Monday 28 December 2015

my buddhist blog number 117

Hi Everybody,
Well Xmas has simply flown by, and I'm sitting here with bright spring-like sunshine streaming through my windows. On the run in Richmond Park with Gatsby this morning it was too hot for a jacket!! And I had an immensely encouraging email from someone who said they'd received a copy of TCFB for xmas and they were already half way through it...with great pleasure! So that's worth an exclamation mark isn't it? perhaps 2!! Anyway, we're galloping through this chapter on Approaching the Practice, and we've looked at the three pillars of chanting and study and taking action. and we've talked about Buddhism not presenting us with a set of prescribed behaviours, or a morality, and we're diving into the meaning of the central Nichiren mantra, nam myoho renge kyo. That's where we pick up the narrative thread.

' I don't think we should be surprised or taken aback if we find some of these issues elusive and difficult to grasp when we first encounter this practice, and indeed, throughout our practice. Why shouldn't it be difficult? It's a huge and many-layered explanation of the reality of life. And as we have said so often, Buddhism is daily life, and since life is infinitely complex, Buddhism will inevitably reflect that complexity.

In my own case I have to say , I certainly did find it difficult. It was one thing comin gto understand many of the values that Buddhism embraces, and appreciating just how valuable they could be close to, in terms of human relationships, and further afiled perhaps, in terms of how society functions. It was quite another to commit to the chanting a strange mantra, perhpas an hour or more a day. Did I really want to do that? A mantra moreover that carries with it a whole bundle of meanings and associations and implications that are to a large extent closed off from everyday experience and derived from a quite different cultural tradition. That was quite a struggle.

I started chanting for two principal reasonds, and I'm sure my experience is by no means uncommon. The people I met who were practicing were to be admired in many ways; positive, compassionate, socially responsible, always constructive in their aims and endeavours. Always supportive of others. But it seemed to me that there was only one way of coming to understand the true value of Nichiren Buddhism in my daily life, and that was to allow it into my life.

I have been chanting on a daily basis ever since!

That's it for today.
I'll be back on the turn of the year on Saturday.
I wish everybody a really creative and fulfilling year of life to come.
William
PS TCFB is available on Amazon in paperback and as a download on Kindle.

Thursday 17 December 2015

my buddhist blog number 116

Hi Everybody,

Hope all is well with you.We're in the middle of the chapter that introduces all the key elements of the daily practice. Since the chantingof the phrase nam myoho renge kyo is central to the practice and the process of change, where does it come from, and what does it mean?

Most of this phrase or mantra comes from the Lotus Sutra itself. Myoho renge kyo is the title  of the Lotus Sutra as written in classical Japanese. To be precise it is written in the Chinese pictograms that the Japanese adopted as their own, in order to create their own written language. The five characters used to write this phrase mean literally, ' the Mystic law of the Lotus Sutra.' The word mystic does not mean mysterious. Rather it conveys  the sense of the ultimate or highest teaching that hasn't previously been revealed.

The key word  Nam which is placed in front of the title words is what you might call the committal word. It comes from the ancient language of Sanskrit and means, among several other things, ' to devote one's life to.' So a straightforward literal translation Nam myoho renge kyo might be, ' I devote my life to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra.' But that is really just the beginning. many volumes have been written to explain the depths of meaning locked up in this mantra. That is partly because, in the Buddhist tradition, the title given to each sutra is seen to be immensely important, and is considred to embody the entire teaching that it contains. As Nichiren Daishonin explains to us in one of his letters, using the analogy of the name of japan,

' Included within the two characters representing Japan is all that is within the country's sixty six provinces; the people and the animals, the rice paddies and the other fields, those of high and low status, the nobles and the commoners...similarly included within the title or daimoku of Nam myoho renge kyo is the entire sutra consisting of of all eight volumes, twenty eight chapters, and 69,384 characters without the omission of a single character...'

Moreover, since Chinese is an incomparably concise language, in which each character can be used to express an immense range of different though related meanings, these 5 basic characters combine to convey a veritable universe of odeas. In very much the same way that in the world of physics for example, the simple-seeming equation e=mc2, sums up within its five characters the complex relationship between energy and matter across the entire vastness of the universe.

But neither of these partial explanations can begin to explain the depth of meaning that Nichiren himself ascribes to this phrase. He describes it as nothing less than the Universal Law of Life, that expresses within its brief compass the realtionship between human life and the entire environment within which life is lived. It sums up within itslef he says, nothin less than the ' wisdom of all the Buddhas.'

Shakyamuni himself expresses something very close to that in the Lotus Sutra itself when he writes that this Law,

'can only be understood and shared between Buddhas.'

It is crucially important I think to make clear that that description is not referring to some sort of exclusivity. Far from it, since the whole purpose of the Lotus Sutra is to convey far and wide to all humanity the depth and breadth of Shakyamuni's hard-won enlightenment, to enable people, all people, to build better lives for themselves. It is simply expressing the crucial point that the intellect, and words and explanations can only take you so far along the path of understanding. You have to practice Buddhism, and  experience to some extent its power and potential to change your life from the inside, before you truly begin to understand. Just as of course, you actually have to bite into the stawberry yourself, before you can begin to understand what it tastes like!

That's enough for today.
Thanks for reading this far.
Hope to see you next time around.
Best wishes,
William

Friday 11 December 2015

my buddhist blog number 115

Hi Everybody,

115!! Thats a big number. I started this blog just about a year ago in the hope that it would create value. I've been totally surprised by the number of people who have got in touch to say how much they've enjoyed it, and in some cases, actually learned from it! That is really pleasing. It takes about a year to write a book and about another year to find some sort of audience, and then hopefully readers continue to find the book and hopefully get some value from it for several years afterwards. I have been immensely fortunate in that all the books seem to continue to find readers who value them for years afterwards, in English and Spanish, and in the case of The Reluctant Buddhist in Italian. I have acquired so many good friends in Italy. When I visited Trets this summer, on a beautiful hot September day, I was utterly surprised to be embraced and kissed even by a couple of Italian ladies who were complete strangers....apparently because they had read TRB or Il Budista Rilutante as it is in Italian. So you see, there are multiple benefits from writing books on obscure subjects!!!

But back to this key chapter on Approaching the Practice, and we're at quite a small sub paragraph labelled..not a morality. Small, but it makes a key point that we need to bear in mind.

We should not forget the point that we have touched upon previously, namely that Buddhism does not depend for its moral force on a prescribed set of behaviours. It relies rather on the power of this inner transformation, on people learning how to accept responsibility for their own lives and their own actions. This clearly has the potential for far reaching effects, not solely on the person at the centre, but on the community he or she inhabits.

The process begins of course with the individual. It all begins with the personal determination...not wish but determination... to live one's life, to the very best of one's ability that is, within the orbit of a buddhist set of values and principles. That's the starting point. But the effect of the changes we make in our thinking and in our behaviour inevitably extends way beyond our own life, in an ever-widening series of ripples, to change the environment within which we live our lives. The individual change that is, begins to affect the social environment that makes up our daily life. And as it does so, and we begin to see the benefits of that change in terms of value-creation and in terms of more productive relationships. So it strengthens the desire to maintain these values and principles. It sets up if you like a virtuous circle in our life; the stronger our practice, the greater the effect on our behaviour, and the greater the effect on our environment, the stronger our practice.

As I said earlier, a small but important point!

Thats all for now. Next tiem we get onto the meaning ogf nam myoho renge kyo.

Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon ( great xmas present!!!) and on Kindle.

Sunday 6 December 2015

My Buddhist blog number 114

Hi Everybody,

Good day for blogging! One of those grey windy wintry days outside. I can hear the wind blustering up against the windows. Been for my run in the park with Gatsby, so I can settle down over a nice warm keyboard without any sense of guilt! One of the chapters in the new book is about how we need to be careful about the new norm of spending hours and  hours sitting still in front of our screens. We need to build in breaks to get the body moving. Any movement, even just a walk to the water dispenser is good.
Anyway, we're in the middle of this chapter on Approaching the Practice.We've looked at chanting. We move on to study and taking action.

The second major element in the practice is study. Studying a wide range of materials from the extant letters and other writings of Nichiren Daishonin himself, to commentaries by Buddhist scholars, and accounts by individual Buddhists on the ways in which their practice has enhanced their lives. There is a huge and varied abundance of material because it is such a broad ranging philosophy which touches upon every aspect of our daily lives. Nichiren as we have seen makes no bones about the importance of study. Indeed he goes so far as to say, 'Exert yourself in the two ways of practice and study, because without practice and study there is no Buddhism.'

But that having been said, this is not in any way an intellectual or an academic practice. The study is not about acquiring knowledge as an end in itself. It is entirely about deepening our understanding of the principles that underlie the practice, so that we get better at living them, at making them work in our daily lives, at manifesting them in our behaviour.

Taking action is the third pillar of the practice; the effort and the struggle to fold Buddhist principles and values into the warp and weft of our daily lives so that they are lived rather than just perceived or understood. And let's be clear, that is a daily struggle. We have to work at it. Few things are more difficult to change than ingrained patterns of thought and behaviour, of which we have often become almst completely unaware, so much have they become a part of us, driven perhaps by anger or selfishness or a basic lack of concern for other people's needs. That is part of all our experience.

