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First edition published by Atria Books, An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2020

This edition published by Thorsons 2020

FIRST EDITION

Text © Tina Turner 2020

Excerpt from “Let Go Let God” reprinted courtesy of Amy Sky and Olivia Newton-John

Excerpt from “Woodstock” reprinted courtesy of Joni Mitchell

All Japanese calligraphy images reprinted courtesy of Taro Gold

Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover illustration © Vera Tammen/Trunk Archive

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Tina Turner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008398637

Ebook Edition © December 2020 ISBN: 9780008398644

Version 2020-11-12

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DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to you … in honor of your unseen efforts to triumph over each problem life sends your way.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE: Nature’s Welcome

CHAPTER TWO: The Worlds Within Us

CHAPTER THREE: Anthem of Angels

CHAPTER FOUR: Stand Up for Your Life

CHAPTER FIVE: Changing Poison into Medicine

CHAPTER SIX: A Revolution of the Heart

CHAPTER SEVEN: Beyond Singing

CHAPTER EIGHT: Homecoming

Afterword

Glossary

Bibliography

Photo Section

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Other Books By

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

Wherever I go, I’m touched when people tell me how inspired they are by my life story, by the challenges I’ve overcome during my eight decades on this planet.

I’m a survivor by nature, but I’ve had help, and I don’t mean success, or money, although I’ve been blessed with both. The help that has been essential to my well-being, my joy, and my resilience is my spiritual life.

That’s a big statement, easy to say, harder to explain. But here, in Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, it is my greatest pleasure to share with you the story of my spiritual journey.

I always wanted to be a teacher, but I believed I should wait for the moment when I had something important to say, when I was sure how to offer real wisdom.

That time is now.

As I write these words, we’re in the midst of the worst pandemic of the last hundred years. From this tragedy, many of us have mourned the loss of loved ones, while many more have sadly lost their livelihoods. My heart aches as I stand with you in this new, uncertain landscape.

Even if you’re among the rare few who avoided the direct impact of this calamity, we all know that no one gets through life without facing adversity. More than ever, I believe we must choose hope, and use our difficulties to move ourselves onward and upward.

I’ve reflected a lot about adversity over the past decade while I battled a series of severe health crises that nearly killed me. Through it all, I had many opportunities to review my life and ask myself some tough questions.

How did I overcome so many serious problems? You might know the list, and it’s long—an unhappy childhood, abandonment, an abusive marriage, a stalled career, financial ruin, the premature death of family members, and multiple illnesses.

There were so many external circumstances and forces I couldn’t change or control, but my life-altering revelation was that I could change my way of responding to these challenges. The most valuable help comes from within, and peace comes when individuals work on becoming their better selves. I started that work in my thirties, when I discovered the transformative power of spirituality.

Spirituality isn’t tied to any one religion or philosophy. It isn’t the property of a priesthood or clergy. Spirituality is a personal awakening and relationship with our Mother Earth and the universe that increases openness and positivity.

My awakening began five decades ago through my practice and study of Buddhist teachings. Sharing the story of this most precious part of my life with you is a long-cherished dream. This book carries my personal guidance on how to create lasting happiness. It explains spiritual truths I’ve learned on my unlikely path to joy, from childhood to today.

Here, I reveal my greatest untold life lessons, deepest realizations, and beloved ancient principles to help you recharge your soul.

I offer you these insights so you’ll have the tools to overcome your own obstacles—even if your challenges seem as impossible as those I’ve faced—and achieve your own dreams, so that you may become truly happy. I want you to open up your heart and mind, refresh your spirit with new hope, courage, and compassion, and change the world by changing your life.

Let me show you all the wonderful ways that Happiness Becomes You.

TINA TURNER

May 3, 2020

Chapter One
NATURE’S WELCOME

Thank you for being you, exactly as you are. Thank you for the tapestry of your life experiences, which have led you to read these words I’ve written just for you.

Thank you for opening this book, so I may share with you the spiritual lessons I’ve learned through more than eighty years of living.

Each of us is born, I believe, with a unique mission, a purpose in life that only we can fulfill. We are linked by a shared responsibility: to help our human family grow kinder and happier.

I first learned about the workings of the universe from my daily experiences growing up in Nutbush, Tennessee, a small rural town. I loved spending time outside, running through the fields, looking up at the heavenly bodies in the sky, spending time with animals—domestic and wild ones—and listening to the sounds of nature.

Even as a little girl, I sensed an unseen universal force as I walked through the wide-open pastures each day. Communing with nature taught me to trust my intuition, which always seemed to know the way home when I was lost, the best branch on a tree for swinging, or where a treacherous rock was hidden in a stream.

I learned to listen to my heart, which taught me that you and I are connected to each other and everything else on this planet. We are joined together by the mysterious nature of life itself, the fundamental creative energy of the universe.

In this complicated world of ours, where contradictions abound, we find breathtaking beauty in the most unlikely places. The brightest rainbows appear after the heaviest of storm clouds. Magnificent butterflies emerge from the drabbest cocoons. And the most beautiful lotus flowers bloom from the deepest and thickest mud.

