The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by Dalai Lama XIV

Researcher Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues found that people experience greater happiness when they spend money on others than when they spend it on themselves. Dunn also found that older adults with hypertension have decreased blood pressure when they are assigned to spend money on others rather than themselves. As the Archbishop had explained, we receive when we give.

You need other people in order to be human. That’s why when they want to punish you they put you in solitary confinement. Because you can’t flourish without other human beings. They give you things that you cannot give yourself, no matter how much money you have. And so we speak of Ubuntu. A person is a person through other persons. And there must have been some people who said, ‘Ah, what a primitive way of thinking.’ It’s the most fundamental law of our being. We flout that—we flout it at our peril.”

We people who care must be attractive, must be filled with joy, so that others recognize that caring, that helping and being generous are not a burden, they are a joy. Give the world your love, your service, your healing, but you can also give it your joy. This, too, is a great

“In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.”

“If we think we want to get joy for ourselves, we realize that it’s very shortsighted, short-lived. Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get in no other way.

In The Book of Forgiving, the Archbishop and his daughter Mpho Tutu presented a universal fourfold path to forgiveness.

May you be free from suffering. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you find peace and joy.