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.