Where to Start with the Dalai Lama: A Reading Guide
Where to start with the Dalai Lama — how to approach The Book of Joy, his essential conversation with Desmond Tutu on lasting happiness. A complete reading guide.
By Lena Fischer
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (born 1935), is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism who has been living in exile in Dharamsala, India since the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1959. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his advocacy of non-violent resistance to Chinese rule and his promotion of peace and environmental values. Among his extensive published writings, The Book of Joy (2016) — a collaboration with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, facilitated by author Douglas Abrams — is the most widely read and emotionally accessible of his works in recent years.
Where to Start: The Book of Joy (2016)
The essential Dalai Lama for general readers — and one of the most genuinely uplifting books in recent popular spirituality. The book’s unusual claim to credibility comes from its participants: the two men discussing how to find joy are not people who have lived without suffering. The Dalai Lama has been in exile for over sixty years, separated from his homeland and his people, and has watched Tibet’s cultural and religious life be systematically suppressed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent decades opposing apartheid, has lived through the violence of South Africa’s political transition, and has faced his own serious illnesses. When these two men say that joy is available despite suffering, they are not offering a comfortable platitude — they are reporting from experience.
The book is structured around a week of conversations at the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, with Abrams facilitating and weaving in relevant scientific research on happiness, compassion, and psychological resilience. The two friends — who clearly delight in each other’s company — are alternately serious and mischievous, agreeing on much and differing instructively on some things: Tutu’s Christian emphasis on God’s presence in suffering and the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist emphasis on the mind’s capacity to transform suffering are different frameworks that arrive at similar practical wisdom.
The eight pillars of joy they identify — perspective, humility, humour, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, generosity — are not unfamiliar, but the specific way each is discussed, grounded in the lives of two people who have genuinely practised them under pressure, gives the framework unusual weight. The chapter on compassion and the tendency to confuse it with empathic distress — taking on others’ pain so completely that you are disabled rather than helpful — is particularly valuable.
The format, which allows the reader to witness a genuine friendship rather than a formal teaching, is the book’s structural achievement. The two men’s teasing, their mutual respect, and their shared capacity for laughter about very serious things is itself a demonstration of the joyfulness they are describing.
Reading the Dalai Lama
Begin with The Book of Joy — it is the most accessible and emotionally engaging entry point. The Art of Happiness (1998) is an earlier and more systematic treatment of the same themes. Both standalone.
For the full Dalai Lama bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Dalai Lama author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with the Dalai Lama?
The Book of Joy (2016, with Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams) is the most accessible and emotionally immediate starting point — a record of a week-long conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu on joy, suffering, and lasting happiness. The warmth and honesty between two men who have each lived through extraordinary suffering makes the book's arguments about joy credible rather than prescriptive.
What is The Book of Joy about?
The Book of Joy records a week-long conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, conducted on the occasion of the Dalai Lama's eightieth birthday. The two friends — who have known each other for decades and have both survived exile, oppression, and deep personal grief — discuss what joy actually is, how to find it despite suffering, and why the most joyful people they know are not those who have avoided difficulty but those who have passed through it with equanimity intact.
Is The Book of Joy suitable for secular readers?
The Book of Joy draws on both Buddhist and Christian contemplative traditions, but both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu are primarily interested in the psychological and practical dimensions of joy rather than theological argument. The book includes discussion of neuroscience research on happiness, compassion, and the relationship between perspective and wellbeing. Secular readers will find much that is directly applicable; the religious frameworks are present but not insistent.
What should I read after The Book of Joy?
After The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness (1998, with psychiatrist Howard Cutler) is an earlier accessible introduction covering similar territory on contentment and the Buddhist approach to suffering. Desmond Tutu's No Future Without Forgiveness, about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is the non-fiction companion to understanding Tutu's perspective. Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness is the natural complement from the Buddhist tradition.