The discipline of the Buddhist practice drives what might be called a constant inner re-appraisal, an inner transformation of our own life, a real growth in self-knowledge. Out of that grows a fundamental respect for the lives of all others. It's not of course a one-way journey. There can be set-backs and regressions as well as advances. It is very much a living dynamic process. But even so there is no doubt that this change comes to have a profound effect upon the way you handle relationships and encounters with everyone you meet; a greater openness for example, an altogether warmer, wider, welcoming generosity towards other people. I have no doubt that one of the greatest benefits of the Buddhist practice in my personal life for example, has been this transformation in the way I experience relation ships at every level.'

That's it for today.
Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading this far.
Hope to see you next time.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon or as a download from Kindle.

Wednesday 2 December 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 113

Hi Everybody,

So we're talking about the basic practice and we're in the middle of a discussion on the role of chanting.

Chanting to achieve things in one's life, including material things, runs strongly counter to the widely held perception of Buddhism that it is essentially about renunciation, about giving up worldly things as a necessary step on the road to achieving a higher spiritual condition. Nichiren Buddhism however teaches that renunciation, giving up things, of itself, brings no benefits. It argues rather that desire is basic to all human life and that as long as there is life there will be the instinctive desire in the hearts of men and women to make the most of that life, which inevitably means to love and to want and to have.

Nichiren saw with great clarity that little was to be gained from people expending huge amounts of thought and time and energy seeking to extinguish a force that lay right at the core of their lives. On the contrary infinitely more is to be achieved by accepting it as an ordinary part of everyone's humanity, and harnessing it, as a powerful engine for individual growth and change.

But let's be clear, we are not talking about a solely rational or intellectual process. In many ways the effects of chanting on a regular, committed, daily basis, are beyond the reach of the intellect alone. It does change profoundly your view of what is valuable and meaningful in life.

The ultimate goal of the Nichiren Buddhist is a world made up of people and communities that live in peace one with another. We chant for it, and work for it on a daily basis.

That brings us to the end of the passage on chanting. Lets leave it there.
Next time around we pick up the theme of study and its role in the practice.
Hope to see you next time.
William

Friday 27 November 2015

my buddhist blog number 112

Hi everybody,

When there is so much violence in the news, so much talk of war and death and destruction and revenge, when we are most likely to feel pretty impotent about what we personally can do, that's a great time I would argue to concentrate on what we can do to create value and goodwill in our own little sphere of life, among our family or friends or our colleagues at work. All the environements we move in. It doesn't have to be big stuff. Anything big or small. An expression of gratitude. An offer of support. Or encouragement. Just ordinary everyday  warm and generous human interaction. We feel better. The person offered the support feels better. And so does everyone else in earshot. And do the same again tomorrow. And the next day.

Anyway, here we are back with the practice and we've been talking about the primary practice of chanting,

So what do we think about when we chant? Well the short answer I think is not a lot. The intention if you like is to become one with the rhythm of the chanting. Listen to the sound, feel the vibration, enjoy the moment for its own sake. It's a kind of relaxation. The time for focused thought is before you start, what is it you want to chant about, and after you have finished, when the mind is very clear, and you are deciding what action you might want to take if any. What do we chant for? We are chanting essentially to tap into this potential within our own lives that will enable us to achieve a higher life state. Remember, as both Buddhism and modern psychology teach us, it's our life state that governs how we think and how we feel and therefore, to a large extent, how we act. So tha tthe higher our life state, the more fully and creatively we can live the day, and that is the underlying thought.

But the fact is that you can chant for any goal you wish to achieve, either in the short or long term of your life, and the lives of those around you. In my experience people don't often start chanting because they want to ' save the planet' so to speak, or rarely. They are much more likely to start chanting for reasons that are much closer and more personal, and for material as well as spiritual concerns. Buddhism is daily life remember, and those are elements of all our days. So it might be for a more bouyant spiritfor example, or more self-confidence in relationships. But it might also be for a better house, or a better job, better health, or just a happy and successful day. Many people chant for these and other utterly normal worldly desires every day of the week. They are very much part of our ordinary humanity.

But there are two key points to bear in mind. One is that we are of course chanting for the courage and the wisdom and the compassion to emerge in our lives so that we ourselves can take the action we need, to achieve these goals in our life, in a value-creating way. And the second is that as we go on chanting on a daily basis, so the practice steadily deepens and broadens our view of what it is that we really want to achieve, to enhance our lives and the lives of those around us, and how we might set about achieving those broader goals. So you might say, the inmitial desires serve as the seed, or the primary cause, that drives us towards a greater self-knowledge. It is in that sense that earthly desires may be said to lead to self-enlightenment.

That's it for today. I'll be back next week.
Hope to see you then.
Meanwhile hope you feel that you are creating value in and around your life.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle as a download

Friday 20 November 2015

my buddhist blog number 111

Hi Everybody,

It's been a sad week. Paris. It touches all of us. Enough words have been said and written about this explosion of meaningless violence against ordinary people going about their ordinary daily lives. I just offer this blog about Buddhist practice as a tiny token of shared sadness.

OK so were diving into a bit more detail about the practice and we look at three key dimensions starting with chanting. The basic practice is chanting. Chanting the phrase or the mantra nam myoho renge kyo, which we'll explain in greater detail in a later episode. The chanting is out loud, rather than repeating a mantra in our heads as in meditation. The key point is that it is clearly a physical action and it has clear physiological effects.For one thing it involves moving considerable volumes of air in and out of the lungs for example, and it raises body temperature and makes the skin tingle. It's been said to be very good for the complexion!

But above all it is a wonderfully joyful and uplifting sound, and it is absolutely central to this practice. As Daisaku Ikeda explains,

'It would be no exaggeration to say that the practice of chanting daimoku in Nichiren Buddhism is what gave rise to a ' Buddhism of the people.' This practice of chanting is indeed the supreme practice Buddhist practice, making it possible for us to fundamentally transform our lives.'

Thus it is seen as the driving force, the engine that powers the process of change, because it is an essential part of the process of refreshing and energising the spirit, and raising the life force. We simply feel better after a period of chanting. Normally the chanting is carried out twice a day. In the morning to launch you into the day with a wholly positive, up-beat frame of mind. In the evening basically in the spirit of gratitude for the day that we've had, good, bad or indifferent. If it's been good there's lots to be grateful for. If it's been bad then you may need to regain the energy and the determination to tackle the challenges that have arisen.  Both morning and evening the chantingis accompanied by the recitation of two brief passages from the Lotus Sutra that are concerned with the universality of Buddhahood and the eternity of life.

There's no set time to chant, nor any set period of chanting. As with most of the elements of Buddhist practice, that's entirely up to the individual. It's your life. You can chant for as little time as you can spare before you have to catch the 8.10 commuter train to the office, or for as long as you feel the need. The practice is above all flexible, shaped to fit in with the demands of modern life. Buddhism remember is daily life. As with so many other activities, the key thing is regularity. Better ten minutes twice a day, than an hour every Friday. Just as we need to refuel our bodies with something to eat two or three times a day, so Buddhism argues, we need this regular, daily refreshment of our spiritual resources.

OK enough for today.
Back on Sunday with another episode.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon or on Kindle. And many thanks to all those people whom have said such generous things about it.

Saturday 14 November 2015

my buddhist blog number 110

Hi Everybody,

Great day for blogging. Grey cold wet and windy! We're into the final chapter of this book. Quite an inportant one I think as chapters go, on approaching the practice. Episode 2 of this chapter.

' Buddhism is daily life It's very easy to over-complicate Buddhism, and in many ways that simple sounding phrase is at the very heart of the Buddhist message. Trying to learn how to see the problems and the challenges that come ceaselessly from all directions into our lives, as opportunities to grow our lives. And if you think about it even momentarily, that means developing the wisdom to spot these opportunities, and the courage to grab onto them, because trying to see problems from this new persepective inevitably means change and change takes courage

The Buddhist argument essentially is that they are not going to stop coming these challenges. It's a bit like saying something as patently obvious as water is always wet. That's just the way things are. It is the very nature of human life. So Buddhism argues, the only part of the equation over which we have control is our approach to these problems. And the key stage in the process of change we have to go through is coming to understand that this is not a purely intellectual process. The intellect is crucially important of course, but it can only take us so far. Buddhism teaches that we can't simply think our way into a radically different approach to life's ups and downs. We have to work at it, we have to train to acquire that persistently more hopeful perspective.

That training is precisely what the daily practice is about. It is if you like, a daily, life-long training programme for the mind.

Admittedly that is not an easy truth either to believe in or to understand. It's not something we are accustomed to doing. If we get a problem the immediate, instinctive, conditioned response is to go to brain. That's what we've always done. That we believe is where the powerhouse is. We are accustomed in the West, trained even, to live our lives driven by three primary engines; our intellect and our emotions, how we think and how we feel, and by our persona, or how we look and present ourselves. We place huge store, as indeed we should, on our intellectual ability to think our way through life's problems. We attach immense value to emotional expression. And perhaps far too much to externals, to physical appearance.

All Buddhism is saying is,' ...hang on a bit, there's more...there is a much neglected spiritual resource within you that is capable of lifting your life performance to a new level...your Buddha nazture. In learning how you draw it out into you daily life...it could change your whole life!

As the late great philospher and historian Arnold Toynbee has commented,

' Westerners have much to learn in this field from Indian and East Asian experience. In books and articles that I have published I have repeatedly drawn my western readers' attention to this historical fact, as part of my lifelong attempt to jolt modern western man out of his ludicrously mistaken belief that modern western civilisation has made itself superior to all others by outstripping them. '

Thats a great comment I would argue, from Arnold Toynbee. A kind of wake-up call to the west.
Anyway, enough for today. Hope it made sense. See you on Wednesday next.

