Book SummaryThe Art of Happiness, by The Dalai Lama

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Art of Happiness

In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler outline the Dalai Lama’s beliefs on how to achieve greater happiness in life—by training yourself to be happier. In this guide, we’ll describe the importance of happiness to all humans and the ways you can change your mind and behavior to create more of it.

The Dalai Lama’s advice for achieving happiness is unique in its simplicity and flexibility. You won’t find elaborate rules or 3-month happiness plans here, because he suggests ways to build happiness that are obvious and even self-explanatory: be empathetic, accept your suffering, learn about your mind. This isn’t to say that implementing those concepts will be easy—it’ll take time and effort—but you have the power now to do so.

Your Purpose Is to Seek Happiness

The Dalai Lama believes that your purpose as a human is to seek happiness. He defines happiness as not merely an emotional state, but a mental and intellectual one. It’s about being content with your life on all levels.

(Shortform note: Aristotle also believed that your purpose in life is to achieve happiness. According to him, every goal you set in life, however distant it may seem from happiness, actually is in service of attaining happiness. Let’s say you join a high-intensity fitness program, which, with its grueling exercises, may not seem in service of your happiness. However, when you look at the micro-goals of joining this program, you see they serve the macro-goal of happiness: You join the program to get fit. You get fit to be healthy. You become healthy to be happier.)

Achieving Happiness Requires Training

The Dalai Lama believes that we’re naturally inclined to be happy, but he doesn’t believe that humans naturally know how to be happy. However, he says, you can realize happiness through training. We’ll present four types of happiness training:

1. Cultivating a Happiness Mindset
2. Building Strong Interpersonal Relationships
3. Working to Eliminate Suffering
4. Weaving Spirituality Into Daily Life

(Shortform note: To help distinguish between a capacity for happiness and the actualization of happiness, think of a special talent, like playing the piano. Just because you have a gift for the piano doesn’t mean you can play a [restricted term] right away. You need to hone your talent through practice and education. Similarly, just because you have an innate capacity for happiness doesn’t mean you know the steps to be happy. You must learn and practice.)

Cultivating a Happiness Mindset

The first of the Dalai Lama’s four ways to be happy is to change your thoughts and state of mind to be more conducive to happiness.

(Shortform note: Some might argue that the idea of changing your mind to be more conducive to happiness isn’t realistic. Especially those suffering from PTSD might experience such significant psychological hurdles in daily life—anxiety, difficulty concentrating, flashbacks, and so on—that the prospect of overcoming them by changing their patterns of thought is impossibly difficult.)

Happiness is a mindset you build and isn’t contingent upon external characteristics, like wealth or status, says the Dalai Lama. Such factors can’t confer lasting happiness. You see this in daily life, adds Cutler: When something great happens, like a promotion, you’re temporarily elated but soon return to your normal level of contentment. Similarly, if you suffer a setback, like a breakup, the negative feelings wear off.

(Shortform note: In science, the phenomenon the Dalai Lama and Cutler refer to—the “wearing-off” of positive or negative emotions—is called hedonic adaptation. What’s more, when positive or negative events are repeated, they have a less pronounced effect on mood, and mood returns more quickly to the baseline. If you keep getting promoted, for instance, the promotions will leave you less happy for less time.)

The Dalai Lama believes there are three steps to cultivating a happiness mindset: education, development of motivation, and exertion. We’ll look at each step individually.

(Shortform note: Other parts of Buddhist teachings are separated into three steps comparable to the ones outlined by the Dalai Lama here. The Threefold Way, for instance, consists of first establishing self-discipline (or ethics), then concentration (or meditation), and finally, wisdom.)

Step 1: Educate Yourself

To cultivate your happiness mindset, educate yourself both about your emotions and the circumstances that give rise to them, counsels the Dalai Lama. By doing this, you root out the misunderstandings of the world that lead to negative emotions and therefore unhappiness.

To perform this educational self-analysis, think about when you’re happy and unhappy. Then, consider the feelings that led to your happiness or unhappiness. As we discussed in the last chapter, you’ll find that feelings like anger and hatred make you unhappy and hurt you and others, says the Dalai Lama. Because they’re hurtful, you’ll know these are negative emotions and that they’re based on a misunderstanding of the world.

Education and Karma

Buddhists refer to the state of being educated about yourself as “clear-knowing.” We can conceptualize this as “wisdom.” Wisdom has advantages beyond rooting out misunderstandings, negative emotions, and unhappiness: It prevents negative karma from being created.

[Karma is positive or negative energy that lives on your “resume of...

The Art of Happiness Summary Shortform Introduction

The Art of Happiness presents the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist approach to achieving greater happiness in life. Happiness, he says, isn’t something that happens to lucky people and eludes the unlucky: It’s something you can—and should—actively work to increase in your life. This involves making changes to the way you live and see the world: You must shift your mindset to be more receptive to happiness, build stronger relationships with others, cut out suffering as much as possible, and incorporate spiritual teachings into every area of your life.

