The Art of Happiness

long pause and reflection, he simply said, “I don’tknow,” and shrugging his shoulders, laughedgood-naturedly.Noting my look of surprise anddisappointment at not receiving a more concreteresponse, the Dalai Lama said, “Sometimes it’svery difficult to explain why people do the thingsthey do ... You’ll often find that there are nosimple explanations. If we were to go into thedetails of individual lives, since a human being’smind is so complex, it would be quite difficult tounderstand what is going on, what exactly istaking place.”I thought that he was being evasive. “But as apsychotherapist, my task is to find out whypeople do the things that they do ...”Once again, he broke into the laugh that manypeople find so extraordinary—a laugh saturated