Author: Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler
Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler
Reading time: 22 minutes
Synopsis
The Art of Happiness is based on many interviews. Psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler spoke with His Holiness the Dalai Lama for this book. The book brings together Buddhist wisdom and Cutler’s knowledge of Western therapy. This makes it an easy guide for a happy life. Do you want more happiness in your daily life? The Dalai Lama shows you how.
Work on Yourself for a Happier Life: True Happiness Comes from Inside.
Most people agree that they want to be happy in life. But for some reason, happiness seems strange and hard to understand. Often, we don’t know what makes us happy. But it is not hard to work on your own happiness. If we change our way of thinking, we can learn to be happier.
Things outside us can make us happy for a short time. But in the long run, our happiness goes back to normal. For example, winning the lottery makes us happy for a short time. This feeling usually fades quite quickly. On the other hand, people who get a serious illness like cancer or paralysis can become happy again. This happens after they have time to deal with it. So, outside things do not really change our long-term happiness.
Our brain is very powerful. How we feel changes how we see the world. For example, bad feelings can change how we see other people. If we are angry, even good friends might seem annoying, cold, or mean.
But we can also train our brain. We can learn to find and grow good feelings. We can also stop bad feelings. This takes time and effort. But in the end, it helps us find peace. We can live a happier life and be happy no matter what happens outside us.
Blink 1 – Care and Empathy are Key to More Happiness.
Compassion is very important for our happiness. We should always try to make it stronger. It is a key part of Buddhist teachings. Studies also show it helps us stay happy for a long time.
Compassion means you want others to be free from pain. It is a kind and gentle way of thinking. When we truly feel compassion, we want this for everyone. It doesn’t matter if we know them or how we feel about them. We feel compassion for all living things. This includes our friends, our enemies, and even a fish caught on a hook.
Many studies show the good things that come from being compassionate. It can make us feel good when we help others. It can even help us live longer.
People with compassion show love and care to everyone. This is their most amazing quality. They feel a strong connection with all people. It does not matter if they are rich or poor, close friends or strangers.
To have compassion, we need to understand others. We must try to see things from their point of view. It helps to understand their lives and to focus on what we have in common.
Imagine your taxi driver asks for too much money. Do not get angry. Instead, think about what you have in common with the driver. Maybe you are both tired and hungry. You both want to go home to your family. Perhaps the driver does not earn enough money for a holiday with loved ones. If you put yourself in their shoes, you can ask: How does this person feel right now? These questions help you understand and stop your anger. So, compassion is key to a happier life.
Blink 2 – More Than Just Romance: Love is Bigger Than Most People Think.
Close and lasting relationships with others make us feel better. They help our body and mind. But in the West, many believe deep closeness is only in romantic relationships. This can be a problem. People who do not have such a relationship often feel lonely and sad.
But ideas about closeness and its limits change over time and in different cultures. There are many kinds of closeness that are not just the Western idea of love. The Dalai Lama himself feels close to many people. This includes his teachers and cooks. He even talked about government matters with a cleaner while she cleaned the floor. If we see the many ways to connect with others, we can live a happier life.
Often, we have problems when we interact with others. Then it’s important to understand what our relationships are built on. For example, romantic relationships based on sexual desire or ‘love at first sight’ cannot last. They need a deeper, stronger foundation.
Lasting relationships, on the other hand, are based on respect and valuing the other person. This kind of relationship means we know the other person’s true self. This takes time. Mark Twain once said: “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married for a quarter of a century.”
Blink 3 – With or Without Religion: Spiritual People are Happier.
Spirituality is another important part of a happier life. Many studies show the benefits of strong religious belief. These range from a happier family life to better health.
But people often think spirituality needs a specific religion. This is not true. Each of the main world religions helps people live a more fulfilling life.
There is also a kind of spirituality that is not religious. Daily spirituality includes basic human qualities. These are kindness, compassion, and care. Both atheists and religious people can use it. When we practice these qualities, we feel closer to all people. We find inner peace. We can live happier and more peaceful lives.
The Dalai Lama spends about four hours a day on religious practices. But you can practice spirituality every day without prayers or mantras. For example, if you want to insult someone, you can practice daily spirituality. Just stop yourself from doing it. This helps us train our spiritual ability. We do not need to pray for four hours every day.
Blink 4 – There is No Way Around It: Suffering is a Natural Part of Life.
Suffering is a natural part of life for everyone. Eastern cultures seem to accept this more. This is probably because people in Asia live closer to poverty and daily struggles than people in the West. Western people often do not understand that suffering is part of life. So, when things go wrong, they often feel like victims of an evil force.
But suffering cannot be avoided. For example, we will all get old and die one day. Trying to hide or ignore this fact is only a short-term solution. Everyone will also suffer at some point in life. Our attitude to this event is very important. If we see suffering as strange and unfair, we will feel like victims. We will blame others. We will stay stuck until the real cause of our sadness is only in our own mind.
Painful experiences will happen. But we often make them worse without wanting to. We do this by worrying too much.
Western people often make a mistake: they resist change. We hold too tightly to things that are important to us. We care too much about our possessions. But change is a constant and natural power. If we fight against it, we will suffer. This is because we will lose things we do not want to let go of.
Another common cause of needless suffering is holding onto bad past events. We keep thinking about them, and this stops our wounds from healing. For example, many divorced people still feel angry at their ex-partner years later.
