INTRODUCTION November 2014 We re so blessed that His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Laureate and the world s most revered spiritual leader, who only ever describes himself as a simple monk, has spoken at so many VI conferences, riveting and delighting audiences time and again with his humour, wisdom and compassion. In all his appearances, the Dalai Lama has been joined by some of the greatest minds in science, education and psychology, among them the founder of Positive Psychology, Dr Martin Seligman, neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni and clinical pain scientist Lorimer Moseley, resulting in thoughtful discussion and debate tackling what at heart is our most important existential question: how to be happy? As a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama has much to say on the topic; in a nutshell, that happiness is a mind state that can be achieved when we understand, through meditation and other contemplative practices, that we re not all separate but, in fact, connected. This then brings about infinite compassion, the path to genuine as opposed to hedonic happiness. Also that Buddhism shares commonalities with modern scientific and philosophic thought, and that the arbiters of mainstream culture with its emphasis on materialism and individuality, and the unhappiness this ultimately creates, need to prioritise ethics more in order to benefit the entire society. We said in a nutshell, didn t we? The Dalai Lama obviously says considerably more than this and that s why some of his ideas and thoughts as shared with thousands of conference delegates have been packaged here for your reading pleasure. And don t forget, the Dalai Lama is the star keynote at VI s next event, Happiness & Its Causes 2015, to be held at Luna Park. Even if nothing beats seeing the Dalai Lama in person and basking in his presence, guaranteed you ll still enjoy our latest ebook: His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Happiness.
SECULAR ETHICS & COMPASSION The Dalai Lama says a moral life is ideally one we lead on the basis of the principle of ahimsa, a Sanskrit term meaning not injuring any sentient being human or otherwise under the influence of hatred, ignorance or greed. It s even better if while avoiding harmful behaviour of body, speech and mind, we also aspire to be as helpful as possible, to try and alleviate the pain and suffering of others and help them achieve genuine happiness. This is the essence of compassion, a quality for which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection and warm heartedness. Indeed, the Dalai Lama confides his really wonderful affectionate mother was the seed of his own compassion. The problem, he says, is at every level we re giving too much attention to the external material aspects of life leading to more anger, fear, distrust, corruption and alienation, while neglecting the inner qualities of the human heart like patience, kindness, tolerance and generosity. If you have respect and concern for the wellbeing of others, then there s no basis for cheating, no basis for bullying or lying or exploitation because you love and respect them. Although millions of people have and continue to seek values from religion, the Dalai Lama believes that in today s secular world religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. Too many people consider themselves atheists. Also there are too many different religious traditions so ethics based on just one of these would not be meaningful for everyone. What we need today, says the Dalai Lama, is an approach to ethics which makes no explicit reference to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics. This would be based on love and compassion for ourselves and others, including our enemies, recognising at a fundamental level, as human beings, we re all the same; each one of us aspires to happiness and none of us wants to suffer. He says, Building a happy, peaceful world ultimately depends on compassion. So our target should be a compassionate world [promoted] not through prayer, not through meditation, but through education. The Dalai Lama is talking specifically about the education of young people because he says, the mental thinking of older generations is already fixed. I m not expecting big change in the existing society. There s only prayer and hope. But if we can provide a new sort of holistic education to young people, then maybe we can build a new society, culture and way of life informed by inner values.
