Dalai Lama XIV & Desmond Tutu

The Dalai Lama XIV is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism whose The Book of Joy, co-authored with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, distils decades of wisdom about happiness, suffering, and resilience.

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama — Tenzin Gyatso — was born in 1935 in a small village in northeastern Tibet and recognized at two years old as the reincarnation of his predecessor. Forced into exile in India in 1959 after the Chinese occupation of Tibet, he has lived at Dharamsala ever since, continuing to lead the Tibetan government-in-exile and to teach Buddhist philosophy to international audiences. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent advocacy for Tibetan independence.

The Book of Joy (2016), co-written with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and narrated by Douglas Abrams, is the record of a week-long conversation between two of the world’s most celebrated spiritual leaders on the question of how to find joy in a life full of suffering. The dialogue format captures the warmth, humor, and intellectual playfulness of the exchange, while the substance — drawing on both Buddhist and Christian traditions — offers a genuinely practical framework for cultivating what the Dalai Lama calls “the highest form of happiness.” The book spent months on bestseller lists and has been widely used in therapeutic and educational contexts.

His broader published work includes The Art of Happiness (1998, with Howard Cutler), Ethics for the New Millennium (1999), and numerous teachings and commentaries on Buddhist philosophy. He writes not for Buddhists specifically but for a general audience interested in the question of how to live well, approaching the subject with a scientific curiosity — he has been in sustained dialogue with neuroscientists about meditation and the brain — that distinguishes him from purely devotional religious writers.