by Dalai Lama
‘In Buddhism, the principle of causality is accepted as a natural law. In dealing with reality, you have to take that law into account. So, for instance, in the case of everyday experiences, if there are certain types of events that you do not desire, then the best method of ensuring that that event does not take place is to make sure that the causal conditions that normally give rise to that event no longer arise. Similarly, if you want a particular event or experience to occur, then the logical thing to do is to seek and accumulate the causes and conditions that give rise to it.
‘This is also the case with mental states and experiences. If you desire happiness, you should seek the causes that give rise to it, and if you don’t desire suffering, then what you should do is to ensure that the causes and conditions that would give rise to it no longer arise. An appreciation of this causal principle is very important.
‘Now, we have spoken of the supreme importance of the mental factor in achieving happiness. Our next task, therefore, is to examine the variety of mental states that we experience. We need to clearly identify different mental states and make a distinction, classifying them according to whether they lead to happiness or not.’
‘Can you give some specific examples of different mental states and describe how you would classify them?’ I asked.
The Dalai Lama explained, ‘Now for instance, hatred, jealousy, anger, and so on are harmful. We consider them negative states of mind because they destroy our mental happiness; once you harbor feelings of hatred or ill feeling towards someone, once you yourself are filled by hatred or negative emotions, then other people appear to you as also hostile. So as a result there is more fear, greater inhibition and hesitation, and a sense of insecurity. These things develop, and also loneliness in the midst of a world perceived as hostile. All these negative feelings develop because of hatred. On the other hand, mental states such as kindness and compassion are definitely very positive. They are very useful . . .’
‘I’m just curious,’ I interrupted. ‘You mention that there are thousands of different states of mind. What would be your definition of a psychologically healthy or well-adjusted person? We might use such a definition as a guideline in determining which mental states to cultivate and which ones to eliminate.’
He laughed, then with his characteristic humility he responded, ‘As a psychiatrist, you might have a better definition of a psychologically healthy person.’
‘But I mean from your standpoint.’
‘Well, I would regard a compassionate, warm, kindhearted person as healthy. If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You’ll find that all human beings are just like you, so you’ll be able to relate to them more easily. That gives you a spirit of friendship. Then there’s less need to hide things, and as a result, feelings of fear, self doubt, and insecurity are automatically dispelled. Also, it creates a feeling of trust from other people. Otherwise, for example, you might find someone who is very competent, and you know that you can trust that person’s competence. But if you sense that person is not kind, then you have to hold something back. You feel that “Oh, I know that person can do things, but can I really trust him?” so you will always have a certain apprehension which creates a kind of distance from him.
‘So, anyway, I think that cultivating positive mental states like kindness and compassion definitely leads to better psychological health and happiness.’
Mental Discipline
As he spoke, I found something very appealing about the Dalai Lama’s approach to achieving happiness. It was absolutely practical and rational: identify and cultivate positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states. Although his suggestion to begin by systematically analyzing the variety of mental states that we experience initially struck me as being a bit dry, I gradually became carried away by the force of his logic and reasoning. And I liked the fact that rather than classifying mental states, emotions, or desires on the basis of some externally imposed moral judgment such as ‘Greed is a sin’ or ‘Hatred is evil,’ he categorizes emotions as positive or negative simply on the basis of whether they lead to our ultimate happiness.
Resuming our conversation the next afternoon, I asked, ‘If happiness is simply a matter of cultivating more positive mental states like kindness and so on, why are so many people unhappy?’
‘Achieving genuine happiness may require bringing about a transformation in your outlook, your way of thinking, and this is not a simple matter,’ he said. ‘It requires the application of so many different factors from different directions. You shouldn’t have the notion for instance that there is just one key, a secret, and if you can get that right, then everything will be okay. It is similar to taking proper care of the physical body; you need a variety of vitamins and nutrients, not just one or two. In the same way, in order to achieve happiness, you need a variety of approaches and methods to deal with and overcome the varied and complex negative mental states. And if you are seeking to overcome certain negative ways of thinking, it is not possible to accomplish that simply by adopting a particular thought or practicing a technique once or twice. Change takes time. Even physical change takes time. For instance, if you’re moving from one climate to another, the body needs time to adapt to the new environment. And in the same way, transforming your mind takes time. There are a lot of negative mental traits, so you need to address and counteract each one of these. That isn’t easy. It requires the repeated application of various techniques and taking the time to familiarize yourself with the practices. It’s a process of learning.
