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A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to speak at a conference titled “Happiness and Its Causes,” which brought together Western psychologists with Buddhist scholars to explore what makes people happy. At the conference, I was struck by just how important the topic of happiness is, particularly given our increasing epidemic of depression. In the United States, college students are accessing mental health services at higher rates than ever before, and psychotherapy and self-help books (not to mention mental health apps) are now multi-billion-dollar industries.
But I also was struck by how the Buddhist scholars seemed to be using the word “happiness” in very different ways than most of the psychologists present at the conference. At times, these two groups appeared to be talking about completely different things.
It’s well known that one of the tools increasingly used by psychotherapists over the past 10 to 15 years—mindfulness meditation—is adapted from Buddhism. Research shows that mindfulness-based therapies are effective for treating depression, anxiety, and even physical pain. So, I was surprised that many of the Buddhist scholars at the conference were critical of Western psychologists’ use of this practice.
Venerable Robina Courtin, a Tibetan Buddhist nun and one of the conference organizers, told me during an interview on KPFA’s ‘About Health’ program, “Part of the problem here is that anybody can use the word mediation. Buddha doesn’t have a copyright on it. But if we want to do the Buddhist one, we’d better know what it means, and I think there are many misconceptions. The first misconception is that you only meditate when you’ve got a problem, so we’re only talking about a pill, which is absurd. ... It is not an alternative to a pill. It is not a relaxation technique. It is not to make all the negative thoughts go away. It is not to have a vision and special feelings. None of that.”
At the heart of her critique seems to again be a differing view of happiness. Indeed, Western psychology sometimes treats mindfulness a little like a “happiness pill”: Use it and everything will be great.
Utterly confused and fascinated by these differences, I began a personal journey. As a Western psychologist, I thought I already understood my own culture’s take on happiness. I was clueless, however, about how Buddhists understood the concept. So, over the past year, I regularly attended group meditation sessions, Dharma talks, and many other events at a local Tibetan Buddhist meditation center—often two or three times a week—and began a daily meditation practice. Ever the researcher, I also read numerous books and articles on both Eastern and Western ideas about happiness. It turns out that happiness is more complex than many people think, and I’m still far from understanding it from either cultural perspective. But some of the differences are interesting to consider.
In his extensive review of research and writings on happiness, Mohsen Joshanloo, Senior Lecturer in the Center for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, makes the case that Western psychology has largely equated happiness with hedonism. In a nutshell, the predominant Western understanding is that happiness is achieved when we feel good. In contrast, Eastern traditions tend to take a “eudaimonic” view of happiness, prioritizing wisdom and meaning over pleasure. In Buddhism, for instance, worldly pleasures are viewed as impermanent. With time, the gratification we receive from a new smartphone, high salary, or the latest compliment someone gives us will fade. So, trying to base one’s well-being on such factors is discouraged.
Eastern worldviews are not all the same, of course. Spiritual and philosophic traditions abound, including many schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and others. Even within each of these perspectives, people have very different beliefs. We are all unique and complex beings. But Joshanloo finds that these varied approaches to life share certain ideas about happiness that broadly contrast with Western approaches.
Here are four of the most important:
1. Self-transcendence is more important than self-enhancement.
If you’re from the West, chances are you take for granted that you have a “self” that is independent from the world around you and calls the shots in your life. This idea of an independent self is based on the largely Western cultural ideal of individualism—the notion that one’s behavior should primarily be determined by one’s personal goals and values, independent of others. From this perspective, a good life is achieved by enhancing ourselves through factors like personal autonomy, goal-achievement, and self-esteem. In contrast, Eastern ideas are often rooted in collectivism—the notion that one’s behavior should be largely determined by goals and values that are shared by the group or collective, often placing others’ interests above one’s own. As National Taiwan University researcher Kwang-Kuo Hwang argues in The Counseling Psychologist, in many Eastern traditions, happiness is achieved, at least in part, by transcending the self—giving up our focus on ourselves and realizing that we are connected to others.
2. Harmony is more important than mastery.
Western culture often considers us to be “masters” of the world around us. In the West, we love to control things. We tend to see ourselves as standing apart from world and thus able to, as Albert Gilgen and Jae Hyung Cho write, “analyze, label, categorize, manipulate, control, or consume” it. Consistent with this idea, in one celebrated Western model of psychological well-being, a fully functioning person is defined as one who “has a sense of mastery and competence in managing the environment.” In many Eastern worldviews, in contrast, the human person is seen as being one with the cosmos and all beings in it, a small but inseparable piece of the whole. Happiness is thus achieved through being in harmony with others and with the world around us.
3. Contentment is more important than satisfaction.
Within Western psychology, satisfaction with life is viewed as one of the most important factors in well-being. Satisfaction implies that the world must meet our needs in order for us to be happy. Eastern perspectives on happiness, on the other hand, tend to emphasize contentment with life. Although Eastern approaches acknowledge that it can be productive to have goals, they also emphasize that we can experience contentment regardless of whether all our goals are achieved. Psychiatrist C. Shamasundar writes in The Indian Journal of Psychiatry that contentment is viewed in Hinduism as “an intensely dynamic acceptance of results of one’s efforts in the moment-to-moment struggle of life.” If our purpose is not to master the universe but to be in harmony with it, we can be content knowing that we do not have ultimate control over what happens and accept that things won’t always go our way.
4. Valuing suffering is more important than avoiding suffering.
In Eastern thought, being content also involves accepting that a certain amount of suffering is unavoidable and even valuable. Because Western views of happiness are often rooted in hedonism, they stress that well-being is achieved by avoiding pain and maximizing pleasure. Within this worldview, we can only be completely happy when nothing bad happens. From some Eastern points of view, however, there is value in embracing both the positive and negative sides of life. According to Joshanloo, in Taoism failing to accept that unhappiness often coexists with happiness is believed to lead to suffering. Somewhat similarly, in Buddhism, suffering is viewed as a virtually unavoidable part of conventional human existence. Acknowledging and even learning from that suffering can help us rise above it.
Happiness is a very personal concept, of course, and everyone is entitled to his or her own view of what makes life worth living. Nonetheless, we can often learn a lot by examining perspectives different from our own. Although Western psychologists have been quick to adopt mindfulness as a therapeutic tool, they’ve been slower to explore the larger worldview that supports that tool. This doesn’t necessarily mean that any of us needs to change the way we view happiness. But perhaps by considering the four points above, we can deepen our own understanding of what life is about.
As Venerable Robina Courtin told me, referring to her own personal journey along the Buddhist path, “If you go along checking the boxes as you go, proving the point each step gradually, and you find that what the Buddha said is wrong, you must reject him. Of course, you must. So I take it as my hypothesis that I’m working with. I’m not just sitting on my laurels and believing in it.”
If one of our goals in life is to be happy, it’s worth exploring different hypotheses about how to get there.