Why do you suppose life works this way?

Perhaps those rainbows, butterflies, and lotus flowers are meant to remind us that our world is a mystical work of art—a universal canvas upon which we all paint our stories, day by day, through the brushstrokes of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Even though I’ve felt it instinctively since childhood, it wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I began to consciously see life in this way. I’m not sure if the nine-year-old me handpicking cotton in Tennessee specifically dreamed of a day when the forty-nine-year-old me would be shaking hands with the Queen of England. Yet, on some deep level, even that far-fetched dream was always within the field of my imagination.

Who would have expected any extraordinary outcome from a farm girl like me, born between the final days of the Great Depression and the first days of World War II? Nevertheless, my life’s path has truly been like a lotus flower, blooming over and over again, against all odds, emerging stronger each time.

No matter where you’re born or who your parents are, it seems to me that we all start out with a mixture of circumstances, with both darkness and light. Some of us experience more of one than the other. And I believe there is an inextricable link between us and our ancestors, that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that encountering adversity, as I have, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s what we make of it, how we use it to shape ourselves and our futures, that ultimately determines our success and happiness.

The thicker the mud, the stronger the lotus that blooms from it, rising above the muck to reach the sun. The same is true for people. I know, because I did it. And I know you can, too.

How did I do it? That’s what I want to tell you.

My hometown of Nutbush is nestled along the honeysuckle-lined roads of West Tennessee’s Haywood County. Haywood was and still is a quiet agricultural area with deep religious roots. It is home to Tennessee’s oldest Jewish synagogue, built in 1882, as well as the places where members of my family have long worshipped, the Spring Hill Baptist Church and the Woodlawn Baptist Church, both founded by an emancipated slave named Hardin Smith. Secretly educated by a plantation owner’s wife, Smith grew up to become a respected preacher and established the congregation that became the Woodlawn Baptist Church, where my grandfather and father later served as deacons.

Thanks to Reverend Smith’s emphasis on education, by the turn of the twentieth century, our county had the highest literacy rate among the Black population of Tennessee. One of the schools Reverend Smith founded for Black children became Carver High School, which I attended. He also organized Black musicians and singers, providing opportunities for them to perform, and laid the foundation for the region’s strong musical traditions, from which I later benefited.

I arrived at the end of 1939, safely delivered in a windowless basement relegated to “colored” women’s maternity at the county hospital. My parents named me Anna Mae, the only name I was known by until adulthood.

My father, Richard Bullock, was the managing sharecropper for a white family called the Poindexters. We had our own four-room home and an acre-size garden filled with vegetables, next to the Poindexters’ home and farm.

White folk rarely welcomed Black people to their homes, but my older sister, Alline, and I were often invited to enjoy lemonade and snacks with the Poindexters. It was only when they had other white people around that we knew we couldn’t go in.

Racism was common, and like many southern counties during the mid-twentieth century, ours was not immune to violence. The year after I was born, Tennessee’s last known lynching happened not far from our home.

A man named Elbert Williams was one of our area’s first civil rights organizers. In 1940, Mr. Williams tried to register Black voters—a right that had long been denied. He soon paid the ultimate price for that brave act. One horrible night, he was abducted from his home by a sheriff and a gang of other white men who brutally ended his life.

Mr. Williams’s murder silenced the civil rights movement in our county for two decades.

I sometimes saw that sheriff, still on duty despite his crimes. People didn’t talk about it. Things like that simply weren’t discussed. There was a fragile calm among the segregated citizens of Haywood County that no one wanted to disturb.

Although racism was rampant, I had more immediate things to worry about, starting with the early realization that my parents couldn’t stand each other. They fought constantly, locked in a hopeless battle neither could win. Their unhappiness cast a long shadow over my childhood.

What an endless chain of unhappiness prejudice forges.

—LENA HORNE

•

“Love thy neighbor” is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced.

—MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE

My mother, Zelma, was affectionate with my sister, but it was different for me. I knew I was the child my mother never wanted. That’s a heavy burden for a little girl to bear.

My parents tried to get away from Nutbush a number of times, hoping that a change of scenery would give them a new life, and they left their young daughters behind. When I was only three, they went to work at a military base in Knoxville, more than 350 miles away. We didn’t have a phone, so we had no contact while they were gone. It would have felt closer if they had moved to the moon, since at least I could see the moon.

Though my mother was always emotionally distant from me, her side of the family was warm and caring. I adored my fun-loving grandmother, Mama Georgie, and my cousin Margaret, who was three years older than me. Margaret became my first mentor, best friend, and soul sister, and in some ways she was even a mother figure—including having “the talk” with me as I entered adolescence, the only person who did.

When my parents went away, they sent Alline to live with Mama Georgie and left me with the other side of our family, my paternal grandparents, Mama Roxanna and Papa Alex, who were strict and somber Bible-thumping folks. It was agony for me. I was high-spirited and playful. I loved to run in the fields, get down in the dirt, yell to my friends, dance through the house, let my hair fly free. Not one bit of my natural rambunctiousness was allowed in their house.

