Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you. No blogs last week. I was off with Sarah and Gatsby walking in deepest Dorset. It is such a beautiful part of the country. So overwhelmingly green and luxuriant with huge overgrown hedges and rolling fields filled with every wild flower you can name...and many you can't, or I can't. I find myself collecting samples and poring over the wild flower book in the evenings over a cup of coffee to name greater celandine and yellow loosestrife and hedge woundwort with a great sense of elation. Go on. Go and look them up. I bet you didn't know them either! And Gatsby was in his element with all these new country smells to enjoy. We had a great time with blue skies and brilliant sunshine every single day. And I haven't even started to tell you about Dorset's beautiful beaches such as Golden Cap and Eype, nestling under these huge Jurassic sandstone cliffs. Or about when we went camping on the night of the summer solstice when it stayed light all night. Or about...... Enough about all that. Back to Chapter 7.
We left it last time with the extraordinary thought that occurs both in Buddhist teachings and in modern psychology, that we can't have negatve and positive feelings, at the same time. It sounds so simple and yet it is so profound. Of course we can be mixed up and confused, and often are. Of course we can alternate between them, an doften do. But we can't experience them at the same time. So that gives us a clear objective; the more we can learn how to summon up our positive responses to tackle the difficult stuff that life presents us with, the less room we have to experience the negative impulses.
That in itself I suggest, is yet another life-changing lesson, so simple and yet so powerful in its implications. and it is precisely what I have in mind when I talk about the practice being practical and down-to-earth, rather than remote and other-worldly. So for example when Nichiren Buddhists are aware that they are approaching a time of extra stress and difficulty in their lives, anything, such as a change of job for example, or stress in a close relationship, or a major move to a new location, or a challenging illness, or even just anxiety over a tough set of exams, they step up their training you might say. They deliberately step up their daily practice to give themselves that extra self-confidence and resilience, and simply that extra life-force, to be able to push themselves through the difficult and stressful and turbulent time.
It is as deliberate, and as conscious, and indeed as practical as that. Nichiren Buddhists use the practice as an additional asset available to them. Buddhism is daily life...and in many ways that simple sounding phrase is the very heart of the Buddhist message. We are very accustomed in the West...you might almost say conditioned...by the very nature of our educational system and our culture, to live our lives driven by three primary engines; our intellect and our emotions, how we think that is and how we feel, and by our persona, how we look or how we present ourselves. We place immense emphasis, as indeed we should, on our intellectual ability to think our way through life's problems. We all need that basic rationality. And we attach great value to emotional expression, to being in touch, as the modern idiom has it, with our emotions. And we are increasingly concerned, probably to exces, about externals, about physical appearance.
Essentially all Buddhism is saying is, that's fine as far as it goes, but it does only go so far. There's more...there is an inner spiritual resource that we can all learn to tap into, and it can life our life performance to a new level. As the modern American philosopher Robert Solomon reminds us,
' Spirituality...requires action as part of its very essence. It is a mode of doing, as well as of being, thinking and feeling.'
In Nichiren Buddhism the daily practice is the method that it offers us to enable us to achieve that powerful combination of spirituality in action. '
And that's where we go next time. To look at the elements of the daily practice.
Hope all that makes sense. its good to be back.
I missed the blogging.
See you on Friday hopefully.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as an e-book on Kindle
Tuesday 24 June 2014
Monday 9 June 2014
my buddhist blog number 46
Hi Everybody,
we're into chapter 7, Buddhism and Practice, and we ended the last episode with the idea that lies right at the heart of a Buddhist practice, that if we are prepared to summon up the determination to achieve it, and if we are prepared to put in the effort, we can choose hope and optimism and resilience and well-being as the way we live our lives. That's where we pick up the thread....
' But even as I write that I am only too well aware of course that it is far easier to say than to achieve. However attracted we might be by the idea, we can't achieve it without help, without some sort of discipline or structure, some sort of scaffolding around which we can consistently reinforce the determination, and strengthen the will to change. That in essence is what the Buddhist practice offers us. It provides the essential structure, the method or the discipline that enables us to take hold of our lives in a rational and measured way and move them in the direction we wish to travel.
Thus despite the many stereotypes and the many misconceptions that are prevalent in the western world, a Buddhist practice is not in any way esoteric or remote and other-worldly. Somewaht differetn certainly from our embedded cultural norms, but always immensely practical and down-to-earth. A key thing to hang onto is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of outcome that we normally associate with religious customs, namely some promise of reward in some afterlife. It has wholly to do with establishing a greater sense of well-being amidst the often harsh realities of this one.
