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Who is it not for? (#ulink_ac30fbeb-9957-544f-991c-fe74f2ce88f1)
Of course people who think reflection is a waste of time (when you might be out there doing something) will not find anything sensible or congenial in Buddhism. In their view all this ‘contemplating your navel’ business is at best misguided and probably harmful as well. It makes you more introspective and more selfish, not less. Their philosophy is: don’t think about things too much, just get on with it and have as much fun as you can, or live up to your principles as best you can, along the way. For them life is straightforward – there isn’t much to be figured out, and they do not hanker for explanations. It may not always be easy or happy, but that’s the way it is. We can click our tongues and feel sorry when we see the sadness that is caused by natural disasters, or human stupidity, on the news at night. We can even send money to Oxfam and march for peace. But the predicament is clear, and we can ignore it or respond to it according to our values and energies.
Buddhism appeals to people who have a sneaking feeling that it may not all be so clear-cut. Instead of taking the diagnosis for granted, and rushing off to look for the cure, such people are keen to burrow more deeply into the questions, and to ponder longer on ‘How come’ before deciding on a change to the game plan. Buddhism supports and guides this enquiry into the ‘big questions’. In fact it encourages you to make the enquiry more rigorous and relentless than you might have thought possible. It holds out the promise of a change, perhaps even a radical transformation, in the way you experience life, and the ease and effectiveness with which you manage your affairs. But the price of this is unswerving honesty – especially when the enquiry is getting rather too close for comfort to our cherished beliefs and attitudes that are taken for granted – and also the willingness to keep at it when it seems pointless or unproductive.
Two things Buddhism is not (#ulink_0ab0db92-2ce0-52c5-b84e-2dad6c30fb15)
One of the biggest misapprehensions about Buddhism is that it is an escape from life, either into a quiet fatalism or into the safety of mental contemplation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The enquiry is no mere intellectual exercise, with painful realities kept nicely at a distance. Rather it involves a continual rubbing of your nose in the everyday messes of your own devising, so that you actually learn from your experience. The author of a recent academic book about Zen Buddhism, T.P. Kasulis, describes his meeting with a Japanese Master.
“You have asked permission to practise Zen meditation in this temple, but tell me: what is Zen?” inquired the Master. After some hesitation and embarrassed smiling, I said something about Zen’s being a way of life rather than a set of dogmas. Laughter filled the tatami-matted reception room. “Everyone comes here to study Zen, but none of them knows what Zen is. Zen is knowing thyself. You are a Western philosopher and know of Socrates’ quest. Did you assume Zen would be something different?”
If we do not have to travel East to tatami-matted rooms, neither do we have to go back to the Greeks. Here is a character in one of Dick Francis’s novels, The Danger, talking:
“To be logical you have to dig up and face your own hidden motives and emotions, and of course they’re hidden precisely because you don’t want to face them. So ... um ... it’s easier to let your basement feelings run the upper storeys, so to speak, and the result is rape, quarrels, love, jobs, opinions, anorexia, philanthropy ... almost anything you can think of. I just like to know what’s going on down there, to pick out why I truly want to do things, that’s all. Then I can do them or not. Whichever.”
He looked at me consideringly. “Self-analysis ... did you study it?”
“No. Lived it. Like everyone does.”
He smiled faintly. “At what age?”
“Well ... from the beginning. I mean, I can’t remember not doing it. Digging into my own true motives. Knowing in one’s heart of hearts. Facing the shameful things ... the discreditable impulses ... Awful, really.”
The more common attitude was well expressed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in one of their sketches. Moore was interviewing Cook about his disastrous attempt to start up a restaurant in the middle of Dartmoor (serving, as I recall, only two dishes – Frog à la Peche, and Peche à la Frog, both equally disgusting). He asked whether Peter Cook thought he had learnt from his mistakes, to which Cook replied, ‘Oh yes. A tremendous amount. And I think I can safely say that I could repeat them almost perfectly.’
