Hi Everybody,
Hope things are OK with you. Spring is always such a wonderfully promising part of the year isn't it?
Longer days. More sunshine. Flowers everywhere. Birds flocking to the bird table. And my writing's going well too, so I'm in a very good place. Hope you are too. This episode follows directly on from the last, I was talking about my deep scepticism when I first started to practice, and how scepticism, in the sense of leading you to ask questions in order to establish a deeper understanding, is a source of strength rather weakness.
' But if I try to cast myself back into that situation there was also I now realise, an inner resolution. I was determined that once I had set out down this somewhat surprising road, I would continue on the journey until I was quite sure, one way or the other, about the value of the practice in my daily life. It was easy enough for people to say to me, ' Buddhism is daily life,' the question was did it actually work at that level? Could it make a fundamental difference to the way I viewed the mundane stuff of every day?
And if you think about it, that is the acid test isn't it? That's what it boils down to. It's not the theory that is going to change our lives, it's the practice. How do Buddhist values and principles affect the way we perceive and the way we respond to the constant stream of events and encounters that make up the daily-ness of all our lives, in all its unexpected, challenging, chaotic, sometimes uplifting, often frustrating detail? The answer can be expressed in many ways of course, but one that makes most sense to me is that Buddhism is both inspirational, and intensely practical. Inspirational in that it delivers to us a view of ordinary human life that is always hopeful and uplifting, and immensely positive and value-creating. At the same time it is intensely practical in that it delivers an utterly down-to-earth, feet-on-the-ground strategy for living with the stuff of everyday.
It does make a profound difference when you are aware that Buddhism is not about demonstrating allegiance to some external, divinely-inspired set of rules and commandments. It is really about allegiance to one's better self, and one's concern for, and responsibility towards others. That clearly has a powerful impact on how we relate to ourselves, our sense of self-worth if you like, and how we relate to everyone we encounter, not just those who are close, family and friends and colleagues, but those we just happen to bump into on a casual or infrequent basis. Literally everyone.
It does make a profound difference that the Buddhist view of humanity is genuinely all inclusive. No one is excluded, or sits on the other side of some boundary. It seeks constantly to break down the barriers between self and others. In that sense it embraces all of humanity, and transcends race and ethnic and religious groupings, and nationalities and cultures. One could certainly argue that living as we do on an increasingly crowded planet, with even its climatic systems and its resources , including the very basics of water and land, under immense presuure, never have we been in greater need of such an all-embracing view of mankind. The celebrated American economist Jeffrey Sachs has put it for us so powerfully,
' ...Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning how to live peacefully and sustainably, in an extraordinarily crowded world.'
As to being utterly practical and down -to-earth, Buddhism as we've seen is a man-made religion, so it's not in any way focused on some heavenly hereafter, which is consequent in some way on the nature of the daily life we have lived here. Buddhism is that daily life, so it's concerned above all with that very here and now. It seeks therefore to engender and nurture, wholly practical and down-to-earth qualities that we need every day, such as the courage to face up to problems rather than sweeping them under the carpet, and resilience and perseverance in the face of the inevitable setbacks and profound losses we all encounter. And the compassion and awareness that enables us to be there for our neighbour whenever he needs help. '
That's plenty enough for today I think. Probably a bit too much!
Hope you manged to get to the end.
Hope your spring is a beautiful and surprising one.
See you next time,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available as a paperback on Amazon and a download on Kindle, and I have to say I am immensely grateful at so many of the generous things people have said about it.
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