Transforming Dissatisfaction At Work

The Art of Happiness at Work
by The Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler, M.D.

From the authors who brought you the million-copy bestseller The Art of Happiness comes an exploration of job, career, and finding the ultimate happiness at work.

It spent nearly two years on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold well over a million copies in hardcover. It remains, five years later, in its original hardcover edition. It was the book by the Dalai Lama that broke new ground, that made him accessible to a larger audience, spreading his words of wisdom and message of inner peace that captured the imagination of America. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for the first time since that revolutionary book, has once again teamed up with psychiatrist Howard Cutler to resume the discussion about what makes life meaningful begun in The Art of Happiness.

Over the past several years, Howard Cutler has continued his conversations with the Dalai Lama, asking him the questions we all want answered about how to find happiness in the place we spend most of our time. Work-whether it's in the home or at an office-is what mostly runs our lives. We depend on it to eat, to clothe and shelter ourselves, and to take care of our families. Once again, Dr. Cutler brings forward seminal studies and asks the Dalai Lama to respond. Beginning with a direct correlation between productivity and happiness, Dr. Cutler questions His Holiness about the nature of work. In psychiatry and according to the Dalai Lama, our motivation for working determines our level of satisfaction. The book explores these three levels of focus:

Survival: focus on salary, stability, food and clothing
Career: focus on advancement
Calling: focus on work as a higher purpose

Cutler probes the Dalai Lama's wisdom by posing these questions: How does the relationship between our personal values and those of our employers affect happiness? What is the relationship between self-awareness and work? What are the main sources of dissatisfaction and how can we cope with them? How do we deal with conflicts with coworkers and bosses? How do we deal with jealousy, anger, or hostility at work? How does the lack of freedom affect our levels of happiness? How do we deal with boredom or lack of challenge? Unfair criticism? Overly demanding or taxing situations? Job change and unemployment?

Once again, Cutler walks us through the Dalai Lama's reasoning so that we know how to apply the wisdom to daily life. This is an invaluable source of strength and peace for anyone who earns a living.

Chapter 1

It had been a long day for the Dalai Lama. Even by the time he had eaten his meager breakfast of tsampa and tea at 7:30 a.m., he had already been up for four hours, completing his rigorous daily regimen of prayer, study, and meditation. After breakfast he began his usual workday, and that day there was a full line-up: meeting with one person after another, he saw an Indian government liaison officer, the head lama of one of the ancient lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, the president of a member republic of the Russian Federation, a high official in the Tibetan government-in-exile, and various members of his private office staff. And scheduled among these private meetings, I watched with admiration as he met with a group of newly arrived Tibetan refugees. They had made the arduous journey across the Himalayas by any means of conveyance they could find, lucky if they could afford a ride on an antediluvian bus, but more likely to have caught a lift, riding in the open bed of a shuddering pickup truck. Some had crossed the rugged border on foot, climbing high-altitude passes with grim determination. Here and there one could see a child missing a finger or a toe-casualties of frostbite. Many arrived penniless, destitute, their traditional chubas (native Tibetan costumes) tattered and dusty from the long journey. In some of the older faces, ruddy faces, weathered and creased by winds and harsh climate, one could detect traces of untold suffering, spirits hardened by years of mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese Communists. For many of these people, however, a mere glimpse of the Dalai Lama, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, was enough to revive their withered spirits and infuse them with renewed hope and joy. He offered them all, young and old, words of hope and encouragement, as well as hardheaded practical advice, ranging from "Education is critical to success" to "Now you men should be careful of going with prostitutes-you could catch a disease."

Finally, it was 2 p.m., his last scheduled appointment for the day. And here was I. I had been allotted several hours each afternoon to collaborate on our book, and I was here to collect. Our meetings were far from chatty tête-à-têtes, however. In fact, I often gave him no end of difficulty as we struggled to reconcile East and West, pestering him with endless questions, a fair proportion of which he labeled so silly or impossible to answer that it had become a running joke between us, trying even his legendary patience.

Standing outside on his bougainvillea-draped porch, with the majestic snowcapped Dhauladhar Mountains of northern India as a backdrop, the Dalai Lama greeted me warmly as he led me inside his home. Little had changed in this room since our first meeting twenty years before. The same traditional Tibetan thanka paintings lined the pale yellow walls, the same Buddhist shrine covered with ornate Buddhist icons at one end of the room, and the same floor-to-ceiling relief map of Tibet dominating the opposite wall. Even the modest furniture appeared to be the same, although it's possible the sofa may have been reupholstered.