‘But I think that as time goes on, you can make positive changes. Every day as soon as you get up, you can develop a sincere positive motivation, thinking, “I will utilize this day in a more positive way. I should not waste this very day.” And then, at night before bed, check what you’ve done, asking yourself, “Did I utilize this day as I planned?” If it went accordingly, then you should rejoice. If it went wrong, then regret what you did and critique the day. So, through methods such as this, you can gradually strengthen the positive aspects of the mind.
‘Now, for example, in my own case, as a Buddhist monk, I believe in Buddhism and through my own experience I know that these Buddhist practices are very helpful to me. However, because of habituation, through many previous lifetimes, certain things may arise, like anger or attachment. So now what I do is: first learn about the positive value of the practices, then build up determination, and then try to implement them. At the beginning, the implementation of the positive practices is very small, so the negative influences are still very powerful. However, eventually, as you gradually build up the positive practices, the negative behaviors are automatically diminished. So, actually the practice of Dharma* is a constant battle within, replacing previous negative conditioning or habituation with new positive conditioning.’
Continuing, he said, ‘No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn’t anything that isn’t made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training, we can change; we can transform ourselves. Within Buddhist practice there are various methods of trying to sustain a calm mind when some disturbing event happens. Through repeated practice of these methods we can get to the point where some disturbance may occur but the negative effects on our mind remain on the surface, like the waves that may ripple on the surface of an ocean but don’t have much effect deep down. And, although my own experience may be very little, I have found this to be true in my own small practice. So, if I receive some tragic news, at that moment I may experience some disturbance within my mind, but it goes very quickly. Or, I may become irritated and develop some anger, but again, it dissipates very quickly. There is no effect on the deeper mind. No hatred. This was achieved through gradual practice; it didn’t happen overnight.’
Certainly not. The Dalai L
ama has been engaged in training his mind since he was four years old.
The systematic training of the mind – the cultivation of happiness, the genuine inner transformation by deliberately selecting and focusing on positive mental states and challenging negative mental states, is possible because of the very structure and function of the brain. We are born with brains that are genetically hard wired with certain instinctual behavior patterns; we are predisposed mentally, emotionally, and physically to respond to our environment in ways that enable us to survive. These basic sets of instructions are encoded in countless innate nerve cell activation patterns, specific combinations of brain cells that fire in response to any given event, experience, or thought. But the wiring in our brains is not static, not irrevocably fixed. Our brains are also adaptable. Neuroscientists have documented the fact that the brain can design new patterns, new combinations of nerve cells and neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit messages between nerve cells) in response to new input. In fact, our brains are malleable, ever changing, reconfiguring their wiring according to new thoughts and experiences. And as a result of learning, the function of individual neurons themselves change, allowing electrical signals to travel along them more readily. Scientists call the brain’s inherent capacity to change ‘plasticity.’
This ability to change the brain’s wiring, to grow new neural connections, has been demonstrated in experiments such as one conducted by Drs. Avi Karni and Leslie Underleider at the National Institute of Mental Health. In that experiment, the researchers had subjects perform a simple motor task, a finger tapping exercise, and identified the parts of the brain involved in the task by taking an MRI brain scan. The subjects then practiced the finger exercise daily for four weeks, gradually becoming more efficient and quicker at it. At the end of the four-week period, the brain scan was repeated and showed that the area of the brain involved in the task had expanded; this indicated that the regular practice and repetition of the task had recruited new nerve cells and changed the neural connections that had originally been involved in the task.
This remarkable feature of the brain appears to be the physiological basis for the possibility of transforming our minds. By mobilizing our thoughts and practicing new ways of thinking, we can reshape our nerve cells and change the way our brains work. It is also the basis for the idea that inner transformation begins with learning (new input) and involves the discipline of gradually replacing our ‘negative conditioning’ (corresponding with our present characteristic nerve cell activation patterns) with ‘positive conditioning’ (forming new neural circuits). Thus, the idea of training the mind for happiness becomes a very real possibility.
Ethical Discipline
In a later discussion related to training the mind for happiness, the Dalai Lama pointed out, ‘I think that ethical behavior is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence. One could call this ethical discipline. Great spiritual teachers like the Buddha advise us to perform wholesome actions and avoid indulging in unwholesome actions. Whether our action is wholesome or unwholesome depends on whether that action or deed arises from a disciplined or undisciplined state of mind. It is felt that a disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact it is said that bringing about discipline within one’s mind is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.
‘When I speak of discipline, I’m referring to self-discipline, not discipline that’s externally imposed on you by someone else. Also, I’m referring to discipline that’s applied in order to overcome your negative qualities. A criminal gang may need discipline to perform a successful robbery, but that discipline is useless.’
