my buddhist blog number 63

Hi Everybody,

Just the most beautiful autumn day in Kew today. Bright blue skies after yesterday's rain, brilliant sunshine and that autumnal crispness in the air. The run in the park with Gatsby this morning was a gift.

Were' in the middle of this account of many ways in which the results of recent sociological research chime with age-old Buddhist teachings, on how we go about building a rich and meaningful life out of the stuff of everyday. So we've looked at altruism and gratitude, both of them playing such an important role. We've discussed focusing on our strengthts rather than constantly being anxious about our weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses. They're normal! And we've talked about trying to focus on the now. Today we're talking about having meaningful goals.

' We all need meaningful goals or directions that are bigger and wider than the simple daily progression of our lives. Things that we have to put real effort and energy into trying to achieve, so that we are completely aware that this activity is stretching us, and lifting us up out of our normal comfort zone. Settling down into that comfort zone can become a powerfully restricting habit, to the extent that we develop not just a strong resistance to setting higher goals ortargets for ourselves, but even a kind of fear, a fear of failure or rejection, that becomes strong enough to prevent us from attempting anything vaguely challenging.

There's plenty of research to show that if we can build this desire, this willingness, to set goals and targets for ourselves, to the extent that it becomes part and parcel of our lives, with real commitment in making the determination, and real resolution in sticking to it, and putting it into effect, then it can spill over into many other areas of our lives, even if they are completely unrelated areas, such as our social and partner relationships and career succes and so on. It seems that the sheer discipline of setting the goal, and the perseverance required to making something of it, act as a sort of catalyst to trigger these beneficial spill-over effects into other areas of our lives.

What has all that to do with Buddhism you might ask? Well a Buddhist practice is precisely about stretching people and lifting them up, encouraging and challenging ourselves to set goals and determinations for what we really want to achieve out of life. That's an easy thing to say of course, it rolls smoothly enough off the tongue, but it takes reall commitment and real application to achieve it. The daily practice is there to help us get better at summoning up that application and that effort. In one sense that is its very point, it is a structured discipline, a structured training programme to help us achieve more.'

That's it for today. Hope your day is a good one. As beautiful as it is here in Kew.
With my best wishes,
William
PS if you can think of anyone today's episode might help, inspire, encourage, be good for, please fire it off to them, with my best wishes.