LAMA HAPPINESS

Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler (1998). The Art of Happiness: 

                                                             A Handbook for Living.

Culter, a psychiatrist, asked the Dalai Lama about happiness in several personal interviews, and together with other Dalai Lama books, integrate the Dalai Lama's teachings on happiness. 

To summarize the Dalai Lama's teachings on happiness as filtered through Cutler (and me):

The purpose of human life is the seek happiness.

Our approach to personal relationships can be to see others like us...we all have the same needs, so we are more alike than different.

We do well to accept suffering as a natural part of human life, take the long view of suffering, attempt to find something positive, perhaps something to learn, some opportunity for growth...

There are many concrete practices that we can consider for cultivating our happiness:

For every activity we undertake, we could ask ourselves a simple question: will this bring us long-term happiness in the sense of a healthy mind, body, and spirit?

Meditating on the negative things in life can reinforce our determination to avoid these things, and meditating on positive things can motivate us to move toward these things...for every negative, there is a positive.

Education, learning, thinking multiple causes, meditating on all factors in a situation, putting things in perspective helps us learn what to do and what to avoid.

We can engender our personal relationships with warmth, affection, and compassion by getting to know the other person, their background, their experiences, their situation, their story...every person can be our teacher.