— Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness (1998), with Howard Cutler
About this quote
हिन्दी में
दूसरों को सुखी देखना चाहते हो तो करुणा का अभ्यास करो; और ख़ुद सुखी होना चाहते हो, तब भी करुणा का ही अभ्यास करो।
What it means
The structure is the argument. Two opposite goals — someone else’s happiness and your own — are given an identical prescription, and the repetition is not a stylistic flourish. It is a claim that the trade-off we assume between looking after others and looking after ourselves does not exist at this level.
Notice what the second sentence refuses to say. The obvious completion would be that if you want to be happy you should pursue what you want; instead it repeats the first half word for word. That is what makes the line worth keeping — it is checkable in your own life rather than merely uplifting, because it predicts a specific result from a specific practice.
What it teaches you
Treat it as a test you can run rather than a sentiment to agree with. Over a fortnight, compare your mood on days spent arranging your own comfort against days a real part of which went to somebody else’s difficulty — attention actually given, not favours performed for credit. Note also the word practice: you are not asked to feel compassion, which is not under your control, but to do it repeatedly, which is.
अर्थ और सीख
एक ही नुस्खा दो उलटे लक्ष्यों के लिए — दूसरों का सुख और अपना सुख। यह दोहराव जानबूझकर है: कहने का अर्थ यह कि अपने भले और दूसरों के भले के बीच जो चुनाव हम मानकर चलते हैं, वह इस स्तर पर है ही नहीं। और ‘अभ्यास’ शब्द पर ध्यान दीजिए — करुणा महसूस करने को नहीं कहा गया, जो हमारे वश में नहीं, बल्कि उसे बार-बार करने को, जो वश में है।
Where it comes from
Genuine Dalai Lama — this formulation appears in The Art of Happiness (1998), his best-selling dialogue with psychiatrist Howard Cutler, and he has repeated it across countless talks.
