An Immaculate review of "An Open Heart"

     The book "An Open Heart, Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life" by the Dalai Lama and edited by Nicholas Vreeland has a special ability that few books possess. The power to change your life.
      What makes this such a moving read is not only the well thought out content displayed by the Dalai Lama, but how the book is put together. This book is essentially a guide,  creating a starting spot for those uneducated in the Buddhist religion and the art of meditation. We begin with learning how Buddhists see life through their eyes, eternal suffering; and the goal of this religion being to escape this suffering by clearing the conscious.
      Once comfortable with the basic premise of the religion, and lifestyle the pole of Buddhist belief follow we begin to be led down a path on how to end our own suffering. But to create this understanding we must first acknowledge that we are in fact suffering. To build this case The Dalai Lama carefully chose explicit examples to display our non-virtuous emotions and habits to ourselves: selfishness, hate, desire, and lack of compassion. By proving to his readers that we do in fact hold many non-virtuous characteristics in our personalities he is able to make us believe that we need to change something. This is how he is able to change us through a 190 page book.
     Now that we have come to the understanding that we do have flaws, which consequently lead to emotions and habits such as anger, insecurity, and over-attachment we all want to find out how to move past this. He answers this with a simple solution: meditation. To many readers, especially in the United States where Buddhism holds the faith of under two percent, it is only logical to start off with the most basic forms of meditation as a way to ease the reader into it. The Dalai Lam does just that and makes sure to thoroughly explain the technique, importance, and usefulness of this practice through examples that tie into our lives, making it very easy for the reader to begin their practice with faith that it is worth it.
     With the reader now putting faith in his hands, the Dali Lama takes his time to slowly integrate new and more complicated forms of meditation, all the while explaining the importance, holding the readers hand through this new experience and making sure that we stay faithful to the idea.
     Once we have progressed through these multiple steps the Dalai Lama leaves us with some words of wisdom that only make sense once you have read through the whole book.
     If one is truly invested in beginning a change in their life, this is a great place to start. There are plenty of books that go into more depth in the practices of Buddhism than this, but none will be as patient with the reader throughout this new journey as this one by "His Holiness" himself.


Tristan Purdy