Hi Everybody, December 30th, on the cusp of the new year. I'm off for a bit of sunshine at the end of this week so I thought it would be good to at least wrap up Chapter 2 before I go, even possibly launch into Chapter 3 of The Case for Buddhism, which is a really crucial chapter that asks, and tries to answer a crucial question in Buddhism, what do we mean when we use the word ' faith.' In a powerfully humanistic religion that has no gods or divine beings to have faith in, what do we mean when we as Buddhists use these words like ' faith' and ' prayer' that inevitably carry so much baggage from our basically Judao-Christian culture.
But let me use this blog, number 9 to round off Chapter 2.
So to recap briefly, in Blog number 7 I answered the question why am I a Nichiren Buddhist? That really describes the journey I personally travelled from deepest scepticism to a profound and enduring commitment to the practice that has unquestionably affected every aspect of my life, as a father and a husband and friend and colleague at work.
In Blog number 8 I introduced the second main strand of the argument I pursue in this book, the science. and try to define the way in which the remarkable body of findings that have come out of sociological and psychological research over the past couple of decades really walk across very much the same territory as Buddhist teachings, since they are profoundly concerned with the values and behaviour that enable us to live the most creative and fulfilling lives, for ourselves, and for the societies that we inhabit.
So as I've said, let me just round of that argument in this post, because to be absolutely fair to any reader I have to ask the direct question, ' Do we need an understanding, or an awareness even, of the science, to develop an effective Buddhist practice.' We pick up the argument on p 35.
' There can only be one answer, and it's in the negative. We do not. But listen to this from the late great historian and philosopher, Arnold Toynbee,
' Science and religion need not and ought not to be in conflict. They are to complementary ways of approaching the universe mentally, in order to cope with it. '
Or this from philosopher Robert Solomon,
' Spirituality is supported and informed by science. The more we know about the world the more we can appreciate it.'
Just listen to the power of that phrase, ' spirituality is supported and informed by science!'
So they are telling us quite clearly that in order to make the very most of this rich and complex life that we are living, we benefit from both kinds of illumination, the spiritual and the scientific. That unquestionably rings true doesn't it?
And this from Tsunesaburo makiguchi, the visionary Japanese educational reformer who founded the lay Buddhist organisation that today is at the forefront of the spread of Buddhist values and beliefs into the western world,
' I could find no contradiction between science, philosophy, which is the basis of our modern society, and the teachings of the Lotus Sutra.'
The fact is that we live and practice in the real world, and the real world is changing rapidly, perhaps most rapidly in the knowledge and understanding of human nature, that lies so close to our Buddhist teachings. In a sense you could say that this social research takes our personal experience of the way Buddhist values and principles shape our daily lives, and places them in a wider global context. And my argument would be that if we genuinely wish, as Buddhists, to reach out to much wider non-Buddhist Buddhist audience, then we can only be helped in that endeavour by some understanding, however peripheral that might be, of this new and immensely revealing knowledge.
But more than that, I think we gain genuine benefit from stretching our understanding in this way. Why? Because, as I've mentioned, we happen to be living in privileged times. We are witnessing if you like the slow building of a wave that is bringing immense social change. The debate and the discussion about what people want for their lives, then obvious concern for personal growth and self-realisation, the understanding of the kind of values and behaviour that enable people to feel good about their lives and their societies has long since passed out of the philosophers and religious teachers into mainstream social debate. It has becoem the stuff of everyday political discussion.
That is I believe a crucial point. Moreover it links in directly with an understanding that has always been at the very heart of a Buddhist approach to life, namely the idea that the pursuit of a sense of well-being at the individual level, has an infinitely deeper and wider significance at the level of society.
As Daisaku Ikeda, one of today's greatest thinkers and writers on Buddhist issues has expressed it;
' In an age when both society and the religious world are wrought by turmoil and confusion ( as indeed they are today ) only a teaching that gives each individual the power to draw forth his or her Buddha nature can lead all people to happiness, and transform the tenor of the times. In other words...there can be no lasting solution to the problems facing society that does not involve our individual life state.'
It is unquestionably a powerful vision and one that immensely relevant to the communities we all live in. It proposes that a movement towards a better society based on the principles of respect for the lives and values of others, and with peace and individual happiness as its objective, cannot just be created as a top down process. It has to start from the bottom up, with a profound change taking place in the lives of countless individuals gradually changing the way the whole,of society functions.
That in essence is the goal to which this book is dedicated. And I ought to add perhaps right from the start that it is written very much for people who have little or no knowledge of Budhism and who could well be as deeply sceptical as I was, about its relevance or appropriateness to a modern western way of life.
The plain fact is that we have a great opportunity to move on from the commonly-held and largely superficial stereotypes of what Buddhism is about. Because we now have this unusual and unexpected conjunction of views. They may be using different idioms and different methods, but essentially both Buddhism and now the social scientists are telling us that a greater sense of well-being at the heart of our lives is fundamentally what we are all seeking, and that there are some clearly defined ways of achieving that objective, however tough and challenging the modern world may be.
So, I'm suggesting here that it's clearly worthwhile to invest a certain amount of time and energy to clearing away those persistent stereotypes that obscure our view of what Buddhism is about, to see more clearlyt what it has to offer.
And we start by unpacking the concept of belief or faith in Buddhism. What's that all about? '
OK . So that's the end of Chapter 2. Quite a long chapter I admit and one that tries to do a lot of work. Perhaps too much work! I hope not.
I hope you managed to get to here.
And I wish you all a creative and fulfilling new year. See you next year!
William Woollard
be no lasting solution to the problems facing society that does not involve our individual life stater.been
Monday 30 December 2013
Thursday 26 December 2013
my Buddhist blog
Hi Everybody,
Hope you are having a good Xmas, wherever you are. I just thought I'd use this little gap of time that boxing day provides to motor along with blog number 8. I'm really enjoying retracing this discussion in this way. With number 7 we left the story in the middle of chapter 2, and in the middle of the debate about science. I accept that it's not an easy debate, it takes a fair bit of concentration, but it seems to me to be a crucial one, because, as I say in the book, we don't practice Buddhism in a bubble. We practice in the midst of a world that is turbulent with new research in sociology and psychology that walks across very much the same ground as Buddhist teachings, namely helping us to understand what it is about our values and behaviour that enable us to live the most fulfilling and the most value-creating lives. So I would suggest, we gain in our understanding and appreciation of the ' modernity ' of Buddhist teachings, by spending a bit of time looking sideways you might say, at some of these research findings. That basically is the argument of this particular blog.
In the last one I introduced a celebrated writer on science called Stephen Jay Gould and his closely argued view that Science and Religion essentially occupy quite different dimensions in our life. That's where I pick up the story now. ( page 29 )
' Stephen Jay Gould's analysis has long been accepted as the most authoritative statement, on what obviously remains a complex and controversial issue. But that having been said, I think we could certainly put up a case, at this time, that there is...not so much a flaw in Gould's analysis, that would be goingn too far...but a gap perhaps, a lacuna. And it has arisen mainly I think as a result of the sheer volume of research that has been carried out in this area over the past ten to fifteen years. Put at it's simplest, science still cannot tackle issues of fundamental faith and belief and spirituality, and frankly isn't particularly interrested in doing so when there is so much else to explore. However over the past couple of decades science has been immensely interested in observing and analysing what might be called the ' consequences ' of belief, namely our behaviour. What we do. How we live. What values we hold. How we handle relationships. How much compassion or altruism we show towards others. How we respond to problems and challenges. what makes us angry or sad or happy or despairing? The potential lines of inquiry are endless.
And it goes without saying that if we happen to have a strong religious or spiritual belief, then that will have a powerful effect on our behaviour. What we deeply hold to be true reveals itself in every aspect of our lives, from how we think and what we say, to the actions that we take in almost every circumstance. People as we know are quite commonly prepared to die for their beliefs, that is how far our beliefs can affect our behaviour.
So in this case there is undoubtedly a big overlap between science and religion, in the sense that behaviour, influenced by profound belief is of course infinitely accessible to observation and analysis by scientists, in all its infinitely varied and manifold forms.
So why is this important?
A quiet revolution
Well in a sense you could say that we have been living through a kind of revolution over the past 20 years or so, a quiet revolution you might say, since this kind of research may take some time to yield up its findings, and is rarely if ever the stuff of headlines. But over this time the social scientists have sought to explore and to understand in ever increasing detail, the motivations and the compulsions that drive human behaviour, and their effects on our sense of self, and on how we feel about our lives. The results have been sometimes astounding, sometimes predictable, but always interesting. With immense patience and care, and on a truly objective basis, sometimes with research projects that have run, and continue to run, for many years, these social scientists have begun to put together an understanding of the nature of human life and motivation that goes way beyond anything that might have been imagined even a few decades ago.
