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his fate. The second, Chuck, was out of bed in his wheelchair, explaining
that he felt as if he had been given a second chance in life. As he was
wheeled through the garden, he had realized that he was closer to the
flowers and could look right into his children’s eyes.
Eger often quotes fellow Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, who said
that our perspective toward life is our final and ultimate freedom. She
explains that our perspective literally has the power to keep us alive or to
cause our death. One of her fellow inmates at Auschwitz was terribly ill
and weak, and others in her bunk asked her how she was holding on to
life. The prisoner said that she had heard that they were going to be
liberated by Christmas. The woman lived against all odds, but she died on
Christmas Day when they were not liberated. It’s no wonder that during
the week the Dalai Lama had called some thoughts and feelings toxic,
even poisonous.
Jinpa explained that while changing our emotions is quite hard,
changing our perspective is actually relatively easy. It is a part of our
mind, over which we have influence. The way you see the world, the
meaning you give to what you witness, changes the way you feel. It can
be the first step of “a spiritual and neural journey that results in more and
more equanimity and of our default state being increasingly more joyful,”
as psychologist and writer Daniel Goleman poetically put it on a pretrip
call. Perspective, Jinpa argued, is nothing less than the skull key that
opens all of the locks that imprison our happiness. What is this
perspective shift that has such power? What is the healthy perspective
that the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop bring to life, that allows them to
greet life with so much joy in the face of so much sorrow?

•           •           •

he Dalai Lama used the terms wider perspective and larger
perspective. They involve stepping back, within our own mind, to
look at the bigger picture and to move beyond our limited self-awareness
and our limited self-interest. Every situation we confront in life comes
from the convergence of many contributing factors. The Dalai Lama had