Awakening The Buddhist Heart
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
'Life is about relationships - the relationship we have with ourselves, with each other, with the world, as well as the connection to that which is beyond any of us. WHen our relationships are food, we feel good; when they are bad, we feel awful. Let's accept it:we need each other. We need to feel connected; we need to feel each other's presence and love.'
With his first bestseller, Awakening the Buddha Within, Surya Das, the American-born lama, gave the Western world a primer for Tibetan Buddhism. Now, he continues to share this ancient wisdom as he shows us how to integrate all the experiences of our lives, both positive and negative, into our spiritual search.
How happy we are with our relationships - with others, the world and ourselves - largely determines how joyous and fulfilled we will be. In Awakening the Biddhist Heart, Lama Surya Das shows us how to use our innate Spiritual Intellgence to build more loving and satisfying connections. As he helps us to increase our self-awareness and sensitivity towards others, making us better mates, parents, friends and members of society, Surya Das demonstrates how we can make our relationships more meaningful as he guides us through Buddhist practices that release negative emotions which enable us to learn from those we love, and those we don't.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The "Buddhist heart" that Surya Das refers to in his third book turns out to be a good heart. Blending intimate anecdotes with wisdom gleaned from his decades of study with traditional Tibetan Buddhist teachers, the American-born author seeks to help readers to awaken this heart so that their everyday relationships may become a way to experience the meaningful interconnectedness and sacrednessness of life. Surya Das wishes to cut to the essence of Buddhist wisdom, while bolstering a general readership with a dawn-of-a-new-era pep talk: "As we enter a new century and a new millennium... it seems increasingly important to awaken our Buddha-like hearts through spiritual connections." Unlike in his first two books--Awakening the Buddha, an explication of Tibetan Buddhism, and Awakening the Sacred, an attempt to describe spiritual values in nonsectarian terms--here Surya Das initially seems to be trying to be all things to all people, and the advice he offers can feel flimsy or vague. He counsels readers to cultivate a more authentic presence, for example, by learning to be natural, simple and open. The disarming honesty of the many personal accounts he presents puts a friendly human face on an ancient tradition, yet the work as a whole lacks power and coherence.