Best wishes to everone,
William

Thursday 12 November 2015

my buddhist blog number 109

Hi Everybody,
Apologies for the longish break. I'm deep into the new book and when I'm struggling with a difficult chapter as I have been, grappling with the concept of spirituality, it's hard to tear myself away. Anyway here I am and ready to launch into the final chapter of this book called Approaching the Practice, which is about the daily practice of Nichiren Buddhism. So here goes.

' It's important to de-mystify this word practice. The fact is that it is used in very much the same way as one might use it in talking about any other field of human endeavour. The basic objective of any practice is to get better at something. Any sportman or musician, any artist knows that unless they train, unless they practice, they cannot possibly attain their full potential. Moreover, having more innate potential doesn't mean less practice. The bigger the talent the more, rather than the less, those sportsmen and those musicians have to practice, because they have a greater potential to fulfil. Few people for example, train as hard as olympic sportsmen and women, or concert musicians.

By the same token, however inherent the Buddha nature may be, drawing it out into the light of our daily lives requires a real personal commitment to sustained practice. It is very common to hear Nichiren Buddhists say that the more they practice, the more they feel themselves to be fortunate, in harmony with themselves, and in some way, however difficult it may be to define, in rhythm with the world around them. Unexpected opportunities appear for example, at the most opportune moment, seemingly insoluble problems reach a resolution, relationships improve, anxieties diminish. That may sound just too good to be true. Maybe. That doesn't alter the fact that the experience is a common one, and that these occurences continue to occur, as a result of greater awareness perhaps, or a greater openness to whatis going on in the environment, or a sharper sense of the possibilities in any particualr situation.

Similarly, when Buddhists are aware that they are approaching a time of extra stress or difficulty in their lives, a set of important exams coming up, or stress in a close realtionship, or illness, or a change of job, they go into training so to speak. They deliberately step up their practice, to give themselves the greater resilience and self-confidence and judgment, to help to drive them through a challenging time.

It is as deliberate and as practical a process as that.

Thus people use the practice as an additional asset available to them. Buddhism is daily life.

Right that's it.
Back on Saturday for the next episode.
Thanks for reading to here.
Best wishes,
William

Tuesday 20 October 2015

my buddhist blog number 108

Hi Everybody,
This is the last episode on this chapter devoted to the principle of the ten worlds, or ten life states, and it brings us right to the nub of the agument, the key implication of this principle in our daily lives. So it goes...
' Indeed the key implication is unmistakeable. It is that Buddhahood can only exist in the presence of the other nine life states, it can only find expression that is, in the lives and behaviour of ordinary people. Us. What that means is that all the lower worlds we've talked about, of Hell, Hunger, Anger and animality are also permanently part of our lives. We can't eliminate them or drive them out in some way. They are part of everyone's life. What we need to do on this journey of building a better life for ourselves and those around us is to the reality of their presence in our life, and set about transforming them through the increased self-awareness and the determination that the practice build up, to limit their negative impact upon our lives. And this is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of Nichiren Buddhism, that it enables us to take any part of our life about which we feel unhappy or even guilty or ashamed and set about transmuting it, through the practice, into a source of value. Nothing has to be given up. Nothing that can exist in the context of our lives is too difficult to challenge.

The overwhelming message therefore is one of hope and optimism. This is part and parcel of what we mean when we talk about taking responsibility for our life. One interpretation of that word is precisely respond-ability. That is to say, we can learn how to respond to people and situations and events in a more value-creating way. That is why so many people describe the effect of their practice as enabling. They come to feel that it helps them to take more control of their lives, instead of feeling at a loss, or even overwhelmed.

In a sense it is a restatement of the analogy of the weightlifter. It is a fact of life that we can't develop stronger muscles by lifting lighter and lighter weights. From a Buddhist standpoint it is equally clear that we cannot grow our iner strength and resilience, those vital qualities, except by overcoming the biggest obstacles and challenges that life throws at us. The bigger the problem we overcome, the greater the resilience we develop. As Daisaku Ikeda has expressed it so clearly,

' True happiness is not the absence of suffering. you can't have day after day of clear skies....Happiness does not mean having a life free from all difficulties, but that whatever difficulties arise, without being shaken in the least, you can summon up the unflinching courage and conviction to fight and overcome them. '

Speaking personally, I find that I am often ' shaken ' by some challenges that arise, so I think we might make that phrase, ' without being shaken in the least,' an optional extra. The key thing is that we try to summon up the courage and the conviction to overcome them.

Ok that's all for today.
Thank you for reading this far.
Hope to see you next time.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as a download on Kindle.

Tuesday 13 October 2015

my buddhist blog number 107

Hi Everybody,
We're coming to the end of the chapter on the ten worlds or the ten life states, and we've come in a sense to the genuine $64000 question, how does the Buddhist description of these life states match up against the reality of our lives. It doesn't take much self analysis I suggest, to recall or to recognise in our daily experience the life states they describe.We've all experienced at some time or another the pain and greyness of hell state. We've all experienced the frustrations of not getting what we want in hunger state, or the sense of deep personal fulfilment that comes when we've really been able to help someone else achieve something they seek, or through a personal difficulty. So I would argue, they certainly  match up to our common experience, and there are some general points that are worth bearing in mind.

Thus we move from one life state to another with great rapidity and with complete freedom depending on what's going on in our heads and in our environment from moment to moment. Nichiren Buddhism chooses to describe that fluency of movement by saying that each life state contains the potential of all the others. We can immediately see the validity of that idea if we think of incidents in our daily lives, and the very purpose of the the concept of the ten worlds is to raise our general level of self awareness. Indeed it has been argues that if we weren't offered some such concept then we would have to invent one to explain the immensely changeable...and even contradictory...feelings we demonstrate or experience every single day of our lives. Of course we're not accustomed to calling these variable and fluctuating states of mind, life states or worlds, as Buddhism describes them. Indeed we take them so much for granted that we may not dignify them with any name at all. But do we experience them? Yes indeed. And we recognise them rapidly enough when we have them pointed out to us.

The nub of the argument.
If we are prepared to accept that argument, and we do need to give it some careful thought, then what follows from it is very important indeed in terms of our understanding of Nichiren Buddhism. Since it brings us to the central promise made by Nichiren, namely that it is possible for us to experience the life state of Buddhahood, in this lifetime, whatever situation our life happens to be in at any given moment. we have within us that is, the potential to move from the near despair of Hell say, to the compassion of Bodhisattva, or the hope and optimism and profound sense of capability and well-being of Buddhahood.

This is the basis for the fundamental argument that has already been touched upon more than once, namely the normality of Buddhahood. It's not in any way a superhuman life state, but a supremely human one. Shakyamuni and Nichiren were ordinary men who nevertheless attained this life state during their everyday lives on Earth. Thus the great promise at the heart of Mahayana and Nichiren Buddhism is that this Buddha Nature is not some remote and inaccessible goal, it is the immediate earthly purpose of our daily practice. However hard it is for us to accept that premise, and of course, it is hard.

Enough for one day.
Back next time to wrap up this key chapter.
Thank you for reading this far. I'm very grateful.
Hope to see you next time.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as a download on Kindle.

Sunday 4 October 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 106

Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you. We're having the most wonderful autumnal days here in Kew, blue skies, warm sunshine even though the sun is so much lower in the sky, leaves just beginning to darken and fall. Running in the park with my dog Gatsby in the mornings is just a joy. He seems to like it too!! Right moving on, were drawing to the end of this key chapter on the ten worlds or the ten states of life. Last time we talked about the powerfully value-creating life state that Buddhism calls bodhisattva. Today we move on to the life state of buddhahood. Don't worry about the names. Focus on what lies behind them. Just to round off the section on bodhisattva, which is essentially about caring for others, Buddhism in its wisdom warns us against the danger of being self-sacrificial, in the sense of neglecting one's own well-being. The care of others it teaches, is best delivered by someone who remains strongly aware of their own basic needs, and who takes care of their own welfare. In order to give to others most effectively it argues, we have to develop and make sure we maintain our own strong and resilient life state.

That brings us to waht Buddhism describes as the highest life state of which human beings are capable. It is, as we've already discussed, a name or a title that is overlaid in the West by a huge amoun tf misconception and misunderstanding, so that it is very difficult for us to believe that it is a life state that can be attained by ordinary people, like us, going about their ordinary daily lives, which might be called perhaps the  What me? syndrome. But we shouldn't allow that little local difficulty tp put us off. The word Buddha by the way comes from a Sanskrit root that means among other things to awaken, or to see deeply, and is used in Buddhsim to describe soemone who is awakened to the ultimate truth of life.

It was Nichiren, through his prolonged study of Buddhist writings and commentaries back through the centuries who brought Buddhism back down to earth so to speak. He made it clear that Shakyamuni was at all times an ordinary man, albeit a man of extraordinary wisdom and insight. Indeed the real significance of his life, Nichiren wrote, lay in his ' behaviour as a human being.' Not notice, as a divine or semi-divine figure, but as an ordinary human being.

