ETHICS FOR A NEW MILLENIUM

by Dalai Lama XIV

Unknown Binding

About the author

Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub), the 14th Dalai Lama, is a practicing member of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism and is influential as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the world's most famous Buddhist monk, and the leader of the exiled Tibetan government in India.

Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.

On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.

After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.

Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.

Reviews

[Avani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've decided to read the non-fiction books collecting dust on my mother's bookshelves, and this was the first one I picked up. The Dalai Lama's approach to ethics for a new millennium is centered on love and compassion -- while the book aims to be non-religious, his perspectives on ethics and morality clearly draw from core tenets of Buddhism. I appreciated how much the book centered celebrating community and forms of kinship with the natural world. I was surprised by the focus on climate change; it is promising to read that religious leaders have cared about and expressed concern towards the state of the environment since the start of the 2000s. I also did not know how anti-militarization the Dalai Lama is! In this book, he calls for the disarmament of military forces across the world. While he draws short of calling for the abolishment of the police, he nonetheless critiques the heavy militarization of what he views to be the protectors of justice.

I found myself agreeing with the book on multiple occasions, and think that the book offers a lot for readers to learn about centering love, honesty, and compassion in every action.