The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by Dalai Lama XIV

Suffering is inevitable, they said, but how we respond to that suffering is our choice. Not even oppression or occupation can take away this freedom to choose our response. Right until the very

From the very core of our being, we simply desire joy and contentment. But so often these feelings are fleeting and hard to find, like a butterfly that lands on us and then flutters away.

We hope that God’s world will become a better place, more hospitable to goodness, more hospitable to compassion, more hospitable to generosity, more hospitable to living together so we don’t have what is happening now between Russia and the Ukraine, or what is happening with ISIS, or what is happening in Kenya or Syria. They make God weep.”

“I am more instinctual,” he had said, and I remembered him saying that deep visceral knowing and prayerful surrender had guided all of the major turning points in his life

There’s a title of a book by C. S. Lewis called Surprised by Joy, which I think expresses how it works.

And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.

“it is how we face all of the things that seem to be negative in our lives that determines the kind of person we become.

Like the ocean has many waves on the surface but deep down it is quite calm.

You are made for perfection, but you are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making.”

Notes to the Future was on courage: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

God Has a Dream. He said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act despite it.”

“Yes, we’re capable of the most awful atrocities. We can give a catalog. And God weeps until there are those who say I do want to try to do something. It is good also to remember that we have a fantastic capacity for goodness. And then you look again. And you see those doctors and nurses from other parts of the world who go into those situations. I mean, you think of, say, Doctors Without Borders. Why do they go there? I mean, they could stay in France or wherever and have a wonderful practice. But they don’t. They go off to some of the most poverty-stricken places.

They are just showing us what we are all capable of being. And by proxy we link ourselves to those and try as much as we can to enter into who we are: people of compassion. “What can you do to help change that situation? You might not be able to do a great deal, but start where you are and do what you can where you are. And yes, be appalled. It would be awful if we looked on all of that horrendousness and we said, Ah, it doesn’t really matter. It’s so wonderful that we can be distressed. That’s part of the greatness of who we are—that you are distressed about someone who is not family in any conventional way. And yet you feel distressed, equally. It’s incredible just how compassionate and generous people can be.

It reminded one of the famous Chinese story about the farmer whose horse runs away. His neighbors are quick to comment on his bad luck. The farmer responds that no one can know what is good and what is bad. When the horse comes back with a wild stallion, the neighbors are quick to comment, this time talking about the farmer’s good luck. Again, the farmer replies that no one can know what is good and what is bad. When the farmer’s son breaks his leg trying to tame the wild stallion, the neighbors now are certain of the farmer’s bad luck. Again, the farmer says that no one knows. When war breaks out, all the able-bodied young men are conscripted into battle except the farmer’s son, who was spared because of his broken leg.

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

I have heard it said that prayer is when we speak to God, and meditation is when God answers.

the Archbishop said, “when you are stuck in a traffic jam, you can deal with it in one of two ways. You can let the frustration really eat you up. Or you can look around at the other drivers and see that one might have a wife who has pancreatic cancer. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know exactly what they might have, but you know they are all suffering with worries and fears because they are human. And you can lift them up and bless them. You can say, Please, God, give each one of them what they need. “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. And I think it has therapeutic consequences for your own health, physical and spiritual. But what does frustration help? I mean, you feel it in the pit of your tummy, the anger. I mean, you just get more angry, and after a while you are going to develop ulcers in the stomach from the fact that you got annoyed at sitting in a traffic jam.”

Think about where you are suffering in your life and then think about all the other people who are going through a similar situation. This perhaps is quite literally the birth of compassion, which means “suffering with.” The incredible thing, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop pointed out, was that this “suffering with” others reminds us that we are not alone, and actually lessens our own pain.

God uses each of us in our own way, and even if you are not the best one, you may be the one who is needed or the one who is there.”

There is a Tibetan saying that wisdom is like rainwater—both gather in the low places. There is another saying that when the spring bloom comes, where does it start? Does it start on the hilltops or down in the valleys first? Growth begins first in the low places.