So here it seems to me, there is a wonderfully rich and meaningful overlap to be explored. Because with religion of course...and in this case it's Buddhism that we wish to put under the microscope...it is only meaningful when its values and principles and teachings become manifest in human behaviour, otherwise it's just a matter of words, just airy philosophy. One of the most profound things ever written about Shakyamuni for example, the first historically recorded Buddha, the seed from which this great tree of Buddhism has grown, who lived around 500BCE, is that the real significance, the real purpose of his mission in this world lay precisely in his ' behaviour ' as a human being; in what he did, at least as much as in what he said.
But the question I askled was why is this important?
And the answer I think is that it gives us this great opportunity which has never been around before. It goes without saying that Buddhism does not exist in a bubble. Buddhism is daily life, and its great strength is its claim to continuing relevance despite the vast changes that have gone on in our social circumstances, because fundamentally human nature hasn't changed. So we are immensely privileged. We can, essentially for the very first time, look at the complex understanding that Buddhism has evolved of human motivation and behaviour...in the context of the learning that is emerging from the formal studies carried out across the world by the social scientists. That in essence is the something more that this book is about, that journey of exploration and comparison. Looking in detail not simply at what Buddhism has to tell us about living a full and meaningful and creative life, but looking sideways at what sociology and psychology and neuroscience have to tell us as well, so that we can see where and how they relate to one another.
A dual track
So, for the past couple of years I have been exploring as much as I could handle of the social research that has gone on in this area in recent years, and the result has been surprising. There is no question in my mind but that fundamental ideas about the nature of human motivation and behaviour that Buddhism has been teaching for centuries, find the most interesting and stimulating echoes and parallels and amplifications, in the studies carried out by today's social scientists. So this book pursues whiat might be called a dual track.
It is indeed a serious, committed, admittedly personal account of Buddhism in today's world, as it is manifest and expressed in the daily lives of very ordinary people holding down a day job you might say, caring for their kids, watching the ball game on a Saturday afternoon, worrying about the mortgage or the tax bill or caring for an aged relative, or whatever. Activities that we are all involved in. Buddhism that is, very much in daily life. And about the qualities that we all seek in our lives such as a stronger and more consistent sense of well-being at the core of our life, that is not so easily dismantled by challenges and problems.
What I would like to do therefore is to take a number of issues that are central to the practice of Buddhism; issues such as compassion and altruism and gratitude for example, or creating meaningful relationships, the dilemma of suffering, how we deal with destructive emotions such as anger and greed, the complex matter of ethics and morality, and so on, and look at these issues both from the Nichiren Buddhist and from the scientific point of view.
These issues aren't by any means concerned with the margins of our life are they?Most of them indeed are profoundly life-changing. The kinds of things you might say that are of the greatest significance to all of us. Buddhism as you would expect has a great deal to say about how we might approach them in a way that creates the most value for our lives and for those around us.
And now modern science offers us this immensely supportive perspective.'
Ok that's enough I think for today. As I've mentioned I think I find it quite difficult to judge what is an appropriate slug of material each time. It depends on the nature of the argument at that particular point in the journey. But no doubt you will let me know if I'm way too long. Or too short.
With my sincere gratitude for your staying with it thus far.
Best wishes,
William Woollard
The book, The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon.
Hope you are having a good Xmas, wherever you are. I just thought I'd use this little gap of time that boxing day provides to motor along with blog number 8. I'm really enjoying retracing this discussion in this way. With number 7 we left the story in the middle of chapter 2, and in the middle of the debate about science. I accept that it's not an easy debate, it takes a fair bit of concentration, but it seems to me to be a crucial one, because, as I say in the book, we don't practice Buddhism in a bubble. We practice in the midst of a world that is turbulent with new research in sociology and psychology that walks across very much the same ground as Buddhist teachings, namely helping us to understand what it is about our values and behaviour that enable us to live the most fulfilling and the most value-creating lives. So I would suggest, we gain in our understanding and appreciation of the ' modernity ' of Buddhist teachings, by spending a bit of time looking sideways you might say, at some of these research findings. That basically is the argument of this particular blog.
In the last one I introduced a celebrated writer on science called Stephen Jay Gould and his closely argued view that Science and Religion essentially occupy quite different dimensions in our life. That's where I pick up the story now. ( page 29 )
' Stephen Jay Gould's analysis has long been accepted as the most authoritative statement, on what obviously remains a complex and controversial issue. But that having been said, I think we could certainly put up a case, at this time, that there is...not so much a flaw in Gould's analysis, that would be goingn too far...but a gap perhaps, a lacuna. And it has arisen mainly I think as a result of the sheer volume of research that has been carried out in this area over the past ten to fifteen years. Put at it's simplest, science still cannot tackle issues of fundamental faith and belief and spirituality, and frankly isn't particularly interrested in doing so when there is so much else to explore. However over the past couple of decades science has been immensely interested in observing and analysing what might be called the ' consequences ' of belief, namely our behaviour. What we do. How we live. What values we hold. How we handle relationships. How much compassion or altruism we show towards others. How we respond to problems and challenges. what makes us angry or sad or happy or despairing? The potential lines of inquiry are endless.
And it goes without saying that if we happen to have a strong religious or spiritual belief, then that will have a powerful effect on our behaviour. What we deeply hold to be true reveals itself in every aspect of our lives, from how we think and what we say, to the actions that we take in almost every circumstance. People as we know are quite commonly prepared to die for their beliefs, that is how far our beliefs can affect our behaviour.
So in this case there is undoubtedly a big overlap between science and religion, in the sense that behaviour, influenced by profound belief is of course infinitely accessible to observation and analysis by scientists, in all its infinitely varied and manifold forms.
So why is this important?
A quiet revolution
Well in a sense you could say that we have been living through a kind of revolution over the past 20 years or so, a quiet revolution you might say, since this kind of research may take some time to yield up its findings, and is rarely if ever the stuff of headlines. But over this time the social scientists have sought to explore and to understand in ever increasing detail, the motivations and the compulsions that drive human behaviour, and their effects on our sense of self, and on how we feel about our lives. The results have been sometimes astounding, sometimes predictable, but always interesting. With immense patience and care, and on a truly objective basis, sometimes with research projects that have run, and continue to run, for many years, these social scientists have begun to put together an understanding of the nature of human life and motivation that goes way beyond anything that might have been imagined even a few decades ago.
So here it seems to me, there is a wonderfully rich and meaningful overlap to be explored. Because with religion of course...and in this case it's Buddhism that we wish to put under the microscope...it is only meaningful when its values and principles and teachings become manifest in human behaviour, otherwise it's just a matter of words, just airy philosophy. One of the most profound things ever written about Shakyamuni for example, the first historically recorded Buddha, the seed from which this great tree of Buddhism has grown, who lived around 500BCE, is that the real significance, the real purpose of his mission in this world lay precisely in his ' behaviour ' as a human being; in what he did, at least as much as in what he said.
But the question I askled was why is this important?
And the answer I think is that it gives us this great opportunity which has never been around before. It goes without saying that Buddhism does not exist in a bubble. Buddhism is daily life, and its great strength is its claim to continuing relevance despite the vast changes that have gone on in our social circumstances, because fundamentally human nature hasn't changed. So we are immensely privileged. We can, essentially for the very first time, look at the complex understanding that Buddhism has evolved of human motivation and behaviour...in the context of the learning that is emerging from the formal studies carried out across the world by the social scientists. That in essence is the something more that this book is about, that journey of exploration and comparison. Looking in detail not simply at what Buddhism has to tell us about living a full and meaningful and creative life, but looking sideways at what sociology and psychology and neuroscience have to tell us as well, so that we can see where and how they relate to one another.
A dual track
So, for the past couple of years I have been exploring as much as I could handle of the social research that has gone on in this area in recent years, and the result has been surprising. There is no question in my mind but that fundamental ideas about the nature of human motivation and behaviour that Buddhism has been teaching for centuries, find the most interesting and stimulating echoes and parallels and amplifications, in the studies carried out by today's social scientists. So this book pursues whiat might be called a dual track.
It is indeed a serious, committed, admittedly personal account of Buddhism in today's world, as it is manifest and expressed in the daily lives of very ordinary people holding down a day job you might say, caring for their kids, watching the ball game on a Saturday afternoon, worrying about the mortgage or the tax bill or caring for an aged relative, or whatever. Activities that we are all involved in. Buddhism that is, very much in daily life. And about the qualities that we all seek in our lives such as a stronger and more consistent sense of well-being at the core of our life, that is not so easily dismantled by challenges and problems.
What I would like to do therefore is to take a number of issues that are central to the practice of Buddhism; issues such as compassion and altruism and gratitude for example, or creating meaningful relationships, the dilemma of suffering, how we deal with destructive emotions such as anger and greed, the complex matter of ethics and morality, and so on, and look at these issues both from the Nichiren Buddhist and from the scientific point of view.
These issues aren't by any means concerned with the margins of our life are they?Most of them indeed are profoundly life-changing. The kinds of things you might say that are of the greatest significance to all of us. Buddhism as you would expect has a great deal to say about how we might approach them in a way that creates the most value for our lives and for those around us.
And now modern science offers us this immensely supportive perspective.'
