In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler outline the Dalai Lama’s beliefs on how to achieve greater happiness in life—by training yourself to be happier. In this guide, we’ll describe the importance of happiness to all humans and the ways you can change your mind and behavior to create more of it.
The Dalai Lama’s advice for achieving happiness is unique in its simplicity and flexibility. You won’t find elaborate rules or 3-month happiness plans here, because he suggests ways to build happiness that are obvious and even self-explanatory: be empathetic, accept your suffering, learn about your mind. This isn’t to say that implementing those concepts will be easy—it’ll take time and effort—but you have the power now to do so.
The Dalai Lama believes that your purpose as a human is to seek happiness. He defines happiness as not merely an emotional state, but a mental and intellectual one. It’s about being content with your life on all levels.
(Shortform note: Aristotle also believed that your purpose in life is to achieve happiness. According to him, every goal you set in life, however distant it may seem from happiness, actually is in service of attaining happiness. Let’s say you join a high-intensity fitness program, which, with its grueling exercises, may not seem in service of your happiness. However, when you look at the micro-goals of joining this program, you see they serve the macro-goal of happiness: You join the program to get fit. You get fit to be healthy. You become healthy to be happier.)
The Dalai Lama believes that we’re naturally inclined to be happy, but he doesn’t believe that humans naturally know how to be happy. However, he says, you can realize happiness through training. We’ll present four types of happiness training:
(Shortform note: To help distinguish between a capacity for happiness and the actualization of happiness, think of a special talent, like playing the piano. Just because you have a gift for the piano doesn’t mean you can play a sonata right away. You need to hone your talent through practice and education. Similarly, just because you have an innate capacity for happiness doesn’t mean you know the steps to be happy. You must learn and practice.)
The first of the Dalai Lama’s four ways to be happy is to change your thoughts and state of mind to be more conducive to happiness.
(Shortform note: Some might argue that the idea of changing your mind to be more conducive to happiness isn’t realistic. Especially those suffering from PTSD might experience such significant psychological hurdles in daily life—anxiety, difficulty concentrating, flashbacks, and so on—that the prospect of overcoming them by changing their patterns of thought is impossibly difficult.)
Happiness is a mindset you build and isn’t contingent upon external characteristics, like wealth or status, says the Dalai Lama. Such factors can’t confer lasting happiness. You see this in daily life, adds Cutler: When something great happens, like a promotion, you’re temporarily elated but soon return to your normal level of contentment. Similarly, if you suffer a setback, like a breakup, the negative feelings wear off.
(Shortform note: In science, the phenomenon the Dalai Lama and Cutler refer to—the “wearing-off” of positive or negative emotions—is called hedonic adaptation. What’s more, when positive or negative events are repeated, they have a less pronounced effect on mood, and mood returns more quickly to the baseline. If you keep getting promoted, for instance, the promotions will leave you less happy for less time.)
The Dalai Lama believes there are three steps to cultivating a happiness mindset: education, development of motivation, and exertion. We’ll look at each step individually.
(Shortform note: Other parts of Buddhist teachings are separated into three steps comparable to the ones outlined by the Dalai Lama here. The Threefold Way, for instance, consists of first establishing self-discipline (or ethics), then concentration (or meditation), and finally, wisdom.)
To cultivate your happiness mindset, educate yourself both about your emotions and the circumstances that give rise to them, counsels the Dalai Lama. By doing this, you root out the misunderstandings of the world that lead to negative emotions and therefore unhappiness.
To perform this educational self-analysis, think about when you’re happy and unhappy. Then, consider the feelings that led to your happiness or unhappiness. As we discussed in the last chapter, you’ll find that feelings like anger and hatred make you unhappy and hurt you and others, says the Dalai Lama. Because they’re hurtful, you’ll know these are negative emotions and that they’re based on a misunderstanding of the world.
Education and Karma
Buddhists refer to the state of being educated about yourself as “clear-knowing.” We can conceptualize this as “wisdom.” Wisdom has advantages beyond rooting out misunderstandings, negative emotions, and unhappiness: It prevents negative karma from being created.
Karma is positive or negative energy that lives on your “resume of life.” If you intentionally do evil, you’ll have bad karma on your resume, which will negatively impact your future lives: Bad karma might cause you to be reborn as a non-human being, like an animal or ghost. Such creatures are less able than humans to work toward enlightenment, or Nirvana, and escape the cycle of rebirth.
If you do good, though, you’ll have good karma on your resume, which will positively impact your future lives: You may be born as a human with a greater capacity to reach enlightenment than, say, a dog. When you’re wise, or clear-knowing, you’re more likely to make choices that build positive karma, thereby keeping your “resume of life” looking good.
After educating yourself on how and why you become happy or unhappy, the next step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to develop your motivation to change your mindset, advises the Dalai Lama.
Simply understanding what makes you unhappy can’t alone eradicate unhappiness, claims the Dalai Lama. You must desire to rid yourself of unhappiness and negative emotions.
(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama tell you to motivate yourself to change but don’t provide tools for doing so. One way to cultivate motivation is to write down the goals you hope to achieve—for instance, to rid yourself of ignorance. Achieving enlightenment is a long and winding path, but by writing down your goals, you help yourself stay on that path.)
Now that you’ve developed the motivation to change your mindset, the final step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to make the effort to change, says the Dalai Lama. We’ll discuss two strategies to make that effort.
(Shortform note: This chapter falls within the Right Effort step of the Noble Eightfold Path because the following strategies concern altering your thinking—not, as you might think, your actions. In the book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama spend the most time on the Meditation and Wisdom parts of The Threefold Way, and little time on the Ethics part, which concerns behavior, speech, and livelihood.)
According to the Dalai Lama, to actively cultivate your happiness mindset, develop your sense of self-worth, regardless of external circumstances. You don’t need possessions, beauty, or titles to validate you as a human. It’s important to not attach your self-worth to such things, he adds, as they can diminish over time, meaning your self-worth does the same.
(Shortform note: Developing your self-worth is important for practical reasons, too: When you lack self-worth, you might engage in destructive behaviors in your quest to “earn” your right to exist. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown writes about employees who overwork themselves to prove their worth. This has negative consequences for the individual and the company.)
When they arise, counter negative emotions with positive ones, says the Dalai Lama. For instance, when you find yourself consumed with self-reproach over a bad test grade, tell yourself that your worth isn’t dependent on grades and practice kindness toward yourself.
(Shortform note: For Brené Brown, self-compassion is a key tool for combating negative feelings, particularly harmful perfectionism. Brown breaks self-compassion into three parts: 1) self-forgiveness, 2) self-awareness, and 3) recognition that you’re not the only person struggling with negative feelings.)
We’ve discussed the first form of happiness training: cultivating a happiness mindset. Now we’ll turn to the second form of happiness training: building strong interpersonal relationships. First, we’ll describe how our happiness is linked to other humans. We’ll then outline the Dalai Lama’s recommendation for establishing connectedness to others to increase our happiness.
The Dalai Lama believes that all humans are dependent on others for their wellbeing and happiness. To prove this, he points to the fact that others provide the material goods and services we rely on for survival. Many people built your home, made the food you eat, and contributed to your education.
(Shortform note: Even in today’s tech-driven society, in which we could survive for months without seeing another human, survival remains contingent upon the efforts of many people. Even an action as impersonal as ordering off Amazon requires the input of many: those who created the algorithms that keep warehouses stocked, those who keep your information safe, those who fulfill your order and deliver it to your home, and so on.)
Since other humans are integral to your happiness, it’s essential to form strong connections with them. The type of connection you forge matters: According to the Dalai Lama, you should establish intimacy between yourself and many different people. Humans have defined intimacy differently across cultures and time, and there’s no overarching definition. In this book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama propose that an intimate relationship is one in which you’re open with the other person and experience a connection.
(Shortform note: It’s true that the level of intimacy you establish with others matters to your happiness. Someone with many loose connections can feel lonelier than someone with only a few close friends. Similarly, relationships marked by conflict and a lack of trust can fail to provide a sense of connection. However, individuals also have different tolerances for alone time and therefore, someone with a few close friends might still long for more connection because they don’t enjoy being alone. Optimizing your social life is a balancing act, so listen to your unique needs.)
The third form of happiness training is working to eliminate suffering. Suffering is an inescapable fact of life, says the Dalai Lama. Everyone suffers, and attempts to free yourself from it—like through excessive drinking, drug use, or eating—provide only temporary relief or exacerbate the suffering. What’s worse, often, the destructive ways you avoid suffering become part of who you are. If you habitually transform your suffering into anger towards others, you become an angry person.
(Shortform note: It’s easy for suffering to lead to bad habits—as the Dalai Lama suggests—because of how the brain forms habits. According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits begin as conscious choices—to avoid suffering, for instance—which become automated loops. The reward at the end of the loop reinforces its validity, and the loop becomes a habit. For instance, you might suffer during a bad meeting with your boss and take your anger out on your family, which gives you relief. The relief reinforces the helpfulness of this loop in your mind, and it becomes a habit.)
Viewing suffering as a fact of life may seem like it just causes more suffering, rejoins Cutler. It therefore might seem best to avoid thinking or talking about suffering.
(Shortform note: Many people take Cutler’s avoidance approach to unpleasant areas of their lives. But avoiding problems by procrastinating, ruminating, or behaving passive-aggressively usually only exacerbates the problem. Avoidance thus typically leads to suffering on all levels of your life.)
But there’s additional context in the Buddhist tradition that makes this discussion of suffering not only valuable but necessary, says the Dalai Lama. Buddhists believe that you can eliminate suffering. In Buddhist philosophy, ignorance, hatred, and craving create suffering. When you start eliminating those root causes of suffering, you move toward freedom from suffering.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama discusses your ability to eliminate suffering but doesn’t discuss what will happen once you do this. In Theravada Buddhism, once you’ve eliminated suffering, you become an arhat—someone who’s attained Nirvana, spiritual enlightenment. There are four stages of becoming an arhat, each one involving the elimination of different cravings, forms of anger, and types of ignorance.)