In this guide, we’ll describe the Dalai Lama’s beliefs around happiness and the training you must undergo to increase happiness in your life. We’ll supplement this with background on Buddhism, scientific evidence in support of or countering the Dalai Lama’s views, and ways to implement his advice in your day-to-day life.

About the Authors

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was born in 1935 in Tibet and, at the age of two, was declared to be the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are Bodhisattvas: enlightened beings who commit to...

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 1: Your Purpose | Moving Toward Happiness

In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler outline the Dalai Lama’s beliefs on how to achieve greater happiness in life—by training yourself to be happier. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet and a Bodhisattva—someone who’s achieved enlightenment and lives to help others do the same.

The Dalai Lama’s advice for achieving happiness is unique in its simplicity and flexibility. You won’t find elaborate rules or 3-month happiness plans here, because he suggests ways to build happiness that are obvious and even self-explanatory: be empathetic, accept your suffering, learn about your mind. This isn’t to say that implementing those concepts will be easy—it’ll take time and effort—but you have the power now to do so.

The Dalai Lama believes that humans’ purpose is to seek happiness and that all humans possess the innate capacity to be happy. But happiness doesn’t come naturally, and you must train yourself to realize your fullest potential for happiness. We’ll describe four forms of happiness training:

1. Cultivating a Happiness Mindset
2. Building Strong Interpersonal Relationships
3. Working to Eliminate Suffering 4....

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Your Attitude Toward Happiness

Understand where your own beliefs about happiness overlap and diverge from those of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama believes our purpose in life is to seek out happiness. Do you agree with this? Why or why not? Describe any other goals you feel we should pursue in addition to, or instead of, happiness.

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 2.1: Cultivating a Happiness Mindset

In the last chapter, we presented the Buddhist proposal that all humans should seek out happiness by training themselves to be happy in four different ways. We’ll now describe the first of those four ways to be happy: changing your thoughts and state of mind to be more conducive to happiness.

(Shortform note: Some might argue that the idea of changing your mind to be more conducive to happiness isn’t realistic. Especially those suffering from PTSD might experience such significant psychological hurdles in daily life—anxiety, difficulty concentrating, flashbacks, and so on—that the prospect of overcoming them by changing their patterns of thought is impossibly difficult.)

Happiness is a mindset you build and isn’t contingent upon external characteristics, like wealth or status, says the Dalai...

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 2.2: Cultivating a Happiness Mindset | Step 1: Educate Yourself

Now that you understand what it means to cultivate a happiness mindset—one of four ways to train yourself to be happy—let’s look at the first of three steps to do so: educating yourself. We’ll first describe how to educate yourself to cultivate a happiness mindset. We’ll then use the specific negative emotions of anger and anxiety to show what educating yourself about those emotions might look like.

How to Educate Yourself

Educate yourself both about your emotions and the circumstances that give rise to them, counsels the Dalai Lama. By doing this, you root out the misunderstandings of the world that lead to negative emotions and therefore unhappiness. To perform this educational self-analysis, think about when you’re happy and unhappy. Then, consider the feelings that led to your happiness or unhappiness. As we discussed in the last chapter, you’ll find that feelings like anger and hatred make you unhappy and hurt you and others, says the Dalai Lama. Because they’re hurtful, you’ll know these are negative emotions and that they’re based on a misunderstanding of the world.

Here’s an example of educating yourself on a negative emotion: You’re...

Shortform Exercise: Educate Yourself About Your Negative Emotions

Analyze a negative emotion to understand how it’s based on a misunderstanding of the world.

Describe a time over the past two weeks when you felt a painful negative emotion. Try to give that emotion a name—like anger, hatred, anxiety, and so on—and note the circumstances that brought it up.

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 2.3: Cultivating a Happiness Mindset | Step 2: Develop Your Motivation to Change

After educating yourself on how and why you become happy or unhappy, the next step of cultivating a happiness mindset is to develop your motivation to change your mindset, advises the Dalai Lama. In this chapter, we’ll cover how to motivate yourself to change your thinking. We’ll then again use the specific negative emotions of anger and anxiety to show what motivating yourself to change those emotions might look like.

How to Develop Your Motivation

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. Awaken this desire by, for instance, periodically reminding yourself of your learning from Step #1: that negative emotions destroy your happiness, while positive ones reinforce it.

(Shortform note: Cutler and the Dalai Lama tell you to motivate yourself to change but provide only one tool for doing so. Another way to cultivate motivation is to write down the goals you hope to achieve—for...

Shortform Exercise: Practice Motivating Yourself to Be Less Anxious

Reflect on how you can pivot away from unrealistic expectations and toward realistic, constructive goals to reduce your anxiety.

Write down a recent occasion when you experienced anxiety. Describe what expectations of yourself you feared you couldn’t meet. (For instance, in a social situation, you feared you wouldn’t be able to make good small talk.)

