The Book of Joy

by Dalai Lama XIV

“Contemplate that, as long as you are too focused on your self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.”

In 1978, psychologists Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman published a landmark study that found that lottery winners were not significantly happier than those who had been paralyzed in an accident. From this and subsequent work came the idea that people have a “set point” that determines their happiness over the course of their life. In other words, we get accustomed to any new situation and inevitably return to our general state of happiness.

However, more recent research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky suggests that perhaps only 50 percent of our happiness is determined by immutable factors like our genes or temperament, our “set point.” The other half is determined by a combination of our circumstances, over which we may have limited control, and our attitudes and actions, over which we have a great deal of control. 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.

“Nice guys finish last” is a phrase that speaks to our deep ambivalence about kindness and compassion in the West. Success in our society is measured by money, power, fame, and influence.

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.

The real secret of freedom may simply be extending this brief space between stimulus and response. Meditation seems to elongate this pause and help expand our ability to choose our response. For example, can we expand the momentary pause between our spouse’s annoyed words and our angry or hurt reaction? Can we change the channel on the mental broadcasting system from self-righteous indignation—how dare she or he speak to me like that—to compassionate understanding—she or he must be very tired.

In a multicenter prospective study of coronary heart disease, health researcher Larry Scherwitz found that people who more frequently said I, me, or mine had a higher risk of having a heart attack and had a higher risk of their heart attack being fatal.

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.’”

“Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy if it cannot be remedied?”

I THINK THAT almost all of us are surprised how our joy is enhanced when we make someone else happy. You know, you go to town, you’ve gone to do some shopping, and when you get back home you have a bunch of flowers for Rachel. She wasn’t expecting them, and the glow of her face and the joy that comes from having made another person joyful is something that you can’t actually compute.

So it seems that money can buy happiness, if we spend it on other people.