I love this excerpt...I think I'm gonna sidebar it but I needed to share it up here immediately :-)

It is not so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering...the sufferings which undermine our internal peace -- anxiety, doubt, disappointment.

Since our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness. -Ethics for a New Millennium, by the 14th Dalai