Nichiren repeatedly makes clear in his writings that Shakyamuni's awakening to the truth of life was not in any way a superhuman state, in some way elevated above ordinary human  life. Nor was it a transcendental state, some place of heavenly peace and tranquillity, cut off from the down-to-earth reality of daily life. This is the key understanding that Nichiren went to great lengths to bring to us, throughout his teaching life. Thus Buddhahood, or the Buddha nature as it is described in Mahayana Buddhism ( which embraces Nichiren Buddhism ) is not presented as an elevation of some kind, a higher plane or level of life onto which we might step, as if we were leaving behind our ordinary lives. It is rather a deeper and richer understanding of the mainstream of our life, as it already is. So that everything we are involved in, the ordinary things, the boring and mundane things, even the suffering and the struggling things, we can learn to experience as part of, our on-going well-being.

And of course, it's not a destination, somewhere we arrive, as if it were a sort of railway station. It is rather a path that we take up and continue to travel along, trying to understand and experience this deeper sense of the wholeness and richness of our lives. Indeed as one Buddhist text puts it, attributed to Shakyamuni himself,

' There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.'

Well that's plenty enough for one day I think.
Hope you find it interesting. Its quite difficult creating a synopsis on a subject such as Buddhahood which has been the subject of countless volumes.
Hope to see you next time.

Tuesday 29 September 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 105

Hi Everybody,
Eight down, two to go! We're in the middle of an importany chapter, describing and analysing the Nichiren Buddhist concept of the ten worlds, or the ten states of life. What are they and how ' real' are they? Those are the questions we need answered aren't they? Up till now, if you happen to have been reading the last eight episodes, these life states have been given ordinary names like hunger and anger and learning and realisation. But the next two are defined by names that we would never use in any other context apart from a discussion of Buddhism. Bodhisattva and Buddhahood are not just relatively unfamilar, they are essentially technical terms comin gfrom Buddhist literature. The important thing I would suggest, is not to be put off by the unfamiliarity, but to get behind the names themselves and see how they relate to the real substance of our lives. The names might be unfamiliar, the life states are universal. So here we go with Bodhisattva.

The hallmark of the life state of Bodhisattva is caring for others, being concerned about their welfare or their safety or their general well-being. Spending time with an older person living on their own perhaps, supporting an anxious neighbour in a crisis, giving time to a charity, offering a colleague a sympathetic ear instead of rushing off to catch the train home. Giving oneself in all sorts of ways, big and small to support other people when they need it. It's not about being a do-gooder. Not at all. It's just about being immensely practical and alert to the fact that absolutely everybody has need for support at some time in their lives, and being ready to be there for them.

It is also mutually beneficial, although that is not the primary motivation. It is you may remember one of the primary qualities modern psychological research has marked out as being fundamental to our own sense of well-being, altruism, being prepared to put ourselves out to help others. Certainly Buddhism argues that one of the most immediate pathways out of those tough life states of hell and hunger and animality, is indeed to find some way, however small, to contribute to the lives of others. At its heart is the desire not simply to help others but to alleviate the cause of their pain or suffering, and replace it with a more stable sens eof well-being.

The prime example of this degree of compassion for others is perhpas the mother, or the parent, whose concern for the child is totally unconditional. Nothing is too much to give. other examples would be the nurse and the doctor and the social worker. Or the aid workers who are prepared to place themselves in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, in developing countries for example, constantly putting themselves at risk, and challenging their environment to ease the plight and improve the quality of life of people with whom they may have no connection except their shared humanity. It's noteworthy that those people in whom the bodhisattva life state is dominant, often receive very little public reward or recognition for their work. Clearly recognition and reward is not their motivation. They are driven by a powerful compassion to ease the suffering and raise the life state of others. That is the source of their greatest joy and fulfilment. In a sense in giving more of themselves, they become most themselves. That, in the end, might be the best description of the bodhisattva way.

That's it for today. Hope it helps to clarify things.
See you next time when we move onto Budhahood.
See you then,
William
PS Had a wonderful note the other day from a lady who lives in Montana, miles and miles she says from her nearest fellow practitioner, who thanked me profusely for writing The case for Buddhism ( no writer can have greater pleasure than being thanked for writing his book!!) because she says, it is a wonderful tool for giving others an awareness of the fundamentals  of Buddhism. That is precisely why it was written. I was filled with gratitude that she took the trouble to write. And let me say thank you to her here again. Thank you so much.

Monday 21 September 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 104

Hi Everybody,

We're in the middle of the chapter that sets out to explain the Buddhist concept of the ten worlds, or the ten states of life. It's one of the fundamental teachings of Nichiren Buddhism and its aim of course is to take us towards a greater self awareness, a deeper understanding of our behaviour so that we can respond more sensitively and more creatively to situations in our life, rather than simply reacting to them. That's its whole purpose, to enable us to create greater value out of every circumstance we find ourselves in, good, bad and indifferent. So we've looked at six of these life states, which Buddhism argues, describes the reality of life for most of us. This is where we spend most of our time, and the key insight is that we experience them very much in response to what is going on in our external environment; now up now down, now left now right depending to a large extent on what is happening to us. The clear implication is that our life state, and in a sense therefore our identity, from moment to moment, how we think and feel and behave and look even, is to a considerable extent dependent on what comes at us from without.

The remaining four lives could be described as representing the great potential in human lives, not simply responding to events and changes in our environment in a somewaht reactionary or oportunistic way, but seeking to take greater control of our lives to make the very most of them, making and shaping our lives you might say. So they are all marked, these four lives, by the effort that is required to achieve them. Which takes us to Learning and Realisation.

These two life states are often taken together because they are so closely related. They represent in a sense the two sides of the same coin. Both are concerned with the strong desire for self-improvement, although via slightly different routes. So learning essentially describes the process of study, putting ourselves ina  position where we can take on board the knowledge and understanding accumulated in particular fields. In the modern world of course we are likely to spend a considerable portion of our early lives in this arena. Acquiring new knowledge and skills, constantly deepening and widening our understanding of how the world worksm, has become more or less a life-time activity for many of us.

Realisation is slightly different in that it involves the inner process of reflection and consideration that enables us to relate this knowledge and understanding to our own lives and our own circumstances and so make the most creative and productive use of it, to enhance our own lives and the lives of those around us.

Buddhism does alert us to the potentially negative aspects of learning and realisation that can be manifested in a sense of superiority for example, over those who don't aspire to these life states. And we've all encountered unhappy examples of that; doctors for patients for example, professors for students, scientists for the relative ignorance of the general public. But in general these two life states, Learning and Realisation are seen very practically in Buddhism, as indeed they are presented by modern educationalists, as the veritable springboard to realising our individual potential, hence the use of the word, realisation.

That's it for today. Two more life states to go, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood. Deal with them later in the week.
See you then.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon or as a download on Kindle.

Thursday 17 September 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 103

Hi Everybody,

Hope all is well with you wherever you are. Beautiful late summer day here in Kew with warm sunshine and long shadows from the lower sun, and a sense of summer edging away. Always a slightly nostalgic time I feel. Anyway since I had such a long gap while I was away soaking up the sun in antibes I thought I would have an enthusiastic week with 3 episodes. And here's number two. We're in the middle of the chapter on the ten worlds. We've looked at the lower four worlds, the unpleasant ones that can wreck people's lives, hell, hunger, animality and anger. We've looked at the life state of tranquility or humanity as its often called and now we're onto rapture.

Rapture represents what is described in Buddhism as relative happiness, that is to say it is very much a transient rather than a deep-seated or long-lived sense of well-being. As its name suggests it is the wonderful up-welling of joy and exhilaration that we all experience when we achieve something that we've really set our heart on. So it brings with it the sense of personal fulfilment and the outburst of energy that comes with passing the difficult set of exams for example, getting that difficult promotion, winning a big prize or just setting off on a long-awaited holiday perhaps. Or falling in love. Indeed the modern ideal of romantic love is perhaps the most accurate metaphor for what we mean by rapture. But however wonderful and exhilarating it may be however much it enriches our life, the reality is that by its very nature rapture is short-lived, a sudden spike of joy in the normal curve of our lives.

Although many people today are inclined to equate this essentially transient state with the highest possible state of life, our maximum happiness as it were, and yearn for some way of making it permanent in their lives, Buddhism, and indeed our own common sense, tell us that the idea of permanent rapture is simply unreal. It only takes the passage of time, or a slight change in circumstances, for that peak of exhilaration and joy to pass, to be replaced by anothe rlife state. it is, by definition, a passing moment. The yearning for it to stay and be there forever, a permanent part of, our lives, is a delusion that can only lead to suffering.

Buddhism tells us that the six life states that we've been outlining briefly describe the reality of life for most of us. These are the worlds we spend a lot of time in, and one of the key insights that Buddhism offers is that we experience them very much as our response to what is going on in our external environment. They are very closely interlinked, and we can slip very easily from one to another as the day passes. And the argument is that as we fluctuate between these states we are pretty much at the mercy of our environment, now up now down, now left now right, depending on what is happening to us. The clear implication is that our life state, and in a sense therefore our identity, from moment to moment, how we think and feel and behave and look even, is, to a considerable extent, dependent on what comes to us from without. Happy when things seem to be going well. Unhappy when they don't. It leaves us pretty much like a rudderless boat, blown this way and that by whatever winds that blow. Bounced up and down by whatever waves that strike us. That is obviously a great simplification of the situation. I'm sure we all see our lives as being very much more complicated than that, but then overall message is clear enough, we can all too easily spend a lot of our lives simply responding to what happens to us, good and bad, rather than making and shaping our lives.

And that's where the next four worlds take us.