What does that mean you might ask, in terms of the ups and downs of ordinary life? It means that instead of finding ourselves responding positively or negatively to those ups and downs, positively to the good things, and negatively to the bad, as they occur in our lives. Now up now down, depending on the nature of the circumstances and the events that we just happen to encounter, which is how so many of us actually live, if we are honest with ourselves. Instead of that we are seeking, with the help of the practice, to develop a much more stable inner core of optimism and resilience and confidence, so that we can more often respond positively and optimistically, no matter what circumstances we have to deal with. You will often hear people decalre for example that that has been the biggest benefit they have gained from the practice, an altogether greater sense of stability, not being blown around so much by circumstance. Not necessarily more in control of their lives, but unquestionably more in control of their responses.
Does that mean we banish anxiety from our lives? Of course not. We're only human. There is nothing seamless about a Buddhist approach to life. Doubts and anxieties frustrations all remain part of the daily mix, because they are all part of our essential humanity. The key difference in my experience is that they don't take over. You see them for what they are, because the practice is very much about clarifying and strengthening that crucial quality of self-awareness, and because we are learning all the time to respond to negative stuff more positively and more creatively.
And we can all see immediately can't we, that an ability to respond strongly and positively to negative stuff is an immensely valuable quality to have in life? We could all do with lots of it. Moreover this expressed purpose of the practice turns out to be completely in tune with what modern psychologists tell us about positive and negative responses. They tell us for example, that we can't have negative and positive feelings, at the same time. We can be mixed up and confused of course, and often are. We can alternate between them, and often do. But we can't feel them at the same time. So the objective becomes clear; the more we can learn how to summon up our positive responses to tackle the stuff that life presents us with, the less room we have to experience the negative ones.'
That's it. A nice neat compact message I hope. The extraordinary thing is that if you take it to heart it's big enough to change your whole life. If you enjoy the blog I'd be really grateful if you were to tel your friends about it, practising Buddhists or not. The idea is to get the ideas in the book discussed andtalked about. You don't have to agree with them. Of course not. It's discussion that's the valuable thing. Anyway, hope to see you next time.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon or from Kindle.
we're into chapter 7, Buddhism and Practice, and we ended the last episode with the idea that lies right at the heart of a Buddhist practice, that if we are prepared to summon up the determination to achieve it, and if we are prepared to put in the effort, we can choose hope and optimism and resilience and well-being as the way we live our lives. That's where we pick up the thread....
' But even as I write that I am only too well aware of course that it is far easier to say than to achieve. However attracted we might be by the idea, we can't achieve it without help, without some sort of discipline or structure, some sort of scaffolding around which we can consistently reinforce the determination, and strengthen the will to change. That in essence is what the Buddhist practice offers us. It provides the essential structure, the method or the discipline that enables us to take hold of our lives in a rational and measured way and move them in the direction we wish to travel.
Thus despite the many stereotypes and the many misconceptions that are prevalent in the western world, a Buddhist practice is not in any way esoteric or remote and other-worldly. Somewaht differetn certainly from our embedded cultural norms, but always immensely practical and down-to-earth. A key thing to hang onto is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of outcome that we normally associate with religious customs, namely some promise of reward in some afterlife. It has wholly to do with establishing a greater sense of well-being amidst the often harsh realities of this one.
What does that mean you might ask, in terms of the ups and downs of ordinary life? It means that instead of finding ourselves responding positively or negatively to those ups and downs, positively to the good things, and negatively to the bad, as they occur in our lives. Now up now down, depending on the nature of the circumstances and the events that we just happen to encounter, which is how so many of us actually live, if we are honest with ourselves. Instead of that we are seeking, with the help of the practice, to develop a much more stable inner core of optimism and resilience and confidence, so that we can more often respond positively and optimistically, no matter what circumstances we have to deal with. You will often hear people decalre for example that that has been the biggest benefit they have gained from the practice, an altogether greater sense of stability, not being blown around so much by circumstance. Not necessarily more in control of their lives, but unquestionably more in control of their responses.
Does that mean we banish anxiety from our lives? Of course not. We're only human. There is nothing seamless about a Buddhist approach to life. Doubts and anxieties frustrations all remain part of the daily mix, because they are all part of our essential humanity. The key difference in my experience is that they don't take over. You see them for what they are, because the practice is very much about clarifying and strengthening that crucial quality of self-awareness, and because we are learning all the time to respond to negative stuff more positively and more creatively.
