PDF Summary:The Art of Happiness, by The Dalai Lama
Book Summary: Learn the key points in minutes.
Below is a preview of the Shortform book summary of The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama. Read the full comprehensive summary at Shortform.
1-Page PDF Summary of The Art of Happiness
In The Art of Happiness, you’ll walk with the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize winner and spiritual leader of Tibet, down the Buddhist path toward happiness. According to him, you have the power to bring more happiness into your life by simply training yourself to be happier. We’ll discuss his four forms of happiness training, which will improve your outlook on life, interpersonal relationships, resilience in the face of suffering, and everyday spirituality.
To help you absorb and apply the Dalai Lama’s advice, we’ve added key background information on Buddhism, as well as scientific evidence in support of his beliefs and concrete actions you can take. The Dalai Lama doesn’t promise that the path to happiness will be plain sailing—but he does believe that your effort will be worth it.
(continued)...
Simply understanding what makes you unhappy can’t alone eradicate unhappiness, claims the Dalai Lama. You must desire to rid yourself of unhappiness and negative emotions.
(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama tell you to motivate yourself to change but don’t provide tools for doing so. One way to cultivate motivation is to write down the goals you hope to achieve—for instance, to rid yourself of ignorance. Achieving enlightenment is a long and winding path, but by writing down your goals, you help yourself stay on that path.)
Step 3: Exert Yourself to Change
Now that you’ve developed the motivation to change your mindset, the final step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to make the effort to change, says the Dalai Lama. We’ll discuss two strategies to make that effort.
(Shortform note: This chapter falls within the Right Effort step of the Noble Eightfold Path because the following strategies concern altering your thinking—not, as you might think, your actions. In the book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama spend the most time on the Meditation and Wisdom parts of The Threefold Way, and little time on the Ethics part, which concerns behavior, speech, and livelihood.)
Strategy #1: Develop Your Self-Worth
According to the Dalai Lama, to actively cultivate your happiness mindset, develop your sense of self-worth, regardless of external circumstances. You don’t need possessions, beauty, or titles to validate you as a human. It’s important to not attach your self-worth to such things, he adds, as they can diminish over time, meaning your self-worth does the same.
(Shortform note: Developing your self-worth is important for practical reasons, too: When you lack self-worth, you might engage in destructive behaviors in your quest to “earn” your right to exist. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown writes about employees who overwork themselves to prove their worth. This has negative consequences for the individual and the company.)
Strategy #2: Combat Negative Emotions With Positive Ones
When they arise, counter negative emotions with positive ones, says the Dalai Lama. For instance, when you find yourself consumed with self-reproach over a bad test grade, tell yourself that your worth isn’t dependent on grades and practice kindness toward yourself.
(Shortform note: For Brené Brown, self-compassion is a key tool for combating negative feelings, particularly harmful perfectionism. Brown breaks self-compassion into three parts: 1) self-forgiveness, 2) self-awareness, and 3) recognition that you’re not the only person struggling with negative feelings.)
Build Strong Interpersonal Relationships
We’ve discussed the first form of happiness training: cultivating a happiness mindset. Now we’ll turn to the second form of happiness training: building strong interpersonal relationships. First, we’ll describe how our happiness is linked to other humans. We’ll then outline the Dalai Lama’s recommendation for establishing connectedness to others to increase our happiness.
We Need Other Humans to Be Happy
The Dalai Lama believes that all humans are dependent on others for their wellbeing and happiness. To prove this, he points to the fact that others provide the material goods and services we rely on for survival. Many people built your home, made the food you eat, and contributed to your education.
(Shortform note: Even in today’s tech-driven society, in which we could survive for months without seeing another human, survival remains contingent upon the efforts of many people. Even an action as impersonal as ordering off Amazon requires the input of many: those who created the algorithms that keep warehouses stocked, those who keep your information safe, those who fulfill your order and deliver it to your home, and so on.)
Form Many Intimate Relationships
Since other humans are integral to your happiness, it’s essential to form strong connections with them. The type of connection you forge matters: According to the Dalai Lama, you should establish intimacy between yourself and many different people. Humans have defined intimacy differently across cultures and time, and there’s no overarching definition. In this book, Cutler and the Dalai Lama propose that an intimate relationship is one in which you’re open with the other person and experience a connection.