The discipline of Buddhism is to learn to look at yourself unflinchingly, especially when you don’t like what you see, so that you can gain practical insight into what makes you tick, and therefore a clearer sense of what it might be possible to do for the best. The effect of Buddhism is not only that of feeling more at peace with yourself, but a more intelligent and skilful involvement in life – career choices, social action, family disputes, whatever.
This brings up another quite common reaction to Buddhism: that its concern – some would say its obsession – with ‘suffering’ is depressing and unhealthy. Indeed, from the point of view of the more usual attempt to deal with trouble by trying to ignore it, it does look perverse. Why on earth would anyone want to dwell on the bad stuff? We cannot really answer this yet, for to do so we have to get right into the core of Buddhism. All we can say is that people discover for themselves that the attempt to avoid the hurt and pain of living is more trouble than it is worth, and that equanimity can be found by staring distress in the face, not by running away from it, or trying to do battle with it. The Buddhist emphasis on ‘suffering’ is not masochistic, but an unsentimental, clear-sighted, pragmatic response to the problem of how to be as happy as possible in a life that is bound to hit you from time to time.
The fruits (#ulink_0b7edfe8-fc5c-5d9f-907b-5b8b9e5921d9)
Perhaps the best answer to the question, ‘Why Buddhism?’ is to point to its fruits – the qualities that naturally arise in someone who pursues the Buddhist path. There is a sense that the problems of life are dealt with more smoothly than before. One is less thrown by unforeseen or unwanted events. One takes things in one’s stride more easily. As the advertisement says, one is less inclined to make a drama out of a crisis. Somehow one’s peace of mind is more stable, so that, although things may be difficult from time to time, one does what one can without becoming distressed or confused. Inner strength grows, and one seems to have greater reserves to draw upon. At the same time a non-complacent self-acceptance builds up – one sees oneself more clearly, warts and all, but without the degree of debilitating self-criticism that might have been present previously. One develops the capacity to be self-aware without being self-conscious.
People who have been practising meditation for some time are recognizable by their poise, naturalness and spontaneity. They gain a non-defensive cheerfulness, a light touch in their dealings with others. Without making a big song and dance about it, they develop a gentle kindliness which is perceptive but not intrusive or sentimental. They are available without a need to ‘mother’ people. Yet this increased generosity of spirit is down to earth, it is unsanctimonious and certainly non-evangelical.
Also people become more clear in their thinking and their responding. The ‘right’ thing to do somehow emerges with greater obviousness. Someone once asked Bobby Fischer, the chess champion, how many moves he considered in his mind when it was his turn to play. He said: ‘Just one ... the right one.’ In the same way Buddhist practice seems to flower in a greater expertise in making real-life decisions. We could sum up all these effects perhaps by saying that Buddhism helps people to be at their best more of the time. All of us have periods when we are ‘on good form’, in which these qualities are available to us. But we are also only too aware of the other times, when we are ratty and muddled, mean-spirited and intolerant. Buddhism expands and consolidates our better natures.
What draws people to Buddhism? (#ulink_65c25a4f-ddbe-5c08-b3cc-098713a2d412)
It is in fact seeing the fruits of Buddhism in another person that attracts people more than anything else. Sometimes, as I said, people are interested in the ideas or the forms of meditation that they come across in conversation or in a book. But what transmutes this interest into some sort of commitment is usually an encounter with a human being who seems actually to embody the teachings. There is a feeling of being drawn, not so much by what they say as by who they are – by a sense of their being at peace with themselves, or of their ability to cut through a difficult situation with an enviable mixture of clarity and tact. Now of course it is not only Buddhists who have this ease and grace; everybody, I am sure, has memories of ‘unforgettable characters’ – a teacher, perhaps, or an old person with whom you had a special relationship as a child, or maybe even just a friend of a friend whom you met at a party or in the pub – who had something of the air we are talking about. But what Buddhism offers, the promise it holds out, is the possibility that you, if you really want to, can become more like that. There are a set of things you can do that will reliably deliver more happiness, more peace and more love in your life.
