Contemplating sustainable happiness in Vienna

I decided to contemplate the next slogan--"always maintain only a joyful mind" during a trip to Vienna. Now you might say: that is really easy: Vienna is a gorgeous city, so it's no challenge to be happy. This is certainly true. However, it was not that trivial. I went there for work: to discuss the future of Mind and Life Europe. Mind and Life is an organization that grew out of a series of dialogues between the Dalai Lama and scientists. So how does work relate to maintaining a joyful mind?

Let's first unpack the slogan. Maintaining only a joyful mind does not mean that you always need to be smiling and ignore all the sadness and difficulty that is abound in life. It does mean that you do not completely wallow in feeling sorry for yourself. After all, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, when there is something to solve a problem, do it, and when there is nothing you can do, it does not help to feel sad about it either. So this attitude of maintaining a joyful mind is the mind that considers everything as workable. Usually this attitude makes even difficult things easier. I got to practise this today on my flight back from Vienna. The flight was kept on an indefinite hold because of stormy weather in Amsterdam. Thankfully enough, my mind actually was quite OK throughout it all. It's not actually that bad to hang out at the airport if you just focus on the moment (and happily plough through the infinite amount of work that is always present). And as I am writing this, I am sitting on the plane, which now has gotten a delayed departure time after all.

Nevertheless, the more important dimension of maintaining a joyful mind became clear to me over the course of the meeting. We were reflecting on what makes Mind and Life events so special. I felt that a crucial ingredient is that it connects us to a dimension of life that we find deeply meaningful. While eating a Sachertorte, which we also did during the meeting, is lovely, this pleasure is only very temporary. In contrast, when you are engaging into work that puts into practice your deepest human values (which for a Buddhist practitioner is mostly cultivating compassion for all living beings, as well as wisdom), this feels very gratifying. When my academic work aligns with these values, in which wisdom may be operationalized as simply learning more about the nature of the human mind, and compassion as doing research that matters and brings benefit to beings, or teaching that gives insight and knowledge to others, then I feel happy for a much longer time. Moreover, by breaking down the boundaries between work and spiritual practice, there is less of a feeling of stress because work becomes just another way to engage in spiritual practice, rather than a competitor for our time. In this way, I think figuring out a way to align one's work to true human values is a way to "always maintain a joyful mind", and also a recipe against burnout.

Finding your own vision for yourself

I like this image because it shows one quality that I find very important  to cultivate: caring for others. (this was  holding a little baby goat on the way to Ladakh)

In this blog I will discuss my facorite Lojong slogan, which is "of all witnesses, rely on the principal one." This refers to not going by other's judgments of you, but sticking to your own compass. It is obviously critical to do this, because otherwise it is the recipe for unhappiness. People will never always like you, especially when you are trying to go against some societal conventions or have some controversial ideas.



One reason I like this slogan a lot is that I really have to work a lot on this one. I tend to be a people-pleaser, and find it challenging to ignore what people think of me. One example is a class I have been teaching, which consists of very critical and quite negative and judgmental students. I noticed I started to worry more and more about what they were thinking and get really scared of doing something wrong. (I read the student evaluations last week, and while they were commenting that the course was not well organized, and that the book was crap, they also wrote that I was knowledgeable and sweet).

Mountains always remind me to keep an overarching vision

Interestingly, this past week I read an amazing alternative perspective of one person nominated as a Teacher of the Year at my university, who said: I really appreciate it when students take the time to tell me I am doing something wrong. Because when you know you do something wrong, you can learn, otherwise you can never change. And as long as you know you have done your best, that is all you can do.

A last point to keep in mind in relying on the principal witness is that it is very important to define your own vision for yourself, and your own goals. Alessia Lugoboni did a very nice video on this, in which she talked about how we often get stuck in life because we don't think enough about why we do what we do. It is important to not just go with everything that happens and get lost in the crazy rat race of daily nitty gritty, but always have an overarching vision about where you want to go. I wrote down several goals at the start of this year, and it is very inspiring to keep reviewing these every few weeks to see how I am doing. Only then can you be slowly change and develop according to whatever vision you have for yourself--not when you are relying on the small-mindedness of what other people think of you. With Tibetan new year around the corner, this is another chance for me to go back to my goals. Do you want to join me?