“The Art of Happiness” – by HH Dalia Lama XIV & Howard C Cutler

The Art of Happiness

Happy people have it a lot better than unhappy people. Studies show you’re more likely to pick up a better mate, more satisfying marriages, more likely to be a better parent, better immune system and live an extra 10 years. It also leads to better mental resilience and ability to deal with adversity or trauma. In the workplace, happy individuals perform much better and earn much more, than miserable employees watching the minutes tick throughout the day. These happy employees are more productive, loyal and take less sickies.

The Art of Happiness looks at happiness through different perspectives from two different authors. Firstly, the Western perspective from Howard Cutler, a relatively no-name psychiatrist out of the US. And the 14th Dalai Lama (The Dal from here on in), leader in Tibetan Buddhism and bringing the perspective from the east. Although perspectives differ, they attempt to drill things down to the basic human level. Here the little distinctions like gender, race, religion, culture and language don’t matter. There are similarities that all of us share in being part of the human race.

Buddhism doesn’t seem to be relevant to us in the Western world. It seems to be only for those wild monks who are willing to give up iPhones and Pizza to hang out in a cave for a few decades. But if you look at the fundamentals of their beliefs, it seems like they’re onto something.

Buddhism is very different to Western religions. It isn’t a faith based system; the Buddha recommends that nobody blindly accepts his teachings. Rather, you should investigate the validity of it all, test the method for yourself and discard anything that looks like crap. So for the last 2500 years, Buddhists have been practicing techniques to train the mind and develop inner resources and been willing to discard what appears to be BS. Over time, they’re left with only the gold, the things that might be objectively true about human existence. More recently, Western science has validated what the Buddhists have been claiming for millennia.

The Purpose of Life

The purpose of life is pretty clear to The Big Dal. It is to seek happiness. It doesn’t matter what your religious beliefs are: all of us are seeking something better in life. To our Western minds, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you can develop and sustain by training the mind. According to Buddhism, happiness is an attainable goal.
There are obstacles between you and happiness. Even if you have a wild success and knock your goal out of the park, or severe failure that puts you into a depression, sooner or later you hit your baseline happiness. Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. Researchers show that lottery winners are pretty stoked after winning as you’d imagine. But a year later this high wears off and they are back to normal…. Or even worse. I (Jonesy) once heard about an old school mate who won the lottery. He quit his job and ‘lived the life for a year’, travelling, taking drugs and eating all he wanted. When I saw him, it wasn’t clear if the lottery was this absolute joy that will solve all of our problems. He had transformed from a ripped handsome man to a chubby junky.

It is also the case for catastrophic events like cancer, blindness or paralysis. At the start it’s a kick in the balls like no other. But sooner or later, you’re back on the baseline. So this internal baseline is where it’s at. It doesn’t matter if the external events are good or bad, you’re going to gravitate back towards this point. Buddhism shows how to set this automatic baseline to a higher level.

The Comparing Mind

You could be hanging out in the Indian slums with $50 in your pocket and be much happier than a Westerner with $1 million in a bank. It doesn’t matter how well we’re doing financially, we tend to be dissatisfied if our neighbor is making more. As HL Menkcken from the pub said a wealthy man is “one whose income is $100 a year higher than his wife’s sister’s husband’.
As we can see, the feeling of life satisfaction depends on who you’re comparing yourself to. Obviously money is just one metric, you can also look at things like intelligence, beauty or just higher status. If you compare yourself to the people on the top of the hierarchy constantly, then you’re in a bit of trouble. But if you point your perspective radar in the opposite direction, to those who are less fortunate you can reflect on the things you have. Rather than being filled with envy and bitterness, you’ll be filled with gratitude and contentment.

