Hi Everybody,
Right we'eve just started Chapter 6, Buddhism and Ethics. I really hope you're not put off by that chapter title. I think this is one of the best chapters in the book, because it tackles some really tough questions and comes up, I like to think, with some meaningful and constructive answers. I like to think!
Anyway, here we go on page 102.
' So if we seek to live any sort of valuable and creative life, let alone the most valuable and creative life of which we are capable, we need some structure don't we, some guidelines to point us in the right direction, and keep us on the right track? And essentially that is what this chapter is about. What sort of structure does Buddhism have to offer?
As you might expect the discussion as to how we should best handle the realtionships that make up the fabric of our lives is as old as civilisation itself. The basic question that we are asking for example, ' What shall I do? ' or to put it in a more comprehensive way, ' How should I choose to live my life?' didn't just occur out of thin air. It was first put in those very terms by Socrates himself, way back in the 4th Century BCE. So it is sometimes called the Socratic Question. And, as Socrates taught all those centuries ago, it may sound simple, even banal, but if that is our initial impression then we are deceiving ourselves, because it isn't. Indeed he argued that it is just about the toughest question we can put to ourselves, since it's really about the natire of our life. So it's not a question that anyone who cares to think about their lives to any meaningful extent, can avoid or duck under.
It's certainly true that most of us, most of the time, live our lives within pretty much well-worn routines, following well-trodden paths and often scarcely thinking about the choices that we make from one moment to the next, one day to the next, in this circumstance or that. although unquestionably, those accumulated choices, come to shape us and our character, even if we're scarcely aware that that is what is going on. We all have huge comfort zones that we take refuge in and hate to depart from. But that fundamental question doesn't go away. It sits there you might say, as a sort of constant backdrop to everythign we say and do, every single day of our lives.
And then suddenly, as we all know, it can leap out into the very foreground of our consciousness, whenever we encounter something that is not part of the routine. A crisis in our lives that may involve a crucial relationship, with a partner or colleague or a child for example, or the loss of someone we hold very dear, and then...what shall I do we ask ourselves...sometimes in considerable anguishor distress, as we realise that we are being confronted with who we really are. We've all been there many times. And it ism precisely at times like these that we have the greatest need of that support structure, those guidelines, of values and principles that we have embedded solidly in our lives, in all those countless choices that we have made day after day, year after year, to shape who we are.
Perhaps the greatest wisdom and the greatest virtue of the Buddhist practice, is that it is there, every single day, renewing it's deeply-held positive values and guidelines. All those days when things are going swimmingly and routinely, as well as those occasions when the challenge to us is strong, and we have to confront who we really are.
And this classical age-old question has a twin, ' What should we do, how should we live? ' Because of course we are al born into families, and families sit within communities, and communities sit within societies. 'No man is an island entire of itself ' the poet reminds us. The value choices that we make of course have some effect on everyone with whom our lives come in contact. What our friends and work colleagues believe and do affects us , just as what we believe and do affects them. Although it is only very recently that we have become aware of just how powerful this subliminal ripple effect is, as a result of some immensely intriguing research carried out over the past two years, in the US, by sociologist Nicolas Christakis and others, at Harvard University.'
And that's where we go next time, to look at how our values and choices and filter out into the social networks of which we are a part, and far more widely than we would ever expect.
See you then.
Best wishes,
William
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