Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you. It's always a bit harder isn't it, to lift yourself in the morning when it's so dark and gloomy. If you can summon up the will to force yourself out of that warm and comfortable bed just half an hour or so earlier, that time spent on daimoku works wonders. It never ceases to amaze me, just how expressing gratitude for the day in front of the gohonzon lifts the spirits. And it means that you can smile at people as you walk to the station or get on the bus. all those gloomy faces! Give them a smile, and they'll almost certainly smile back. I picked up my daughter Jessica from the station late last night, and there was a guy bedding down obviously for the night, on the bench by the entrance. When I went up to him and asked him if he would like a hot drink, he flashed me a wonderful smile, that was the greatest reward you could ever ask for for just giving someone a cup of coffee!
Ayway, where were we? In the last episode we were talking about the power of daimoku to lift the spirits, to create hope, when we are faced with a problem that we don't know how to handle. That's where we pick up the story, with a sub heading...But what about doubts and negativity?
' That's all very well I can hear you say, for those who are fortunate enough to have profound conviction in the practice, but what about those who have doubts? There are many Buddhist commentaries that tell us we should never have doubts. But I don't personally see how that is possible, since doubts are a normal part of all our lives, just as negativity is inherent in all our lives. Although it is very important to recognise that they are not at all the same thing. We need to examine the cause of doubt of course, but doubts breed caution, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of caution in a dangerous world. As I've written elsewhere, we might want to call it prudence, if that were not such a desperately un-cool word in the 21st century lexicon! But negativity is awholly different matter. Negativity can disarm us, or render us completely incapable of action. It can tell us for example that a Buddhist practice may well be able to deal with other people's problems, but not this one, not the one that happens to have broken its way into our life. Because, our negativity tells us, because this one's totally different, or particularly deep-rooted, or because it involves a particularly intractable situation. Our own problems always seem to have a uniquely difficult twist to them. There is never any shortage of costumes for us to dress our negativity in.
We all have a negative voice.
The psychologists tell us that we all talk to ourselves pretty much all the time. In a sort of on-going dialogue of reasoning with ourselves, and rehearsing and working things over in our mind, we hold this constant, inner, ruminating, conversation with ourselves. In fact it is so much a part of our lives that we tend to take this inner whispering voice or voices completely for granted. But one of those voices is a negative one, a powerful advocate for not doing things, for not challenging our situation, for not making the effort, because...well, what's the point...we can't win this time.
That modern psychological understanding is very much in keeping with the Buddhist perception of human nature , that we all have this negative side to our personality, to some degree, even those of us who are blessed with the sunniest and most positive of temperaments. Indeed Buddhism teaches that we will always have it as a fundamental part of our humanity, however positive the spirit we learn to develop and maintain. And as we know from our personal experience, let alone from Buddhist teachings, it is indeed one of our potential life states, lurking there if you like always ready to take over if we have a low life state. Although we don't tend to describe it openly as our negativity. We talk instead about being a bit low, or a bit down, as I did this grey morning, or feeling a bit less confident and capable at this particular moment, or uncertain or unwilling to challenge this particular situation.
So how do we recognise it, and how do we tackle it? '
Answers in the next episode!!
Hope to see you then.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a paper back from Amazon and as a download from Kindle.
Great Xmas present you might think. Could change someone's life.
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