Hi Everybody,
Such a beautiful bright spring-like day. My morning run in the park with Gatsby was just joy. I missed the eclipse because of the clouds, but they soon broke up and let the sunlight through, and as we ran through a couple of woods you could the sunlight streaming through the trees. Just beautiful.
To the blog. This episode runs on directly from the last one. so that one brought us up the life state of Hunger. This one describes it. They're all important of course, but in this obsessively materialistic age, I think a firm grasp of the way in which this life state can undermine our pleasure and satisfaction with our lives can save us from a lot of grief.
So Hunger very briefly is about wanting. It is the life state in which we are convinced that our happiness lies in acquiring something that is, for one reason or another, just out of reach. We know for sure that if we can only have this something, we will be so much happier than we are now. It will really do the trick. The agony lies in in the fact that for people who have this as their dominant life tendency there is always something to want, always something more to reach out for in the saleroom or the web catalogue...that will really do the trick. And it's not limited of course simply to material stuff, to clothes and cars and falt screen TV's and stuff. By no means. It manifests itself in just about every aspct of people's lives; the nagging dissastisfaction with what we have, the constant desire for something more. A modern social network like Facebook for example even stimulats the desire to acquire and display..more friends. And Twitter..more followers. As if they were commodities.
And that's the key point isn't it? For as long as our lives are largely taken up with stuff, we are essentially treating ourselves as material animals. But we know that to be false don't we? We know that we all have a spiritual dimension to our lives, however much we may seek to ignore it or mask it, under a shell of cynicism say. The physical and the material simply aren't enough, and for as long as we try to live as if they were, with our live slargely driven by the next acquisition or the next bonus, we know full well that we are in some measure diminishing ourselves. Or in Buddhist terms we are slandering ourselves.
As we've seen, Nichiren Daishonin nails this seemingly modern issue so precisely that it's worht repeating his words;' more valuable than the treasures 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, and just 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 meaning and the worth of our lives, totally regardless of wealth or possessions, and warm and generous relations with all those whose lives touch ours.
It's like comng home.
That's it for today.
Thank you for reading this far. Its much appreciated.
See you next time.
Best wishes,
William
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