HOW TO PRACTICE
The Way to a Meaningful Life
His Holiness the DALAI LAMA
Pocket Books
$20.00 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Michael Armenia

How to Practice, the latest publication from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, was translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D., who served as his interpreter for many years. In reading this book I was impressed with a sense of the Dalai Lama's commitment to engendering compassion and eliminating suffering. If you look at the book on a deeper level, the structure in the ritual and practice of Tibetan Buddhism unfolds. The book can benefit both people on the path of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as people of other religious faiths. As the Dalai Lama says, all beings want to end suffering.

The book is divided into six parts. The first outlines three teachings of Buddha in the necessary order of practice: morality, meditation, and wisdom. To have wisdom, to see the world as it is without faulty thinking, we must possess what the Dalai Lama calls "calm abiding" or "concentrated meditation". To achieve "calm abiding", we must successfully practice morality. The next three parts of the book examine morality, concentrated meditation and wisdom in more detail. The fifth part addresses Tantra and Deity Yoga which is, in my opinion, intended for qualified practitioners. Finally, in the last part of the book, all of the practices that are summarized at the end of each chapter are gathered together to form an "Overview of the Path to Enlightenment".

The Dalai Lama divides the practice of morality into three types: individual liberation, the morality of concern for others and the morality of Tantra. The first concerns the individual as he or she refrains from causing any harm to others. The second concerns the individual in his or her efforts to help others by refraining from selfishness and self-cherishing. The third concerns techniques of developing body and mind to emanate pure wisdom and compassion. There are suggestions on how to change the views we have of ourselves and our relationships with others. To practice this, visualization exercises and prayers to be mindfully recited are suggested.

One of the aspects of the book that caught my attention was the Dalai Lama's discussion on the sources of suffering. He addresses how karma is transmitted through lifetimes during the process of dying: death, the intermediate stage between this life and the next, and rebirth. He chronicles the mind as it goes through eight levels during death to its final state of clear light. This process is regularly visualized by Tibetan practitioners as the level of clear light is considered the most profound level of consciousness.

How to Practice makes a distinction between analytical meditation and stabilizing meditation. The former is a practice of reasoning on a subject while the latter is the way to "calm abiding" by focusing our minds on a topic or subject such as your breathing or "the first letter of your name on a disk of light inside or outside your body." Regarding the manner of meditation, the Dalai Lama also considers aspects such as diet and posture. 

In his chapters on wisdom, we learn that the primary source of suffering is ignorance - our mistaken assumption that objects inherently exist. We perceive objects as existing in there own right, a conventional truth, when in reality they do not inherently exist - all objects are a result of "dependent-arising." The ultimate truth is emptiness, the lacking of inherent existence. This does not imply that nothing exists (nihilism). The Dalai Lama suggests that wisdom comes in "The Middle Way", the path between the conventional truth that our thoughts and actions are forms and the ultimate truth of emptiness. 

To the average person, Tantra connotes a sort of sexual yoga. However, the Tantric aspect of Buddhism is far more complex. Tantra begins with calm abiding and meditating on the body and mind as if it were the perfect body and mind of a deity. This chapter does not give detailed instructions for following this path, rather it gives more an introduction into the types of Tantra. 

My present spiritual path is not Tibetan Buddhism. Nevertheless, the virtues presented in this book have inspired me to not only to read more by the Dalai Lama, but to develop my "other-centered" nature through acts of selflessness.

© 2002 Michael Armenia