The Art of Happiness

egister his response.Looking a bit perplexed, the Dalai Lamasuddenly interrupted me.“Howard,” he said, starting to laugh, “Ialready agreed. Why are you still arguing thecase?”Finally grasping that he had agreed to myproposal, I felt a surge of elation—among myobjectives and reasons for proposing this book,there was a more selfish motive that I hadconveniently forgotten to mention: I wanted tolearn from him how I myself could becomehappier.We began work on the book in 1993, duringthe Dalai Lama’s first visit to Arizona, my homestate. That week he had an intensive teachingschedule, delivering a brilliant commentary on aclassic text by Shantideva, the great eighth-