Spiritual leader Dalai Lama’s life mission is to guide people toward becoming the best human beings they can be. And the key to this, he believes, is love and compassion. At ‘The Teachings by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama’ session at the Taj Mahal, Delhi, he spoke about how spiritual development helps cope with hurdles in life and the secret to happiness.

Essence of Religion
The essence of any religion is a good heart. Sometimes I call love and compassion a universal religion. This is my religion. Complicated philosophy, this and that, sometimes creates more troubles and problems. If these sophisticated philosophies are useful for the development of good heart, then good — use them fully. If these complicated philosophies or systems become an obstacle to a good heart, then better to leave them.

World peace: a myth or possibility?
As one brought up in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, love and compassion are the moral fabric of world peace. When you have pity or compassion for a very poor person, you are showing sympathy because he or she is poor; your compassion is based on altruistic considerations. On the other hand, love towards your wife, husband, children, or a close friend is usually based on attachment. When your attachment changes, your kindness changes; it may disappear. This is not true love.
Real love is not based on attachment, but on altruism. In this case, your compassion will remain a humane response to suffering as long as beings continue to suffer. Spiritual development, most useful in day-to-day life, gives a calmness and presence of mind. Our lives are in constant flux, bringing many difficulties. When faced with a calm and clear mind, problems can be successfully resolved. When, instead, we lose control over our minds through hatred, selfishness, jealousy and anger, we lose our sense of judgement. Our minds are blinded and in those wild moments anything can happen, including war.
Thus, the practice of compassion and wisdom is useful to all, especially to those responsible for running national affairs, in whose hands lie the power and opportunity to create the structure of world peace.

Secret to happiness
I believe the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affects this. For a start, it is possible to divide every kind of happiness and suffering into two main categories: mental and physical. Of the two, it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence on most of us.
Unless we are either gravely ill or deprived of basic necessities, our physical condition plays a secondary role in life. If the body is content, we virtually ignore it. The mind, however, registers every event, no matter how small. Hence, we should devote our most serious efforts to bringing about mental peace. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.
Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.