Ok that's enough I think for today. As I've mentioned I think I find it quite difficult to judge what is an appropriate slug of material each time. It depends on the nature of the argument at that particular point in the journey. But no doubt you will let me know if I'm way too long. Or too short.
With my sincere gratitude for your staying with it thus far.
Best wishes,
William Woollard
The book, The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon.
Monday 23 December 2013
my buddhist blog
Hi Everybody,
Happy Xmas and all that. It's blowing a gale and a half outside so instead of browsing the shops for last-minute Xmas presents I'm in here in the warm at the keyboard composing blog number 7 in this The Case for Buddhism series. So in the past couple of posts I've said something about my personal journey from profound scepticism about the value or relevance of a Buddhist practice in the midst of the rush and bustle and competitive pressures that define our modern western way of life, to this deep and enduring commitment to and great gratitude for a practice that has enriched every aspect of my life and relationships...no question...and I'm sure the lives of those whom my life touches.
So now I want to put that on one side for the moment, and move on to the other key dimension of this journey we're on, the science. And the key question at this point is where does the science fit into the argument? Or, what has science got to do with a Buddhist practice? Let the book take up the story; (p27)
' The answer to that question is slightly more circuitous. Over recent years there has been something of a movement to link together the words Buddhism and science, as if to imply that in some way, not often explained in detail, they occupy to some extent the same or similar territories. I believe that approach to be profoundly misleading on many counts. Buddhism is not and doesn't claim to be in the least scientific in its approach to resolving the deepest issues of life. But then it doesn't need to be. On then one hand Buddhism doesn't need in any way the justification or the validation from modern science for its philosophical insights into the nature of human motivation and behaviour. They have been tested and proven over many centuries, as I've said, in the toughest laboratory of them all, the trials and tribulations of daily human life.
And on the other hand, science simply isn't equipped, even if it were interested, to deal with the area of religious belief. many scientists do of course have strong and active religious lives, but that tells us little about the relationship between science and religion, except that they can clearly co-exist. It is simply testimony if you like to the enduring power and support provided by religious thought. But the basic fact is that science doesn't do religion. Issues like faith and belief and fundamental spirituality lie beyond the range of scientific tools. You can't put courage and compassion and faith and belief into a test tube and weigh and measure them. This issue was most eloquently dealt with by the late great Stephen Jay Gould, the brilliant American palaeontologist and writer on science, who famously coined the definitive acronym on this subject. That acronym is NOMA. It stands briefly for ' non-overlapping magisteria' which is simply a somewhat academic or high-flown way of saying that science and religion occupy quite different dimensions in our life.
However academically off-putting and inaccessible that particular definition might be, we know instinctively that it's accurate don't we? It makes complete sense on a sort of workaday pavement-level basis. We know full well that we live in a world that is dominated by science and technology, and we know the colossal benefits we derive from that situation. No one would want in any way to question that. But we also know, if we give it a moment's thought, that academic science is only a very small and highly specialised part of what we all know. Most ofm our knowledge about ourselves and our relationships comes from our own experience of life. We learn about life you might say, from life itself.
We also know that we don't turn to science when it comes to some of the biggest and most puzzling questions of all. Questions such as why are we here? Or is there a fundamental purpose to life? Or what is the meaning of suffering? Or what happens to an item called me after death? We may not ask those questions very often, but that's not the point. The fact is that when we do, we don't turn to science for the answers, we turn to a completely different dimension of our experience. And we happen to call that dimension religion...which does attempt to give us answers.
So, I would argue, we have a clear need for both kinds of inspiration and illumination, if we are to make the very most of this remarkable universe that we inhabit. As several great philosophers have commented, science is the organisation of knowledge, but wisdom, in the sense of spirituality, is the organisation of life. Indeed I would argue that we need to stand up and take serious issue with scientists, when they choose to argue that in some way our lives would be richer and truer without the religious bit. It wouldn't !!'
I'm never quite sure how long to make these episodes. But let me leave this argument there for the moment. In the next blog I will take up the thread and look at the extraordinary new insights that are being offered to us by some of the latest findings in fields such as sociology and psychology, and how they might relate to some of the teachings that lie at the heart of Buddhism.
Many thanks for reading thus far.
See you again soon.
Best wishes,
William Woollard.
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon.
scientific in its approach to resloving the deepest issues of human life. But then it doesn't need to bre
Happy Xmas and all that. It's blowing a gale and a half outside so instead of browsing the shops for last-minute Xmas presents I'm in here in the warm at the keyboard composing blog number 7 in this The Case for Buddhism series. So in the past couple of posts I've said something about my personal journey from profound scepticism about the value or relevance of a Buddhist practice in the midst of the rush and bustle and competitive pressures that define our modern western way of life, to this deep and enduring commitment to and great gratitude for a practice that has enriched every aspect of my life and relationships...no question...and I'm sure the lives of those whom my life touches.
So now I want to put that on one side for the moment, and move on to the other key dimension of this journey we're on, the science. And the key question at this point is where does the science fit into the argument? Or, what has science got to do with a Buddhist practice? Let the book take up the story; (p27)
' The answer to that question is slightly more circuitous. Over recent years there has been something of a movement to link together the words Buddhism and science, as if to imply that in some way, not often explained in detail, they occupy to some extent the same or similar territories. I believe that approach to be profoundly misleading on many counts. Buddhism is not and doesn't claim to be in the least scientific in its approach to resolving the deepest issues of life. But then it doesn't need to be. On then one hand Buddhism doesn't need in any way the justification or the validation from modern science for its philosophical insights into the nature of human motivation and behaviour. They have been tested and proven over many centuries, as I've said, in the toughest laboratory of them all, the trials and tribulations of daily human life.
And on the other hand, science simply isn't equipped, even if it were interested, to deal with the area of religious belief. many scientists do of course have strong and active religious lives, but that tells us little about the relationship between science and religion, except that they can clearly co-exist. It is simply testimony if you like to the enduring power and support provided by religious thought. But the basic fact is that science doesn't do religion. Issues like faith and belief and fundamental spirituality lie beyond the range of scientific tools. You can't put courage and compassion and faith and belief into a test tube and weigh and measure them. This issue was most eloquently dealt with by the late great Stephen Jay Gould, the brilliant American palaeontologist and writer on science, who famously coined the definitive acronym on this subject. That acronym is NOMA. It stands briefly for ' non-overlapping magisteria' which is simply a somewhat academic or high-flown way of saying that science and religion occupy quite different dimensions in our life.
However academically off-putting and inaccessible that particular definition might be, we know instinctively that it's accurate don't we? It makes complete sense on a sort of workaday pavement-level basis. We know full well that we live in a world that is dominated by science and technology, and we know the colossal benefits we derive from that situation. No one would want in any way to question that. But we also know, if we give it a moment's thought, that academic science is only a very small and highly specialised part of what we all know. Most ofm our knowledge about ourselves and our relationships comes from our own experience of life. We learn about life you might say, from life itself.
We also know that we don't turn to science when it comes to some of the biggest and most puzzling questions of all. Questions such as why are we here? Or is there a fundamental purpose to life? Or what is the meaning of suffering? Or what happens to an item called me after death? We may not ask those questions very often, but that's not the point. The fact is that when we do, we don't turn to science for the answers, we turn to a completely different dimension of our experience. And we happen to call that dimension religion...which does attempt to give us answers.
So, I would argue, we have a clear need for both kinds of inspiration and illumination, if we are to make the very most of this remarkable universe that we inhabit. As several great philosophers have commented, science is the organisation of knowledge, but wisdom, in the sense of spirituality, is the organisation of life. Indeed I would argue that we need to stand up and take serious issue with scientists, when they choose to argue that in some way our lives would be richer and truer without the religious bit. It wouldn't !!'
I'm never quite sure how long to make these episodes. But let me leave this argument there for the moment. In the next blog I will take up the thread and look at the extraordinary new insights that are being offered to us by some of the latest findings in fields such as sociology and psychology, and how they might relate to some of the teachings that lie at the heart of Buddhism.
Many thanks for reading thus far.
See you again soon.
Best wishes,
William Woollard.
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon.
scientific in its approach to resloving the deepest issues of human life. But then it doesn't need to bre
Tuesday 17 December 2013
mybuddhist blog
Hi Everybody, blog number 6 in this series which is essentially tracking the narative thread of my latest book, The Case for Buddhism. In the last couple of blogs I've traced the story of my journey over many months of study and debate from profound scepticism about the relevance of a Buddhist practice to my life as a television journalist, to making the determination to take up the prqctice. This blog picks up the thread of that story.
The Case for Buddhism p23
' I cannot say that at the start of my practice there was any clear vision or sense of direction. There wasn't an overriding idea or an obvious goal towards which I was heading. Why should there be?There was however I now realise a clear resolution. There seemed no point otherwise. If I try to put myself back in that situation, I was determined that once I had set out on this somewaht surprising road, I would continue until I was sure, one way or another, about the value of this practice in my daily life. It was easy enough for people to say to me, ' Buddhism is daily life,' as they did. The question was, did it actually work at that level?Did it make a fundamental difference to the way I viewed the ordinary stuff of every day?