The Dalai Lama stopped speaking for a moment and seemed to be reflecting, gathering his thoughts. Or, perhaps he was simply searching for a word in English. I don’t know. But thinking about our conversation as he paused that afternoon, something about all this talk concerning the importance of learning and discipline began to strike me as being rather tedious when contrasted with the lofty goals of true happiness, spiritual growth, and complete internal transformation. It seemed that the quest for happiness should somehow be a more spontaneous process.
Raising this issue, I interjected, ‘You describe the negative emotions and behaviors as being “unwholesome” and the positive behaviors as “wholesome.” Further, you’ve said that an untrained or undisciplined mind generally results in negative or unwholesome behaviors, so we have to learn and train ourselves to increase our positive behaviors. So far, so good.
‘But the thing that bothers me is that your very definition of negative or unwholesome behaviors is those behaviors which lead to suffering. And you define a wholesome behavior as one that leads to happiness. You also start with the basic premise that all beings naturally want to avoid suffering and gain happiness – that desire is innate; it doesn’t have to be learned. The question then is: If it’s natural for us to want to avoid suffering, why aren’t we spontaneously and naturally more and more repulsed by the negative or unwholesome behaviors as we grow older? And if it is natural to want to gain happiness, why aren’t we spontaneously and naturally more and more drawn to wholesome behaviors and thus become happier as our life progresses? I mean, if these wholesome behaviors naturally lead to happiness and we want happiness, shouldn’t that occur as a natural process? Why should we need so much education, training, and discipline for that process to occur?’
Shaking his head, the Dalai Lama replied, ‘Even in conventional terms, in our everyday life, we consider education as a very important factor for ensuring a successful and happy life. And knowledge does not come by naturally. We have to train; we have to go through a kind of systematic training program and so forth. And we consider this conventional education and training to be quite hard; otherwise why would students look forward so much to vacations? Still, we know that this type of education is quite vital for ensuring a happy and successful life.
‘In the same way, doing wholesome deeds may not come naturally, but we have to consciously train towards it. This is so, particularly in modern society, because there is a tendency to accept that the question of wholesome deeds and unwholesome deeds – what to do and what is not to be done – is something that is considered to be within the purview of religion. Traditionally, it has been considered the responsibility of religion to prescribe what behaviors are wholesome and what are not. However, in today’s society, religion has lost its prestige and influence to some degree. And at the same time, no alternative, such as a secular ethics, has come up to replace it. So there seems to be less attention paid to the need to lead a wholesome way of life. It is because of this that I think we need to make some special effort and consciously work towards gaining that kind of knowledge. For example, although I personally believe that our human nature is fundamentally gentle and compassionate, I feel it is not enough that this is our underlying nature; we must also develop an appreciation and awareness of that fact. And changing how we perceive ourselves, through learning and understanding, can have a very real impact on how we interact with others and how we conduct our daily lives.’
Playing devil’s advocate, I countered, ‘Still, you use the analogy of conventional academic education and training. That is one thing. But if you are talking about certain behaviors that you call “wholesome” or positive, leading to happiness, and other behaviors leading to suffering, why does it take so much learning to identify which behaviors are which and so much training to implement the positive behaviors and eliminate the negative? I mean, if you put your hand in a fire, you get burned. You pull your hand back, and you’ve learned that this behavior leads to suffering. You don’t need extensive learning or training to learn not to touch the fire again.
‘So, why aren’t all behaviors or emotions that lead to suffering like that? For instance, you claim that anger and hatred are clearly negative emotions and ultimately lead to suffering. But why does one have to be educated about the harmful effects of anger
and hatred in order to eliminate these? Since anger immediately causes an uncomfortable emotional state in oneself, and it is certainly easy to feel that discomfort directly, why doesn’t one just naturally and spontaneously avoid it in the future?’
As the Dalai Lama listened intently to my arguments, his intelligent eyes widened slightly, as if he were mildly surprised, or even amused, at the naivete of my questions. Then, with a hearty laugh, full of goodwill, he said, ‘When you talk of knowledge leading to freedom or resolution of a problem, you have to understand that there are many different levels. For example, let’s say that human beings in the Stone Age didn’t know how to cook meat but they still had the biological need to eat, so they just ate like a wild animal. As humans progressed, they learned how to cook and then how to put in different spices to make the food more tasty and came up with more diverse dishes. And even up to our present age, if we are suffering from a particular illness and through our knowledge we learn that a certain type of food is not good for us, even though we might have the desire to eat it, we restrain ourselves from eating it. So it is clear that the more sophisticated the level of our knowledge is, the more effective we will be in dealing with the natural world.