The right to be happy

Bhutanese way merits study.

The Dalai Lama, who heads the Tibetan spiritual world order, has a solid point when he says that many of the problems besetting humanity today are due to “secondary-level differences” and that “at the fundamental level, there is no basis for quarrel”. At the concluding day of the World Buddhist Congregation in New Delhi on Wednesday, the Buddhist leader also drove home the point that “each one of us has the right to achieve” a happy life. By a happy life, mind you, in accordance with the spiritual tenets of Buddhism, be it the ancient ones or latest varieties like Nichiren Buddhism, one does not mean a life brimming with material happiness, but a life wedded to the pursuit of inner happiness — a celebration of life in entirety. Bhutan is an excellent example.

It is not a materially affluent nation, but its GNH (gross national happiness) practice and advocacy has made its people a uniquely joyous species on earth. The right to be happy, as espoused by the Dalai Lama, and his thesis that we fundamentally have no, or cannot have any, differences, are at the root of an egalitarian society that the Buddha had envisioned. How can authoritarian Beijing tolerate such ‘hogwash’?

The Sentinel, December 2