Douglas Abrams > Quotes

“It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“The Archbishop cradled his right hand in his left. He hung his head in concentration. The goal was meditation, but I've never been quite sure where meditation ends and prayer begins, or where prayer ends and meditation begins. I have heard it said that prayer is when we speak to God, and meditation is when God answers.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Lasting happiness cannot be found in pursuit of any goal or achievement. It does not reside in fortune or fame. It resides only in the human mind and heart, and it is here that we hope you will find it.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Joy,” as the Archbishop said during the week, “is much bigger than happiness. While happiness is often seen as being dependent on external circumstances, joy is not.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“When we take the perspective of others, we can empathize with them.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“While he was in prison, he watched fifty-four people, fifty-three men and one woman, walk by his cell on their way to the execution chamber. He got his fellow inmates to start banging their bars at five minutes before the execution. "I discovered on death row that the other inmates had not had the unconditional love that I had had from my mother. We became a family, and we did not know if they had any other family and friends there, so we were banging the bars to say to those who were being put to death, 'We're with you, we still love you right up to the end.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“I was quite stuck by the Dali Lama's phrase of "passing through difficulties." We often feel that suffering will engulf us, it that suffering will never end, but if we can realize that it, too, will pass, or as the Buddhists say, that it is impermanent, we can survive them more easily, and perhaps what we have to learn from them, find meaning in then, so that we come out the other side, not embittered but emboldened. The depth of our suffering can also result in the height of our joy.”
― Douglas Abrams

“The archbishop had one explained to be that suffering can either embitter is or enoble us and that the difference lies in whether we are able to find meaning in our suffering. Without meaning, when suffering seems senseless, we can easily become embittered. But when we can find a shred of meaning or redemption in our suffering, it can enoble us, as it did for Nelson Mandela.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“A healthy perspective really is the foundation of joy and happiness, because the way we see the world is the way we experience the world. Changing the way we see the world in turn changes the way we feel and the way we act, which changes the world itself. Or, as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, "With our mind we create our own world.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World