So where have I ended up? I ought to say at once that I've never spent much time looking backwards. I'm much more concerned about the projects I have in hand now and where they are leading. But if I pose the direct question now, what has been the result of all those years of regular daily Buddhist practice, what sort of answer emerges? That's a tough question for anyone of course, and not one that can be answered lightly.
But I would go so far as to say that my Buddhist practice has had a greater and more profound effect on the way I live my life than any other single experience. That's a big thing to say about a long and eventful life. Moreover I simply can't think of any negatives. I have ended up with the most powerful and enduring sense of well-being and gratitude for all the things that are in my life...and I mean all the things. I can honestly say that for much of my life that was not the case. I can well remember for example that I would very rarely allow myself to use the ' happiness' word because as soon as you had uttered it, it seemed that whatever it was that you were trying to describe had either passed by or simp,y evaporated. Better not to pin a label on the experience.
Somehow, I can't claim to be entirely sure how, since causal connections are inevitably so difficult to trace, but undoubtedly I've been able to develop a much greater awareness of, and a much greater sense of gratitude for, the immense richness of my life. I also seem to have grown a much greater capacity to embrace everything that I encounter in my life. Not just the easy things, the good and the golden things, the stuff we all want. But all things, good, bad and indifferent. And there's been plenty of bad and indifferent stuff, as there is in all lives. Near bankruptcy as a result of fraud in the City for example, and losing most of the material possessions that I thought were so crucial to my happiness. For the past three years I've been engaged in a battle against cancer that has involved me in a fair bit of mental and physical pain. But as I have written elsewhere, as soon as I became aware of the cancer, so too I was aware of my ability to face up to it, to embrace it even as part of my life. And those responses came as something of a shock to me. The knowledge that my sense of well-being and optimism about life wasn't dependent on nonly good things happening to me.
So what I am saying is that this gradual transformation towards a profound and stable sense of well-being has occurred almost sub-consciously, as Imhave gone about my ordinary daily life...as a Buddhist. And that is the crucial point that cannot really be overstated. Basically I've just got on with living my life. The only major change has been that I've tried hard to do that within the framework of those Buddhist values and principles that I slowly acquired. so I've maintained a strong daily practcie for example, difficult in the early years because I was so often questioning its value, but now as much a part of my life as breathing. I've made a real effort to respond positively to all the ' stuff' that confronts all of us on a daily basis. As you would expect I haven't always succeeded, but when I've made a mess of things I've made the effort to re-evaluate so that I can make a better shot at getting it right, next time around. Sometimes that's been easy, sometimes difficult, but as Buddhism tells us so often, trying, actually making the effort, is in itself, succeeding. It's not trying, not making the effort, that we can count as failure.
And I think I'm being whooy accurate when I say that I've worked hard to create value in the lives of people whom my life has touched. Not in extraordinary ways I might add, just the ordinary everyday ways of courtesy and support and encouragement and active help when it was needed. As both Buddhism and now modern social science tell us repeatedly, altruism, concerning ourselves with the needs and welfare of others is without a shadow of doubt, on eof the most powerful contributors to our own sense of well-being. Givin gto others is an immesne source of personal benefit.
But what we ought to focus on I suggest, are the implications of that brief account, which, I have no doubt, could be said to describe the lives of the vast majority of my Buddhist colleagues. And those implications seem to me to be inescapable. Put simply it suggests that a Nichiren Buddhist practice, provided it is lived with some degree of care and commitment...nothing extraordinary or even particularly demanding, certainly nothing we would consider to be overtly religious in any formal sense...that simple practice has the potential to transform ( that's the key word ..transform ) the difficult and unlikely stuff of our ordinary daily lives into a profound sense of well-being and gratitude for the joy of living.
Because that is describing nothing more than what has actually taken place in my life.'
Whew. That's enough for today I'm sure. In fact apolgies for going on a bit, but this is an important part of the story. Next blog I move on to a consideration of modern sociology and psychology, and what they have to tell us about human motivation and behaviour, and how that relates to Buddhist teachings.
The book by the way, The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon.
Best wishes,
William miodnight Tuesday 17th december.
Wednesday 11 December 2013
my Buddhist blog
Hi Everybody, blog number 5 from The Case for Buddhism. My idea is that the blog will be made up largely with key passages from the book itself, and this one follows on directly from blog number 4, from Chapter two of the book. It's called A Personal Story, the story of my relationship with Nichiren Buddhism in fact.
Last week we reached the stage where I had encountered Nichiren Buddhism through my partner at that time Sarah, and rejected it as being really inappropriate...utterly irrelevant even is the way I felt...to the achievement-driven, immensely competitve and pressured lives we live in a western society. The story continues...
' But as we all know, life is full of ironiesthat take us completely by surprise. Within a few months, and with considerable reluctance, I decided to take up the study of Nichiren Buddhism. Why the change of mind? Well it was undoubtedly partly as a result of the relationship that had become very much more important to me; Sarah, who is now my beloved wife, had begun to take Buddhism very seriously, because of the benefits she was experiencing, the clear set of values for example, and the sense of purpose and structure she felt it brought into her life. But my decision came mainly from the realisation that I simply didn't know what I was talking about. My casual brush with Buddhism overseas had in a sense been more confusing than enlightening. In order to deal with this new dilemma in my life...I wanted the lady, I didn't want the Buddhism she was now firmly attached to...this was the only strategy that presented itself to me. Before I could do anything I had to know much more about what I was dealing with. My initial thoughts I have to admit, were that eventually, with a much deeper knowledge, I would be able to reason Buddhism out of our lives so to speak; explain coolly and rationally just why this practice was wholly inappropriate to the sort of life we were living in twentieth century Europe, and we could then get married. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men!
The fact is that the study of philosophy, almost any philosophy is I think, immensely seductive, precisely because it challenges us, and our preconceptions. It forces us to stop and think and really face up to the big questions about ourselves and our values that in the general rush and hurry of things we spend all too little time thinking about. So, inevitably perhaps, I soon got a great deal of pleasure out of the study. In a s esne it took ona life of its own. I read everything I could lay my hands on, and just about everywhere, on planes and trains and buses and in the gaps between filming sessions.
Buddhist philosophy is wholly about human motivation and behaviour, and about how we function and relate to one another. It has been well described somewhere as perhaps the greatest creation of the human mind, because of course, unlike all the other great global religions, Buddhism is entirely man-made, if I may put it that way. Created wholly by men, for men, and women too of course. Men only in the sense of all human beings. When Shakyamuni first began to talk to people about his new understanding of the nature of humanlife, nothing remotely like it had been seen before. At no time in the 50 years or so of his teaching life, did Shakyamuni, the first historically recorded Buddha, claim to have anything like a hot line to God, or anything resembling divine inspiration. So it was astoundingly fresh and challenging of conventional ideas. But it is also a philosophy that has evolved immensely over the past 2500 years, with additions and commentaries and interpretations by some of the greatest minds in human history.
But as it turned out it wasn't simply a case of picking up a book and understanding what it said. I had, seemingly inadvertently, come upon something that was changing profoundly how I felt about myself and the way I lived my life, and above all perhaps, how I handled my relationships. Buddhism is very much about relationships.
Interestingly the modern American philosopher Robert Solomon, writes about something very similar in his book about his own spiritual journey, Spirituality for the Skeptic. Having defined himself as having been a profound sceptic, ' dismissive of both spirituality and religion' for most of his life, he goes on to describe how an awakening sense of a spiritual depths in our lives can fundamentally transform our sense of who we are.
' Spirituality ' he writes, ' is ultimately social and global, a sense of ourselves identified with others and the world. But ultimately spirituality must also be understood in terms of the transformation of the self. It's not just a conclusion, or a vision, or a philosophy that one can try on a like a new pair of pants. How we think and feel about ourselves has an impact on who we actually are.' This journey he goes on ' doesn't just move us and inform us, or supplement our already busy day to day existence. It changes us, makes us different kinds of people, different kinds of beings.'
So I gradually became aware that I had reached one of those genuine life-changing moments. It's very difficult to achieve profoundchange in our lives. Indeed it is perhaps the most difficult thing to do. We've spent so many years grooving our beliefs and patterns of behaviour into our life that they represent nothing less than who we are. So it takes real energy and real commitment, and overcoming not a little apprehension, to set about changing them. We need if you like the wisdom to see that we need the change, the confidence to set the change in motion.
Did I have enough commitment? Here I was with my life seemingly set on a pretty well-defined course, comfortable, moderately successful, with no profound perception of religious need. I'm sure many people who encounter Buddhism share that set of circumstances. But perhaps the most surprising thing for me was that when I made that final decision to fold a Buddhist practice into the fabric of my life, it didn't seem so profound a change after all. Indeed it seemed to have a certain natural inevitability about it, as if imhad been makin gthis gradual journeytowards a greater understanding of myself and my life.
