Two books about Dalai Lama

What does the Dalai Lama's life teach us?

Certainly, he is a sterling example of turning adversity into joyful service. But there is more to him than that. He is also a model of innovation and adaptation. He has taken the tenets of Buddhism and made them relevant to everyone. He has found commonalities in the teachings of Catholicism and Buddhism.

His message is not just about personal happiness and good karma, it is also very much about respecting the earth’s resources, recognizing the equality of all people, and sharing with the less fortunate.

He has said that, at ninety, he will decide whether his long series of lives as the Dalai Lama will end. As of this writing, he is nearly eighty. Will he live another ten years?

We can only hope so.



Seven Years in Tibet: My Life Before, During and After (1952; German: Sieben Jahre in Tibet. Mein Leben am Hofe des Dalai Lama; 1954 in English) is an autobiographical travel book written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer based on his real life experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951 during the Second World War and the interim period before the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950.

The book covers the escape of Harrer and his companion, Peter Aufschnaiter, from a British internment camp in India. Harrer and Aufschnaiter then traveled across Tibet to Lhasa, the capital. Here they spent several years, and Harrer describes the contemporary Tibetan culture in detail. Harrer subsequently became a tutor and friend of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Seven Years in Tibet was translated into 53 languages, became a bestseller in the United States in 1954, and sold three million copies.