As I unpacked my notebooks and fumbled with my tape recorder, we spoke casually about some of his activities and meetings earlier that day. The Dalai Lama generally scheduled our meetings for his last appointment of the day, so as I loitered in the attached reception room waiting for our meeting to begin, I often had the opportunity to observe the collection of individuals who came to meet with him. On that day in particular I was struck by the diversity of individuals seeking his time and counsel, people coming to visit him from all corners of the earth.

Thinking about this as I began our session, I said, "You know, I couldn't help but notice how many different kinds of people come to see you, people with various professions, all sorts of jobs. And I was thinking about how you also are involved in so many different kinds of activities. Now, this week I want to focus on the topic of work . . ."

"Yes. Good." The Dalai Lama nodded.

"And since we're going to be talking about work this week, I was just curious, what do you consider to be your primary job?"

The Dalai Lama looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

I was puzzled why he was puzzled. It seemed to be a simple question.

"Well, in the West," I explained, "when you meet somebody, often the first question you ask a stranger is, 'What do you do?' meaning specifically, 'What kind of work do you do? What's your job?' So, if you met a complete stranger and they didn't know you or had never heard of the Dalai Lama and they didn't even know what your monk's robes signified, they just met you as a human being and they asked you, 'What do you do for a living?' what would you tell them?"

The Dalai Lama reflected in silence for a long while, and finally declared, "Nothing. I do nothing."

Nothing? In response to my blank stare, he repeated himself. "If I was suddenly posed with this question that would probably be my answer. Nothing."

Nothing? I didn't buy it. He clearly worked as hard as anyone I knew, harder even. And as grueling as this day had been, it was light duty compared to his schedule during his frequent trips abroad. In fact, informally attached to his small staff on a speaking tour of the U.S. the year before, I had witnessed a remarkable display of relentless activity, dedication, and hard work: as a statesman, he had met with President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and a host of high-ranking senators and members of Congress. As a teacher, an ordained Buddhist monk and consummate Buddhist scholar, he gave extensive lectures expounding the most subtle facets of Buddhist philosophy. As a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and tireless advocate for world peace and human rights, he gave public addresses to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. As a religious leader striving to promote interfaith dialogue and harmony, he met with religious figures from many faiths: priests, rabbis, ministers, and swamis, even the president of the Mormon Church. He met with scientists, scholars, entertainers, the famous and the obscure. And in each place he visited, he met with local Tibetan refugees struggling to make a life and prosper in their new country. He worked morning till night, traveling from city to city with such speed that one place seemed to merge into the next. And yet not a single meeting or event on this tour was initiated at his own request-all were based on invitations from others. And even more remarkable-no matter how rigorous his schedule became, he seemed to handle his work effortlessly. He was happy doing it.

He did nothing? Not by a long shot.

"No, really," I pressed. "What if someone persisted and asked you again?"

"Well," he laughed, "in that case, I would probably say, 'I just look after myself, just take care of myself.'" Perhaps sensing my frustration with this glib response, he smiled and continued, "I think maybe this answer isn't entirely serious. But actually, if you think about it, that's true. All six billion human beings in the world are just 'taking care of number one.' Isn't it? So whether one is a professional, or whatever line of work one is in, each of us from birth to death is just working to take care of ourselves. That's our main task."

My attempt to pin him down on his job description was getting nowhere fast. And this wasn't the first time I had noticed his natural reluctance to engage in discussion about his role in the world. Perhaps it was due to a certain lack of self-absorption, an absence of self-involvement. I don't know. But I decided to drop the subject of his job for now and turn to the wider issue.

"Well, in working to take care of ourselves most people need some kind of job. Now many times in the past I've heard you say that the purpose of life is happiness."

"That's right," he affirmed.

Copyright © 2003 the Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler, published by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.

About the Author

Recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso was brought to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and enthroned two years later as the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, His Holiness is today universally acknowledged as one of the world's preeminent spiritual leaders.

Howard Cutler, M.D., is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He first met the Dalai Lama in 1982, while visiting India on a research grant to study Tibetan medicine. Dr. Cutler maintains a private psychiatric practice in Phoenix.