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
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