The Book of Joy

more intense, he argued, by the glue of guilt and shame when we think we
should not have them. The Dalai Lama agreed that human emotions are
natural, but he did argue about whether they are unavoidable. Mental
immunity, he explained, is the way to avoid them.
For months after our time in Dharamsala I wrestled with this seeming
disagreement: Is it possible to truly prevent negative thoughts and
emotions, to develop what the Dalai Lama was calling “mental
immunity”? Or are these thoughts and emotions inevitable, and should
we, as the Archbishop was suggesting, just accept them and forgive
ourselves for having them?
Finally, after many discussions with psychological experts, it became
clear that each position was valid and simply reflected a different stage in
the cycle of emotional life. Through self-inquiry and meditation, we can
discover the nature of our mind and learn to soothe our emotional
reactivity. This will leave us less vulnerable to the destructive emotions
and thought patterns that cause us so much suffering. This is the process
of developing mental immunity.
The Archbishop was simply reminding us that even with this
immunity, there will be times when we will have negative or destructive
emotions, and when this does happen, the last thing we want to do is
judge ourselves harshly.
In other words, the Dalai Lama was saying that if we eat healthy, take
our vitamins, and get enough rest, we can stay healthy, and the
Archbishop was saying, “Yes, even so, there will be times when we will
catch a cold, and we should not make it worse by beating up on
ourselves.”
So how do we deal with these obstacles to joy—the inevitable sources
of suffering, both internal and external—that cause so much pain and
anguish in our lives, when they do arise? These range from the everyday
troubles of stress, frustration, and worry to the life-defining experiences
of adversity, illness, and ultimately having to face death. We cannot
control the inevitability of these occurrences, but both men agreed that
we could influence their effect in our life by adjusting the attitude we
take toward them.