Dalai Lama Pack - His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler M.D.

Written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler M.D.
Read by Howard C. Cutler M.D., B.D. Wong, Richard Gere, Brian Nishii, Marc Cashman
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

The Art of Happiness

The Dalai Lama is probably one of the only people who, if you ask him if he’s happy, even though he’s suffered the loss of his country, will give you an unconditional “yes.” What’s more, he’ll tell you that happiness is the purpose of life, and the “the very motion of our life is toward happiness.” How to get there has always been the question. He’s tried to answer it before, but he’s never had the help of a psychiatrist to get the message across in a context we can easily understand.
Through meditation, stories, and the meeting of Buddhism and psychology, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day depression, anxiety, anger, jealousy, or just an ordinary bad mood. He discusses relationships, health, family, work, and spirituality to show us how to ride through life’s obstacles on a deep, abiding source of inner peace. Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations and with a healthy dose of common sense, The Art of Happiness is a program that crosses the boundaries of all traditions to help listeners with the difficulties common to all human beings.

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The Art of Happiness at Work

In conversations with the Dalai Lama over the past several years, Howard Cutler has asked the questions we all want answered about how to find happiness in the place we spend most of our time - work. Beginning with the basic need to find satisfaction in our careers, Dr. Cutler questions His Holiness about the nature of work. In psychiatry and according to the Dalai Lama, our motivation for working determines our level of satisfaction. The Art of Happiness at Work explores these three levels of focus:
Survival: focus on salary, stability, food and clothing
Career: focus on advancement
Calling: focus on work as a higher purpose
Dr. Cutler probes the Dalai Lama’s wisdom by posing these questions: What is the relationship between self-awareness and work? How does lack of freedom at work affect our levels of happiness? How can we deal with boredom or lack of challenge? Job change and unemployment? How much of our misery comes from our identity being tied up with work?

Dr. Cutler walks us through the Dalai Lama’s reasoning so that we may know how to apply his wisdom to daily life. The Art of Happiness at Work is an invaluable source of strength and peace for anyone who earns a living.

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The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Niels Bohr, Einstein. Their insights shook our perception of who we are and where we stand in the world and in their wake have left an uneasy co-existence: science vs. religion, faith vs. empirical enquiry. Which is the keeper of truth? Which is the true path to understanding reality?
After 40 years of study with some of the greatest scientific minds as well as a lifetime of meditative, spiritual, and philosophical study, the Dalai Lama presents a brilliant analysis of why both disciplines must be pursued in order to arrive at a complete picture of the truth. Science shows us ways of interpreting the physical world, while spirituality helps us cope with reality. But the extreme of either is impoverishing. The belief that all is reducible to matter and energy leaves out a huge range of human experience: emotions, yearnings, compassion, culture. At the same time, holding unexamined spiritual beliefs, beliefs that are contradicted by evidence, logic, and experience, can lock us into fundamentalist cages.

Through an examination of Darwinism and karma, quantum mechanics and philosophical insight into the nature of reality, neurobiology and the study of consciousness, the Dalai Lama draws significant parallels between contemplative and scientific examination of reality. “I believe that spirituality and science are complementary but different investigative approaches with the same goal of seeking the truth,” His Holiness writes. “In this, there is much each may learn from the other, and together they may contribute to expanding the horizon of human knowledge and wisdom.”

This breathtakingly personal examination is a tribute to the Dalai Lama’s teachers, both of science and spirituality. The legacy of this book is a vision of the world in which our different approaches to understanding ourselves, our universe, and one another can be brought together in the service of humanity.

This audio includes an interview with Richard Gere.

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The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World

How can we expect to find happiness and meaning in our lives when the modern world seems like such a truly unhappy place?
The Art of Happiness has become the classic guide to the Dalai Lama’s enlightened approach to living. In this inspirational new volume, the unique collaboration between the Dalai Lama and the highly respected scholar Howard Cutler returns with a practical application of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual values to the stressful and demanding world we all live in today.

With the Dalai Lama’s trademark warmth and humour and Cutler’s penetrating mind, the result is a wise approach to dealing with human problems that is both optimistic and realistic, even in the most challenging times.

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The Heart of Meditation: Discovering Innermost Awareness

His Holiness the Dalai Lama provides intimate details on an advanced meditation practice called Dzogchen using a visionary poem by the 19th-century saint Patrul Rinpoche, author of the Buddhist classic Words of My Perfect Teacher. The Dalai Lama deftly connects how training the mind in compassion for other beings is directly related to - and in fact a prerequisite for - the very pinnacle of Buddhist meditation. He presents his understanding, confirmed again and again over millennia, that the cultivation of both compassion and wisdom is absolutely critical to progress in meditation and goes into great depth on how this can be accomplished. While accessible to a beginner, he leads the listener in very fine detail on how to identify innermost awareness - who we really are - how to maintain contact with this awareness, and how to release oneself from the endless stream of our thoughts to let this awareness, always present, become consistently apparent.

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Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together

No person today is untouched by what happens in the rest of the world. With this historic development, the Dalai Lama understands that the essential task of humanity is to cultivate peaceful coexistence. But this has long been problematic with religion, and while previous conflicts over religious differences may have been significant, they did not threaten the very survival of humanity. Now, when extremists have access to powerful technologies, a single spark could ignite a powder keg of frightening proportions.

Yet the Dalai Lama shows how the challenges of globalization can also move us in another direction, to a deeper plane where nations, cultures, and individuals connect through their shared human nature. All major religions confront the same perennial questions; each has distinct forms of expression. But this marvelous diversity of insight has the potential for inspiring dialogue that can enrich everyone’s pursuit of wisdom.

Toward a True Kinship of Faiths explores where differences between religions can be genuinely appreciated without serving as sources of conflict, as well as offers a hopeful yet realistic look at how humanity must step into the future.