{"id":8753,"date":"2011-02-15T10:08:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T02:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=8753"},"modified":"2011-02-15T10:11:48","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T02:11:48","slug":"review-of-awakening-kindness-by-nawang-khechog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2011\/02\/review-of-awakening-kindness-by-nawang-khechog\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Awakening Kindness by Nawang Khechog"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019m always somewhat skeptical about books that mention various religions under one breath. This often results in generalisations and misinterpretations. True to my \u2018suspicion\u2019, the author made these mistakes. It\u2019s probably true that most religions teach us to be good but to equate them as being exactly the same does no justice to their true nature. One major mistake in the book was to say an enlightened being is god. (Sic: \u2018In the Buddhist tradition, we say enlightened being instead of god, but this pretty much means the same thing.\u2019)<\/p>\n

There is no god who is a creator, all-loving, supreme and ultimate in Buddhism. God(s) in Buddhist cosmology are not free from the three poisons (greed, hatred and delusion) and thus definitely not on par with enlightened beings who are free of them. I can understand the intention of stringing religions together for \u2018harmony\u2019 but I don\u2019t agree that they should be written off as having no differences in doctrine and ideology. It is even harder to swallow when he mentioned that \u2018dedicating our life to serving others – then we truly become enlightened, and then we truly become a servant of God, an attendant to humanity.\u2019 The ultimate goal of Buddhists is to become fully enlightened ones, Buddhas, who are greater than all gods, not to be subservient to any!<\/p>\n

His intention perhaps is to say that humans have the capability of showing kindness and compassion regardless of religion or race. I would say he did a fairly good job if the above mistakes are not made. I like the idea of injecting personal stories and historical facts to illustrate his point. Historical and present figures are included like Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King Jr, Ang San Suu Kyi and His Holiness The Dalai Lama to name a few. As a student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and a Tibetan, it\u2019s only natural that he quotes heavily from him and other Tibetan great masters, but it\u2019s rather refreshing that he also introduces the Theravada meditation method on curbing anger (though briefly) and Thich Nhat Hanh\u2019s famous mindful walking meditation method. But I\u2019m surprised that the famous Metta Sutta was not mentioned at all.<\/p>\n

As a musician, it\u2019s only natural that he suggested music and dance as a channel to express kindness – which he seems more at ease and passionate at explaining. It may seem a little new age, but it should sit well with Western audiences or nominal practitioners .<\/p>\n

It is a pity that a book about Awakening Kindness has no mention about vegetarianism, although there\u2019s a line or two advising readers to treat all sentient beings well. The famous teaching \u201cAll sentient beings are our Mothers\u201d often repeated by Tibetans when kindness and compassion are taught is missing from the book as well. Perhaps too cliched? In any way, being a vegetarian is the very least any human can do to show compassion to hapless animals and the environment. And certainly one of many ways to cultivate Bodhicitta, which is often mentioned in the book too.<\/p>\n

I say read this book if one is keen to know how to apply kindness and compassion in everyday life. But certainly not as a training guide for serious spiritual practitioners. Even though he had gone through proper Buddhist monastic education, his sharing on kindness and compassion might not be systematic enough for those who want to cultivate all-rounded compassion.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m always somewhat skeptical about books that mention various religions under one breath. This often results in generalisations and misinterpretations….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[43,57,244,447],"class_list":["post-8753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-bodhicitta","tag-compassion","tag-god","tag-kindness","wpcat-176-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}