The Doctor is Within

The Dalai Lama has been in exile for 50 years now. The New York Times has a short reflection from a reporter that has been covering him for many years. It's as good as synopsis of H.H. Dalai Lama I've seen. Here's a sample:

I’ve been spending time for 18 years in a Benedictine monastery, and the monks I know there have likewise found out how to be delighted by the smallest birthday cake. Happiness is not pleasure, they know, and unhappiness, as the Buddhists say, is not the same as suffering. Suffering — in the sense of old age, sickness and death — is the law of life; unhappiness is just the position we choose — or can not choose — to bring to it. (source)

Being in my own Benedictine Monastery, I know what this writer says to be true--you do find great happiness in little things, which aren't necessarily pleasurable or not pleasurable. It's just a different orientation of spirit in the cloister that changes everything.

-t