Acceptance of suffering is the first, integral step toward eliminating it, says the Dalai Lama. If you can’t accept that life is suffering, you’ll only ever apply spot solutions to your suffering—like the destructive forms of numbing described above. You won’t free yourself from its root causes of ignorance, hatred, and craving.
(Shortform note: Acceptance is also an important step in addiction recovery programs, usually seen as the first, foundational step on the road to recovery. It encompasses acceptance of your addiction and how it’s affected your life, acceptance of yourself and your flaws, and acceptance of the challenges you’ll encounter as you recover from your addiction.)
The Dalai Lama’s fourth and final form of happiness training is weaving spirituality into daily life. According to the Dalai Lama, weaving spirituality into your life means taking every opportunity in your day-to-day to practice a spiritual teaching or derive a spiritual lesson.
(Shortform note: Science confirms the Dalai Lama’s belief that spirituality makes you happier: Studies have shown that those who have spirituality or religion in their lives tend to be happier and less depressed and anxious than those who don’t.)
Practice whatever form of spirituality you subscribe to, says the Dalai Lama: a religious spirituality, guided by the tenets of a religion, or a secular spirituality, guided by the values of kindness, compassion, and so forth.
(Shortform note: There’s debate over whether Buddhism itself is a religion or a philosophy. Those who believe it’s a religion do so because Buddhism, like other religions, proposes that there’s a single, true reality (Nirvana). Those who believe Buddhism is a philosophy argue that Buddhism doesn’t propose a single reality, but rather some testable propositions to eradicate suffering from your lie.)
The Art of Happiness presents the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist approach to achieving greater happiness in life. Happiness, he says, isn’t something that happens to lucky people and eludes the unlucky: It’s something you can—and should—actively work to increase in your life. This involves making changes to the way you live and see the world: You must shift your mindset to be more receptive to happiness, build stronger relationships with others, cut out suffering as much as possible, and incorporate spiritual teachings into every area of your life.
In this guide, we’ll describe the Dalai Lama’s beliefs around happiness and the training you must undergo to increase happiness in your life. We’ll supplement this with background on Buddhism, scientific evidence in support of or countering the Dalai Lama’s views, and ways to implement his advice in your day-to-day life.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was born in 1935 in Tibet and, at the age of two, was declared to be the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are Bodhisattvas: enlightened beings who commit to being reborn over and over to help humans achieve enlightenment. His Holiness received a Buddhist education and the highest degree in Buddhist philosophy at age 23.
Traditionally, Dalai Lamas are both the political and spiritual rulers of Tibet, and the 14th Dalai Lama served in both capacities from 1950 to 2011. At the start of this period, China invaded Tibet, and the Dalai Lama was forced to flee and live in exile in Dharamsala, India, where he still lives. From Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama pursued peace efforts and in 1989 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work toward freeing Tibet. The Dalai Lama retired from political duties in 2011 and passed political authority to an elected leader. He remains the spiritual leader of Tibet.
Howard C. Cutler is a psychiatrist and author based in Phoenix, Arizona. Cutler first met the Dalai Lama in 1982 while studying Tibetan medicine in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives. After their initial meeting, Cutler was impressed by the Dalai Lama’s capacity for kindness and happiness, and the two remained in contact until Cutler asked the Dalai Lama to work on this book with him in 1993. Now, Cutler works as a speaker and teacher, giving courses based on The Art of Happiness.
Connect with Howard C. Cutler and the Dalai Lama:
Publisher: Penguin Random House
This guide covers the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Art of Happiness, published in 2009. The Dalai Lama wrote a new preface, and Cutler wrote a new introduction.
Publication of The Art of Happiness coincided with the emergence of happiness as a field of scientific study. The book, along with formal scientific research, helped introduce the West to the idea that you can foster happiness—that it’s not just luck of the draw. This idea has since taken root in politics, medicine, pop culture, and many other realms of life. The ever-growing body of scientific work on happiness, which includes books like The Happiness Hypothesis and The Happiness Advantage, shows this wave is still going strong.
The Art of Happiness introduced Westerners to the Dalai Lama and Buddhism in a substantial way. Up until its publication, Cutler says Americans were familiar with the Dalai Lama but not his spiritual teachings.
According to Cutler’s 2009 introduction, the book was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and was woven into the fabric of pop culture, appearing in shows like Friends, Sex and the City, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, MTV Cribs, and Jeopardy!.
Since its publication, Cutler and the Dalai Lama have worked on two other books together: The Art of Happiness at Work (2003), and The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World (2009).
The book was well-received at the time of publication and remains a fixture in self-help and lifestyle libraries. Readers appreciate how simple and unpretentious the Dalai Lama’s advice for being happy is. He doesn’t offer a program that guarantees bliss, but rather simple, almost obvious ways to slowly and surely grow the seed of happiness in your life.
Some critics, though, felt that the temperature of the advice was lukewarm and didn’t have the power to sway anyone. Some also disagree fundamentally with the book’s premise that our purpose in life is to be happy.
The Art of Happiness is presented as a meeting of Eastern spirituality and Western science. It’s predicated on the idea that you need both science and spirituality to live your best life.
Cutler stresses the value of Buddhist thought by stating that Buddhism is based on observable truth—in other words, on lived human experience, rather than on faith, like other religions. The Dalai Lama’s previously said, for example, that if science were to ever show a Buddhist belief to be empirically incorrect, then that belief would have to be altered. Cutler adds that Buddhists have been reflecting on the best way to achieve happiness for 2,500 years and that such a long-standing tradition has likely developed accurate ideas around achieving happiness.
This book is not a results- or formula-driven self-help book, like Designing Your Life, for instance. Rather, it’s the Dalai Lama’s musings on or answers to Cutler’s questions on happiness, which Cutler loosely arranged into categories and chapters. You won’t read The Art of Happiness and come out with an action plan for happiness, but you’ll better understand what makes you happy and why and how you can begin to make shifts in your life to increase your happiness.
Cutler often presents ideas in the Dalai Lama’s own words, sometimes quoting him at length. Cutler then breaks down those ideas, giving concrete examples from his psychiatric practice, for instance, or connecting them to science, where appropriate.
Cutler groups the Dalai Lama’s advice into five parts that broadly cover: 1) the purpose of life, 2) relationships, 3) suffering, 4) adversity, and 5) spirituality. The parts are heavily structured, each containing chapters and chapter subheadings. Cutler likely structured the parts this rigorously because the ideas are expansive, are interconnected, and need to be corralled. Despite the structuring, you’ll still encounter the same ideas across many chapters—this is simply the interconnected nature of Buddhist philosophy.
In this guide, we’ve sought to make the Dalai Lama’s advice more actionable and sequential. The guide’s chapter organization approximately reflects the book’s part organization, but we’ve moved much of the content within parts around to create a clearer and more direct path to achieving happiness.
In commentary, we supplement the Dalai Lama’s beliefs with scientific evidence, connections to other self-help works, and background on Buddhist philosophy. Where applicable, we’ve also added actionable strategies for implementing the Dalai Lama’s advice.
In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler outline the Dalai Lama’s beliefs on how to achieve greater happiness in life—by training yourself to be happier. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet and a Bodhisattva—someone who’s achieved enlightenment and lives to help others do the same.
The Dalai Lama’s advice for achieving happiness is unique in its simplicity and flexibility. You won’t find elaborate rules or 3-month happiness plans here, because he suggests ways to build happiness that are obvious and even self-explanatory: be empathetic, accept your suffering, learn about your mind. This isn’t to say that implementing those concepts will be easy—it’ll take time and effort—but you have the power now to do so.
The Dalai Lama believes that humans’ purpose is to seek happiness and that all humans possess the innate capacity to be happy. But happiness doesn’t come naturally, and you must train yourself to realize your fullest potential for happiness. We’ll describe four forms of happiness training:
In this chapter, we’ll first discuss the Dalai Lama’s proposal that your aim in life is to seek happiness. We’ll then describe your innate capacity for happiness and why you must train yourself to be happy.
The Dalai Lama believes that your purpose as a human is to seek happiness. He defines happiness as not merely an emotional state, but a mental and intellectual one. It’s about being content with your life on all levels.
(Shortform note: Aristotle also believed that your purpose in life is to achieve happiness. According to him, every goal you set in life, however distant it may seem from happiness, actually is in service of attaining happiness. Let’s say you join a high-intensity fitness program, which, with its grueling exercises, may not seem in service of your happiness. However, when you look at the micro-goals of joining this program, you see they serve the macro-goal of happiness: You join the program to get fit. You get fit to be healthy. You become healthy to be happier.)
Cutler adds that some westerners see striving for personal happiness as a selfish act. But the Dalai Lama argues the opposite is the case: Unhappy people are more self-absorbed than happy people, who are compassionate, helpful, and generous. Therefore, seeking happiness brings more good into the world.
(Shortform note: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs echoes the idea that we’re able to do our best for others when we’re happy and explains why this might be the case. Abraham Maslow posited that human motivation is tiered: We’re first motivated to satisfy simple needs—for shelter, food, and so on—and only motivated to tend to higher-tier needs—friendship, love, and the like—once the simple needs are met. Therefore, until we reach the highest tier, self-actualization—comparable to the attainment of happiness as described by the Dalai Lama—we can’t practice generosity toward others because we’re too busy meeting essential needs.)
Not only is your purpose in life to seek happiness, says the Dalai Lama, but you’re also predisposed toward happiness because you’re innately compassionate and loving. This belief stems from the Buddhist doctrine of Buddha Nature, the belief in humans’ intrinsic state of purity and positivity.
(Shortform note: Buddhists of different schools perceive Buddha Nature differently. Some believe that you’re born with the seed of Buddha Nature but must nurture it into bloom yourself. Others believe that your Buddha Nature is already fully developed but hidden by your misconceptions of the world. Your goal, then, is to rid yourself of those misconceptions.)
