The Heart is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out

by Ogyen Trinley Dorje and H.H The Dalai Lama (Foreword)

If you are inspired to take up his challenge, the Karmapa offers a path for participating in a global community that is based on compassion. In these chapters, he shares his vision for bringing social action into daily life, on a scale we can realistically manage through the choices we make every day what to buy, what to eat, and how to relate honestly and bravely with our friends and family and coworkers. His fresh and encouraging perspective shows us that we have the strength to live with kindness in the midst of the many challenges we face as socially and environmentally conscious beings. Because he sees the world through the lens of the interdependence of all beings, he sees that humans can change social and environmental problems by changing their attitudes and actions. 

The Karmapa is one of the highest ranking lamas in Tibetan Buddhism and is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism’s oldest reincarnation lineage. The present incarnation, names Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is the seventeenth in this line. Since his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet at the age of fourteen, the Karmapa has lived a short distance from his mentor, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, in northern India. Over the course of three weeks, the Karmapa held a series of meetings at his residence with a group of American college students.