Customer Reviews

A Simple Path: Basic Buddhist Teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

thorsons have done us a great service with the publication of this book. HH the dalai Lama gave a lecture on the 4 noble truths in england, and instead of merely publishing the text[good enough in and of itself},Thorsons has interspersed scores of color pictures of some of the finest photographs available,throughout the volume. Heavy bonded glossy photograhic paper is used,highlighting this amazing volume. The typeset is bold and clear,the pictures are breathtaking!Monasteries, monks praying, pilgrims outside the ptola palace,children playing...absolutely stunning photgraphs, perfectly compliment the text of His Holiness.And at this price?!?! What an exquisite book, and what a bargain. Absolutely magnificent! Highest recommendation.

(3.75 Stars)

The cover of the book is so warm and inviting. His Holiness The Dalai Lama smiling at you with mouth and eyes. Every time I look at it I smile. I'm tempted to cut the cover off and frame it...

The book discusses in great detail the 4 Noble Truths.

It's difficult to write a review on books regarding Buddhism. Everyone's experience will be different and everyone's understanding will be different and I don't want to discourage anyone from exploring The Path...

For myself I found this book difficult to follow. Someone else may take to it better and find it an easier to understand (I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer)

I felt like a freshmen walking in late to a lecture and the audience and class this was for was all graduate students. I felt like I missed the beginning of the talk and that the level of content was for more advanced students.

I do not recommend this to a newcomer to Buddhism, again I found the "level" to be more advanced, but that's your call and like I said you may take to it better than I did and hey - it's your path.

I did get things out of the book and did learn some things. I felt incredibly honored to be reading the words of HH The Dalai Lama and that's what kept me reading.

The photographs are absolutely beautiful! - and again - I love the cover!

I must confess, I picked up this book because it was just so lovely! It is nicely bound, on superb high quality glossy paper, with stunning photographs of Tibet. Everything about it just makes you want to cradle, or worship, it.

Then there's the text. They took a lecture that H. H. the Dalai Lama gave on the 4 Noble Truths and cut it (thank heavens) and put it in the book. The result is weird. The extremely philosophical treatise makes an odd accompaniment to scenes of Tibet. On the one hand, you're reading about how all the world is suffering and we are ignorant louts for getting so caught up in this illusion, and then we glance at the photograph (every pair of pages has one, so you're always looking at something wonderful). I thought, "Gee, if I'm not supposed to care about the world, or I'm not supposed to delight in its pleasures and glories, then what is all this color and visual drama? Illusion?" Thus, the book highlights in an unwitting way one of the paradoxes of Buddhism... we try to disentangle ourselves from the grosser life of merely sensate pleasure but we can and should still love the world. Who says Christianity has a corner on the market of paradox?!

Still, there are some real textual gems and pearls scattered in the pages, and it is quick reading because of all the pictures. Occasionally you'll have to slog through a passage on Tibetan cosmology and physics, which sounds pretty medieval, but then you come across a glorious section that makes your heart sing.

It's a fun ride!

Although this book doesnt get into anything complex, it is a wonderful book for people new to Buddhism. Full of great pictures, and easy to read text, it introduces basics of Buddhism. It may favor with more Tibetan Buddhist information, but it does include other schools of Buddhism. Highly recommend

I agree with a reviewer Buster Paris.
In this book, HH teaches The Four Noble Truth which are the very foundation of the Buddhist teaching. However, I do not recomend this book to a first time Buddhist book reader who's naturally not familier with Buddhist's technical terms.

If you are willing to start learning Buddhism and wondering where to start, Lama Surya Das's "Awakening the Buddha Within" I think is the best.
It deals with the Four Noble Truth & the Eightfold Path in simple English and is really well structured. It's fantastic.

And if you would like to read "a book by the Dalai Lama" to see what Buddhism can offer, or just to be inspired, I recomend "Healing Anger - The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective" which is a transcript of oral teachings delivered by HH in Arisona for the Buddhists & non-Buddhists.

Well, you can come back to "A Simple Path" when you are ready!
This is truly beautiful a book. You will be happy to own one.

The Dalai Lama's books are usually very simply and lightly written, so that the average reader has no difficulty accessing them. This book is some exception to that, as the Dalai Lama wanders into topics that the introductory student of Buddhism might find a bit arcane. His intent is to explain the basic Buddhist Path of the Four Noble Truths, and he almost accomplished that here. I would hesitate to recommend this book to an introductory student on Buddhism, with the caveat of not getting discouraged on the Dalai Lama period. He has produced many wonderful ideas and is justifiably celebrated as a religious leader, but I could not conclude that this is his strongest or most accessible work. The book is wonderfully illustrated with pictures of Buddhists and their monasteries from Tibet to India, and one wishes there had been much more attention to the vibrancy of Tibetan and Buddhist culture, than merely incidentally commentary along the way. Alas, it succeeds more as a nicely illustrated coffee-table book than a substantive introduction to Buddhism.

A little to complicated to understand. Hoped for more information on the religion, but it only touched on generalities. Referred to lots of other works for the information I had hoped to find.

This book is 176 pgs., short and concise, including endnotes and a glossary of terms for quick reference of the many Buddhist words. For instance, a simple word I had heard before from other studies is this term, "Arhat". I forgot what it meant and I needed to look it up. It is defined in the glossary thus:

"Arhat (Tib. dgra bcom pa) - to become an Arhat is the final goal of the Shravakayana. It is a form of nirvana, beyond rebirth, but falls short of buddhahood. The Tibetan word literally means 'one who has subdued the enemies', i.e., negative emotions."

I mention this fact for two reasons. The first reason is to show how the glossary is very useful (you can look up "Shravakayana" and many other words to find their meaning if it isn't expressed in the text of the book, too). The second reason is to let you know that if you have negative emotions, you, too, can subdue them and become an Arhat. It may appear to your mind to be something unimagined or even almost looked at as not even necessary. You might reason that you are the way you are and that that is all there is to it. (I suspect most reading this actually sense that this latter attitude is the "path of suffering" and you are searching out this book to move away from this path into one that leads to enlightenment).

In this book, you will be told that the latter way of viewing yourself is the path of suffering. This book brings this teaching forth very nicely, that is, the cessation of suffering is possible in this life. Becoming an Arhat is not that difficult and can be accomplished in this life. The rewards are worth the effort!

The book is simple to understand (using the glossary helps a great deal as there are a lot of Tibetan words used) but doesn't suffer from oversimplification. The Dalai Lama wrote a series of lectures in 1996 and this book simply states the facts of Buddhism, its tenants and principles without giving the reader more details than is needed to understand Buddhism and its practices.

If you are achieving self-realization through another path, you may read this book and discover many similarities to your path and the Buddhist path. This can be quite startling actually, yet reassuring. We intuitively know that there may be many ways to the top of a mountain, yet there is only one mountain top.

This work was translated by Geshi Thupten Kinpa, edited by Dominique Side and photographs were provided by Ian Cumming. The photos add to the richness of the book and were appreciated by me. The main text consists of 5 chapters, four of which cover the 4 Noble Truths briefly. They give the reader a clear picture of them and their purpose in Buddhist teachings--to provide its very foundation.

Let me leave you with words to literally live by:

"So, now you have read these teachings.... Whatever your faith, if you accept that faith then it must become part of your life. It is not sufficient to attend church on Sunday and join hands together in prayer for a few moments, if the rest of your behavior remains the same...."

"Once the teaching is part of your life, whenever you have a real problem it gives you inner strength."

"...because no-one else can provide this for us -- no deities, no gurus, and no friends. This is why the Buddha says you must be your own master."