Pursuing Happiness with the Dalai Lama

[Applause] um spiritual brothers and sisters of course happiness perhaps i think the real i think meaning happiness or when i say the happiness mainly in day in the sense deep satisfaction so there are naturally two levels one mainly related with physical sort of experience and one mental experience so desire for that i think since every human being started on this planet i just saying maybe a few hundred thousand yes but of course the uh what is it the nature of the happiness i think last few hundred thousand years i think some change because human intelligence change so the perception or the wounds in the perception or the the level of happy experiences also may be different so the i think very reason i from the buddhist viewpoint of course the very reason the different religious tradition developed on this planet certainly not for misery not for trouble but for deep satisfaction that's very clear and particularly when we passing through some difficult period as a it looks hopeless at that time religious faith give us hope inner strength so i think the various religious tradition uh last i think uh uh more than two thousand years i think really made tremendous sort of uh contribution uh for millions of people so today now 21st century of course the material development highly developed but still i think various diversity tradition still had very very important role and particularly the people sort of get i think satisfaction from material value material facility mainly physical level those i think rich family the physical comfort i think very high standard but that no guarantee the same sort of standard in peace of mind more worry more anxiety perhaps more jealousy more fear so the this moment i think this century modern sort of modern period uh in order to provide uh mental labor of satisfaction inner peace various divinity tradition uh i think immense adversity role and then meantime in order to make more effective contribution from various difficulty tradition for a better world better human being more compassionate human being more law-abiding human being a man is a self-discipline or moral principle uh the very religious tradition among ourselves uh close understanding and through that way we can make more effective sort of contribution but sometimes some people may say oh before sort of helping to humanity firstly you yourself manage well no longer quarrel or something people may say that isn't it so i think among ourselves real sort of harmony on the on the basis of mutual admiration mutual respect mutual appreciation that very possible to develop so these are i think very important so like this sort of meeting to get this gathering i think it means hell so that's all next thank you your holiness are we i i think i'd like the monitors oh can you hear are you all right okay you can't all right um so i was told to speak up and i'm speaking up maybe that's a little bit better that's better all right i also don't see a clock here so could someone loan me their watch your holiness what an honor it is to be here with you and now i can see better your face yes yes all right well i want you to get a good look um otherwise there's a very strong light i can't see now much better yes so now we can see in here very good you know there's a phrase in american culture the good life someone asked me a few months ago has that discussion that recurring theme of the good life been raised again in the wake of the economic downturn and i i realized that i wasn't hearing anyone talk about the good life but i had just accepted this invitation to be a part of this conversation and i realized that in fact i think that american conversation that the longings behind that and the focus of that have shifted in fact to a far-flung conversation about the nature of human happiness and i believe that this five-year project at emory and this summit on happiness today is a powerful expression of that and also an expression of how it represents a shift in perspective because even in previous generations when we talked about the good life it was in terms of simplifying conditions and circumstances it was about the conditions and circumstances that might lead to a good life i think that this discussion we're now having about happiness is about an inner orientation that can make life good in and through many kinds of circumstances and conditions so it is a less materialistic conversation it is in essence a spiritual conversation though we all know that spirituality is defined and described in many different ways in 21st century lives the way his holiness the dalai lama has translated his wisdom on happiness has very interestingly i think energized and deepened this cultural interest we have in happiness we have just begun to experience his his wisdom and his grace graciousness here and now we are going to add some distinguished jewish christian and muslim voices to that conversation we have chief rabbi lord jonathan sachs of the united kingdom bishop catherine jeffords story of the episcopal church and professor dr sayed jose nasser of george washington university so we are going to turn this into a discussion in a moment but first each of the the three of our leaders will take a seat alongside his holiness the dalai lama rabbi sachs will begin and and give us an introduction to the contribution their tradition might make to this collective unfolding discussion on the nature of human happiness friends i think you'll agree we have been privileged to hear words of wisdom and grace from one of the great spiritual masters of our time your holiness we are blessed by your presence inspired by your teaching and if we could only learn one thing from you which is how to laugh the way you do i think we'd increase the happiness in the world it's infectious it's at moments like this that we realize how wrong tolstoy was when he wrote at the beginning of anna karenina that all happy families are alike and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way as if happiness were like the answer to a question in mathematics in which there are many wrong answers but only one right one happiness isn't like that it comes in many forms there is the happiness of one who is at peace with the world and there is the happiness of one who successfully changes the world there is the happiness of a mozart that is as sweet and natural as a spring breeze and there is a happiness of a beethoven carved from the rock by struggle and pain and so it is with cultures each culture conceives of happiness in its own way and we are enriched by the sheer multiplicity of ways in which human beings have flourished and made a blessing over life so let me therefore from the jewish tradition add just one dimension already hinted at which i think we tend to forget nowadays the hebrew the biblical hebrew has two key words for happiness one is o'shea and one is simha and they are very different osha is the happiness we feel simha is the happiness we make or share we can is the happiness we can experience on our own but simcha is the happiness that only exists in virtue of being shared i would define simcha as social happiness so in the bible it's something that is shared by husband and wife it's something that on festivals is shared by the whole community it's something to which we invite the widow the orphan the stranger the people who would otherwise be vulnerable and alone simcha is the happiness we make when we come together to give collective thanks for the miracle and the gift of simply being alive it's something exuberant joyous celebratory and it is something we only feel when we leave behind the separatenesses of each of us and become a part of a we and us a community simcha tells us that happiness is part of the tenor and texture of our relationships and the way our culture is geared to a shared sense of gratitude in the book of deuteronomy moses says something very paradoxical but which we rediscover to our cost in age after age and we are rediscovering it today there is moses speaking to the new generation who will carry on where he left off and he says you and your parents have just spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness you had no land no home no comfort no security you thought that was the difficult part actually that was the easy part the difficult part is affluence because that's when you forget where you came from that is when you forget why you are here affluence makes you forget to give thanks and when a society forgets to give thanks it loses the art of happiness people think of the eye rather than the you they lose the art of relationship marriages begin to fail communities grow weak society begins to decline and all says moses because in his words you forgot to serve god with joy and gladness of heart out of the abundance of all good things and how right he was the consumer society is constantly tempting us all the time to spend money we don't have to buy things we don't need for the sake of a happiness that won't last in fact the consumer society by constantly making us aware of what we don't have instead of making us thankful for what we do have has turned out to be the most efficient system yet devised for the manufacture and distribution of unhappiness simcha reminds us of the basic distinction just made by his holiness between material goods and spiritual goods it's a very interesting difference if i have a certain amount of money and i give some of it to you i have less if i have a certain amount of power and i give it to you i have less power but if i have a certain amount of love or friendship or trust and i give it to you i don't have less i have more spiritual goods turn out to be the things that the more we share the more we have and so it follows that spiritual happiness is the greatest renewable source of energy we have and we make it by sharing so the one jewish insight i would add to our conversation is let's think a little less of the happiness i feel and more of the happiness we make when we come together as families as communities as communities of faith respecting and loving one another joined in that bond of fellowship and love thank you everything bishop jefford shorey would you like to take the place of honor now it's a joy to be with you it is a joy it is a joy to be with you uh thank you for your introduction to happiness from buddhist perspective i was struck by your saying that happiness is both physical and mental in christian tradition it is very important for us that god became human that god took human form and therefore bodies are of utmost importance but as rabbi sachs has said sometimes we take the goods of this world too seriously we think that they are god rather than god happiness for christians is about right relationship right relationship with god with self and with other other both other human beings and all of the rest of creation and it is that part that we are learning anew right relationship with god is putting god first in the center of things understanding as rabbi sachs has said that nothing can replace god right relationship with other human beings and also with the rest of creation is understanding that all is made in the image of god that it all reflects the divine i'm reminded of indra's net and the remarkable um understanding that each part of creation reflects the whole that is learning that we are only beginning to touch happiness in right relationship means using the blessings of this world for the benefit of all that none of us can be truly happy unless we all are we talk about that both in terms of shalom great hebrew vision of peace right relationship with god and neighbor and creation and christian take on that probably most clearly called the reign of god rain when god rules when god rules when god rules all is in right relationship we cooperate with that understanding when we cooperate we find greater happiness when we don't take ourselves as god we find much greater happiness when we are not in the center of things when other created things are not at the center two we are finding right relationship happiness communally happiness in community not easy the eternal search but it is it is in pursuing that that we find greater happiness your holiness we've met for 40 years on different continents it's a great joy to see you again because your presence itself is happiness to discuss happiness is one thing to discuss happiness is one thing to be happy is something else and the paradox of our world is that in order to listen to a lecture on happiness people have to stand in line for two hours unhappily to get in that's the world in which we live allow me to make a few comments uh from the islamic from the point of the islamic tradition upon the brief but very focused and profound comments that you made upon happiness first of all this division between physical happiness and meditational i prefer that to mental happiness if you allow me to use a presumptuous buddhist term but has a very deep islamic resonance one perhaps can talk about nirvanic happiness and samsaric happiness but samsaric happiness is already a mirage and it's that which we pursue most of our life from the islamic point of view the word for happiness which appears in the quran sacred scripture of islam is the word a whole series of terms which are related to each other and is identified very clearly with the paradisal state that is that is the state of those in paradise in heaven there are many other terms of course which have correspondences to buddhist eschatology you have written a wonderful book about that somebody should compare that with the abrahamic eschatologies but that means something very deep that is we live in a world in which we're not often happy but we never leave the pursuit of happiness which means itself that we're not really made for this world alone the very fact that we are never fully satisfied with all the physical and psychological demands of our lower passionate soul means that we're not only that so unhappiness itself is the proof in the sense of our spiritual character otherwise everyone would be happy in doing everyday things and every happiness that we seek outside of spiritual happiness comes to an end and the ending is always sadness what separates happiness from the experiences of life other than happiness is sorrow longing separation termination pain all of these things all of which mean that the state of happiness for those who only seek it in the samsari world in a sense is always temporal finitude it always comes to an end and that is i think one of the deepest intuitions that all the religions of the world are presented to human beings in islam we do not only talk about the pursuit of happiness unless by pursuit you mean a kind of profession but pursuing the ordinary sense of pursuing but attainment happiness we are in this world not only to pursue happiness but to attain it because there are some people who have the idea that it's life itself or even the truth there's no such thing as truth and the philosopher i speak as for one moment as that just following the truth is enough whereas our traditions believe that what is important is to attain happiness as your holiness abortion said in so many of your writings then you point it very briefly to something which is extremely important and that is the levels of happiness happiness is not only one level everything in the deepest sense in our universe is layered it's hierarchic it's structured i don't mean a political sense i mean in an inward sense in the sense that you you are the dalai lama and the simple peasant who doesn't have your knowledge at all in tibet and there are all levels in between and happiness is the same way somehow our soul realizes that there are modes of happiness and each human being characterizes his life according to what he or she conceived this mode of hierarchy to be that what makes me most happy then what is the second one what is the third one and people who go through life without being able to smile at the moment of death are usually those who've gotten their priorities wrong have not been able to see this hierarchy of course there's happiness in drinking a cold glass of water when we are thirsty not of course saying cola is happiness which i received on the airplane as i was coming down here i don't mean that all the way from that to what you alluded to meditation concentration reaching the neuronic consciousness in the same way that we have levels of consciousness there are levels of happiness and happiness is the human being who through life can go through these various stages happiness it does not preclude or exclude social happiness but it is not only social happiness happiness has to start from within us it's a happy human being who creates a happy ambiance a happy amnesty does not necessarily create a happy human being let me just conclude because i only have a few minutes to speak in the philosophical sense to be happy is to be oneself and here the islamic tradition emphasizes that god created us with a primordial nature what we call dinofettra or alphetra in arabic with primordial nature and that primordial nature was combined with joy and happiness it was paradiso and so in a sense happiness is our right but not as following beings we first have to rediscover that primordial nature and life's goal is precisely to rediscover who we are once we know who we are we are happy there are very few human beings in the modern world who are happy with themselves i i have many friends who go to some village in afghanistan before i was bombed or india or some place and see that people are happy they said what right you have to be happy you don't have television you don't have refrigerator you don't get stuck in 495 traffic like i do five hours a day in washington that part they don't say uh they think that happiness should be impossible in those states it's because they do not realize that these people are perhaps closer to being who they really are they have also fallen but not as much as this totally exteriorized modern human being who has to always concentrate all of his energies outwardly and i could not but agree 100 percent with what our dear rabbi said about consumerism we live in a world in which we are fooled into accepting the causes of unhappiness as happiness and that is one of the great tragedies which is resulting now in our destruction of the very environment in which we live the environmental crisis is due to this substitution really is to do of course to a false science of nature and all of those things but also to a consumer's philosophy which believes that happiness is to have is to want more and more once it was asked of a great sufi master from horizon what do you want he said i want not to want that is the epitome of happiness and in conclusion just let me quote one single arabic sentence very famous proverb that it says that is he who lives happily dies happily and happiness is a permanent state of the soul and we are here to attain it thank you so i'd like to ask each of you one question and then have us interact and if you have questions of each other i'd also welcome that um your holiness as several people have already mentioned you radiate happiness you seem to embody happiness and you also have a wonderful sense of humor um and yet you are familiar with suffering your life has unfolded on a canvas that is marked by gravity and the fate of your people and your tradition so how does your understanding of happiness your notion of happiness encompass that encompass suffering and the hardness of life and speak to that because [Music] oh of course my life not easy that's clear i think perhaps i think firstly when i see some problem some tragedy i always look from different angle and sometimes the tragedy one aspect tragedy but that same sort of event may also may have some positive thing so when i look more holistic way then the that event not 100 sort of negative but they are also part of positive now one example i usually use telling people we lost our own country itself sad but that brings differently new opportunity there's immense benefit so like that that's one thing then second i think one of you i think mentioned to you when when when we face some sort of sad thing if you look very closely and looks unbearable look from distance is not that much unbearable one thing then another thing as one buddhist master eighth century mentioned when we face some problem think or analyze the problem situation if the situation can overcome eventually then no need worry make effort if there is no way to overcome that then no use much sorrow sadness much worry so that i feel very realistic approach so these things i usually should do and and and also if our sort of friend spend i think uh one week together then you may notice a certain period my sadness [Laughter] oh with my anger some chamber also [Laughter] due to some irritation that also as a human being is it possible but overall okay [Laughter] and i think it can be very interesting for this next hour or so if we not only honor and enjoy the echoes of similarity but also the differences so i wonder and i'd pose this to you rabbi sax and even bishop shore um it seems to me that that the hebrew bible let's say the psalms really wallow in sadness and suffering and anger as a way through those human experiences so i wonder how do you you know is there uh how would you how do you respond to this idea and how might you see it differently or what might you add to that approach to sadness and um rabbi sucks i know that you have just finished sitting shiva at the death of your mother so you've been in a period of grief and mourning which is very much lived and embodied yeah it is true that if you read the jewish literature and you read jewish history happiness is not the first word that comes to mind we do we do degrees in misery postgraduate angst and advanced guilt and we do all this stuff you know and yet somehow or other when all of that is at an end we get together and we celebrate and where i love what his holiness has just said how he himself has lived a story that i resonate with the story of suffering and exile and yet he has come through it still smiling and that to me is how i have always defined my faith as a jew the definition of a jew israel is as it says in genesis 34 one who struggles wrestles with god and with humanity and prevails and jacob says something very profound to the angel he says i will not let you go until you bless me and that is how i feel about suffering when something bad happens i will not let go of that bad thing until i have discovered the blessing that lies within it when my late father died now i'm in mourning for my late mother that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that i thought were important external success all of that is irrelevant you lose a parent you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is how easily you can lose those you love and then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times i will not let you go until you bless me thank you to that word blessing and blessed i guess this is a sneak preview of your talk tomorrow bishop jefford short because you you you i have read it in advance and you you talk about all the many words in christian tradition in biblical greek that that add up to happiness and blessing is one of those and i was i'm very struck when you when you bring this discussion with happiness in connection with the beatitudes where jesus talks about blessedness and happiness and it is it actually sounds very buddhist when i read it in the context of preparing for this and yet i think um yes so rabbi sex you said you've also written that uh about the oy vey theory of jewishness um and i think that there's been a temptation in christianity not a temptation a tendency to think about happiness that will only be complete after this life right in the pure unmediated presence of god um talk to me about how you work with that tendency and how you see that evolving in the imagination of christians now there's this ongoing tension between seeing happiness as joining with god is communion with god that's only possible in the afterlife and the insistence that human beings are created to be happy that happiness is possible in this life and i was struck in thinking about the question about suffering that there's a couple of places in the psalms where it says happy are those who will dash the enemy's babies against the rock it's it's an insistence on justice it's a it's a demand for restoration of right relationship it's not it's not finding joy in death it's taking what is and insisting that greater happiness for all is possible there's that the particular piece of christianity that insists that sometimes suffering is a root to happiness for the larger community that kind of suffering may not be chosen but it contains blessing within it the sense that our our goal is this fully restored creation at right relationship with all that is and sometimes the journey there requires us to enter into suffering and to demand to insist that there is blessing in the midst of that wrestling with the angel it must be there you have created us to be happy you have created us to be good now show us show us the way through this show us the possibility for which all that is is created professor nasser um it seems to me that a distinctive word that islam brings to this discussion of happiness happiness and virtue is the notion of beauty you've written a great deal about that i've been so struck across the years by muslim conversation partners talking about the moral value of beauty and um that you know the saying of the prophet that god is beautiful and he loves beauty i'd love for you to say a little bit more about the link you understand between beauty and virtue and happiness first of all uh in the arabic language the word for beauty and virtue is the same and goodness all three the root which is also the root of my own name my name is hussein now made famous thanks to president new president everybody knows it like the root hsn in arabic means these three things beauty virtue and goodness in the islam muslim mind they're not separated from each other in the deepest sense uh goodness in the ordinary sense these were external actions in a deeper sense with virtues within us beauty can deal also with external forms and it can deal with beauty of the soul beauty of the spirit within us but beauty in a sense is more interiorizing beauty is what draws us directly to the divine to the divine reality i said presumptuous to talk of holiness about buddhist sayings but the buddha says that the beauty of my image saves so the beauty of celestial beauty that is the center of the sacred art of various traditions is salvific it's a way of salvation and ugliness which is the opposite of beauty in arabic also means evil the ugly is the evil one of the signs that live in an evil world is the ugly ambience we have created for ourselves and look at the remarkable predominance of beauty in nature take us human beings out and look at nature remarkable predominance of beauty from the fish that swim under the sea in coral reefs that we're now destroying so rapidly in the gulf of mexico to the great mountains whose snows are melting thanks to the fact they're dropping too many cars i've been a person at the forefront the environmental movement for 50 years so i feel very sensitive towards this i think what is happening is proof precisely of the era of our world view but we look at nature look how beautiful it is and many people today in the west who are atheists are the greatest protectors of nature because they find through the beauty of nature the vacuum created in their soul in the laws of the sacredness human form and therefore even there they're the deepest spiritual the great paradox is that in the united states they're the greatest defenders the atheists the greatest defenders of the natural environment and this is very what a paradox that could i think would be more paradoxical in human history now islam looks upon this quality of beauty as not being something accidental to be virtuous is to be beautiful to be good is to be beautiful and that is why wherever islam meant went it created a civilization based on beauty look at islamic art the carpets the tile the and that again is one of the great tragedies that we have now some of the ugliest cities in the world in the islamic world the great contrast there's been a city like isfahan and it's modernized part of karachi or cairo they're all part of the same civilization but the spiritual aspect the beauty has not disappeared with the ugliness of urban sprawl it is central to islamic spirituality and islamic spirituality sees even morality in terms of spiritual beauty because a moral act should emanate from a virtue soul and a virtual soul is the soul that is beautiful if i were to translate the word virtuous soul into persian or arabic it would mean beautiful soul so yes beauty is central and it's beauty that brings us happiness because our souls in that primordial condition that i mentioned were created in beauty drawn to beauty like a firefly to the candle into our soul is drawn to beauty and beauty makes us happy except depends what condition our soul is in as he said uh you could listen to the 21st concerto mozart the second movement which is a celestial piece of western music and be happy for a long long time you could listen to this bang bang which is called music today and be happy for five minutes and then get bored and go to something else but our soul seeks beauty and this beauty that makes us all happy everything even says a beautiful dish you're made when we are hungry so yes there's a very deep nexus between beauty and happiness and happy is the person who realizes inner beauty would any of you like to respond to each other any of this yes rabbi sex i i was very moved by by the beauty of your words and and i i agree with them totally i just wanted to add a little footnote um a very great rabbi rabbi abraham cook who was the rabbi in israel in the early part of the 21st century found himself stuck in london where i come from during the first world war he hated london but there was one bit of london he loved which was the national gallery and he would go to the national gallery and sit day after day looking at the portraits by rembrandt he even said that when god created light on the first day of creation that was a special spiritual life because the sun and the moon didn't get created until the fourth day so it wasn't physical light it was a special holy light and he said god took some of that light and gave it to rembrandt and the thing about repeat the characters in rembrandt's paintings is that they're not beautiful but they shine with an inner radiance and as well as the love of beauty i also think there's a religious challenge to see beauty in things that outwardly don't look that beautiful and that is special i've noticed in um some of what you've all written in preparation for this conference as the monotheists among us here at mcpanel that there's a lot of attention to defining happiness and to the many words that are used in our different traditions and in our languages in our traditions original language and and it it makes me think that that in this culture in particular if we are going to take happiness seriously in a whole new way as i think many of us want to we do have to wrestle a bit with that word it that also leads me to wonder if american culture has somehow been fundamentally led astray from the outset by defining happiness as a right as a right is this something that we have to work with in order to have this new conversation yes i've been very much concerned with this of late in trying to compare the attitude of various religions to the question of rights because western civilization keeps talking about human rights human rights human rights all the time and other religious civilizations now that they don't like being human they should have always seen this somewhat differently and that is a question of the relation of rights to responsibilities i think you have something very important there by emphasizing the rights of man to happiness nothing is said about the responsibilities of men and many american generations have sort of expected the governments to provide for them help to exercise their rights but never really the responsibility is very much unless people have had individual conscience taught in churches and synagogues i think the time has come for us to realize its first responsibilities then rights the word responsible comes from the latin word rest which means response echo we are ourselves responses to god's creative act so by existing we are responsible and it's from accepting a responsibility that issues all our rights i think if we do not balance in our present generation and the generation that is to come once again uh correct balance between responsibilities and rights just talk about human rights is going to end by just and terminating human existence we need to accept responsibility first and foremost towards other creatures human beings towards god's nature and ultimately towards god himself of course your holiness um i wonder how you react to happiness being defined as a right right sorry you do it right you do oh i always believe and also share with the people the very purpose of our life is for happiness those non-believer also they felt their religion religious faith this brings a lot of complication so without that they say they feel they're easier to achieve happy life so i think the very purpose of our existence is for happiness i think our life i think ultimately based on hope there's no guarantee that tomorrow or next month or next year or next century something wonderful something good nobody guarantee that something better but we simply you see the hope or in spite of today's difficulties or future will be better so we're making effort if hope gone completely hopeless then i think that very attitude may shorten our life then a person could little bit impatience and experience hopelessness than suicide so therefore our life depends on hope hope for better for happiness so therefore i feel uh maybe i think too simple maybe but i feel like that the very purpose of our life like we can we can say happiness so that mentioned your constitution and then also you see equally very right you see their happiness not come from sky but we must make a happy life so we have the responsibility the the government cannot provide happiness uh happiness must create within ourselves and our family so ultimately our own responsibility isn't it that's my view of course but here i think i want make clear of course to the audience buddhism buddhist thinking is more on the law of causality rather than creator buddhism and jainism so if you go more more so the philosophical field then we have big barrier even some people say you see buddhist buddhism is kind of theistic it isn't but again you see some people say not buddhism is not atheism because it means nd anti-god so atheism means anti-god in that sense buddhism is not anti-god buddhism respect the different tradition cheers to tradition certainly and myself also deeps of admiration all those major tradition it is obviously no question is there last sort of more than thousand years or two thousand years these major spiritual nature spiritual spiritual tradition give immense benefit to humanity so so therefore obviously this is sufficient plenty of reasons to respect to admire to appreciation to appreciate but in the in the meantime i always make distinction faith appreciation respect to different things faith my own case faith buddhism towards buddhism to buddhism but respect to all religions um bishop story and then right happiness not a right but a duty and a duty not just to oneself but to the whole community to the whole of creation when we see it when we see it primarily as a right it is so individually focused that at least many americans lose the lose the perspective of the larger whole um right to pursue happiness on behalf of society on half on behalf of all creation i'd like just to reflect on one other word which is pursuit because as anyone who thought deeply about han aristotle was very good on this ecclesiastic likewise finding happiness doesn't necessarily follow from pursuing it sometimes the deepest happiness comes when you're least expecting it and there is a wonderful story about an eighteenth-century rabbi lavi yitzhak of berdychev who is looking at people rushing to and fro in the town square and he wonders why they're all running so frenetically and he stops one and he says why are you running and the man says i'm running to make a living and the rabbi says to him how come you're so sure that the living is in front of you and you have to run to catch it up maybe it's behind you and you've got to stop and let it catch up with you now which bits of contemporary culture do we stop and let our blessings catch up with us now that is called the sabbath which we all share the sabbath is when we celebrate the things that are important but not urgent and i remember once um taking a uh you know an atheist actually i think an atheist who's the premier child care specialist in britain to see a little jewish primary school and some of the stuff they do there and she saw on friday you know the little children preparing for the sabbath the little five-year-old mother and father blessing the five-year-old children and welcoming the five-year-old guests and she's fascinated by this sabbath which she has never experienced and she asked one five-year-old boy what do you like most about the sabbath and he says oh what don't you like and a five-year-old boy being an orthodox child says you can't watch television it's terrible and then she said what do you like about the sabbath and he said it's the only time daddy doesn't have to rush away and sometimes we don't need to pursue happiness we just need to pause and let it catch up with us and i think that gets at precisely why the practice of meditation the teachings of buddhism and the teachings of his holiness in particular have been so magnetic for so many people in the west as they have discovered this there is at the heart of buddhist teaching a notion of about happiness that finding calmness in the mind right is part of it which is something you just pointed at and i'd like to draw out the three of you about corollaries in your traditions obviously sabbath is one for generating calmness of the mind of course in the islamic tradition the five daily prayers themselves you pull yourself out of the flow of time in a space that is sacralized and the ablution itself in the sense washes the soul as well as the body and for a few minutes even if your mind is running like that you have to force yourself to pull yourself out of that context of course only the saints succeed completely but nevertheless the exercise has a tremendous effect upon having at least certain punctuations put upon the sentence of our life every day that goes faster and faster and secondly of course the month of ramadan the month of fasting when we're doing a whole month the tempo of even big cities slows down if around 6 15 620 when the sun sets you go to such a big city as cairo or karachi where the streets are cluttered you can't drive all the streets are empty everything slows down and this power ramadan has been able to preserve despite everything i think of course you have for example you used to have lent and you have of course yom kippur the holy days of judaism so we share that but in islam you have a whole month of fasting which changes the whole temple of life under the daily prayers they're very very central they're like buddhist meditations in islamic form by coming in a punctuated manner throughout the day and of course some people then have explored extended prayers we have our own formula meditation invocation contemplation but that's only for people who are spiritually very active you might say like let's say monks in tibet but for the ordinary muslims those other practices are ubiquitous they run throughout all of society you know in some islamic cities let's say for the noon prayer you could go to the bazaar put your hand in and pick up all the jewelry and put in your pocket and go because all these shops are left open they're absolute quiet and everyone is in the mosque praying it's really quite remarkable experience that continues to this day um obviously in judaism is in all the religious traditions there are elite forms of meditation but what really interests me as as interests you is just the simple basic act of prayer and prayer for me daily prayer three times daily i'm we're not quite up to five times daily but we're impressed um three things happen when i pray the first thing is thanks you know the first prayer we pray thank you god for giving me back my life when i was on honeymoon with elaine um for reasons we didn't go into i i almost drowned i was in italy i couldn't swim i was out of my depth there was no one close and i remember as i went under for the fifth time thinking two thoughts number one what a way to begin a honeymoon and number two watch the italian for help so you know when i get up every morning i know what it feels thank you god for giving me back my life and that is the first that underlying sense of gratitude you get when you pray the second thing is confession the truth is that it is so important to be able to say god i got it wrong because god forgives when i get it wrong and he believes in me more than i believe in myself if he didn't have total faith in me i wouldn't be here to begin with our cultures but you know our modern western culture makes it very hard to fail but we all fail and therefore when we have an unforgiving culture we have to fake it and pretend we never did fit and when i am able to say to god god you know that i got it wrong and he says to me yeah jonathan you got it wrong uh but try again next time and you feel the ability to acknowledge your mistakes then you grow you learn by those so that is the second thing and the third thing is simply the basic experience of prayer all together standing in the presence of a of a deeper form of being knowing that this universe is not indifferent to my existence death to my prayers blind to my hopes that somehow there is something that is giving me hope and when i feel in that presence of the being at the heart of being then we experience the greatest line of all in the life of faith from psalm 23 though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil for you are with me we can face the future without fear if we know we do not face it alone [Applause] we share we share many of the same forms of prayer prayer as awareness and attending christians may happen in other traditions as well sometimes pray with images sometimes pray without images a kind of emptying prayer i think the part that is perhaps most attractive to new learners is about understanding all of existence as prayer the celts were very effective at blessing each moment of the day blessing the milking of the cow blessing the covering of the fire at night brother lawrence blessed the washing of dishes runners begin to understand the blessing that comes with putting your body to work and emptying the mind there are practices that each of us participates in that are about simple awareness of god's presence in every breath in every moment in every encounter in every challenge it's it's that awareness and attending that is i think so significant i agree we'll complete that they're all very also much emphasized in islam and islam as in judaism priesthood is divided among all human beings and each person stands directly before god but perhaps there's one thing that the rabbi doesn't know and this holy doesn't know that i should mention the muslims owe a great deal to moses you said you pray three times a day we pray five times a day we believe that when the prophet ascended from jerusalem to heaven god taught him the daily prayers that we performed and when he was coming down moses met him and said how many units of prayer did god order you to tell your followers he said 51. he said they'll never do it believe me i have a thousand years of experience go back and bargain with god go back and bargain with god and so the prophet went and bargained we came down to 17 units thank you very much that otherwise would have to do 51. so muslims always value moses for that and your holiness um buddhism and mindfulness meditation some of these buddhist practices to calm the mind have become very important in many lives including people who are devout uh christians muslims and jews buddhism offers itself up i can imagine that people have said to you though i mean you have it's not just about calmness of mind it's training your mind and you in particular uh your daily practice is known you spend hours in meditation and prayer uh i think i think most of us in this culture feel that we do not or cannot carve out that kind of space for training our minds to get to the point as you said that in the midst of something that feels sad or tragic we can gain a distance on it what what advice do you give people who feel that it is hard to make that kind of space in a modern life foreign i always believe and also accordingly i expressing or telling people that different people different or today tradition it is much better to keep one's own tradition it is much better to keep it more suitable so in the west judo christian background generally and some extent islam also so all these tears to religion so it is much better to keep that tradition uh and then like uh i think buddhist terminology mindfulness mindfulness practice oh you should constantly sort of watch one's own mental state this whether you see use that term or not all religion is to practice that isn't it self-discipline now like ramadan or five times prayer or three times with prayer mindfulness working and during that sort of prayer your mind fully concentrate on allah or god like that that also is a single pointed mind sort of practice meditation so all major religious tradition different sorry i think different term but same meaning uh so so my christian friend you see uh showing interest or in fact i think practice the certain should they techniques or method to increase compassion to increase patience so that's okay these are common practice basically is a practice of love compassion forgiveness tolerance self-discipline contentment all these same practice common common so one thing the theory of some kind of relative relativity relativity absence of independent existence one my christian friend one monk now he already passed away he always showing interest about some of these buddhist practice and then one day he asked me about this theory of emptiness although he himself usually have some kind of sort of explanation according to christianity it's a total submission oneself to god so the self-centered attitude empty that kind of surrender meaning meaning good but the other meaning of emptiness means absence of independent existence no absolute so he sort of furthers or diversity inquiry about that then i told him this is not your business this is buddhist business so in the philosophical field you see these differences tasty religion and non-testing religion so it is a better issue to keep one's own sort of tradition that's much effective much better some people looks to see fun to do to take something from here something from here something from here no real solid basis that's not good some criticism unique things remain there more tasteful everything mixed the taste-ness so speaking of food bodily pleasures where does the body come into all this where does the body come into happiness um bishop shore you mentioned running and i know our whole attraction towards external facilities huh you see lost the recognition of importance of sort of inner values internal resources or internet resources and you think more inward than you find there's no need physical rush of course mental is still there so that i think the i think some of the sort of problem after too much busy life i think too much attention about uh outside and we many so many people usually believe their real sort of happiness come from outside from money from power just this foundation is wrong real happiness must come from within these are just those factors for conditions that as a human being as well as being with consciousness the ultimate source of happiness within ourselves that's very important but again i do want to ask about this being embodied i don't it it can sound like we're having a discussion about happiness that's very cerebral very mental you for example bishop story have talked has spoken about running as uh body meditation let's talk a little bit about our physical selves in this condition of happiness i think there are two essential pieces to that one is the ancient ascetical tradition that trains the body um so that the mind can in some sense do its work more effectively the mind and the heart and the soul and the other is this sense that i will speak of in my own tradition as incarnation our bodies are a blessing they are evidence of god's love for what is created and the uh the the sense of happiness of the whole creation shalom the reign of god is about bodily needs satisfied people have enough to eat they have shelter they have meaningful work they live in peace they can watch their children grow up and the elders can wander in the street it's both it's both understanding bodies as tools for working toward happiness for working toward justice and peace and that that justice and peace and embodied blessing needs to be available to the whole community um well obviously judaism has a certain approach to the physical dimension of the spiritual life it's called food in fact somebody once said you know if you want to crash course in understanding all the jewish festivals they can all be summed up in three sentences they tried to kill us we survived let's eat but i think that is part of our faith that god is to be found down here in this world that god created and seven times pronounced good and i find one of the most striking sentences in judaism it is in the jerusalem talmud is the statement of rav that in the world to come a person will have to give an account of every legitimate pleasure he or she deprived themselves of in this life because god gave us this world to enjoy and i must say that quite a part i mean and absolutely judaism is taken and i think we share this but judaism has said there are three approaches to physical pleasure number one is hedonism the worship of pleasure number two is asceticism the denial of pleasure and number three is the biblical way the sanctification of pleasure and that i think is important and very profound and i must say that you know sometimes the best kind of interfaith gatherings i mean theology is extremely wonderful it's very cognitive that is a very polite english way of saying boring and and sometimes the best form of interfaith you just sit together you eat together you drink together you share one another's songs you listen to one another's stories and just enjoying the pleasures of this world with people of another faith that is beautiful i would add just one other thing if there is one thing i find beautiful beyond merchants they're in my own tradition in what we call hospitality very real element of christianity and islam and buddhism it's a super element in sikhism what's called langer you know it's not just my physical pleasures it's giving physical pleasure to those who have all too little and one very great hasidic teacher once said somebody else's material needs are my spiritual duties and that i think is where we join in sharing our pleasures with others the body in a sense is like a double-edged sword on the one hand there is need for denial on the other hand the body is the manifestation of divine presence on the highest level and there is no sanctification possible without a certain form of asceticism the germans saying that there is no culture without a citizen and that's true we have to deny in order to be able to confirm that which transcends that what we deny the testimony of faith in islam there is not god but god saw the denial of all the gods with the small g all the false idols that we worship in order to confirm the divine reality now in all the monotheistic religion in fact in all religions hinduism buddhism there is an element of asceticism in order to free the soul from the entrapment not of the body itself but the image of the body upon the psyche or the psyche is that element of the site which dominates over the body and which in sense imprisons us there is no religion without asceticism that's impossible however to deny the reality of the body sanctified what he called sanctification is also a very great error and as great tradition as in buddhism which began by emphasizing uh samsara you end up with a sacred body of the buddha and we have that in another form in islam we have in all abrahamic religions the fact that we believe in the resurrection of the body and not only of the soul which we share with islam shared with christianity and judaism and also the in christianity the body of christ the central the body of christ is one of the paradoxes from myself as a muslim look upon christianity is a religion in which you eat the body of the founder every day in the eucharist in a certain sense symbolically but there was such a long period of theology of opposition to the sacred ashes of the body so only side stream currents and christian theology delved into it and now it's coming to the fore and the question of the denial of the sickness of the body which also has to do with sacred asthma sexuality and the relation that we have with the world of nature and the denial of the sacred aspect of nature they all go together cluster together and to realize that our body is also has a sanctified aspect that is a projection of in a sense as the subtle body the spiritual body on this plane and especially physical beauty reflects sometimes a very very deep beauty is not skin deep necessarily and that spiritual beauty is always reflected in the physical we grow it uh when we're born as a young man and woman we might be beautiful but that's i've done nothing for that that's god has done that when we are old if we're still beautiful it's the reflection of our actions in this world the person who grows old beautifully there's something inward that has been transformed and so the body is very very precious the care for it the understanding of its significance and a deeper level of spiritual significance which have this entanturism in the indian universe and we also have it in islam is i think a very very significant revival of religious teaching that has to take place in all the religions today and your holiness i i wonder how you think about the body where does the body come into your imagination about spiritual happiness without a body then no longer brain [Laughter] then difficult to think so from the buddhist viewpoint of course tradition which based on law of causality you see the thinking analyzing is the most important for that human brain is really very smart the other animals they also from the police viewpoint they also have the feeling yet they have no such wonderful sort of brain so therefore we believe we consider you see this body is something very very precious for example in the there's a buddhist practices that involve one's relationship with an attitude towards one's body one's material resources and also one's collection of virtues and in in the connection to all of these one needs there you know there are different stages of practice that involve first of all kind of letting go and then uh and then the second different circumstances under certain circumstances we have to the services is such you see give even your body your organ something really benefit then give but then another circumstances you must protect protect so there is a kind of a guarding and protecting and nurturing of the body and then um and then also perfection of those resources and body and then uh increasing and enhancing their capacity so there's a complex relationship between you know both body resources and once virtues and also also i already mentioned at the beginning this is the two different kind of satisfaction one satisfaction of course a comfortable shelter so sufficient food and also sufficient sleep you see provides certain sort of degree of satisfaction that also is even we have to acquire nothing wrong the and the comfortable sort of sustain your body fit then your mind mental function becoming more effective physically too much and then mental function also difficult so in any way there's some happiness certain degree of happiness or satisfaction related with sensorial that's a body another level of a level of happiness or satisfaction is mental state between these two mental state is more important i think obviously mentally happy even if you see some purpose even your physical sort of difficulties now ramadan it's a daytime whole day fasting you may feel really hungry or some sort of even tiredness but mentally you voluntarily take that that hardship so that gives you satisfaction mentally so mental satisfaction can subdue physical difficulties other hand mental unhappiness mentals of the pain cannot save you by physical comfort so mental state is more superior and more important and your holiness compassion is obviously central to what you teach and also to your understanding of a happy life you have written and spoken a great deal about practicing compassion towards enemies towards those who hate you um this is a moment in american political life and cultural life where there's a great deal of hatred and lack of compassion of enemies and i wonder just to bring this discussion to another level to a social level what advice you might offer to this moment in our collective life jesus christ's irritation detention law for example in the gospel um you know in the gospel if you find the commandment that if some hits you on your right cheek then turn the other cheek so that's this sort of same idea practice of patience and practice of tolerance yes but but also subverting subverting the violence using the violence in some sense the energy of the anger um to change the situation what does that mean in practical terms how would that look they're also similar they're also similar now here you say we have to go to a more deeper level the violent real demarcation violence and non-violence is not on the level of physical action but mental action a certain sort of physical rough action wrathful action or motivated by sense of concern of well-being of other or in order to stop their wrongdoing if they carry wrongdoing then ultimately they will suffer so and aware that and purely the sense of concern of their long-term well-being use some harsh method and force or forcefully stop their wrongdoing it's non-violence hitting on one cheek in the ancient world the superior would hit with the back of the hand and if you turned your head he would have to use the other hand and look you in the face so suddenly the dynamic has changed he would have to see you um he can't simply hit and hit an in the 23rd chapter of deuteronomy so unexpected i want i think we all have to hear it here it is moses is talking about the experience of the israelites in egypt we read about it in the book of exodus an age of oppression of slavery of almost genocide attempted genocide and eventually the israelites leave they go through the desert and as they're about to cross the jordan and enter the land moses says these words do not hate an egyptian for you were a stranger in his land now that language is very odd you're a stranger in islam sounds as if the egyptians gave them hospitality as if they put up the israelites in the cairo hilton and it wasn't like that so what is moses saying do not hate an egyptian for you were strangers in your land he is telling the israelites you have left the physical egypt now you must leave the mental experience of egypt you have to let go of hate because if you do not let go of hate you will never be free if the israelites had continued to hate their enemies moses would have taken the israelites out of egypt but he would not have taken egypt out of the israelites they would be slaves to their past slaves to their feeling of pain and injustice and grievance this is the line he taught them and the line we have to repeat day after day in this difficult and dangerous 21st century you have to let go of hate if you want to be free [Applause] one of my muslim friend she explained to me one interpretation of jihad not only sort of of the attack on other but real meaning is compared or attack your own wrongdoing or negativity negativities the greater jihad the bigger jihadists to combat your own negative forces within you yes yes so in that sense the whole buddhist practice is [Applause] a great conclusion for an interfaith summit yes i have no choice but to say a few words because what our dear friend rabbi shaq said about the question of hatred and anger right now is directed more than anywhere else towards the islamic world as far as the west is concerned the buddhist world does not share in that nor does the hindu world and it brings up of course some very intractable problems at the heart of bushes the arab-israeli conflict which goes back precisely to rooted attitudes if i can put it mildly which have to be given up if you're going to have peace but there's something more profound that is going on here i was alluding to it last night when i gave a talk here which is very very sad and that is that we have all been engaged as represent different religions to try to better understand each other during the la last half century half a century ago people in egypt or iran know much less about buddhism than they do now his books had not been but many of the books read what he had written had not been translated let's say into my own mother tongue persia a lot of things like that have changed but one thing which is going the other way is the rising hatred in america against islam until a few years goes against islamic so-called extremists now it's against islam itself and many of the old texts written hundreds of years ago in the middle ages in europe and latin have been resuscitated and regurgitated right here in atlanta and other cities and coming out of the mouth of people from whom would not expect this some claim to be christians and brings up a terrible response terrible reaction which is going to endanger i said last night also the future of all christian communities in the middle east in the islamic world and uh the question that always comes up the question of compassion that you ask compassion is meaningless if you have no power to either do good or evil commit compassion towards the australian aborigines what effect does it have and usually is combined when you can do something and you exercise it as the buddhists have emphasized so much now uh people do not understand two things first of all islam is a religion none is not deprived of compassion but after buddhism there is no religion that speaks as much as compassion as islam does every chapter of the quran begins with the name of god the most merciful and compassionate or all merciful our compassion and secondly that compassion towards other creatures has done any less in the islamic world than anywhere else you cannot say god created humanity and it divided compassion he gave four fifth to tibet one tenth to let's say belgium and then the rest is scattered over the rest of the earth that's of course that is not at all the case but what is involved here is the question of power that is it's not the islamic world that invaded the two neighboring countries of the united states it's the other way around and the great problem for the muslims is the exercise of compassion at a time when they've been bombed every night and the important for christians in this country to understand what it means to be placed in such a situation how to exercise christian compassion christian charity we are in a very very complicated situation and i think the leaders the religious leaders spiritual readers of these traditions religion including islam must be able to speak up to this issue simply vilification that i have all the monopoly and compassion you don't have any of it you're just brute force or so forth that's not going to solve any problem at all and we need to and that itself to understand that the other can also be compassionate is a form of compassion if you're a follower of christ or of the prophet islam anybody you must exercise that no muslim has a right to say that a christian does not have compassion because somebody dropped a bomb on his brother's head last night and vice versa and this is a very important issue here is dhaka especially in what's called the middle east today that's a very big subject okay i'm out of my medium i'm used to being in a recording studio where there aren't people applauding of wonderful answers and we're almost at we are out of time yes you may with this sort of topic i want to add one thing one year after after the september 11th event uh the some kind of anniversary sort of prayer meeting in washington the national cathedral at that time i was in washington so they invited me to their ceremony so there i mentioned this was the unthinkable sort of destruction carried by a few people whose background muslim uh these few muslims sort of behavior cannot symbolize cannot represent whole islam so it is absolutely unfair or wrong due to few individuals missing behavior and whole sort of system uh whole tradition and now consider a little bit negative it's totally wrong as far as mischievous people few individual mischievous people every tradition among them uh among the hindus among the jews among the christians among the buddhists in in every sort of religious tradition some mischievous people always there so that cannot sort of symbolize or represent the whole tradition i mentioned that since then many occasions in europe in latin america and also in india i always say because of the people it is very important distinction the whole system and a few mischievous people's activities this must be because differentiated distinction here also i want to tell to tell you now i think media people and also even some sort of writers is a great impression clash western civilization and islam either such things are just one individual sort of view i think there is no valid basis basis so some islam practitioner you see actually you see as we all know because of that mention that word genuine islam practitioner should extend compassion towards all creatures as always mentioned and then also you should say genuine practitioner of islam if if anyone who create bloodshed he or she actually not changing islam practitioner they see that so we must because we must touch the essential message and don't look these few individuals behavior that's very important we need to finish professor nasir you've written that one of the arabic words most commonly used for happiness literally means expanded this follows very much on what his holiness just said and rabbi sachs has written that in the 21st century all religious people must feel themselves enlarged rather than threatened by the presence of religious others i i personally feel that this discussion has been a wonderful demonstration of that and of course again it is such an honor to be here with his holiness and with all of you and i want to thank you so much and thank you all for coming and this concludes our conversation you

Channel: The On Being Project

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Keywords: on being, krista tippett, on being with krista tippett, dalai lama, jonathan sacks, conversation, wisdom, reflection

Id: I17GGBJ_fhI

Length: 110min 7sec (6607 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020