NEGATIVE EMOTIONS The Dalai Lama explains that what primarily upsets our inner peace are our disturbing emotions, namely any thought, emotion or mental event reflecting a negative or uncompassionate mind state. Such negative thoughts and emotions, namely hatred, anger, pride, lust, greed, envy and all the rest, are what obstruct our most basic aspiration - to be happy and to avoid suffering. When we act under their influence, we become oblivious to the impact our actions have on others: they are thus the cause of our destructive behaviour both towards others and to ourselves. The purpose of Buddhism is to understand our psyche so that we can start to identify and transform those negative thoughts, emotions and feelings that are preventing us from living a more wholesome and fulfilling life. According to the Buddhist teachings, there are 84,000 disturbing emotions, all of which can be transformed since none are intrinsic to our fundamental nature. The Dalai Lama does, however, concede many of these mental states, among them fear, anger, hatred and jealousy, at the biological level do have a purpose. For example, in anger, the blood circulation goes more in the arms in order to fight. And when fear develops, then the blood circulation goes more in the legs so we are ready to run away. So you see there is a close connection between emotions and biology. Yet what distinguishes human beings from all other animals is we have this intelligence, we have the ability to think long-term, beyond our immediate survival. We can imagine alternative ways of being. Then we realise some of these emotions are actually of no benefit. In fact, are harmful. When we realise this, the desire inevitably arises to eliminate negative emotions from the mind stream. Or at the very least, channel their raw energy into action or speech that is beneficial. For example, when a child misbehaves, some kind of ferocity [on the part of the caregiver] is necessary, says the Dalai Lama, but this kind of anger is positive because it s motivated by compassion.
GENUINE HAPPINESS The Dalai Lama says ethics based on compassion for others is the very foundation for wellbeing or human flourishing, a state not to be confused with hedonic happiness defined as mundane or ordinary pleasure. According to Buddhism hedonic pleasure is simply any type of pleasure we experience that s stimulus driven. When we enjoy a sunset, delicious food, kind words, a good book, even a happy memory, that s hedonic pleasure. Stimuli can be absolutely anything including our thoughts. It s important to note we can also take hedonic delight in that which is unwholesome in nature, for example, another person s misfortune. That s what schadenfreude means. Or we can take hedonic pleasure in that which is ethically neutral, such as a soft warm bed. Like the Buddhist notion of lasting wellbeing sukka, or the Greek notion of human flourishing - eudemonia, the genuine happiness the Dalai Lama talks about is a sense of happiness that s truly spiritual in nature because it s the fruit of having cultivated our heart and mind and stems from within, from what we re bringing to the world rather than what we re getting from it. The Dalai Lama says hedonic happiness is inherently unstable. When we lose that which makes us hedonically happy, for example, our wealth, our looks, our health, or someone close to us dies (as inevitably happens), we tend to feel miserable. Conversely, no one and nothing can ever take away from us genuine happiness that s derived from our unconditional love for others, our generous spirit, our equanimity, or indeed any of our virtues. Some of the happiest people the Dalai Lama knows are yogis who ve lived and meditated in solitude, sometimes for decades on end, in extremely simple, primitive conditions. He notes their genuine happiness has nothing to do with external stimuli but everything to do with their depth of insight and awakening to their fullest human potential.
THE PLASTIC BRAIN Neuroplasticity is a phenomenon referring to a vast range of neurological changes that occur in response to experience. But just how plastic the brain is and whether the scope for change in certain individuals is limited due to genetics or other factors, is still the subject of considerable scientific debate. In contrast, Buddhism teaches that most human beings have infinite capacity for improvement, even the moral monsters we call psychopaths. Indeed, the discovery of mirror neurons - a special class of brain cells that fire when we observe someone else s emotion or when we watch someone else perform an action seems to suggest humans are actually wired for empathy. Of course, mental transformation isn't easy and doesn t happen overnight but the Dalai Lama is adamant it is possible through rigorous mind training employing meditative techniques aimed specifically at two principal objectives - the cultivation of an infinitely compassionate heart and the cultivation of deep insights into the nature of reality, particularly the Buddhist concept of selflessness, which are referred to as the union of compassion and wisdom. I think people can change, except perhaps in those cases where there is some damage to the brain. Then it s difficult. Otherwise I think you can change, he says.
