The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by Dalai Lama XIV

No dark fate determines the future. We do. Each day and each moment, we are able to create and re-create our lives and the very quality of human life on our planet. This is the power we wield.

Every day is a new opportunity to begin again. Every day is your birthday.

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say,” the Archbishop added, as we began our descent, “save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”

The suffering from a natural disaster we cannot control, but the suffering from our daily disasters we can. We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people. When it comes to personal happiness there is a lot that we as individuals can do.”

the Archbishop decries any form of oppression or discrimination, wherever he might find it.

What is it, I wondered, about spiritual leaders that they are always getting up early to pray and meditate? It clearly makes a great difference in how they approach their day.

“One of my practices comes from an ancient Indian teacher,” the Dalai Lama began answering the Archbishop’s question. “He taught that when you experience some tragic situation, think about it. If there’s no way to overcome the tragedy, then there is no use worrying too much. So I practice that.” The Dalai Lama was referring to the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva, who wrote, “If something can be done about the situation, what need is there for dejection? And if nothing can be done about it, what use is there for being dejected?”

Therefore, if you look from one angle, you feel, oh how bad, how sad. But if you look from another angle at that same tragedy, that same event, you see that it gives me new opportunities.

‘Wherever you have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.’”

There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive?

if you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.

“If you want to be a good writer,” the Archbishop concluded, “you are not going to become one by always going to the movies and eating bonbons. You have to sit down and write, which can be very frustrating, and yet without that you would not get that good result.”

How much control do we have over our emotions? The Archbishop would say we have very little. The Dalai Lama would say we have more than we think.

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

We should have wise selfishness rather than foolish selfishness. Foolish selfishness means you just think only of yourself, don’t care about others, bully others, exploit others. In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life. So that is what I call wise selfishness.”

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.

There are four independent brain circuits that influence our lasting well-being, Davidson explained. The first is “our ability to maintain positive states.”

The second circuit is responsible for “our ability to recover from negative states.”

The third circuit, also independent but essential to the others, is “our ability to focus and avoid mind-wandering.”

The fourth and final circuit is “our ability to be generous.”

Perhaps more sobering, it has also hardwired us to cooperate with and be kind to those who look like our caregivers, who presumably kept us safe. We are more wary of others who look different: these are the unconscious roots of prejudice. Our empathy does not seem to extend to those who are outside our “group,” which is perhaps why the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama are constantly reminding us that we are, in fact, one group—humanity.

“We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment.

survey after survey has shown that it is unhappy people who tend to be most self-focused and are socially withdrawn, brooding, and even antagonistic.

In short, the more we heal our own pain, the more we can turn to the pain of others.

The more we turn toward others, the more joy we experience, and the more joy we experience, the more we can bring joy to others.

Archbishop poetically phrased it, “to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.”

“I think if you are an intensely religious believer, as soon as you wake up, you thank God for another day. And you try to do God’s will. For a nontheist like myself, but who is a Buddhist, as soon as I wake up, I remember Buddha’s teaching: the importance of kindness and compassion, wishing something good for others, or at least to reduce their suffering. Then I remember that everything is interrelated, the teaching of interdependence. So then I set my intention for the day: that this day should be meaningful. Meaningful means, if possible, serve and help others. If not possible, then at least not to harm others. That’s a meaningful day.”

power, a valuable reminder that compassion is a feature of strength, not weakness,

‘There is nothing wrong with faiths. The problem is the faithful.’”

“Okay. As I was saying, do you really think that when—I didn’t say if; I said when—the Dalai Lama arrives in heaven, that God will say, ‘Oh, Dalai Lama, you’ve been so wonderful. What a pity you are not a Christian. You’ll have to go to the warmer place.’ Everybody sees just how entirely ridiculous it is.” The Archbishop paused and then, in a very intimate moment of friendship said, “I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was meeting you.”