Let me illustrate this process of attraction by quoting from some interviews that I taped with residents and visitors at a Buddhist community in Devon. Here is Kevin, a visitor for the weekend from his home in Southampton, 45 years old, a project quality manager for a big company making complicated communication systems. He was brought up an ‘unthinking Anglican’, left school at fifteen, took City and Guilds qualifications in electronics, and is married with two teenage daughters. How did this apparently ordinary man come to be involved with lamas, gurus and meditation?
About seven or eight years ago, in my late thirties, I started to realize that everything in life isn’t good, everything in the garden isn’t rosy, and that there is such a thing as suffering, and you start to question it ... I mean, things in my own garden and the garden globally. Before I ever met Buddhism I began to think that perhaps the unsatisfactoriness of life was something to do with me. That it wasn’t outside, but the only one who could do anything about my life was me. People could perhaps give me some advice, but the effort really had to come from within myself … My first encounter with Buddhism as such was when I was standing at the kitchen sink and my wife said, ‘Did you know Chas (a friend) is a Buddhist?’ and I thought, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder what that’s all about? I must talk to him about it.’ And when I did he talked about suffering in one’s life, and how to approach it, and he just reinforced what I had been thinking.
Then I read a book by Christmas Humphreys, and I got to hear about some Buddhist meetings in Portsmouth, and I thought I’ve got to investigate this. So I went along, not at all sure what I was going to find. The first thing I found was some very nice, warm, friendly people – that was my instant impression. They accepted me as if they already knew me, which I found very encouraging. And I’ve come to realize that this is the effect that Buddhism tends to have on people. People become warm, friendly, generous – with things and with themselves. It was that first meeting that clinched it. They still had problems in their lives that they were willing to talk about, but it seemed to me that they somehow coped with these problems in a way that involved far less effort than a lot of other people I knew – myself, for one! Now I can see that this attitude stemmed from their meditation practice. Ten minutes later the bhikkhu (monk) walked in in his robes, with his begging bowl – he was from the Isle of Wight! – and I was immediately impressed with his calmness. He seemed to be at peace with himself. I listened to him talk, and after the meeting I fixed to visit his place on the Isle of Wight … and I’ve been meditating pretty regularly since then.
My family are very sympathetic. They’ve seen a big change in me. I’m not so easily panicked or worked up as I used to be. I’m more calm. On a physical level my health has improved – I’ve got low blood pressure now and a very low pulse rate, and it used to be the other way round. Just a few months ago my youngest daughter – she’s thirteen – came with me to the monastery and spent the best part of a day there. She found it very interesting. She was quite impressed actually! She was very struck by the shaven heads and lack of hair. The first impression she got was one of peace. She said, ‘It’s funny, Dad. I don’t know why it is, but their shaven heads make them look peaceful!’
Then there was James. He was thirty and had been living in the community for about nine months at the time, teaching at the local technical college and looking after the vegetable garden. James had been brought up a strict Roman Catholic and had been to a Jesuit boarding school from the age of eight. He had a PhD in water pollution and was married to another Buddhist. He said:
I started to think about religion for myself when I was about fourteen. I think I was pretty confused, especially in my feelings. My family weren’t very emotional, and also at school feelings were pushed aside and you just had to cope. You didn’t cry, you didn’t show any ‘weakness’ because that was wrong. No touch; no cuddles. There wasn’t anybody I could talk to about this so it was all locked up inside, and I had to grapple with it on my own. Sex too was a big issue, especially coming from a very ‘male’ family and being at an all-male school. I was beginning to be fascinated by girls, but was also terrified! Generally I felt very split between my intellectual life and a deeper side of me that I could feel but not really understand. I tried to ask one of the priests about this and he said, ‘It’s just nature. You see it in the birds and trees. It is God.’ And that really confused me! So I left school with these big questions forming inside me. When I went to university I basically squashed it all down, and just had a bit of a wild time. But when I went on to do research I was spending a lot of time on my own in the lab doing experiments, sometimes through the night, and I started to think again.
Things were beginning to boil up again, and then one day I saw a poster for a public talk on Buddhism, and on impulse I decided to go. In walked this big monk and he sat down and talked for about an hour, and I felt his whole presence just fill the room. Something inside me responded to his strength and his peace, and my whole being just said, ‘Yes’. I wanted the strength that he showed. He seemed to know what it was all about. But afterwards I couldn’t remember what he said at all! I started going to a small meditation group that was meeting and then joined a Zen group in London.
Mary, another resident in the community, had had a rather different upbringing, yet in some ways her path to Buddhism was similar to James’s. Her father had been interested in the Eastern religions and had been a somewhat unconventional figure in their south of England commuter-belt town. Mary had been used to thinking about spiritual matters as a teenager:
I had been looking forward to going to university to discuss ‘the meaning of life’ with people, but as it turned out university wasn’t about that at all. It was about getting plastered. All the people I seemed to bump into were just into drink and sex and their careers! I missed the serious side of things dreadfully. After I left I worked for a couple of years and then planned an overland trip to China. Six months before I was due to go my father died. And during the week after he died I experienced, in the middle of all the feelings, a great presence of mind. I was thinking and writing about him, and remembering all the times I had felt critical of him. And I thought, ‘When death is possible, what is the most important thing?’ And I knew the answer was Love. This was a sort of turning point, and I gained some insights that I later realized were important in Buddhism, though I didn’t know it at the time. When I came back from my trip, which I eventually made, I went to a thing called a Western Zen Retreat – very nervously, I might say. I didn’t know what to expect. I was set this question to meditate on which was ‘Who am I?’, and I found an answer to it, a real one, that put me in touch with a level of being that I had not experienced before: infinite love, infinite peace, a different sense of who I am entirely. And that experience of course made me very interested in Buddhism. At this point I wasn’t quite sure what I was after, but I was jolly well after something!
Then I met a Japanese Zen Master called Hogen-san who came to England for a few weeks every year, giving talks and workshops, and he attracted me very much. I used to follow him around the country. He was very down-to-earth, not ‘holy’ at all. I remember one interview I had with him where we had Guinness for breakfast! I learnt to see that Buddhism was in everyday life, not in some special rituals or only on Sundays. Hogen-san’s quality was there in the pub as well as in the meditation room.
The last extract I want to give here is from my talk with Theresa, a 41-year-old American woman who was also living in the community and teaching meditation. She had grown up in an orthodox Jewish family, enjoying some of the rituals, but without thinking about what it meant at all. ‘It didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t specially resistant, but ... well, everybody has to have a religion, don’t they, and you might as well be Jewish,’ is how she remembers it. She impressed me as much as anyone I have ever met, with her unpretentious, light, warm manner which I came to see as the outward show of a great inner strength and peacefulness. The story of how she came to Buddhism illustrates another of the common threads – the discovery that what you thought was going to make you happy doesn’t. The piece that I want to quote here demonstrates not so much the powerful attraction of example, though that is there, but rather the way in which such qualities as she clearly had can grow from rather unpromising beginnings. If Theresa can make it, I thought, there really is hope for us all!
I wasn’t thinking about any of the big questions as an adolescent, but I had a really rough time of it socially when I was thirteen. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom. After school I’d come home and lie on my bed and listen to the Top 40 on the radio, and the words of the songs spoke to me about where I was at. They were sad and asking why you didn’t have a boyfriend and saying how wonderful it would be to be in love. The songs were very melaneholy and I was very sorry for myself. Life seemed so wrong. I didn’t feel that people liked me. I was lonely. I had been successful in school up to thirteen, and then my grades just plummeted. I lost all my self-confidence. There seemed to be such an emphasis on how people looked, and I wasn’t pretty. I didn’t fit the image of the ‘popular girl’ so the boys didn’t go for me. I just shrivelled up even more. And the songs were like my only friends. They understood me a bit.
