Desmond Tutu Books

Before embarking on the journey, we must first understand what forgiveness truly is. People often misconstrue forgiveness as forgetting what happened or pretending that no wrong occurred. It is neither amnesia nor blind acceptance. To forgive is not to deny the hurt or erase accountability; rather, ...

From The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World

We live in a world that knows how to punish but has forgotten how to heal. When we cling to resentment, we think we are holding power, but in reality it holds us. Unforgiveness festers; it becomes a toxin that spreads into every aspect of life. It twists our perception and hardens us against love. I...

From The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World

The first subject we discussed was the nature of joy itself. The Dalai Lama began by distinguishing between pleasure and joy. Pleasure is sensory; it depends on external conditions—a delicious meal, a warm bath, the praise of others. But such pleasure, he smiled, is unstable. When the cause disappea...

From The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

The Dalai Lama often says the mind is like a lake. If it’s disturbed by anger, fear, or self-centered thoughts, we cannot see clearly. The obstacles to joy are precisely those disturbances—fear that the future will fail us, anger at the past, envy of others, and habitual self-criticism. These emotio...

From The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World