The Art of Happiness Read online

  By 1998, after years of continual rejections, and with my financial resources finally depleted, it seemed I had few options left. Still, determined to see that at least a few new readers could benefit from the Dalai Lama’s wisdom, I planned to use the last of my retirement savings to self-publish a small number of copies. Strangely, however, it was right at that point that the mother of a close friend happened to make an offhand remark to a stranger on a New York subway—a stranger who turned out to be in the publishing industry—which initiated a series of connections that finally led to agreements with both a literary agent and a good mainstream publisher. And so, with a small first printing and modest expectations, the book was at last released.

  UNEXPECTED SUCCESS

  That was ten years ago. And the Dalai Lama, the publisher, and I could never have imagined the subsequent course of events. Awareness of the book grew rapidly, spreading more by word of mouth than by advertising or publicity. Not expecting such an overwhelmingly positive response, I watched with wonder as the book soon appeared on the New York Times bestsellers list, where it remained for the next two years. It wasn’t long before we started to see evidence that the book was truly becoming part of the cultural milieu in America, spontaneously showing up on TV sitcoms, game shows, even MTV—the very icons of popular culture in America at the time: Friends, Sex and the City, Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, MTV Cribs—and even the season’s opening game on Monday Night Football, when one of the quarterbacks attributed his preseason success, in part at least, to The Art of Happiness.

  Clearly, there was a kind of universal appeal to the Dalai Lama’s basic message: Yes, happiness is possible—in fact, we can train in happiness in much the same way that we train in any other skill,

  directly cultivating it through effort and practice. Explaining how happiness can be achieved by reshaping our attitudes and outlook, the Dalai Lama shows us how the key to happiness is in our own hands. No longer do we need to rely on luck or chance to achieve happiness, waiting for the day when all the outer conditions of our lives finally fall into place—the day we finally lose weight, get rich, get married (or divorced!), or get that coveted promotion.

  His fundamental message of hope seemed to strike a chord in people, resonating deep in the hearts of individuals not only in America but throughout the world—people from diverse backgrounds, perhaps, but who all shared the fundamental human aspiration for happiness, a yearning for something better in life. Ultimately, the book went on to be translated into fifty languages and was read by millions around the world.

  A HAPPINESS REVOLUTION

  The concept of happiness as an achievable goal, something we can deliberately cultivate through practice and effort, is fundamental to the Buddhist view of happiness. In fact, the idea of training the mind has been the cornerstone of Buddhist practice for millennia. Coincidentally, shortly after the publication of The Art of Happiness, this same idea began to take root in society from another direction—as a “new” scientific discovery—leading to a fundamental shift in many people’s perception of happiness.

  When I first began work on The Art of Happiness in the early 1990s, I discovered that there were relatively few scientific studies on happiness and positive emotions. These were not popular subjects for research. Although at the time there were a handful of researchers studying human happiness and positive emotions, they were the mavericks. But then, suddenly, human happiness started to become a subject of intense interest to the scientific community and the general public alike, as people began to abandon their previous notions of happiness as elusive, mysterious, and unpredictable, replacing that view with the perception of happiness as something that could be scientifically investigated. And over the past decade, as more and more people have rejected the idea of happiness as something that is merely a by-product of our external circumstances, in favor of seeing happiness as something that can be systematically developed, we have witnessed the exponential growth of a new movement—a Happiness Revolution.

  The watershed event for this new movement was the formal establishment of a new field of psychology involving the study of human happiness. The formal birth of this new branch of psychology took place in 1998, when a highly influential psychologist, Dr. Martin Seligman, the newly elected president of the American Psychological Association, decided to dedicate his term as president to the establishment of this new field, which he dubbed “positive psychology.” Pointing out that for the past half century clinical psychology had focused exclusively on mental illness, human weakness, and dysfunction, he called on his colleagues to expand the scope of psychology to include the study of positive emotions, human strengths, and “what makes life worth living.”

  Seligman teamed up with another brilliant researcher, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to lay the groundwork for this new field. They were soon joined by a core group of top researchers from universities in America and Europe, and positive psychology took off with tremendous momentum. For the first time in human history, happiness had finally become a legitimate field of scientific inquiry.

  Since that time, the Happiness Revolution has had a growing impact on all levels of society. Feature stories on happiness have inundated the popular media, while academic courses on positive psychology have been cropping up on college campuses across the United States and throughout the world. At Harvard University, for instance, “The Happiness Course” has now replaced Introductory Economics as the most popular undergraduate course, with enrollment quickly soaring to well over 1,400 students each semester. The impact is even being seen on the governmental level in nations around the world, with the country of Bhutan, for instance, replacing GDP with GNH (Gross National Happiness) as its most important measure of success as a nation. Policymakers in many nations are now even exploring the idea of shaping public policy based on happiness research. As one government official in Scotland exuberantly asserted, “If we can embrace this new science of positive psychology, we have the opportunity to create a new Enlightenment.”