And again the philosopher Robert Solomon seems to me to express something very similar. He writes that when we have the courage to make this journey, to fold a more meaningful spiritual dimension into our lives, then...
' we are adopting a framework, or a positive attitude in which all sorts of possibilities open up that may not have been evident before. ...the facts of the world remain pretty much as they were. Nevertheless everything changes. The world is born anew.
' a positive attitude in which all sorts of possibilities opnes up' captures the very essence of what I'm talking about.'
I'm sure that's long enough for today. If not too long. Thank you so much for reading this far.
Next blog I'll go on to how I believe this practice has changed and affected my life over the past 20 years or so.
As I think I've mentioned the book is available on Amazon, and will soon start coming out as a reading onthe Buddhist podcast.
With my best wishes, William
Last week we reached the stage where I had encountered Nichiren Buddhism through my partner at that time Sarah, and rejected it as being really inappropriate...utterly irrelevant even is the way I felt...to the achievement-driven, immensely competitve and pressured lives we live in a western society. The story continues...
' But as we all know, life is full of ironiesthat take us completely by surprise. Within a few months, and with considerable reluctance, I decided to take up the study of Nichiren Buddhism. Why the change of mind? Well it was undoubtedly partly as a result of the relationship that had become very much more important to me; Sarah, who is now my beloved wife, had begun to take Buddhism very seriously, because of the benefits she was experiencing, the clear set of values for example, and the sense of purpose and structure she felt it brought into her life. But my decision came mainly from the realisation that I simply didn't know what I was talking about. My casual brush with Buddhism overseas had in a sense been more confusing than enlightening. In order to deal with this new dilemma in my life...I wanted the lady, I didn't want the Buddhism she was now firmly attached to...this was the only strategy that presented itself to me. Before I could do anything I had to know much more about what I was dealing with. My initial thoughts I have to admit, were that eventually, with a much deeper knowledge, I would be able to reason Buddhism out of our lives so to speak; explain coolly and rationally just why this practice was wholly inappropriate to the sort of life we were living in twentieth century Europe, and we could then get married. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men!
The fact is that the study of philosophy, almost any philosophy is I think, immensely seductive, precisely because it challenges us, and our preconceptions. It forces us to stop and think and really face up to the big questions about ourselves and our values that in the general rush and hurry of things we spend all too little time thinking about. So, inevitably perhaps, I soon got a great deal of pleasure out of the study. In a s esne it took ona life of its own. I read everything I could lay my hands on, and just about everywhere, on planes and trains and buses and in the gaps between filming sessions.
Buddhist philosophy is wholly about human motivation and behaviour, and about how we function and relate to one another. It has been well described somewhere as perhaps the greatest creation of the human mind, because of course, unlike all the other great global religions, Buddhism is entirely man-made, if I may put it that way. Created wholly by men, for men, and women too of course. Men only in the sense of all human beings. When Shakyamuni first began to talk to people about his new understanding of the nature of humanlife, nothing remotely like it had been seen before. At no time in the 50 years or so of his teaching life, did Shakyamuni, the first historically recorded Buddha, claim to have anything like a hot line to God, or anything resembling divine inspiration. So it was astoundingly fresh and challenging of conventional ideas. But it is also a philosophy that has evolved immensely over the past 2500 years, with additions and commentaries and interpretations by some of the greatest minds in human history.
But as it turned out it wasn't simply a case of picking up a book and understanding what it said. I had, seemingly inadvertently, come upon something that was changing profoundly how I felt about myself and the way I lived my life, and above all perhaps, how I handled my relationships. Buddhism is very much about relationships.
Interestingly the modern American philosopher Robert Solomon, writes about something very similar in his book about his own spiritual journey, Spirituality for the Skeptic. Having defined himself as having been a profound sceptic, ' dismissive of both spirituality and religion' for most of his life, he goes on to describe how an awakening sense of a spiritual depths in our lives can fundamentally transform our sense of who we are.
' Spirituality ' he writes, ' is ultimately social and global, a sense of ourselves identified with others and the world. But ultimately spirituality must also be understood in terms of the transformation of the self. It's not just a conclusion, or a vision, or a philosophy that one can try on a like a new pair of pants. How we think and feel about ourselves has an impact on who we actually are.' This journey he goes on ' doesn't just move us and inform us, or supplement our already busy day to day existence. It changes us, makes us different kinds of people, different kinds of beings.'
So I gradually became aware that I had reached one of those genuine life-changing moments. It's very difficult to achieve profoundchange in our lives. Indeed it is perhaps the most difficult thing to do. We've spent so many years grooving our beliefs and patterns of behaviour into our life that they represent nothing less than who we are. So it takes real energy and real commitment, and overcoming not a little apprehension, to set about changing them. We need if you like the wisdom to see that we need the change, the confidence to set the change in motion.
Did I have enough commitment? Here I was with my life seemingly set on a pretty well-defined course, comfortable, moderately successful, with no profound perception of religious need. I'm sure many people who encounter Buddhism share that set of circumstances. But perhaps the most surprising thing for me was that when I made that final decision to fold a Buddhist practice into the fabric of my life, it didn't seem so profound a change after all. Indeed it seemed to have a certain natural inevitability about it, as if imhad been makin gthis gradual journeytowards a greater understanding of myself and my life.
And again the philosopher Robert Solomon seems to me to express something very similar. He writes that when we have the courage to make this journey, to fold a more meaningful spiritual dimension into our lives, then...
' we are adopting a framework, or a positive attitude in which all sorts of possibilities open up that may not have been evident before. ...the facts of the world remain pretty much as they were. Nevertheless everything changes. The world is born anew.
' a positive attitude in which all sorts of possibilities opnes up' captures the very essence of what I'm talking about.'
I'm sure that's long enough for today. If not too long. Thank you so much for reading this far.
Next blog I'll go on to how I believe this practice has changed and affected my life over the past 20 years or so.
As I think I've mentioned the book is available on Amazon, and will soon start coming out as a reading onthe Buddhist podcast.
With my best wishes, William
Friday 6 December 2013
my buddhist blog
Hi Everybody,
Blog number 4 from The Case for Buddhism. As I've mentioned I think, what I'm hoping to do with this blog thing is to work through some of the key bits of the book in the hope that they will be of interest and of value to readers who find their way to it through the vast mass of material on the web. And I will be reading the whole book from first to last, a chapter at a time to go out on The Buddhist Podcast.
But today I'm moving on to Chapter Two, which is called A Personal Story, and which starts by trying to answer the key question, So why am I Buddhist?
' So why am I a Buddhist? It's a longish story but since it's an important and very relevant part of the argument I wish to make, let me explain in as brief a compass as makes sense at this early point in the journey.
The story really starts in South East Asia, For a considerable portion of my working life I've lived and worked overseas, initially in South East Asia and then for severa years in the deserts of the Middle East, and throughout that time I worked hard to establish good and close relations with people of all the local religions, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists. Even making a shot at mastering the languages, Malay and then Arabic so that I could converse at least on a casual basis and relate to people at a deeper level than just work issues.That effort paid off in tha tit added immensely to the quality of my relationships during those years. I spent many weeks for example, livin gup country in long-houses in the jungles of Borneo for example, and many weeks travelling and encountering villagers in the vast and empty deserts of Oman.
I've also always hada keen interest in religions so I studied Islam and read the Koran for example, and was well aware of the depth and beauty of much Buddhist thought, and how well it fitted into the norms and rhythms rhythms of the societies in which it had been created and nurtured for so many centuries. But unquestionably it didn't really touch my life during those long years abroad. I could see and respect just how profoundly those beliefs drove my colleagues' lives, but there it ended. I had been brought up in an actively Christian household, and my life and behaviour I believe largely reflected Christian values. I have elsewhere described my then Christianity as rather like a comfortable well-worn jacket; a bit crumpled and loose fitting, and a bit worn at the elbows, but it slipped on easily, and once on I scarcely knew it was there. And I didn't feel any need for any more substantial religiousn scaffolding to support my life.
It's worth adding perhaps that the general view I acquired of Buddhism during those years comes pretty close to the way in which the western world has viewed Buddhism over the past few hundred years. It has been seen, historically speaking, as an interesting and often extraordinary body of humanist philosophy, full of insights into the nature of human motivation and behaviour perhaps, but to say the least, remote and other-worldly and more than a little obscure. And it has been that viewpoint that has largely driven the western response to Buddhism over the years. It has been seen particularly as a focus of philosophical and doctrinal studies for the academic, rather than anty kind of practical guide to ordinary daily life. Particularly daily life today, in the fiercely competitive, time-slicing, achievement driven hustle and bustle of our post industrial western society.
And that I think is by no means an unimportant consideration for many of us; we are indeed overwhelmingly concerned with ' getting on' with the business of our lives, being swept along by the pretty relentless tide of events that swallows up most of our day, and often perhpas not so much making decisions about our life, as having them made for us by what might be called our deeply ingrained habit energy. We tend not to spend much time, if any, just standing still for a bit. Contemplation isn't a particularly fashionable place to be. ' What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare' the poet asks and most of us are traveling so fast to the next place we need to be that we don't have the time to consider an answer.