That's it for today.
thanks for reading this far.

See you next time,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon as a paperback or it  can be downloaded from Kindle. Lots of people have said very encouraging things about it, for which I'm immensely grateful

Tuesday 15 September 2015

my buddhist blog number 102

Hi Everybody,
Just back from holiday in Antibes in the South of France, a beautiful little old town between Nice and Cannes, not posh or smart, just very ordinary. Ordinary except that was originally founded by the Greeks, and then taken over by the Romans and the old centre of the town dates back to the 18th century with narrow winding streets only a couple of metres wide, and old fortifications overlooking the sea, and there's a huge blue bay with the Cap D'Antibes at one end and the blue shadows of the Alpes Maritimes marching down to the sea at the other. So very ordinary, but kind of breathtaking. And I've been going there for about 30 odd years and my children learned to fish off the rocks there and grew up spending their long summer holidays at the house I owned there. When we go there now we practice with some local members and this time we went off with them to the European Centre at Trets, further down the coast close to Marseille. It turned out that we had the place to ourselves, so there we were chanting to our hearts content in the grand hall, and in came two ladies visiting from Italy. So we did gongyo together, and it was just a beautiful moment, and as we were talking afterwards it turned out that they had read Il Budista Rilutante ( the Italian version of The Reluctant Buddhist) and when they recognised me as the author they both threw their arms around me enthusiastically and kissed me. So thats how I went to Trets and got kissed by two strange Italian ladies!!

So we pick up today where we left off on episode 101, in the midle of the Chapter on the ten worlds. A concept that is central to Nichiren Buddhism, and we's looking at the mini portraits of the ten states of mind that Buddhism paints for us. Weve looked at Hell, Hunger, animality and Anger, so we're now onto the state that is labelled Humanity. And once again it describes a life state that we all immediately recognise, in the sense that it describes those periods, those moments, long or short, when we are quiet and calm and completely at peace with our lot. We like the life we have. So it is fundamentally a neutral state. Nothing has excited us, or upset us, or aroused a passionate or anxious response. It is sometimes called a state of rest because it is at least in part about recharging our batteries. So it is marked by all sorts of positive qualities such as reasonablenes and sound judgement and consideration for others. When you are in this life state it means that you might be actively seeking to achieve compromise rather than conflict, or you are putting the best positive gloss on circumstances rather than being critical, or you are prepared to be very supportive of other people's proposals. It's a very relaxed and positive place to be.

Is there a negative side to this life state? Well it is sometimes suggested that it might lead to a certain amount of apathy, revealed perhaps in the long-term acceptance of a basically unsatisfactory situation, or an unwillingness to make the effort to change it. The ten worlds of course are all about self awareness, knowing where are, recognising how we are behaving or responding in a particular situation, and  once again Buddhism argues that it is the awareness of the nature of this life state that enables us to benefit from its positive qualities of compromise and sound judgment, and to avoid its dangers of accepting an unacceptable status quo.

That's it. Brief and to the point. Next time we move onto the life state that Buddhism calls rapture.
Hope to see you then.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is  available from  Amazon or a download on Kindle.

Thursday 27 August 2015

my buddhist blog number 101

Hi Everybody,

I'm just about to fly off to sun and sand and sea and other good stuff in Antibes, so I thought I'd squeeze in another episode before I go. We're in the middle of the explanation of this central Buddhist analysis that is called the ten worlds, and we've landed on Anger. It's a life state we all readily recognise of course, which you could say powerfully underlines both the validity and the value of this analysis; it's real, and practical and can genuinely help us navigate our emotional state. Anger is a state that is dominated not simply by all the external ugly manifestations of shouting and threatening and the storms of temper, but by the constant overwhelming demands of one's own ego. At its heart is the sense of superiority over others, with all the gross distortions of perspective that brings with it. So there will be the sudden outbursts of blazing anger that may seem to blow up from nowhere, often surprising the owner of the anger as much as the hapless victim. But there will also be lots of other destructive behaviour, such as rampant intolerance and cynicism and sarcasm, lack of gratitude, and constant criticism of others.

It goes without saying that anger of this sort can be immensely destructive of  personal relationships. At the wider level of society anger in this sense of superiority of self, clearly lies at the root of a whole range of widespread injustices from racism and religious intolerance, to the oppression of women and minority groups. So sitting in anger state is a very destructive place to be. No one wants to be there.

But once again, there is a positive side to anger because it is also a great achiever. It can be a powerful, highly energised driver towards change, in the fight against apathy for example, or situations that threaten the dignity of the individual.

The key to overcoming the destructive aspect of anger has to come from self-awareness. It can't just be switched off or re-directed from outside. Each of us has to take up a personal struggle to master our anger. It's entirely our responsibility.

So that's Anger state. Next time we're on to the state which Buddhism labels as Humanity, when we are kind of at peace with our lot. Hope to see you then.
Best wishes,
William
Just to remind you the book is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle as a download. it's doing well. Lots of generous things are being said about. The one I like most is that it not only helps with an understanding of Buddhism , but it helps people to live it on a daily basis. That's huge praise, for which I am immensely grateful.

Tuesday 25 August 2015

my buddhist blog number 100

Hi Everybody,

We're in the middle of the chgapter on the ten worlds.We've looked at Hell and Hunger and we move on now to the third of what are known as the lower life states, which is called Animality. As the name suggests, it defines a state of mind in which we are driven prety much by instinct, with little or no moderation from reason or moral considerations. So this is a state in which the strong or those with special knowledge have no qualms about taking advantage of those who are weak or unaware, in order to satisfy their own ends, regardless of the rights or the morality of the situation, or the pain caused.

These days we might think of the widespread occurrence of mindles hooliganism and reckless anti-social behaviour in which the perpetrators take no account of the suffering or the anxiety inflicted on the people around them. We could argue perhaps that we are being a bit hard on the animals when we define this semi-psychopathic behaviour by referecne to them! But the key point is clear enough, fundamental to this life state is an absence of empathy and humanity. It is also characterised by an absence of wisdom or judgement. So that in this state we simply don't care whetehr our behaviour is appropriate or not, we just go ahead and do whatever we want, regardless of other people's feelings or needs. Similarly we pay scant attention to things like rules or regulations that are designed to keep things running smoothly in our crowded urban environments.

So altogether people in this life state are pretty unpleasant to be with, and can cause a great deal of inconvenience at one end of the scale, and real suffering at the other.

These three life states, Hell, Hunger and Animality are known in Buddhism as the three evil paths, not so much because they are associated with evil in the conventional sense, but because they are undoubtedly the root cause of a great deal of suffering. Indeed they can completely tear lives apartor render them unbearable. People who spend much of their lives in these life states tend to rotate through them in quick succession, one after the other, driven by hunger for one thing or another, not really aware of, or caring about, the effects on other people, creating a great deal of pain and suffering and anguish in their own lives and the lives of others.

In that sense they are desperate life states, and one of the great virtues that stems from a knowledge of these ten worlds, is that it can act like a clarion call. It can make you starkly aware of the reality of your situation, and thus act as a powerful stimulus to lift yourself out of it. Who would want to continue to dwell in Hell, Hunger or Animality, once they realise where they are?

That's it for today. Thank you for reading up to this point.
Look forward to seeing you next time. Hope before long that we'll get these chapters out on The Buddhist Podcast, when Jason can find the time. I have recorded the whole book for him.
Best wishes,
William
PS You can get The Case for Buddhism on Amazon as a paperback, or as a download on Kindle.

Saturday 22 August 2015

my buddhist blog number 99

Hi Everybody,
I have to say when I type that 99 it seems like a very big number to me. I can't remember quite when I wrote number 1, but it's been about as long a journey as it was to write the book. It took a year. When you start out you are never quite sure where it is going to take you, and for how long. I'd done a lot of research but even so the eventual journey was very different from the one I'd envisaged. The human brain is simply amazing. That's what the new book is about. Well mainly. That's how it started out, the extraordinary evolution of the human brain, that we first acquired on the East African savanna's about 70,000 years ago, and that we now take on the District Line every morning to go to work. Same brain. Different world. But that's altogether another story. Where are we? Well we're just launching out on the brilliant, literally brilliant Buddhist analysis of the 10 worlds. We're spinning through the thumb nail portraits that Buddhism provides for us so that we can easily recognise where we are from moment to moment. And we've looked at Hell. Next up is Hunger.
' We've already touched upon Hunger briefly when we were looking at the desire for wealth which is so ubiquitous in the modern human character, but just to paint it ina bit more detail, hunger is essentially a state of constant dissatisfaction with where our life is now, because our wants and our desires have got out of control, and it's the out of control but that's the problem. Desires are of course fundamental to our human nature, and essential to life in many ways. They motivate us for example towards satisfying our basic needs for food and warmth and love and friendship, and move us on to satisfy the need for recognistion and reward and pleasure. Once again as you would expect, there are many gradations of this life state, from a more or less constant low-level itch to have some new thing or experience, all the way up to the stage where the hunger in a sense has become an end in itself,  so that it can never be satisfied. We end up chasing one desire after another, and yet experiencing no real sense of fulfilment or satisfaction. As soon as the desire has been achieved, the compelling hunger seeks out another object to be possessed. a more common term for it I suppose might be good old fashioned greed. Since what ever we get is not enough, we end up trapped in a world of frustrated yearning for more stuff, another kind of hell. We are in the grip of a genuine addiction, and like most addictions, it is the source of a great deal of suffering, not just for ourselves, but for all those around us.