  THE BENEFITS OF HAPPINESS

  One of the factors fueling the Happiness Revolution has been the startling research in the past decade revealing the many benefits of happiness, benefits extending far beyond merely “feeling good.” In fact, cultivating greater happiness can be seen as “one-stop shopping” for those seeking greater success in every major life domain. Scientific studies have shown that happy people are more likely to attract a mate, enjoy stronger and more satisfying marriages, and are better parents. Happy people are also healthier, with better immune function and less cardiovascular disease. There is even evidence that happy individuals live up to ten years longer than their less happy peers! In addition, happiness leads to better mental health, greater resilience, and an increased capacity to deal with adversity and trauma.

  There are some who believe that happy people tend to be shallow and a bit stupid, a notion shared by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who once wrote: “To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” Recent research, however, has proven this idea to be nothing but a myth, finding that happiness leads to greater creativity and improved mental functioning.

  The benefits of happiness extend to the workplace, as well, with happy individuals performing better and enjoying greater personal success on every level, including higher income. In fact, studies show that higher income is more directly related to one’s level of happiness than to one’s level of education. Extensive research has also shown that organizations with happy employees are more successful, consistently demonstrating greater profitability; this isn’t surprising considering that happy workers are more productive, more loyal to the company, take fewer sick days, show up to work more consistently, have fewer conflicts with coworkers, quit their jobs less frequently, and generate greater customer satisfaction.

  So there is no question that happiness brings tremendous personal rewards. But it is also critical to point
out that cultivating greater happiness benefits not only oneself, but also one’s family, community,

  and society In fact, this is one of the key principles underlying The Art of Happiness, a principle supported by a growing body of scientific evidence. For example, a stunning recent study has shown that happiness is highly contagious, spreading in social networks just like a virus. Other lines of evidence have found that happiness and positive emotions act as an antidote to prejudice, causing changes in the brain that prevent the instinctual bias against those we perceive as different, ultimately breaking down the barriers between Us and Them! The beneficial effects of happiness extend to the broadest level of society; another study, for instance, found that increasing the average level of happiness among the population of a nation will result in an increase in freedom and democracy in that country!

  The Happiness Revolution has led increasing numbers of individuals to seek happiness in a more systematic and direct way. There have been some critics of the positive psychology movement who have characterized their efforts as being nothing more than a self-absorbed, self-indulgent luxury, concerned only with personal gratification. In view of the above evidence, however, it could be argued that if you are truly concerned about the welfare of others and building a better world, it is your duty to be happy, or to do what you can to become happier.

  BUDDHIST WISDOM AND MODERN SCIENCE: BRIDGING EAST AND WEST

  The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the Twentieth Century.

  —The influential British historian Arnold J. Toynbee

  One of the goals of The Art of Happiness is to present an approach to achieving human happiness that combines the best of East and West, integrating traditional Buddhist wisdom with modern Western science. Following a recent talk in which I spoke about this approach, an audience member asked:

  “If scientists have conducted research on happiness and studies have now proven how to become happy, what do we need the Buddhist theories or the Dalai Lama’s views for? Shouldn’t the scientific proof be enough?”

  Good questions. And as a great admirer of the scientific approach to happiness, I think it is safe to say that the checks and balances of the scientific method generally result in highly reliable and useful information. At the same time, however, all scientific findings are not some kind of Absolute Truth or Eternal Law. Scientific knowledge is a dynamic, living thing—and scientific theories are always being refined, modified, or revised as we gather new data. And in evaluating the validity of any study, there’s always the possibility of methodological errors, flaws in experimental design, statistical analysis, and so on. One also needs to consider how many subjects were studied and whether the study has been replicated. With this in mind, it’s important to recognize that the science of human happiness is still in its infancy. While we have learned a great deal, there is a lot that we still don’t know.

  The key question is: Does Buddhism have anything to contribute to the scientific investigation of happiness?

  In considering this question, it is important to understand that Buddhism is not a faith-based system in the traditional sense. In fact, when the Buddha first began to teach, he advised his disciples not to blindly accept his teachings out of faith, but rather to investigate the validity of his theories and test his methods for themselves. This reliance on empirical investigation, the uncompromising commitment to truth, and a total dedication to discovering the nature of reality are things that both Buddhism and science have in common. In fact, the Dalai Lama has demonstrated his total commitment to these principles, stating, “If science was to conclusively prove that some part of the Buddhist scriptures or basic beliefs turned out to be untrue, then the Buddhist scripture or belief would have to change.” Such a shocking statement would seem to be almost inconceivable coming from any other religious or spiritual leader in the world!