And when I think about it, that was pretty much my own personal situation, when, several years later, I first encountered Nichiren Buddhism, in this country, through Sarah, my partner at that time. My response was to some extent coloured by that earlier overseas experience, but to say that I wa sprofoundly sceptical would e an understatement. It seemed well...simply irrelevant...to the kind of life that we were living. I was being swept along by my passion to make the most of my journalistic and writing career, and I certainly didn't feel the need for something that I saw as outlandish and ostensibly alien as Buddhism in my life. For starters there was no space. Like most people today...I was far too busy. But busy or not, there was no way that I could envisage that some remote and mystical philosophy, born out of a wholly different time and space, could help me deal more effectively, more creatively, with the kinds of challenging, often exciting, sometimes anxiety-creating problems, that came at me every day of the week.
I knew who I was, I thought, and pretty much what I wanted out of life, which was essentially more of the same, more exciting work and more critical acclaim. I was pretty much addicted to the stimulation and the pace and the movement of the career im had ended up in which was writing and producing television programmes. Every programme was both demanding and stressful and yet immensely challenging and rewarding, so that the creative process was very much like a drug. when one programme fix had ended, I wanted another one. And the endless demands on my time and energies didn't leave any space for something as supremely out of left field....as Buddhism
But as we all know, life is full of ironies that take us completely by surpise. Within a few months, and with considrable reluctance, I had decided I should take up the study of this Nichiren Buddhism.
Why the change of mind? '
To be continued in blog number 5.
Thank you so much for reading this far.
It is immensely appreciated.
Best wishes,
William
Blog number 4 from The Case for Buddhism. As I've mentioned I think, what I'm hoping to do with this blog thing is to work through some of the key bits of the book in the hope that they will be of interest and of value to readers who find their way to it through the vast mass of material on the web. And I will be reading the whole book from first to last, a chapter at a time to go out on The Buddhist Podcast.
But today I'm moving on to Chapter Two, which is called A Personal Story, and which starts by trying to answer the key question, So why am I Buddhist?
' So why am I a Buddhist? It's a longish story but since it's an important and very relevant part of the argument I wish to make, let me explain in as brief a compass as makes sense at this early point in the journey.
The story really starts in South East Asia, For a considerable portion of my working life I've lived and worked overseas, initially in South East Asia and then for severa years in the deserts of the Middle East, and throughout that time I worked hard to establish good and close relations with people of all the local religions, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists. Even making a shot at mastering the languages, Malay and then Arabic so that I could converse at least on a casual basis and relate to people at a deeper level than just work issues.That effort paid off in tha tit added immensely to the quality of my relationships during those years. I spent many weeks for example, livin gup country in long-houses in the jungles of Borneo for example, and many weeks travelling and encountering villagers in the vast and empty deserts of Oman.
I've also always hada keen interest in religions so I studied Islam and read the Koran for example, and was well aware of the depth and beauty of much Buddhist thought, and how well it fitted into the norms and rhythms rhythms of the societies in which it had been created and nurtured for so many centuries. But unquestionably it didn't really touch my life during those long years abroad. I could see and respect just how profoundly those beliefs drove my colleagues' lives, but there it ended. I had been brought up in an actively Christian household, and my life and behaviour I believe largely reflected Christian values. I have elsewhere described my then Christianity as rather like a comfortable well-worn jacket; a bit crumpled and loose fitting, and a bit worn at the elbows, but it slipped on easily, and once on I scarcely knew it was there. And I didn't feel any need for any more substantial religiousn scaffolding to support my life.
It's worth adding perhaps that the general view I acquired of Buddhism during those years comes pretty close to the way in which the western world has viewed Buddhism over the past few hundred years. It has been seen, historically speaking, as an interesting and often extraordinary body of humanist philosophy, full of insights into the nature of human motivation and behaviour perhaps, but to say the least, remote and other-worldly and more than a little obscure. And it has been that viewpoint that has largely driven the western response to Buddhism over the years. It has been seen particularly as a focus of philosophical and doctrinal studies for the academic, rather than anty kind of practical guide to ordinary daily life. Particularly daily life today, in the fiercely competitive, time-slicing, achievement driven hustle and bustle of our post industrial western society.
And that I think is by no means an unimportant consideration for many of us; we are indeed overwhelmingly concerned with ' getting on' with the business of our lives, being swept along by the pretty relentless tide of events that swallows up most of our day, and often perhpas not so much making decisions about our life, as having them made for us by what might be called our deeply ingrained habit energy. We tend not to spend much time, if any, just standing still for a bit. Contemplation isn't a particularly fashionable place to be. ' What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare' the poet asks and most of us are traveling so fast to the next place we need to be that we don't have the time to consider an answer.
And when I think about it, that was pretty much my own personal situation, when, several years later, I first encountered Nichiren Buddhism, in this country, through Sarah, my partner at that time. My response was to some extent coloured by that earlier overseas experience, but to say that I wa sprofoundly sceptical would e an understatement. It seemed well...simply irrelevant...to the kind of life that we were living. I was being swept along by my passion to make the most of my journalistic and writing career, and I certainly didn't feel the need for something that I saw as outlandish and ostensibly alien as Buddhism in my life. For starters there was no space. Like most people today...I was far too busy. But busy or not, there was no way that I could envisage that some remote and mystical philosophy, born out of a wholly different time and space, could help me deal more effectively, more creatively, with the kinds of challenging, often exciting, sometimes anxiety-creating problems, that came at me every day of the week.
I knew who I was, I thought, and pretty much what I wanted out of life, which was essentially more of the same, more exciting work and more critical acclaim. I was pretty much addicted to the stimulation and the pace and the movement of the career im had ended up in which was writing and producing television programmes. Every programme was both demanding and stressful and yet immensely challenging and rewarding, so that the creative process was very much like a drug. when one programme fix had ended, I wanted another one. And the endless demands on my time and energies didn't leave any space for something as supremely out of left field....as Buddhism
But as we all know, life is full of ironies that take us completely by surpise. Within a few months, and with considrable reluctance, I had decided I should take up the study of this Nichiren Buddhism.
Why the change of mind? '
To be continued in blog number 5.
Thank you so much for reading this far.
It is immensely appreciated.
Best wishes,
William
Wednesday 4 December 2013
mybuddhistblog
Hi Everybody, just to backtrack a little, this blog essentially follows the argument of my most recent book, The Case For Buddhism, which was published in July of this year. What the book does is to examine fundamental Buddhist teachings, in the light of and in relation to the latest understanding of human motivation and behaviour that has come from the huge amount of research over the past 10-15 years in sociology and psychology and neuroscience. The book was written in direct response to the many requests I received from several parts of the world, to write a totally practical and down-to-earth book that Nichiren Buddhists could comfortably give to their friends and family and acquaintances who might not be interested in taking up a Buddhist practice, even to those who might be distinctly sceptical about the whole idea of people in the western world taking up a Buddhist practice...as indeed I was 20 odd years ago...very sceptical...so that they might build up a much clearer understanding of what Buddhism is about, and what it seeks to achieve in individual lives, and in society. As I say in the book ( p3)
' I believe strongly that Buddhist values and principles can enhance any life, lived anywhere in any circumstances, whether or not that person has the slightest interest in taking up a Buddhist practice. My objective is understanding, not recruitment. So this is certainly a serious committed personal account of Buddhism, but only in the sense that Buddhism is about ordinary daily life. It is not in any way about a remote, inaccessible and other-worldly philosophy. Not at all...
Put simply this particular case for Buddhism is basically about learning in a wholly practical way, how to build a stronger and more resilient sense of wel-being, for oneself and others, no matter what the circumstances we find ourselves in. And that's clearly a hugely important qualification. We tend to persuade ourselves that our external circumstances are the determining factor in our overall sense of well-being. Buddhism offers us the astounding truth that building or creating this sesne of well-being at the core of our lives is essentially a matter of choice, how we choose to live. That in itself is a life-changing lesson, and in my experience, we don't have to especially knowledgeable, or dedicated, or indeed religious in any way to learn it. Thousands of ordinary people have done it...'
What I do throughout the book therefore is to pursue what I have called a dual track
'...I take a number of issues that are central to the practice of Buddhism, issues such as compassion and altruism and gratitude for example, or creating meaningful relationships, the dilemma of suffering, how we deal with destructive emotions such as anger and greed, the complex matter of ethics and morality and so on, and l look at these issues from both the classical Buddhist, and from the scientific point of view. These issues aren't by any means concerned with the margins of our life are they? Most of them indeed are profoundly life-changing. The kinds of things you might say that are of the greatest significance to all of us. Buddhism as you would expect has a great deal to say to us about how we might approach them in a way that creates the most value for our lives and for those around us. And now modern science offers us this immensely supportive perspective...
