Written by HH Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy
One day I was in Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, to begin a series of important Buddhist teachings. Bodh Gaya is the holiest pilgrimage place for Buddhists.
There were around one hundred thousand people who had come to attend the teachings, but suddenly I had this intense pain in my abdomen. They did not know then that it was my gallbladder, but I was told I needed to go to the hospital urgently. When bouts of pain struck, it was so intense that I was sweating. We had to drive to the hospital in Patna, the capital city of the state of Bihar, which was two hours away. As we were driving, along the road we passed a lot of poverty. Bihar is one of the poorest states in India. I could see out the window that the children had no shoes, and I knew they were not getting proper education. Then as we approached Patna, under a hut I saw an old man lying on the ground. His hair was disheveled, his clothes were dirty, and he looked sick. He had no one to take care of him. Really, he looked as if he were dying. All the way to the hospital, I was thinking of this man and felt his suffering, and I completely forgot about my own pain. By simply shifting my focus to another person, which is what compassion does, my own pain was much less intense. This is how compassion works even at the physical level.
So… a self-centred attitude is the source of the problem. We have to take care of ourselves without selfishly taking care of ourselves. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we cannot survive. We need to do that. We should have wise selfishness rather than foolish selfishness. Foolish selfishness means you just think of yourself, don’t care about others, bully others, exploit others. In fact, taking care of others, helping others ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life. So that is what I call wise selfishness.