my buddhist blog number 140

Hi Everybody,

It's been a really productive week with the new book, which is called by the way A Personal Journey, because its very much about my own personal interests and my journey into a Buddhist practice. But back to today's blog with a little piece on Buddhism's modern relevance.
' These distinctive elements of Buddhism, its essential humanism, its dynamic humanism, as it's sometimes called because its purpose is to change and move our whole life towards the positive end of the spectrum, and its unbounded inclusiveness, are perhaps the key qualities that give Buddhism its universal relevance and its astounding everlasting modernity. It may have begun in the deer park in the little town of Sarnath in Northern India all those years ago when Shakyamuni first sat down to talk to a small group of people about his newly-won ideas, but in no sense is it ancient, in no sense is it stuck in time or backwards looking. It continues to be powerfully about the here and now of our daily lives.

Witness to this is the fact that over the past 40 or 50 years many tens of thousands of people in Europe and the Americas for example, and elsewhere, have chosen to place a Buddhist practice at the very centre of their lives. For the very first time in its history, during what might well be described as the most materialistic and possibly the least spiritual of all the ages of man, Buddhism is flowing strongly westwards out of Japan and Asia, and into the western-way-of-life parts of the world. Indeed never before in its history has Buddhism spread so rapidly or so widely in terms of its geographical area, and never before have so many people in the West turned to Buddhism to find answers to their questions about life, the universe and everything.'

That'll do for today. Off now to spen some time in a care hom,e form people with dementia to see if I can create some value.

With all my best wishes,

William. have a great weekend.
The Case for Buddhism is available as a paperback on Amazon and as a download on Kindle in English and Spanish