‘An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life’ by The Dalai Lama

Finished 2/17/17 at 10:38pm

Recently, I listened to a TED talk by Devdutt Pattanaik (via TED Radio Hour, a great podcast) which described a meeting between Alexander the Great and an Indian wiseman that illustrated the great cultural differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

From the talk, verbatim:

Alexander, a young Macedonian, met there what he called a “gymnosophist,” which means “the naked, wise man.” We don’t know who he was. Perhaps he was a Jain monk, like Bahubali over here, the Gomateshwara Bahubali whose image is not far from Mysore. Or perhaps he was just a yogi who was sitting on a rock, staring at the sky and the sun and the moon.

Alexander asked, “What are you doing?” and the gymnosophist answered, “I’m experiencing nothingness.” Then the gymnosophist asked, “What are you doing?” and Alexander said, “I am conquering the world.” And they both laughed. Each one thought that the other was a fool. The gymnosophist said, “Why is he conquering the world? It’s pointless.” And Alexander thought, “Why is he sitting around, doing nothing? What a waste of a life.”

After hearing this, I realized I knew only the cliff notes of Eastern Philosophy, and I wanted/needed to understand this separate train of thought more deeply.

I went to the library (digitally) and began to search for a starting point; this, of course, is more difficult than it sounds, as “Eastern Philosophy” can mean about 10,000 different things to different people (the same goes for “Western Philosophy” of course) and there’s not necessarily major canonical works that one can start at.

After some searching, I happened across a work from The Dalai Lama himself (I realize he writes or is translated into english quite frequently), and figured that Tibetan Buddhism may be a good starting point. Plus, who wouldn’t want to reach a state of enlightenment that would give you a sublime smile like that one?

*An Open Heart *is built from a series of talks/lectures The Dalai Lama gave when visiting in New York. The book focuses on the topic of compassion, and the link between all living beings — in many ways, acting as a primer for some of the deeper tenants of Tibetan Buddhism.

The opening chapter is the strongest, as it’s built word-for-word from a speech he gave to more than 40,000 in Central Park in 2009. It’s a strong argument for the dependency of all on each other, and the importance of compassion for happiness and human existence.

His story in-and-of-itself is a testament to compassion. He elaborates on it, and it’s building of his character and compassion in his speech:

In my case, at the age of sixteen I lost my freedom, and at twenty-four I lost my country. I have been a refugee for the past forty years, with heavy responsibilities. As I look back, my life has not been easy. However, throughout all these years, I learned about compassion, about caring for others. The mental attitude has brought me inner strength.

He goes on latter to elaborate more on some of the basic tenants of Tibetan Buddhism, including recognizing suffering in yourself, and then the cyclic suffering in all living things. The eternal process of reincarnation and it’s ties to compassion is also discussed. Compassion, he argues is the recognition of this in all others and the drive to cure it in all you meet.

One of the more nuanced points he speaks to (and which I struggle to fully grasp) is that of ‘nothingness’ and the overall importance of the rejection of the intrinsic or innate existence of all things.

To excerpt:

So what is emptiness? It is simply this unfindability. When we look for the flower among its parts, we are confronted with the absence of such a flower. That absence we are confronted with is the flower’s emptiness. But then, is there no flower? Of course there is. To seek for the core of any phenomenon is ultimately to arrive at a more subtle appreciation of its emptiness, its unfindability. However, we mustn’t think of the emptiness of a flower simply as the unfindability we encounter when searching among it’s parts. Rather, it is the dependent nature of the flower, or whatever object you care to name, that defines its emptiness. This is called dependent origination.

He applies this to chairs, tables, and eventually the self — is there one ‘thing’ in anything? Is everything dependent on one another? Are we anything without everything else?

He opens up many questions, attempting to answer them within the constructs of Buddhist philosophy and providing methods to mediate on them to improve ones compassion (and therefore whole self).

Next Steps

Overall, I do recommend the book, but I want to continue to dive into different branches of Buddhist (and eventually Indian/Hindu and Shinto) philosophy as this does not provide a holistic view but one focused on a quality.

However, I do respect the wisdom found in these pages, and within the teachings of The Dalai Lama himself. He leads a life lead by his convictions, and provides a positive model to the world that in many ways is in need of hearing his words.