The Dalai Lama

Desmond Tutu

Douglas Carlton Abrams

Two great spiritual masters share their own hard-won wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity. The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet, despite having experienced great personal and national suffering. From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake, the first being their personal stories and teachings about joy. Both the Dalai Lama and Tutu have been tested by extraordinary adversity, oppression, and conflict. The second layer consists of the exciting research into joy as well as the other qualities essential for any enduring happiness, like gratitude, humility, humour, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness. And the third encompasses practical exercises and guidance based on the Dalai Lama's and Tutu's own daily practices, which anchor their emotional and spiritual lives. Most of all, during that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and even wise-cracking humour, how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of being.

Finding Enduring Happiness in an Uncertain World

The Book of Joy

sam kruczek

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.

“Where there is fear, frustration will come. Frustration brings anger. So,you see, fear and anger are very close.”

We want something that we did not get, like respect or kindness, or we get something that we did not want, like disrespect or criticism. Underlying this anger, the Dalai Lama was saying, is a fear that we will not get what we need, that we are not loved, that we are not respected, that we will not be included. One way out of anger, then, is to ask, What is the hurt that has caused our anger, what is the fear that we have?

“In my own case, when I encounter some difficult situation in the morning, my mind is calm, and it is much easier. When the same situation happens in the late evening, and I am a little bit tired, then I feel annoyed. So your basic physical condition makes a difference, whether your body is fresh, whether your mind is fresh. So this also shows how much depends on your own perception and your limited subjective view.”

So when we feel our grief, uncomfortable and aching as it may be, it is actually a reminder of the beauty of that love, now lost. 

“When bad things happen they become news, and it is easy to feel like our basic human nature is to kill or to rape or to be corrupt. Then we can feel that there is not much hope for our future. All these things happen, but they are unusual, which is why they become news” 

“The paradox is that although the drive behind excessive self-focus is to seek greater happiness for yourself, it ends up doing exactly the opposite. When you focus too much on yourself, you become disconnected and alienated from others. In the end, you also become alienated from yourself, since the need for connection with others is such a fundamental part of who we are as human beings.”

…when people are feeling lonely or socially rejected, they literally seek warmth, like sipping hot soup. What the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop were saying is that we can generate that warmth simply by opening our hearts and turning our attention and our concern to other people.

I don’t think we help people by making them feel guilty. We want to try to be as welcoming as we possibly can and say that the experience they have is something that many other people also have

You can have a nice house with a nice bedroom and a nice bath, and play relaxing music, but if you are full of anger, full of jealousy, full of attachment, you will never be able to relax. In contrast, you may be sitting on a rock with nothing, but if your mind is completely peaceful, then you can be relaxed.”

The Book of Joy quotes

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