The contemporary (or in other words is latterday) globe says that stress can appear in only day-to-day routines. However, what has on no account mattered was a spiritual practice.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dalai Lama which is the title for leadership of Lamaism were found or known as the most popular mental or inner mentors. They can help you by teaching some perspective, decreasing your stress, and making life more joyful. They are the best in these issues.
Your first step will be studying their teachings on a road that includes true love, acceptance, and joy.
Chapter 1 – Here is a fundamental aspect of existing and felicitousness: Suffering
Suffering is always within human life such as traffic jams in the mornings or accumulated bills. However, understanding the meanings of positive moments in life is fundamental despite its obvious drawbacks. Even, it is vital for all sections of existing itself. Truly, what can be fertile and astructive (but is an old term, so, in popular terms is called constructive) is hurt and feeling sorrow.
To illustrate, although every mother knows about the pain of birth, they accept it because it is necessary for the tremendous joy of having a novel kid. Provided that women avoided the discomfort of giving birth, the race of man was probably finished because of that!
Let’s look at Nelson Mandela. His 27 years were in jail and the passing time was painful for him. While his resting time was obligated to spend on the ground, he owned a mindless job which is breaking rocks that caused every moment was difficult.
After such an experience, everyone would expect that Mandela became miserable like his broken rocks; in contrast, he used his suffering to improve empathy and gentility against his diplomatic enemies. Thanks to that compassion, the person who was the initial chairman of South Africa at liberty was Mandela.
So it’s important to suffer, but if you’re only experienced in a certain way, you need to shift the viewpoint of yourself far outta yourself and toward others. At some point, if you become obsessive over yourself about your goodness or malignancy, you will face sadness like lojong that is taught by the Buddhist brain education exercise.
It was wanted from the Dalai Lama for sharing his Buddhist creed on Bodh Gaya which is the most divine Buddhist site all over the globe. Let’s consider that experience.
He felt acute acne in his tummy before reaching the area and it looked like a serious situation. So, even though it took two hours to arrive at the closest infirmary, he needed to be transported there quickly.
When he was on his way, a man, who was ill and old, sat in the avenue and he seemed openly close to dying. The author’s attention was moved to the old man by feeling his agony and, forgetting his ache at a minimum for a second.
Chapter 2 – Sometimes you may not have control over suffering, but there is always a way to respond.
Let’s consider your physical form. As long as you are healthy, your chance of getting sick is quite low. However, even a tiny virus can make you deathly sick when you become unhealthy. What is very important for your posture welfare is immunization and strength, and later on, the exact tenet can be valid for your brain.
If you establish a certain level for spiritual immunization over the years, you may still suffer from emotional disturbances but it will be easier to get better. In contrast, if you have weak mental immunity, you will suffer for months or years.
Therefore, what do you think about how you can construct this spiritual immunization?
First, you need to understand that fright and disappointment are not actually, but in the face of your brain. As such, they couldn’t become the controller of existing of you, moreover, you can find joy in any situation.
To illustrate, at one time, the flight of the Dalai Lama was canceled and it pushed him and movie producer Peggy Callahan to undertake a trip six-hour-long for the following closest landing field. Although the situation was certainly discouraging, anger or frustration did not appear because they’ve made improvised journeys more fun via telling amusing trip tales through the road.
The example shows the reason for the fact that criticizing shouldn’t be made on your own, once the situations are not in your authority. Also, Desmond Tutu offers another example as he is stuck in a traffic jam while rushing to make an important meeting.
In previous years, even though he would have tried to overcome his urge to express his rage physically via chattering his tooth, he eventually realizes that magnificent occasions are found for quiet and devotion while in a traffic jam. So, he moved away from destructive behavior like teeth grinding, which served to infuriate him further, thanks to this realization.
Of course, it is easier to say that you can make the exact thing once you feel stuck in difficult circumstances you can’t change. But, if you just admit the circumstances and see them as an occasion for being patient, stress may stay away from your mind.
Chapter 3 – While compassion helps, frustrated expectations cause anger.
