My Spiritual Journey by Dalai Lama (good books for 8th graders txt) 📕

1. Excerpted from the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, edited by Robert Kiely (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1998), 38-42.

2. The Sanskrit word mara can be translated as “demon.”

3. Aryadeva, an Indian sage of the second and third centuries, was the principal disciple of Nagarjuna, the author of fundamental Buddhist treatises.

4. The “essences” are the elements of the subtle body.

5. Tsongkhapa, a Tibetan saint and scholar of the thirteenth century, founded the Gelugpa school, to which the institution of the Dalai Lamas belongs.

6. Lama Thubten Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire, edited by Jonathan Landaw (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 32-33.

7. The September 11, 2001, attacks.

8. Speech to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, October 14, 2001.

9. "Human Rights, Democracy, and Freedom,” speech given in Dharamsala, 2008.

10. Excerpt from a speech to the Society for Neurosciences, Washington, DC, November 12, 2005.

11. Ibid.

12. Nagarjuna, “Hymn to the Buddha Who Transcends the World” (in Sanskrit, Lokatishtava; in Tibetan, ‘Jig rten las ‘das par bstod pa).

13. Speech delivered January 14, 2003.

14. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millennium (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1999), 214-16.

15. Excerpt from a speech given at the “Tibet in Danger” conference, Sydney, Australia, September 28, 1996.

16. In this epithet for the Buddha, Tathagata is the Sanskrit term for “thus-gone.”

17. Ikshvaku is the first king of the solar dynasty of Ayodhya, the origin of the Chakra-vartin lineage, into which Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, was born.

18. Avalokiteshvara is the Sanskrit name (Chenrezig in Tibetan) for the Buddha of Compassion.

19. The Tantras are the treatises of Vajrayana Buddhism that describe the subtle body.

20. Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), great teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He recast the Kadampa tradition and renewed it, establishing Ganden Monastery, where the new Gelukpa school originated. The Dalai Lama is the most notable figure in the Gelukpa tradition. Manjushri is the meditation deity who embodies wisdom and learning.

21.Vinaya is the Sanskrit term for “monastic discipline.”

22. The Kalpataru is one of the five trees of Svarga, the heaven of the god Indra, situated at the top of Mount Meru, where the souls of mortals migrate after living virtuously and stay until the time comes for them to resume an earthly body. Legend says that the Kalpataru grants all wishes.

23. The Jambu tree, or rose apple tree, gives its name to Jambudvipa, the southern continent, the one inhabited by human beings according to the Buddhist cosmology of the Abhidharma.

24. To avoid destroying insects and earthworms when the foundations were built.

25. Poem written to accompany the offering made by the Dalai Lama of a statue of the Buddha to the Indian people during the opening of the “International Conference on Ecological Responsibility,” New Delhi, October 2, 1993.

26. The Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal, near the village of Kapilavastu.

27. It was as he sat at the foot of the Bodhi Tree—which was a pipal tree (Ficus religiosa)—that Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained Enlightenment. In Bodhgaya, on the historic place of Enlightenment, Buddhists venerate a tree that is said to be the offshoot of the Bodhi Tree.

28. Teaching given in Sarnath, January 14, 2009.

29. This initiation in Beijing was given in 1932.

30. Quoted from the teaching given at the conclusion of the initiation on December 29, 1990. See the development of this theme in the book Kalachakra: Un mandala pour la paix by Sofia Stril-Rever and Mathieu Ricard, with a preface by the Dalai Lama (Paris: Éditions de la Martinière, 2008).

31. Declaration at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 1991.

32. Speech delivered September 20, 1991, at the inauguration of the World Conservation Union’s “Take Care of the Earth” campaign, September 21, 1991.

33. Excerpt from Edmond Blattchen, La Compassion universelle (interviews with the Dalai Lama), translated into French by Mathieu Ricard (Liège: Alice Editions), 34.

34. Excerpt from UNESCO, “Earth Charter” (Paris: UNESCO, March 2000), available at: http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html. The International Secretariat of the Earth Charter, on the campus of the University for Peace in San José, Costa Rica, coordinates global programs and projects in connection with fifty-three national committees of the Earth Charter and partner organizations such as the National Councils for Sustainable Development.

Part Three: As the Dalai Lama

1. This spiritual master-lay protector relationship is called chö-yon in Tibetan.

2. The Dalai Lama, My Land and My People: Memoirs of the Dalai Lama of Tibet (New York: Potala Corp., 1977), 75.

3. See Tibet Justice Center, “Appeal by His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet to the United Nations (1950),” UN document A11549-11 (Kalimpong, November 1950), 5, available at: http://www.tibetjustice.org/materials/un/un2.html.

4. The International Commission of Jurists is the UN consulting organization that examined the Tibetan question in 1950.

5. Located on the shores of the Brahmaputra, in the Indian state of Assam, Tezpur was the first Indian town across the Indo-Tibetan border. It sheltered the Dalai Lama and his retinue for several days after their escape.

6. Mussoorie is a city in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, in the foothills of the Himalayas. In April 1959, at Nehru’s invitation, the Dalai Lama established the Tibetan government in exile there, before transferring it to Dharamsala in 1960. The first Tibetan school was founded in Mussoorie in 1960; today about five thousand Tibetans live there.

7. In February 1957, Nehru had advised the Dalai Lama to negotiate the principles of the Seventeen-Point Agreement with China.

8. Talk given in Dharamsala in May 1960.

9. The government and the prime minister are now elected by the Assembly of Deputies of the Tibetan People, which, to reflect the diaspora, includes ten deputies for each of the three provinces of Greater Tibet, two deputies for each of the five main religious schools, two deputies for Europe, and one deputy for America.

10. Speech given in Washington, DC, April 1993.

11. Ibid.

12. Declaration made in Aspen, Colorado, July 2008.

13. Speech given at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 6, 1992.

14. Samdhong Rinpoche, with Donovan Roebert, Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), 156-57.

15.