When I went to college looks stopped being the all-important thing, and I started to feel more comfortable about myself. It seemed like I had a personality that was worthwhile. And I even got some boyfriends, so things really began to look up! I started to have a good time – but not thinking about what I was up to. It was cool to be an atheist, so I was an athiest. I was going to parties and drinking beer like I was making up for lost time. Four years! After I left college I went to Kansas City and worked for Hallmark Cards as a graphic artist. I was doing well in most people’s terms – I had a good job, I was making good money, I had a nice apartment and a car and nice clothes. I was going out on dates. I’d become ‘attractive’. I’d got all the things that as a girl I’d thought were important. I got to travel a lot in the States and Europe, and finally wound up married at 27 – because it was the next thing to do, and it kept my Mum quiet! So finally I had a chance to find out what it was all about. I began to question what it was that I’d got, vaguely at first, and then more seriously as my relationship with my husband began to go downhill. It was like I’d finally done it – all the things that are supposed to make you happy, even getting a husband. And I wasn’t. It hadn’t worked. I was in a bad way. I used to just lie down on the sofa and curl up and things would get very dark. I just didn’t want to deal with it at all. I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I would get very angry and scream and throw plates. I was very difficult! We were living with my husband’s parents in North Carolina, and they didn’t like me at all.
My lifeline was a man I was working for at the university who I could talk to a bit, and he started talking about the possibility of feeling some inner strength and not just being pushed around by other people’s expectations and disapproval. And someone else told me about Transcendental Meditation, which was at that time all the rage in the States. So I thought, ‘Oh well. I’ll try it.’ I did the weekend initiation and learnt the technique. And I remember looking in the mirror the day afterwards, and I really felt different. I felt a real calmness. I liked myself. I felt warmly towards myself for the first time for a long time, maybe for the first time ever. I felt still, and accepting of myself And that experience made me want to practise the meditation hard, which I did. I faithfully did my 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening for two and a half years without fail. Then I started to feel it had lost its value in some way, like, whatever it was good for, I had got it. And I had a sense there was more than the calmness and relaxation I was getting from TM. I started asking people about other kinds of meditation to see what there was.
I went to a weekend retreat in vipassana (insight) meditation, where we just sat watching the rise and fall of our breathing, and walking very slowly. And I found it the hardest thing of my life. By Sunday I was ready to explode. It was so simple, what the teacher was asking us to do ... and I couldn’t do it. And that really showed me something, the fact that it was such a challenge. I hated it, but the challenge absolutely intrigued me. I was hooked. He talked about the importance in everyday life of awareness, of waking up to life and living fully. Many of the things he said felt so inspiring and so right. And I wanted the kinds of things he was talking about. I just dived in and started doing lots of retreats and sitting every day. I started having some of the experiences Buddhism talks about – really seeing into the reality of who I am, and beginning to understand why things had been so difficult. Simply that a thought is just a thought, and I don’t have to get all caught up in it. There is a way out of all the suffering, as Buddhism says, and I was experiencing it – in glimpses. It was mind-blowing. Right here, in this day and age, it is possible. Not 2,500 years ago when the Buddha taught but here and now it is possible to see the end of suffering.
Several of these quotations, as well as showing the power of person-to-person contact and example, also suggest that people may be predisposed, perhaps only unconsciously, to Buddhism as a result of encountering real unhappiness in their lives that the conventional solutions and distractions don’t provide satisfying answers to. Sooner or later they are touched by an experience of distress that seems to open their eyes to the great weight of ‘suffering’, as the Buddhists call it, that the world contains. The author of No Boundary, Ken Wilber, suggests that unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life are not signs of inadequacy or mental illness, but of a growing intelligence,
a special intelligence usually buried under the immense weight of social shams. A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life is, at the same time, beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities. For suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality, and forces us to become alive in a special sense – to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided … It is only through all manner of numbing compensations, distractions and enchantments that we agree not to question the root cause of our [troubles] ... But sooner or later, if we are not rendered totally insensitive, our defensive compensations begin to fail in their soothing and concealing purpose and, as a consequence, we begin to suffer.