Enemies

Generally, we don’t want to wish good things for our enemies. We’d love for them to get what’s coming for them. But even if your enemy is made unhappy, what is there for you to be joyful about? If you stop to think about it, nothing can be made for that. Buddhists pay a lot of attention to their rivals and enemies. This is because hatred is a stumbling block to our happiness. And if you’re able to practice patience and tolerance when enemies pop up, then everything else is much easier. So for a happiness practitioner, enemies play a critical role.

Imagine if you never had an enemy in the first place. You’d pop out into existence and everyone would pamper, hand feed you and make goo goo noises. If from infancy, you never faced challenges you’d never have a chance to grow. It might be cool at first, but sooner or later it turns into a monstrous reality. Having an enemy is a necessary condition for practicing patience. Your mates don’t usually test you and provide opportunities like this, compared to the enemy. So when you stumble across one, you should treat it with gratitude.
If your boss is being a dick, you should be grateful. This enemy is truly rare and the supply is limited. The struggle and the process of conflict leads to learning, examining, growth and insights.

Suffering

In the time of the Buddha, a woman named Kisagotami suffered the death of her only child. Unable to accept it, she ran from person to person, seeking a medicine to restore her child to life. The Buddha was said to have such medicine. Kisagotami went to the Buddha, paid homage and asked “can you make a medicine that will restore my child?”.
“I know of such a medicine” the Buddha replied. “But in order to make it, I need certain ingredients”
Relieved the woman asked “What ingredients do you require?”
“Bring me a handful of mustard seeds… I require the mustard seed to be taken from a household where no child, spouse, parent or servant has died”.
The woman agreed and began going from house to house in search of hte mustard seed. At each house the people agreed to give her the seed, but when she asked them if anyone had died in that household, she could find no home where death had not visited
In one house a daughter, in another a servant, in others a husband or parent had died
Kisogatami was not able to find a home free from the suffering of death
Seeing she was not alone in her grief, the mother let go of her child’s lifeless body and returned to the Buddha, who said with great compassion: “you though you alone had lost a son, the law of death is that among all living creatures, there is no permanence”

Kisagotami’s search shows that no one lives free from suffering and loss. It doesn’t matter how bad things may seem for you, everyone at some point is going to feel the same pain. Suffering is inevitable and a universal phenomenon.

Throughout your day, problems are about to arise. The biggest problems are inevitable: you can’t get your old fella up any more, loss of memory with old age, illness and death. Trying to avoid these might provide temporary relief, but sooner or later they’ll rear their ugly heads. If you’ve got the kahunas to confront your suffering, you’re more likely to appreciate the nature of the problem. It may be scary, but you’re in a much better position to deal with them than if you looked to avoid them.

Rather than accept suffering, some prefer to go with the feeling “Oh I shouldn’t be experiencing this! Why me!”. They feel like they don’t deserve to suffer, that they are some victim. This basic outlook is that suffering is negative and should be avoided at all costs. Although pain and suffering is experienced in all human beings, those in the East have a greater acceptance of it. Partly due to spiritual teachings like those from Buddhism and partly due to suffering being so obvious everywhere in the streets.
But us in the Western world have gone the other way. We carry the hope and belief that life is mostly fair and that they are good people who deserve good things to happen to them. If the world doesn’t cater to these expectations, they can become severely depressed and unhappy. If I’m unhappy, I must be the victim of something or someone. They might blame the government, the education system, parents, the other gender or their partner.

Shifting Perspective

Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his master for 3 years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was finally over, the Master said to him “now you can go to Athens and learn wisdom”. When the disciple was entering, he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple who burst out laughing “why do you laugh when I insult you” said the wise man. “Because for 3 years I’ve been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing”. “Enter the city” said the wise man, “it’s all yours”.

This 4th Century story shows the value of suffering and hardship. The willingness of the disciple to shift perspective of obstacles, meant the world was his. No matter what the world threw at him, he’d perceive it in a different way.
The ability for us to shift perspectives is the most powerful tool to help cope with our problems. By practicing this, certain tragedies allow us to develop a calmness of mind.