Who is Teachings On Buddhism from His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama, Heart of Wisdom 2012 Wall Calendar

by: His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Amazon Price: $9.10 (as of 02/17/2012)

This calendar features a year's worth of wisdom from the Dalai Lama. Presenting wonderful images together with some important quotations by the outstanding personality of the 14th Dalai Lama and his predecessors.

The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living

by: Dalai Lama

Amazon Price: $13.93 (as of 02/17/2012)

This is an excerpt:

THE BENEFITS OF COMPASSION

In recent years there have been many studies that support the idea that developing compassion and altruism has a positive impact on our physical and emotional health. In one well-known experiment, for example, David McClelland, a psychologist at Harvard University, showed a group of students a film of Mother Teresa working among Calcutta's sick and poor. The students reported that the film stimulated feelings of compassion. Afterward, he analyzed the students' saliva and found an increase in immunoglobulin-A, an antibody that can help fight respiratory infections. In another study done by James House at the University of Michigan Research Center, investigators found that doing regular volunteer work, interacting with others in a warm and compassionate way, dramatically increased life expectancy, and probably overall vitality as well.

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama

Amazon Price: $9.76 (as of 02/17/2012)

How do you reconcile a commitment to non-violence when faced with violence? Why do the poor often seem happier than the rich? Must a society lose its traditions in order to move into the future? These are some of the questions posed to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by filmmaker and explorer Rick Ray. Ray examines some of the fundamental questions of our time by weaving together observations from his own journeys throughout India and the Middle East, and the wisdom of an extraordinary spiritual leader. This is his story, as told and filmed by Rick Ray during a private visit to his monastery in Dharamsala, India over the course of several months. Also included is rare historical footage as well as footage supplied by individuals who at great personal risk, filmed with hidden cameras within Tibet. Part biography, part philosophy, part adventure and part politics, "10 Questions for The Dalai Lama" conveys more than history and more than answers - it opens a window into the heart of an inspiring man. If you had only one hour, what would you ask?

Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide to the Stages of Meditation

by: Dalai Lama

Amazon Price: $4.00 (as of 02/17/2012)

The following is another excerpt:

The environment where you are doing the meditation should be properly cleaned. While cleaning, you should cultivate the motivation that since you are engaged in the task of accumulating great stores of merit by inviting the hosts of buddhas and bodhisattvas to this environment, it is important to have a clean place. You should see that all the external dirt and dust around you is basically a manifestation of the faults and stains within your own mind. You should see that the most important aim is to purge these stains and faults from within your mind. Therefore, as you cleanse the environment, think that you are also purifying your mind. Develop the very strong thought that by cleaning this place you are inviting the host of buddhas and bodhisattvas who are the most supreme merit field, and that you will subsequently engage in a path that will enable you to purge your mind of the stains of delusions.

The Open Road

by: Pico Iyer

Amazon Price: (as of 02/17/2012)

This is a brilliant pairing of writer and subject. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, for more than 30 years, thanks to a long-ago connection between the writer's father, an Oxford don born in India, and a young Dalai Lama. And so the acute global observer Iyer, a travel writer, essayist and novelist, has long followed the fortunes of the astute globalist Tibetan Buddhist, who travels the world but can never go home to his Chinese-occupied country. This is not a biography but an extended journalistic analysis of someone deep enough for several lifetimes, as Tibetan Buddhists believe. Iyer organizes his observations by smart descriptions of aspects of the Dalai Lama's work and character.

Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's Heart of Wisdom Teachings

by: Dalai Lama

Amazon Price: $6.99 (as of 02/17/2012)

The Buddha's life exemplifies a very important principle--a certain amount of hardship is necessary in one's spiritual pursuit. We can also see this principle at work in the lives of other great religious teachers, such as Jesus Christ or the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Furthermore, I think that the followers of these teachers, if they wish to attain the highest spiritual realizations within their tradition, must themselves undergo a process of hardship, which they endure through dedicated perseverance. There is sometimes the tendency among the followers of the Buddha to imagine, perhaps only in the back of their minds, that "Although the Buddha went through all of those hardships to attain enlightenment they aren't really necessary for me. Surely, I can attain enlightenment without giving up life's comforts." Perhaps such people imagine that, because they are somehow more fortunate than the Buddha, they can attain the same spiritual state as he did without any particular hardships or renunciation. This is, I think, mistaken.

...While Buddhism has adapted to the culture of each new civilization it has encountered, it nonetheless retains its emphasis on morality and discipline as essential for spiritual maturation. If we ourselves want the attainments described by the Buddha--the deep concentration and the penetrating insights--then we too must endure some amount of hardship and observe ethical behavior.

--from Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama's Heart of Wisdom Teachings by H.H. the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama Renaissance (narrated by Harrison Ford)

Amazon Price: $22.25 (as of 02/17/2012)

I saw this great movie on the big screen and it is definately worth owning! Enjoy.

The documentary film has played in theaters in over 100 cities in the U.S., as well as in cinemas around the world. At the edge of the Millennium, the Dalai Lama of Tibet invited 40 of the West's leading, most innovative thinkers to his residence in the Himalayan Mountains of Northern India to discuss the world's problems and how we can solve them. What transpired was unexpected and powerful, and captured by an 18-person 5-camera film crew.

The film features quantum physicists Fred Alan Wolf and Amit Goswami (from What the Bleep Do We Know), Dr. Michael Beckwith (from The Secret),national radio host Thom Hartmann, revolutionary social scientist Jean Houston, activist Vandana Shiva (from the film The Corporation), and others. Beautifully filmed exotic scenery and Tibetan and Indian culture.

"SPELLBINDING... An uplifting cathartic journey that grips the soul."
"An inspirational revelation for mankind... An everlasting awakening of the heart and mind."
- Actress Diane Ladd - 3-time Oscar & Emmy nominee

Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama: The Untold Story of the Holy Men Who Shaped Tibet, from Pre-history to the Present Day

by: Alexander Norman

Amazon Price: $6.50 (as of 02/17/2012)