The pressures of modern life in the community in Western can support delusive expectancies and wishes such as everyone’s desires of having a greater flat and a more favorable working life. That comes from the extra idea is every time more proper and it is easier to believe.
But, the thing that occurs when you inevitably drop to complete them all is extra significant compared to those expectations. After all, there is almost always fear, which soon converts to furious.
Such fear is all too common. Also, some uncertainties cause anger and these can be painful as well as damaging. This could be a horror of something without obtaining what you desire, the horror that others may dislike you or disrespect you. Fortunately, despite this, you can overcome love and affection towards others.
Let’s look at Paul Ekman as an example. While his father had offensive movements and actions, his mother committed suicide so he became a rage-aholic which included powerful anger that he would explode randomly throughout the week; however, it continued until the Mind and Life Institute feted a public lecture where he became acquainted with the Dalai Lama. Paul’s anger disappeared instantly when Paul’s hand was grabbed by Dalai Lama and looked to his pigsney with intemerate romance.
Compassion can be a powerful tool to connect people but surprisingly, it can lead to sadness. In fact, according to the studies, it was discovered by Joseph Forgas, who was a psychological explorer, that nominal grades of unhappiness can truly produce positive results.
In Forgas’s experiment, the ones who were more vulnerable to community law were the unhappy attendees. On the other hand, when the unhappy ones and the happy ones cross-checked each other, the ones who were more jurisdiction and bounteous were the unhappy people. To determine this final trait, it was asked by Forgas to the attendees if they decided how much cash was gonna be held by them and how much cash was going to give different people. Consequently, the ones who were more avid to share more compared to others were the unhappy attendees.
Another example which was had by the Dalai Lama was found: Once the eldest teacher, had by him, died, the writer was in grief and agony. However, his pain was shifted to willpower for performing his mentor’s desires instead of being arrogant. At present, he trains the individuals who lost their close friends or their families, they can use their sadness to achieve their dreams.
Chapter 4 – What can be in danger because of singleness and jealousy is the existence of you and your welfare.
Do you know the quantity of the individuals who are interacting with you from the moment you arouse through the moment you get into bed?
The number is shockingly low for most people and it can be a serious problem because a variety of health issues can appear when loneliness is there. But there is no need to worry because people can overcome loneliness by opening their hearts to others and trusting them.
Research conducted at Columbia University found that the rate of people having heart attacks increased depending on the participants who more frequently used antecedents such as ‘’I’’, ‘’me’’, and ‘’mine” (which are called first-person pronouns). That means you focus on yourself excessively which may cause isolation, hypertension (or in other words is high blood pressure), and boosted tension. It’s very important to trust others, open yourself and search paths for sharing your existence to make sure this doesn’t come to you.
However, the only threat is not loneliness. People should also avoid a feeling of envy because it is trickier emotion as human beings are phylogenetically programmed to wish for the stuff that different people own.
It was found by Frans de Waal who was a specialist for observing primates this interesting fact with an experiment. In that experiment, a rock was given to a monkey who was awarded a cuke piece when it accepted the rock. Later, the monkey’s neighbor applied the exact duty but it was given much tastier grapes when it was accepted and that was shown to the first monkey.
In return, the monkey performed the task with enthusiasm, waiting for the grape to be given to him. But when a different cuke piece was given to him instead of grapes, his response was rage. He shook his lattice’s guardrails to protest at the unfairness of the situation.
The monkey response looks quite logical; consequently, justice is a great thing, isn’t it?
As it is understood, people who feel excluded may suffer from unhappiness because of a desire for good intentions. To illustrate, in the nineties, the green cards were given to a class of Tibetans who live in India to migrate to the US.
They started to send money to their families, who were at home to provide justice for their wealth among their families. However, that caused a problem related to the next door of their relatives. Since American citizens send more money to them, human beings started changing their homes and buying motors so that jealousy showed up among next doors.
Chapter 5 – Kill cheating and change your life by getting nigher to cheer.