If you don’t believe in Buddha Nature, you’ll find proof of humans’ innate compassion by observing our behavior, claims the Dalai Lama: Children need the compassion, care, and love of their families to survive. Because they’re necessary to survival, these emotions must be fundamental to human nature. We’ll call such innate, life-sustaining emotions positive emotions. Cutler adds that there’s scientific research proving humans are inherently kind and altruistic.
(Shortform note: While there is, as the Dalai Lama and Cutler say, evidence of humans’ innate altruism, kindness, and caring, we can’t deny the existence of war, poverty, and hatred. Researchers have tried to account for this by proposing that in the hunter-gatherer societies of 15,000 years ago (and in modern-day ones), altruism was an important survival mechanism. However, when humans developed an agricultural lifestyle, altruism was by necessity replaced with self-serving behavior and hierarchies, which led to conflict. We’ll discuss why later in the chapter.)
According to the Dalai Lama, while positive emotions are part of human nature, other emotions, like hatred, envy, and anger, are not. We’ll call such emotions negative. Negative emotions grow from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works—what Buddhists call “ignorance.” For instance, you may feel the negative emotion of envy toward your wealthy colleague; however, that envy is based on a misunderstanding: You believe that you’re a separate entity from your neighbor, but in reality, there’s no firm boundary between you two.
What Is Ignorance in Buddhism?
Cutler and the Dalai Lama don’t elaborate on how Buddhism defines “ignorance.” Let’s take a look at the incorrect beliefs that the term “ignorance” in Buddhism encompasses:
The belief in permanence: We cling to states and objects and want them to last forever, not understanding that all things must change.
The belief in independent existence: All existence is conditional. Something creates a noise, for instance—noise doesn’t exist independent of its source. Similarly, outside factors shape humans and their thoughts and behaviors.
The belief in the self: We believe we have a permanent identity when in reality, we’re a composite of five ever-changing factors: physical form, emotions, sensory perception, thoughts, and consciousness.
The failure to understand the Four Noble Truths: The Four Noble Truths truth are the truth of suffering (suffering is inherent to human existence), the origin of suffering (suffering is caused by hatred, craving, and ignorance), the ending of suffering (by achieving Nirvana, a state of enlightenment), and the path toward ending suffering (the Noble Eightfold Path, which includes eight areas of life in which to better yourself).
Beyond being misguided, negative emotions make life harder, claims the Dalai Lama. If you feel envious of your neighbor, you may behave badly toward them and ruin your relationship.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama proposes that negative emotions always make life harder. But can they ever make life easier by steering you clear of bad decisions? Often, in dating, you’re told to heed your instincts—aversion, for instance—as they’re an accurate indication of whether you’ll get along with someone in the long term. Therefore, heeding negative instincts could help preserve your wellbeing.)
The Dalai Lama also specifically addresses conflict and war, claiming these are the products of our intellect, not human nature. Human intellect grew after human compassion to help us navigate increasingly complex societies, says the Dalai Lama. When not coupled with compassion, intellect can be harmful. For instance, we’ve used intellect to harvest energy from natural resources. But, unbalanced by compassion for nature, this intellect has led us to wreak havoc on the planet.
(Shortform note: Anthropologists have made findings that confirm the Dalai Lama’s idea that humans are compassionate first and intelligent—or intelligently self-serving—second. As discussed, altruism was key to survival in hunter-gatherer societies, but not in agricultural societies, which emerged around 12,000 years ago. With farming came the need for specialized positions and hierarchical structures within communities. More complex communities then began dominating simpler communities and taking their resources.)
We’ve just described how humans are primed to be happy and compassionate. But while the Dalai Lama believes that we’re naturally inclined to be happy, he doesn’t believe that humans naturally know how to be happy. However, he says, you can realize happiness through training. In the rest of this guide, we’ll present four types of happiness training:
(Shortform note: To help distinguish between a capacity for happiness and the actualization of happiness, think of a special talent, like playing the piano. Just because you have a gift for the piano doesn’t mean you can play a sonata right away. You need to hone your talent through practice and education. Similarly, just because you have an innate capacity for happiness doesn’t mean you know the steps to be happy. You must learn and practice.)
Understand where your own beliefs about happiness overlap and diverge from those of the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama believes our purpose in life is to seek out happiness. Do you agree with this? Why or why not? Describe any other goals you feel we should pursue in addition to, or instead of, happiness.
The Dalai Lama further believes that you have the ability to bring more happiness into your life by training yourself to be happy. Do you agree? Why or why not? What events from your own life have reinforced this belief?
Regardless of whether or not you believe it’s possible, make a list of specific ways in which the ability to train yourself to be happier could improve your life. (For instance, if you could train yourself to be happier, you might enjoy better mental health.)
In the last chapter, we presented the Buddhist proposal that all humans should seek out happiness by training themselves to be happy in four different ways. We’ll now describe the first of those four ways to be happy: changing your thoughts and state of mind to be more conducive to happiness.
(Shortform note: Some might argue that the idea of changing your mind to be more conducive to happiness isn’t realistic. Especially those suffering from PTSD might experience such significant psychological hurdles in daily life—anxiety, difficulty concentrating, flashbacks, and so on—that the prospect of overcoming them by changing their patterns of thought is impossibly difficult.)
Happiness is a mindset you build and isn’t contingent upon external characteristics, like wealth or status, says the Dalai Lama. Such factors can’t confer lasting happiness. You see this in daily life, adds Cutler: When something great happens, like a promotion, you’re temporarily elated but soon return to your normal level of contentment. Similarly, if you suffer a setback, like a breakup, the negative feelings wear off.
(Shortform note: In science, the phenomenon the Dalai Lama and Cutler refer to—the “wearing-off” of positive or negative emotions—is called hedonic adaptation. What’s more, when positive or negative events are repeated, they have a less pronounced effect on mood, and mood returns more quickly to the baseline. If you keep getting promoted, for instance, the promotions will leave you less happy for less time.)
The Dalai Lama warns that cultivating a happiness mindset takes time and experimentation. But, adds Cutler, it’s not impossible: Your brain is malleable, and you can rewire it to elevate your general level of happiness.
(Shortform note: Beyond having malleable—what’s referred to in neuroscience as “plastic”—brains, you can enhance the plasticity of your brain by learning new skills, getting plenty of high-quality sleep, and exercising regularly.)
The Dalai Lama believes there are three steps to cultivating a happiness mindset: education, development of motivation, and exertion. We’ll look at each step in the next three chapters.
(Shortform note: Other parts of Buddhist teachings are separated into three steps comparable to the ones outlined by the Dalai Lama here. The Threefold Way, for instance, consists of first establishing self-discipline (or ethics), then concentration (or meditation), and finally, wisdom.)
Now that you understand what it means to cultivate a happiness mindset—one of four ways to train yourself to be happy—let’s look at the first of three steps to do so: educating yourself. We’ll first describe how to educate yourself to cultivate a happiness mindset. We’ll then use the specific negative emotions of anger and anxiety to show what educating yourself about those emotions might look like.
Educate yourself both about your emotions and the circumstances that give rise to them, counsels the Dalai Lama. By doing this, you root out the misunderstandings of the world that lead to negative emotions and therefore unhappiness. To perform this educational self-analysis, think about when you’re happy and unhappy. Then, consider the feelings that led to your happiness or unhappiness. As we discussed in the last chapter, you’ll find that feelings like anger and hatred make you unhappy and hurt you and others, says the Dalai Lama. Because they’re hurtful, you’ll know these are negative emotions and that they’re based on a misunderstanding of the world.
Here’s an example of educating yourself on a negative emotion: You’re unhappy every time you see a particular friend. When you analyze this unhappiness, you realize it’s rooted in a feeling of resentment—they make more money than you. You further note this resentment is destroying your friendship with someone you otherwise like. Because of its destructiveness, you can determine that resentment is a negative emotion, based on the misconception that your friend is better off than you because they have more money.
Education and Karma
Buddhists refer to the state of being educated about yourself as “clear-knowing.” We can conceptualize this as “wisdom.” Wisdom has advantages beyond rooting out misunderstandings, negative emotions, and unhappiness: It prevents negative karma from being created.
Karma is positive or negative energy that lives on your “resume of life.” If you intentionally do evil, you’ll have bad karma on your resume, which will negatively impact your future lives: Bad karma might cause you to be reborn as a non-human being, like an animal or ghost. Such creatures are less able than humans to work toward enlightenment, or Nirvana, and escape the cycle of rebirth.
If you do good, though, you’ll have good karma on your resume, which will positively impact your future lives: You may be born as a human with a greater capacity to reach enlightenment than, say, a dog. When you’re wise, or clear-knowing, you’re more likely to make choices that build positive karma, thereby keeping your “resume of life” looking good.
Conversely, feelings of compassion and generosity make you and others happy, says the Dalai Lama. Not only this, but they benefit you and others. These feelings, therefore, are positive.
Here’s an example of educating yourself on a positive emotion: You’re happy every time you see a neighbor. When you think about this happiness, you realize it’s rooted in a feeling of generosity, elicited because your neighbor often asks you for help with their groceries. You’ll further realize that your feeling of generosity benefits you and your neighbor by making you feel good and supporting your neighbor. Generosity, therefore, is a positive emotion.
(Shortform note: There’s scientific evidence to support the Dalai Lama’s belief that positive feelings are beneficial to you and others. Displaying kindness can lower stress hormone levels and increase your levels of “happiness” neurotransmitters, like serotonin and dopamine. Kindness toward others, in turn, spreads happiness to the recipients.)
Let’s look at how to educate yourself specifically on anger. According to the Dalai Lama, if you struggle with anger issues, educate yourself on the benefits of tolerance and patience and the destructive nature of anger. As we’ve seen, negative emotions are rooted in a misunderstanding of the world and cause problems. Positive emotions, like tolerance and patience, are based in human nature and make you happy.
