Hi Everybody,
I was invited yesterday to the first showingof a short film on dementia, directed as it happened by a Nichiren Buddhist, and with another member playing the lead ing role, so a very special event, and very moving. Couldn't hold back the tears. The film underlined the immense impact that two key qualities that lie at the heart of a Buddhist practice can have on our relationships, respect for others, and empathy, seeking to understand where they are in their lives and how our words and actions can create the most value for them in that situation. You don't have to be a Buddhist of course to have respect and empathy, but it helps!
Back to this episode. It follows on directly from the last. I realise as I write these blogs that the lines of argument in the books I write are so closely constructed that it helps to read the previous episode before reading the current one...but I can't keep asking people to do that can I? I just have to go on thinking it!! Anyway here we go,
'...it's about balance. We are so accustomed in the West, with out our essentially Judaeo-Christian cultural heritage to separate God and Caesar, State and Church, to understand spiritual aspirations as being different from, separate from, and often more worthy somehow than material ones. Buddhism argues that both have an essential role to play in the complex spectrum of human well-being. There's nothing about the one that makes it inherently more worthy than the other. It's up to us to establish the balance in our lives that enables us to live the most creative and fulfilling lives for ourselves, and the most supportive of others. It's all part of that being wholly responsible for our lives that we have discussed at some length in this book. And of course it takes us back to the respect and empathy I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.
A crucial part of the down-to-erath practicality that Buddhism brings into our lives is coming to understand...with our whole lives...the profound interconnectedness of all things. We may not be able to see it directly with our eyes of course, or experience it with our senses, but Buddhism, and now of course modern science, ask us to understand that everything but everything in existence, is interconnected and interdependent at the most profound level. Just as, on the surface of things, the island seems to be completely separate from the mainland, but go deeper, to the sea bed, and it is seen to be part of the whole. Or just as each wave on the surface of the sea may seem separate and distinct, but each one is embedded in the great body of the ocean. But those of course are just metaphores to illustrate the idea. The fact is that this deeply rooted Buddhist view, which goes back directly to Shakyamuni's great struggle all those years ago, to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, is now echoed in very precise terms by what modern science has to tell us.
Our DNA for example, the blueprint for making us who we are, we now know connects us to every othe rliving thing. Not just to other humans, but to every living entity tha thas ever existed on the face of the planet. That is an extraordinary mind-blowing idea, most passionately expressed as we saw in an earlier chapter, by one of today's greatest philosopher-scientists, Daniel Dennet; ' ...you share a common ancestor,' he tells us, ' with every chimpanzee, every worm, every blade of grass, every redwood tree.'
And the great Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangerie Maathai, reminds us of something that we could never perceive just with our senses, namely that all human beings who walk the planet, are all from the same family stem;
' So far, ' she writes, ' all the information we have suggests that we come from somewhere within this part of the world, in East Africa, and that of course for many people must be surprising because I think we are so used to being divided along ethnic lines, or along racial lines, and so we look all the time for reasons to be different from each other. So it must be surprising for some of us to realise that what differentiates us is usually very superficial, like the colour of our eyes, or the texture of our hair. But we are essentially all from the same stem, from the same origin. So I think that as we continue to understand ourselves and appreciate each other, and especially when we get to understand that we all come from the same origin, we will shed a lot of the prejudices that we have harboured in the past.'
Let's sincerely hope so. '
Enought food for thought. I can't thank you enough for reading thus far. I'm just so grateful.
Best wishes,
William
The Case for Buddhism is available in paperback on Amazon, and as a download on Kindle.
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