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.
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