Ancient Wisdom [Paperback]

Ancient wisdom? Well, my two grand-mothers had most of those self-evident wisdoms too. Do not expect too much of uplifting sapience from this book.
The DL has a wise style at least to write down his knowledge and make it transparent, because he pretends to be a humble man. About the people who visit him and esxpect that he can heal them, he is saying that: "I am only an ordinary human being. The best I can do is try to help them by sharing in their suffering."
He is a buddhist philosopher down to the bone which becomes apparent throughout the whole book. His philosophy is buddhistic and he knows how to give Buddha`s and Tibetan teachings a more modern touch.
At length he is simplistic in his statements: "The next life or tomorrow - we can never be certain which will come first." How true! Sentences like that are usual in his book.But it cannot be denied that there are two remarkable leitmotifs in his work which must be positively noted:
the human nature is responsible for the sufferings in the world
it is vital for the benefit of the whole mankind that people become morally better educated
If anybody who reads this book succeds in attaining a higher spiritual level to improve his moral behaviour this book was worth the efforts to write it. And forget about the shortcomings of the book, since there are more important fields to cope with!
"The psychological and emotional suffering we find prevalent in the West is less likely to reflect a cultural shortcoming than an underlying human tendency."
The DL is no doubt a highly educated man. He is not at all from yesterday. The DL does not agree with other people that science has disproved religion. "Many people, believing that science has disproven religion, make the further assumption that because there appears to be no final evidence for any spiritual authority, morality itself must be a matter of individual preference." He is strongly opposing to this believe. And he takes a lot of efforts to prove that it is possible to come to generally true discoveries on ethics by reason alone. And the societies as a whole and its individuals have to keep to it. He says that anything else can only lead to chaos. That is whay we live in aworld in which chaos prevails.
The DL is no fool. He has a lot to say to atheists and materialists. "In replacing religion as the final source of knowledge in popular estimation, science begins to look a bit like another religion itself. With this comes a similar danger on the part of some of its adherents to blind faith in its principles and, correspondingly, to intolerance of alternate views."
Maybe he thought of a R. Dawkins who says that people who do not believe in evolution should be jailed. Not the kind of peace the DL is striving for with all his heart, or at least with his consciousness.
Nobody, he says, knows anything about the human consciousness "and though it has been the subject of investigation throughout history, despite scientists`best efforts, they still do not understand what it actually is, nor why it exists, how it functions nor what is its essential nature."
Notwithstanding his call for a spiritual revolution to develop a higher claim in ethics is not a call for a religious movemenet.
One deficiency is apparent in his argumentation about the importance of ethics. His basis for ethical behaviour is hanging somewhere in the void of space. Therefore it has an equal reliable basis than the ethics of self-reliable atheists. The good human inner core, in which the DL likes to believe, is an unsafe ground for higher etrhics, no matter how buddhistic or atheistic this religioin is. If there is no higher source for ethics, there is no source at all and everybody is his own master. But the DL is bound in his Tibetan teaching and budhistic world view. He believs in the "Kun long", the individual`s capacity to have a good disposition for the heart
"The aim of spiritual and, therefore, ethical practice is thus to transform and perfect the individual`s kun long. This is how we become better human beings."
And spiritual revolution is for him an ethical revolution. But who would not agree with him when he says "Happiness arises from virtuous causes. If we truly desire to be happy, there is no other way to proceed but by the way of virtue: it is this method by which happiness is achieved. And, we might add, the basis of virtue, its ground, is ethical discipline." Well, I fear there are a lot of people who develop a liking in malicousness and a dislike in seeing the happiness of others!!
It is true that the DLs ethics have also some flaws. It turns out that he has an only crippled idea about the virtue of truth, because "we have to take into account the overall situation and weigh the benefits of telling a lie and telling the truth and do what we judge to be least harmful overall." The idea of relative truth has befallen even the DL`s hiher spirit! This is analog to the relative ethics in Catholic and Islam theology. If you find it difficult to compare the DLs ethics with Christs, then maybe it is here.
Another contraposition is this: The DL believes that humans have the potential to find peace by themselves. They have inner qualities strong enough to achieve everything what is needed for the welfare and happiness of the people. He says world news only report the bad events, but they are not interested in the overwhelming majority of good events. I would think, that in the city of Hiroshima most people did well in the moment when they died in the nuclear explosion. One malicious action can have a devastating effect on thousands of others. If Hitler would have loved the Jews, there would not have been the killings of 6 Milllion. Therefore his argument of the goodness of people is weak and not relevant in reality.
The DL has good hopes, but good hopes will not be enough to save mankind. The DLs book is good in demanding and reproaching the optimistic modernists and the way of the western lifestyle which spreads out from anywhere to nowhere. He critisizes the rich and the morally selfish people who make their living at the cost of the poor who only become poorer while the richer become even more selfish. "It strikes me that the lifestyles of the rich are often absurdly and pointlessly complicated." There is indeed a good lesson to be learnt here!
Mankind needs to be ethically educated and brought back to ancient wisdom. But how?
"Secular educational systems were developed at at time when religious institutions were still highly influental throughout society...This worked well enough until the influence of religion began to decline." And this is the reason why people lose all their ethics and why they turn hopeless and bad, he says. The DLs conclusion: "This is why the family environment itself is such a vital component in a child`s upbringing." Right so!
Readable book with many true conclusions. The DL lives on hope and good will. Many more people should.

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