How to Expand Love

Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships

By: His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Narrated by: Jeffrey Hopkins PhD

Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

In How to Expand Love, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers a simple yet illuminating program for transforming self-centered energy into outwardly directed compassion. Drawing on exercises and techniques established in Tibetan monasteries more than a thousand years ago, the Dalai Lama guides us through seven key stages.

First, we learn ways to move beyond our self-defeating tendency to put others into rigid categories. We discover how to create and maintain a positive attitude toward those around us. By reflecting on the kindness that close friends have shown us we learn to reciprocate and help other people achieve their own long-term goals. And in seeking the well-being of others, we foster compassion, the all-encompassing face of love.

In this accessible and insightful audiobook, His Holiness the Dalai Lama helps us to open our hearts and minds to the experience of unlimited love, transforming every relationship in our lives and guiding us ever closer to wisdom and enlightenment.

True love: explore our extensive list of titles by and about His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

©2005 His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. (P)2005 Simon and Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"This is a generous and sensible road map to not-so-random acts of kindness." (Publishers Weekly)
"Whom are you going to call on when you need to learn inner calmness, universal love, and forgiveness? For some, it's the Dalai Lama. His Holiness offers a simple seven-step plan from which most listeners can glean usable techniques slowly, peacefully, progressively....narrator/translator Jeffrey Hopkins conveys the information in just that fashion." (AudioFile)

Masterpiece

Any additional comments?

This is the Dalai Lama's masterpiece. I find he rambles a lot in other books, but this one is pure meat and potatoes (not a very Buddhist analogy, I know). This book, on the other hand, is so targeted and structured that it condenses the essence of the Buddhist path the same way Je Tsongkhapa did with Lamrim. With a better title like "Awaken Your Buddha Nature" it would be popular. As it stands, it seems to be a lost treasure.

What is love? how do we love?

This book gives a different perspective on how we think of love friends, neutral beings and enemies. I like the perspective in this book, it reinforces my belief of living in peace and sharing loving kindness to self and others.

For the privileged only

Any additional comments?

As most books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this addresses exclusively the privileged. It also contains the statement that all suffering is self-inflicted. This is an outrageous insult of a great number of human beings who suffer due to the misdeeds of others.
If I would not know that this book is written by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama (and so on), I would be tempted to think this book is the sorry effort of a privileged person of average intelligence and about average capacity for compassion.

Too Much Reliance on Belief in Reincarnation

Many of the meditations require that you believe in reincarnation in order to work. Given that I don't believe in that, they're useless to me.

Also, the narrator was irritatingly slow, I had to increase the speed to 1.4-1.5 in order for it to sound normal.