Inspiration from the Dalai Lama

I recently returned from a trip to Dharamshala, India where I had the honor to meet with the Dalai Lama. It was an amazing and inspiring trip on so many levels.

The Tibetan Buddhist community in Dharamshala

The Dalai Lama is 90 years old, but he remains full of energy. He has a wonderful sense of humor and is almost always smiling. He wants to connect with the people around him, because it fulfills him.

The most inspiring thing about the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhist community that has settled in Dharamshala, India is their relentless focus on opportunity. As most of you know, the Dalai Lama and a large number of Tibetan Buddhists (around 150,000) escaped from Tibet in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as they faced increased repression from the Chinese. The emigration continued, but it has slowed down to a trickle as the Chinese have made it increasingly challenging to try to cross the national boundary to India.

The Tibetan Buddhists had faced terrible conditions in Tibet and many of their friends and relatives had been killed. It would have been easy to be consumed by the sadness and regret for the lives that had been lost. But, instead, the Tibetan Buddhists have been driven by the excitement of creating a thriving community in their new-found home in Dharamshala, India.

The results are impressive. Dharamshala is a thriving community with a growing number of institutions that are dedicated to supporting the Tibetan Buddhist emigrants as they seek to rebuild their lives in a different country. The Tibetan Buddhists have come together to support each other, inspired by the opportunity they see.

As many of you are aware, I have written a book called The Journey Beyond Fear that focuses on the power of opportunity-based narratives as a way to overcome fear. I definitely felt that the Tibetan Buddhist experience in Dharamshala illustrates the power of opportunity-based narratives. It can motivate people to come together to accomplish amazing things.

The connection between compassion and passion

During my visit, I was struck by the emphasis that the Dalai Lama puts on feeling compassion for others. By this, he means being aware of the suffering of others around us and being motivated to provide help and reduce the suffering. He wasn’t focused on the suffering – he was focused on the ability to help others and the opportunity to help them create more meaningful lives.

As I reflected on this, I explored the connection between the two words -“compassion” and “passion.” During several decades of research, I have become very focused on the power of a very specific form of passion – I call it “the passion of the explorer.” It turns out, compassion and passion are deeply related in their origins, since they both emerged from Latin words for “suffering.”

What a paradox! A word that started with the meaning of suffering has evolved into a word that focuses on excitement. Similarly, compassion, a word that appears to focus on seeing the suffering of others, also seeks to cultivate excitement about the opportunity to help others to achieve more.

In my work on the passion of the explorer, I have found that people who have cultivated this passion are excited about achieving increasing impact in a specific domain – it could be anything from gardening to nuclear physics. But the interesting thing about these people is that they are explorers, deeply aware of their surroundings, and very much driven to connect with others in ways that help everyone to achieve more impact in the areas that matter to them.

Now, there are many different forms of passion (I developed a taxonomy of passion in my book The Journey Beyond Fear) and I would certainly not claim that all forms of passion also exhibit this form of compassion. However, my visit to Dharamshala gave me insight into how deeply connected the passion of the explorer is with compassion.

My Bhutan experience

I should also mention that my trip included a visit to Bhutan, which has been at the top of my bucket list of countries that I have not yet visited, but wanted to see. It, too, was a very inspiring experience. The setting in the mountains was marvelous. But what really inspired me was the focus of the King of Bhutan on cultivating deep happiness among all the people in this remote country.

The country has created a Gross National Happiness index that it uses to measure progress, rather than Gross Domestic Product. While I found this very inspiring, I also was hopeful that this might evolve into a Gross National Passion index. While happiness is certainly something we should all strive for, I believe that deep happiness will only come when we discover and cultivate the passion of the explorer that I believe is waiting in all of us to be drawn out.

Bottom line

We are facing significant challenges around the world. It is easy to become consumed by the challenges and prisoners of the emotion of fear that naturally emerges if we focus on the challenges. Nevertheless, I am a strong believer that our primary focus should be on the extraordinary opportunities that we all can address to make our lives and communities much more fulfilling.