And we can all see immediately can't we, that an ability to respond strongly and positively to negative stuff is an immensely valuable quality to have in life? We could all do with lots of it. Moreover this expressed purpose of the practice turns out to be completely in tune with what modern psychologists tell us about positive and negative responses. They tell us for example, that we can't have negative and positive feelings, at the same time. We can be mixed up and confused of course, and often are. We can alternate between them, and often do. But we can't feel them at the same time. So the objective becomes clear; the more we can learn how to summon up our positive responses to tackle the stuff that life presents us with, the less room we have to experience the negative ones.'
That's it. A nice neat compact message I hope. The extraordinary thing is that if you take it to heart it's big enough to change your whole life. If you enjoy the blog I'd be really grateful if you were to tel your friends about it, practising Buddhists or not. The idea is to get the ideas in the book discussed andtalked about. You don't have to agree with them. Of course not. It's discussion that's the valuable thing. Anyway, hope to see you next time.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon or from Kindle.
Wednesday 4 June 2014
my buddhist blog number 45
Hi Everybody,
We're into chapter 7, Buddhism and Practice. The last episode ended on the words, ' we want to become that bright and resourceful and optimistic colleague who everybody wants to have around! ' Don't we? And that's what the practice is about. It's not about religious ritual. It's about personal growth and change.
' The fact is that Nichiren Buddhism uses the word practice in very much the same way as we might use it in talking about any about any other field of human endeavour. It's not a technical term. Why do we practice anything? For one reason only. We don't practice for the sake of the practice do we? We practice to get better at something. We practice to get better at the skills we are seeking to acquire. Any sportsman, any musician, any artist knows that unless they practice they cannot possibly hope to achieve their full potential. Moreover having more innate talent doesn't mean less training. The greater the talent, the more, rather than the less sportmen and musicians have to train because they have a greater potential to fulfil. Few people train as hard as Olympic athletes or as concert musicians for example.
By the same token, however inherent the qualities that Buddhism teaches we all have at the core of our lives, learning how to draw them out, so that we can understand them more fully, and use them more readily in the stuff of our daily lives, requires a real personal commitment to sustained practice. So from this standpoint the Buddhist practice may be seen not so much as a religious ritual, but as a personal daily discipline. Indeed we might regard it as a sort of daily, life-time, personal training programme. Not all that different in a sense from a daily life-time training programme at the gym for example, aimed at achieving a higher level of physical fitness. Except that with the Buddhist practice we are of course talking about developing spiritual muscle, about developing an inner toughness and resilience and optimism that is strong enough not to be dismantled by the problems and the difficulties and yes, the suffering, that we will inevitably encounter in our lives.
And that word ' training ' in this context is very significant, because that in effect is what we are doing with the discipline of the daily practice, we are training our minds, we are shaping our approach to life. and if we look into the work of the psychologists and other social scientists in this field, their findings directly support the view that a regular practice, sustained over time...both of those aspects are crucial... is the absolute key to making the most of our qualities in any field, including developing those highly desirable life skills that we have been talking about, such as hope and optimism and courage and compassion.
The economist Richard Layard has argued,
' The fact is we can train our feelings. We are not simply victims of our situation, or indeed of our past..we can directly address our bad feelings and replace them by positive feelings, building on the positive force that is in each of us, our better self.'
So he's talking directly about using this regular ' training ' to create or reveal ' our better self.' And remember that's a social scientist talking, not a Buddhist teacher! Interestingly, like Daniel Goleman, he goes on to use the analogy of professional musicians. You only get to play Mozart on a concert platform so to speak, if you can summon up the inner determination to put in that regular daily practice over long periods of your life. And that sort of regualr daily practice he explains, whether it is to polish our musical ability, or ' train ourselves in the skills of being happy, ' will undoubtedly have a profound effect on who we are, and how we behave and respond to the circumstances and the people we encounter.
Professor Ericcson of Florida State University is another great champion of the absolutely primary role played by effort and practice in any filed of endeavour you care to mention. His research tells us that it is not so much the innate skill or talent that we might have been born with, although of course that is important, but the crucial factor in taking any skill or talent that we have to a higher level, is the effort we are prepared to put into it. And he equates effort directly with the amount of time we are prepared to put into practice, practice, practice.
Professor Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania University, from whom we've already quoted on several occasions, not only expresses his wholehearted agreement with that view, but he adds the comment that a crucial aspect of this whole process is that we are the ones making the choice to practice; we are the ones putting in the effort, it's our choice, ' ...the exercise of conscious choice...' as he puts it.
