How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships

Dalai Lama gives a very structured and easy to follow introduction of buddhist beliefs. Moreover, he provides meditation techniques that can be applied in daily life, during each encounter with other beings

This book is very practical and very easy to read and outlines the basic principles for practicing peace of mind and loving kindness. This approach is very useful in working with all the competitiveness, conflict and anger in our world today. The book can be read in small bites each day to help work with the principles on a daily basis.

Spiritual wisdom of the heart whose root is compassion. The Dalai Lama is so generous in sharing his thought process on why an expansion of love is valuable to everyone. Love heals in a way nothing else can. It is the force that turned around a Jewish zealot who arrested Christians from Saul to Disciple Paul on the road to Damascus, turned a tax collector into a Apostle, and conquered the once pagan Roman Empire into the Holy Sea. Buddhism has grown into popularity in the West as its approach to love concentrates on compassion to such a high extent that there can only be love left in its wake. A brilliant illumination on the nature of love. This book is for Buddhists and non-Buddhists. We are affected by the thoughts we expose ourselves to, in whatever media they appear, do your dharma and karma a universe of good .... and open your heart and head to the Dalai Lama's teachings on expanding love.

I am not a Buddhist but this book is definitely one of the finest books when one is searching for spiritual wisdom and life's guiding light. No, it is certainly not a religious book and meditations can be practiced outside of Buddhism. How to Expand Love by Jeffrey Hopkins (from the teaching of Dalai Lama) truly spells out the map/road to see higher consciousness of human beings. The most amazing thing about this book is that it can be perfectly appropriate for someone who just started opening themselves to learn about love and compassion. It can also be a book for someone who has some foundation of spirituality to learn more. It helps ones who want to further expand their heart to give and to receive love and compassion. The meditations practices described in the book is so easy to follow but it takes commitment. It can be a book you speed read once to get the feel of what it is like. But certainly if one wants to use this book as a primary tool in expanding love and compassion, one need to periodically go back and read certain chapters, using certain chapters as the central meditation practice. Every time I pick up this book to read a chapter, I can just feel my heart is heated and warm, ready to channel love and compassion to friends, family, strangers and people who I sometimes get annoyed and upset. I am sure after re-reading the texts of this book a couple times, his words would just be another spiritual gateway for others learn about compassion. It is another book to experience, another book for one to taste and to understand. Don't get frustrated when you cannot become the master of love and compassion after one reading. But make a commitment to ourselves we will activate our higher consciousness and awareness of our doings. We will do the very best we can to master love and compassion for human beings and for the nature.

"When I speak about love and compassion, I do so not as a Buddhist, or as a Tibetan, nor as the Dalai Lama. I do so as one human being speaking with another". With these words, the Dalai Lama opens his recent guide to expanding one's circle of loving relationships through the practice of love and compassion. This book is simply and eloquently written, and its teachings are wise. The Dalai Lama points out that human beings are essentially alike when superficial differences are pealed away. In addition, all religions are essentially alike to the extent they teach love, kindness, and peace and "a desire to help their fellow beings." (p.4) The Dalai Lama presents a way of understanding these insights and a means of bringing them into focus in one's life through the practice of lovingkindness. Some of the teachings in this book make use of specifically Buddhist beliefs such as the doctrine of rebirth. But the practices and principles of this book can be used with benefit regardless of whether the reader accepts or doesn't accept rebirth or other specifically Buddhist doctrines. The Dalai Lama sets forth a process of reflective understanding and meditation in first understanding the nature of love and then learning to practice it. It is an inner-directed teaching in that it looks to the self and to self-understanding rather than to externals -- to things beyond one's control such as wealth or power or to success -- as the key to happiness. Thus, the first part of the Dalai Lama's teaching in this book is directed to an understanding of the basic purity of the human mind. Because the mind is pure, it is possible, for the Dalai Lama, to remove defilements such as hatred, lust, and ignorance. The radiant, empty character of the mind also links all human beings together in terms of establishing a commonality and an ability to love and be loved. It teaches that people ought not to be categorized in that beyond the defilements that plague all of us, we are essentially human with the need to be loved and to be free from suffering. This teaching of the pure, radiant mind ("Buddha nature") possessed by all is the most fundamental and difficult teaching in this book. The Dalai Lama then presents a series of seven steps to increase one's ability to feel love and compassion for an ever-growing class of people and sentient beings. The process is presented in gradually expanding steps, and the reader can follow the path as it develops. Each step is accompanied by teachings and by suggested meditation practices. these seven steps are 1.creating a positive attitude towards others; 2. recognizing the kindnesses each of us has received; 3. reciprocating the kindness of others; 4. learning to love others (including learning the difference between disinterested love and love based upon attachment, such as physical or sensual desire or upon the receipt of benefits from those close to us); 5. practicing compassion, the desire to have others free from suffering