The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World

by Dalai Lama XIV

Coincidentally, shortly after the publication of The Art of Happiness, this same idea began to take root in society from another direction—as a “new” scientific discovery—leading to a fundamental shift in many people’s perception of happiness. More and more people seemed to be rejecting the idea of happiness as something that is merely a by-product of our external circumstances, in favor of seeing happiness as something that can be systematically developed. This change was part of a worldwide Happiness Revolution, characterized by a sudden explosion of interest in the subject of human happiness among both the scientific community and general public.

For example, we provide direct scientific evidence demonstrating how the cultivation of compassion can be an effective technique to increase personal happiness. In addition, we show how empathy and compassion cause specific changes in brain function that alter the way we perceive and interact with others—for example, causing us to perceive others as being more similar to ourselves. These changes result in relating to others based more on our similarities than our differences, removing the barriers between “us” and “them.”

Finally, we will explain how this approach to overcoming societal problems could even have several unique advantages over more conventional approaches, due to factors such as the contagious nature of positive emotions and happiness.

It would require seeing compassion as something of great practical value and importance, with real concrete benefits, not merely as a “warm and fuzzy” abstract philosophical concept or a “soft” topic that is religious, spiritual, or moral in nature. In fact, it should even be seen as a necessity, something critical to our survival and not a luxury or something we only practice in church on Sundays or after we retire to Florida

The Dalai Lama responded, “Then to really try to understand this, we need to investigate how we come to think of ourselves as independent, isolated or separate, and how we view others as different or separate, and see if we can come to a deeper understanding. But we cannot start from the standpoint of saying simply we are all the same and denying that there are differences.”

“Other methods . . .” he said slowly, taking a moment to carefully consider the question while I eagerly anticipated his insights and wisdom. Suddenly he started to laugh. As if he had a sudden epiphany, he exclaimed, “Yes! Now if we could get beings from Mars to come down to the earth, and pose some kind of threat, then I think you would see all the people on Earth unite very quickly! They would join together, and say, ‘We, the people of the earth!’” He continued laughing.

When we met in Tucson, Arizona, several years later, the Dalai Lama began to weave together the ideas from our many conversations on these topics, presenting a coherent approach to coping with our troubled world, explaining how to maintain a feeling of hope and even happiness despite the many problems of today’s world.

“No Sense of Community, No Anchor” On a recent Friday afternoon, an unemployed twenty-year-old posted a message on YouTube, simply offering to “be there” for anyone who needed to talk. “I never met you, but I do care,” he said. By the end of the weekend, he had received more than five thousand calls and text messages from strangers taking him up on his offer.

“So, I was just wondering—in the course of your travels, is there any particular aspect of modern society that you have noticed that you feel acts as a major obstruction to the full expression of human happiness? Of course, there are many specific problems in today’s world, like violence, racism, terrorism, the gap between rich and poor, the environment, and so on. But here I’m wondering if there is more of a general feature of society that stands out in your mind as particularly significant?” Seated upon a wide upholstered chair, the Dalai Lama bent down to unlace his plain brown shoes while he silently reflected on the question. Then, tucking his feet under him in a cross-legged position, settling in for a deeper discussion, he replied, “Yes. I was just thinking there is one thing I have noticed, something that is very important. I think it could be best characterized as a lack of sense of community.

According to sociologists Miller McPherson and Matthew E. Brashears from the University of Arizona and Lynn Smith-Lovin from Duke University, in the past two decades the number of people who report they have no one with whom they can talk about important matters has nearly tripled.

More recent studies show that working hours and commutes are both longer, resulting in less time for people to interact with their community. These changes in work hours and the geographical scattering of families may foster a broader, shallower network of ties, rather than the close bonds necessary for fulfillment of our human need for connection.

Robin Dunbar, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool in the UK, asserts, “The lack of social contact, the lack of sense of community, may be the most pressing social problem of the new millennium.”

For example, one of the factors in Western societies which might affect this is mobility. People will often move from one city or state to another in order to improve themselves in some way, for a better job, to make more money, to try to improve their living conditions. This idea of uprooting oneself in search of better opportunities is actually promoted in our society.”