THE POWER OF MEDITATION Buddhism has long held that our mind can change in response to our behaviour, most notably serious mental work in the form of meditation. But it s only recently that scientists have been able to prove this in relation to brain activities in the lab. The Dalai Lama cites what are now two famous studies conducted by Professor Richard Davidson and his team at the University of Wisconsin in the US. In the first, the researchers took a number of monks from Bhutan and Tibet who had meditated between 10,000 and 60,000 hours, and measured their brain activity. The meditating monks showed considerably more activity in their left prefrontal cortex, believed to be correlated with positive effect (i.e. feeling good) than novice practitioners who d only meditated for between 10 and 20 hours. In the second, the Dalai Lama dispatched eight of his most accomplished practitioners to Davidson's lab to have them hooked up for EEG testing and brain scanning. These were monks who d meditated for 10,000 to 50,000 hours, over time periods of 15 to 40 years. As a control, 10 student volunteers with no previous meditation experience were also tested after one week of training. Both groups were asked to meditate specifically on unconditional compassion. Buddhist teaching describes that state, which is at the heart of the Dalai Lama's teaching, as the "unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings." The results unambiguously showed that meditation activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly different ways from those of the volunteers. Most important, the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organised and coordinated than in the students. The monks also had the highest levels of gamma waves, which are associated with knitting together disparate brain circuits, and so are connected to higher mental activity and heightened awareness.
BUDDHISM & MODERN SCIENCE The Dalai Lama strongly believes Buddhism and modern science have a lot in common, in particular their basic philosophical outlook and methodology. On the philosophical level, both are deeply suspicious of any notion of absolutes. Both also prefer to explain evolution and the emergence of life in terms of the natural laws of cause and effect. Both traditions also emphasise the role of empiricism. This means that in the Buddhist investigation of reality, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. As the Dalai Lama says, Buddhist literature mentions that in world geography, the middle of the universe is in the centre of the world. This is outdated I don t believe it. At least for this planet. Yet many people dismiss Buddhism as a credible science. They think there s only one credible method of investigating reality and that s the scientific method. The Dalai Lama points out there are things meditators and spiritual practitioners know to be true because they ve trained their mind through concentration, insight and analysis in order to make legitimate, authentic and replicable discoveries. Their findings shouldn t be discounted just because scientists can t yet validate these phenomena through objective, quantitative physical measurements. He says, Scientists must be open-minded. They should always question, not make a final decision too early. They should investigate. That s the work of a genuine scientist. To not simply decide, not simply deny, not simply accept, but be open and investigate.
THE NATURE OF MIND What is mind? What is consciousness? Are mind and brain one and the same? What if something continues after death? These are age-old questions many great scientists have long tried to answer. What s really fascinating is some scientists are now turning to the religion of Buddhism (and the Dalai Lama as its most famous exponent), which presents its own compelling theories to explain the mystery of existence, in order to deepen their understanding in these areas. The Dalai Lama says the ultimate nature of mind is essentially pure, and that crucially, the various afflictive emotions that make us so unhappy such as desire, hatred and jealousy are products of tens of years if not lifetimes of conditioning or habit. They are not intrinsic qualities of the mind because the mind can be cleansed of them. Moreover, progressively more subtle levels of mind or consciousness - Buddhists use these terms interchangeably - exist, says the Dalai Lama. There are the grosser levels of mind, such as our sensory perceptions which depend on physical organs like our ears and eyes, followed by our mental consciousness (mental states that have a physiological basis), followed by ever more refined or subtle states, some of which persist after bodily death. As the Dalai Lama says, it s not uncommon for the body of an accomplished practitioner who has died to remain fresh days later because the subtle level of mind is still in the body. So the grosser level of mind is dead, but the subtle mind still remains there, in that dead body. As soon as the mind departs from the body then immediately, within minutes, the body decays. Departs from the body? Along with Buddhism, many Eastern traditions believe in rebirth according to which, after we die, the body no longer remains. However, consciousness persists, seeking and finding embodiment in another form human or otherwise - depending on karmic influences. So death is something like a change of dress, says the Dalai Lama. When your dress gets too old, then the time comes to change to a new one. Similarly when this body becomes unusable, then the time comes to take a new one. It s true. Many are afraid of death. But if you live your life well, death will come and it ll be okay.
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