(Shortform note: You can educate yourself on the destructive effects of anger through self-analysis, but you can also turn to science to understand anger’s destructive nature: Suppressing anger can cause you to turn your anger on yourself and lead to chronic passive-aggressive behavior. Patience, on the other hand, has been scientifically proven to lessen the effects of depression.)
If you struggle with anxiety, educate yourself about where the anxiety comes from and whether it’s valid, recommends the Dalai Lama. If, for instance, you’re anxious about going to an event, analyze your thoughts and figure out if you’re anxious for valid reasons—perhaps because you’re giving a speech—or because of a generalized fear of socializing.
(Shortform note: Figuring out the source of your anxiety can be difficult. If you’re not sure where your anxiety comes from, consider whether the following common anxiety triggers might be affecting you: 1) Work environment—is your job stressful? 2) Travel or commute—Do you spend a lot of time in transit? 3) Withdrawal—Are you withdrawing from alcohol, drugs, or medication?)
Analyze a negative emotion to understand how it’s based on a misunderstanding of the world.
Describe a time over the past two weeks when you felt a painful negative emotion. Try to give that emotion a name—like anger, hatred, anxiety, and so on—and note the circumstances that brought it up.
Write down how that negative feeling influenced your subsequent thoughts or actions. (For instance, did it cause you to say something you wouldn’t have otherwise said? Did it lead to a bout of self-reproach?)
Now, trace the negative feeling back to the belief that created it. What worldview, belief about yourself, or belief about how things should work, gave rise to the negative emotion? Describe it in as much detail as possible. (For instance, if you became upset about not being able to exercise as intensely as you once could, perhaps you believe your physical fitness should never change—even though as you age, your body inevitably must change.)
After educating yourself on how and why you become happy or unhappy, the next step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to develop your motivation to change your mindset, advises the Dalai Lama. In this chapter, we’ll cover how to motivate yourself to change your thinking. We’ll then again use the specific negative emotions of anger and anxiety to show what motivating yourself to change those emotions might look like.
Simply understanding what makes you unhappy can’t alone eradicate unhappiness, claims the Dalai Lama. You must desire to rid yourself of unhappiness and negative emotions. Awaken this desire by, for instance, periodically reminding yourself of your learning from Step #1: that negative emotions destroy your happiness, while positive ones reinforce it.
(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama tell you to motivate yourself to change but provide only one tool for doing so. Another way to cultivate motivation is to write down the goals you hope to achieve—for instance, to rid yourself of ignorance. Achieving enlightenment is a long and winding path, but by writing down your goals, you help yourself stay on that path.)
According to the Dalai Lama, if you struggle with building your motivation to change, you may need to take better care of your physical body so you’re more capable—for instance by going to fewer parties that leave you tired the next day.
(Shortform note: Countless self-help books echo the recommendation to take better care of yourself to improve. In the classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey argues that by adopting seven personal habits, including listening better, taking initiative, and prioritizing efficiently, you become a more effective human—in other words, more able to accomplish your goals.)
According to the Dalai Lama, to be less angry, develop your motivation to become patient and tolerant—cures for anger and hatred, as we learned in the last chapter. The greater your motivation to strengthen these positive emotions, the easier it will be to change your mindset.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama recommends fostering patience and tolerance but doesn’t elaborate on how to do this. Build patience by, for instance, finishing one task before moving on to the next. Cultivate tolerance by becoming aware of your conditioned beliefs and how those affect your tolerance for other behaviors or beliefs.)
The Dalai Lama recommends not developing a motivation to be less anxious, but rather to pivot your motivation toward being a kinder person. Here’s why: Anxiety often arises when you feel you can’t meet expectations. If, instead of worrying about expectations, you develop the motivation to just be the most compassionate person you can be, then, says the Dalai Lama, no matter whether you meet expectations, you’ll feel good because your intentions were good.
The Noble Eightfold Path
The Dalai Lama recommends focusing your motivational energy on simply being a compassionate person, rather than meeting specific expectations. This corresponds to the “Right Effort” step of the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism. In this step, you work to eliminate negative feelings and cultivate positive ones.
As discussed earlier, the Noble Eightfold Path is the last of the Four Noble Truths: the path toward ending suffering. By pursuing the Noble Eightfold Path, you eliminate suffering. The eight parts of the path are:
Right Action
Right Speech
Right Livelihood
Right Mindfulness
Right Effort
Right Concentration
Right View or Understanding
Right Intention or Thought
These are often represented as a wheel with eight spokes, called the Dharma Wheel. The eight parts of the path are in turn organized into three categories, called The Threefold Way: Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom.
Reflect on how you can pivot away from unrealistic expectations and toward realistic, constructive goals to reduce your anxiety.
Write down a recent occasion when you experienced anxiety. Describe what expectations of yourself you feared you couldn’t meet. (For instance, in a social situation, you feared you wouldn’t be able to make good small talk.)
Think about how, next time you’re in a similar situation, you can pivot away from the need to meet those concrete expectations and toward the goal of being a better person. What alternate, simpler goals could you strive toward? (In a social situation, your goal might be to simply become a better listener.)
Now, put yourself back in this situation and try to re-experience it with the goal of being a better person. How does this feel different from working toward meeting specific expectations? Does it take some of the pressure off? Do you feel you can set this goal for yourself in future situations?
Now that you’ve developed the motivation to change your mindset, the final step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to make the effort to change, says the Dalai Lama. We’ll discuss five strategies to make that effort, including, again, specific strategies for the negative emotions of anger and anxiety.
(Shortform note: This chapter falls within the Right Effort step of the Noble Eightfold Path because the following strategies concern altering your thinking—not, as you might think, your actions. In the book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama spend the most time on the Meditation and Wisdom parts of The Threefold Way, and little time on the Ethics part, which, again, concerns behavior, speech, and livelihood.)
According to the Dalai Lama, to actively cultivate your happiness mindset, develop your sense of self-worth, regardless of external circumstances. You don’t need possessions, beauty, or titles to validate you as a human. It’s important to not attach your self-worth to such things, he adds, as they can diminish over time, meaning your self-worth does the same.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama advises you to develop your self-worth to cultivate a happiness mindset. Doing this is important for practical reasons, too: When you lack self-worth, you might engage in destructive behaviors in your quest to “earn” your right to exist. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown writes about employees who overwork themselves to prove their worth. This has negative consequences for the individual and the company.)
When they arise, counter negative emotions with positive ones, says the Dalai Lama. For instance, when you find yourself consumed with self-reproach over a bad test grade, tell yourself that your worth isn’t dependent on grades and practice kindness toward yourself.
(Shortform note: For Brené Brown, self-compassion is a key tool for combating negative feelings, particularly harmful perfectionism. Brown breaks self-compassion into three parts: 1) Self-forgiveness, 2) self-awareness, and 3) recognition that you’re not the only person struggling with negative feelings.)
Cutler adds that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is a close therapeutic equivalent to the Dalai Lama’s process of combating negative emotions with positive ones. In CBT, you counter distorted thoughts—like the belief that your work must be perfect—with rational ones—like the understanding that you’re human and can’t do everything perfectly.
(Shortform note: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has a lot in common with this book’s approach to seeking happiness beyond this strategy of countering negative feelings with positive ones. In The Art of Happiness, you learn how to change your mind to be more conducive to happiness. In CBT, you similarly change or shift destructive thought patterns, like black-and-white thinking or catastrophizing. Both approaches aim to alter your mental framework.)
Cutler chimes in to advise that you think about how much better off you are than others rather than about how much better off others are than you to change your mindset. Your happiness is largely dependent on how well you perceive yourself compared to others. You therefore can decide if you’ll be happy or disgruntled by comparing yourself to either those who are worse off or those who are better off.
(Shortform note: Cutler argues that happiness is relative and that you can make yourself happier by refraining from comparing yourself to those who are better off. But there’s also evidence that certain circumstances can unconditionally increase or decrease happiness. Living amidst war, poverty, or in isolation, for instance, can make you unhappy, no matter how much worse off someone else may be.)
Change your mindset by being grateful for the things and qualities you do possess, rather than yearning for those you don’t, says the Dalai Lama. The reason for this is practical: If you try to constantly acquire better things, you’ll eventually run out of things to acquire. When that happens, you’ll become unhappy.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama brings up a practical reason to cultivate an appreciation for what you have. But in Buddhism, yearning or “craving,” as it’s commonly referred to, is the actual source of suffering, as described in the Second Noble Truth. This is because satisfying cravings creates only temporary pleasure—like eating sweets. Once that pleasure fades, you’re struck with a new craving and must satisfy that. This craving-and-satisfying keeps you locked in Samsara, the endless cycle of birth, suffering, and death.)
Learn the distinction between happiness and pleasure, and prioritize the pursuit of happiness to strengthen your happiness mindset, advises the Dalai Lama. Happiness is a lasting state of non-suffering while pleasure is ephemeral, contingent on factors outside of your control. A good meal is an example of pleasure: It eventually ends. Happiness, on the other hand, lets you be content even when the meal is over, or even if you don’t get to enjoy a meal.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama recommends prioritizing happiness over pleasure, but you could argue that sometimes, it’s better to prioritize fleeting pleasures over long-term happiness. Research indicates that pursuing pleasure can lead to better emotional health while perpetually denying oneself pleasures—food, entertainment, sex, and so on—can lead to distress and anxiety. Perhaps the key is to carefully balance pleasure with happiness and ensure pleasures have a more lasting effect on your life by reflecting on or journaling about them.)
This step of reducing anger is difficult, claims the Dalai Lama, because it’s hard to combat anger in the moment. Both he and Cutler advise against releasing your anger, as that just compounds it. Instead, the Dalai Lama recommends first relying on the work you do before an anger-provoking situation arises: the steps of educating yourself and developing the motivation to not become angry, as discussed previously.
