Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama

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Summary and Review of the book Destructive Emotions:

Hello and welcome to Reunion, where I am writing this new article.

I am taking advantage of this somewhat Zen setting of the Langevin Falls to tell you about a new book. The book is “Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?“ by Daniel Goleman, which was written in collaboration with the Dalai Lama.

It’s a very interesting book, and it was David Jay who introduced it to me. He said to me, “well, you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, and you’ve discovered the faults it highlights. Such selfishness goes perhaps a little too far.

I have just read an excellent book which counterbalances this point of view a little bit and which explains how one can develop positive emotions in oneself and reduce or destroy negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, hatred or fear, stress, etc.”

It’s an extremely interesting book.

You should know that the Dalai Lama, I believe every year since the 90s, meets with Western scientists, the big names in psychology, neuroscience, and other very specialized fields. He has these people meet with himself and Buddhist monks.

Well, the result is that there are extremely fruitful dialogues which then lead to books like this one, and there are also a lot of scientific experiments that are done.

So, this book is simply the story of a meeting between the Dalai Lama, Buddhist monks and high-level Western scientists that was held in 2001 on precisely how to overcome destructive emotions: what are they, how to best manage them, how to remove them ideally and be happier.

Moreover, you should know that it is extremely interesting. The book starts off by saying that there is a Buddhist monk who has been examined by scientists, that several experiments have been done, and scientists have, in fact, shown that this man is able to focus much more than average people, that he’s endowed with certain mental abilities that are absolutely amazing and that were not foreseen by Western psychology, and that just being next to that person is an experience in itself because one wants to be next to him; he is someone who radiates positive energy.

And there you have it, it was done in a very rigorous way, and many scientific studies today show that meditation has many positive effects on life (for example these carried out at Harvard). It is proven that meditation decreases stress, increases longevity, and decreases the prevalence of certain diseases. There are really a lot of positives.

I highly recommend this book to you; it is very much interesting, if only for the dialogue between scientists who meet with Buddhist monks. It is really two different worlds coming together. We see people who could clash with each other, but who are there in a process of dialogue and coming together.

Again, it is extraordinarily interesting. So, there you have it. I highly recommend this book, which is extremely good, and has a very different point of view from that of Ayn Rand.

In fact, it is even a very good counter example.

So, don’t hesitate to read: “Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them”; a book that is definitely worthwhile.

Thanks for watching this video, and I’ll see you on the blog soon.

I also invite you to watch my video entitled “REMOVE DESTRUCTIVE emotions from your life with emotional ANTIDOTES”, which goes very well with this article. This video is in French, but you can watch it using the English subtitles 🙂: