Kindness, Clarity, and Insight

Nearly twenty-five years after its original publication, Kindness, Clarity, and Insight is still widely considered the most readable, yet substantive and wide-ranging, of His Holiness' works. Broad in scope and revealing the depth of his knowledge, these teachings display the range of the Dalai Lama and his message, covering a plethora of topics, including: the need for compassion, the common goals of the world's religions, karma, the four noble truths, the luminous nature of the mind, meditative concentration, selflessness, the two truths, and the fundamental innate mind of clear light that all the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism aim at manifesting. Although others in Tibet have mentioned that all orders of Tibetan Buddhism have the same basic outlook, the Dalai Lama is the first to explain in detail how this is so, his brilliant syncretic exposition being the final chapter in this book.

The book's twenty chapters are deftly arranged in a developmental sequence so that readers easily understand the background needed to appreciate the more complex, later topics. Taken as a whole, the teachings in this book provide an accessible map of Tibetan spiritual culture.

"Though [the Dalai Lama] is one of the most erudite scholars...he has a gift for reducing his doctrine to a core of lucid practicality, crystallized in the title of his book, Kindness, Clarity and Insight." --Time Magazine