This book goes into greater depth of Buddhist thinking than do books 4 and 5 by the Dalai Lama. In this book he discusses other religions and compares them to his Tibetan Buddhism. (For all my reviews of the author, click on his name.)

Here the Dalai Lama expands the OT’s Commandments 6-10 to 10 non-virtues: (a) 3 physical - killing, stealing, sexual misconduct; (b) 4 verbal - lying, divisive talk, harsh speech, senseless chatter; and (c) 3 mental - covetousness, harmful intent, wrong views. No reasons were (or need be) given for these 10 non-virtues. “Refraining from Harm” requires patience and tolerance: if someone pushes, shows anger to, hits, or insults you, then you should not respond by pushing back, being angry, hitting back, or answering back. This is the nearly the same as Christ’s “turn the other cheek.” (I’ve observed most Buddhist grad students respond this way but only a few Christian grad students have, sad to say.) This book spells out the steps to attain and live by good ethics, which seem to be reasonable and global ones to me. I don’t accept Buddhist’s reincarnation - neither their belief that your past actions (or karma) leads to your present situation, nor their belief in moving up in the next cycle by doing better in this one. This moving up seems like a way to motivate improving one’s life by better ethical living. It takes great patience since the Dalai Lama says it may take one eons to move all the way up to the Buddha state.

Going beyond ethics involves higher states of knowledge and wisdom. With this book, I finally have some clear ideas about these for Buddhists. Terms like “dependent arising,” “form and emptiness” and the absence of “inherent existence” finally became clear. Inherent existence means static, independent existence, unmoved or unaffected by anything else. Dependent arising means all things depend on something else and are not static, thus anything is “empty” of inherent existence. Using simple words, there is no such thing as a completely static, independent existence, so things are “empty” of (that is, don’t have) that kind of existence. Wisdom comes when one realizes that this is true for everything, bar none – “all is emptiness.” It seems to me that a lot of (initially undefined and unclear) words come down to just “life is dynamic and is dependent on other things.” Is that all there is to Buddhist ideology? Attaining a Buddha state, after having such wisdom, then requires emptying the mind of any thoughts whatsoever (is this like being in a coma?), then seeing the “clear light” of nirvana. What am I missing? Have I oversimplified? But I learned a lot I didn't know about Buddhist thinking, so I recommend the book highly.