No one is forcing us. The life-changing value lies precisely in the fact that we are wholly responsible for just how much effort, just how much determination, just how much practice we are prepared to invest into any quality or skill we are seeking to develop. So we are back to that absolutely basic proposition that Buddhism puts to all of us, that if we are prepared to summon up the determination to achieve it, and if we are prepared to put in the effort, we can choose hope and optimism and resilience and well-being , as the way we wish to live our lives.'
Nuff said for today I think. Hope it makes sense in terms of daily life. That is the key thing for me; does this stuff help us in the way we go about our daily lives.
See you nest time.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a papeback from Amazon and as a Kindle download.
We're into chapter 7, Buddhism and Practice. The last episode ended on the words, ' we want to become that bright and resourceful and optimistic colleague who everybody wants to have around! ' Don't we? And that's what the practice is about. It's not about religious ritual. It's about personal growth and change.
' The fact is that Nichiren Buddhism uses the word practice in very much the same way as we might use it in talking about any about any other field of human endeavour. It's not a technical term. Why do we practice anything? For one reason only. We don't practice for the sake of the practice do we? We practice to get better at something. We practice to get better at the skills we are seeking to acquire. Any sportsman, any musician, any artist knows that unless they practice they cannot possibly hope to achieve their full potential. Moreover having more innate talent doesn't mean less training. The greater the talent, the more, rather than the less sportmen and musicians have to train because they have a greater potential to fulfil. Few people train as hard as Olympic athletes or as concert musicians for example.
By the same token, however inherent the qualities that Buddhism teaches we all have at the core of our lives, learning how to draw them out, so that we can understand them more fully, and use them more readily in the stuff of our daily lives, requires a real personal commitment to sustained practice. So from this standpoint the Buddhist practice may be seen not so much as a religious ritual, but as a personal daily discipline. Indeed we might regard it as a sort of daily, life-time, personal training programme. Not all that different in a sense from a daily life-time training programme at the gym for example, aimed at achieving a higher level of physical fitness. Except that with the Buddhist practice we are of course talking about developing spiritual muscle, about developing an inner toughness and resilience and optimism that is strong enough not to be dismantled by the problems and the difficulties and yes, the suffering, that we will inevitably encounter in our lives.
And that word ' training ' in this context is very significant, because that in effect is what we are doing with the discipline of the daily practice, we are training our minds, we are shaping our approach to life. and if we look into the work of the psychologists and other social scientists in this field, their findings directly support the view that a regular practice, sustained over time...both of those aspects are crucial... is the absolute key to making the most of our qualities in any field, including developing those highly desirable life skills that we have been talking about, such as hope and optimism and courage and compassion.
The economist Richard Layard has argued,
' The fact is we can train our feelings. We are not simply victims of our situation, or indeed of our past..we can directly address our bad feelings and replace them by positive feelings, building on the positive force that is in each of us, our better self.'
So he's talking directly about using this regular ' training ' to create or reveal ' our better self.' And remember that's a social scientist talking, not a Buddhist teacher! Interestingly, like Daniel Goleman, he goes on to use the analogy of professional musicians. You only get to play Mozart on a concert platform so to speak, if you can summon up the inner determination to put in that regular daily practice over long periods of your life. And that sort of regualr daily practice he explains, whether it is to polish our musical ability, or ' train ourselves in the skills of being happy, ' will undoubtedly have a profound effect on who we are, and how we behave and respond to the circumstances and the people we encounter.
Professor Ericcson of Florida State University is another great champion of the absolutely primary role played by effort and practice in any filed of endeavour you care to mention. His research tells us that it is not so much the innate skill or talent that we might have been born with, although of course that is important, but the crucial factor in taking any skill or talent that we have to a higher level, is the effort we are prepared to put into it. And he equates effort directly with the amount of time we are prepared to put into practice, practice, practice.
Professor Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania University, from whom we've already quoted on several occasions, not only expresses his wholehearted agreement with that view, but he adds the comment that a crucial aspect of this whole process is that we are the ones making the choice to practice; we are the ones putting in the effort, it's our choice, ' ...the exercise of conscious choice...' as he puts it.
No one is forcing us. The life-changing value lies precisely in the fact that we are wholly responsible for just how much effort, just how much determination, just how much practice we are prepared to invest into any quality or skill we are seeking to develop. So we are back to that absolutely basic proposition that Buddhism puts to all of us, that if we are prepared to summon up the determination to achieve it, and if we are prepared to put in the effort, we can choose hope and optimism and resilience and well-being , as the way we wish to live our lives.'
Nuff said for today I think. Hope it makes sense in terms of daily life. That is the key thing for me; does this stuff help us in the way we go about our daily lives.
See you nest time.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a papeback from Amazon and as a Kindle download.
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