Mama Roxanna forced me to go to church, and my lack of enthusiasm was compounded by the sweltering heat inside the building. There was no air-conditioning, of course, and it was baffling to my young mind that everyone got all dressed up just to go sit in a hot oven and listen to someone lecture. I never understood what the preacher was talking about, since no one bothered to explain it to the children. For me, sitting there, drenched in sweat, it was just a tedious exercise in boredom.

At one point, my parents let us visit them in Knoxville. While we were there, we attended a Pentecostal church, which was a very different experience from our subdued Baptist church. The “sanctified” church could get wild and turned out to be much more enjoyable for me. People would sometimes “get the Spirit” and start yelling, dancing, and singing in the aisles. It was definitely action packed, which was more my style. I’d join right in, singing and dancing.

One day I got so carried away that I danced right out of my skirt. Some folks would even fall down and go into convulsions. I just figured they must have gotten too excited. Although the Pentecostal experience didn’t resonate with me any more than the quieter Baptist services, it was a real spectacle. And it was fun!

Back home, Baptist Sunday school became obligatory. Sometimes it was pleasant because it was nice to be with other children. But when I finally got old enough to join the choir, that was my sweet spot. I was eight or nine, and the youngest singer in the group. The rest were teenagers. Even at that young age, I had the biggest voice in the choir and would often be chosen to sing a solo. Since we had no telephone at home, I had learned to broadcast my voice to friends and neighbors without hurting my vocal cords, which helped my voice grow strong, a talent that came in handy later in my life.

My parents returned to Nutbush when I was five, so I was freed from the stifling environment at my relatives’ place. But our home wasn’t much better because my parents were still fighting tooth and nail.

Whenever they’d go at each other, I’d run out of the house to find a quiet place to calm my heart. Sitting by a stream, I’d watch dragonflies hover over the water, swoop onto the surface to quench their thirst, then zoom off, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.

I daydreamed about growing my own wings so I could fly off to a happier place—a home where nobody fought and I could be loved for being myself.

That was just a dream. When I was eleven, my mother left for the last time and never came back. She moved to St. Louis. Never sent a single letter. Nothing. I waited for the mail to come each day, hoping she would remember me, but I didn’t see her again until Mama Georgie’s funeral, more than five years later.

Soon after I turned thirteen, my father also left. His destination was Detroit.

Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world won’t blow your candle out.

—KATHERINE DUNHAM

•

Everyone has a gift for something, even if it is the gift of being a good friend.

—MARIAN ANDERSON

At first, my father made an effort to stay in touch, and he’d send a little money every now and then to help my relatives take care of me. But he never came back. I was a child with no parents and no real home.

Thankfully, I still had my cousin Margaret.

Margaret and I were each other’s sounding board and safe haven, sharing our dreams and confiding our secrets. When I was fourteen, she told me a secret I never expected to hear: She was pregnant. This news confused me, because Margaret was always so careful in her life. She was only seventeen and didn’t fool around with boys as much as some other girls did, and her biggest dream was to attend college.

She confided in me that she had decided a baby and college weren’t compatible, so she was determined to terminate the pregnancy. She didn’t know how, though, so she tried old-time home remedies, like drinking warm concoctions of black pepper, in vain attempts that only resulted in an upset stomach and a foul taste in her mouth.

Tragically, at the end of January 1954, just a week after she revealed her biggest secret to me, Margaret died in a terrible car accident.

I couldn’t believe it. Not my Margaret. The light of my life. I was devastated. Lost. Alone.

Death was something I hadn’t thought much about before Margaret’s passing. I had gone to Papa Alex’s funeral when I was eleven, but honestly, when I saw him lying still in the casket, he just looked like he was in a tranquil sleep.

Losing Margaret was very different. Nothing had ever struck me as hard.

I had witnessed the circle of life and death in nature, where plants and animals came and went in their own time. And I had heard about deaths in our community, young and old people, dying in all sorts of circumstances. But this time it was very personal.

After Margaret died, there was a lot of talk about God’s will. Our community was deeply Baptist, after all, and that was a natural response to the sudden tragedy that killed her and a few other young people, including my half sister Evelyn (my mother’s child from a previous relationship). Thinking about the mysteries of life and death, I didn’t have a problem with the concept of an underlying universal force. But the idea of a bearded old white man in space, monitoring activities here on Earth, felt unrelatable and just plain unreal.

I couldn’t verbalize my own vision of God then, as the vocabulary hadn’t come to me yet. But from the youngest age I can recall, I knew I could experience “Godliness” in Mother Nature. Something told me I had a piece of God in my heart, even if the traditional beliefs of my family and the way they practiced religion weren’t right for me. I wished they practiced what they preached and lived more positive lives.

After Margaret’s death especially, I knew I’d have to find my own way to carry on, to construct my own path to happiness.

I spent a lot of time outside, where I could think in peace. Nature was the only place where I always felt welcome and enjoyed a sense of belonging—my truest childhood home. Whether sitting in the garden at night staring up at a star-filled sky or lying in the noon shade of a tulip tree, watching butterflies glide by, I felt the healing force of love everywhere in nature, and I soaked it in.

