Words from the wiser

Clearly my lack of posts lately is insight into the busy time of year that it is! However, I did have the chance to start reading "Live in a Better Way" (by the Dalai Lama.) I am only a few pages into the book but a few things stuck out that I wanted to share here since I've been slacking on posts the past few weeks!

• "Karma is definite: good karma brings happiness; bad karma brings suffering. Therefore I must create only good karma and avoid bad karma at all costs."
• "What everyone, an uneducated person, a professor, philosohper, beggar, or millionaire, a child, an old person, yourself or others, is looking for is happiness; nobody wants problems and suffering. Where happiness is concerned, you can focus either on the happiness of the moment, or on happiness that transcends lifetimes. There is happiness that lasts a minute, one hour, twelve hours, or twenty-four hours; which happiness do you want? Which happiness do you think is most important to achieve? Similarly, there is happiness that can lsat for one week, a month, or years. So, which one would  you prefer? Which one is most important to you?"
• "At present, it seems as though one's life span is long. We carry the concept of permanence in our hallucinated minds and important phenomena, such as life, are mistakenly apprehended as being permanent. We believe that we are going to live for a long time....There is the sudden appearance one moment, and the next minute it is gone."

Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, I believe that some of the topics covered in these excerpts apply to everyone - karma, the search for happiness, and forgetting to live in the moment.

What do you think about these topics? Has anyone read this book? Any other good reads lately?