The Dalai Lama On Happiness*

"We are made to seek happiness." The Art of Happiness by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

"The basic, underlying nature of the human being is gentleness," so writes His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. In his book on the subject of happiness, The Art of Happiness, His Holiness writes poetically that "if we look at the very pattern of our existence from an early age until our death, we can see the way in which we are fundamentally nurtured by others' affection. It begins at birth." He asserts that a calm, composed mind is beneficial to health and well being.

Yet if this be true, how then may aggression and hostility endemic to the human species be accounted for? His Holiness replies that "unbalanced human intelligence, misuse of our intelligence, our imaginative faculty" are the principle causes of such behavior. His Holiness adds that if the intelligence innate to humans is not formed in a balanced, constructive manner, then the end result is often conflict and violence.

Thus, His Holiness concludes we must use our minds in a way that leads to respect, compassion and understanding if we are to prosper in the modern, complex world.

* The SimpleMind is away from the computer this week. This is a reprint of a top 10 reader favorite which appeared here earlier.

Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery

"Our escape route was long and hard for people more used to the sheltered life of Lhasa." My Land and My People by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, as he is customarily named, more often called the 'Dalai Lama,' especially in the West,approves and supports  the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center, the Kumbum Chamtse Ling monastery located in Bloomington, Indian; it celebrates and enjoys a degree of autonomy unknown in its original homeland. Today, while Tibet remains embroiled in relations with China, Mongolia enjoys a large measure of autonomy.

The establishment of this monastery on American soil is an important moment in American Buddhism. Not to be overlooked, it is an active monastery devoted to Mahayanan principles with its resident abbot, Arjia Rinpoche; this pivotal development, is a source of pride to the growing U.S. population of Mongolians and the few of Tibetan ancestry. The community now forming around the monastery in Bloomington, Indiana is decidedly an interfaith community, as Buddhism itself was once a persecuted and repressed faith, there has been a flowering of compassion regarding the beliefs of others. Still true today, in some parts of the world, Buddhism, like other faith communities, remains suppressed and scarcely tolerated.

Westerners, who through simple unfamiliarity with one of the great faiths of the world, have over the course of the past 50 years regarded this Eastern philosophy with varying degrees of suspicion. Others not comprehending that its message is one of peace, faith and salvation, have taken to Buddhism due to a notion of the exotic. Yet Buddhism in its forms, shares much with other faiths, far more familiar in the west, especially to Orthodox Christians and Jews whose traditions of scholarship, teaching and monastic activities in several respects mirror those of their Buddhist brothers and sisters.

Due to political events occurring more than 50 years ago, Tenzin Gyatso was forced to flee his homeland as a young man. The majority of his life has been lived in exile. Due to China's claims to Tibetan and Mongolian territories, as well as areas of Himalaya, the traditions of this part of the world especially its religious foundations, have been severely tested by forced rule. 

In his book, My Land and My People, first published in English in 1962, the thoughts and impressions of Tenzin Gyatso are made available to general English readership for the first time. He writes, "If you hit a man on the skull and break his skull, you can hardly expect him to be friendly. This [thought] thoroughly angered the Chinese.... [In regards to political skill] I could only apply my religious training to these problems... But religious training, I believed and still believe, was a very reliable guide... Non-violence was the only moral course."

Later in this same book, he writes of the preparations and realization of his exile, "My journey through the border areas reminded me of two of my observations of China itself... The first was of Chinese monasteries... I had found all of the temples and monasteries neglected and almost empty... I was told that there were still learned Llamas in Inner Mongolia  ... several hundred people came from Inner Mongolia to ask for my blessing... This was the fate I could see hanging over the Tibetan monks and monasteries already in Chinese hands... I believe boys from Mongolia and East Turkestan clung equally stubbornly to their faith."

Now today in America, Tenzin Gyatso comes to share his faith with all; the establishment of the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center is one of the keys to this effort, and further evidence that Mahayana has a life not only within its historic boundaries, but in the wider world as well.

Sunyata

"All the world's religious traditions have potential to help us become better human beings." -- The 14th Dalai Lama, writing a forward in the book, The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale.

People, notes the 14th Dalai Lama, "eat rice because it grows best where they live, not because it is either better or worse than bread." Likewise he notes, "the world's religions share the same essential purpose. We must maintain respect and harmony among them... Religion, for most of us depends on our family background-- where we were born and grew up. I think it is usually better not to change that." In the book, The Mystic Heart by author Wayne Teasdale, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama writes an introductory forward to the volume which follows.

Teasdale starts this work with the notion of moral duty. This may be tough one for some to swallow in a world where every man is his own individual, corporate entity. "Consider that domination, cruelty, greed, violence, and all our other ills arise from a sense of insufficient and insecure being. I need more... but it's never enough... All these others threaten us, intimidate us, make us anxious. We can't control them... Our actions [may] turn to openness, trust, inclusion, nurturance and communion... Raising our hidden knowledge of unity, rearranging our dynamism, is something we can practice."

The Mystic Heart takes up the idea of the inter-relatedness of not only religions, but also of persons. Teasdale writes at length, establishing common ground between the world faiths, those of thousand years standing and those emerging. He writes of the commonality of the monastic experience, and he writes about the Buddhist notion of sunyata. Sunyata is often translated from the Sanskrit to mean void or emptiness, but this is the clumsiness of words.
It is also described variously; here a phrase hits home, 'sunyata or how to untie what has never been tied.' This may be closer to its truer meaning and sense of emptying, unloading, freedom. Sunyata is a central tenet of Buddhist thought. Sunyata is a positive thought, to be empty, to be free to receive.

 Emptiness not only empties everything else, but also empties itself. There is the passage  in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, also called The Heart Sutra which states:

   Listen, Shariputra, Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true for feelings, mental formations and consciousness.  version from: The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh

Sunyata then, contains characteristics of wisdom and compassion. Wisdom in  recognizing the light of   suchness, everything in its own nature. All things are equally recognized by their suchness. The wisdom  of  sunyata is inseparable from the compassion aspect of sunyata. Sunyata is compassion-- light, realization, an awakening of the creative, essential nature of all -- and then nothing. Sunyata is comprised of all things, all judgments, all moral, and all ill in the ultimate world.

Emptying ourselves of  the false self or the unconscious identity of mere self-interest, is in the way to a larger identity of the divinity. A similar result happens within the process of  Sunyata. Awakening to the Buddha mind universal, develops compassion.  And yet Sunyata calls for a universal mind, free of all constraints so as to heed the great intelligence-mind of the Dharmakaya.

It is rain that falls so totally into the river. What then is the water, what then, the rain?