(Shortform note: It’s true that the level of intimacy you establish with others matters to your happiness. Someone with many loose connections can feel lonelier than someone with only a few close friends. Similarly, relationships marked by conflict and a lack of trust can fail to provide a sense of connection. However, individuals also have different tolerances for alone time and therefore, someone with a few close friends might still long for more connection because they don’t enjoy being alone. Optimizing your social life is a balancing act, so listen to your unique needs.)
Work to Eliminate Suffering
The third form of happiness training is working to eliminate suffering. Suffering is an inescapable fact of life, says the Dalai Lama. Everyone suffers, and attempts to free yourself from it—like through excessive drinking, drug use, or eating—provide only temporary relief or exacerbate the suffering. What’s worse, often, the destructive ways you avoid suffering become part of who you are. If you habitually transform your suffering into anger towards others, you become an angry person.
(Shortform note: It’s easy for suffering to lead to bad habits—as the Dalai Lama suggests—because of how the brain forms habits. According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits begin as conscious choices—to avoid suffering, for instance—which become automated loops. The reward at the end of the loop reinforces its validity, and the loop becomes a habit. For instance, you might suffer during a bad meeting with your boss and take your anger out on your family, which gives you relief. The relief reinforces the helpfulness of this loop in your mind, and it becomes a habit.)
If Suffering Is Inherent, Why Talk About It?
Viewing suffering as a fact of life may seem like it just causes more suffering, rejoins Cutler. It therefore might seem best to avoid thinking or talking about suffering.
(Shortform note: Many people take Cutler’s avoidance approach to unpleasant areas of their lives. But avoiding problems by procrastinating, ruminating, or behaving passive-aggressively usually only exacerbates the problem. Avoidance thus typically leads to suffering on all levels of your life.)
But there’s additional context in the Buddhist tradition that makes this discussion of suffering not only valuable but necessary, says the Dalai Lama. Buddhists believe that you can eliminate suffering. In Buddhist philosophy, ignorance, hatred, and craving create suffering. When you start eliminating those root causes of suffering, you move toward freedom from suffering.
(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama discusses your ability to eliminate suffering but doesn’t discuss what will happen once you do this. In Theravada Buddhism, once you’ve eliminated suffering, you become an arhat—someone who’s attained Nirvana, spiritual enlightenment. There are four stages of becoming an arhat, each one involving the elimination of different cravings, forms of anger, and types of ignorance.)
To Free Yourself From Suffering, Accept Your Suffering
Acceptance of suffering is the first, integral step toward eliminating it, says the Dalai Lama. If you can’t accept that life is suffering, you’ll only ever apply spot solutions to your suffering—like the destructive forms of numbing described above. You won’t free yourself from its root causes of ignorance, hatred, and craving.
(Shortform note: Acceptance is also an important step in addiction recovery programs, usually seen as the first, foundational step on the road to recovery. It encompasses acceptance of your addiction and how it’s affected your life, acceptance of yourself and your flaws, and acceptance of the challenges you’ll encounter as you recover from your addiction.)
Weave Spirituality Into Daily Life
The Dalai Lama’s fourth and final form of happiness training is weaving spirituality into daily life. According to the Dalai Lama, weaving spirituality into your life means taking every opportunity in your day-to-day to practice a spiritual teaching or derive a spiritual lesson.
(Shortform note: Science confirms the Dalai Lama’s belief that spirituality makes you happier: Studies have shown that those who have spirituality or religion in their lives tend to be happier and less depressed and anxious than those who don’t.)
Practice whatever form of spirituality you subscribe to, says the Dalai Lama: a religious spirituality, guided by the tenets of a religion, or a secular spirituality, guided by the values of kindness, compassion, and so forth.
(Shortform note: There’s debate over whether Buddhism itself is a religion or a philosophy. Those who believe it’s a religion do so because Buddhism, like other religions, proposes that there’s a single, true reality (Nirvana). Those who believe Buddhism is a philosophy argue that Buddhism doesn’t propose a single reality, but rather some testable propositions to eradicate suffering from your life.)
Want to learn the rest of The Art of Happiness in 21 minutes?
Unlock the full book summary of The Art of Happiness by signing up for Shortform .
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being 100% comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you don't spend your time wondering what the author's point is.
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's The Art of Happiness PDF summary: