The Dalai Lama Taught Me to be Wise Selfish
I’ve had the pleasure this month of watching and mind mapping two phenomenal films with my friend Christine Leuthold’s Stone Soup Ripple (SSR) documentary club. The first film was Meeting Jim about an extraordinary man who lived a life of openness and vulnerability while building cultural institutions and communities. The second one was Mission Joy, where the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu joins forces for a final time to share ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience research on how we can each find joy in our troubled times.
Thanks to Christine’s background as director and board member of several film festivals, her screening events usually has the directors and producers as featured guests. This time we were joined by Jim’s longtime friend and the film’s producer Steven Ullman and Mission Joy’s co-director Peggy Callahan who gave behind-the-scenes context to each movie and brought the characters to life.
I wanted to the highlights from Mission Joy first with you.
Who are they?
To appreciate the lessons, it helps to know who these people are.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu rose from poverty to become the highest ranking clergyman of South Africa, where he used his prominent position to fight the apartheid through nonviolent means alongside the African National Congress party (ANC). While Nelson Mandela and other activists were in jail, Tutu continued to apply pressure both at home and abroad, touring Europe and the US encouraging an international economic boycott of South Africa. After the fall of apartheid, he was appointed chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to not only investigate human rights abuses, but also to grant amnesty to perpetrators to help the country heal and transition to a free democracy. He was awarded the the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama in 2009.
The Dalai Lama likely needs no introduction being the most famous Buddhist teacher and his activism in Tibetan freedom, climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation. In the film, he notes that it was his misfortune of being exiled from Tibet that freed him from the “Golden Prison” of Potala Palace (the seat of Tibetan government in Lhasa) to reach his current influence. His ability to reframe the suffering he sees is one of his secrets to finding joy.
Mission Joy - How To Be Happy
This is the mind map I made while watching the documentary to organize all the themes. Below are the main takeaways based on this map along with my observations.
What is joy? According to the Dalai Lama, it’s a state of being satisfied and content with a meaningful life, but it’s elusive because most people have external sources of joy. What’s a meaningful life? Both men’s meaning was found in peacefully defying brutal authoritarian regimes and championing causes that reduce this world’s problems. In other words, meaning is be found in the service of others.
Furthermore, being good to others only benefits ourselves, in a “wise selfish” way according to the Dalai Lama. Research has indeed shown that kindness affects lasting happiness and our physical health including a better immune system, not to mention opening up more opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Lastly, Desmond Tutu says that “we can be human only together”. This implies that our meaning as human beings is tied to others. This naturally leads to the question: how do we support others in a meaningful way while retaining internal control of our happiness? I’ll address the full answer in a future post because it ties into Stoicism and Vipassana, but for now I’ll leave you with reframing because it’s how both men transformed their suffering into effective leadership and personal growth. It’s the key to maintaining our internal wellbeing even while doing something as mundane as driving. In “Turning Driving into Meditation Practice”, I wrote:
One such reframing was that because I remained calm, the person tailgating and cutting me off was actually the one suffering. During Vipassana, I learned that the source of our misery comes from feelings of craving and aversion, that attachment to such feelings causes us much agitation. In this instance, the tailgater is suffering from his attachment of getting to his destination (i.e. craving) as fast as possible, therefore any delay or obstacle was unacceptable. By aggressively cutting me off, he would only be fueling his own misery, for I wouldn’t be the only obstacle that stands in his way - there are literally hundreds of miles to go with many things slowing him that are outside of his control. By the time he reaches his destination, it is almost guaranteed that he’ll be in a state of agitation, which bleeds into other aspects of life. Worse, this agitation often hides itself under the guise of an ego boost. This realization made it nearly impossible for me to be angry at those who acted aggressively towards me. Instead, by recognizing the nature of their misery, I could only feel sorry for them. This emotional space then allowed a form of compassion to take place, one that hoped they will get home safely without endangering anyone else.
Both Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have overcome much hardship, seen much conflict and suffering, and led countless people through the darkest of times. They are the very definition of people who live with joy DESPITE OF rather than BECAUSE OF everything they’ve gone through. For them to go through hell and back, and yet unequivocally say that “basic human nature is good” - Dalai Lama and “we are made for goodness” -Desmond Tutu gives me hope for humankind and our future.
As the poet Rilke said, “do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.”
Dalai Lama’s point that there are many more good than bad things in the world despite what we constantly see in the news also makes logical sense because otherwise our civilization would have collapsed already.
Desmond Tutu said that “forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting”. It means to face the crimes and pardon those who’ve wronged you and made you suffer. Rather than a sign of weakness, it takes enormous nobility and strength to reconcile and move forward together, without anger.
This is exactly what he did in Apartheid South Africa where he persisted in leading peaceful resolutions in the face of decades of extreme police brutality and state sponsored massacres. A lesser person would have resorted to violence and righteous vengeance. Together with other great leaders like Nelson Mandela, this persistence paid off in one of the most miraculous political turnarounds of the 20th century while avoiding full scale civil war. The post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a stunning example of how forgiveness can be institutionalized to heal a broken nation.
Zooming out a bit, his approach is supported by history based on my research in the wake of the Russia Ukraine crisis. In the post Thirty Years War era, acts of reconciliation and reintegration contributed to a more peaceful global order, while continued punishment and ostracization led to further conflict. The reinclusion of France into the family of nations after the Napoleonic wars and the post-WW2 support for Europe and Japan comes to mind for the former, while post-WW1 treatment of Germany is an example of the latter. Until we and our leaders see our so-called enemies as people like ourselves, with the same human needs for security, shelter, livelihood and respect, we will continue to demonize each other and be susceptible to rhetoric from the top and echos from the past.
Duality and opposing forces is a central theme in science and philosophy. For every negative, there is an equally strong positive. Friction, the contact of opposing forces, moves us forward. Similarly, Suffering allows us to truly appreciate joy. They are inseparable. It’s the mindset that determines if we are also to transform suffering into appreciation. This mindset is developed through one’s own readiness (through learning and meditation for example) and opportunities to exercise that readiness. Luckily for us, hardships are inevitable and ample.
Along the same lines, suffering is necessary for compassion. I’ve observed that pain is the fertilizer for empathy, for how can we genuinely feel for another if we don’t know how it feels ourselves? This is perhaps the real danger of the wealth gap, which separates us from the suffering of others, leading to an empathy gap. When one portion of society no longer empathizes or feels the pain of another, we cannot effectively craft societal rules that embody compassion. This is another reason to not avoid suffering and to increase our exposure.
It’s fascinating that positive psychology wasn’t studied until recently. The Dalai Lama had to challenge Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and member of the academic establishment, to use science to determine the causes of joy. That’s a fundamental mindset shift in itself since the field of psychology typically studies abnormal negative mental conditions. Equally important is his conclusion that wellbeing is a skill, a learned behavior or muscle that gets stronger the more we exercise it.
I got a taste of that in the 10-day Vipassana silent meditation course I took in February, where we were trained for 12 hours a day to simply sit, be present and observe rather than react to emotions and sensations both positive and negative. This was exceedingly difficult, but it forged a powerful new tool for finding inner peace.
Finally, I noticed that the interaction between these two spiritual leaders sharpened their own understanding of their domains. Not only is it a testament to universal human truths regardless of religious belief, it also means that a mind is as sharp as the other minds it encounters. This is why I actively seek conversations with deep thinkers and don’t shy away from tough questions.
