A Truthful Heart

Buddhist Practices for Connecting with Others

The Dalai Lama often says "Kindness is society." By learning to live from a more compassionate viewpoint, Jeffrey Hopkins writes we can create a better life not only for ourselves but for everyone. In A Truthful Heart, Hopkins uses Buddhist meditations (including the Dalai Lama's favorite), visualizations, and entertaining recollections from his own life to guide us in developing an awareness of the capacity for love inside us and learning to project that love into the world around us. Delivering a potent message with the power to change our relationships and improve the quality of our lives A Truthful Heart is the ideal book for an age in which our dealings with each other seem increasingly impersonal— even violent and aggressive. Anyone seeking release from anger and hurt or simply wanting to increase the love and caring among us will welcome this timely vision for humanity. This is a new edition of Cultivating Compassion.
"Jeffrey Hopkins is a humble person. His tone throughout the book is gentle subtle and persuasive. The book is really a thoughtful and well-organized exploration of the meaning of compassion.... Hopkins has written an authentic roadmap for the human global village within a Buddhist context that will serve the reader well. Stock this fine work in Buddhism Religion and Philosophy sections."—New Age Retailer

"How relevant this is to our current troubled times!…Hopkins is to be congratulated on his simple language and style while retaining a potent message…the book has tremendous value for practitioners at all levels and not just for Buddhists."—The Middle Way

"Hopkins offers the reader a series of practices and meditations that move from equanimity to compassion in a gently confrontational way designed not to make his audience feel warm and fuzzy but instead to make them feel genuinely and sincerely connected (as the best Buddhist texts often do). Hopkins admits that he struggled living up to the ideals presented by his"gurus and offered in this book which only lends power to his words...one of the most outstanding books on human relationships to come along in a while."—Elephant Journal online "We can all stand to know how to become more kind caring and full of love and compassion for all beings can't we? Hopkins directs his audience on how to fully cultivate compassion through meditative practices. However he does this in a manner that can be appreciated by those who have never meditated and who might not plan on ever doing so. These meditations can simply translate into nice thoughts to have while dealing with difficult situations.... The beauty of A Truthful Heart is that it's easy to take its message with you. Every day can be a bit brighter."—Feminist Review
Jeffrey Hopkins, PhD, served for a decade as the interpreter for the Dalai Lama. A Buddhist scholar and the author of more than thirty-five books, he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded the largest academic program in Tibetan Buddhist studies in the West. View titles by Jeffrey Hopkins

About

The Dalai Lama often says "Kindness is society." By learning to live from a more compassionate viewpoint, Jeffrey Hopkins writes we can create a better life not only for ourselves but for everyone. In A Truthful Heart, Hopkins uses Buddhist meditations (including the Dalai Lama's favorite), visualizations, and entertaining recollections from his own life to guide us in developing an awareness of the capacity for love inside us and learning to project that love into the world around us. Delivering a potent message with the power to change our relationships and improve the quality of our lives A Truthful Heart is the ideal book for an age in which our dealings with each other seem increasingly impersonal— even violent and aggressive. Anyone seeking release from anger and hurt or simply wanting to increase the love and caring among us will welcome this timely vision for humanity. This is a new edition of Cultivating Compassion.

Reviews

"Jeffrey Hopkins is a humble person. His tone throughout the book is gentle subtle and persuasive. The book is really a thoughtful and well-organized exploration of the meaning of compassion.... Hopkins has written an authentic roadmap for the human global village within a Buddhist context that will serve the reader well. Stock this fine work in Buddhism Religion and Philosophy sections."—New Age Retailer

"How relevant this is to our current troubled times!…Hopkins is to be congratulated on his simple language and style while retaining a potent message…the book has tremendous value for practitioners at all levels and not just for Buddhists."—The Middle Way

"Hopkins offers the reader a series of practices and meditations that move from equanimity to compassion in a gently confrontational way designed not to make his audience feel warm and fuzzy but instead to make them feel genuinely and sincerely connected (as the best Buddhist texts often do). Hopkins admits that he struggled living up to the ideals presented by his"gurus and offered in this book which only lends power to his words...one of the most outstanding books on human relationships to come along in a while."—Elephant Journal online "We can all stand to know how to become more kind caring and full of love and compassion for all beings can't we? Hopkins directs his audience on how to fully cultivate compassion through meditative practices. However he does this in a manner that can be appreciated by those who have never meditated and who might not plan on ever doing so. These meditations can simply translate into nice thoughts to have while dealing with difficult situations.... The beauty of A Truthful Heart is that it's easy to take its message with you. Every day can be a bit brighter."—Feminist Review

Author

Jeffrey Hopkins, PhD, served for a decade as the interpreter for the Dalai Lama. A Buddhist scholar and the author of more than thirty-five books, he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded the largest academic program in Tibetan Buddhist studies in the West. View titles by Jeffrey Hopkins