The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

by Dalai Lama XIV

“If you want others to be happy practice compassion; and if you want yourself to be happy practice compassion.”

The revered thirteenth-century Tibetan master Sakya Pandita once said, “Seek learning even if you were to die tomorrow.”

“If science was to conclusively prove that some part of the Buddhist scriptures or basic beliefs turned out to be untrue, then the Buddhist scripture or belief would have to change.”

Wherever I meet people, I always have the feeling that I am encountering another human being, just like myself. I find it is much easier to communicate with others on that level. If we emphasize specific characteristics, like I am Tibetan or I am Buddhist, then there are differences. But those things are secondary. If we can leave the differences aside, I think we can easily communicate, exchange ideas, and share experiences.”

The purpose of our existence is to seek happiness. It seems like common sense, and Western thinkers from Aristotle to William James have agreed with this idea. But isn’t a life based on seeking personal happiness by nature self-centered, even self-indulgent? Not necessarily. In fact, survey after survey has shown that it is unhappy people who tend to be most self-focused and are often socially withdrawn, brooding, and even antagonistic. Happy people, in contrast, are generally found to be more sociable, flexible, and creative and are able to tolerate life’s daily frustrations more easily than unhappy people. And, most important, they are found to be more loving and forgiving than unhappy people.

The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences.

The true antidote of greed is contentment. If you have a strong sense of contentment, it doesn’t matter whether you obtain the object or not; either way, you are still content.”

we don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate—right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.

Identify and cultivate positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states.

But for some reason the more pessimistic view of humanity has taken root in our culture, at least since the seventeenth century, under the influence of philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, who had a pretty dark view of the human species. He saw the human race as being violent, competitive, in continual conflict, and concerned only with self-interest. Hobbes, who was famous for discounting any notion of basic human kindness, was once caught giving money to a beggar on the street. When questioned about this generous impulse, he claimed, “I’m not doing this to help him. I’m just doing this to relieve my own distress at seeing the man’s poverty.”

“Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming, and nonaggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards the other.

If we think of suffering as something unnatural, something that we shouldn’t be experiencing, then it’s not much of a leap to begin to look for someone to blame for our suffering. If I’m unhappy, then I must be the “victim” of someone or something—an idea that’s all too common in the West. The victimizer may be the government, the educational system, abusive parents, a “dysfunctional family,” the other gender, or our uncaring mate. Or we may turn blame inward: there’s something wrong with me, I’m the victim of disease, of defective genes perhaps. But the risk of continuing to focus on assigning blame and maintaining a victim stance, is the perpetuation of our suffering—with persistent feelings of anger, frustration, and resentment.