No person has impacted my spiritual path more than the Dalai Lama and my wife. His book, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World, led me to believe first that I could practice the dharma as a psychology of life instead of a turbulent religious institution. His other book, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, deepened my core understanding further. Finally, his latest book, Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World, so eloquently provides this Westerner the significance of a Buddhist Ethics in a modern world.

From his influence, I view Buddhism as a practice instead of a belief system. I see it as a form of ethics instead of a culturally biased perspective relative only to Asian cultures instead of the entire world. On many occasions, the Dalai Lama has stated that the ethics, asserted in the Buddhist path, contains the same absolutes as ethics in the modern world. If we simply look at the six perfections of Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism, we may recognize the relevance and absolutes these ethics endure across cultures and time periods. They are simple terms but hard to live by. The six perfections are the following: “Generosity, Discipline, Patience, Enthusiastic Effort, Meditation, and Wisdom.” (I quote directly from the Table of Contents of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s magnificent text, Dharma Paths.)

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