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
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