So now, when I meet people, I do it on a human-to-human level, no need for formality. I really hate formality. When we are born, there is no formality. When we die, there is no formality. When we enter hospital, there is no formality. So formality is just artificial. It just creates additional barriers. So irrespective of our beliefs, we are all the same human beings.

sometimes I say, Since I became a refugee, I have been liberated from the prison of formality. So I became much closer to reality.

so often our parenting in the West is too focused on our children, and their needs alone, rather than helping them to learn to care for others.

“I used to feel very frustrated and angry,” the Archbishop said, “when we would be rushing to a very important meeting, and we would be stuck in traffic because there was an accident up ahead. You were grinding your teeth and looking for somebody to kick. But growing older I said, well, this is an opportunity for being quiet. And then you would try to uphold all the people that were involved.

Sometimes we get too angry with ourselves thinking that we ought to be perfect from the word go. But this being on earth is a time for us to learn to be good, to learn to be more loving, to learn to be more compassionate. And you learn, not theoretically.” The Archbishop was pointing his index fingers at his head. “You learn when something happens that tests you.”

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

“Well, one did not do silly things like stand in front of a lit window at night, but one had to say to God, ‘If I’m doing your work, you better jolly well protect me.’”

Even if leadership requires a show of strength during moments of crisis, our humanity is defined equally, or perhaps even more, by our weakness and vulnerability, a fact that the Archbishop often says reminds us of our need for one another.

The English word courage comes from the French word coeur, or heart; courage is indeed the triumph of our heart’s love and commitment over our mind’s reasonable murmurings to keep us safe.

“Our opportunities are so much greater now, but so, too, are our anxieties.”

The Archbishop once told me that people often think he needs time to pray and reflect because he is a religious leader. He said those who must live in the marketplace—business-people, professionals, and workers—need it even more.

When we turn a threat into a challenge, our body responds very differently.

They encourage us to develop stress resilience. This involves turning what is called “threat stress,” or the perception that a stressful event is a threat that will harm us, into what is called “challenge stress,” or the perception that a stressful event is a challenge that will help us grow. The remedy they offer is quite straightforward. One simply notices the fight-or-flight stress response in one’s body—the beating heart, the pulsing blood or tingling feeling in our hands and face, the rapid breathing—then remembers that these are natural responses to stress and that our body is just preparing to rise to the challenge.

the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.

“When I meet someone,” the Dalai Lama said, returning to what was becoming an important theme, “I always try to relate to the person on the basic human level. On that level, I know that, just like me, he or she wishes to find happiness, to have fewer problems and less difficulty in their life. Whether I am speaking with one person, or whether I am giving a talk to a large group of people, I always see myself first and foremost as just another fellow human. That way, there is in fact no need for introduction.

All of a sudden a car cut across the lanes in front of us and the Archbishop had to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting the other car. “There are some truly amazing drivers on the road!” the Archbishop said with exasperation and a head-shaking chuckle. I asked him what went through his head at moments like this, and he said that perhaps the driver was on his way to the hospital because his wife was giving birth, or a relative was sick. There it was. He reacted with the inevitable and uncontrollable surprise, which is one of our instinctual responses, but then instead of taking the low road of anger, he took the high road of humor, acceptance, and even compassion. And it was gone: no fuming, no lingering frustration, no raised blood pressure.

He was so mad that he banged his head against the car again and again. Bang, bang, bang.” The Dalai Lama pretended to hit his head into the imaginary fender, to the delight of the children. “That is anger. What use is it? The very reason he lost his temper is that he hit his head and then he hits his head on purpose, inflicting more pain on himself. It’s foolish. When anger develops, think, what is the cause? And then also think, what will be the result of my anger, my angry face, or my shouting? Then you will realize that anger is not helpful.”

If we can have compassion for ourselves, and acknowledge how we feel afraid, hurt, or threatened, we can have compassion for others—possibly even for those who have evoked our anger.

Sadness is seemingly the most direct challenge to joy, but as the Archbishop argued strongly, it often leads us most directly to empathy and compassion and to recognizing our need for one another.

What is particularly interesting is that brief sadness might generate more empathy or generosity. Participants in the study played a game, part of which involved deciding how much money to give themselves and how much to give others. The sad participants gave significantly more to the other participants.