The Book of Joy

You are a Masterpiece in the Making

dukkha

suffering, stress, anxiety, dissatisfaction

sukha

happiness, ease, comfort

We must accept ourselves as we are. Berating ourselves and the practices of shame and guilt only strengthens the negative feeling.

stress and anxiety arise from the attempt to control what is fundamentally impermanent and unable to be controlled. We try to control the moment, which results in our feeling that what is happening should not be happening. So much of what causes heartache is our wanting things to be different than they are.

We often experience deep frustration from this lack of control, but we can instead cultivate calm and acceptance, and recognise what seem like setbacks as opportunities for reflection.

[Accept] circumstances as they are, because if there are circumstances that you cannot change, then it’s no use beating your head against a brick wall; that just gives you a headache.

Fear, Stress, and Anxiety

so much of our stress is dependent on seeing ourselves as separate from others

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Fear is useful, but we often draw it out of proportion, or fail to act at all because of it. Fear is the necessary condition for courage.

It is very hard to be joyful with stress and anxiety; we have a continual feeling of being overwhelmed and not being able to handle our work commitments, our family commitments, or the digital devices that are constantly reminding us of all the things that we are missing. Juggling so many things at the same time, we can feel like we are always one step behind.

Jinpa pointed out that modern society has prioritized independence to such an extent that we are left on our own to try to manage lives that are increasingly out of control.

Stress and anxiety often come from too much expectation and too much ambition. Then when we don’t fulfill that expectation or achieve that ambition, we experience frustration. Right from the beginning, it is a self-centered attitude. I want this. I want that. Often we are not being realistic about our own ability or about objective reality. When we have a clear picture about our own capacity, we can be realistic about our effort. Then there is a much greater chance of achieving our goals. But unrealistic effort only brings disaster. So in many cases our stress is caused by our expectations and our ambition.

Perhaps anxiety is a symptom of a kind of greed then.

All we need is love and connection, and once we realise this, “all the getting and grasping that we thought was so essential to our well-being takes its rightful place and no longer becomes the focus or the obsession of our lives.”

Being realistic allows us to “come to some sense of inner peace now, rather than always chasing after our expectations and ambition for the next.”

A healthy stress response is one that helps us overcome a challenge.

Frustration and Anger

Where there is fear, frustration will come. Frustration brings anger. So, you see, fear and anger are very close.

For of years I have said that anger is another word for fear — this perspective has helped me return to loving my father, so I am grateful for it — but the Dalai Lama’s version, that anger comes from frustration and frustration begins with fear, is more complete. Anger is not the same as fear, but it is a consequence of it.

Underlying this anger is a fear that we will not get what we need, that we are not loved, that we are not respected, that we will not be included.

Anger comes from within us. By understanding where our anger comes from we can develop compassion for ourselves that can then allow us to have greater compassion for others, even those we feel have caused out anger.

Eventually we can even learn to be grateful for obstacles,

when you have to deal with physical ailments, and you wish maybe that you had a great deal more energy than you in fact have. One is reminded of one’s humanity and one’s fragility.

Sadness and Grief: The Hard Times Knit Us More Closely Together

And so I think we shouldn’t think we are superwomen and supermen. To hold down emotions in a controlled environment, as it were, is not wise. I would say go ahead and even maybe shout out your sadness and pain. This can bring you back to normal. It’s locking them up and pretending that they are not there that causes them to fester and become a wound.

To conceal our sadness or pain does us harm, only the catharsis of relief can bring us back to Joy.

Sadness isn’t to be avoided exactly, indeed it can make us more observant, empathetic, and generous, and is often the emotion “that causes us to reach out to one another in support and solidarity”

We try so hard to separate joy and sorrow into their own boxes, but the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama tell us that they are inevitably fastened together. Neither advocate the kind of fleeting happiness, often called hedonic happiness, that requires only positive states and banishes feelings like sadness to emotional exile. The kind of happiness that they describe is often called eudemonic happiness and is characterized by self-understanding, meaning, growth, and acceptance, including life’s inevitable suffering, sadness, and grief.

With this we are able to grow from This eudemonic happiness is not simply immune to sadness or sorrow, it is actually enhanced by it, deepened by it. In this way it can be said to be anti-fragile.

Grief is a “reminder of the depth of our love.”

Despair: The World Is in Such Turmoil

That we feel pain and anguish at the suffering of others is not a curse, it shows us our humanity and reminds us,

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

It is okay to feel anger, even to despair, but from that we can find the spirit to act.

We should also remember that news does not represent the proportions of reality. People are remarkably good and generous and when we cannot see that it is because we are not seeing fully, not because it is not true.

