True happiness
The first part of the Dalai Lama's Ethics is to understand true happiness. He defines happiness as independent from circumstance and independent from other people. He says that by correctly understanding what happiness is and why it is so important, one can fix their ethical pursuit of happiness as their ultimate goal. By treating happiness as the main prize of life, the Dalai Lama says that one's life will come into harmony, and that their motivation and energy will be surprisingly powerful.
Negative emotion and power
The Dalai Lama frames negative emotion as a major inhibition in the ethical pursuit of happiness. He says that negative emotion is essentially the antagonist in life, because as one attempts to become happy, their happiness will be disrupted by negative emotion, but it is a trap. The negative emotion is like a liar who promises immediate happiness as the reward for immediate behavior, typically bad or short-sighted behavior. But this only leads to a frustrated life with many problems.
So Pa
The teacher writes that an ethical person will need a magic power to help them in their quest. The hero's magic weapon is called "so pa," Tibetan for "a courageous response to adversity." By this, he means that an ethical person will understand the nature of adversity as a trick or a test, and by having the courage to trust that the ethical response is better than the indulgent response, a person can begin to see great victories in their life, even if they aren't obvious at first.
Life as suffering
One should not be surprised when the teacher arrives at the axiom of Buddhism, that life is suffering. To conceive of life as suffering is to see the motif of suffering spread through the desires of mankind. To fall in love is to suffer great agony and then to sacrifice unspeakable autonomy for the relationship. To succeed in career is to sacrifice without the promise of success, and to succeed in happiness is to voluntarily accept life's suffering with "so pa," choosing to participate in life's suffering without a sense of victimhood.
Karma
The idea of karma is also explained in the book. Karma is understood by the Dalai Lama as an ongoing currency exchange of fate. By purposefully acting in an evil or unjust manner, one steps out of good karma, because the universe knows that for each person, ethical happiness is the ultimate good, so the universe will show through fate why ethical behavior is superior, therefore inflicting the person with frustrating fates that are educational and painful. This type of suffering is offered as a secondary type of suffering that is more voluntary than the first.
