Rainn Wilson: Love Is An Action

“The Dalai Lama makes me a better Catholic.” -Arthur C. Brooks

Greetings from New York!

It’s your friend Rainn here, dropping in on the Dispatch. First off, on the Soul Boom podcast this week, we have the great Arthur C. Brooks as our guest.

Arthur is a writer, academic, and thinker who, in recent years, has done as much as anyone to make the science of happiness accessible and practical in our daily lives. And as a devout Catholic he is also very interested in the intersection between spirituality, faith, and happiness. Given that his interests are so very Soul Boomy, when he heard about my book coming out, he contacted me. He appreciated Soul Boom’s mission and helped promote it, writing about the book in one of his happiness essays for the Atlantic and also writing a nice blurb for the paperback.

As we discuss on the pod, the other connection we’ve discovered while getting to know each other, is that we’ve lived parallel lives of a sort. Though we never met in our younger years, we are close in age and grew up about ten miles apart. He was a French horn player, and (as alluded to in the title of my hilarious yet poignant memoir, The Bassoon King), I played the bassoon. He went on to become a professional French horn player, while I pursued acting. But I like to think that there’s an alternate universe (like in Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow) where I became a professional bassoonist.

As mentioned in our conversation, he’s been visiting the Dalai Lama in India for several years now. He’s learned much from the Dalai Lama and his cohort about meditation and their approach to contemplative practices. So when Arthur extended the invitation to join him in India, I jumped at the chance. If my enthusiasm at doing so is a little unclear, let me explain: There are very few true heroes in the world — especially spiritual ones. But here is a genuine icon embodying service to humanity. To me, it was the opportunity of a lifetime to meet a moral giant — one who is 88 years old I might add. So there was a sense of urgency to take this opportunity.

I’ve always been moved by the story of his flight from Tibet and the horrific treatment of the Tibetans and the Tibetan monks by the Chinese government. As history documents, Tibetan Buddhist monks were executed and monasteries dismantled, and the Dalai Lama’s life was in dire threat. Indeed, he lost dozens of close friends and thousands of followers that were under his charge. He fled, along with thousands of other Tibetans, to Dharamshala in northern India.

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama soon after escaping China in 1959. Credit: claudearpi.net

The main part of the story that is so moving to me, (and he's spoken about it a lot over the decades) is his daily habit of forgiveness toward the regime that now occupies Tibet. He practices this forgiveness at the individual and collective levels. Forgiveness for the occupying government. Forgiveness for its generals. Forgiveness for the corporals following the orders of the generals. Forgiveness for the soldiers under the command of the corporals that are shooting Tibetan Buddhist monks. And forgiveness for the people from mainland China whom the Chinese government is resettling in Tibet. That is why he is a hero to me. He could have very easily, and justifiably, lived his life in great bitterness and resentment. But instead he chooses love.

(As a Bahá'í, I'm struck by the parallel between the non-violent Tibetan Buddhist response to oppression and the peaceful response of the Bahá’ís in Iran in the face of their persecution. The Iranian theocracy is persecuting the Bahá’í population in similar ways to what has been inflicted on Tibetans. The Bahá’í charge is to likewise be peaceful and love everyone, and to choose constructive resilience rather than retaliation.)

When Holly and I arrived in India, I unfortunately fell ill and missed the first day’s meeting. Thankfully, I felt well enough to join the second day. It was a simple affair. The day began with a two-hour Q&A lecture. Arthur asked the Dalai Lama a series of questions that were very specific. For instance: How do we find transcendence in our daily life? And how do we use spiritual tools to help make the world more just? That was the tenor of some of the specific questions that Arthur asked. The interesting thing though, was that the Dalai Lama's answers never really corresponded with the question. He just spoke about love. The whole afternoon was spent speaking about love. Different ways to love one another, the importance of love, how love is not a feeling, how love is an action, how the problem in the world right now is the lack of love, how what we need to be doing is building bonds of love. He just kept hitting that hard. I left the meeting really thinking about love in some new and vibrant ways.

After the Q&A with Arthur, we lined up to go shake the Dalai Lama’s hand and look him in the eye as he greeted us, placing a khata sash on each person. Those in attendance were also then gifted a book with his signature. That sash now hangs in my office as a reminder of that meeting. And the book is something I will definitely treasure.

Me and my bestie, H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama

To be clear, I have a deep degree of respect for the Dalai Lama, but for me, he holds no unique position of sacredness. I don't feel like he is any more sacred or special than the janitor who happened to be emptying the garbage in the parking lot at the same time as he lectured. I am, however, in awe of and honored by his work, his writings, his teachings, his devotion to peace, to building bridges of love, his teaching of the concept of forgiveness, and the incredible ancient Tibetan Buddhist wisdom that he both manifests and spreads throughout the world. It's very, very rare that you get to meet someone who has devoted their life to peace, love, wisdom, justice, and service. 

H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama. Photo Courtesy of Mark Seliger

In my life, I’ve met a handful of luminous souls from a variety of faith traditions. One of the things I've noticed about the most spiritually wise people that I've met (and I would put our upcoming podcast guest, Father Gregory Boyle in this group) is that they possess a radiant joy in their being, where there's laughter and a quality almost akin to the playful giggles of a child. In Western culture, we tend to think of gurus as very serious and solemn figures. But the truth is, I think people that have a certain measure of enlightenment almost revert to a more childlike quality. And I noticed that with the Dalai Lama — a lot of joy and twinkling eyes and gales of laughter and gigantic smiles all the time. Not like a serious authority figure in any way.

Reflecting on all this brings me back to a moment from this week’s podcast. Arthur said to me, “the Dalai Lama makes me a better Catholic.” And he also said that about Soul Boom. He told me that Soul Boom, the book, makes the reader want to be a better Catholic, a better Jew, a better Buddhist, a better Whatever — and isn't trying to convert you to any way of thinking. Those words from Arthur were especially meaningful because that is the goal behind Soul Boom: to strengthen the questions we all have around faith and spirituality, and to deepen the connection to our spiritual reality, which we could all use in our daily life. The intention isn’t to convert anyone to a particular way of thinking, but to connect us more deeply to Source. As the Báb wrote: The ways to God are as numerous as the breaths of His creatures.

Of course, I'm not trying to compare myself to the Dalai Lama here… but we are both losing our hair.

PS: We’re just scratching the surface here. If you want to go deeper, buy the Soul Boom book.

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