toward a black plastic cup. It overshot its mark, hit the baseboard, and came hurtling back toward me. Startled, I leapt aside just in time. Apparently, golfing could be unpredictable and dangerous in ways I had never imagined.
Bored with golf, I wandered down a corridor to find the kitchen. Unlike the kitchens at Jokhang, which were in constant use and in which an enticing medley of scents could always be detected, Sam’s kitchen was sterile and uninteresting, probably because he ate most of his meals downstairs. I noticed a few empty beer cans and an ice cream carton in the garbage. No intrigue here.
I was wandering around looking for more rooms—there weren’t any—as someone on the conference call was saying, “Psychology is still a young science. It was just over a hundred years ago that Freud coined the term psychoanalysis. Since then most of the focus has been on helping people with serious mental challenges. It’s only recently that we’ve seen trends like Positive Psychology, in which the focus is not on going from minus ten to zero but from zero to plus ten.”
“Maximizing our potential,” chimed in someone.
“A state of greatest flourishing,” added someone else.
“What I don’t get,” Sam was saying, “is why, after all the research in recent decades, there still doesn’t seem to be a formula for happiness.”
I paused. Formula for happiness? That was so Sam, with his programs and codes and algorithms. As if happiness could be reduced to a collection of scientific data.
“There is an equation,” the man in the center of Sam’s screen was saying. “But like most formulas, it needs some explaining.”
Really? I wasn’t sure if the Dalai Lama knew of such a formula, but the very idea that such a thing might exist made me prick up my ears.
“The formula is H equals S plus C plus V,” said the man, as he keyed it in and it came up on the screen. “Happiness equals what’s called your biological set point, or S, plus the conditions of your life, C, plus V, your voluntary activities. According to this theory, each individual has a set point, or average level of happiness. Some people are naturally upbeat and cheerful, putting them at one end of the bell curve. Others are temperamentally gloomy and fall to the other end. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in the middle. This set point is our personal norm, the base level of subjective well-being we tend to return to after the triumphs and tragedies and day-to-day ups and downs of our lives. Winning the lottery might make you happier for a while, but the research shows that eventually you are likely to revert to your set point.”
“Is there a way to change the set point?” asked a young woman with a British accent. “Or are we just stuck with it?”
I hopped from the floor to the bed, and the bed to the desk, so I could follow the discussion better.
“Meditation,” said a man with a shiny bald head and glowing skin. “It has a powerful impact. Studies have shown that the set points of experienced meditators are right off the scale.”
Yes, I thought, His Holiness certainly knows about that!
“Turning to conditions, C,” continued the man who had been explaining set-point theory, “there are some things about our conditions we can’t control—gender, age, race, sexual orientation, for example. Depending on where you’re born in the world, those factors may or may not have a huge impact on your likely level of happiness.
“As for V, the voluntary variables,” he said, “these include activities you choose to pursue, such as exercising, meditating, learning to play the piano, getting involved with a cause. Such activities require ongoing attention, which means that you don’t habituate to them in the way that you might get used to a new car, say, or a new girlfriend and lose interest when the novelty wears off.”
This prompted chuckling around the world.
He went on. “When you take the happiness formula overall,
Bored with golf, I wandered down a corridor to find the kitchen. Unlike the kitchens at Jokhang, which were in constant use and in which an enticing medley of scents could always be detected, Sam’s kitchen was sterile and uninteresting, probably because he ate most of his meals downstairs. I noticed a few empty beer cans and an ice cream carton in the garbage. No intrigue here.
I was wandering around looking for more rooms—there weren’t any—as someone on the conference call was saying, “Psychology is still a young science. It was just over a hundred years ago that Freud coined the term psychoanalysis. Since then most of the focus has been on helping people with serious mental challenges. It’s only recently that we’ve seen trends like Positive Psychology, in which the focus is not on going from minus ten to zero but from zero to plus ten.”
“Maximizing our potential,” chimed in someone.
“A state of greatest flourishing,” added someone else.
“What I don’t get,” Sam was saying, “is why, after all the research in recent decades, there still doesn’t seem to be a formula for happiness.”
I paused. Formula for happiness? That was so Sam, with his programs and codes and algorithms. As if happiness could be reduced to a collection of scientific data.
“There is an equation,” the man in the center of Sam’s screen was saying. “But like most formulas, it needs some explaining.”
Really? I wasn’t sure if the Dalai Lama knew of such a formula, but the very idea that such a thing might exist made me prick up my ears.
“The formula is H equals S plus C plus V,” said the man, as he keyed it in and it came up on the screen. “Happiness equals what’s called your biological set point, or S, plus the conditions of your life, C, plus V, your voluntary activities. According to this theory, each individual has a set point, or average level of happiness. Some people are naturally upbeat and cheerful, putting them at one end of the bell curve. Others are temperamentally gloomy and fall to the other end. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in the middle. This set point is our personal norm, the base level of subjective well-being we tend to return to after the triumphs and tragedies and day-to-day ups and downs of our lives. Winning the lottery might make you happier for a while, but the research shows that eventually you are likely to revert to your set point.”
“Is there a way to change the set point?” asked a young woman with a British accent. “Or are we just stuck with it?”
I hopped from the floor to the bed, and the bed to the desk, so I could follow the discussion better.
“Meditation,” said a man with a shiny bald head and glowing skin. “It has a powerful impact. Studies have shown that the set points of experienced meditators are right off the scale.”
Yes, I thought, His Holiness certainly knows about that!
“Turning to conditions, C,” continued the man who had been explaining set-point theory, “there are some things about our conditions we can’t control—gender, age, race, sexual orientation, for example. Depending on where you’re born in the world, those factors may or may not have a huge impact on your likely level of happiness.
“As for V, the voluntary variables,” he said, “these include activities you choose to pursue, such as exercising, meditating, learning to play the piano, getting involved with a cause. Such activities require ongoing attention, which means that you don’t habituate to them in the way that you might get used to a new car, say, or a new girlfriend and lose interest when the novelty wears off.”
This prompted chuckling around the world.
He went on. “When you take the happiness formula overall,
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