  For 2,500 years, Buddhists have been practicing techniques to “train the mind” and develop their inner resources. And one would guess that after more than two millennia, ineffective techniques and methods would have been gradually abandoned, while only the most effective and reliable methods would have survived. It would seem reasonable to assume, therefore, that Buddhism might have much to contribute to our understanding of happiness and how to achieve it, and some remarkable recent developments certainly suggest that this is the case. When The Art of Happiness was first published, there was little scientific research available that related to the Dalai Lama’s fundamental views on human happiness. It has been very gratifying for me to see that since that time there has been an explosion of research on happiness, and even more gratifying to discover that the growing body of scientific evidence has consistently supported the views expressed by the Dalai Lama in this book. One example that illustrates this is the research on happiness and compassion discussed below.

  Another fascinating line of evidence is based on some cutting-edge research conducted by Dr. Richard Davidson, a highly regarded neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Using the latest technology, Dr. Davidson and colleagues identified a specific area in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain that is associated with states of happiness. He then measured the average level of activity in this “happiness” region among a large group of ordinary Americans. Later, he invited some Tibetan Buddhist monks into his lab and performed the same studies. He was astonished to find that their levels of activity in the happiness area of the brain were the highest he had ever seen, and by a huge margin—so far above the others that they were essentially off the chart! Of course, this may not be proof of anything, but nevertheless such extreme findings are highly suggestive of the potential value of Buddhist practices in the quest to find effective methods of increasing individual happiness.

  KINDNESS, COMPASSION, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

  If there is a fundamental principle in The Art of Happiness with the greatest potential to make a significant contribution to the new science of human happiness, it is this:

  There is an inextricable link between one’s personal happiness and kindness, compassion, and caring for others. And this is a two-way street: increased happiness leads to greater compassion, and increased compassion leads to greater happiness.

  In other words, studies have found not only that happier people tend to be more caring and more willing to reach out and help others, but that by deliberately cultivating greater kindness and compassion, a person will experience increased happiness.

  It is easy to see how such principles could have a profound impact on any society if people adopted them on a widespread scale. However, since it is unlikely that most people in the West will “convert” to Buddhism as their primary spiritual path, if these principles are to be widely adopted in Western society they need to be presented in a secular context, which generally means investigating them from a scientific perspective. Thus, in the following pages you will find experimental evidence showing that happy people tend to be kinder and more compassionate. At the time I was writing the book, however, I could find no research showing the reverse principle, that cultivating greater compassion makes people happier—one of the Dalai Lama’s most cherished beliefs. But today such evidence exists, showing that the practice of kindness and compassion is a powerful strategy to increase personal happiness.

  In one of my favorite experiments, Dr. Davidson brought a French Tibetan Buddhist monk into his lab to study the effects of compassion. This monk was a highly trained adept who had spent many years in the Himalayan region, meditating on compassion (and who acted compassionately, as well, dedicating his life to charitable activities in the region). Davidson began by monitoring the monk’s brain function in a resting state to measure baseline brain activity; then he asked him to perform an intensive Buddhist meditation on compassion. The results showed that during his meditation on compassion, there was a dramatic leftward shift in his prefrontal function, lighting up the “happiness region” of the brain. Davidson conclu
ded: “The very act of concern for others’ well-being creates a greater sense of well-being within oneself.” What could be more conclusive evidence of the link between personal happiness and compassion?

  In another study, conducted in “the real world” outside the laboratory, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California at Riverside asked a group of subjects to choose one day each week in which to perform five “random acts of kindness.” After six weeks, the subjects in the study experienced a significant increase in their overall levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

  THE FUTURE OF THE ART OF HAPPINESS

  For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of this book’s success were the many wonderful and moving letters we received from readers describing how the Dalai Lama’s words helped them, and the positive impact The Art of Happiness had in their lives. In some of the letters, readers expressed interest in a sequel, pointing out various topics that had not been included in the book. After hearing how the first book had been of such benefit to some individuals, the Dalai Lama agreed to collaborate on a sequel; so after reviewing the readers’ requests, I prepared a list of topics. We quickly realized, however, that there were more topics than could be covered in a single volume, so we divided the topics into a series of volumes. Our first follow-up book, The Art of Happiness at Work, was published in 2003. Like the first volume, it was very well received and became a bestseller—and more important, feedback from readers indicated that it was of practical value in helping them find greater happiness at work, the activity occupying the greatest part of our waking hours.