But if we accept that pain is natural, we can deal with it better. We can also find out why it happens. This way, we can stop creating some of our own suffering. We will move closer to a happier life.
Blink 5 – With Discipline, We Remove Unwanted Feelings and Habits.
The Dalai Lama believes that bad feelings like anger and fear stop us from being naturally happy. They are like poison. But some good feelings – like love, kindness, patience, and generosity – can work like medicine. They get rid of harmful emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. To get rid of negative things, we must regularly practice positive emotions and actions.
This is similar to Western cognitive therapy. This therapy finds harmful actions and thoughts and changes them. For example, people who are depressed see themselves in a twisted way. They only think about bad things like work or money problems. They do not see that they have many good things. For example, they are healthy and have a happy family. Studies show these people can become happier if they change how they think.
Getting rid of bad emotions and actions, and replacing them with good ones, is a long and hard process. To make good habits stick, we first need to understand why we need to change. Then we must turn this reason into a strong belief. This belief must come with a firm decision to change. With steady discipline, we can then make the needed change happen.
Changing habits can take years. It is not realistic to expect quick improvements. The Dalai Lama himself says it took him 40 years. He needed this time to truly value these Buddhist ideas and practices.
The four hours he spends praying each day remind him how he wants to live his life. With strong effort and regular self-reminders, we can also change our behavior.
Blink 6 – With Different Eyes: Changing Your View Often Helps in Bad Situations.
When people face a problem, they usually see it as fully bad. But most situations have both bad and good sides. You can look at every situation in different ways. For example, sitting next to an annoying person on a plane can seem very bad. Or, we can see it as a chance to practice patience and tolerance.
Changing how we see things can help us find meaning in pain and suffering. When we face difficulties, we should not feel sorry for ourselves. We should not ask, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Instead, we can see the problem as a challenge. It is a chance to grow and become stronger. If you find meaning in your pain, you grow from the difficult experience.
To change your point of view, you need a flexible mind. This means you are mentally open. Everyone can develop this flexibility. Just look at your past suffering from different angles.
People with flexible minds are sometimes seen as unsure or not steady. So, how can we follow strong values but still be mentally flexible?
The Dalai Lama’s solution is to focus on your main values. These are basic rules that work in many daily situations. Do not stick to specific rules. These can limit you and be wrong in some cases.
It takes time and effort to find the good in bad events. You need to practice this skill before something painful happens in your life. A new tree cannot grow strong enough overnight to survive a big storm the next day. In the same way, we cannot suddenly learn to find deeper meaning in bad news, like a cancer diagnosis.
Blink 7 – With Patience and Tolerance: Hate and Anger Rarely Last After You Analyze Them.
Among all bad feelings, anger and hate are the biggest blocks to happiness. When anger or hate comes up, it quickly takes away our inner peace. It makes our judgment unclear. So we often act in ways that make things worse. This also makes our anger grow. Studies clearly show that anger and hate are bad for our health. They can even raise the risk of heart problems.
You cannot get rid of anger and hate by just pushing them down. Also, it does not help to let anger out without control, like shouting. This only makes bad feelings stronger, not weaker. The answer is to fight anger with patience and tolerance. We can learn these through meditation.
Anger often comes from an unbalanced mind. So the first step to deal with it is to build inner peace. Studies show that stress makes it easier to get angry. So, it is important to lower stress. We can do this by building calmness and happiness. This takes away the reason for anger.
When we feel anger rising, the right thing to do is pause. The Dalai Lama and Western thinkers agree on this. Stop and think about the situation. Where does our anger come from? What caused it? Is it harmful or helpful? By thinking about our anger clearly, we can face our bad feelings with patience and understanding. This helps us fight them.
Blink 8 – If You Know Yourself and Your Skills, You Suffer Less from Fear.
Fear, sadness, and worry are feelings everyone has sometimes. They are normal reactions to certain things. But if they become too strong or happen all the time, they can cause serious problems for our mind and body. They can weaken our immune system and cause heart problems, for example.
Many things cause fear. And there are many ways to stop it. One way is to challenge fearful thoughts and replace them with positive ones. The Dalai Lama and Western thinkers suggest this.
Sometimes a situation makes us feel afraid for no good reason. For example, this can happen when we ask someone on a date. In these cases, it helps to think about why we want to do something. If we remember that our reasons are good and honest – for example, we just want to spend time with the person – our fear goes away.
Too much fear often comes with low self-esteem. The Dalai Lama suggests being honest with ourselves and others about what we can do. If we accept our limits, we can confidently say when we cannot do something or do not know something. This will not hurt our self-esteem.
Sometimes low self-esteem can become self-hate. The person feels totally worthless and might even think about suicide. In these cases, it helps to remember how amazing the human mind is. Remember the potential for growth in everyone, including ourselves. Tibetans regularly think about this during their daily meditations. This might be why self-hate is almost unknown in their society.
Summary
Summary
The main message of this book is:
You can find lasting happiness, but you need inner discipline. Happiness does not come from outside things like money or luck. Work on your ability to understand others. Develop daily spirituality and a flexible mind. This will help you deal better with pain and suffering.
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For Further Reading: The Happy Society by Richard Layard
Layard uses ideas from psychology, brain science, economics, social sciences, and philosophy. He suggests we deeply rethink our personal lives and our economic system.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/die-regeln-des-glucks-de