Dalai Lama: Happiness

A Review of 'The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard. C. Cutler alongside my thoughts...

Isn't seeking happiness self-centered and self-indulgent?

The Dalai Lama says the purpose of our existence is to seek happiness. And yet the word happiness comes from the Icelandic word 'happ' which means luck or chance. Sounds elusive, right? However, perhaps we need to look at the research and ask again, is it worth 'pursuing' (and maybe that is simply not the right word but the point remains)?

Unhappy people tend to be more self-focused, brooding, antagonistic, and socially withdrawn. Happy people tend to be more flexible, creative, loving and forgiving.

Huh! Makes sense right. Think about it ....

You're in a traffic jam. You've been stuck for 20 mins. Just as the traffic finally starts to move, the person in the next lane indicates they want to get in front of you. If you're chill and happy, you let them in. When you're grumpy, the unhappy you ignores them, moves ahead and closes the gap. Any truth in that? But.... but....but....

It seems contradictory. Buddhism seems to teach, "Life is Suffering" and yet here is the head of that religion saying ... By 'training our mind' (mind from the Tibetan word 'Sem' which means psyche or spirit, that is heart and mind, not merely our cognitive ability or intellect), we can eliminate those factors that lead to unhappiness and choose to cultivate the ones that lead to happiness.

We all so often use control strategies (thanks to some wonderful protective parts) to change, get rid of, or avoid unwanted thoughts and feelings, but many of us know the rebound effect that can create. Experiential avoidance is a major cause of states of mind, from which we then seek relief: depression, anxiety, and addiction, for example.

Ask yourself ..

What thoughts, feelings and sensations would I like to be rid of ... ?

However, rather than ridding ourselves of certain states, perhaps we could first ask ourselves, what is happiness? There are some proposed distinctions about the source and sustainability of different versions of happiness we may have.

Perhaps this might be a way to think about it ...

• Pleasure = a short-term, sensory or emotional hit of enjoyment. It’s usually tied to a stimulus and ends when the stimulus ends. It’s often about getting something you want in the moment.

• Eudaimonia = usually translated as human flourishing or living well. It’s different from just “feeling happy” — it’s about the quality and purpose of your life as a whole, not just your mood in a moment.

• Happiness = a longer-lasting sense of wellbeing, contentment, or meaning in life. It’s less about a single event and more about your overall relationship to life.

The Dalai Lama invites us to consider that happiness is more determined by one's state of mind, than by external events. We may learn to adapt to the inevitable vicissitudes of life, the triumphs and the disasters, adjusting our way back to a baseline of contentment.

Is it dependent then on our outlook, how we make meaning of a situation, how we interpret that which is generated via our body, thoughts, and feelings. For example, we are delighted when we get a pay raise, until we find our colleague got a bigger one. The comparison taints that which was previously positive. "I wish ...." leaves us more dissatisfied.

Or we compare ourselves to those less fortunate and so we feel okay. "I'm glad I'm not .... " may lift our spirits. But these strategies can be fleeting.

So what might help us reduce suffering and cultivate factors that lead to happiness?

A Table to help discern different definitions of happiness.

Aspect	Pleasure	Happiness	Eudaimonia
Definition	A short-term positive feeling from satisfying a desire or experiencing something enjoyable	A general state of wellbeing, contentment, or life satisfaction	A life of virtue, meaning, and fulfilment — living in alignment with your highest potential
Source	External stimuli (food, travel, music, entertainment, physical comfort)	Both internal mindset and external circumstances	Internal character, values, and purposeful action
Timeframe	Momentary	Can be sustained for days, months, or years	Lifelong orientation
Focus	Feeling good now	Feeling good overall	Being good and doing good over the course of life
Examples	Eating a favourite dessert, hot bath, holiday excitement, buying new clothes, even success.	Feeling secure in a loving relationship, satisfaction after achieving a goal, enjoying a balanced life	Raising children with care, dedicating yourself to a craft or cause, living with integrity despite challenges
Philosophical roots	Hedonism (pleasure as the goal)	Modern psychology (subjective wellbeing)	Aristotle’s virtue ethics (flourishing through virtue and reason)
Risks if pursued alone	Can lead to dependency on external rewards, diminishing returns, and emptiness when pleasures fade, even addiction.	Can be unstable if based only on circumstances. Relationship to life, others and self may be the key.	Can feel demanding and be hidden behind protectors seeking validation; may require sacrifice and discomfort in the short term
Emotional depth	Shallow but intense	Moderate to deep	Deep and enduring
	Pleasure can contribute to happiness, but is not the same	Happiness can result from both pleasure and eudaimonia	Eudaimonia often produces a more stable form of happiness, with pleasure as a by-product

The Dalai Lama goes on to say, there are 4 factors that fulfill happiness: wealth, worldly satisfaction (I think of Maslow's hierarchy here), spirituality and enlightenment. However, none of these sources of happiness can be effective or utilized unless you are able to inhabit a level of calmness of mind.

As long as there is a lack of inner discipline that brings calmness of mind, no matter what external facilities or conditions you have, they will never give you the feeling of joy and happiness you are seeking.

Certain desires are positive, useful, in fact. However the demarcation between a positive and negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction (a car in a big city makes sense versus wishing for a car in a small self-sufficient village). How then can we get happiness? Have all our desires met (but we've seen time and again we often don't know what we want, or we get it but want more so it becomes a vicious cycle).

The more sustainable way is ...

Not to have what we want ... but rather to want and appreciate what we have.

What assets and resources and blessings do you have .... ?

The Dalai Lama says when he lost his political office and his country, he was blessed with the capacity to create good friends. And that has sustained him. Along with his work. But just being a human being, which connected him to all others, and affords him a sense of self-worth and dignity, and therefore a sense of connection and affection.

The foundation of Bowlby's Attachment theory is that very idea. We build a secure base through attuned relationship with primary caregivers, and that sense of connection and affection is what gives us the self-confidence to go outside our comfort zone and explore the world.

However being in the world means inevitable bumps and bruises, physically and emotionally. With Life-quakes predicted to now happen in our fast-moving world, on average, every 18 months, suffering and coping with uncertainty is inevitable. So rather than deny reality, and deny suffering, facing it honestly, accepting it for what it is, and using it as a catalyst for growth is a necessity.

Emotional bruising and betrayal, which fires us into states of anger, anxiety and downright hatred, requires us to mentally train ourselves to increase our self-awareness, patience and compassion. This takes practice, but the Dalai Lama encourages us to replace our harmful impulses with constructive, calm responses. Even Darwin noted an 'instinct of sympathy' in our species and David Hume, a 'natural benevolence'. Understanding our reactions to our enemies, through learning, examining, and finding alternative ways of dealing with them, ultimately results in true growth, insight and successful psychotherapeutic outcomes.

The Dalai Lama encourages spiritual practices such as using your personal suffering as a way to enhance your compassion. Finding meaning in pain and suffering can shift our perspectives, and flexible thinking is so important, as it nurtures the resiliency of the human spirit. "I have no consistent policies" he laughs. The contemplation of impermanence has a vital function. We are blessed to be here, however impermanently, so act with urgency. And if we are willing to go deeper, to dispel the notion that reality is the cause of our suffering. We are. We need to relinquish the past. And live in the now.

Be Present. And so it is.