The Heart Is Noble ─ Changing the World from the Inside Out

Sixteen American college students spent a month in India with His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa. Together, they discussed topics ranging from food justice to gender identities to sustainable compassion. The Karmapa’s teachings in this book are the product of those meetings.

For those who wish to take up its challenge, this book can serve as a guide to being a friend to this planet and to all of us who share it. The Karmapa describes how to see the world as a global community, in which people are linked by their shared concerns for humanity—and their wish to bring about real change. While acknowledging the magnitude of this undertaking, the Karmapa shows us how to go about it, using the inner resources we have already.

The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is the spiritual head of one of the major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 900-year-old lineage of Karmapas has included some of Tibet's greatest spiritual masters. Born to nomadic parents in rural Tibet, he was identified while still a young child as the heir to this leadership position. In 2000, the Karmapa's dramatic escape to India from Chinese-ruled Tibet at the age of fourteen propelled him onto the world stage. Since then, he has emerged as an international Buddhist leader and environmental activist, founding Khoryug, a region-wide environmental protection program. The Karmapa has been dubbed the "new face of Tibetan Buddhism," and many Tibetans look to the Karmapa for inspiration in their struggle to preserve their embattled culture. In 2008, he made his historic first visit to America. He currently resides at Gyuto Monastery, near Dharamsala, India.