The Book of Joy

is physical or mental, it seems to consume all of our focus and leave very
little attention for others. In his book with the Dalai Lama, psychiatrist
Howard Cutler summarized these findings: “In fact, survey after survey
has shown that it is unhappy people who tend to be most self-focused and
are socially withdrawn, brooding, and even antagonistic. Happy people, in
contrast, are generally found to be more sociable, flexible, and creative,
and are able to tolerate life’s daily frustrations more easily than unhappy
people. And, most important, they are found to be more loving and
forgiving than unhappy people.”
Still some might wonder what our own joy has to do with countering
injustice and inequality. What does our happiness have to do with
addressing the suffering of the world? In short, the more we heal our own
pain, the more we can turn to the pain of others. But in a surprising way,
what the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama were saying is that the way we
heal our own pain is actually by turning to the pain of others. It is a
virtuous cycle. The more we turn toward others, the more joy we
experience, and the more joy we experience, the more we can bring joy to
others. The goal is not just to create joy for ourselves but, as the
Archbishop poetically phrased it, “to be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of
peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.” As
we will see, joy is in fact quite contagious. As is love, compassion, and
generosity.
So being more joyful is not just about having more fun. We’re talking
about a more empathic, more empowered, even more spiritual state of
mind that is totally engaged with the world. When the Archbishop and I
were working on creating a training course for peace ambassadors and
activists who go into conflict regions, he explained how peace must come
from within. We cannot bring peace if we do not have inner peace.
Similarly, we cannot hope to make the world a better, happier place if we
do not also aspire for this in our own lives. I was eager to hear about how
we deal with the inevitable obstacles to joy, but I knew that would need to
wait for the next day. There was time for only one brief question before
lunch.
I asked the Dalai Lama what it was like to wake up with joy, and he