Hi Everybody,
Yet another beautiful sun-kissed autumn day here in Kew. The sunlight glinting off the golden yellow leaves that are still on the trees. The run in the park with Gatsby this morning was pure pleasure. And as I was running this morning that remarkable and very famous Buddhist text came into my mind, ' there is no path to happiness...happiness is the path. ' I have to say it's not the first time. It often pops in to my head when I'm our running, and I just let it sit there at the back of my mind as I jog on under the trees and over the leaves with Gatsby chasing the squirrels. It is of course immensely profound with many layers of meaning and we can all approach it from many different directions, but the one that seems to work best for me is from the direction of gratitude.
Gratitude not simply in the narrow sense of being grateful to someone for something they have done, but gratitude in the broadest sense, gratitude if you like as a whole approach to life. Gratitude for all the love that I have in my life from family and friends. Gratitude above all for the knowledge that when things get tough or difficult...as of course they often do in all our lives... then I have the Buddhist practice to enable me to stand back and marshal my energies and my wisdom to tackle the difficulty, whatever it is. And the sure knowledge that that has worked powerfully for me as a positive life strategy for the past 25 years or so.
As it happens we're in the middle of a chapter about Buddhism and happiness, because of course this is one of the many qualities that sets Buddhism apart from other major religions is that it presents itself right from the start as being about ordinary people increasing the sum total of happiness or well-being in their lives. Moreover, as we've shown in the past couple of blogs, there is now a huge amount of research from sociologists and positive psychologists that echoes that basic position, to indicate that is, that the quest for happiness is the ultimate motivational force in life...universally. That is to say it cuts across all the boundaries you can think of...national and religious and ethnic and status etc etc.. This quest for a greater sens eof well-being in life is truly universal.
So that close alignment of views does give us a very different perspective doesn't it? It means for example that this powerful and life-changing idea that Buddhism offers us, an idea that many people find unusual and hard to swallow because it is so bold and uncompromising, is doing no more than recognising the essential quality of our universal human nature. Doing no more than pointing out to us that this is the most powerful motivator in human life, and that it can be harnessed as an instrument of change, to enable us to lead fuller and richer lives.
Enough for one swallow I think!
Hope it helps understanding.
See you next time
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon and as a download on Kindle.
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