The Book of Joy

important, but at the same time the reality is that out of seven billion
people, over one billion people on the planet are nonbelievers. So we
cannot exclude them. One billion is quite a large number. They are also
our human brothers and sisters. They also have the right to become
happier human beings and to be good members of the human family. So
one need not depend on religious faith to educate our inner values.”
“It’s very difficult to follow your very profound pronouncements,” the
Archbishop began. “I thought you were going to say that, in fact, when
you are pursuing happiness, you are not going to find it. It’s very, very
elusive. You don’t find it by saying, I’m going to forget about everything
and just pursue happiness. There’s a title of a book by C. S. Lewis called
Surprised by Joy, which I think expresses how it works.
“Many people look at you,” the Archbishop continued, “and they think
of all the awful things that have happened to you. Nothing can be more
devastating than being exiled from your home, from the things that are
really precious to you. And yet when people come to you, they experience
someone who has a wonderful serenity . . . a wonderful compassion . . . a
mischievousness—”
“That’s the right word,” the Dalai Lama added. “I don’t like too much
formality.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” the Archbishop elbowed back.
“Oh!” The Dalai Lama laughed at his reprimand.
“It’s wonderful to discover that what we want is not actually
happiness. It is not actually what I would speak of. I would speak of joy.
Joy subsumes happiness. Joy is the far greater thing. Think of a mother
who is going to give birth. Almost all of us want to escape pain. And
mothers know that they are going to have pain, the great pain of giving
birth. But they accept it. And even after the most painful labor, once the
baby is out, you can’t measure the mother’s joy. It is one of those
incredible things that joy can come so quickly from suffering.
“A mother can be dead tired from work,” the Archbishop continued,
“and all of the things that have worried her. And then her child is ill. That
mother will not remember her exhaustion. She can sit at the bedside of
her sick child the night through, and when the child gets better you see