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.