I addressed the next question to the Archbishop. “The joy that you are talking about is not just a feeling. It’s not something that just comes and goes. It’s something much more profound. And it sounds like what you’re saying is that joy is a way of approaching the world. Many people are waiting for happiness or joy. When they get a job, when they fall in love, when they get rich, then they will be happy, then they will have joy. You are talking about something that is available right now, without waiting for anything.”
The Archbishop considered his response carefully. “I mean simply to say that ultimately our greatest joy is when we seek to do good for others.” Was it really that straightforward? Did we just need to stimulate and satisfy our dedicated brain circuit of generosity? As if anticipating my skepticism, the Archbishop continued, “It’s how we are made. I mean we’re wired to be compassionate.” Quite literally wired, I thought, based on Davidson’s research.
“We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. I didn’t know that I was going to come so soon to the concept that we have at home, the concept of Ubuntu. It says: A person is a person through other persons.
“Ubuntu says when I have a small piece of bread, it is for my benefit that I share it with you. Because, after all, none of us came into the world on our own. We needed two people to bring us into the world. And the Bible that we Jews and Christians share tells a beautiful story. God says, ‘It is not good for Adam to be alone.’ Well, you could have said, ‘No, I’m sorry, he’s not alone. I mean, there are trees, there are animals, and there are the birds. How can you say he’s alone?’
“And you realize that in a very real sense we’re meant for a very profound complementarity. It is the nature of things. You don’t have to be a believer in anything. I mean I could not speak as I am speaking without having learned it from other human beings. I could not walk as a human being. I could not think as a human being, except through learning it from other human beings. I learned to be a human being from other human beings. We belong in this delicate network. It is actually quite profound.
“Unfortunately, in our world we tend to be blind to our connection until times of great disaster. We find we start caring about people in Timbuktu, whom we’ve never met and we’re probably never going to meet this side of death. And yet we pour out our hearts. We give resources to help them because we realize that we are bound up together. We are bound up and can be human only together.”
I was deeply moved by what the Archbishop was saying, yet I could hear the skepticism that some readers would have, that I had had. Most people do not walk around thinking about how they can help others. Whether we like it or not, most people are waking up in the morning wondering how they are going to manage to do their job, make enough money to pay the bills, and take care of their families and other responsibilities. “Nice guys finish last” is a phrase that speaks to our deep ambivalence about kindness and compassion in the West. Success in our society is measured by money, power, fame, and influence.
These men had all of these except the first, but neither would go hungry. For spiritual leaders, ignoring money was fine, but what about for those who lived and died in the almighty marketplace? Most people are not aspiring to spiritual greatness or enlightenment but to pay for their children’s education and make it through retirement without running out of money. I chuckled at the memory of visiting the house of some friends outside of Las Vegas. It was a beautiful home, actually more like a Persian estate, with multiple buildings with fountains and flowing channels of water. It was reminiscent of the great structures of Islamic civilization. I was there for a discussion of the Archbishop’s legacy, and when he arrived and witnessed the beauty and grandeur of the place, he had smiled and said cheekily, “I was wrong—I do want to be rich.”
“As you just mentioned,” the Dalai Lama added, getting quite animated, “people think about money or fame or power. From the point of view of one’s own personal happiness, these are shortsighted. The reality, as the Archbishop mentioned, is that human beings are social animals. One individual, no matter how powerful, how clever, cannot survive without other human beings. So the best way to fulfill your wishes, to reach your goals, is to help others, to make more friends.
“How do we create more friends?” he now asked rhetorically. “Trust. How do you develop trust? It’s simple: You show your genuine sense of concern for their well-being. Then trust will come. But if behind an artificial smile, or a big banquet, is a self-centered attitude deep inside of you, then there will never be trust. If you are thinking how to exploit, how to take advantage of them, then you can never develop trust in others. Without trust, there is no friendship. We human beings are social animals, as we’ve said, and we need friends. Genuine friends. Friends for money, friends for power are artificial friends.”
The Archbishop jumped in. “This God is community, fellowship. Being created by this God, we are created in order to flourish. And we flourish in community. When we become self-centered, turning in on ourselves, as sure as anything, we are going to find one day a deep, deep, deep frustration.”
• • •
We are left with a paradox. If one of the fundamental secrets of joy is going beyond our own self-centeredness, then is it foolish selfishness (as the Dalai Lama would say) and self-defeating to focus on our own joy and happiness? The Archbishop had already said that we could not pursue joy and happiness in their own right, so is it not a mistake to focus on them at all?
Research suggests that cultivating your own joy and happiness has benefits not just for you, but also for others in your life. When we are able to move beyond our own pain and suffering, we are more available to others; pain causes us to be extremely self-focused. Whether the pain 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 shared his experience each morning. “I think if you are an intensely religious believer, as soon as you wake up, you thank God for another day. And you try to do God’s will. For a nontheist like myself, but who is a Buddhist, as soon as I wake up, I remember Buddha’s teaching: the importance of kindness and compassion, wishing something good for others, or at least to reduce their suffering. Then I remember that everything is interrelated, the teaching of interdependence. So then I set my intention for the day: that this day should be meaningful. Meaningful means, if possible, serve and help others. If not possible, then at least not to harm others. That’s a meaningful day.”