What about the positive dimension of hunger? It lies in the fact that there is often a huge amount of drive and energy locked up in the hunger state. If that energy can be re-directed or re-channelled away from satisfying our own selfish needs, towards meeting the needs of others who may be severely deprived in various ways, then such hunger can move mountains and achieve great good.'

That's it for today. Be back next week with a look at Animality, the third of the four lower worlds.
See you then.
Best wishes,
william
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle as a download.

Wednesday 12 August 2015

my buddhist blog number 98

Hi Everybody,

We pick up exactly where we left off a couple of days ago; we're talking about the fundamental Buddhist principle of the Ten Worlds. We've covered the initial question of why 10? We move on to another key point, not a ladder!

' Another important point to emphasise is that these ten states are not in any way represented as a sort of  subjective or emotional ladder, on which we might move up or down in any progressive way, one rung at a time. Not at all. These ten life states represent rather the entire universe of our mind, and we can move from any part of that universe to any other part in a trice, depending on what is taken place within our minds and what is happening around us from moment to moment.

There is however a basic problem in putting this idea across. The movement of our mind is so dazzlingly swift, and words by comparison are so slow and cumbersome, that any attempt to describe these kaleidoscopic changes in our subjective or emotional life, in the slower medium of words inevitably appears somewhat laboured and unreal. It feels, and no doubt reads, a bit like walking in wet concrete, everything is slowed down and slightly caricatured. But don't let that put you off, the Ten Worlds are real in our life, and it really helps to know more about them.

OK, let's paint brief portraits of all ten life states, so that we can recognise them for what they are.

Hell
Hell as its name indicates, is a state of the deepest suffering or depression, often characterised by a feeling of helplessness. We feel we can't escape the pain we're in, we just have to endure it. That having been said there many gradations of course, from the somewhat auperficial hell of having  really bad day at the office, when everything and everyone seems to be against you, and just nothing goes right, to the despair and panic of being made redundant and not knowing where you are going to find another job to pay the bills. The distinctive colour of Hell state is grey, we feel grey within and the world seems grey without.

And then there is the ultimate hell of the deep deep grief at the loss of a child or a partner, when you cannot believe that the darkness will ever lift, and you don't know how you can carry on.

We all immediately recognise this state as being real. There's nothing in the least theoretical about it, it's a real part of our lives. The examples of course are as many and as varied as there are people to experience them. And when we have been cast inot hell state, the memory of it may remain sharp and clear with us for a very long time, sometimes forever.

Buddhism tells us that all these life states have both a positive and a negative dimension, but can there possibly be a positive dimension to Hell? Buddhism argues that there is, that the deep suffering can be the greatest possible stimulus to action. It is so painful that we feel compelled to summon up from somewhere the life force to enable us to climb out of the hole that our life has fallen into. Hell is also a great teacher, in the sense that having been there ourselves, we are immensely more capable of understanding and feeling compassion for others who are in hell state now, and therefore finding the best way to support them. '

We move on over the next few episodes to examine  all ten life states in the same way.
Hope to see you next time.
Best wishes,

William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback from Amazon and as a download from Kindle.

Sunday 9 August 2015

my buddhist blog number 97

Hi Everybody, I've had more writing commissions over the past 6 months than I had all of last year. Not quite sure whether to be pleased about that or not. I like to chill out in the summer, and then work harder in the winter. however mustn't look several gift horses in the mouth as they say. But it means bigger gaps than I would like in the blogging stakes. Apologies to any waiting readers. Good news is that I've just had another order for The Reluctant Buddhist from SGI-USA. and that's always pleasing, to know that it is still in demand. And extraordinarily Amazon are promoting the Spanish version in Spain. so life is being very sweet to me. anyway, we're at the beginnin gof Appendix A, dealing with tthe 10 worlds. and we pick up with a key question, why 10?

' Although it might seem when you first encounter the concept, to be somewaht implausible to say the least, to reduce the vast range of our constantly shifting responses to just 10 states. But hold your judgement till you have explored the idea a little further. It's worth bearing in mind that this is a structure that has undoubtedly stood the test of time. Moreover it does pass the all-important test of practicality.

If there were 50 or 100 life states for example, it would become wholly unwieldy and impractical as a way of thinking about our ordinary daily lives. That is a crucial point. The Ten worlds as a fundamental principle of Buddhism is not intended as a reference book to sit on the bookshelves, or alongside the psychiatrist's couch. It is of value only to the extent that it is useful to ordinary people going about their daily lives. It provides us in a sense with a road map, an A-Z of our inner life state. This is where you are, where do you want to be? With this structure we are offered thoughtful and detailed, and above all an objective guide to help us interpret where we are in our subjective or emotional life, so that we can see it more clearly and do something about it.
If we accept, as Buddhism teaches, that both suffering and happiness come not from external factors in our lives, but from deep within, then knowing more clearly where we are, as opposed to where we would like to be, is a crucial piece of information that we need. Indeed we might ask, where else are we going to get that information?

And this is certainly not superficial stuff. The life states are in from moment to moment affect everything in our life; how we feel, how we think, how we act, even how we look, not to mention how our environment responds to us. With a moment's reflection we can all recognise the truth in that. When we are in the state of anger for example, it is instantly signalled by the flushed face, the stifening of the facial muscles, and the raised pitch of the voice. That's an angry man we say! And that set of indocators  is likely to trigger an immediate tension in our environment. Everybody responds with their own heightened tension, and increased attention to what's going on. Is he going to hit him we might think! Then if somebody happens to prick the tension with a joke or a laugh, in an instant it's all gone. The muscles in the face relax, the voice is lowered again, the eyes lose their glitter, the general tension in the room dissipates. It's all there in those few contrasting moments, how we feel, how we think, and look and act. and how our environment responds. '

That's it. Enough for today. I'll be back with another episode later this wek, promise! It takes up the issue of the 10 worlds not being a ladder!!

See you then I hope.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon all over, and on Kindle as a download.

Saturday 25 July 2015

my buddhist blog number 96

Hi Everybody, I've been away in deepest Norfolk with Sarah and Gatsby the dog just chilling out for a week or so in a really beautiful part of the countryside, winding country lanes and sleepy villages and fields of golden wheat and beaches that go on for miles. It's not part of the UK I've visited and I was really surprised just how out of the way and unchanged it is. Beautiful. And quite unlike my usual holidays where I'm either windsurfing or playing tennis, so that I come back and need a rest! Anyway, here I am totally rested and back at the blog. We've finished Chapter 12 , so we're on to 2 appendices that this book has, one dealing with two very important aspects of Nichiren Buddhism, one concerned with the principle of the 10 worlds, the other with the basic elements of the practice. So here we go with Appendix A, entitled States of Mind.

' Buddhism seeks to explain the reality of daily life. It does not present in any way a sort of utopian ideal, or an abstract vision of what might be. It is absolutely real. So real that you can grab hold of it. It is a rich and detailed analysis of the nature of human life, built up on the basis of observations and perceptions as well as the inspiration of some quite exceptionally gifted and enlightened people whom we happen to call Buddhas. It's not scientific, but there are many comparisons to be made with scientific observation. It's no accident for example that modern psychology is deeply interested in many of the consclusions that Buddhism has arrived at, about the essential nature of human life. As the late philosopher and historian Arnold Toynbee has written,

'The Buddhist analysis of the dynamics of life is more detailed and subtle than any modern western analysis I know of .'

The Buddhist concept of the Ten Worlds, or the ten states of life is just such an analysis of the dynamics of human life.Its purpose is to describe for us in a way that is systematic, and therefore practical and useful something that we all experience, but which we take so much for granted as a normal part of our lives that we rarely give it a moments thought. That something is the extraordinary moment-to-moment changeability in our state of mind as we go about our daily lives.

We all know tha tour life state, or how we feel, changes constantly throughout the day, triggered by the constant flux of thought within, and the stream of events we encounter without. Our mind is so rapid in its response to every stimulus, and everything that we sense or that we experience calls forth a response. So every hour can be different, every minute, at times every second, so swift is the ability of the mind to respond to what is going on both in and around us.

Since Buddhism is entirely about the ordinary lives of ordinary human beings, it has to cope with this feature of our lives, and the concept of the Ten Worlds is the result. It goes without saying that they are not objective places these worlds, they are of course purely subjective states, inside our heads, states of mind. But why just 10? '

That's the question we go on to answer next episode.
Hope to see you then.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon in paperback or as a download from Kindle.
Any comments you want to make really gratefully received

Wednesday 8 July 2015

my buddhist blog number 95

Hi Everybody,

We're coming to the end of Chapter 12, which is really about the wider social implications of our personal daily practice.

' So Buddhism argues, we can have the absolute conviction that when we set out on this purely personal journey towards greater hope and optimism and resilience, even though at the outset, we may be focused largely or even entirely on our own concerns, inevitably, with the inner growth that comes from the discipline of the daily practiceit becomes a wider social impulse. Buddhism is crucially about social as well as individual change.

It is my strongly held view that Buddhist values and principles can bring the very greatest value to the daily life of anyone, in any circumstances, whether or not they actually choose to take up the daily practice. But that said, we can come to understand that our daily practice is indeed the stone that we personally are dropping into the global pool. And every stone, however small, however personal and intimate and insignificant it might seem, creates ripples, and ripples create change. Initially as we've seen that personal change may only have an effect upon a relatively close-knit group, on family and friends and colleagues at work perhaps. But the effect is real, it is crucial that we come to understand that, it's real. And as we carry on, as we sustain this movement towards a more positive approach to all the circumstances we encounter, so Buddhism suggests, the ripples extend slowly outwards, gradually perhaps, but nevertheless they continue, out into the local society and beyond.

