happy birthday!!

 

Happy 89th Birthday to Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

finding happiness in troubled times

 

 

 

 

Deeply moving and laugh-out-loud funny, His Holiness the Dalai Lama

 and Archbishop Desmond Tutu share science-backed wisdom

 of how to live with joy in troubled times.

 director Louie Psihoyos teams up with co-director Peggy Callahan on

 MISSION: JOY – FINDING HAPPINESS IN TROUBLED TIMES,

 a documentary with unprecedented access to the unlikely friendship

 of two international icons who transcend religion:

 His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Archbishop Tutu.

 

 In their final joint mission, these self-described mischievous brothers give a master class

 in how to create joy in a world that was never easy for them. They offer neuroscience-backed

 wisdom to help each of us live with more joy, despite circumstances.

 

 

 

Dalai Lama - 86th Birthday Message

 

 

 

 

 

 

compassion - radical kinship

 

 

 

 
"It is not enough to believe that compassion is important and to think about how nice it is!"

Self-centeredness inhibits our love for others,

 and we are all afflicted by it to one degree or another.

 

 For true happiness to come about, we need a calm mind,

 and such peace of mind is brought about only by a compassionate attitude. 

How can we develop this attitude? 

 

 We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; 

we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behavior.

Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment.

 For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated 

with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate. 

 

Usually when we are concerned about a close friend, we call this compassion, 

but it too is usually attachment. Even in marriage, the love between husband and wife—

particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other’s 

deeper character very well—depends more on attachment than genuine love.

 

 Marriages that last only a short time do so because they lack compassion; 

they are produced by emotional attachment based on projection and expectation,

 and as soon as the projections change, the attachment disappears. 

 

Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears flawless,

 when in fact he or she has many faults. In addition, attachment makes us exaggerate

 small, positive qualities. When this happens, it indicates that our love is motivated

 more by personal need than by genuine care for another.

Compassion without attachment is possible. 

Therefore, we need to clarify the distinctions between compassion and attachment. 

 

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.

 Because of this firm foundation, a truly compassionate attitude toward others

 does not change even if they behave negatively.

 

 Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, 

but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person 

is a close friend or an enemy.

 

 This is genuine compassion. 

For a practitioner, the goal is to develop this genuine compassion, 

this genuine wish for the well-being of another, 

in fact for every living being throughout the universe. 

 

 

~ Dalai Lama

adapted from The Compassionate Life

 art of Father Gregory Boyle from

Saint Ignatius College Prep Library

 

 

 

to unite

~ Dalai Lama

attachment

.

Our self-centeredness,

our distinctive attachment to the feeling 

of an independent "I" works to inhibit

our compassion.

True compassion can only develop

and grow as such self-grasping is reduced

and eventually eliminated.

~ Dalai Lama 

from Tibetan Portrait - The Power of Compassion

photo by Phil Borges

the woman is Tamdin, 69 years old, she was imprisoned in 1987 but now has escaped, 
walking 35 days across the Himalayas to seek an audience with the Dalai Lama.

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