Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion »

Tenzin Gyatzo, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the head of the Tibetan government in exile. The author of The Art of Happiness, among other books, he resides in Dharamsala, India.

Paul Ekman is the world’s foremost expert on facial expressions, a professor emeritus at the University of California in San Francisco, and the author of Emotions Revealed. He has served as an adviser to police departments, antiterrorism groups, and animation studios, and Ekman’s research inspired Lie to Me, the FOX TV series. He lives in northern California.

In this unparalleled series of conversations, the Dalai Lama and Ekman prod and push toward answers to the central questions of emotional experience.

Publishers Weekly

This edited transcription of 39 hours of dialogue between the Dalai Lama and renowned psychologist Ekman addresses issues ranging from the importance of mindfulness, the evolutionary function of moods, meditative breathing and the cultivation of compassion. Ekman and the Dalai Lama are articulate, deeply serious scholars, and their investigations into "the varieties of anger," the destructive potential of contempt and the power of forgiveness contain a wealth of fascinating insights; unfortunately, their musings would have benefited from more scrupulous editing-their pronouncements lie buried beneath conversational meandering and tangential discussions. The Dalai Lama's humor and curiosity do translate well, however, and do much in enlivening the unfocused text; he and Ekman delight in playfully invoking everything from traditional Buddhist thought to Western philosophy, Darwin, communism and personal anecdotes in a single breath. It's an intellectual treat readers will enjoy-if they can put up with the rambling transcript. (Sept.)

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Foreword Daniel Goleman ix

Introduction Paul Ekman xiii

1 East and West 1

Two Traditions

Science, Religion, and Truth

The Filter of Moods

When Emotions Are Destructive

Attachment and Control

The Poverty of Emotional Language

2 Experiencing Emotion 36

What Are Emotions?

Obstacles to Constructive Emotional Experiences

Calming Difficult People

Mindfulness

The Refractory Period

Emotional Scripts

3 Emotional Balance 78

Meditative Practice

How High the Bar

The Startle and the Buffer

Forgiveness and Responsibility

4 Anger, Resentment, and Hatred 108

Preparing for Anger

Expressing Anger

The Varieties of Anger

The Actor and the Act

The Relatives of Anger

Motivating Anger

5 The Nature of Compassion 139

Defining Compassion

Compassion from an Evolutionary Perspective

Animal Intelligence

Unbiased Compassion

Cultivating Consciousness

The Balance of Wisdom and Compassion

Empathy, Intelligence, and Wisdom

6 Global Compassion 185

Extending the Limits of Compassion

Releasing Resentments

Learning Altruism

Achieving Emotional Balance

Gratitude and Rejoicing

Mental Training Gymnasiums

7 Personal Transformation 226

Changing the Experience of Emotion

The Mystery of Goodness

The Path of Reason

Notes 245

Acknowledgments 251

Index 253