(Shortform note: It’s been scientifically proven that venting about a negative situation only makes you feel worse. The more you complain in a day, the worse you feel your day has been. Not only that, but venting also spreads negative feelings to those you’re complaining to.)
In a heated moment, the Dalai Lama recommends combating anger by first, as much as possible, educating yourself about it. Understand where it came from and if it’s justified. Then, use patience and tolerance to neutralize it. You may not be able to completely eradicate it, but you can at least reduce your anger’s potency.
(Shortform note: You may notice that even in a moment of anger, the Dalai Lama recommends the steps of 1) educating yourself on your anger, 2) motivating yourself to be less angry, and 3) exerting yourself to combat anger. Therefore, even on a micro-level—the exertion step of lessening your anger—the Dalai Lama leans on this threefold process.)
The Dalai Lama also offers two anger meditations that help you deal with anger when it arises:
Visualize someone you know becoming extremely angry. Imagine what they look like and how their anger manifests: Perhaps they look scary and raise their voice. Now, recall a time you’ve been this angry. What did you do and how did you look? Decide that you’ll never again become that angry because of the negative effects on your behavior, appearance, and so on.
(Shortform note: What the Dalai Lama describes here is akin to visualization. This is a technique most often used to help you achieve goals, but the Dalai Lama recommends it to help you avoid bad outcomes. Visualization has benefits beyond reinforcing your determination to do better, as the Dalai Lama indicates: It also primes your subconscious to come up with ideas for how to do better. With anger, therefore, visualization might help you consciously decide to become less angry, but subconsciously, might also prompt you to devise ways to be less angry in the future.)
Here’s another anger meditation: Visualize someone you dislike and allow your natural aversive response to them to manifest in your body. Note how you feel—perhaps your fists clench, your heart rate rises, and your mind clouds with negative thoughts. Now, decide you’ll never allow yourself to become angry in this way again because of the painful effect it has in your body.
(Shortform note: This anger meditation is similar to the more scientific advice to simply pay closer attention to your body when angry. Rather than reacting automatically to an anger trigger, delay your response by considering how the anger feels. Being mindful in this way gives your brain time to shift from a reactive and aggressive state to a state of threat response, thus avoiding angry outbursts you’ll later regret.)
The Dalai Lama recommends a two-pronged approach to combating anxiety in the moment: If there’s an actionable solution to the problem that’s giving you anxiety, work toward that solution. For instance, if you’re anxious over whether a fellow party guest will bring the same bottle of wine as you, the solution is to call them and ask, not to fret. If there’s no actionable solution to the problem that’s giving you anxiety, stop worrying. If you can’t get in touch with the other guest, drop the worry. You can’t change anything about the situation, and worrying won’t help.
(Shortform note: If after exerting yourself to be less anxious in the way the Dalai Lama recommends, you still feel anxious, engaging in physical activity can help alleviate remaining anxiety. This is because movement lessens muscle tension, meaning your tense body doesn’t add to your feelings of anxiety. Further, your brain releases neurochemicals like serotonin and GABA, both of which combat anxiety, when you exercise. Finally, the frontal region of your brain is activated, and this keeps activity in the amygdala—the center of reactivity and threat-responses—in check.)
As you cultivate a happiness mindset, set realistic expectations for yourself, advises the Dalai Lama. Change comes about incrementally and requires effort. Being realistic doesn’t mean losing sight of your ultimate goal—happiness—but don’t expect to achieve it right away. The Dalai Lama believes that even if you can make only sporadic progress towards a happiness mindset, you’re succeeding.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama here advises you not to expect too much too soon on your path toward achieving a happiness mindset. If you still feel the need to keep track of your progress, though, set small happiness-related goals for yourself. In The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz argues that large goals are reached through a series of smaller goals. Achieving a series of small goals gives you a sense of accomplishment and motivates you to stay on the path toward your ultimate goal—in this case, happiness.)
If you still feel that you aren’t making enough progress, zoom out and take a longer-term view, suggests the Dalai Lama. This may help you see that you’ve made strides: You may realize that you’ve become significantly less anxious than you were a year ago, for instance.
(Shortform note: You can maintain the longer-term view the Dalai Lama recommends by writing down your goals and progress toward them and keeping this documentation in an easy-to-see place. This gives you a constant, visual reminder of your long-term progress.)
Understand when you choose pleasure over happiness and how you can avoid doing so in the future.
Write down a recent instance when you opted for pleasure over happiness. Note what the pleasurable thing or activity was, and what the happiness-increasing thing or activity was. (For instance, you might have chosen to stay home and watch TV rather than go to your parents’ for dinner.) Justify why you chose the pleasurable activity.
Describe how the option you didn’t choose would have made you happier. (For example, seeing your parents would have made you feel connected and loved and minimized regrets you might experience at the end of their lives.)
Note some ways you can help yourself more easily choose happiness over pleasure in future situations. (You might come up with a phrase to say to yourself, or call to mind the experience you’ve noted in this exercise. You might also give yourself more time to think about the decision, so you can motivate yourself to choose the happiness-maximizing option.)
Over the last four chapters, we’ve discussed the first form of happiness training: cultivating a happiness mindset. Now we’ll turn to the second form of happiness training: building strong interpersonal relationships. First, we’ll describe how our happiness is linked to other humans. We’ll then outline the Dalai Lama’s recommendations for establishing connectedness to others to increase our happiness.
The Dalai Lama believes that all humans are dependent on others for their wellbeing and happiness. To prove this, he points to the fact that others provide the material goods and services we rely on for survival. Many people built your home, made the food you eat, and contributed to your education.
(Shortform note: Even in today’s tech-driven society, in which we could survive for months without seeing another human, survival remains contingent upon the efforts of many people. Even an action as impersonal as ordering off Amazon requires the input of many: those who created the algorithms that keep warehouses stocked, those who keep your information safe, those who fulfill your order and deliver it to your home, and so on.)
Furthermore, on an emotional level, the Dalai Lama says that we need interactions with other humans to make us happy. Cutler adds a scientific perspective: Loneliness has been proven to deteriorate health and reduce lifespan.
(Shortform note: Some have described the dominance of loneliness in American society as a crisis, with a particular concentration among seniors. The health effects of loneliness can be direr than smoking 15 cigarettes each day.)
Now that you understand that other humans are integral to your happiness, begin forming connections. The type of connection you forge matters: According to the Dalai Lama, establish intimacy between yourself and many different people. Humans have defined intimacy differently across cultures and time, and there’s no overarching definition. In this book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama propose that an intimate relationship is one in which you’re open with the other person and experience a connection.
(Shortform note: It’s true that the level of intimacy you establish with others matters to your happiness. Someone with many loose connections can feel lonelier than someone with only a few close friends. Similarly, relationships marked by conflict and a lack of trust can fail to provide a sense of connection. However, individuals also have different tolerances for alone time and therefore, someone with a few close friends might still long for more connection because they don’t enjoy being alone. Optimizing your social life is a balancing act, and you must listen to your unique needs.)
The Dalai Lama adds that the fact that intimacy is defined in so many different ways means you can—and should—establish many types of intimate relationships with many people. For instance, forge an intimate relationship with a school friend that’s based on an academic experience and an intimate relationship with a fellow parent that’s based on the experience of parenthood.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama recommends forming intimate relationships with many people. You can view this alternatively as widening your social network, which makes you not only happier but also more connected. Widening your network might entail transforming what would otherwise be a meaningless interaction into an opportunity to connect. When you make this effort, the interaction can leave you feeling as emotionally satisfied as a chat with a confidant.)
From a scientific perspective, Cutler writes that intimacy promotes both physical and psychological health. It also prevents the anxiety that separation and alienation foster.
(Shortform note: Cutler argues for the benefits of intimacy, but it can be intimidating to establish intimacy because this demands time. If you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of being emotionally intimate, consider that intimacy doesn’t have to mean being someone’s die-hard best friend. Instead, just focus on establishing a connection and being yourself.)
The Dalai Lama clarifies that there’s no magic formula for establishing many intimate relationships. However, two necessary ingredients go into building them: compassion and a solid foundation. Let’s look at each individually.
According to the Dalai Lama, unconditional compassion is critical to a good relationship. Unconditional compassion lets you approach others with openness and caring, thereby laying the groundwork for strong relationships. Even if the response to your compassionate outreach is negative, you won’t have closed off the possibility of a positive interaction yourself.
(Shortorm note: The Dalai Lama advises you to approach everyone with compassion, so you always create at least the possibility for connection. But sometimes, despite being compassionate, you simply can’t connect with someone. In such cases, being curious about the other person can lead to them opening up about themselves.)
The Dalai Lama believes that compassion is a mindset that wishes others well, eschews negative thoughts toward others, and is rooted in a feeling of responsibility toward others. Compassion also encompasses the wish for oneself to be well.
(Shortform note: Others have defined compassion in different terms than the Dalai Lama: Some believe compassion is an understanding of someone’s suffering and a related desire to help alleviate it. Compassion, therefore, could be empathy (the ability to feel someone’s pain—we’ll cover this in the next section) combined with action.)
The Dalai Lama doesn’t promise that cultivating compassion will always allow everyone to connect. Some people grew up in difficult circumstances that make compassion hard, and in general, you usually can’t always be totally compassionate. However, the Dalai Lama feels that as long as you make an effort, you can feel good about having tried.
(Shortform note: As the Dalai Lama proposes, it’s impossible to be fully compassionate in every possible situation, in large part due to our upbringing. Anger in parents, for instance, can lead to increased aggression and reduced empathy in their children. Unless counteracted, this carries on into adulthood and can make it difficult for adults to access compassion.)