We can that is, by the way we personally choose to live as individuals, by the values and the behaviours we choose to adopt, undoubtedly help to transform what Daisaku Ikeda calls, ' the tenor of our times.'

That's it for today. Commendably brief I hope you'lll say!
Next time we move on to States of Mind or life states.
Hope to see you then.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon in paperback or as a download from Kindle. And I have to thank everybody that it has been so warmly received.

Saturday 27 June 2015

my buddhist blog number 94

Hi Everybody,
When I type that blog number 94 I feel that it is such a long journey we've travelled since numero uno. So many themes, so many issues, and you realise just how profoundly Buddhism comes into one's life and changes how you approach everything. And one of its greatest benefits is that because it is a daily practice it causes you to constantly review your life and how you are living it. I'm going through a tough time at the moment for various reasons and I can see so clearly how the practice stabilises you and enables you to focus your inner resources on dealing with the difficulties that arise. It's a great stabiliser.

Anyway, here we are coming to the end of chapter 12, which is essentially about Buddhismand social change.

' Over the past ten to fifteen years, perhaps a bit longer, the discussion of what we really mean when we talk about a sense of well-being in our lives, what kinds of values and behaviour make people feel good about their lives and their relationships, has passed out of the hands of philosophers and religious teachers, into mainstream psychol;ogical and sociological studies. We have tried in this book to document enough of that movement to illustrate the truth of that. But all the indications are that the circle of this debate is now widening to encompass mainstream practical, political and economic thinking.

The idea that there's much more to life than Gross domestic product or GDP is no longer just a passing political joke. It is becoming part of mainstream political discussion. That represents I suggest, a genuinely seismic shift in the way society as a whole thinks about the idea of progress and success, away from strictly limited economic and financial indicators that have been used right across the world up till now, towards a much more meaningful measure that embraces the central idea of individual well-being. That would be a revolution, and one that would make social policy infinitely more compatible with a Buddhist approach to life. So it's not a marginal issue is it?

Buddhism argues that we can have the absolute conviction that when we set out on this purely personal journey towards greater hope and optimism and resilience, even though we may at the outset be focused largely, or even entirely on our own concerns, inevitably, with the inner growth that comes from the discipline of the daily practice, it becomes a wider social impulse. Buddhism is crucially about social as well as individual change. It determinedly seeks achieve harmonious societies, and beyond that global peace. And it determinedly chooses to do so by the only route it can be achieved, individual by individual.
It argues that a movement towards a better society, based on respect for the lives and values of others, and with peace and individual well-being as its objective, cannot be created solely as a top-down process. It has to start from the bottom up, with a profound change taking place in the lives of countless individuals, gradually influencing the way the whole of society functions. Daisaku Ikeda reminds us continually that we can all be part of that crucial process.

' In an age when both society and the religious world are wrought by turmoil and confusion,' as they are so painfully today, ' only a teaching that gives each individual the power to draw forth his or her Buddha nature can lead all people to happiness and transform the tenor of the times. In other words there can be no lasting solution to the problems facingn society that does not involve our individual state of life. '

Well enough there I think, I hope, to give us pause for thought about how our individual practice fits into this wider vision of Buddhism as an engine of social change.

See you next time I hope. Thanks for reading thus far.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon or for download on Kindle.

Saturday 20 June 2015

MY BUDDHIST BLOG NUMBER 93

Hi Everybody,

Saturday afternoon, blog time! We're coming to the end of Chapter 12, in which we pull together some of the many threads of the discussion in the book. I wrote this one deliberately dealing with a different issue in each chapter such as Buddhism and Belief, Buddhism and Happiness, Buddhism and Ethics etc, so that the reader could dip into chapters at random to take part in a discussion on those specific issues, and it's an approach that seems to have worked. Lots of people have written to say that they often just go back to the book from time to time, just to refresh their memories of the discussion of a particular issue. What I have found with the blog is that because each episode really flows on from the previous one, it helps to retrace my steps just a fraction to pick up the thread of the argument with each episode, so that it makes sense. I only hope that works for most people. So where are we/ We're talking about how we can make a difference as Buddhists in our own environment...
' It involves coming to understand that we are not powerless, and that we can start out by having a beneficial effect upon our own immediate environment, the sphere in which we live and work. The key thing is making a personal determination that we wish to make a difference.

Buddhism asks us to make that determination every single day.

And once again Buddhism is by no means alone in standing up for that view without compromise. Remember just how boldly John F. Kennedy galvanised the optimism of an entire nation when he put that same thought into his own words,

' First examine our attitude towards peae itself. Too many of us think it impossible, too many of us think it is unreal, but that is a dangerous defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man made, therefore they can be solved by man, and man can be as big as he wants.'

And man can be as big as he wants. Or as Buddhism might well put it, man can be as positive and optimistic and as resilient ...as he determines to be. One could argue I think that we are very much in need of that spirit, that powerful vision at the present time.

A seismic shift in how we measure progress
And unquestionably, despite the widespread tumult, and the conflict and suffering that we see in the world, the tectonic plates of understanding do seem to be shifting. Buddhism as we've seen has been teaching this radical idea for many hundreds of years, namely that we create the greatest valuein our own lives when we concern ourselves with the happiness and welfare ofm others. That is the very basis and foundation of the Buddhist approach to life; respect for and concern for the welfare of everyone with whom we come in contact. We have seen that in the past couple of decades , modern sociological and psychological research has also come to recognise and document something very similar, namely that we do indeed experience great personal benefit, a greater sense of purpose and confidence and pleasure in our lives, when we try to live in this generous and compassionate and altruistic way.

And I have to say, speaking both as a Buddhist and as a responsible citizen, we can only welcome that  remarkable conjunction of views since it can only be immensely beneficial to individuals and to the communities and societies we all live in. But the change we are witnessing I suggest goes even further than that......'

And we'll pick up on that further change I'm talking about next time, the redefinition of what we mean by progress, that is taking place in society.

See you then hopefully,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is availabel on Amazon as a paperback, and as a download on Kindle.

Saturday 13 June 2015

my buddhist blog number 92

Hi Everybody,

Well I'm back from the brilliant light and the blue skies and the even bluer sea and the crisp croissants from the little boulangerie on the corner and the fishing from the rocks in the evening sunlight and the windsurfing and the...we had such a great holiday in Antibes, just having loving time together really after being so busy here at home. But it's great to be back too. I love the greenness of Kew with all the roadside trees and the scruffiness of the little village that sits around the station. Could I put a book on your summer reading list that really gets you thinking about your values and how you live your life. Its The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris, philosopher and neuroscientist. Not a new book but an utterly brilliant one that argues basically that the basis for our moral choices has to be the extent to which they create well-being in society. Which is not a million miles away from the teachings of Shakyamuni and Nichiren, that the basis for our behaviour in society, and the greatest cause for our own well-being indeed, should be the extent to which we create value for others.

So where were we? We were in the middle of Chapter 12 which realy serves to pull together some of the main threads of the book, and we've reached a section which is sub-titled, the greatest challenge.

' Much of the dailyness of our Buddhist practice is inevitably focused on helping us as indviduals to understand our own lives and to develop good strong, productive relationships within a relatively close environment of family and friends and colleagues. Inevitably. Those are the relationships that have by far the biggest influence on our lives. And as we all know, maintaining harmonious and productive relationships even within this relatively narrow environment takes considerable energy and effort.

But that having been said, perhaps the greatest challenge facing all of us as individuals, is learning how to extend this understanding, this compassion that the practice helps us to develop and to keep fresh and alive, out beyond the inner circle of friends and colleagues and work mates, out beyond our own community and our own society, to embrace all of humankind. That's a very big ask isn't it? And at first glance it may well seem like...well just a bunch of words. They may express what we would like to hear, but are they little more than wishful thinking? Little more than a thin pious hope? The history of man's inhumanity to man is so devastating that it can drive out the hope that such a change can ever be achieved.

But Buddhism is by no means alone these days in presenting this challenge to us. There is a growing body of opinion that such a vision is not only immensely, morally desirable, but a profound necessity for the future well-being of all of us, more interdependent now than ever before in human history. Let's go back to the American economist Jeffrey Sachs again, with his passionate argument for looking at the world through the lens of our common humanity;

' Most importantly, ' he writes, ' for us on this crowded planet, facing the challenge of living side by side as never before, and facing a common ecological challenge that has never been upon us in human history until now, the way of solving problems requires one fundamental change. A big one. And that is learning that the challenges of our gneration are not us versus them...they are us, all of us together on this planet, against a set of shared and increasingly urgent problems.'

All of us together on this planet...learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. It is a powerful vision, and most ordinary human beings would willingly subscribe to it. We desperately want the resolution that Jeffrey Sachs describes for us. People of all cultures and of all religions, Jew and Arab and Sunni and shia and catholic and Protestant and Hindu and Buddhist, living side by side... not necessarily in complete harmony, because history tells us that there are deep rifts in belief that may never be completely healed...but at least peacefully and sustainably.