I didn’t let my unstable family situation prevent me from finding enjoyment in the world around me. In those days, Nutbush and other areas north of Memphis were a mecca for local and traveling gospel, blues, and jazz musicians. They performed in our churches, cafés, and juke joints and became my first musical influences. I loved listening to all different types of music, and I did so every chance I got. We didn’t have a record player, but we always had a radio, and that was good enough for me.

I enjoyed singing in the church choir and occasionally performed with Mr. Bootsie Whitelow, a popular Nutbush native, and his String Band. During high school, my music teacher even had me learning to sing opera. I had other interests as well, and excelled at cheerleading, track, and basketball.

But most of all, I loved movies. Every chance I got, I’d go to our local movie theater, often memorizing scenes on the spot and reenacting them for my family when I got home. After I saw Little Women, I enjoyed acting out the scene where Jo and Amy (played by June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor) pretend to faint. One time, I did such a convincing job of falling lifeless to the floor that my sister got scared, thinking I’d actually passed out!

Fantasies about the silver screen often got me through difficult times. When I was working in the fields, picking cotton and strawberries in the oppressive heat, I would imagine a far-off paradise where I could live like the elegant movie stars did. I had no idea where this magical “Hollywood” was, but I knew, deep down inside, that I wasn’t destined to stay in the farmlands. Even then, I believed that my circumstances did not limit my possibilities. I knew that someday I’d find my way out into the world.

My summer visit to Knoxville at age five had already given me a taste of another world—one with towering brick buildings, broad streets, and sparkling clean stores filled with the latest products. Now, eleven years later, when Mama Georgie suddenly passed away, my mother invited me to live with her in St. Louis. That’s when I began a whole new life.

Living in a big city for the first time, I felt like an outsider. Then again, I had always felt like an outsider within my own family, so I was able to quickly adapt. When I was seventeen, I went to the Club Manhattan, a bustling, smoke-filled music venue, where I met two men who would play important roles in my life.

The first was Raymond Hill, a talented sax player with whom I had a brief romance that produced my beloved son Craig. The second was Ike Turner, a musician and bandleader who was famous for his groundbreaking song, “Rocket 88.”

Ike spotted me at the Club Manhattan and invited me to sing with his band. He became a mentor to me and launched my musical career. I was thrilled. There I was, a teenager, standing onstage, dressed in fine clothes, singing my heart out. I never imagined that kind of career was possible for me. It seemed like a dream come true, until it wasn’t.

Against my better judgment, Ike became my first husband. The best thing our relationship produced was my second beloved son, Ronnie. Ike and I also raised his two sons from his first marriage, Ike Jr. and Michael, so I was a mother of four when I was still figuring out how to be an adult.

Living with Ike was a challenging series of ordeals. He changed my name from Anna Mae Bullock to Tina Turner in the early days of our relationship, despite my protests. After that, during our difficult ascent to fame in the 1960s as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, I suffered years of domestic violence, both emotional and physical. Busted lips, black eyes, dislocated joints, broken bones, and psychological torture became a part of everyday life. I got used to suffering and tried to keep myself sane while somehow managing his insanity. I felt there was no way out.

By the mid-1960s, we had achieved success with some of our songs, and my 1966 solo “River Deep–Mountain High,” produced by Phil Spector, was a smash in the United Kingdom and Europe. Thanks to that hit, the Rolling Stones invited us to tour overseas with them in the fall of 1966, which was another dream come true.

However, after we returned to the States, life with Ike got worse. The pressure to turn out hits intensified Ike’s insecurities and fueled his drug dependency, making his bouts of violence more frequent.

I began to lose hope.

Finally, in 1968, I was so depressed and despondent that I couldn’t think straight. Ike’s abuse and infidelities left me numb, unable to feel for myself or my family, unable to feel alive. The only thing I could feel was that I had reached the end. One night before I was set to go onstage, I attempted suicide by taking fifty sleeping pills. People backstage noticed something was very wrong with me and rushed me to the hospital, which saved my life.

At first, I was disappointed when I woke up and realized I was still alive. I thought death was my only chance at escape. But it was not in my nature to stay down for long. For nearly twenty-nine years, I’d always found a way to get up and go on, despite all the trials in my life. In fact, that was my mantra before I even knew what a mantra was. “I’ll go on.”

This time, too, I tried to pull myself out of despair as best I could. If this was my lot in life, I thought, I would somehow make the most of it. Then, it occurred to me that maybe I had survived for a reason, for some greater purpose. From that point on, no matter how tough life was, my instinct, my heart, told me to just keep going.

Where was I headed? That was still unclear.

Never underestimate the power of dreams, and the influence of the human spirit …

The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

—WILMA RUDOLPH

•

When you can’t find your direction, and your heart won’t guide you home, let go, and let God …

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

—OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, “LET GO LET GOD”

The early 1970s were a difficult time, both personally and professionally. We hadn’t had any significant success with our music in recent years, so I took it upon myself to do something about it. I wanted to write a song. I had been helping a songwriter who worked with us, cleaning up his writing, and I thought, if he could write songs, so could I.

