Hi Everybody,
It looks as if I got the number of the last episode wrong. Two 22's! So this one's 24. We've had enough of chapter 4 I think on what we really mean by the word happiness, so let's move on to chapter 5, which is called Buddhism and the Problem Paradox. Buddhism remember was born out of Shakyamuni's intense perception of the scale of human suffering, and his search for ways of enabling ordinary people to understand it more acutely and therefore to handle it, deal with it more effectively, to enable them to live altogether better lives. So this lies if you like at the very heart of Buddhist teachings, how can we get better at the business of handling the problems and the difficulties and the anxieties that come in a constant stream into all our lives. That in essence, is what Buddhism is about. So chapter 5, here we come.
' Man was born to troubles as the sparks fly upwards, Job tells us eternally in the Old Testament. But few of us, if any, are prepared to accept that as an accurate description of the reality of our lives. No way. We're simply not having it. No one wants pains and problems, or the anxiety and the tension and the stress that arise, as they threaten to emerge in our lives. So the natural human response is to argue that since we can't stand them, we have to get rid of them! And that in fact is pretty much what we try to do. In our modern societies we spend huge amounts of time and money and energy and ingenuity in trying to create a whole defensive network to keep the challenging and the anxiety-creating side of life at bay. And where we aren't completely successful in the barrier-building business, as we can't be of course, we have evolved a whole series of secondary strategies to fill the gaps.
So we ignore them for example, or run away from them, in the hope that they will just go away or evaporate. The reality is of course that problems ignored have a very nasty habit of becoming problems magnified, so that what was once readily solvable, if only we'd had the courage to face up to it when it first emerged, can become something so big that it can overwhelm us or knock us over.
Or we very commonly dump the problem onto someone else. That is to say we mentally shift the blame or the responsibility onto someone or some thing outside ourselves, pointing to anything so long as it's not ourselves, as the source of the current difficulty. If there are problems within a relationship for example, it's not our problem, it's clearly because the other half of the relationship has to change something about themselves in order to put things right. If there's trouble with the boss or colleagues at work, it's bound to be because they are being totally unreasonable or obstinate or unfair. Everyone can see that. So we end up in a sort of impasse. Nothing changes, and the frustration or the friction keep on recurring, to the extent that it can lead to the break up of an otherwise fine relationship, or people being stuck in a hellish state of tension or dissatisfaction at work.
We've all been there at some stage in our lives, and many times more than once.
And if those strategies still don't block up all the crevices in our defences, then we are complicit in creating a kind of fiction that we are quite happy to share with one another. So although the problems and the crises, and the anxieties and the suffering they bring, continue to swallow up a considerable portion of our energies, we attempt to explain that away to ourselves and to others as being a completely abnormal exception to the normal flows an dpatterns of our life. And we come to believe firmly in that fiction. The research shows for example that very different people, facing completely different problems, will use very similar language in explaining it away to themselves. ' This is not really how my life is, ' we say to ourselves, ' I just have to get over this difficult phase I'm going through...and then my life will straighten out and get back to normal! '
And no matter how frequently they occur, or how disturbing they may be in terms of de-railing our lives, we persuade ourselves, time and time again, that as soon as this particular setback, hiccup, crisis or disaster has passed us by, our life will revert to it normal, routine, untroubled state. Why? Because that's the state, we've convinced ourselves, we need to be happy, the one without the hassle. You could say that is the idealised, unreal, life state, that we are all addicted to.
So, we might ask, is there a better way? That's really what this chapter is about.
And let's be clear, several of those strategies we've just been talking about have their rightful place in our armoury. We haven't evolved them for nothing. No one for example would question the prudence of arranging whatever insulation we can since we live in troubled times. And although the fiction strategy may not keep any actual problems at bay, it probably helps to lessen the anxiety these problems create. But can that possibly be enough?
The key point to bear in mind is that this is not some remote or theoretical issue is it? It is close up and very personal. We're talking here about real life-time strategies that involve all of us, throughout all our lives. This is how we actually handle the the daily detail of our lives. And we could certainly argue I think, that learning how to deal with problems effectively, has got to be on eof the most important steps along the road to well-being. What could be more important?
So we share a deep and common interest, I suggest, in posing this question as to whether or not these strategies are adequate? Are they anywhere close to best response that we can come up with? '
Good question. particualrly if it's allied to another key question, which is, how does Buddhism help us in this situation? Those are the basic questions we tackle in the nest episode.
Thank you immensely for reading so far. my hope is of course that each blog stands to some extent on it's own, in encapsulating some interesting point or observation, but that they really tell a continuing story. Each one leads logically on to the next one, because many issues are simply too extensive to be dealt with in a single episode. They might require 2, 3 or 4 episodes to tease out the argument. That's certainly the case with this issue.
Anyway. Enough for now.
Seen you next time.
William
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon
energies, we make it quite clear to ourselves and everyone else that they are a completely abnormal
No comments:
Post a Comment