Summary
In "How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life," His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Jeffrey Hopkins, offers a comprehensive guide to cultivating inner peace and compassion through Tibetan Buddhist practices. The book emphasizes that while external factors contribute to happiness, true and lasting contentment arises from mental development. It presents techniques to calm the mind, reduce negative emotions, and foster positive relationships, ultimately aiming for a better self and a better world.
The book is structured into six parts, beginning with the basics of spiritual practice: morality, concentrated meditation, and wisdom. Morality involves reorienting physical and verbal actions to avoid harm and cultivating concern for others. Concentrated meditation focuses on achieving mental focus and restoring calm during stressful situations. Wisdom delves into the nature of reality through dependent-arising and emptiness, aiming to reconcile appearance and reality. These practices build upon each other, forming a path towards enlightenment.
The Dalai Lama explains that the path to enlightenment begins with understanding suffering, its sources, and the possibility of cessation. He details the Four Noble Truths: recognizing suffering, identifying its causes (afflictive emotions and contaminated karmas), understanding the possibility of eliminating these causes, and following the path to cessation through morality, meditation, and wisdom. He emphasizes the importance of training the mind to weaken negative attitudes and strengthen positive ones, which can transform not only oneself but also one's surroundings.
The book explores the practice of concentrated meditation (calm abiding), essential for achieving mental clarity and focus. It offers guidance on overcoming obstacles such as excitement and laxity, maintaining mindfulness and introspection, and achieving a stable and clear mind. It details techniques for choosing a suitable object of meditation, maintaining the right physical posture, and addressing problems through analytical meditation.
"How to Practice" delves into the wisdom of emptiness, explaining that phenomena do not exist inherently but are dependent on causes, conditions, and conceptualization. It discusses the compatibility of dependent-arising and emptiness, illustrating how understanding the true nature of phenomena can lead to freedom from suffering. The book also presents the importance of compassion and the intention to become enlightened for the sake of others, outlining rituals and practices to nurture these qualities.
Furthermore, the book touches upon Tantra, a path involving deity yoga and utilizing the power of imagination for spiritual progress. It provides insights into using desire in the spiritual path and the importance of initiation, pledges, and vows in Tantric practice. The book concludes with an overview of the path to enlightenment, emphasizing that realization is generated through understanding, accumulating merit, and overcoming obstructions. Throughout, the Dalai Lama shares personal anecdotes and practical advice, encouraging readers to implement these teachings in their daily lives for a more meaningful and peaceful existence.