Hi Everybody,
I was walking in the rain early this morning with Gatsby. It was still wonderfully refreshing in the woods with the brilliant green of the young leaves on the trees, and everywhere signs of spring busting out all over.And would I go out every morning for this upliftingwalk if I didn't have Gatsby? I doubt it.
We were talking in the last episode about how important it is to take note of the extraordinary clarity and modernity of Shakyamuni's perceptions all those centuries ago, of our fundamental need as human beings to live in such a way as to create harmonious and balanced relationships within these three dimensions that make up our lives, with ourselves first of all at the centre, we can achieve nothing if we are at odds with ourselves, and then with the extension of human society around us, and then beyond with the wider environment.
And it is extraordinary to observe how some of the very latest offerings from today's scientists and philosophers take up those same themes and express remarkably similar views. So we have Jeffrey Sachs for example, the noted American economist, when he tries to define what he believes to be the greatest challenge facing modern societies, clearly embraces all of those three dimensions; ourselves, society, and the environment.
' Ours, he writes, ' is not the generation that faced the Cold War. Our is not the generation to have first grappled with the nuclear demon, although we still grapple with it today. Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world...facing the challenge of living side by side as never before, and facing a common ecological challenge that has never been upon us in human history until mow...'
Sam Harris, neuroscientist and philosopher, in his stimulating nand controversial book, The Moral Landscape, in which he puts forward what seems to me the extraordinarily ' Buddhist ' argument that the primary basis for making any ethical decisions should be to increase the well-being of mankind as a whole. He writes,
' As we better understand the brain, we will increasingly understand all the forces...kindness, reciprocity,trust, openness to argument, respect for evidence,intuitions of fairness, impulse control, the mitigation of aggression etc... that allow friends and strangers to collaborate on the common projects of civilisation. Understanding ourselves in this way, and using this knowledge to improve human life, will be among the most important challenges to science in the decades to come.'
' ...that allow friends and strangers to collaborate on the common projects of civilisation...' It's a powerful phrase that projects an immensely bold vision; this inextricable and essential bond between individual development and social progress. It could be seen I suggest, as very much a scientist's...or perhpas I should say a neuroscientist's ..version of Buddhist vision that we touched upon earlier, presented by the eminent authority on Buddhism, Daisaku Ikeda;
' ...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 facing society that does not involve our individual state of life.'
Our individual life state, our very own individual values and principles, playing a key role in resolving the profound problems faced by modern society. Buddhism has always taught that although a Buddhist practice is very much an individual activity, enabling ordinary people to build a strong and resilient inner self, it only becomes meaningful as something that is lived in society. That is to say, the daily determination to live as a Buddhist, rather than simply knowing and understanding Buddhist principles, becomes apparent above all in our behaviour, and in the way we handle the realtionships that occur at every level in our lives, from the most fleeting to the most complex.
As you might expect, we spend a great deal of time talking about the way in which a Buddhist practice can help us as individuals, to understand our lives and to develop happy and productive relationships within a relatively close environment of family and friends and work colleagues. Of course. The fact is that those are the very relationships that have by far the biggest influence on our lives. They make up the very fabric of our lives from day to day and from year to year. And as we all know, maintaining harmonious and creative and fulfilling relationships even within this relatively narrow compass, takes considerable energy and effort and compassion.
But the research of Christakis and others now offers us a quite different and I suggest, an immensely illuminating perspective in looking at what has always been a strong theme in Buddhist teachings. Namely that the way we respect and respond to all the people we encounter in the course of the day, from partners and work colleagues to ticket sellers and travelling companions, clearly has effects well beyond the people we actually encounter, as they in turn, carry those effects on into their relationships, and their social networks..
That's it for today.
Hope it made a contribution to your thinking.
See you again soon.
William
No comments:
Post a Comment