What I disliked: The concept of the absence of inherent existence is repeated far too often. I tend to be a concrete thinker and don't do as well with abstractions, so if halfway through the book I felt like I was being beat over the head with the repetition of ideas, I can only imagine how less concrete thinkers felt. I also think it would have been helpful for the Dalai Lama to provide some more examples, especially as there were a few parts where I actually needed elaboration and did not get it, as opposed to much of the rest of the book in which there was, in my opinion, unnecessary elaboration on the concept of emptiness. Also, he does not explain how individuals can help others by using these principles. The approach seems almost naive; even if one were to commit oneself fully to helping others understand emptiness and the importance of compassion, there is no discourse regarding how to do this. Many people are not open to new ideas unless they are ready to be open to new ideas. I kept being reminded of the proverb that you can lead a horse to water . . . Also, he's forcing the concept of "cyclic existence" on us (while saying at the beginning that what he's about to tell us could be applied without having anything to do with religions) and basing the concepts he's talking about on it. urn:oclc:820490117 Republisher_date 20160104024227 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20160103023041 Scanner scribe6.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source The book “How to See Yourself as You Really Are” by the Dalai Lama, is good book that talks a lot about human nature. It goes through chapters of how the human mind sees itself. Then he goes on to tell you helpful ways of understanding yourself, or “how to see yourself as you really are.” He explains all of this from a Buddhist perspective, and helps to give good tips on how you can reach the proper state of mind.

I can't say the book is bad. It's possible to draw something out of it and it could've been worse. So I gave it an average score of 2.5 . This book is one of the most meaningful and loving book I have ever read, and I believe you will feel the same way if you give the books many reads in smaller chunks like I did. I feel that Dalai Lama is doing his best in making Buddhist teachings more approachable to people of other religions or non-religion.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2014-07-22 21:12:39.410427 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA1138923 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Containerid S0022 Donor What I liked: The Dalai Lama explains concepts that I may have been aware of but had not really reflected on. He repeats most concepts enough that you are easily able to remember them. I also thought the introduction was excellent; it was inclusive, open-minded, and it laid out why this book is important.

Drawing on wisdom and techniques refined in Tibetan monasteries for more than a thousand years, and adopting as its structure traditional Buddhist steps of meditative reflection, How to See Yourself As You Really Are includes practical exercises and gives readers a clear path to assess their growth and personal development. Reifications such as "morality/moral values" and "cyclic existence" weren't defined, so it took me almost the whole book to figure out most of them. While I may have thought somewhere at the beginning "Oh, ok, he means that", later on I got confused again about how the term was used. And I think it was only possible for me to figure them out at all because I already was familiar with the concepts using different (more common) words. I doubt that someone who's new to this would understand what he's talking about. If you understand that, no matter what appears, whether to your senses or to your thinking mind, those objects are established in dependence upon thought, you will get over the idea that phenomena exist in their own right. You will understand that there is no truth in their being set up from their own side. You will realize emptiness, the absence of inherent existence, which exists beyond the proliferation of problems born from seeing phenomena as existing in themselves and provides the medicine for removing delusion." On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.

Like the two wings of a bird, love and insight work cooperatively to bring about enlightenment, says a fundamental Buddhist teaching. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In "How to See Yourself As You Really Are, " the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic -- and loving -- perspective.Step-by-step exercises help readers shatter their false assumptions and ideas and see the world as it actually exists. By directing our attention to the false veneer that so bedazzles our senses and our thoughts, His Holiness sets the stage for discovering the reality behind appearances. But getting past one's misconceptions is only a prelude to right action, and the book's final section describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration to the service of love, and vice versa, so that true altruistic enlightenment is attained. But perhaps this is to be expected from a reader who feels that without passion (something the Dalai Lama puts forward as a 'sin' and undesirable), while causing many of the world's problems, has also created some of the world's finest moments in art, science, literature, social reform and more. Without passion there would be no impetus to create, to achieve a state closer to the divine. In a nutshell, this book teaches you to see everything objectively and clinically -- e.g. a beautiful woman is nothing more than a collection of symmetrical body parts whose fat content is proportionate to each other. The problem is that in looking at the world clinically and objectively (detached from emotion), you also remove the "art" since human sight is 100% perception (i.e beauty is in the eye of the beholder). For example, a woman with a big nose is cute to some people precisely because that outstanding feature is what makes her unique and endearing. Without art, a woman with a big nose is always an ugly woman.

In this way, meditation is a long journey, not a single insight or even several insights. It gets more and more profound as the days, months, and years pass. Keep reading and thinking and meditating." Good book. Is a bit repetitive and moralizing with too much stressing how life is suffering and all.

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Step-by-step exercises help readers shatter their false assumptions and ideas and see the world as it actually exists. By directing our attention to the false veneer that so bedazzles our senses and our thoughts, His Holiness sets the stage for discovering the reality behind appearances. But getting past one's misconceptions is only a prelude to right action, and the book's final section describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration to the service of love, and vice versa, so that true altruistic enlightenment is attained. This book itself is an illustration of Tibet's contribution to world culture, reminding us of the importance of maintaining a homeland for its preservation. The light shining through the Dalai Lama's teachings has its source in that culture, offering insights and practices that so many of us need in ours. The book's third part describes how to harness the power of meditative concentration with insight to achieve immersion in our own ultimate nature, which undermines our problems at their very foundation. The fourth and fifth parts discuss how people and things actually do exist, since they do not exist in the way we assume. The Dalai Lama draws readers into noticing how everything depends on thought -- how thought itself organizes what we perceive. His goal is to develop in us a clear sense of what it means to exist without misconception. Then the final part of the book explains the way this profound state of being enhances love by revealing how unnecessary destructive emotions and suffering actually are. In this way self-knowledge is seen as the key to personal development and positive relationships. Once we know how to put insight in the service of love and love in the service of insight, we come to the book's appendix, an overview of the steps for achieving altruistic enlightenment. After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.

The only way to gain this understanding is internal. You need to give up false beliefs you are superimposing on the way things really are; there is no external means of removing lust and hatred. If you are pierced by a thorn, you can remove it forever with a needle, but to get rid of an internal attitude, you must see clearly the mistaken beliefs on which it is based. This calls for using reason to explore the true nature of phenomena and then concentrate on what has been understood." if we understand and train ourselves in these concepts, we have insight and can act with empathy and compassion

Some people are naturally more comfortable with being honest. Others learn to be honest once they become comfortable with someone. You should have one or both of these types of people in your life. nothing and noone exists in and of themselves (not even "I" or "you") because everything is being influenced and shaped by causes, its parts & thought everything is impermanent and subject to change, thus we shouldn't get attached to persons, things & situations or else it'll cause afflictive emotions