Becoming Enlightened

Title:
Author: Dalai Lama and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins

Dates: From 2/1/09 to 2/19/09

Notes:
This book was a great into and outline to Buddhist Philosophy. It is written by the Dalai Lama himself, and translated by the author. This is a definite plus, because I have read other reviews of books regarding the Dalai Lama, to find that they were an interview or something with him and the author used a little bit of the Lama's input, plus a whole lot of his own opinion, and seemingly put something together to sell. Not the case with this book.

As I got this book I was also starting a six week course on Buddhism and Meditation, so the two went hand in hand, and this book gave me some questions to ask in the class. The Dalai Lama lays the book out well, and breaks it into three levels of understanding, with subsections in each level. Additionally, each subsection concludes with a summary outline of points to contemplate, which summarise and in some cases also elaborate upon the material in that subsection. Also, at the end, there is a full collection of all the end-of-section contemplation outlines, for a full review.

The book provides examples of each idea; however, at times the examples did not go into enough depth and left me with some questions in my mind. However, they are good discussion points for my classes still. Due to the instructional nature of this book, I plan to read it again sometime in the near future as a reference for my studies of meditation.

Rating: 8.5

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Enlightened-Holiness-Dalai-Lama/dp/1416565833