The best way to foster compassion is to develop empathy, says the Dalai Lama: the capacity to understand another’s pain and suffering. To do this, put yourself in the shoes of that person. Think about what their pain is like. If you struggle with this, imagine the suffering of someone or something you love dearly, like a family member. Once you’ve awakened your empathy, apply it to all sentient beings.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama recommends imagining someone else’s suffering to awaken your empathy. But there are other, more actionable ways to develop your empathy: Strike up conversations with new and different people to learn about their lives. Or visit new communities or institutions in your neighborhood to gain a fresh perspective. Also consider joining a new group through which you work on a shared goal with others: for instance, volunteering at a farmer’s market.)
It may take creativity to imagine what someone else’s suffering is like, warns the Dalai Lama. But if you take the time to do this, the empathy you build comes in handy in most facets of life.
(Shortform note: As the Dalai Lama suggests, empathy is useful in many areas of life. Empathy helps you be a better manager at work and a more supportive friend and family member.)
Also foster compassion by searching for commonalities between yourself and others and by taking into account their backgrounds, advises the Dalai Lama. First, approach others with the conviction that you have a lot in common. Let’s say you’re going on a first date with someone who works in a different field at a different pay grade. Rather than feeling that you can’t possibly have anything in common, approach them with the conviction that you actually have a lot in common: You’re both humans with the need for affection and love. This lets you approach the date with compassion rather than enmity.
(Shortform note: In this discussion of cultivating compassion by finding common ground, the Buddhist concept of emptiness can be helpful. As discussed in a previous comment, emptiness is the idea that no one (and nothing) has a fixed identity. Everything is constantly changing and made up of smaller pieces and caused by other conditions. You could therefore view a human not as an unchangeable, self-contained flesh-and-blood being, but as an entity shaped by upbringing and circumstances and in perpetual transition. Viewing other humans in this fluid way can help you overcome barriers to connection.)
Second, as far as possible, take into account someone’s background when interacting with them, advises the Dalai Lama. If you know someone’s struggling with a particular issue—illness, for instance—it might account for their closed-off behavior. Bring extra compassion to the interaction, and you might break through the barrier of antagonism.
(Shortform note: While bringing extra compassion to people in difficult situations is usually a good thing, it’s possible to prioritize others’ feelings over your own in a way that’s detrimental to you. If you feel, for instance, that you think more about the needs and feelings of another than about your own, you may need to direct more of your compassion toward yourself.)
The Dalai Lama’s final recommendation for fostering compassion is through meditation. To do this, follow these steps:
Recognize that your aims in life are to be happy and to avoid suffering. Recognize that all beings everywhere also have the aim to be happy and avoid suffering.
Now, visualize someone who’s suffering. Think about their suffering from all angles systematically. Recognize that this person has all the same needs as you do and that pain, suffering, happiness, and comfort affect them in the same ways as you.
From that recognition, allow any natural feelings of compassion for this person to arise. Try to determine that you don’t want this person to suffer. Try to decide that you will try to help the person be free from suffering. Focus all your attention on that single desire and try to generate further feelings of compassion.
Types of Buddhist Meditations
This type of meditation is perhaps best described as a Metta meditation (more on this below). There are several different types of meditations across the two main divisions of Buddhism: Theravada and Mahayana. (The most basic distinction between these divisions is that Theravada Buddhists seek to achieve enlightenment so they can be free of Samsara, the cycle of rebirth, and achieve Nirvana. Mahayana Buddhists, meanwhile, try to stay in the cycle of rebirth, so they can help others achieve enlightenment.)
Here are three types of traditional Buddhist meditation:
Shamatha: This meditation helps you become mentally calm. It might entail focusing on your breath and letting your thoughts drift by.
Vipassana: This usually follows a Shamatha meditation and is designed to give you greater insights into your mind.
Metta: This meditation involves cultivating and sending loving thoughts and feelings to others.
The second way to form many intimate relationships is by building them on a lasting emotional foundation, says the Dalai Lama. Form connections based on affection and trust, not transient feelings like lust or romantic interest. This is not to say, adds the Dalai Lama, that healthy relationships can’t have a sexual component. Sex or lust simply can’t form the sole basis for a healthy, intimate relationship.
(Shortform note: As the Dalai Lama suggests, the lusty feelings that may draw two people together romantically eventually pass. This is because the initial thrill of “falling in love” is caused by neurotransmitters, whose job it is to encourage couples to procreate. Once this has had a chance to occur, lust fades, and relationships can only survive if there’s true respect and appreciation between partners.)
Think about how you can increase the number of meaningful relationships in your life, and then take action to do so.
Reflect on your current relationships. Is a type of connection lacking in your life? Describe an area of life, big or small, in which you’d like more connection with others. (If you’re a teacher but don’t feel close to your fellow teachers, you might want more workplace intimacy, for example.)
Now brainstorm a few people you might reach out to or avenues you might pursue to establish greater connection in this area. (If you want to feel closer to your fellow teachers, note the names of a few teachers you think you’d get along with.)
Finally, set up a concrete plan for building connectivity. Hote how and when you’ll reach out to the people or groups you wrote down in the last step. If helpful, even note how you’ll follow up the first meeting to create a long-term connectivity plan. (If you ask a fellow teacher out for coffee, be sure to schedule a second coffee date not long after.)
Now that we’ve talked about the importance of interpersonal relationships to our happiness, we’ll turn to the third form of happiness training: working to eliminate suffering. In this chapter, we’ll present the Buddhist belief that suffering is inherent to human existence and the need to accept suffering to free yourself from it. In the subsequent two chapters on suffering, we’ll cover how you can accept and combat suffering.
Suffering is an inescapable fact of life, says the Dalai Lama. Everyone suffers, and attempts to free yourself from it—like through excessive drinking, drug use, or eating—provide only temporary relief or exacerbate the suffering. What’s worse, often, the destructive ways you avoid suffering become part of who you are. If you habitually transform your suffering into anger towards others, you become an angry person.
(Shortform note: It’s easy for suffering to lead to bad habits—as the Dalai Lama suggests—because of how the brain forms habits. According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits begin as conscious choices—to avoid suffering, for instance—which become automated loops. The reward at the end of the loop reinforces its validity, and the loop becomes a habit. For instance, you might suffer during a bad meeting with your boss and take your anger out on your family, which gives you relief. The relief reinforces the helpfulness of this loop in your mind, and it becomes a habit.)
Viewing suffering as a fact of life may seem like it just causes more suffering, rejoins Cutler. It therefore might seem best to avoid thinking or talking about suffering.
(Shortform note: Many people take Cutler’s avoidance approach to unpleasant areas of their lives. But avoiding problems by procrastinating, ruminating, or behaving passive-aggressively usually only exacerbates the problems. Avoidance thus typically leads to suffering on all levels of your life.)
But there’s additional context in the Buddhist tradition that makes this discussion of suffering not only valuable but necessary, says the Dalai Lama. Buddhists believe that you can eliminate suffering. In Buddhist philosophy, ignorance, hatred, and craving create suffering. When you start eliminating those root causes of suffering, you move toward freedom from suffering.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama discusses your ability to eliminate suffering but doesn’t say what will happen once you do this. In Theravada Buddhism, once you’ve eliminated suffering, you become an arhat—someone who’s attained Nirvana, spiritual enlightenment. There are four stages of becoming an arhat, each one involving the elimination of different cravings, forms of anger, and types of ignorance.)
Acceptance of suffering is the first, integral step toward eliminating it, says the Dalai Lama. If you can’t accept that life is suffering, you’ll only ever apply spot solutions to your suffering—like the destructive forms of numbing, described above. You won’t free yourself from its root causes of ignorance, hatred, and craving.
(Shortform note: Acceptance is also an important step in addiction recovery programs, usually seen as the first, foundational step on the road to recovery. It encompasses acceptance of your addiction and how it’s affected your life, acceptance of yourself and your flaws, and acceptance of the challenges you’ll encounter as you recover from your addiction.)
Accepting suffering keeps you from imposing additional layers of suffering on yourself, says the Dalai Lama. Much of your suffering stems simply from the belief that you don’t deserve to suffer. Understanding that suffering must happen frees you from the painful feelings that things should be different.
For instance, if you miss your train, you might suffer a little from the inconvenience of getting home later. But you dramatically increase your suffering by adding on feelings that it’s unfair that you missed the train, that the train service is attacking you, and so on.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama states that accepting suffering prevents you from making yourself suffer even more. But can self-created suffering ever be productive? When people feel the effects of a bad situation particularly strongly—in other words, suffer more than others—they may be more likely to grow from that situation, provided they contextualize it as a learning experience. This is why successful people are often hard on themselves: They make themselves suffer so they can grow more fully.)
The Dalai Lama notes that accepting suffering is not the same as rolling over to it. As discussed in the first chapter, our purpose is to seek happiness. It’s natural and right that even though we accept suffering, we also try to reduce it.
(Shortform note: Standing up against suffering can sometimes take the shape of standing up for yourself in confrontational situations, rather than letting others cause you to suffer. You can stand up for yourself by being genuine and truthful and reacting calmly but firmly to unfair demands.)
Beyond accepting suffering, also understand it, advises the Dalai Lama. Reflect on what makes you suffer and why. When you put your finger on it, formless suffering takes shape. You then can reduce or eliminate it.
(Shortform note: Here, we see a reappearance of Step #1 of cultivating a happiness mindset: educating yourself. In this case, you educate yourself on the nature of your suffering, while in the chapter on cultivating a happiness mindset, you educate yourself on your psyche more broadly, working to understand your emotions. The process remains the same, though.)
Train yourself to accept suffering more quickly, so you can move on to eliminating it.
Think of a recent time when you suffered. This doesn’t have to be a massive bout of suffering—something mundane is fine. Describe the circumstances of the suffering in as much detail as possible. (For instance, you were late to pick up your kids from daycare, and they cried all the way home.)
Now, consider how your thoughts might have exacerbated your suffering. What was going through your head? Did you reproach yourself? Did you blame others? Note as many such negative thoughts as you can. (If you were late to get your kids from daycare, maybe you felt guilty, and this made the experience worse.)