Indeed, one of the most remarkable things for me , as I went through some of the best of this modern social research, was the realisation of just how many of the findings about what it is that makes people feel good about themselves and their lives, and experience a sense of wholeness and purpose in their lives, are prefigured in the kinds of ideas Buddhism has been teaching for so long...'
' The plain fact is that we now have a great opportunity...an opportunity to move on from the commonly held and largely superficial stereotypes of what Buddhism is about, becausewe now have this unusual and unexpected conjunction of views. They may be using different idioms and different methods, but essentially, both Buddhism, and now the social scientists, are telling us that a greater sense of well-being at the heart of our lives is fundamentally what we are all seeking, and that there are some clearly defined ways of achieving that objective...however tough and challengingthe modern world may be.'
Thank you for reading this far. It's greatly appreciated. Greatly.
William
PS I ought to add perhaps that the book itself, The Case for Buddhism, is available on Amazon.
' I believe strongly that Buddhist values and principles can enhance any life, lived anywhere in any circumstances, whether or not that person has the slightest interest in taking up a Buddhist practice. My objective is understanding, not recruitment. So this is certainly a serious committed personal account of Buddhism, but only in the sense that Buddhism is about ordinary daily life. It is not in any way about a remote, inaccessible and other-worldly philosophy. Not at all...
Put simply this particular case for Buddhism is basically about learning in a wholly practical way, how to build a stronger and more resilient sense of wel-being, for oneself and others, no matter what the circumstances we find ourselves in. And that's clearly a hugely important qualification. We tend to persuade ourselves that our external circumstances are the determining factor in our overall sense of well-being. Buddhism offers us the astounding truth that building or creating this sesne of well-being at the core of our lives is essentially a matter of choice, how we choose to live. That in itself is a life-changing lesson, and in my experience, we don't have to especially knowledgeable, or dedicated, or indeed religious in any way to learn it. Thousands of ordinary people have done it...'
What I do throughout the book therefore is to pursue what I have called a dual track
'...I take a number of issues that are central to the practice of Buddhism, issues such as compassion and altruism and gratitude for example, or creating meaningful relationships, the dilemma of suffering, how we deal with destructive emotions such as anger and greed, the complex matter of ethics and morality and so on, and l look at these issues from both the classical Buddhist, and from the scientific point of view. These issues aren't by any means concerned with the margins of our life are they? Most of them indeed are profoundly life-changing. The kinds of things you might say that are of the greatest significance to all of us. Buddhism as you would expect has a great deal to say to us about how we might approach them in a way that creates the most value for our lives and for those around us. And now modern science offers us this immensely supportive perspective...
Indeed, one of the most remarkable things for me , as I went through some of the best of this modern social research, was the realisation of just how many of the findings about what it is that makes people feel good about themselves and their lives, and experience a sense of wholeness and purpose in their lives, are prefigured in the kinds of ideas Buddhism has been teaching for so long...'
' The plain fact is that we now have a great opportunity...an opportunity to move on from the commonly held and largely superficial stereotypes of what Buddhism is about, becausewe now have this unusual and unexpected conjunction of views. They may be using different idioms and different methods, but essentially, both Buddhism, and now the social scientists, are telling us that a greater sense of well-being at the heart of our lives is fundamentally what we are all seeking, and that there are some clearly defined ways of achieving that objective...however tough and challengingthe modern world may be.'
Thank you for reading this far. It's greatly appreciated. Greatly.
William
PS I ought to add perhaps that the book itself, The Case for Buddhism, is available on Amazon.
Sunday 1 December 2013
mybuddhistblog
Hi everybody, blog number two on my new book, The Case for Buddhism. Let me just remind you that it was written really in response to the many requests I received to write a wholly practical, down-to-earth book about the practice of Nichiren Buddhism that members might use as a way of introducing the values and the principles of the practice to people who know little or nothing about Buddhism, apart perhaps from the many stereotypes that are so powerful and prevalent in the West, and who have probably never given a moment's thought to folding a Buddhist practice into their lives. So a touch target to hit, and basically the way I've gone about it is to make use of my long experience in science journalism to do a fair amount of research so that I could look at classical Buddhist teachings, in the light of some of the latest and most interesting research in psychology and sociology and neuroscience, which, I would argue, in its finding, walks across very much the same territory as Buddhism, in the sense that it is concerned with how we can learn to live the most creative and fulfilling and socially-responsible lives of whic we are capable.
So where to begin? Well perhaps the best place is at the beginning! So here's the opening passage from Chapter One...Setting out on a Journey
' Every book is a journey, and at the start of every journey you need a certain minimum amount of baggage, a certain minimum amount of information to set off confidently in the right direction. In this case that minimum information consists I think of two items in particular. One is that I have been a science journalist for well over 30 years, enjoying myself immensely in taking difficult, and often obscure and intractable bits of science, and workingn hard not just to explain them, but to make them interesting and accessible, entertaining even, to a wider general audience. The second is that for over 20 years I have been a Buddhist, a Nichiren Buddhist as it happens, seeking to put into practice a set of values and principles that have greatly enriched and enhanced every aspect of my life, and I believe the lives of those around me.
Everything that follows in this book really flows from those two bits of baggage.
But if I'm totally honest that's not quite enough inforamtion is it, to allow us to move on comfortably? Why do I say that? Because the fact is that the mere mention of Buddhism immediately raises in the minds of most people, more questions than it answersIndeed partly perhaps because of the apparent mismatch with my quite tough and rigorous journalistic background, people quite frequently approach me and actually pose the question, ' A practising Buddhist? What's all that really about? '
What's all that really about...is basically what this book is about. Because of course the practice of Buddhism is still so rare, so relatively unusual in the Western World that it inevitably stimulates that sense of surprise and inquiry. when we get to talking casually many people want to know more than can possibly be conveyed in a brief conversation, and yet at the same time, there is often a reluctance to get closer to something as seemingly alien and other-worldly as Buddhism. I can wholly empathise with that view. No one wants to seem weird to his friends. I didn't. And for all the claims about our living in a multi-cultural society, the underlying cultural fabric of Europe is still very much Western Christianity. Indeed that is true of the entire ex-european empire spread around the globe from the Americas to Australia. One manifestation of that deep cultural tradition that we would all immediately recognise is that somebody who might never go into a church from one year to the next is nonetheless completely at home slipping into a church for a moment of stillness, or even, in a moment of stress, asking for help from a God he or she doesn't really know. Whereas, understandably enough, that same person would find it infinitely difficult, impossible even, to slip into any place Buddhist in an attempt to deal with this particular bout of anxiety or strees.
For most people in the West, when we hear the word Buddhist, we are forced to take refuge in a bunch of vague and shadowy stereotypes, becausewe don't have any clear or familiar markers to hang onto. That is I think a key point. With Christianity there are plenty, even complete non-Christian s know the basic outlines of the Christian tradition. Whereas the mention of the name Buddhism summons up not much more than a series of vague National Geographic-type images: a vast interesting perhpas but nebulous mystical philosophy without any clear boundaries, lines of orange-robed priests weaving amid the traffic in downtown Bangkok, or prayer flags waving against the backdrop of Tibetan peaks. and that's about it. Not much to go on for the typical hustling and bustling time-pressured westerner.
So thats part of the purpsaoe of this particular journey. Clearing away thos evague and totally unhelpful stereotypes, and replacing them with a much clear, sharper understanding of what Buddhism is really about.'
Well that enough I reckon for today. More tomorrow.
For anybody who is reading this, my great gratitude.
Best wishes,
William
So where to begin? Well perhaps the best place is at the beginning! So here's the opening passage from Chapter One...Setting out on a Journey
' Every book is a journey, and at the start of every journey you need a certain minimum amount of baggage, a certain minimum amount of information to set off confidently in the right direction. In this case that minimum information consists I think of two items in particular. One is that I have been a science journalist for well over 30 years, enjoying myself immensely in taking difficult, and often obscure and intractable bits of science, and workingn hard not just to explain them, but to make them interesting and accessible, entertaining even, to a wider general audience. The second is that for over 20 years I have been a Buddhist, a Nichiren Buddhist as it happens, seeking to put into practice a set of values and principles that have greatly enriched and enhanced every aspect of my life, and I believe the lives of those around me.
Everything that follows in this book really flows from those two bits of baggage.
But if I'm totally honest that's not quite enough inforamtion is it, to allow us to move on comfortably? Why do I say that? Because the fact is that the mere mention of Buddhism immediately raises in the minds of most people, more questions than it answersIndeed partly perhaps because of the apparent mismatch with my quite tough and rigorous journalistic background, people quite frequently approach me and actually pose the question, ' A practising Buddhist? What's all that really about? '
What's all that really about...is basically what this book is about. Because of course the practice of Buddhism is still so rare, so relatively unusual in the Western World that it inevitably stimulates that sense of surprise and inquiry. when we get to talking casually many people want to know more than can possibly be conveyed in a brief conversation, and yet at the same time, there is often a reluctance to get closer to something as seemingly alien and other-worldly as Buddhism. I can wholly empathise with that view. No one wants to seem weird to his friends. I didn't. And for all the claims about our living in a multi-cultural society, the underlying cultural fabric of Europe is still very much Western Christianity. Indeed that is true of the entire ex-european empire spread around the globe from the Americas to Australia. One manifestation of that deep cultural tradition that we would all immediately recognise is that somebody who might never go into a church from one year to the next is nonetheless completely at home slipping into a church for a moment of stillness, or even, in a moment of stress, asking for help from a God he or she doesn't really know. Whereas, understandably enough, that same person would find it infinitely difficult, impossible even, to slip into any place Buddhist in an attempt to deal with this particular bout of anxiety or strees.