But most ordinary human beings, describing themselves as realists, believe that to be an unattainable ideal, and in any case there doesn't seem to be any path along which it can be achieved. One of Buddhism's greatest services to humanity I suggest, is that it simply refuses to accept that interpretation of reality. Buddhism reminds us every single day, that however difficult the path, it starts right here for each one of us, at our own feet, and we can start to move along it whenever we choose. It involves coming to understand that we are not powerless, and that we can start out by seeking to have a beneficial influence upon our own environment, the little sphere within which we live and work. The key thing is making a personal determination that we wish to make a difference.

Buddhism asks us to make that determination every single day. '

That's it for today.
It's good to be back.
hope to see you again next time.
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and as a download on Kindle

Saturday 30 May 2015

my buddhist blog number 91

Hi Everybody,

I'm in something of a hurry. I'm packing to leave for the South of France at the crack of dawn tomorrow, but I wanted to get this episode off before I leave. So if you don't mind I will dive straight into it. We're talking about the Buddhist concept of connectedness. We've looked at the theory for a bit, and last time we asked the question, but what difference to our actual behaviour.

Good question. Indeed it might be perhaps the most important question we can ask ourselves, given that there is so much conflict in society and between ethnic groups. What real difference we need to ask, does all that theoretical stuff make to the way we live our daily lives? What's wrong you might ask with seeing ourselves, as we commonly do, stopping at our skin, quite separate and distinct from everything else on the planet? What practical difference can it make? Science of course, in presenting us with the clearest possible evidence of our deep inrerconectedness doesn't have to take an ethical or a social stance. But Buddhism most certainly does, and thefundamental Buddhist answer to that question would be that everything in our behaviour is driven by our perceptions. Thus a gross misperception, that arises directly from the narrowness of our view, strictly limited by what can perceive with our senses, can lead to grossly inappropriate behaviour. As I have expressed it elsewhere,

' Close to it simply means 'me' and ' you.' That's probably easy enough to handle. Further afield it begins to mean 'us' and ' them.' They are different from us and it begins to get more difficult. You may well be a mild-mannered and altruistc individual who gets on with everybody, but it goes without saying that not everybody is. It doesn't take more than a brief look at human history, old and new, to see that the idea of separation, of them and us, of their lot and our lot, of white skins and brown skins, of Catholics and Protestants, of Christians and Muslims, lies at the root of everything from the brawling between different tribal groups of football fans outside the pub on a Saturday night, to the powerfully disruptive forces of racism, and extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism. And unspeakable events like Rwanda. And Sebrenica. And Auschwitz.'

Those terrible names may come from a different time and a different space, but they are truly part of the heritage of every one of us. We can never escape from what they mean.

So the Buddhist answer to that first question rings out loud and clear, the difference it makes to us all is simply immense. Immense. There is no other word for it. As soon as we understand that everything in our behaviour is driven by our perceptions, then keeping those perceptions sharp and clear, and keeping our compassion alert and active becomes of the utmost importance to the way we encounter everything in our daily life. Are we creating value in this situation, or are we being carelessly destructive? Are we respecting the views and the concerns of others or are we carelessly trampling over them in pursuit of our own interests.

That clarity and that freshness are some of the benefits that flow from the discipline of the daily practice. That is one of its main functions, to keep that awareness and that compassion fresh and young and active, every single day.'

Right. Enough for today. I'm off on a weeks hols. And I have to say I think I deserve it. Been working very hard. Speak to you when I get back.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon and as a download from Kindle.
People tell me it's good value! Hope so.

Monday 25 May 2015

my budhist blog number 90

Hi Everybody,

I just want to say a huge thank you to all the people who've taken the trouble to read this blog, and all those people who've said some really encouraging things about the book, that it's interesting and even inspiring and hugely accessible and easy to read and immensely informative about both Buddhism and science.....and so on.....the sort of feedback that every writer would love to receive. So a zillion thank you's from my heart.

Right, well we're in the middle of this section about the fundamental Buddhist principle of the interconnectedness of all things, and we've just had that wonderful quote from that truly great Kenyan lady Wangerei Maathai in which she talks about all human beings who have ever lived on the planet coming from the same stem that originated in East Africa. That's where we pick it up.

' So that is the powerful bond that Buddhism and now modern science, ask us to understand, binds us all so closely to everyone on Earth. And remarkably it doesn't stop there. Because the very materials of which we are made connect us intimately to every rock, every planet, every galaxy spinning out ther eon the edge of darkness. We are that is made of the very same atoms and molecules. It is simply impossible to conceive how a young man livin gin Northern India all those years ago, and seeking desperately to understand the nature of reality, could possibly have perceived such a level of connectedness, but we are indeed, connected across the universe down to the level of the atom and the molecule.

' ...all matter is the same...the modern particle physicist explains to us,...the matter of ehich the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on earth...there are the same kinds of atoms there as on earth. The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures...'

And let's be clear what we have here. We have a radical modern theoretical physicist coming suprisingly, astoundingly close to the way in which fully 700 years earlier, the young Buddhist social revolutionary Nichiren Daishonin sought to transmit to us, Shakyamuni's understanding of of the closeness of our connection to everything in our environment. So he writes,

' Life at each moment encompasses the body and mind and self and environment of all sentient beings in the Ten Worlds as well as all insentient beings..including plants, sky, earth, and even the minutest particles of dust. Life at each moment permeates the entire realm of phenomena and is revealed in all phenomena..''

Body mind and self, sentient and insentient beings, and plants and sky and earth and dust. Nothing is excluded. Both Buddhism and science it would seem are at one in explaining to us that we live out our lives as part of a totally joined up world. And, I would argue, the more we can grasp and internalise that truth, the more profoundly it is likely to influence our behaviour.

But it poses a huge question for us...what difference does it make? And that might well be the most important question we can ask ourselves. What real difference does all that theoretical stuff make to our daily lives? '

And that's where we go next week to answer that question head on.
Thanks for reading. If you know anyone who might conceivably be interested in reading this you would be doing them a huge favour if you were to pass it on to them.

See you next time,
William
The book The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon  and Kindle.

Sunday 10 May 2015

my buddhist blog number 89

Hi Everybody,

I was invited yesterday to the first showingof a short film on dementia, directed as it happened by a Nichiren Buddhist, and with another member playing the lead ing role, so a very special event, and very moving. Couldn't hold back the tears. The film underlined the immense impact that two key qualities that lie at the heart of a Buddhist practice can have on our relationships, respect for others, and empathy, seeking to understand where they are in their lives and how our words and actions can create the most value for them in that situation. You don't have to be a Buddhist of course to have respect and empathy, but it helps!

Back to this episode. It follows on directly from the last. I realise as I write these blogs that the lines of argument in the books I write are so closely constructed that it helps to read the previous episode before reading the current one...but I can't keep asking people to do that can I? I just have to go on thinking it!! Anyway here we go,

'...it's about balance. We are so accustomed in the West, with out our essentially Judaeo-Christian cultural heritage to separate God and Caesar, State and Church, to understand spiritual aspirations as being different from, separate from, and often more worthy somehow than material ones. Buddhism argues that both have an essential role to play in the complex spectrum of human well-being. There's nothing about the one that makes it inherently more worthy than the other. It's up to us to establish the balance in our lives that enables us to live the most creative and fulfilling lives for ourselves, and the most supportive of others. It's all part of that being wholly responsible for our lives that we have discussed at some length in this book. And of course it takes us back to the respect and empathy I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

A crucial part of the down-to-erath practicality that Buddhism brings into our lives is coming to understand...with our whole lives...the profound interconnectedness of all things. We may not be able to see it directly with our eyes of course, or experience it with our senses, but Buddhism, and now of course modern science, ask us to understand that everything but everything in existence, is interconnected and interdependent at the most profound level. Just as, on the surface of things, the island seems to be completely separate from the mainland, but go deeper, to the sea bed, and it is seen to be part of the whole. Or just as each wave on the surface of the sea may seem separate and distinct, but each one is embedded in the great body of the ocean. But those of course are just metaphores to illustrate the idea. The fact is that this deeply rooted Buddhist view, which goes back directly to Shakyamuni's great struggle all those years ago, to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, is now echoed in very precise terms by what modern science has to tell us.

Our DNA for example, the blueprint for making us who we are, we now know connects us to every othe rliving thing. Not just to other humans, but to every living entity tha thas ever existed on the face of the planet. That is an extraordinary mind-blowing idea, most passionately expressed as we saw in an earlier chapter, by one of today's greatest philosopher-scientists, Daniel Dennet; ' ...you share a common ancestor,' he tells us, ' with every chimpanzee, every worm, every blade of grass, every redwood tree.'

And the great Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel  Peace Laureate, Wangerie Maathai, reminds us of something that we could never perceive just with our senses, namely that all human beings who walk the planet, are all from the same family stem;

' So far, ' she writes, ' all the information we have suggests that we come from somewhere within this part of the world, in East Africa, and that of course for many people must be surprising because I think we are so used to being divided along ethnic lines, or along racial lines, and so we look all the time for reasons to be different from each other. So it must be surprising for some of us to realise that what differentiates us is usually very superficial, like the colour of our eyes, or the texture of our hair. But we are essentially all from the same stem, from the same origin. So I think that as we continue to understand ourselves and appreciate each other, and especially when we get to understand that we all come from the same origin, we will shed a lot of the prejudices that we have harboured in the past.' 

Let's sincerely hope so. '

Enought food for thought. I can't thank you enough for reading thus far. I'm just so grateful.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback on Amazon, and as a download on Kindle.