Over the years, I’d heard songwriters say, “Write what you know.” Following that advice, my first try was a song I penned in 1973, called “Nutbush City Limits,” about the place where I was born. It was a hit, especially in Europe. That relieved some of our financial worries, and it made me so happy to think I could do something creative. But the kids and I were still suffering at home, where we were always at the mercy of Ike’s mood and temper.

I was often distraught and exhausted from the abuse, and it was getting harder to hide it from the people around me, who weren’t blind to my problems. When I was alone with them, they’d sometimes try to speak with me about it, saying things like “I hope you’re taking care of yourself.” I knew it was their way of saying, “Why don’t you get the heck out of that mess?”

One day, our sound engineer said something different to me. “Tina, you should try chanting. It will help you change your life.”

I didn’t know exactly what chanting was, and I didn’t ask for an explanation. Wasn’t chanting something hippies did? I soon forgot about it.

A couple of months later, my youngest son, Ronnie, came home carrying what looked like a lacquered brown wooden rosary. He said excitedly, “Mother, these are Buddhist chanting beads. If you chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, you can have anything you want.”

What? How could I ever have anything I want? I didn’t even know how to process that statement.

“It’s mystical, but it all makes sense,” he assured me. “I just can’t explain it. Let’s go up the street to a chanting meeting and learn more.”

Under normal circumstances I might have gone. But by that time, I was basically a prisoner in my own home; I couldn’t go anywhere without Ike’s permission. He rarely allowed me to go on my own to places other than the grocery store or the recording studio. So, I told Ronnie he could invite the Buddhist people to visit us, but I couldn’t go to them. That was my second brush with chanting, but nothing came of it.

A few weeks later, Ike brought home a cheerful-looking woman to meet me. He was always parading people through our house to “see Tina.” Out of nowhere, she started talking about chanting. She was a Buddhist.

Apparently, the universe was trying very hard to send me an important message. This time, I was ready to listen.

Chapter Two
THE WORLDS WITHIN US

It was another typically beautiful day in Southern California—the kind you see on postcards, with blue skies and plenty of sunshine. But it wasn’t a typical day for me because I had heard about chanting for the third time in as many months and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

It was 1973, and I was approaching my thirty-fourth birthday, doing my best to raise four strong-willed teenage boys while dealing with a litany of relationship and professional problems. No matter how intense the stress became, I kept all the pressure inside. This was a bad time; yet somehow, I felt a spark of hope.

I had seen enough of life to believe there’s no such thing as a coincidence. I believe that our situations, good or bad, always happen for a reason, even when the reasons elude us. Still, I wondered why I had to suffer abuse and negativity when I had done nothing to deserve it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

But no matter what happened, I tried to be a good person. If there was any justice in the universe, I hoped some long-overdue positivity would come my way. Maybe this was my moment. Three people who didn’t know one another, and were of different ages, genders, and ethnicities, had each offered the same advice about changing my life for the better. They told me: “Learn about Buddhist wisdom and start to chant.”

I felt this message had come to me for a reason.

All I wanted was a way to change my life. Even the slightest improvement would be a relief.

I should try chanting and test it out, I told myself.

I began by reading books on the subject by Daisaku Ikeda, a true thought leader in Buddhist practice. Although I hadn’t been a great student in my younger years, I was a curious person who always enjoyed learning. As I grew older, books became good friends to me, transporting me to other places and introducing me to new ideas. Whether I was reading about fashion, the history of ancient Egypt, science, or politics, I welcomed the opportunity to improve myself.

Ikeda’s writings whisked me away to a mystical era in ancient India, where I learned about a concept called the Ten Worlds.

A colorful, practical principle of Buddhist wisdom, with origins dating back nearly three thousand years, the Ten Worlds describes ten categories of our “life condition”—our ever-changing moods, thoughts, and general states of being—that powerfully influence our emotions, our actions, and our view of ourselves and others.

These ten “worlds” are actually life states that we all experience internally, and they range from the very worst to the very best of human behavior. The lesser of these inner conditions—when left unexamined, or unchecked—can lead to habits that trap us in unhealthy patterns. That’s certainly what happened to me.

By becoming conscious of these conditions, I was able to see the tendencies that were holding me back and bringing me down, including low self-esteem, codependence, denying my worth, and deferring decisions about my life to others. If I could see these aspects of myself more clearly, I could begin to change them, opening the way for me to build lasting success and happiness.

To help illustrate the Ten Worlds, I invite you to come with me on a quick journey. Fast-forward from 1973, when I was first learning about Buddhism, to a lazy Sunday morning in 1977. It was a few years after I started chanting, and the first full year of my life as a single, independent woman.

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I love to sleep. After all those years of performing, I’m a night owl, and sometimes I like to sleep quite late in the mornings.

That Sunday morning in 1977 was no different.

No one can figure out your worth but you.

—PEARL BAILEY

•

The challenge is not to be perfect.