Think about how, instead of letting your thoughts make you feel worse, you could have accepted this moment of suffering as part of life. What kind phrases could you have told yourself to keep negative thoughts at bay? Note as many resonant phrases as possible. (As a late parent, you might have told yourself that everyone is late sometimes; it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent.)
Finally, think about how you can more quickly move to acceptance of suffering the next time this situation occurs. This might involve telling yourself the kind phrases you noted in the last step, or doing a short breathing exercise to pause the negative thoughts. Write down as many tactics as you can. (If you’re late to pick up your kids again in the future, remind yourself that being a parent is difficult and that you’re doing well in many other ways.)
In the last chapter, we introduced the third form of happiness training: working to eliminate suffering. We’ll now describe four strategies to accept suffering—the critical first step toward eliminating it.
To accept suffering, stop taking things personally, advises the Dalai Lama. According to Cutler, humans tend to personalize—take events that have nothing to do with them, personally. To stop doing this, analyze problematic situations like a scientist, counsels the Dalai Lama. You’ll likely find the problem has less to do with you than you thought.
For instance, if a delivery person doesn’t deliver your package on the expected day, you might think they have a vendetta against you. But by analyzing the situation objectively, you discover there are postal delays. This, not a vindictive delivery person, is the source of the problem.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama counsels objectivity, but it’s hard to be objective when it comes to your own life. Foster objectivity by recognizing that you’ll never be completely objective and that the best you’ll ever do is approach objectivity. Also be aware of the areas of your life where objectivity is especially difficult—when it comes to parenting, for instance. Bring additional attention to such areas to stop taking things personally.)
Cutler notes that you won’t always be able to trace the source of every problem—you simply don’t have enough information. But by questioning why something bad happened, rather than leaping to conclusions, you begin to dismantle the belief that everything is about you.
(Shortform note: Personalization is one of several cognitive distortions that the act of questioning can help combat. Others include overgeneralization, which causes you to draw a broad conclusion from a small event, and catastrophizing, which leads you to blow up problems out of proportion. Bringing rational inquiry to such thought patterns can help prevent them from gaining traction.)
Accept suffering by refusing to indulge in guilt, insist Cutler and the Dalai Lama. Guilt is a form of suffering-denial: You refuse to accept that you, and all humans, make mistakes that cause suffering. Therefore, when you make a mistake that causes suffering, you feel it’s unacceptable and punish yourself by feeling guilty. Instead of stoking unconstructive feelings of guilt, approach mistakes as learning experiences, writes Cutler.
Let’s say you accidentally address a new acquaintance by the wrong name, which causes them to suffer. You spend the rest of the day beating yourself up over having used the wrong name, rather than accepting that accidental suffering is unavoidable, even when you create it, resolving to remember their name next time, and moving on.
(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama advise you to cut out guilt, but in proper doses, guilt can help people behave appropriately. When people recalled behavior they felt guilty about in the past, they were more likely to improve their behavior moving forward than if they recalled behavior they hadn’t felt guilty about. Those who feel guilt easily also typically have a better work ethic and can lead more effectively than those who don’t. In some cases, guilt might therefore contain a learning component.)
Grasp how integral suffering is to your existence by reflecting on the nature of your body, recommends the Dalai Lama. Simply by having a body, which experiences pain and feelings, you’re automatically subject to suffering.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama proposes that suffering is built into the human experience, but this isn’t the case in Christian teaching. Christians believe that God made the world perfect and free from suffering. It was humans who brought about suffering and evil by disobeying him.)
Finally, accept suffering by accepting change, say Cutler and the Dalai Lama. Nothing in life is permanent, and you cause yourself suffering by clinging to states, people, or objects that inevitably change. A clear-cut example of this is the process of aging. Many suffer because they can’t accept that their bodies deteriorate over time. It would be less painful to simply accept the changes brought about by aging.
(Shortform note: Accepting change can be difficult, especially in areas of our lives in which industries have a vested interest in making us feel that change is unacceptable. Author Ashton Applewhite argues that the skincare industry and the pharmaceutical industry make natural changes in appearance and physical ability seem unacceptable, so people buy the products they sell. Both society and we ourselves thus perpetuate our suffering.)
You can also make yourself miserable by thinking that a problem is permanent, when actually, nothing is permanent, writes Cutler. You might despair when you lose your job, for instance, because you see unemployment as lasting. Understanding that this state will probably change can reduce your suffering.
(Shortform note: Some argue that all Buddhist philosophy and teachings revolve around the acceptance of impermanence. If you can accept that all things must end—including, most importantly, life—you free yourself fully from suffering. Some Buddhist teachers go even further to say that you must not only accept impermanence but appreciate it. In other words, if a pet dies, don’t just accept their death—change—as a fact of life. Appreciate that life is change and that you’re currently experiencing life as the constantly-flowing river of change it is.)
Work to stop taking events in your life personally to free yourself from suffering.
Think about an instance in the last two weeks when you took something personally. Note the circumstances in as much detail as possible. (Perhaps someone at a party made a rude comment about your outfit.)
Write down how this incident or problem made you feel. What thoughts ran through your head? Were you hurt? Angry? (You might have felt both offended and angry at the person who insulted your outfit).
Now, as much as possible, step outside your own shoes in this situation and look at it critically and analytically to understand how the problem came to be. Consider other causes of the issue or angles you might not have noticed, and write these down. (You might realize that the person who insulted you is going through a divorce and is therefore in a difficult emotional place.)
Finally, write down some ways you can bring empathy or understanding to such problems in the future. Can you practice compassion toward the person or situation that you felt harmed you, and if so, how? (You could be empathetic toward the person who insulted your outfit—it’s unlikely they meant to hurt you.)
We’ll conclude our discussion of the third form of happiness training, working to eliminate suffering, by discussing how to actively combat suffering. We’ll cover four strategies to do so.
Change your perspective on a bad situation to see its advantages to you, recommends the Dalai Lama. View situations from all angles and distances, and you’ll find some positive outcome. For instance, if you lose your keys while running errands, view this as an opportunity to enjoy the sunshine while you hunt.
(Shortform note: The perspective shift the Dalai Lama recommends here is similar to the process of becoming more optimistic. Optimism means having good coping skills in problematic situations. Beyond reducing suffering, it’s associated with health benefits like mental and physical resilience, better immune functionality, and cardiovascular health.)
The Dalai Lama specifically mentions changing your perspective on your enemies—an important exercise in Buddhism. View enemies, and the difficulties they present you, as opportunities to build tolerance and kindness. Without enemies who challenge and irritate you, you’d never have to develop positive qualities.
(Shortform note: One way to change your perspective on your enemies is to practice the meditation of loving-kindness: Metta. In this meditation, you foster feelings of unconditional love and kindness toward all beings. You do this by first cultivating kindness for yourself, then for your loved ones, neutral figures, people you dislike, and finally for all beings.)
The Dalai Lama stresses that changing your perspective is a practice. To develop the habit of reframing adversity, consciously do it every time something bad happens.
(Shortform note: Practice of Buddhist teachings takes many shapes. Beyond implementing teachings in real-life situations, as the Dalai Lama proposes here, Buddhists also meditate, recite mantras, perform chanting rituals, or leave offerings to the Buddha. Combined, these strengthen your grasp of Buddhist philosophy.)
If you struggle to shift your perspective, you may need to develop mental flexibility, says the Dalai Lama. This is the ability to view all things from all angles, put yourself in anyone’s shoes, and adapt to changing circumstances and new information. Mental flexibility has two benefits beyond helping you change your perspective to lessen your suffering:
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama isn’t the only person to advocate for mental flexibility: Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats revolves around the importance of being able to switch thinking styles to maximize your effectiveness at work. The metaphor of hats implies that you can easily change thinking styles and that any thinking style only applies to certain circumstances.)
When you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you empathize with them, says the Dalai Lama. He mentions three different perspective levels to adopt to be fully empathetic: the personal level (“How does this person feel?”), the community level (“How does this community feel?”), and the planetary level (“How does humanity feel?”). When you view and act from all three perspective levels, you do the most good. Let’s look at an example:
You’re upset by a new housing development near you but strive to understand how it impacts others: By taking a personal-level empathetic perspective on the development, you see how it will help families seeking housing close to schools. By taking a community-level perspective, you discover this development provides affordable housing to underserved families. By zooming out to a planetary level, you recognize that when kids grow up in stable environments, their chances of thriving are higher. Having done this exercise, you can be more empathetic to the families in the development and reduce your suffering.
(Shortform note: The idea that mental flexibility makes you more empathetic ties in with the Dalai Lama’s discussion on the need for empathy to build stronger interpersonal relationships. A causal link emerges: Developing mental flexibility leads to greater empathy. Greater empathy, in turn, leads to greater compassion, which leads to better relationships. Thus, we can say that another benefit of mental flexibility is improved relationships.)
Mental flexibility makes you resilient in the face of conflict, uncertainty, and vacillation, claims the Dalai Lama. If, for instance, your company is doing lay-offs, use mental flexibility to begin searching for other jobs or gain new skills.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama advocates for mental flexibility to navigate the fast-changing world, and this is truer now than ever before. In 2021, a year defined by an ongoing global pandemic and the worsening effects of climate change, some considered mental agility to be the new skill to acquire.)
The Dalai Lama and Cutler add that mental flexibility doesn’t mean you lack values or abandon them as soon as a more convincing argument comes up. Instead, do as the Dalai Lama does: Build a belief system based on a few principles that let you act and think flexibly. The Dalai Lama’s belief system revolves around unconditional compassion and has three principles:
Based on these, the Dalai Lama can summon unconditional compassion in all situations. For instance, if someone cuts him off on their way into a building, he can reflect that he himself would want to avoid the suffering of being late. The person who cut him off also wants to avoid that suffering, and the Dalai Lama can therefore be compassionate toward that person.