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 2.4: Cultivating a Happiness Mindset | 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 five strategies to make that effort, including, again, specific strategies for the negative emotions of anger and anxiety.

(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, again, 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...

Shortform Exercise: Strengthen Your Ability to Choose Happiness Over Pleasure

Understand when you choose pleasure over happiness and how you can avoid doing so in the future.

Write down a recent instance when you opted for pleasure over happiness. Note what the pleasurable thing or activity was, and what the happiness-increasing thing or activity was. (For instance, you might have chosen to stay home and watch TV rather than go to your parents’ for dinner.) Justify why you chose the pleasurable activity.

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 3: Build Strong Interpersonal Relationships

Over the last four chapters, 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 recommendations 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...

Shortform Exercise: Build Your Network of Intimate Connections

Think about how you can increase the number of meaningful relationships in your life, and then take action to do so.

Reflect on your current relationships. Is a type of connection lacking in your life? Describe an area of life, big or small, in which you’d like more connection with others. (If you’re a teacher but don’t feel close to your fellow teachers, you might want more workplace intimacy, for example.)

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 4.1: Work to Eliminate Suffering | Suffering Is Inherent to Human Existence

Now that we’ve talked about the importance of interpersonal relationships to our happiness, we’ll turn to the third form of happiness training: working to eliminate suffering. In this chapter, we’ll present the Buddhist belief that suffering is inherent to human existence and the need to accept suffering to free yourself from it. In the subsequent two chapters on suffering, we’ll cover how you can accept and combat 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...

Shortform Exercise: Accept Suffering More Easily

Train yourself to accept suffering more quickly, so you can move on to eliminating it.

Think of a recent time when you suffered. This doesn’t have to be a massive bout of suffering—something mundane is fine. Describe the circumstances of the suffering in as much detail as possible. (For instance, you were late to pick up your kids from daycare, and they cried all the way home.)

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 4.2: Work to Eliminate Suffering | Strategies to Accept Suffering

In the last chapter, we introduced the third form of happiness training: working to eliminate suffering. We’ll now describe four strategies to accept suffering—the critical first step toward eliminating it.

Strategy #1: Don’t Take Things Personally

To accept suffering, stop taking things personally, advises the Dalai Lama. According to Cutler, humans tend to personalize—take events that have nothing to do with them, personally. To stop doing this, analyze problematic situations like a scientist, counsels the Dalai Lama. You’ll likely find the problem has less to do with you than you thought.

For instance, if a delivery person doesn’t deliver your package on the expected day, you might think they have a vendetta against you. But by analyzing the situation objectively, you discover there are postal delays. This, not a vindictive delivery person, is the source of the problem.

(Shortform note: The Dalai Lama counsels objectivity, but it’s hard to be objective when it comes to your own life. Foster objectivity by recognizing that you’ll never be completely objective and that...

Shortform Exercise: Refrain From Personalizing

Work to stop taking events in your life personally to free yourself from suffering.

Think about an instance in the last two weeks when you took something personally. Note the circumstances in as much detail as possible. (Perhaps someone at a party made a rude comment about your outfit.)

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 4.3: Work to Eliminate Suffering | Strategies to Combat Suffering

We’ll conclude our discussion of the third form of happiness training, working to eliminate suffering, by discussing how to actively combat suffering. We’ll cover four strategies to do so.

Strategy #1: Change Your Perspective on Suffering

Change your perspective on a bad situation to see its advantages to you, recommends the Dalai Lama. View situations from all angles and distances, and you’ll find some positive outcome. For instance, if you lose your keys while running errands, view this as an opportunity to enjoy the sunshine while you hunt.

(Shortform note: The perspective shift the Dalai Lama recommends here is similar to the process of becoming more optimistic. Optimism means having good coping skills in problematic situations. Beyond reducing suffering, it’s associated with health benefits like mental and physical resilience, better immune functionality, and cardiovascular health.)

The Dalai Lama specifically mentions changing your perspective on your enemies—an important exercise in Buddhism. **View enemies, and the difficulties they present you, as opportunities to...

Shortform Exercise: Derive Meaning From Your Suffering

Practice the Dalai Lama’s recommendation to find meaning in suffering.

Describe an instance in the last two weeks when you suffered. This can be mundane, everyday suffering. (For instance, you might have completed the wrong assignment for a class and received a failing grade on it.)

The Art of Happiness Summary Part 5: Weave Spirituality Into Daily Life

Let’s move on to the Dalai Lama’s fourth and final form of happiness training: weaving spirituality into daily life. We’ll first describe what it means to bring spirituality to your daily existence and then cover two ways to do so.

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...

Shortform Exercise: Apply Your Spirituality to Your Daily Life

Determine how to implement a facet of your spirituality in your everyday life.

Whatever form of spirituality you practice, list one key idea or belief that you’d like to act on in your life more. (If you subscribe to the Buddhist beliefs in this book, you might try to be more compassionate.)