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