Rank Your Values
Even if you don’t feel the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist belief system is right for you, understanding your belief system is critical to leading a good life, says Tony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within. He suggests that you not only note but also rank your values. This is because not all values matter equally to you, and ranking can help you live by your few top values—as the Dalai Lama suggests.
Ranking also prevents conflict caused by contradictory values. If, for instance, you value both compassion and career equally, those values may cause conflict when you must choose between throwing over a coworker for a promotion and behaving compassionately. Hewing only to one principle—compassion, for instance—means you avoid getting caught in such tight spots and gives you more flexibility to act. If you don’t need that promotion, you gain the mental freedom to enjoy your job and the company of your coworkers.
The second strategy to combat suffering is to find meaning in suffering, says the Dalai Lama. When you feel that your suffering serves a purpose, it becomes more tolerable. Deriving meaning from suffering may seem like an impossible request, writes Cutler, but actually, it’s not: If you reflect on any bout of suffering, you see how it made you a better person somehow. If you lost a loved one, for instance, that experience, while distressing, made you compassionate toward others who’ve lost loved ones.
(Shortform note: As Cutler mentions, it can seem impossible to find meaning in suffering. But in such cases, outside intervention can help. A study has shown that nurses, people who regularly interact with sufferers, can help patients derive meaning from their pain by helping them construct a narrative around it. Simply by listening to a patient’s story about an illness or injury and encouraging them to draw spiritual or reflective conclusions from it, nurses can improve the patient’s experience of their suffering.)
Cutler and the Dalai Lama specifically note three benefits you can derive from suffering:
(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama list increased empathy and decreased sense of ego as benefits of suffering. But does everyone need to suffer to become more empathetic and wish to eradicate suffering? The answer seems to be no: Ten percent of your capacity for empathy is a result of your genes. Some may therefore have an intrinsically greater capacity for empathy.)
This being said, Cutler adds that you may need to practice deriving meaning from suffering in advance of suffering. It’s difficult to find meaning when you’re actively suffering. Practice by reflecting on your last moment of suffering and discovering how you grew from it. It’ll then be easier to see that benefit when you next suffer.
(Shortform note: To prepare yourself for inevitable suffering, fold some reflection on suffering into your regular meditative practice, if you have one. You can do this alone by following a guided meditation, or doing a practice wherein you “breathe in” the suffering of yourself and others and “breathe out” compassion and kindness for yourself and others. The Tong-Len meditation, presented in strategy #4, below, is similar to this.)
Be honest to combat self-critical or self-aggrandizing thoughts that make you suffer, advises the Dalai Lama. Much suffering comes from the mismatch between your perceptions of yourself and reality: If you think you’re great at the guitar, for instance, but actually can barely play a chord, you’ll suffer. Conversely, if you’re convinced you’re lousy at everything, you’ll never try to learn the guitar. This, too, will make you suffer.
(Shortform note: The honesty approach the Dalai Lama advocates for is similar to Brené Brown’s concept of living wholeheartedly. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown defines wholehearted living as believing that you’re worthy of love despite your imperfections—in other words, you’re honest with yourself about your intrinsic value and shortcomings as a human.)
As a final strategy to combat suffering, the Dalai Lama recommends the Tong-Len meditation. He notes that this meditation may not be right for everyone at all times and that you should use your judgment in determining if you want to engage in it:
The Logic of Tong-Len Meditation
Renowned Tibetan nun Pema Chödrön leads an almost 50-minute Tong-Len reflection and meditation you can follow. In her reflection, Pema explains that Tong-Len meditation is built around the idea that by understanding that others suffer in exactly the same ways you do, you can drastically reduce your own suffering. It’s often because we feel that we’re the only ones enduring our current situation that the situation feels so unendurable.
Pema goes on to describe the three levels of spiritual understanding you can develop during this practice:
Step #1: The understanding that others feel the same way you do and that you aren’t the only one who suffers.
Step #2: The understanding that suffering is a necessary part of the path toward enlightenment.
Step #3: Taking on the suffering of others with the aim of freeing them from it.
Pema notes that you don’t have to take steps two or three if they don’t feel sincere at that moment. As long as you can appreciate that others share your suffering, consider the meditation worthwhile.
Practice the Dalai Lama’s recommendation to find meaning in suffering.
Describe an instance in the last two weeks when you suffered. This can be mundane, everyday suffering. (For instance, you might have completed the wrong assignment for a class and received a failing grade on it.)
Reflect on what you learned from this moment of suffering. What new knowledge, however minor, did you gain from the experience? (You might have learned to read the course syllabus more carefully, for instance.)
To solidify your learning, imagine a future situation in which you apply your new knowledge to avoid the suffering you recently encountered. Jot down how you behave or react differently this time. (In the future, when you sit down to complete your assignment, you carefully review the syllabus, for instance.)
Let’s move on to the Dalai Lama’s fourth and final form of happiness training: weaving spirituality into daily life. We’ll first describe what it means to bring spirituality to your daily existence and then cover two ways to do so.
According to the Dalai Lama, weaving spirituality into your life means taking every opportunity in your day-to-day to practice a spiritual teaching or derive a spiritual lesson.
(Shortform note: Science confirms the Dalai Lama’s belief that spirituality makes you happier: Studies have shown that those who have spirituality or religion in their lives tend to be happier and less depressed and anxious than those who don’t.)
Practice whatever form of spirituality you subscribe to, says the Dalai Lama: a religious spirituality, guided by the tenets of a religion, or a secular spirituality, guided by the values of kindness, compassion, and so forth.
(Shortform note: There’s debate over whether Buddhism itself is a religion or a philosophy. Those who believe it’s a religion do so because Buddhism, like other religions, proposes that there’s a single, true reality (Nirvana). Those who believe Buddhism is a philosophy argue that Buddhism doesn’t propose a single reality, but rather some testable propositions to eradicate suffering from your lie.)
Regardless of the type of spirituality you practice, what matters, according to the Dalai Lama, is the extent to which you action the positive elements of your spirituality. Actioning requires a calm mind and discipline. Let’s talk about these elements one at a time.
(Shortform note: Actioning your spirituality through calmness of mind and good discipline is similar to James Clear’s approach to habit-formation. In Atomic Habits, he argues that to develop a habit, remove the barriers to performing the habit in advance. The Dalai Lama’s approach is similar: Prepare your mind in advance so that acting on your spirituality becomes easy in the moment.)
To weave spirituality into your life, develop a calm mind, recommends the Dalai Lama. When your mind is calm—undisturbed by distracting negative thoughts and emotions—you see clearly what’s going on and can use your spiritual teachings effectively.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama doesn’t specify what it means to “see clearly what’s going on.” It makes sense, though, that he means recognizing The Four Noble Truths and then pursuing the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to the end of suffering. We might also simply take this to mean understanding everything we’ve been discussing in this guide: the importance of a happiness mindset, interpersonal relationships, acceptance of suffering, and so on.)
Let’s say you’re planning a party for a friend. You’re overwhelmed by thoughts of all the tasks still to do and a feeling that you’re putting in a lot of work for someone who won’t be grateful. Your un-calm mind prevents you from seeing the reality of the situation: that your thoughts about the tasks, not the tasks themselves, are causing you to suffer. When you recognize this, you can implement the practice of shifting your perspective to eliminate suffering.
To develop a calm mind, the Dalai Lama recommends meditation but adds that most religions have their own practices for this and that practitioners of a specific religion can perform those.
(Shortform note: Buddhists advise visualizing the un-calm mind as a container of dirty water. With dirt and debris in it—representing thoughts and feelings—the water is unclear, and you can’t see through it. But when you let the dirt settle at the bottom of the glass—either by letting the mind settle naturally or by meditating—the water becomes clear and you can see it as it is.)
The Dalai Lama’s meditation for developing calmness of mind is as follows:
(Shortform note: The meditation the Dalai Lama outlines here is best categorized as Vipassana. Vipassana translates to “clear seeing.” In this meditation, you learn to experience your mind and the world without filters. This experiential practice stands in contrast to learning about or knowing something intellectually—for instance, learning about the concept of impermanence from a teacher. In Vipassana, you experience impermanence: You experience how your thoughts come and go and your mind is inherently clear.)
The second recommendation for weaving spirituality into your life is to be disciplined about implementing your spiritual learning, says the Dalai Lama. In every situation, take the three steps to cultivate your happiness mindset, work to eliminate suffering, and build strong relationships.
Let’s say someone on the subway is invading your personal space. If you’re disciplined, you first sense that your ire is being provoked and ask yourself why you’re angry—in other words, you educate yourself. Then, you connect with your motivation to change for the better: You determine that you wish to be free of this anger. Finally, you exert yourself to change by, for instance, combating your anger with compassion toward the person or by changing your perspective on the situation to see its benefit to you.
(Shortform note: In other realms of life, discipline can lead to greater happiness and, argue Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in Extreme Ownership, greater freedom. This is because when you’re disciplined enough to stick to a schedule and goals, new opportunities open up to you. Perhaps by being a disciplined gym-goer, you gain greater freedom from having a stronger body. Similarly, if you have the discipline to take the three steps toward a happiness mindset in every situation, you don’t automatically leap to negative reactions and have more freedom to maneuver.)
Determine how to implement a facet of your spirituality in your everyday life.
Whatever form of spirituality you practice, list one key idea or belief that you’d like to act on in your life more. (If you subscribe to the Buddhist beliefs in this book, you might try to be more compassionate.)
Think about what’s stopping you from implementing that spiritual idea or belief in your life now. How can you adjust your behavior or thoughts so you can act on the belief more easily? (For instance, anger might make compassion difficult for you. You might reduce your anger through meditation or reflection on the benefits of positive emotions, like kindness and compassion.)
Finally, envision a future situation in which you effectively apply the spiritual belief. What does that look and feel like? Be as descriptive as possible. (For instance, you might envision a situation in which you act compassionately, rather than angrily, toward a troublesome neighbor.)