It’s to be whole.

—JANE FONDA

•

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

—ANAÏS NIN

Happily asleep in my bed, I’m awakened by the annoying sound of my alarm clock. I wonder: Why did I set that today? Nothing’s going on. It’s Sunday.

With one eye half open, I push the off button and drift back to dreamland.

Then, a distant thought bubbles up from the recesses of my mind, jolting me awake with this sobering fact: Today is actually Monday, and now I’m late for a rehearsal with Cher for her television show.

I splash water on my face, spray myself with perfume, and throw on the clothes I wore last night, which are conveniently draped on a chair right where I left them. My stomach is growling, so I grab an apple and run out the door.

Traffic is jammed, making me even later, and my temper is starting to flare. I turn on the radio, hoping for some musical relief, as Barbra Streisand’s gorgeous ballad “Evergreen” comes on, calming my nerves.

Arriving late to CBS Television City, which is unlike me, I’m thankful that no one mentions my tardiness. Everyone seems happy to see me.

My embarrassment at being late quickly gives way to delight when our brilliant costume designer, Bob Mackie, shows me a sparkly creation he’s made for me to wear on the show. I’ve been wanting exactly this kind of costume for years, and now I’m thrilled that my desire’s been fulfilled.

The rehearsal is fun and easy. Cher and I always have a good time together. After a quick bite at the nearby Farmers Market, I head out to meet some friends who’ve invited me to chant with them.

Feeling much happier than I did this morning, I’m more like my usual self as I steer my Jaguar XKE Roadster, which I cherish and love driving.

To my surprise, I’m suddenly pulled over by a police officer. I’m not aware that I’ve done anything wrong, so I’m feeling nervous. I try to suppress feelings of angst and indignation, remembering what I know about injustices at the hands of policemen.

These thoughts evaporate when the officer politely asks, “How are you doing today, ma’am?” I tell him I’m fine, and on my way to a Buddhist chanting meeting. The expression on his face indicates he was not expecting to hear that. “Is there some urgent rush to get there?” he asks. “Because you rolled right through that last stop sign just now.”

Turns out the reason I’m being stopped is because of the hard-to-break habit of “California stops.” If you’ve never heard of a California stop, it’s when the wheels of your car don’t actually come to a complete halt at a stop sign.

I apologize and explain that I’m not the best driver in the world, and my thoughts have been distracted by some family drama lately. The officer reminds me to always halt fully at stop signs and red lights and lets me off with a warning. Then, I’m back on the road.

While driving (a lot more carefully than I did before being stopped), I listen to a fascinating interview on public radio with scientist Carl Sagan. His comments reveal things I never knew about the universe, leading me to think about my place in the world.

As I wait to turn a corner near a retirement home, I see an older woman whose smile reminds me of my dear grandmother Mama Georgie. Something about this moment makes me resolve that I’ll spend more time doing good things for others, the way she taught me to do.

Thank you, Mama Georgie, I think to myself as I send her a loving prayer of appreciation.

Why am I telling you all the details of a seemingly unremarkable day in Los Angeles? Because, during this time, you traveled with me through eight of the Ten Worlds, and we went all the way from “Hunger” to “Bodhisattva.”

Since ancient times, the Ten Worlds have been described (from lowest to highest) as Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Tranquility, Heaven, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva, and Buddhahood.

The first four of these worlds can be summed up like this: the state of suffering or destructive despair (Hell), the state of being controlled by insatiable desires (Hunger), the state of being swayed by instinctive behaviors (Animality), and the state of ego attachments, dominated by conflict and arrogance (Anger).

The fifth and sixth worlds are the state of relative calm (Tranquility) and the state of temporary elation at the gratification of a desire (Heaven).

Together, these six states of being, from Hell to Heaven, are considered the lower paths, since their emergence, or disappearance, is determined mostly by the way we react to external circumstances. Any satisfaction we may gain while experiencing these life conditions depends on temporary, external situations, so it doesn’t last long.

In contrast, the remaining four worlds are the higher paths, which require our conscious, inner effort to manifest them. The gains we make while experiencing these higher conditions are long-lasting.

In Buddhist texts, these four higher paths are often called the four noble paths.

The first two of these four higher paths are the state of seeking truth from the teachings or experiences of others (Learning) and the state of understanding truth through our own efforts and observations (Realization). Achieving these life conditions gives us some independence from the ups and downs of the lower paths.

Then we come to the highest two paths.

The first of these two is the state of compassion, altruism, and aspiring to enlightenment while finding joy in helping others do the same (Bodhisattva).

Finally, we have the highest condition in life. This is the state of total freedom, wholeness, and absolute happiness, in which we can enjoy a limitless sense of unity with the life force of the universe itself (Buddhahood). I like to think of this as an indestructible, diamond-like condition—a treasure we have deep within our hearts.

We reveal this greatest of life conditions through our concerted positive actions, particularly those actions we take while we’re in the state of Bodhisattva. The state of Buddhahood overflows with boundless compassion, infinite wisdom, and steadfast courage.

