Art of Happiness

The Art of Happiness is a book by The Great Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. It is a great book that helps us to understand how a person can get happiness.

The first section of the book explains what is the Purpose of Life. In the first few pages of the book, the Dalai Lama states that the purpose of life is happiness, no matter what an individual seeks the ultimate goal is a better and happier life and that this happiness can be achieved through training the mind. 

Training the mind

The first step in training the mind is to identify the sources of happiness and then cultivate these factors which create happiness such as kindness, compassion, and friendship and eliminate the factors that create unhappiness such as anger, jealousy, hatred, and envy.

He also says that happiness can be affected by one’s outlook on things. So how do we go about training the man for happiness? Well, we have to learn how our emotions and behaviors affect us and how negative emotions and behaviors harm. This is the relationship between events and emotions which needs to be balanced.

Events that cause you to be compassionate or kind,  and then we decrease events that create unhappiness such as those events which bring in you feeling such as selfishness, or envious, and because this process can take a bit of time. Dali Lama suggests that one should keep reviewing each day so that you can see your progress daily over the long run.

Warmth and compassion

The next section of this book is human warmth and compassion. In this section Dalai Lama talks about intimacy and compassion as these factors have shown to improve overall well-being. So, how do you create intimate relationships? Dalai Lama gives three aspects which you can follow initially you have to establish compassion, here you see how the other person is suffering and then you try and put yourself in their shoes and show that you care that would genuinely help.

The other way to develop compassion is to often experience other people’s suffering by practicing compassion and meditations as these two things help remind you how common suffering and then the next aspect is to respect the other person’s backgrounds and views and finally be honest about why they went in such a suffering state.

Transforming Suffering

The third section of this book is Transforming Suffering. Dalai Lama also tells us the many different ways of dealing with suffering. The first way would be to accept the fact that suffering is a natural part of life and it is something that we all share with all of the other living creatures. Secondly to confront the problems which cause suffering and look for solutions. Be aware of self-created suffering. One can often cause unnecessary suffering by overreacting or taking things too personally.

All things change and one must be aware of this and not try to resist it because if you resist change this creates suffering, Another way is to find meaning in suffering. This can help make the suffering feel less overwhelming and one way to do this is as a religious or spiritual practice.

One has to understand how to deal with physical pain because that pain is essential to life as it prevents injuries and it is an important learning tool and knowing this pain’s purpose is that one can help you manage it. Finally, he talks about how Buddhism sees suffering. In Buddhism, there are three root causes of suffering ignorance, craving, and hatred.

Overcoming Obstacles

The last section of this book is Overcoming Obstacles. Here he is talking specifically about negative emotions and behaviors and the process of change. There are a few steps involved:

the first step involves education and learning. One has to see why one wants to change and what are the positives and negatives of making these changes.

The second step is determination and enthusiasm, you should remind yourself of why you wanted to change you use a long term view to help create perspective and you remind yourself of your own impermanence. These things will help and motivate you to create a sense of urgency to create the change, and then the third step is action. Here, one should use habituation to one’s advantage, consistent effort over time will develop habits.

He also talks about dealing with specific negative emotions. In Buddhism, one of the main ways to combat negative emotions is with their corresponding positive emotions. So dealing with anger and hatred, he says you should cultivate patience and tolerance. This can be difficult at first but when anger arises try and take a time out and then analyze the situation. This is not an easy process and at times you may not be able to stop yourself, but it will happen eventually.

While dealing with anxiety and building self-esteem corresponding positive emotion is sincere motivation, but then he gives a simple approach to fear and worry. Does the approach involve asking this question this problem be solved? If it can be remedied then there is no need to worry about it. Alternatively, if there’s no possible solution, then there’s no point in being worried about it anyway because you can’t do anything. Even after knowing this concept, you might still find yourself worrying just keep reminding yourself of this question.

Our moment to moment happiness is largely determined by our outlook.

Read, Overcome Stagnation

One life. Live Boundless