Open your heart

Just as musicians keep their hands in shape, athletes improve their reflexes and techniques, linguists train their ears, and scholars perfect their visions, so we direct our heads and hearts.' - the Dalai Lama. The concept of compassion - sympathy with the suffering of others and the desire to free them from it - is a struggle in all spiritual traditions. For how does one become a compassionate person? By what mechanisms can an egoistic heart change into a selfless heart? In Open Your Heart, the Dalai Lama speaks clearly about the daily Buddhist practice of compassion. The Dalai Lama shows, using classical Buddhist teachers, that the path to this leads through various meditations. Open Your Heart explains these meditations - from the simplest to the most challenging - by describing mental training techniques that enable you to open your head and heart. The path to this end begins in Open Your Heart with clear reflections on the benefits of a virtuous life, and continues with exercises that can temper destructive and impulsive emotions. This can transform an aimless and restless soul into a disciplined and open mind. Open Your Heart is a clear explanation of the Buddhist path to enlightenment by the great master himself, the Dalai Lama.