The Dalai Lama on Laughter

Why I Laugh

In an excerpt from his new book, My Spiritual Journey, The Dalai Lama shares his belief in the surprising power of laughter and smiles to reach other people, even our enemies.

I Am a Professional Laugher

I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher. Laughing is a characteristic of the Tibetans, who are different in this from the Japanese or the Indians. They are very cheerful, like the Italians, rather than a little reserved, like the Germans or the English.

My cheerfulness also comes from my family. I come from a small village, not a big city, and our way of life is more jovial. We are always amusing ourselves, teasing each other, joking. It’s our habit.

To that is added, as I often say, the responsibility of being realistic. Of course problems are there. But thinking only of the negative aspect doesn’t help to find solutions and it destroys peace of mind. Everything, though, is relative. You can see the positive side of even the worst tragedies if you adopt a holistic perspective. If you take the negative as absolute and definitive, however, you increase your worries and anxiety, whereas by broadening the way you look at a problem you understand what is bad about it, but you accept it. This attitude comes to me, from my practice and from Buddhist philosophy, which help me enormously.

I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic!

Take the loss of our country, for example. We are a stateless people, and we must confront adversity along with many painful circumstances in Tibet itself. Nevertheless, such experiences also bring many benefits.

As for me, I’ve been homeless for half a century. But I have found a large number of new homes throughout the vast world. If I had remained at the Potala, I don’t think I would have had the chance to meet so many personalities, so many heads of state in Asia, Taiwan, the United States, and Europe, popes as well as many famous scientists and economists.

The life of exile is an unfortunate life, but I have always tried to cultivate a happy state of mind, appreciating the opportunities this existence without a settled home, far from all protocol, has offered me. This way I have been able to preserve my inner peace.

I Love the Smile, Unique to Humans

If we are content just to think that compassion, rationality, and patience are good, that is not actually enough to develop these qualities. Difficulties provide the occasion to put them into practice. Who can make such occasions arise? Certainly not our friends, but rather our enemies, for they are the ones who pose the most problems. So that we truly want to progress on the path, we must regard our enemies as our best teachers.

For whoever holds love and compassion in high esteem, the practice of tolerance is essential, and it requires an enemy. We must be grateful to our enemies, then, because they help us best engender a serene mind! Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the “enemies” who appear from time to time in our lives.

Of course it is natural and right that we all want to have friends. I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic! You have to take care of others, of their well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even more friends and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself need help, you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’ happiness, you will be the loser in the long run. Is friendship born of arguments, anger, jealousy, and unbridled competition? I don’t think so. Only affection produces authentic friends.

In contemporary materialistic society, if you have money and power you have the impression of having a lot of friends. But they aren’t your friends; they are the friends of your money and power. If you lose your wealth and influence you will have trouble finding those people again.

Unfortunately, so long as things are going well, we think we can get along by ourselves. However, as our situation and health decline, we soon realize how wrong we were. That is when we understand who really helps us. To prepare ourselves for such a time, by making true friends who are useful when we need them most, we must cultivate altruism.

As for me, I always want more friends. I love smiles, and my wish is to see more smiles, real smiles, for there are many kinds—sarcastic, artificial, or diplomatic. Some smiles don’t arouse any satisfaction, and some even engender suspicion or fear. An authentic smile, though, arouses an authentic feeling of freshness, and I think the smile belongs only to human beings. If we want those smiles, we must create the reasons that make them appear.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Spiritual-Journey-ebook/dp/B003VIWRM2

Original article link:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/10/24/dalai-lama-on-laughter-and-compassion.html

Dalai Lama Laces Piety with Humor

Meditation and prayer don’t hold a candle to direct action, the Dalai Lama told a sold-out crowd this morning at Middlebury College.

If you want to change the world, that is.

“Investigate reality thoroughly,” explained the charismatic spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. “You must be realistic. You must look at reality from different angles and from a distance.”

The most effective purveyors of violence employ those means — so why shouldn’t we? he asked, before breaking into a long chuckle.

Hundreds of appreciative titters and guffaws swept through the audience of 2,800 ticket-holders at the college’s Nelson Arena, and among those who watched and listened to off-site, live-stream projections of the event.

Humor punctuated much of the half-hour talk and a subsequent discussion of pre-submitted questions.

His speech, “Finding Common Ground: Ethics for a Whole World,” was the second in two days at the liberal arts institution.

During much of his seemingly improvised talk, he advocated for the practice (teaching and learning) of “secular ethics, not based on religious faith,” as a universal path to empathy.

But as often as not, the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, known formally as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, seemed intent on puncturing preconceptions of his own piety.

He occasionally rocked back on his onstage sofa to laugh, saffron robes waving and brown oxfords swept airborne.

He found humor in his determination that America’s political parties currently are “in substance, not much different.”

When asked whether Americans should refrain from visiting Tibet because of its implicit support for the Chinese occupation, the Dalai Lama, 77, didn’t hesitate: Contact of any kind with Tibetans would surely help in the long run.

“I think whenever you have the opportunity, you should go,” he said.

It’s a costly journey, he added, still keeping a straight face. The cash-strapped tourist might borrow money for the trip, buy what look and smell like Tibetan antiques — and then sell them for a profit later.

He cracked a wide grin, and it met with laughter and applause.

Chinese authorities had once called him a “demon,” the Dalai Lama continued: “Maybe, but a warm-hearted demon!”

The author of one submitted question noted his radiant smile: What is his secret?

“If it’s a secret, then maybe I should keep it,” the Dalai Lama answered, and burst into another bobbing spell of mirth.

Yet the talk had its serious moments.

A reasoned appreciation of humanity’s common identity and concerns is essential to our survival in the 21st century, the Dalai Lama said: “At the present time, destruction of your enemy is the destruction of yourself.

“There will still be conflict, but there must be a change of methods,” he added. “This can be a century of dialogue.”

He elaborated on the theme later in the morning: “I don’t believe peace will come through prayer. It will come through our actions.”

This weekend’s visit was the Tibetan’s third to Middlebury; he participated in symposiums at the college in 1984 and 1990.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has known the Dalai Lama for years, introduced him Saturday as “a man of remarkable humility, patience, and perseverance,” with “a steady voice of reason and compromise” through years of exile.

Some of that perseverance surfaced Saturday during a silent, nearly slapstick bid by each man to insist that the other be seated first.

The Dalai Lama won.

October 13, 2012
By Joel Banner Baird, The Free Press staff writer, The Burlington Free Press