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C UR R E NT D I R EC TI ON S I N P SY CH O L O GIC A L S CI E NC E

Buddhist and Psychological
Perspectives on Emotions and
Well-Being
Paul Ekman,1 Richard J. Davidson,2 Matthieu Ricard,3 and B. Alan Wallace4
University of California, San Francisco; 2University of Wisconsin, Madison; 3Shechen Monastery, Katmandu, Nepal; and
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, Santa Barbara, California
1

ABSTRACT—Stimulated

by a recent meeting between
Western psychologists and the Dalai Lama on the topic
of destructive emotions, we report on two issues: the
achievement of enduring happiness, what Tibetan Buddhists call sukha, and the nature of afflictive and nonafflictive emotional states and traits. A Buddhist perspective
on these issues is presented, along with discussion of the
challenges the Buddhist view raises for empirical research
and theory.

KEYWORDS—Buddhism; consciousness

Buddhist thought, which arose more than 2,000 years ago in
Asian cultures, holds assumptions that differ in important ways
from modern psychology. The particular branch of Buddhist
thinking we consider here is Indo-Tibetan, a tradition having
roots in Indian thought and further developed by Tibetan theorists. It is a line of thinking that is more than 1,000 years old.
Although different aspects of Buddhist thought have already
influenced a number of psychologists, its challenges for research on emotion are not widely known. Some suggestive
convergences between Buddhist thinking and, for example,
findings in neurobiology, suggest the fruitfulness of integrating
a Buddhist view into emotion research.
The traditional languages of Buddhism, such as Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan, have no word for ‘‘emotion’’ as such. Although discrepant from the modern psychological research
tradition that has isolated emotion as a distinct mental process
that can be studied apart from other processes, the fact that
there is no term in Buddhism for emotion is quite consistent
with what scientists have come to learn about the anatomy of

Address correspondence to Paul Ekman, P.O. Box 5211, Berkeley
CA 94705; e-mail: paul@paulekman.com.

Volume 14—Number 2

the brain. Every region in the brain that has been identified with
some aspect of emotion has also been identified with aspects
of cognition (e.g., Davidson & Irwin, 1999). The circuitry that
supports affect and the circuitry that supports cognition are
completely intertwined—an anatomical arrangement consistent
with the Buddhist view that these processes cannot be separated.
We have chosen two issues, the achievement of enduring
happiness and the nature of afflictive emotions, to illustrate the
usefulness of considering the Buddhist perspective in work
on emotion. Given the space allowed, we present illustrative
examples of possible areas for research, rather than a more
complete discussion.
This report is a collaborative effort of Buddhists (Matthieu
Ricard and B. Alan Wallace) and psychologists (Paul Ekman
and Richard J. Davidson). Our report grew out of an extraordinary meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, India, in March 2000, that focused on destructive
emotions.1 The Buddhist authors wrote the sections titled ‘‘The
Buddhist View,’’ and the psychologist authors wrote the sections
on research directions and theory.

ACHIEVING ENDURING HAPPINESS

The Buddhist View
Buddhists and psychologists alike believe that emotions
strongly influence people’s thoughts, words, and actions and
that, at times, they help people in their pursuit of transient
pleasures and satisfaction. From a Buddhist perspective, how1

The participants at this meeting, besides the Dalai Lama, were Richard
Davidson, Paul Ekman, Owen Flannagen, Daniel Goleman, Mark Greenberg,
Thupten Jinpa, Matthieu Ricard, Jeanne Tsai, Francisco Varela, and Alan
Wallace. We thank the Mind and Life Institute of Boulder, Colorado for organizing the meeting in India and a subsequent meeting during which we wrote this
article.

Copyright r 2005 Americ...

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