The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by Dalai Lama XIV

joy is in fact our birthright and even more fundamental than happiness.

Most people never pay much attention to the ultimate source of a happy life, which is inside, not outside. Even the source of physical health is inside, not outside.

“It’s wonderful to discover that what we want is not actually happiness. It is not actually what I would speak of. I would speak of joy. Joy subsumes happiness. Joy is the far greater thing.

“Too much self-centered thinking is the source of suffering. A compassionate concern for others’ well-being is the source of happiness.

According to Lyubomirsky, the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.

“Where there is fear, frustration will come. Frustration brings anger. So, you see, fear and anger are very close.”

Psychologists often call anger a secondary emotion, because it comes as a defense to feeling threatened.

When people impugn your intentions, and you know that you have noble intentions. It’s really quite painful. You grind your teeth and you say, there they go again.

Archbishop’s struggle for freedom. He was not afraid of anger and righteous indignation in pursuit of peace, justice, and equality in his homeland.

The kind of happiness that they describe is often called eudemonic happiness and is characterized by self-understanding, meaning, growth, and acceptance, including life’s inevitable suffering, sadness, and grief.

My friend Gordon Wheeler, who is a psychologist, explains that grief is the reminder of the depth of our love. Without love, there is no grief. So when we feel our grief, uncomfortable and aching as it may be, it is actually a reminder of the beauty of that love, now lost.

And by proxy we link ourselves to those and try as much as we can to enter into who we are: people of compassion.

Think about the rights of women or how slavery was considered morally justified a few hundred years ago. It takes time. We are growing and learning how to be compassionate, how to be caring, how to be human.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

You know human beings are basically good. You know that’s where we have to start. That everything else is an aberration.

“All these things happen, but they are unusual, which is why they become news. There are millions and millions of children who are loved by their parents every day. Then in school their teachers care for them. Okay, maybe there are some bad teachers, but most of them really are kind and caring. Then in the hospital, every day millions of people receive immense caring. But this is so common that none of it becomes news. We take it for granted.

To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.”

What I had learned from our dialogue was that we did not have to wait for others to open their hearts to us. By opening our heart to them, we could feel connected to them, whether on a mountaintop or in the middle of Manhattan.

Jinpa had explained how mudita works: If someone has something that we want, say, a bigger house, we can consciously take joy in their good fortune by telling ourselves: “Good for him. Just like me, he, too, wants to be happy. He, too, wants to be successful. He, too, wants to support his family. May he be happy. I congratulate him and want him to have more success.” Mudita recognizes that life is not a zero-sum game, that there is not just one slice of cake in which someone else’s taking more means we get less. Mudita sees joy as limitless.

This is a beautiful prayer that Jinpa uses to cultivate mudita: As for suffering I do not wish even the slightest; as for happiness I am never satisfied. In this, there is no difference between others and me. Bless me so I may take joy in others’ happiness.

suffering can either embitter us or ennoble us and that the difference lies in whether we are able to find meaning in our suffering.

The true measure of spiritual development is how one confronts one’s own mortality.

Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness.

As our dialogue progressed, we converged on eight pillars of joy. Four were qualities of the mind: perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance. Four were qualities of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.

We would end up, ultimately, at compassion and generosity, and indeed both men would insist that these two qualities were perhaps most pivotal to any lasting happiness.

Or, as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “With our mind we create our own world.”

“The very fact of not thinking about your own frustration and pain does something. I don’t know why. But it will make you feel much better.

“Then, you see, my talk may offer them something relevant, but if I consider myself something special, or if they also consider me something different and special, then my experience will not be of much use.

“There is a Tibetan prayer,” the Dalai Lama said, “which is part of the mind-training teachings. A Tibetan master says, ‘Whenever I see someone, may I never feel superior. From the depth of my heart, may I be able to really appreciate the other person in front of me.’”

Needing to feel that we are bigger than others comes from a nagging fear that we are smaller.

No one can fulfill our role but us in the divine plan or karmic unfolding.

“I reckon there are many people who think they have to be somber because it gives them gravitas, and they feel they are more likely to be respected if they are serious. But I believe very fervently that one of the ways of getting into the hearts of people is the capacity of making them laugh. If you are able to laugh at yourself, then everyone knows you’re not pompous. Besides, you hardly ever knock down someone who is knocking himself down. You’re not likely to clobber someone if they’ve already, as it were, self-clobbered.

The Dalai Lama had told us that stress and anxiety come from our expectations of how life should be.

One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations.

Reflecting on this seeming paradox, of pursuing a goal yet with no attachment to its outcome, Jinpa explained to me that there is an important insight. This is a deep recognition that while each of us should do everything we can to realize the goal we seek, whether or not we succeed often depends on many factors beyond our control. So our responsibility is to pursue the goal with all the dedication we can muster, do the best we can but not become fixated on a preconceived notion of a result. Sometimes, actually quite often, our efforts lead to an unexpected outcome that might even be better than what we originally had in mind.

When we accept the present, we can forgive and release the desire for a different past.

“Generally, when we speak of cultivating compassion for someone, we are cultivating compassion for someone who is actually undergoing acute suffering and pain. But you can also develop compassion for someone who may not be experiencing acute pain or suffering right now, but who is creating the conditions for their own future suffering.”

In The Book of Forgiving, the Archbishop and Mpho outline two cycles: the cycle of revenge and the cycle of forgiveness. When a hurt or harm happens, we can choose to hurt back or to heal. If we choose to retaliate, or pay back, the cycle of revenge and harm continues endlessly, but if we choose to forgive, we break the cycle and we can heal, renewing or releasing the relationship.

Every day, think as you wake up, ‘I am fortunate to be alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it,’” the Dalai Lama has often said.

In one study with his colleagues Michael McCullough and Jo-Ann Tsang, they found that grateful people do not seem to ignore or deny the negative aspects of life; they simply choose to appreciate what is positive as well:

“Compassion is what connects the feeling of empathy to acts of kindness, generosity, and other expressions of altruistic tendencies.”

we were only halfway through our evolution as a species on this planet.