“The fact is that wherever you go, you can’t run away from community. Isn’t it?* There it is. Unless you choose to isolate yourself. Choose to become indifferent. Choose to have no commitment. It is really up to you.”

So, we begin our investigation of human society and happiness with several basic premises. First, there is no doubt that societal factors can influence an individual’s happiness. Second, in looking for specific factors that can influence human happiness, there is no doubt that a sense of connection to others and a wider sense of community play a key role in human happiness. Third, in looking at the trends of modern society, as the Dalai Lama points out, there is no doubt that there has been a deterioration of our sense of community, growing social isolation, and a lack of a deep feeling of connection among people.

he explained how to create the spirit of community in three basic steps. . . . STEP ONE: AWARENESS OF THE BENEFITS If a mysterious stranger sidled up to you and whispered, “I can offer you a secret method to cut in half your chances of dying within the next year—without giving up your cigarettes, Big Macs, or beer, without a single push-up, or a minute of exercise!” what would the information be worth?

In his wonderful book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, leading economist Lord Richard Layard outlines six key factors that can largely explain the differences in average levels of happiness between one country and another. One of them is the percentage of the population that belongs to a social organization.

As Phoenix-raised filmmaker Steven Spielberg explained, “When my mom saw me and my three sisters parked in front of the TV set watching The Wallace and Ladmo Show, she knew, except for bathroom breaks, we wouldn’t be anywhere else.” A similar statement could be uttered by a generation of Phoenix residents, cutting across ethnic, racial, gender, religious, or socioeconomic barriers—a generation that shared the exact same words and same visual images being imprinted and stored in their brains at the exact same moment for hours every week.

When contemplating the deterioration of our sense of community, the growing alienation in our society, and the destructive social forces causing them, these had initially seemed to be virtually unsolvable problems. But now, they seemed possible to resolve. In presenting these complex and seemingly overwhelming social problems to the Dalai Lama, he seemed to slice through them like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian knot. His answers were so basic, they were disarming. What if you move to a new place? Simply join a group. What if you feel unmotivated? Understand the benefits more. What if you feel isolated, alienated, unconnected to any community? Take stock of your own interests, and get involved with others with similar interests. Showing us the way

We don’t need to change the course of modern society in order to create a greater sense of community. We only need to act, one person at a time, reaching out to connect with others with similar interests.

“Well,” I continued, “I think there could be a potential problem here. Certainly it is natural that people may strongly identify with their particular group or community. But this can highlight our differences from other groups, which can often lead to a feeling of superiority. Strong group identification not only produces pride for one’s own group but also creates the very real potential of developing bias and prejudice against other groups. And then all sorts of problems can arise as a result. So, the question is, How can one encourage the transition from ‘I’ to ‘Us,’ moving from a feeling of isolation to a feeling of identification with a group, yet prevent that from progressing to ‘Us’ against ‘Them’? It seems that human beings have a long history of that kind of thing occurring, and from there it is a very short step to conflict and even violence.” “This is true,” the Dalai Lama agreed; “that is why it is important to recognize, as I mentioned yesterday, that there can be different levels to the concept of ‘community’—and I think it is important that one’s cultural or national identity, or whatever, does not override one’s basic identity as a human being, as also being a member of the human community. This is critical.”

The absence of that fundamental human bond can result in a sense of indifference, a lack of concern for others’ welfare that can in turn lead to problems ranging from poverty to the destruction of the environment. Also, without that deep connection there is a sense of separateness, a sense that others are fundamentally different, which can open the door to prejudice and possibly even to the kinds of dehumanization that can lead to unimaginable atrocities.