We all have the potential to manifest any of these ten conditions at any moment, and as we are experiencing one of them, the other nine conditions remain dormant.

As the example of my memorable day in 1977 shows, we all experience swings from one life condition, or world, to another, and we may go through many different conditions in a single day. At any given moment, we are always experiencing one of these conditions, and the qualities of that condition inside ourselves reflect outward into every area of our lives.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t aware that the qualities of Buddhahood existed. During my childhood, my home environment revolved mostly around the lower four or five worlds. Occasionally, there were times when I briefly experienced Heaven, such as when I went to the movies or visited with my beloved Mama Georgie. Later, in school, I experienced the states of Learning and Realization, expanding my horizons with new subjects and class activities, but those states were irregular and brief.

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

—ETTY HILLESUM

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Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

—ARISTOTLE

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The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

—JOHN MILTON

As a teenager, I took a job working for the Hendersons, a kind young white family, who opened my eyes to what it was like to be a part of a happy home. For the first time, I saw what a higher life condition could be. I felt their compassion and desire to help me in the way they taught me social manners and told me about the world outside of Tennessee. Thanks to the Hendersons, I observed the condition of Bodhisattva, and I aspired to have the sort of positivity I saw in their lives.

Though I was becoming aware that higher life states were possible, I didn’t know how to achieve them. I hadn’t yet found a way to transform my state of life.

But I carried these memories with me as a guiding light.

Later, I worked as a nurse’s assistant at a hospital. Let me tell you, if there’s one building on Earth where all of the Ten Worlds are manifesting at the same time, it’s a hospital. There are people experiencing genuine emergencies, as well as nervous hypochondriacs, people waiting to donate blood, people doing important research to cure disease, babies crying their first cries, loved ones saying their final goodbyes, and everything in between. That was a mind-opening experience, too.

Now that we’re familiar with the range of life conditions, let’s revisit our journey through that day of mine in 1977, only this time through the lens of the Ten Worlds.

Sleeping snugly in my bed, I am in a state of Tranquility.

As the alarm sounds, instinctive reflexes, and perhaps momentary fear, trigger Animality. The notion that I’m safe to go back to sleep for as long as I want is Heaven, which is soon shattered when I remember it’s Monday. Disbelief turns to Anger, as I berate myself for oversleeping.

Now, you might interpret my feeling hungry on the way out the door as the state of Hunger, but it’s more accurately Animality, since it’s instinctive, in contrast to the actual state of Hunger, which is about our desires or greed (not literally wanting something to eat).

The traffic jams bring out Anger again, but soothing music helps me settle back to Tranquility.

The realization of something I’ve been wanting for so long (Hunger), a gorgeous Bob Mackie costume, brings out Heaven, although this is a temporary high.

Back in my car, I return to Tranquility until a police officer stops me, which briefly brings out Anger. Fortunately, he lets me go with only a warning, and Tranquility returns.

Listening to Carl Sagan’s insights on public radio gives rise to Learning and Realization. To cap off the day, remembering my grandmother and her lessons about helping others immediately brings out the state of Bodhisattva.

Now that I’m ending my day in a higher life condition, the things that seemed bad earlier in the day don’t seem so bad anymore. But those external circumstances haven’t changed—it’s my life condition that changed. My life condition colors my view of the whole day, past and present.

In other words, our life condition can brighten, or darken, our feelings about the same circumstances.

If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.

—MARVIN GAYE

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I believe in the soul … I believe it is prompt accountability for one’s choices, a willing acceptance of responsibility for one’s thoughts, behavior, and actions that makes it powerful.

—ALICE WALKER

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The ultimate mystery is one’s own self.

—SAMMY DAVIS JR.

Although the details may be different, I’m sure you’ve experienced similar situations, and you know that feeling of being on a roller-coaster ride through many different life conditions in a single day.

The more I’ve learned about modern psychology, the more I see its similarities to ancient Buddhist wisdom. I even found that Abraham Maslow’s well-known theory of self-actualization and the hierarchy of needs have been likened to the Ten Worlds. The first time I saw Maslow’s hierarchy of needs drawn as levels in a pyramid, I was struck by its resemblance to Buddhist levels of life conditions.

Maslow’s theory says that people naturally seek to satisfy their basic needs in the following order, from lower to higher:

First there is the physical level of our basic survival needs (food, water, and shelter); then comes the level of safety (security, health, and finances); and the level of psychological needs of belonging (love, friendship, and family). These first three levels in Maslow’s pyramid correspond to the six lower life conditions of the Ten Worlds.

For example, if we are struggling to meet our basic physical and safety needs, we’re likely to experience the conditions of Hell, Hunger, Anger, and Animality. And when our psychological needs are met, we achieve Tranquility and Heaven.

In Maslow’s pyramid, the next level is esteem (accomplishment, freedom, and self-confidence), which corresponds to Learning and Realization; and finally, there is the level of self-actualization (fulfillment of potential, discovery of purpose, and clarity of perception), which shares elements of the life conditions of Bodhisattva and Buddhahood.

