By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune
You don’t have to be the 14th reincarnation of the “Buddha of Compassion” to write a book about dealing with workplace stress, but it can’t hurt.
While it can be argued that Tenzin Gyatso has never had to do a lick of physical labor, he is the Dalai Lama, whose smiling, bespectacled face has become the planet’s prime symbol for Buddhism, the cause of Tibetan freedom and international peace advocacy.
By itself, that might be enough to explain the quick appearance of the just-released paperback edition The Art of Happiness at Work (Riverhead Books) on – aided by literary collaborator Howard Cutler, the American psychiatrist who also co-wrote the Dalai Lama’s previously bestselling The Art of Happiness – exhibits a gift for capturing the illusive obvious and milling it into informational nuggets readily digestible by the Western, materialistic mind.
Otherwise, the reader would never make it past page 14. That is where the Dalai Lama thinks long and hard before answering the question, “What do you do for a living?”
“Nothing. I do nothing,” he finally says.
While the 69-year-old Nobel Peace laureate is tireless in his role as exiled spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people, globe-trotting ambassador for human rights and ethics lecturer, his needs have been provided to him by doting followers since age 2. He may rise at 3 a.m. to begin his day with meditation and exacting ritual, but he does so without the worries of providing himself food and shelter.
That is not the case for most of the 6 billion beings who daily grub out a living on planet Earth.
But to take anything of Eastern philosophy at face value often is to miss the point; the same is true of the Dalai Lama’s self-professed unemployment. Happiness at work? How about happiness in life, not determined by the clock or separated into work, home and spiritual personas, but by the degree all are fused into one.
And when barriers appear on your path to joy? “Welcome them, embrace them willingly, and see them as a way to develop yourself, to prosper, to ultimately achieve a greater sense of well-being and happiness,” the Dalai Lama suggests.
Cutler admits it isn’t easy for Western readers to make the philosophical leap the Dalai Lama recommends in order to develop contentment that relies on spiritual and ethical unity – not the varying and often conflicting workplace, home and social personas Americans use to navigate fractured lives.
“For most of us, that is a pretty tall order,” Cutler said in an interview. “To be like the Dalai Lama, you have to be who you are and treat all the same in all settings, whether a high-ranking politician or the food server at a restaurant.
“But he’s saying that the closer we get to integrating who we are at work, the happier we will be,” he adds. “It’s a matter of taking small steps, recognizing human beings are equally worthy of respect.”
Still, not even the Dalai Lama can provide answers to all problems. At one point in the book, Cutler describes a workplace where only production and profit are king, and employees bear increasing workloads and long hours as cutbacks leave fewer hands to handle the same demands.
The Dalai Lama laughs in seeming disbelief: “Some of your questions are so impossible! It is almost as if you are asking, ‘How can beings in the hell realm learn to practice patience, tolerance and tranquility?’ ”
More often, though, the Tibetan spiritual teacher offers simple advice built around what he identifies as the three motivations for work: money, career and calling.
Accumulation of money, for wealth alone, is self-defeating, the Dalai Lama argues. If your pursuit of career is all you have, success will prove empty and often come at the expense of others. Only in seeing one’s work as a calling, or a means to serve a higher purpose, can workers find true fulfillment.
“Whether it is work or some other activity, the main purpose should be to benefit human beings,” the Dalai Lama says. “Relate to others with warmth, human affection, with honesty and sincerity. Compassion.”
However, wisdom, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
Michael Mercer, renowned business psychologist and author of Hire the Best and Avoid the Rest, has no plans to pick up The Art of Happiness at Work. He respects the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader, but questions his bona fides as a workplace adviser.
“I have no desire to read it. I consider it in the same category as sports coaches who write books about how to run a business,” Mercer says. “The Dalai Lama doesn’t run a business. It would be more valuable to people to read a book by someone who’s really run a business or a corporation.”
When provided a list of key excerpts, however, Mercer acknowledged the Dalai Lama’s ability to “translate some timeless principles into plain and simple advice . . . though he does it with a spiritual emphasis.”
For example, when a worker is exploited or asked to do unethical things, the Dalai Lama preaches the duty to resist.
However, he also stresses the “need to cope inwardly and train our minds to remain calm” to avoid despair, hatred or frustration.
Mercer, whose company provides its clients with pre-employment tests to forecast applicants behaviors and abilities, says the secular interpretation is one simply valuing truthfulness and poise by workers in confronting superiors in such crises.
The Dalai Lama says “critical thinking and analysis” can help a disappointed employee overcome the jealousy and anger from being unjustly denied a promotion or pay hike.
Mercer’s interpretation? “Being successful in the workplace means you learn from your mistakes. Another part of that is that when you fall down, pick yourself up.”
Finally, the Dalai Lama emphasizes the need for higher purpose in work, concluding that personal challenge “is not necessarily an absolute requirement for workplace satisfaction.”
That is not as at odds with America’s entrepreneurial spirit as it may first appear, Mercer says.
“He’s getting at having a vision, a big goal of an exciting, compelling future,” he explains. “As the saying goes, Jonas Salk did not want to be a director of a laboratory, he wanted to cure polio.”
As for Cutler and the Dalai Lama, who he first met in 1982 as a medical student researching traditional Tibetan medicine, a third Art of Happiness volume already is in progress. This time, the sage and the doctor will focus on cultivating inner peace in a world full of violence, terrorism, racism and economic injustice.
