Hi Everybody,
Great news today from two huge allies. One from my dear friend Jason Jarrett, he of the Buddhist podcast, now moved to Vancouver. He is frantically busy the whole time travelling the world in his big new job, but he tells me that he has started editing the recordings of The Case for Buddhism that I have been periodically firing across to him, for upcoming podcast programmes. That is such great great news, because the feedback we get from around the world on the support and encouragment that people get from the podcast is just so inspiring. And the second piece of news from another dear friend Tiziana in Bogota. She's the lady who burnt so much midnight oil translating the Reluctant Buddhist and Buddhism and the Science of Happiness into Spanish for South America. Recently SGI Dominican Republic have been buying lots of copies of Il Budista Reacio as the Spanish version is called, and today she sent them 70 copies of both. That just blows me away. That something I wrote sitting in my study here in Kew, should touch people's lives in Santo Domingo! Isn't that amazing. Yes is the short answer!
Anyway, back to The Case for Buddhism , and we're in the middle of this chapter that discusses what I have called Buddhism and the Problem Paradox. How does Buddhism help us to deal with all the tough stuff tha tlife throws at us? And this paragraph has a sub heading... a personal training programme.
' So a Buddhist practice isn't in any way about a form of escapism, about finding some inner meditative refuge away from the pace and clamour and constant complexity of modern life. Although that of course is one of the most widely held stereotypes of what Buddhism is about, namely getting away from it all, or most of it. Buddhism is above all about ' fighting optimism.' About struggle and challenge, about challenging attitudes and behaviours that don't create value, or that don't lead to positive outcomes. It's far easier of course for us to go on simply complaining about problems that arise, or responding to them instinctively, which most often means negatively. As we all know so well, few things in life are more difficult than challenging patterns of thought or behaviour that we have spent years cultivating and nurturing and embedding into our lives. It takes real self- knowledge and courage and great persistence, simply not bein gprepared to give up.
Setting out to achieve that change in perspective, that change in attitude, is essentially the role that the daily Buddhist practice plays, the daily Buddhist, personal training programme. Indeed the true greatness of this practice in my view is precisely that. It enables us to achieve that slight shift in perspective, that slight shift in understanding, and strange as it may seem, that is all that is needed. It may only be a slight change, but time and time again it proves to be enough to enable us to look at the problem with a completely different attitude, that then leads on to tangible, positive, sometimes even remarkable outcomes in people's lives. And every time it does so, it reinforces the confidence and the resolve to tackle the next issue that comes along in the same way. And in that way we find ourselves moving steadily from being generally anxious and negative about problems, to being focused and confident about resolving them.
That is the shift in attitude that we are seeking. So theproblems remain the same, but our sense of being able to overcome them has changed profoundly. And problems that we feel confident we can overcome, actually change in character. They no longer seem so looming or so threatening. In fact we consciously change the way we talk about them and describe them to ourselves and to others. We start to call them challenges, and the change is by no means simply verbal. Problems are negative and threatening. Challenges are stimulating and uplifting. As soon as you say, ' I've got this challenge coming up next month,' you feel differently about it don't you? You feel immediately that you are preparing to stand against it...and win.
Given our powerful cultural conditioning it's important to emphasise perhaps, that we are not talking here about something akin to stoicism, about merely putting up with problems, or being broad shouldered in bearing them as a burden, Not at all. That's a completely different approach. What we are talking about here is transformation, about seeing problems differently and turning them into a source of personal growth, growing our self confidence, and our sense of our own capability, both immensely important contributors to our sense of well-being.
Nichiren Buddhists often describe this approach to problems with the phrase, turning poison into medicine. That is to say, taking a difficult and maybe seemingly impossible situation, and not simply enduring it, but turning it around completely, to create longer term value and self fulfilment out of it.
It's interesting that there is a phrase that modern psychologists use that strongly buttresses the virtue of this age-old Buddhist teaching. The psychologists talk about the ' constructive contribution ' that is made to our lives in tackling suffering and problems in this way. '
That's enough for one episode I think. Next time we look at the way this positive approach to life, helps us immensely to help others.
See you then, William
In case you are interested, The Case for Buddhism is available from Amazon.
It's doing well.
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