It can be said by an individual who has had an experience near to die that approaching the end gets the existence more worthy.
When people are inevitably in the face of difficulty, they come close to joy. Let’s consider the initial selection which is proper to the democracy of South Africa in 1994. With their gratitude for their newly acquired freedoms, there was a voting queue with kilometers that was lined up by the South Africans. In the exact twelve months, voter turnout in the United States was under 40 percent because many residents in the United States did not struggle for the right to vote at the time, and therefore did not feel responsible.
The Reform of Chinese Culture is an extra instance. In that time, officials claimed that the tongue that would be erased 15 years later was the Tibetan language. Many publications written by Tibetan writers were burned, and countless sculptures and monasteries were destroyed by the state to make a terrible plan.
Although the Dalai Lama was very upset about this by nature, when he came to India as a fugitive in 1959; he directed this feeling to preserve the rest of Tibetan culture.
In other words, nothing is appreciated as much as the almost extinct things. However, what is also very important to have joy while living is to accept the actuality and the inescapable of dying. As an example, while growing up, Desmond Tutu tended to a diversity of diseases and he was close to dying from childhood illnesses on multiple occasions. According to doctors, he was in such a state that timber had been purchased to prepare the casket of his son by his father.
Then, Tutu faced tuberculosis as a teenager. Other patients were bleeding, coughing, and finally passing away and Tutu was also not expected to see his life after his adolescence. However, he is still living nowadays.
Chapter 6 – To come nearer to correct cheer, you need to develop your perspective and humility.
So far, you know how to deal with horror and rage in your mental sphere. Then it’s time to look at the affirmative direction and find out how to improve happiness. To do this, what is the most useful thing is using the eight columns of mirth. Come on and look at what it is.
A perspective that provides observation of situations with a wider view of the point is the initial of the eight columns. After all, you will realize that there is nothing that will last forever. As a result, your focus will move away from the present, joy, and hope will take hold of your life.
To illustrate, by Victor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist, and writer of strong publication Man’s Search for Meaning, it was remembered the paths many inmates survive from a distinct perspective while in jail in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A rumor spread that a camp will be liberated at Christmas when an innate was ill and at death’s door. This simple belief that things would be improved soon helped her to survive. When Christmas finally arrived, there was nothing about liberation. Thus, her hope disappeared and she passed away.
Humility is the next column and only as significant as perspective. The idea here is simply that if you think you are more preferable compared to different people, you’ll never find joy. As an example, what was a tense young man always when people wanted to provide spiritual teaching was the Dalai Lama because he had tremendous anxiety as a result of seeing himself above the audience.
Self-supremacy and thus failure to humble nurtures singleness and isolation. But nowadays, he has seen him as another person who can destroy his anxiety instantly and make his experiences even more enjoyable.
Chapter 7 – You can relax by neutralizing tense situations thanks to jokes and admission.
What is the third column of joy is humor and it is not surprising because everyone knows that a good joke is always successful to overcome a stressful situation.
The person who was forced into a tense situation by asked to talk with the Tutsis and Hutus was Desmond Tutu, the two fighting ethnic societies at the battle after the Rwandan genocide. Despite the difficulty of the situation, Tutu overstepped the difficulty of speaking about the sensitive subject by handling jokes like a tool.
Tutu used a simple, daily humor tool to relieve difficult emotions and comfort people. For instance, while the speculative tale about a place where big-nosed people discriminated against individuals with small noses made the audience laugh but at the same time, they also began to comprehend the nonsense of bias.
On the other hand, acceptance is the fourth column and thanks to humor it can be guided. As a result, if you cannot accept that there are hard seconds in existence that you are not in control over, you will never feel the joy.
For example, if your relationship with your neighbor is poor, you can have many solutions which are useless such as criticizing your neighbor, feeling anxious about your interactions, or accepting it like no stress between yours.
However, you need to accept your relationship and have a desire for boosting it if you want to make progress. Thus, you may also admit that you are not responsible for your neighbor or her feelings towards you.