We can maintain our hope, though be wary of optimism,

Hope is quite different from optimism, which is more superficial and liable to become pessimism when the circumstances change. Hope is something much deeper.

I find myself, in this chapter, most moved and inspired by Tutu. His message of hope against the backdrop of his own experience is stunning. Optimism and pessimism are both fickle, but Hope is a view upon the world. As we often hear, “hope is not a strategy”, it is a reality.

Despair turns us inward. Hope sends us into the arms of others.

Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require the raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.

Loneliness: No Need for Introduction.

The Dalai Lama has this beautiful refrain — no need for introduction. We are all human, and by that fact we know one another. Formality separates us.

We are same human beings, no need for introduction. Same human face, when we see one another we immediately know this is a human brother or sister. Whether you know them or not, you can smile and say hello.

we are born and die totally dependent on others, […] the independence that we think we experience in between is a myth.

Loneliness and aloneness are distinct,

Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.

And over focus on the self is our undoing,

When you focus too much on yourself, you become disconnected and alienated from others. In the end, you also become alienated from yourself, since the need for connection with others is such a fundamental part of who we are as human beings.

I can walk down the street feeling judgmental and critical of others, and I will feel separate and lonely, [or] I can walk down the same street with more openhearted acceptance and compassion and suddenly everyone seems warm and friendly. It is almost as if my inner state of mind and heart changes the physical and social world around me completely.

We don’t set out to be lonely, and it isn’t something to feel guilty about when we are, it is only for us to recognise that we are part of a whole, of a community, and that in fellowship with humanity, we need never feel lonely.

Envy: That Guy Goes Past Yet Again in His Mercedes-Benz

Tutu affirms again the naturalness of our emotions and urges self-compassion. Comparison is human, we seem to have a natural instinct for fairness and are discomforted by inequality. We can learn to meet this feeling in healthy ways.

Without this practice we risk falling into a cycle outlined in a Tibetan Buddhist saying, we feel “envy toward the above, competitiveness toward the equal, and contempt toward the lower.”

Our sense of fairness is relative, and local to our own lived experience. “Upward comparisons are particularly corrosive to our well-being”, so much so that,

Envy doesn’t leave room for joy. The Tibetan word for envy is trakdok, which means “heavy or constricted shoulders,” and indeed the feeling of envy leaves one with a pinched feeling of discontent and resentment, tinged with guilt. Buddhism sees envy as so corrosive that it compares it to a venomous snake that poisons us.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama disagree about hot to cope with envy. Tutu advocates self-compassion to dispel the guilt that comes with it, and gratitude to remedy the envy itself, “counting your blessings”.

The Dalai Lama instead counsels that we should not consider these negative emotions as “normal”, that we should learn to avoid the feeling of envy and instead cultivate “the Buddhist concept of mudita, which is often translated as “sympathetic joy” and described as the antidote to envy. Mudita is so important in Buddhism that it is considered one of the Four Immeasurables, qualities we can cultivate infinitely. The other three are loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity.”

If someone has something that we want, say, a bigger house, we can consciously take joy in their good fortune by telling ourselves: “Good for him. Just like me, he, too, wants to be happy. He, too, wants to be successful. He, too, wants to support his family. May he be happy. I congratulate him and want him to have more success.” Mudita recognizes that life is not a zero-sum game, that there is not just one slice of cake in which someone else’s taking more means we get less. Mudita sees joy as limitless.

We can give ourselves the gift of Joy by recognising the beauty and merit of those around us, recognising our shared humanity.

We are part of the same society. We are part of the same humanity. When humanity is happy, we will be happy. When humanity is peaceful, our own lives are peaceful.

By creating separate stories of ‘I’ and ‘They’, we distance ourselves from this natural state. Developing a sense of ‘we’, of ‘us’, restores this balance, freeing us from negative comparison.

Selected quotes

Since I became a refugee, I have been liberated from the prison of formality. So I became much closer to reality. That’s much better.

If you want to be a good writer, you are not going to become one by always going to the movies and eating bonbons. You have to sit down and write, which can be very frustrating, and yet without that you would not get that good result.

Everybody may want to be happy […] but the challenge is a lot of people don’t know how. You were talking about the importance of being warmhearted, but a lot of people are shy or have a hard time opening up to other people. They get scared. They’re afraid of rejection
[but] when you approach people with trust, then it inspires trust in them as well.

Trust. People place their trust in me but I am too afraid to do the same. Friends tell me that I create the kind of safe space they’ve always wanted, where they feel they can say anything they’re feeling.