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