The Middle Way

In this luminous presentation, the Dalai Lama lays out the Middle Way - ''the way of the intelligent person'' who approaches all matters, including matters of faith and devotion, with the highest spirit of critical inquiry and does so without falling into the traps of fixed ideas or extreme views. With fresh emphasis, this peerless and beloved teacher links Tibetan Buddhism to its deep roots in the ancient scholastic tradition of Nalanda University and to the profound analytical teachings of the seminal Indian master Nagarjuna. As the Dalai Lama explores in depth Nagarjuna's Fundamental Stanzas on the Middle Way - a text of radical importance to the entirety of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition-he illuminates such subtle and easily misunderstood topics as the nature of self and no-self, dependent origination, and the differing roles of relative and absolute truths. This volume also includes a rich exploration of the Tibetan master Tsongkhapa's Three Principal Aspects of the Path, offering the reader an opportunity to put these matters of deepest philosophical import into direct practice. ''It is vital for us to obtain genuine confidence in the nature of mind and reality, grounded in understanding and reason. What we need is a skeptical curiosity and constant inquiry, a curious mind, drawn toward all possibilities; and when we cultivate that, the desire to deeply investigate naturally arises.''