In My Own Words: An Introduction to My Teachings and Philosophy

By His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Hay House, 2008, $14.95

Revered throughout the world as a spiritual master, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, presents a distillation of Buddhist teachings for those wishing to understand the wisdom of this more than 2,500-year-old tradition. “When we talk about the Buddha, we are not talking about someone who was a Buddha from the beginning. He began just like us. He was an ordinary sentient being who saw the same suffering we do: birth, old age, sickness, and death.” The Buddha’s greatest desire was for enlightenment, and he achieved it through determined, integrated, and persistent spiritual practice.

Tenzin Gyatso is the first Dalai Lama ever to travel to the West, and as such he is intensely aware that we are, as a civilization and as a species, at a critical crossroads, that moral and ethical thinking has not kept pace with scientific and technological invention. The teachings he presents in this book are taken from some of his most powerful writings and talks; they give readers insight into just what it is that allows someone like His Holiness, who has witnessed the pain and suffering of his people, to serve as a beacon of compassion in a world that needs it so desperately.