“But now in answering your question about cultivating a deeper feeling of connection, I think the key is how we relate to one another. It comes down to our basic outlook, on what basis we relate to those around us.” “Just to clarify, when you say, ‘on what basis,’ you mean . . . ?” “The question is whether we relate to others based on what differentiates us or on the characteristics we share. This can determine whether we have an underlying sense of separation from others, or a feeling of affinity and a bond to a wider community.”

was just thinking—maybe you could imagine a situation where someone was stranded on an uninhabited barren island for a long time, and if you happen to come across another human being, even if that person was very different from you and a complete stranger, you would immediately feel a sense of affinity to that person. Then our common bond as human beings would become very apparent.”

we might consider examples such as Survivor, the series that helped spawn the reality TV revolution. Every week tens of millions of viewers watched as a group of ordinary people stranded in some isolated place struggled to meet various challenges and endure harsh conditions. Ah, one might think, here we will see people working cooperatively, like our ancient ancestors, working cooperatively in order to “win”! But the “reality” was very different. The conditions of the game were arranged so that, yes, they had to work cooperatively, but the alliances by nature were only temporary and conditional, as the contestants plotted and schemed against one another to win the game and walk off with the Grand Prize: a million dollars! The objective was to banish contestants one by one from the deserted island through a group vote, eliminating every other contestant until only a lone individual remained—the “sole survivor.” The end game was the ultimate American fantasy in our Age of Individualism: to be left completely alone, sitting on a mountain of cash!

Even commercial breaks provide equally compelling examples, with advertisers such as Burger King, proclaiming, HAVE IT YOUR WAY! The message? America, the land where not only every man and every woman is an individual but also where every hamburger is an individual!

we see that proverbs such as “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” have taken root in the West, extolling the virtue of an individual standing out from the crowd and speaking one’s mind, while in Asian cultures such as Japan you’ll find proverbs such as “The nail that stands out gets pounded down,” hinting at the reception one can expect for, arrogantly, stepping out from the group.

it was easy to come up with illustrations of the dangers of extreme individualism. I thought of Ted Kaczynski, for example, the infamous Unabomber, for years America’s most dangerous domestic terrorist—perhaps the poster child for extreme Individualism. Despite having a brilliant mind for mathematics, Kaczynski ended up living a miserable life in a remote, squalid shack in Montana, conducting a one-man war against technology, industry, society, and all forms of Collectivism. He spent his days in solitude, making letter bombs to kill and dismember people he didn’t like.

“Your Holiness, you mention how extreme Individualism can cause things like selfishness, but to clarify, do you also think that the promotion of less extreme forms of Individualism can cause or contribute to the widespread loneliness and alienation you mentioned earlier?”

“So,” the Dalai Lama continued, “I think it comes down to this: If a society promotes narrow-minded Individualism or narrow-minded Socialism, in either case it is shortsighted, and does not ultimately promote the greatest happiness of the members of that society.

There is nothing. On the other hand, if a society places too much emphasis on the individual, to the point where he or she feels too independent, has a sense of not needing others, and feels totally self-sufficient, then it is sort of like a person who sits on the limb of a tree while he is sawing it off. It’s foolish!” As with extreme Individualism, it was easy to see the dangers of extreme Collectivism. In fact, the world has seen far too often the destructive effects of the state trampling upon the rights of the individual in the name of the collective: the gulags, the repressive regimes, the horrors that occur when human beings are stripped of their individual human rights. There is something about even the more benign forms of extreme Collectivism that seems to squelch human creativity, personal initiative, and growth.

“However, we also need to look at the level of society as a whole and pay attention to the interests of the group, to create the conditions where individuals and groups can thrive, where there is an overall sense of security, attention to the social welfare, and so on. So we need a wider, more holistic outlook that includes both approaches. And it all comes down to balance.”

In looking at the traits of the happiest nations on earth, one discovers a pattern that appears to follow the Dalai Lama’s key principle: balance. Here we find a balanced approach that avoids extremes of independence and interdependence, Individualism and Collectivism, but rather incorporates both perspectives. In Scandinavian countries, for instance, one finds a Western industrialized culture, which is traditionally more individualistic, with the typically Western tradition of respect for individual rights and independent thinking. At the same time, you also find collectivist values, such as the cultural value that you shouldn’t stand out, the “nail gets pounded down” ethic. A similar pattern exists in other countries with the very highest levels of happiness, like Switzerland, demonstrating a balance between a sense of independence and a sense of interdependence, respect for individual freedom and initiative yet with a stronger sense of social welfare and a more active involvement in the affairs of the local community than is found in less-happy Western countries.

