Hi Everybody,
I came back from the most stimulating and exciting visit to India yesterday, so, I have to say, I am a trifle jet lagged. But no matter. One of the things we did there was to visit the extraordinary and beautiful Buddhist caves at Ajanta. They aren't really caves, althjough they are always described in that way. They are in fact a remarkable series of small monasteries or dormitaries for visiting monks, and temples or places for them to chant or meditate, carved deeply into the rock face of a remote steep-sided gorge, with a river running through it. And all these dwellings and meditation places have the most beautiful carvings of Buddhas and bodhisattvas and vines and trees carved into their entrances and walls. And uniquely in the case of Ajanta, there are paintings of scenes from the Buddha's life on the walls and ceilings. It is remarkable that these wall paintings have survived over so many hundreds of years, with the reds and the blues and the greens still fresh and bright. Some of the caves date from the 2nd century BC, so very much of the Hinayana period, but most of them date from the 4th century AD so very much in the Mahayana period. And you can sit in stillness and the coolness of these caves and just immerse yourself in the moment, or you can, as we did, sit in monks cell and chant quietly and you actually feel the resonance of your voice as it's played back to you from the rock. it is an extraordinarily moving experience to be there and know that Buddhists lived and practised there 1400 years ago. Once experienced never forgotten.
So where were we? We were in the middle of Chapter 4 I think, Buddhism and Happiness, and we'd just touched on that lovely story of Ma Post, advising her young son to climb out of his bad mood by going out and helping someone. And Martin Seligman tells us that all his objective research shows that showing compassion and altruism towards others produces the single most reliable increase in our sense of well-being. That's just extraordinary isn't it? Evolutionary biologists looking at how mankind has evolved have the devil's own job of trying to acount for the evolutionary purpose of altruism, and here we have a learned psychologist telling us that even the smallest acts of kindness and compassion towards others, have the most powerful effect on our own well-being. But this simple story illustrates two other fundamental qualities that are deeply woven into the Buddhist understanding of well-being, both of which seem to be borne out equally by what the scientists tell us they have learned from their research.
Not in someone else's gift
One is that well-being doesn't exist just in our own heads, although we commonly believe that to be the case. We evolved very much as members of a group, a family or a tribe. That basically is why we have been so successful as a species, and we are in our deepest nature, very much gregarious animals. We need strong relationships. Our inner sense of well-being is generated essentially through the nature of the relationships we establish with the world around us, from the basic pleasure we take in our environment through to the experience of lasting and fulfilling and harmonious relationships at all levels in our lives. When we experience them, they strengthen and reinforce our creative energies so that we feel truly liberated, and we find that we can achieve so much more in our outward lives. When those relationships break down for whatever reason, the effects can be devastating in all areas of our life, not simply those associated with that relationship. We are not only less happy, we operate as individuals under stress, out of harmony with ourselves and our environment, and our performance is greatly diminished.
The second understanding , no less profound, is that our own well-being is not in someone else's gift. We have to make it for ourselves. As Daisaku Ikeda has expressed it for example;
'Happiness is not something that someone else, like a lover, can give to us. We have to achieve it for ourselves.'
That is undeniably a hard lesson for us to learn because our wants are so many, and because we so commonly believe that our personal happiness is indeed dependant upon our partner for example, or our child, or our friends, or our job. Or on earning a million pounds. Whereas Buddhism tells us that we have to go out and make our happiness for ourselves out of our own determination and action. Just as the young Stephen Post was asked by his perceptive mother to take some action, to go out and find someone to help in order to drive away his bad mood. And that phrase, ' take some action, 'is well worth taking to heart because it carries a profound truth of its own. As one utterly practical Buddhist teacher put it to me once, if we think in terms of pursuing happiness then we are very much on the wrong track, because none of us knows how to achieve that. Where do we start? In which direction do we run? We comme much closer to it, he argued, if we think of well-being as a sort of by-product, a quality that comes into our lives when we take action to create value in some way, particularly in ways that have beneficial effects in other people's lives. It is utterly fascinating to find that view echoed directly, even to the choice of words, by a modern psychologist, when she writes in a recent book, The How of Happiness.
'...even the familiar phrase ' pursuit of happpiness ' implies that happiness is an object that one has to chase or discover..I prefer to think of ' creation ' or ' contruction ' of happiness because research shows that it's in our power to fashion it for ourselves.'
That's a big lesson for us to learn I think. And quite a difficult one.
So we are getting a closer fix on what we mean when we use the happiness word aren't we? It's certainly not just forcing ourselves to be cheerful, regardless of what's going on. We don't get much joy if we try to chase it. And it doesn't just happen to us as a result of good luck or good fortune.The kind of durable, deep-seated, and above all, resilient well-being that we are talking about can't simply be dependant upon the play of external events. This happens and we like it...and are happy. That happens and we don't like it...and we're unhappy. A bit like a cork in a swell. Now up now down, dependant upon what comes our way.
It can only come we now understand, from one place. It has to come from within. We have to make it from the values that we hold, and the choices that we make, and the kinds of actions and responses, that we fold into our lives.
That's it for today. Quite an important passage I think, because we all want greater well-being, and we don't often have the space and the time, and the inclination perhaps, to think our way through what we actually mean by it.
Hpe that helps. I'll be back on Saturday.
All my best wishes,
William
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