The Art of Happiness
His holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M. D.
Why did I choose the book?
I chose this book mainly because it’s in English. I felt that I need to read something longer and more difficult in English and at the same time I wanted to relax a bit while reading. The whole book is written as a conversation between the Dalai Lama and the American psychologist Howard.
There are a lot of ideas in the book when I had "aha" moments and at the same time I realized how sometimes we forget to enjoy ordinary things and how overwhelmed we are with the materialism of the modern world.
Thoughts that stuck in my head:
"We don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate - right now at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness."
This sentence was just one of the aha moments when I read the book. It occurred to me that sometimes, as humanity, we are constantly pursuing something bigger and bigger, and as soon as we reach a certain goal, we want more. I don't mean that we shouldn't set big goals, not at all. You just need to live more in the present moment and celebrate the smaller successes of everyday life.
"I think in many cases people tend to expect the other person to respond to them in a positive way first, rather than taking the initiative themselves to create that possibility."
Again, something I perceive around me quite often. "I am not successful, because he treats me like this." "She's still in a bad mood." But how many times do we try to change ourselves instead of complaining? Us, humans, often tend to blame others and are afraid to take life into our own hands, which is shame. And I realized that sometimes I also act like that. I would like to change it anyway.
"When we suffer, it’s natural to view our suffering as senseless and unfair, and wonder," Why me? ". Fortunately, however, during times of comparative ease, periods before o rafter acute experiences of suffering, we can reflect on suffering, seeking to develop an understanding of its meaning. "
The authors mention here how we should take the positive ones from each negative experience. And again, everything is always up to us how we deal with it and what we take from a bad experience. We have two things left - to regret or take the positive from the negative and learn from it. Of course, there are events where positive things are sought for badly, but it is always up to us how we approach it.
Conclusion
While reading this book, I was completely relaxed and it can be said that it was a form of meditation for me (which I really appreciated now, as I have been under a lot of stress lately). This book brought me a lot of lessons and good advice for the future. The only thing that bothered me about the book was that lots of ideas are based on similar principles, and therefore lots of ideas spin around all the time. They are always said only a little differently. The book was strongly motivating and self-developing, but the question is how long I will be able to follow the principles of the book and whether I will be able to apply them to daily life.
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