Travis Hellstrom - The Dalai Lama Quotes Book: A Collection of Speeches, Quotations, Essays and Advice from His Holiness

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The Dalai Lama Book of Quotes

Text Copyright 2016 Travis Hellstrom

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-57826-640-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-57826-641-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Design by Carolyn Kasper

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CONTENTS

H IS H OLINESS the XIV Dalai Lama is one of the great thinkers of our time. He has shared his wisdom with us throughout the world in speeches, interviews, stories, and dozens of books. But in seeking to learn from his wise words, where should you begin? In The Dalai Lama Book of Quotes we have taken some of the Dalai Lamas most loved wisdom from over 40 years of teaching and shared them in short and easy to remember quotes. The language may be simple, but we trust you will find the wisdom of His Holiness to be profound.

Whether you are reading just one quote at a time or enjoying them all in one reading, we hope the wisdom of the Dalai Lama is helpful and powerful for you, as it has been for us.

As His Holiness says, If anything Ive said seems useful to you, Im glad. If not, dont worry. Just forget about it.

T he need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence.

If our love for someone is based largely on attraction, whether it be their looks or some other superficial characteristic, our feelings for that person are liable, over time, to evaporate. When they lose the quality we found alluring, the situation can change completely, this despite their being the same person. This is why intimate relationships based purely on attraction are almost always unstable.

If you are showing love to your fellow human beings, you are showing love to your God.

We humans have existed in our present form for about 100,000 years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are news; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

Harming or destroying any being from the highest to the lowest, from a human to the tiniest insect, must at all costs be avoided. The foundation of all spiritual practice is love.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Human affection is the foundation of proper development.

We have genuine friendship when it is based on true human feeling, a feeling of closeness in which there is a sense of sharing and connectedness. I would call this type of friendship genuine because it is not affected by the increase or decrease of the individuals wealth, status or power. The factor that sustains that friendship is whether or not the two people have mutual feelings of love and affection.

Take in account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

To generate true love, you need to know how it differs from attachment.

Unfortunately, love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic.

Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy.

Along with love, compassion is the face of altruism. It is a feeling from deep in the heart that you cannot bear others suffering without acting to relieve it.

With love that is simply attachment, the slightest change in the object, such as a tiny change of attitude, immediately causes you to change. This is because your emotion is based on something very superficial. Take, for example, a new marriage. Often after a few weeks, months, or years the couple becomes enemies and finish up getting divorced. They married deeply in lovenobody marries with hatredbut after a short time everything changed. Why?