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.
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