Having this insight will help you to move towards a sense of cheer and calmness by helping you get rid of the despair and fear your relationship causes you.
Chapter 8 – Two important steps for a feeling of joy: Act of grace and appreciativeness.
Are you thankful for your warm bed and the clean water that comes outside of your faucet? Provided that you are found in the West, those are not luxuries for you because they are hoped and usually guaranteed.
However, there are no such simple facilities for many people around the world. The reason why gratitude has an essential pillar of joy comes from that idea: Finally, we are ready to be even more thankful for the things that we own.
Gratitude represents the idea that virtue is not to receive anything given and all things that you own or all you experienced are reasons for being thankful. For instance, the person who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a murder he did not commit was Anthony Ray Hinton. Moreover, police officers stated that, on the date that was his capture in Alabama, he was put in jail for being black.
After decades, the Supreme Court unanimously decided to release him. Instead of feeling rage, he forgave those who put him in jail. He couldn’t continue his life by staying in the past without his forgiveness and couldn’t savor the today.
At present, once it piddles down, it’s a basic practice in jail to sense the wet drops fall on his front thanks to his running. Instead of getting up each morning and letting his long-term prison affect his life of misery, he praises another day of peace and cheer.
Forgiveness is the following column of cheer that is an example in Hinton’s experience. Here is another good example that came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In the process, a case involving maternal teenagers who had been fooled by the supporters of apartheid was included in a deadly booby trap.
It was seen her boy’s body was being dragged down the avenues on general TV by one of the maternals and she forgave the responsible human beings when those who were cheating on young people wanted to be forgiven. She said that capturing because of their offenses will never take her boy again and that revenge cannot bring joy to anyone.
Chapter 9 – To increase your happiness, you need to be compassionate and think of others.
Are you happy to give presents to different people? A lot of human beings handle this and it is quite natural. After all, presenting a gift to someone they appreciate is a small thing that gives a feeling of intense felicitousness.
For this reason, the compassionate concern is the cheer’s seventh column. According to evolutionary biologists, compassion shapes a fundamental direction of the main chance and they are called reciprocal altruism that means that a feeling of joy results owing to assisting different people. When children are six months, this concept can appear.
Scientists observed children of this age by referring them to toys that could be related to assisting different individuals. As a result, helper’s high appeared in children and endorphins created a feeling of glow like consuming junk food like chocolate. In different terms, as children become compassionate, their hearts fill with joy.
As a result, what can take this emotion a step further is the final column of cheer: spending time on the felicitousness of other individuals.
After making his fortune from being an iatrical technology entrepreneur, James Doty, who was the creator of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, donated $30 million to a charity without keeping it all to himself. He did this at the cost of losing all his fortune in the ensuing stock market crash.
He was aware that money would not get him strength or love and certainly not perform him delighted. So he refused the advice of his lawyers to withdraw his charitable contributions. On the other hand, what made him happy was to help others feel happy.
Elizabeth Dunn, who is an analyst, supports this thanks to her discovery that people feel happier when they spend their money on other individuals instead of themselves. For this reason, even if many people feel fear of the emerging vulnerability because of emotions such as forgiveness or compassion, these simple emotions continue to be further curing and refreshing experiences that a person can ever experience.
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams Book Review
One way to correct felicitously and enjoy even in a painful world is found. Of course, it is hard to find and follow because nothing is easy. As you reduce your concern for material things and boost your interest in the goodness of others through mercy and bounty, you will come to live the true joy.
During your meditation, let’s consider your fleetness.
In the coming time while sitting for meditation again, try to consider your death and how it should end. Thanks to illuminating and even imagining the dying operation, you can become more prepared to face it. If you succeed in reaching this situation, you can joyfully arrive at death without horror or remorse.
Download Pdf
https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/goodbooksummary/The+Book+of+Joy+by+Dalai+Lama+Book+Summary.pdf
Download Epub
https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/goodbooksummary/The+Book+of+Joy+by+Dalai+Lama+Book+Summary.epub