When we seek to self-actualize—when we aspire to manifest the states of Bodhisattva and Buddhahood—we are changed for the better. I spoke about this often while touring Japan in the late 1980s, explaining that, thanks to my Buddhist practice, I felt like a different person had emerged from within me, my true self, with a strong sense of purpose and self-awareness.

Despite the similarities between the Ten Worlds and Maslow’s hierarchy, there is a key difference. Unlike the stages that one must satisfy in order to move on to the next level on Maslow’s pyramid, the optimistic message of Buddhism is that each of the Ten Worlds contains the potential of all the other life conditions within itself. In other words, we can move directly from one condition to any other, without having to experience an intermediate condition.

This concept is liberating because it tells us that even if we are experiencing the condition of Hell, we have the potential to instantly manifest any of the higher states, even Buddhahood.

For example, people who have survived a natural disaster report experiencing profound insights about the interrelatedness of all living things. They often feel more compassionate, and at one with the universe.

This awareness of our potential to elevate ourselves out of the lowest depths of suffering to the highest state of human existence is life changing. Armed with this knowledge, we see that there is a positive quality in every condition, so we don’t need to fear any state of life. When we wake up to this reality, that any condition we may be experiencing possesses the potential for all other states of being, we can find the light of hope no matter what our circumstances are.

This understanding is crucial, because without hope, anything can become a source of despair. With hope, anything can become a source of joy.

We can also be confident that we can use any of the lower conditions of life as fuel to achieve the higher ones. This is our human superpower, the ability to “change poison into medicine.”

Thanks to my Buddhist practice, the empowering process of changing poison into medicine—transforming destructive negativity into creative positivity—has become the hope-filled theme of my life, which we’ll explore more in chapter five.

In the meantime, know that whenever you feel your life condition diving down into the lower worlds, you can lift yourself up. Sometimes you can do it through relatively simple efforts. Focusing your mind, doing yoga, running, swimming, working out, practicing breathing exercises, taking a walk, “shaking it off,” or, as many of us learned in kindergarten, stopping for a time-out or nap can sometimes work wonders. If these methods aren’t effective at raising your state of mind, you can explore other ways, such as prayer, chanting, meditation, or study. Choose whatever path works best for you.

In my case, until I was thirty-four, nothing I tried seemed to make a lasting improvement in my life condition. Nothing helped me to lift myself out of the lower worlds. I was stuck in negative cycles, silently suffering, unsure how I could ever make my dreams come true.

Then, I began to chant. Buddhism taught me how to access a direct path upward in my life condition, a spiritual express lane, so to speak, by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

I think most people who know something about me have probably heard that I study and practice Buddhism and that I chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I’ll bet fewer people know how chanting actually works.

Now that we’ve explored the Ten Worlds together, we’ll look at what the words—or sounds—Nam-myoho-renge-kyo mean, both literally and to me personally. I’d like to share with you some of the wondrous ways in which chanting has helped me to become happy and strong, how it lifted my life condition—and how it can do the same for you.

HIGHLIGHTS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS IN EACH OF THE TEN WORLDS

1. HELL

Positive: Personal experiences of deep suffering can lead us to the desire to help others find their way out of their own suffering.

Negative: Hopeless despair; the inability to see oneself and others clearly; self-destructive tendencies.

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2. HUNGER

Positive: Aiming to achieve goals; yearning to have more.

Negative: Greed; hedonism; insatiable desires.

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3. ANIMALITY

Positive: Healthy instincts to survive and to protect and nurture life.

Negative: Acting only from instinct; threatening the weak and fearing the strong.

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4. ANGER

Positive: Righteous passion to fight injustice; creative force for change.

Negative: Egotistic self-righteousness; destructive competitiveness; conflict.

5. TRANQUILITY

Positive: Neutral state of peacefulness; ability to act with humane reason.

Negative: State of passive inactivity; unwillingness to tackle problems; laziness.

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6. HEAVEN

Positive: Sense of pleasure and happiness; heightened awareness; feelings of appreciation for being alive.

Negative: Short-lived elation that is typically self-oriented; wish for fleeting gratification to repeat can lead to excess.

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7. LEARNING

Positive: Striving for self-improvement by studying new concepts through others’ teachings.

Negative: Tendency to become self-centered; dismissive attitude toward others with less experience or knowledge.

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8. REALIZATION

Positive: Gaining wisdom and insight through one’s own learning and personal observation of the world.

Negative: Lacking a broad view of life due to self-absorption; feelings of superiority over others.

9. BODHISATTVA

This word contains bodhi, or “enlightenment,” and sattva, or “living beings”—meaning one who seeks enlightenment for oneself and others.

Positive: Compassion; acting selflessly for others without expectation of reward.

Negative: Neglecting one’s own life; feeling contempt for those one tries to help.

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10. BUDDHAHOOD

This word indicates the state of enlightenment to the ultimate reality of the universe and all workings of life.

Positive: Boundless wisdom, courage, and compassion; a grand life force that illuminates the positive aspects of each of the other nine worlds. Buddhahood is the only life condition that has no negative aspects.

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