When it comes to identifying the kind of society that we should seek to create for a happier world, all of the available evidence seems to support the Dalai Lama’s view: We must work toward building societies that maintain respect for an individual’s human rights and dignity, one that encourages cultivation of personal strengths, personal integrity, and self-confidence yet at the same time promotes a deep sense of connection to others and concern for the welfare of others. Balance is the key. “Not Me or We, But Me and We”

“Howard,” the Dalai Lama cut in, “I think in discussing this topic we should first make something more clear. Now, I have noticed that sometimes people in the West have this tendency to see things in black or white terms, all or none. So here you are speaking of this Me Versus We, as if one needs to make a choice, as if to achieve a sense of unity, our goal must be to forget our differences, and look only at the areas we have in common with others. “But that is not the goal here,” he said firmly. “The approach we are advocating in bringing about positive changes is to develop a more realistic view, a view that is more consistent with reality. So, we are not saying to forget about oneself, one’s own concerns. That is not realistic. We are saying that you can think about both one’s own welfare and the welfare of others at the same time.”

Evidence of our divergent points of view would still surface occasionally, however, when in my zeal for clear-cut, definitive solutions to broad human problems, I asked questions that he felt were so all encompassing that they were impossible to answer. Generally, he attributed these kinds of questions to my characteristic Western “absolutist” thinking, the tendency to see things in terms of black and white—a contrast to his customary view that human problems are often more complex, nuanced, composed mostly of gray areas.

We put such questions into either one of two categories: Impossible or Silly. If I was going to ask a question that I knew he would react to in that manner, but I wanted to ask anyway, I’d preface my question by, “Now, Your Holiness, this is in the Impossible category, and the question is

I confess I didn’t fully abdicate my position that one had to give up part of one’s individuality if one was going to “merge” with a group identity, didn’t fully buy his view, until much later, when I began to find scientific evidence supporting his view.

“So, in this same way you could expand your identity to include ‘we as the region’ or ‘we as the country,’ and so on. And ultimately, in the case of society, the human community, we can extend this unity to include everybody, so we can say, ‘we, the people of the earth.’ So at the level of humanity, there are differences among the individual members but at the same time we can see a ‘sameness,’ we can relate to each other on a deeper, more fundamental basis. . . . You know,” he added, as he prepared to end the session, “these days I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of usage of the word ‘humanity.’ I think that’s a wonderful development—because this is very inclusive.”

We began our discussion of human happiness within a societal context by investigating the fundamental issue of Me Versus We—separateness versus connection. The Dalai Lama argues that human beings are designed to connect to others, explaining how our capacity for human affection, warmth, friendship, and love are rich and reliable sources of human happiness—like some alchemical process of transmuting lead into gold, the transformation of I into Us, cultivating a sense of belonging, brings rich rewards of human satisfaction, along with better physical, mental, and emotional health. At the same time, connecting with others helps to strengthen the wider community and help build a better society. In fact, whether looking through the lens of the Buddhist ideal of compassion or citing recent scientific evidence, one could reasonably argue that human connection and community bonds, based on a sense of caring, can be the single greatest source of human happiness and satisfaction.

But, as we have witnessed throughout human history, sometimes things can go wrong. Terribly wrong. While the feeling of belonging, the sense of Us, may bring great rewards, what happens when Us and Them becomes Us Against Them? How does the mere perception of Us and Them escalate into prejudice, hatred, conflict, and violence? These were critical questions that we had to face as our discussions continued.

IN 1992 a Croatian farmer named Adem told a horrific story. In an interview with American journalist and author Peter Maas, Adem sat hunched over, mumbling a narrative of events so devastating that they seemed to have drained the strength and spirit from his body. Even his voice couldn’t seem to register much more than a whisper. Over the previous year, he said, relations between local Serbs and Croats had deteriorated. In just a year they saw individual identities dissolve, absorbed into a greater undifferentiated mind-set: Us Against Them. And then one night, the hostilities suddenly became a nightmare from which Adem could not awaken. That night Serbs from a neighboring village rounded up thirty-five men from Adem’s village and slit their throats. .

