![]() ![]() ![]() The Dalai Lama told me, “Thinking in a more compassionate way is the best way to fulfill your own interests.” He added that his own practice was to think about benefiting other people as much as possible. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has an apt term for the blending of selfless and selfish: otherish. The concept of wise selfishness shows that the line between self-interest and other-interest is porous. But, he said, a truly enlightened self-interest also means recognizing that acting in generous and altruistic ways makes you happier than solely being out for yourself does. It is natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. He called it “wise selfishness.” We all have an inborn penchant for self-interest. During our encounter, however, I was reminded that His Holiness had a theory that elegantly exposed the false binary between selfishness and selflessness. So that was the psychic baggage I carried into my interview with the Dalai Lama. In my low moments, I sometimes feel like I’m a thousand-armed being as well, except my palm-based eyeballs are seeking only self-centered gratification. This deity has a thousand arms, and on each hand there is an eyeball, scanning the world for suffering. The Dalai Lama is considered an emanation of a Buddhist deity of compassion called Avalokiteshvara. On the other hand, I find that his unstinting advocacy for kindness and generosity provokes a kind of impostor syndrome for me. He also used his influence and resources to help catalyze an explosion of scientific research into meditation. And he did all of this while unflinchingly preaching compassion, even as the Chinese government repressed his people and desecrated their culture. Instead of fading into irrelevance, he became a global figure, meeting with world leaders, appearing in Apple ads and keeping the Tibetan cause in the headlines. At 23, he was forced into exile after a Chinese invasion. He was identified at age 2 as the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, and rapidly proved himself to be a meditative and academic adept. On one hand, his biography is extraordinary. ![]() But I admit that I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with the man. I am a huge fan of the Dalai Lama, which is perhaps unsurprising given that I write books and host a podcast about happiness. This was a rare opportunity, given that he is now 87 years old and doesn’t grant interviews very often. I recently flew to Dharamsala, India, to spend a few weeks in the orbit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. If we lived in a state of perpetual altruistic concern, refusing to speak up for ourselves and generally being doormats, that would constitute what one Tibetan Buddhist teacher called “idiot compassion.” Research suggests that compassionate, generous people are happier, healthier, more popular and more successful.Īnd yet, we all need to have some self-interest. We say we care about others, but as the comedian George Carlin used to joke, we still take the bread from the middle of the loaf.Īside from avoiding hypocrisy and public relations issues, there are many other reasons not to be selfish. Nobody likes people who hog the ball or bogart the joint, perhaps because we see in those people a reflection of our own lurking capacity for greed. After spending several days with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai in Atlanta, a few years ago, this way of meditating on Him and with Him simply came to me and I eventually wrote it down.Selfishness gets a bad rap - which, for the most part, is richly deserved. ![]()
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