By Matthew Ritchie, Staff Contributor
With the recent release of The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World, the sequel to the very popular The Art of Happiness book, Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama plan to create a more compassionate world.
The book asks a simple question: How is it possible for the average person to be happy in a world that seems increasingly difficult and fraught with problems. The answer, according to the Dalai Lama and Cutler, is by training your mind so that you can see the positive sides to all situations and maintain peace of mind. As opposed to ignoring life’s problems and pretending everything is alright, Cutler and the Dalai Lama prescribe that to gain peace of mind is to accept life’s big problems. In doing so, peace of mind can be reached and a logical mind will come forward to help fix these problems.
One issue that some may have upon picking up this book is that it isn’t strictly a Dalai Lama book. Instead you get Cutler, a trained psychologist and practitioner under the Dalai Lama, guiding you through the teachings of Buddhism and applying them to a Westernized and primarily American viewpoint. Cutler does the primary speaking in the book, drawing from a variety of psychological studies to demonstrate the helpfulness of the Dalai Lama’s teaching in Western society.
Cutler breaks up the process of training your mind in a number of easy to understand chapters that focus on the issues at hand and the ways to fix them.
The book is split up into three sections: “I, Us, and Them”, “Violence Versus Dialogue” and “Happiness in a Troubled World”. The sections deal with subjects such as prejudice, violence and extreme nationalism. The book then suggests ways to overcome these problems.
The book is structured so that anytime Cutler and the Dalai Lama address one issue, the following chapter addresses how to fix it. In this way the book has a practical way of dealing with these problems one at a time. The book can even be used as a manual in the process of meditating on these thoughts after the book has been read.
The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World is a helpful and empowering work, but fault can be found in the authors’ word choice and style. One issue is Cutler’s focus on the hardships of the American world. Most of the Pheonix resident’s hypothetical situations derive from an entirely American centre on issues of prejudice and fear. Cutler mentions the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks repeatedly in an attempt to focus on the fear and resulting prejudice during the aftermath of these events. The first book, The Art of Happiness, claimed to reach audiences all over the world, but Cutler’s American focus doesn’t seem like it would be a selling point in non-American countries.
Cutler also has the habit of creating over-exaggerated tear-jerking hypothetical situations to get his point across. In a newscast Cutler witnessed, a reporter on a Saudi Arabian TV station interviews a Muslim girl who professes her hatred for the world’s Jewish population.
“It’s doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine Basmallah at 17 years old, bomb strapped to her chest,” says Cutler. “Filled with rusty nails and screws, walking into an elementary school in … perhaps America … blowing herself up with as many innocent Jewish children as she can.”
Cutler is trying to force his point by creating a truly fearful situation. This only reinforces the idea that America is a nation filled with fear.
Lapses in writing skill aside, Cutler does bring useful ideas to the table with the help of the Dalai Lama’s teaching. The overall message in the book is that humanity’s natural emotional state is compassion.
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