For most people in the West, when we hear the word Buddhist, we are forced to take refuge in a bunch of vague and shadowy stereotypes, becausewe don't have any clear or familiar markers to hang onto. That is I think a key point. With Christianity there are plenty, even complete non-Christian s know the basic outlines of the Christian tradition. Whereas the mention of the name Buddhism summons up not much more than a series of vague National Geographic-type images: a vast interesting perhpas but nebulous mystical philosophy without any clear boundaries, lines of orange-robed priests weaving amid the traffic in downtown Bangkok, or prayer flags waving against the backdrop of Tibetan peaks. and that's about it. Not much to go on for the typical hustling and bustling time-pressured westerner.
So thats part of the purpsaoe of this particular journey. Clearing away thos evague and totally unhelpful stereotypes, and replacing them with a much clear, sharper understanding of what Buddhism is really about.'
Well that enough I reckon for today. More tomorrow.
For anybody who is reading this, my great gratitude.
Best wishes,
William
Thursday 28 November 2013
caseforbuddhism.gmail.com
Hello everybody. This is my very first blog, and I'm moved to write it because..well basically because having put in a huge amount of effort and research in writing my latest book on Buddhism, entitled The Case for Buddhism, which I'm deeply pleased to be able to say, has already been very warmly received wherever it has been read in the UK and the USA, I feel the very least I can do is to take steps to give it a wider audience. So this blog is essentially about The Case for Buddhism.
So, briefly, what is the book itself about? Well initially it was started in response to the dozens of requests I received from many parts of the world from readers of my other books on Nichiren Buddhism, The Reluctant Buddhist, and Buddhism and the Science of Happiness, to write a really down-to-earth, absolutely no-nonsense book about a Nichiren Buddhist practice that could be given to the most sceptical, the most disinterested, even the most cynical people, and hopefully hold their attention sufficiently so that even though they might never actually take up the practice, they would understand much more about what it was seeking to achieve, and therefore, at the very least, be more supportive. So that's what it sets out to do, and from the sort of response I have received so far, I believe it could well be achieving that objective.
But as I went along I began to realise that there was also a huge opportunity opening up to do something more, that came about essentially because of the many years I've spent as a television science journalist, writing about difficult and complex bits of science and technology, trying to make them interesting and accessible and entertaining even to a wider general audience. So what's that got to do with Buddhism? Well let's see.
The fact is that over the past 15-20 years or so there has been a kind of revolution, a quiet revolution you might say, in the simply vast amount of research in sociology,and psychology and neuroscience, to explore and to understand, in ever increasing detail, the motivations and the compulsions that drive human behaviour, and their effects on our sense of self and on how we feel about our lives. The results have been sometimes astounding, sometimes predictable, but always interesting. With immense patience and care, and on a truly objective basis, sometimes with research projects that have run and continue to run for many years, these social scientists have put together an understanding of the nature of human life and motivation that goes way beyond anything that might have been imagined even a few decades ago.
Why is that important to us you might ask? Well I think it gives us a great opportunity that has never been around before. It goes without saying that Buddhism doesn't exist in a bubble. Buddhism is daily life we often say, and its great strength is its claim to continuing relevance despite the vast changes that have taken place in our social circumstances, because, fundamentally, human nature hasn't changed. So we are immensely privileged. We can, essentially for the very first time, look at the complex understanding that Buddhism has evolved of human motivation and behaviour...accumulated over several hundred years of contemplation and reflection... in the context of the understanding that is emerging from these formal. scientific studies that have been carried out across the world by the social scientists. How do they compare? How do they relate to each other?
So, over the past couple of years I've been exploring as much as I could handle of the social research that has gone on in this area in recent years, and there is no question in my mind but that fundamental ideas about human nature that Buddhism has been teaching us for centuries, find the most interesting and stimulating echoes and parallels and ampification in the studies carried out by today's social scientists. It's important not to fall into the trap of using words like ' prove' or ' validate' in this context because that would be wholly inaccurate. As far as I am aware there has never been a piece of research specifically to validate a Buddhist teaching . And in any case my argument would be that Buddhist insights about the nature of human life don't need anything resembling validation from modern science. They have proved their value many times over in the toughest laboratory there can ever be...namely human life itself.
But what these research findings do provide is absolutely invaluable, in the sense that they deliver into our hands a set of new, and quite different, and profoundly illuminating perspectives that illustrate the astounding modernity..I really can't think of any other way of expressing it...the astounding modernity of Buddhist teachings about the values and behaviours that enable us to live the most productive and satisfying and value-creating lives of which we are capable, both for ourselves and for those whom our lives touch.
That essentially is what this new book about. In future blogs what I hope to do is to follow the structure of The Case for Buddhism, in taking a whole series of issues and themes that are central to a Buddhist practice, and looking at them from a strictly Buddhist perspective, and from a modern scientific one.
Hope to meet you again.
Copyright William Woollard
27.11.13
So, briefly, what is the book itself about? Well initially it was started in response to the dozens of requests I received from many parts of the world from readers of my other books on Nichiren Buddhism, The Reluctant Buddhist, and Buddhism and the Science of Happiness, to write a really down-to-earth, absolutely no-nonsense book about a Nichiren Buddhist practice that could be given to the most sceptical, the most disinterested, even the most cynical people, and hopefully hold their attention sufficiently so that even though they might never actually take up the practice, they would understand much more about what it was seeking to achieve, and therefore, at the very least, be more supportive. So that's what it sets out to do, and from the sort of response I have received so far, I believe it could well be achieving that objective.
But as I went along I began to realise that there was also a huge opportunity opening up to do something more, that came about essentially because of the many years I've spent as a television science journalist, writing about difficult and complex bits of science and technology, trying to make them interesting and accessible and entertaining even to a wider general audience. So what's that got to do with Buddhism? Well let's see.
The fact is that over the past 15-20 years or so there has been a kind of revolution, a quiet revolution you might say, in the simply vast amount of research in sociology,and psychology and neuroscience, to explore and to understand, in ever increasing detail, the motivations and the compulsions that drive human behaviour, and their effects on our sense of self and on how we feel about our lives. The results have been sometimes astounding, sometimes predictable, but always interesting. With immense patience and care, and on a truly objective basis, sometimes with research projects that have run and continue to run for many years, these social scientists have put together an understanding of the nature of human life and motivation that goes way beyond anything that might have been imagined even a few decades ago.
Why is that important to us you might ask? Well I think it gives us a great opportunity that has never been around before. It goes without saying that Buddhism doesn't exist in a bubble. Buddhism is daily life we often say, and its great strength is its claim to continuing relevance despite the vast changes that have taken place in our social circumstances, because, fundamentally, human nature hasn't changed. So we are immensely privileged. We can, essentially for the very first time, look at the complex understanding that Buddhism has evolved of human motivation and behaviour...accumulated over several hundred years of contemplation and reflection... in the context of the understanding that is emerging from these formal. scientific studies that have been carried out across the world by the social scientists. How do they compare? How do they relate to each other?
So, over the past couple of years I've been exploring as much as I could handle of the social research that has gone on in this area in recent years, and there is no question in my mind but that fundamental ideas about human nature that Buddhism has been teaching us for centuries, find the most interesting and stimulating echoes and parallels and ampification in the studies carried out by today's social scientists. It's important not to fall into the trap of using words like ' prove' or ' validate' in this context because that would be wholly inaccurate. As far as I am aware there has never been a piece of research specifically to validate a Buddhist teaching . And in any case my argument would be that Buddhist insights about the nature of human life don't need anything resembling validation from modern science. They have proved their value many times over in the toughest laboratory there can ever be...namely human life itself.
But what these research findings do provide is absolutely invaluable, in the sense that they deliver into our hands a set of new, and quite different, and profoundly illuminating perspectives that illustrate the astounding modernity..I really can't think of any other way of expressing it...the astounding modernity of Buddhist teachings about the values and behaviours that enable us to live the most productive and satisfying and value-creating lives of which we are capable, both for ourselves and for those whom our lives touch.
That essentially is what this new book about. In future blogs what I hope to do is to follow the structure of The Case for Buddhism, in taking a whole series of issues and themes that are central to a Buddhist practice, and looking at them from a strictly Buddhist perspective, and from a modern scientific one.
Hope to meet you again.
Copyright William Woollard
27.11.13
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