Franz Alt

There is a fine line for an author between being confident that you have something worthwhile to say and being convinced you are the revealer of long-hidden truth. In this book, Franz Alt often lands on the wrong side of that line.

It’s not a long book, but it comes across as long-winded, for the author repeatedly hammers on his basic point that abortion and atomic armaments are the two major evils of the day (somehow connected) and that a thorough-going application of the Sermon on the show more Mount would be the solution to both. He reads the words of Jesus as a political document, although I was never sure exactly how to turn the sermon into a political program. Alt doesn’t seem sure either since he denies that it is a collection of laws according to which one could govern. The application appears instead to be an inner reform of the individual, even though he rejects the long tradition of personal application.

It is in this rejection of or non-engagement with the long record of intense preoccupation with the Sermon on the Mount throughout church history that Alt comes across as a guru. He writes that the official church and many Christians have struggled for two thousand years with the real teachings of Jesus and connects this to Jesus’s warning against false prophets. He explicates this as those who want to do piously rather than be pious. But in the course of revealing this “real” teaching of Jesus, Alt freely puts words in Jesus’s mouth, such as when he writes, “Jesus macht uns den inneren Zusammenhang von Abtreibung und Aufrüstung klar: die Gewalt und die Feindbilder in uns.” This might be compatible with what Jesus says, but Alt doesn’t show how he derives this thought from the words of Jesus.

Not that Alt is at a loss for words. His prose style mixes news reports (which makes this four-decade-old book seem dated), quotations from Drewermann, Jung, and others, and entire paragraphs of aphorisms. Some of these are well-stated (“konservativ sein heisst nicht, die Asche hüten, sondern die Flamme”), but I’ll be leery of quoting them, for in some cases, I recognized them as key thoughts of others, unattributed.

This book sat a long time on my shelf before I stuck it into my pocket to read on a train trip. Next, it will go to the shopping bag with books for my next trip to the used bookstore. show less

AN APPEAL TO THE WORLD by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Franz Alt doing the interviews, is a small book with a big message. In less than 100 pages His Holiness shares his latest revelations with the world. His message hopes to convey a “way to peace in a time of division.”
For the most part, the book is an interview with Ph.D. Franz Alt asking the questions in his best interview manner and the Dalai Lama responding. They talk about Spirituality, the Education of the Heart, War, The show more Next Generation, even Mr. Trump, along the way revealing this religious leader in exile’s views on these and many other subjects.
The most revealing thing in the entire book is this religious leader’s view on what is most important for the World to learn and for each individual to hold in their heart. It is not religion, it is ethics and morality. Teaching these two things, learning these two things, bringing forth these elements of our inner humanity, he feels is far more important than impressing the artificial construct of any religion upon the heart of mankind. Nurturing what we are born with, an innate need to do good, is more worthwhile than any tract or text on spirituality. God is within us all, no matter what name you give that leader, so let us find the common ground and shake off the chains that hold us back from being one world, one people.
Or something like that.
Short, sweet, on point, wasting no time to get to the important points, AN APPEAL TO THE WORLD is an opening salvo for humanity. The question remains, “Is humanity too selfish, ignorant, small-minded, or any of a thousand other things, to do what is truly important?”
Probably. show less

The Dalai Lama’s An Appeal to the World is a moving primer of his message for the 21st century. In an interview with television journalist Franz Alt, His Holiness the Dalai Lama addressed both the inward and outward paths of peace, war, climate change, materialism, meditation, universal ethics, and even neuroscience.
His Holiness discussed six principles: 1) nonviolence—of which he has become a symbol to free Tibet; 2) tolerance—he envisions no peace unless there is peace among show more religions; 3) each religion’s uniqueness; 4) the meaning of religion today—the Dalai Lama sees a religious person as one who collaborates in preserving the earth; 5) patience—His Holiness saw himself working on this virtue; and 6) death and rebirth—he has no clue what will happen.
Still the Dalai Lama presents the world with a “childlike faith” in political miracles saying, “One day we will cooperate well with China.” He pins his greatest hope on China’s young people, and the 400 million who are Buddhists. His Holiness viewed the 65 years of Chinese Communism as an enormous spiritual void, as compared with 1,300 years of Tibetan Buddhism. show less

Wenige Seiten mit teils sich wiederholenden Aussagen des DL und trotzdem Potential dein Leben zu verändern.
"Solange der unermessliche Raum Bestand hat und solange es noch empfindende Wesen gibt, möge auch ich ausharren, um das Leid aus der Welt zu verbannen."