Hi Everybody,
Hope you are well and rejoicing in this spring that's all around us, here in the UK anyway. You can't help but think of Nichiren's famous gosho phrase, ' winter always turns to spring,' and what it means when the goin ggets tough and you have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Winter always turns to spring...I will get through this. We can never remember whole gosho passages, but as daisaku Ikeda advises us, we can embed in our lives these extraordinary powerful phrases so that they leap into the mind when we need them; phrases like, ' no one was born hating others,' and ' a coward never had his prayers answered' and ' the treasures of the heart are most valuable of all,' and so on. And that's the phrase we pick up on this week, because we're right at the end of Chapter 11 and I'm going to back track a couple of lines. So we've been talking about the fact that although there are huge pressures on us these days to live as essentially acquisitive, materialist individuals, bent on a accumulating more stuff, we should never forget how profoundly important to us is our need for a meaningful spiritual life.
' As we've seen, Nichiren Daishonin nails this seemingly modern issue so precisely that it's worth repeating his words again; ' more valuable than the treasure in any storehouse...' that is to say more stuff, ...' are the treasures of the body...' that is to say good health and an active life...' and the treasures of the heart are most valuable of all..' that is to say a vital and meaningful spiritual life.
And in our deepest selves we know that whenever we manage to pause from the pace and bustle and constant bombarding materialism of modern life, just to take stock of who we are and where we are in our lives, and what is truly important to us, we recognise that we earnestly seek treasures of the heart in our lives. We need a strong sense of the meaningn and the worth of our lives, totally regardless of wealth or possessions, and warm and generous relationships with all those whose lives touch ours.
It's like coming home.
And I think it could be argues that that kind of seeking, that kind of search for something more to life, is at least part of the reason why over the past few decades, what might be called this quiet revolution has taken place, quiet because it has never been the stuff of headlines. But in that time frame many tens of thousands of people in the West and elsewhere around the world, ordinary people like us, holding down a job in an office or a factory, falling in love and bringing up families, worrying about the rising tide of bills and caring for aged relatives and so on, have chosen to put that altogether under a Buddhist set of values and principles. And for this constantly growing number of people, clearly the choice that Buddhism offers provides a meaningful resolution to the countless challenges that modern life in the West throws at all of us. Meaningful and happier indeed, because obviously people in such large numbers are not turning to Buddhism because it makes them less happy, or resolves fewer problems!
It's also possible to argue I think that this movement of strong Buddhist values and principles westwards is one among several influences that is triggereing a profound re-think of what we really mean when we talk about the successful society in the West, away from the readitional measures that have todo largely if not entirely with the accumulation of wealth and rising GDP, towards measures that have more to do with quality of life and well-being.'
That's it for today. Hope it was worth reading.
Back next time with the start of Chapter Twelve
See you then.
Best wishes,
William
PS Just to remind you, The Case for Buddhism can be bought as a paper back from Amazon and as a download from Kindle.
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