Only nine days later Gitera found himself wielding a bloody machete, hacking his next-door neighbors to death, the mother, the children, everyone—inside the village church. The local Tutsis had fled there, certain a safe refuge could be found in the place where they had learned together with their Hutu neighbors that murder was a sin.

Such events had been occurring nationwide, with countless incidents—a ten-year-old boy buried alive, a Hutu housewife strolling over to next-door neighbors and slaughtering the children who had been her children’s closest playmates, untold tortures—as what started out with well-organized militias sent out to the villages to massacre Tutsis turned into a frenzied bloodbath, a killing spree by civilians, who were encouraged by the government and whipped up by the Rwandan state radio blaring out a continuous stream of dehumanizing propaganda, referring to Tutsis not as people but as “cockroaches” that must be exterminated. Much of the civilian population participated in the mass extermination.

The figures of the genocide are staggering—an estimated eight hundred thousand to one million of their fellow Tutsi countrymen (as well as Hutu moderates) were massacred in one hundred days! Not with bombs, machine guns, or gas chambers—but mostly one on one, up close, personal. One witness reported he saw “husbands killing wives, wives killing husbands, neighbors killing neighbors, brothers killing sisters, sisters killing brothers, and children killing parents.” For a hundred days, it seemed that all social categories or designations, such as husband, wife, sister, neighbor, friend, old, young, farmer, doctor, or clergyman had all disappeared—only two remained: “us” and “them.”

“Then let’s make this the first topic we explore today—this natural human tendency to divide ourselves into groups: the ‘in-group’ and the ‘out-group.’” The Dalai Lama seemed fresh, ready to explore. “Yes. Very good!” Catching him in the morning was always a good thing. I said, “Well, in starting on the most basic level, first I think there is a biological basis, from an evolutionary standpoint, why people tend to divide themselves this way. But of course, as you like to remind me, these things can be complex. So, there may be other causes of these ‘us and them’ divisions, such as psychological causes. For example, right now the World Cup is going on. So if you like a particular team, you’re a fan, and if someone asks you the outcome of a particular game, you don’t say, ‘Oh, they won.’ You say, ‘We won!’

The Dalai Lama was silent for a moment longer while he considered the issue, then began. “Now, the sense of self and the attachment to one’s existence is of course a very natural trait. And I think that this sense of Us is simply an extension of this sense of self—it becomes extended so others get included in it, especially your immediate kin. You expand your horizon of identification, of personal identity, to include others, those to whom you look for support. So, as this expands, first it extends to your family, then your cultural group, then your nation, wherever it takes.

In tracing the process of how human beings separate into groups that can sometimes seek to destroy and harm one another, we begin by classifying people into two categories, the in-group and the out-group (what I’ve been referring to as Us and Them)—those groups that I identify myself as a member of, and those groups that I perceive to be different from me, those groups to which I do not belong. The process of dividing people into two groups, Us and Them, is one example of categorization. The brain really likes to categorize everything it can into groups—categorizing objects, concepts, and people. Why? We live in a very complex world, and the brain’s ability to process information is limited. Categorization is one of the brain’s favorite strategies to help simplify the torrential flood of sensory information that we’re inundated with every moment.

This has left us with a legacy of a brain that is good for overcoming danger and life-threatening situations, what some researchers call the catastrophic brain—a brain that was on the constant lookout for things that might go wrong, things that might be a threat to our survival, a brain that might tend to ignore the good things in life, in favor of the bad, good at sensing the tiny pebble in our shoe but not as good for appreciating the beautiful sunset or scenery we encounter as we stroll.

Now, ordinarily there is really nothing wrong with merely recognizing differences between groups, merely identifying Us and Them. Similarly, there is also nothing wrong with favoring one’s own group. But the problem is that the evolutionary forces and pressures that acted to shape the architecture of the human brain did not stop there—we do not only form an automatic positive bias toward our own group, but we also have an instinctual negative bias toward other groups. As soon as we categorize an individual as belonging to Us or Them, the brain continues to process that information by classifying them as Friend or Foe—immediately stamping that image with an emotional tone, instinctively imbuing these categories with positive feelings toward “friends” and negative feelings toward “foes.” And as we will discuss, that is where things can begin to go wrong—very wrong.