The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by Dalai Lama XIV

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. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance.

“When we asked her about the granting of amnesty, she said, ‘What is it going to help us if he were to go to prison? It won’t bring back our children.’ And there is an incredible kind of nobility and strength.

‘We want to be part of the process of healing in South Africa. We are sure that our daughter would support us in saying we want amnesty to be granted to the murderers.’

We’ve spoken of Nelson Mandela as an amazing icon of forgiveness,” the Archbishop said, “but you and you and you and you have the potential to be instruments of incredible compassion and forgiveness. We cannot say of anyone at all that they are totally unable to forgive.

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.”

“We stand firm against the wrong not only to protect those who are being harmed but also to protect the person who is harming others, because eventually they, too, will suffer. So it’s out of a sense of concern for their own long-term well-being that we stop their wrongdoing.

those who say forgiving is a sign of weakness haven’t tried it.

Chimps kiss and make up, and it seems that many other species do as well. Not only apes like us but also sheep, goats, hyenas, and dolphins. Of the species that have been studied, only domestic cats have failed to show behavior that reconciles relationships after conflict. (This finding will not surprise anyone who has cats.)

In a review of the research on forgiveness and health, Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Michael Scherer found that unforgiveness seems to compromise the immune system in a number of ways, including disrupting the production of important hormones and the way that our cells fight off infections.

It’s not your fault, but you woke up from a warm bed, you were able to have a shower, you put on clean clothes, and you were in a home that is warm in the winter. Now just think of the many who are refugees who wake up in the morning, and there’s not very much protection for them against the rain that is pelting down.

Gratitude is the elevation of enjoyment, the ennobling of enjoyment.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar who spent a great deal of time in Christian–Buddhist interfaith dialogue, has explained, “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers us. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes a difficult gift is given to us and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge.”

Acceptance means not fighting reality. Gratitude means embracing reality.

Hinton responded, “If I’m angry and unforgiving, they will have taken the rest of my life.”

“The world didn’t give you your joy, and the world can’t take it away. You can let people come into your life and destroy it, but I refused to let anyone take my joy. I get up in the morning, and I don’t need anyone to make me laugh. I am going to laugh on my own, because I have been blessed to see another day, and when you are blessed to see another day that should automatically give you joy.

When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share.

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: “People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks.”

The Buddha supposedly said, “What is that one thing, which when you possess, you have all other virtues? It is compassion.”

The Dalai Lama’s comment echoed a topic I have discussed with quite a few religious seekers and parents: It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.

caring for others, even in the midst of his own suffering, the suffering of being in exile.”

One of the differences between empathy and compassion is that while empathy is simply experiencing another’s emotion, compassion is a more empowered state where we want what is best for the other person. As the Dalai Lama has described it, if we see a person who is being crushed by a rock, the goal is not to get under the rock and feel what they are feeling; it is to help to remove the rock.

It’s hard to love others as you love yourself, as both men pointed out, if you don’t love yourself.

“When no one believes a word you say, eventually you stop saying anything. I did not say good morning.

He got his fellow inmates to start banging their bars at five minutes before the execution.

And when I lost it all, all of my false friends disappeared.” Jim decided to go through with his contribution. “At that moment I realized that the only way that money can bring happiness is to give it away.”

“When you produce a lot, and you don’t say, ‘by the way there are people over there who are hungry,’ and instead you destroy the surplus—and you think it’s going to be okay—it can’t be okay, because you have broken fundamental laws of the universe. And things will go horrendously wrong.

I knew that speaking truth to power, as he always did, was exhausting. However, he did not seem depleted.

Start where you are, and realize that you are not meant on your own to resolve all of these massive problems. Do what you can.

It helps no one if you sacrifice your joy because others are suffering. 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 gift.”

We can take in the suffering of others and give them back our joy.

The Chinese government will discover that freedom is actually cheaper than oppression.”

No matter how excellent, no religion can be universal. So we have to find another way to promote these values. “I think the only way really is, as we have said, through education. Education is universal. We must teach people, especially our youth, the source of happiness and satisfaction. We must teach them that the ultimate source of happiness is within themselves. Not machine. Not technology. Not money. Not power.

The key is to avoid all external distractions like talking, music, or television. The goal is simply to listen to the wisdom of the spirit that often comes through the wisdom of the body.

Envy is a poison tinged with guilt and self-criticism. It kills our happiness and empties the world of its riches and wonders.

mudita, the practice of rejoicing in others’ good fortune.

. I felt overwhelmed, as if I was going to collapse under the weight of the suffering and my task. What could I offer? Then I remembered the “giving and receiving” technique of tonglen. . . . So I breathed in the suffering as if it were a dark cloud and breathed out golden light from my heart into the room and to everyone I encountered. A whole new level of integration happened. I could open to the experience of suffering and found something necessary and precious to sustain me. The suffering became fluid with each breath and washed over me so that I began to become unstuck. I began to feel the liberation of not being trapped in the experience of suffering but the freedom that happened as a result of actively engaging in it.”