For James the process started while he was still at school; for Mary it was her father’s death; for Theresa the unhappiness and depression of her marriage. For some people it is not until they themselves are ill, or old, or close to death, that the questioning begins to start. For many it is some kind of personal brush with distress that cannot, this time, be shrugged off.
It is interesting that it is precisely this dual impetus – waking up to suffering, and encountering someone who seems to deal with it better than we do – that got the Buddha himself started on the intense six or seven years of enquiry that ended with his ‘enlightenment’ under the bodhi tree at Bodhgaya in Northern India, and his discovery of the insights that now form the heart of all Buddhist teaching. According to the myth of Buddha’s life, he was born into a rich family to a father who was determined to shield him from any possible problems or unhappiness. He grew up with every conceivable luxury, and it seemed that his father’s plans were working out well until, one day when Buddha was out in the town, he saw a sick person, lying uncared for in the street, an old person, and a dead body, and these suddenly brought home to him the existence and the inevitability of suffering. But on one of his jaunts he also met a wandering monk, whose inner peace in the face of all this unhappiness impressed him greatly, and inspired him to set out on his quest to find the deepest, most lasting solution he could to the problem of suffering. It is partly the fact that there are people around today, Western as well as Eastern and female as well as male, who appear in some subtle way to have ‘cracked it’, just as Buddha did, that accounts for Buddhism’s growing appeal.
Why now? (#ulink_c527257e-c17c-53e5-83a7-c2249a66993e)
These stories illustrate a number of themes that we shall be exploring in more detail as we go along. What I would like to pick up now are the pointers to why Buddhism seems to many people to be the most timely of the traditional religions
Perhaps the most obvious reason for its appeal is that it actually seems to work. People can feel its benefits in themselves, in friends and family members who have been practising, and most strikingly, as we have seen, in the Buddhist monks and teachers that have inspired them. It is mundane and practically helpful. In fact Buddhism is uniquely equipped to meet the particular anxieties and attitudes of the times. Our general feeling of insecurity is partly due to the incredible rate of change in the world – change in values and lifestyles as well as in technology and forms of employment – and change is one of Buddhism’s most central concepts. You could almost say that how to handle change is precisely what Buddhism teaches. It is when personal beliefs and philosophies are weak and conflicting that Buddhism really comes into its own. In more traditional, settled times and cultures, it is only a few unusual individuals who endeavour to peck their way out of a substantial shell of routine ways of thinking and behaving. But in our times the certainties are few and far between, the shell is already cracking, and attempts by traditionalists to keep asserting that the old shell is still valid do not seem, to many people, to be enough. Like it or not, many of us in the Western world are in the pecking business, puzzled about how to live, about how to bring up children, about what it means to be a good son or daughter, about what constitutes maturity, about our responsibilities to the earth, about what occupations are worthwhile, and a host of other such questions that seem to be pressing but difficult. And Buddhism is at hand with teachings and techniques custom-built to help us chip away at old assumptions and present confusions until we see clearly and unequivocally what matters most, and an intuitive wisdom begins to emerge and guide us.
We also live in a rather individualistic age, when the sense of autonomy, of being on our own, of having to make it on our own, is strong. The major concern of the times is with personal and local happiness, with ourselves and the few people close to us, and Buddhism looks from the outside as if it is again tailor-made to offer that personal salvation. It buys in to the preoccupation with the individual and his or her well-being. Buddhism does not tell you to pull your socks up and be nicer to everybody, nor does it wag a stern finger at you when you behave badly or thoughtlessly. The fundamental problem in Buddhism is not of sin, but of delusion, and the way forward is therefore not through the uncomfortable shove that guilt is supposed to provide, but through insight. So the initial sense is of working on yourself for yourself.
It would be a big mistake, though, to suppose, as some critics do, that because Buddhism starts with oneself, it also stops there. Far from it. Buddhism tells you that if you work at it you will be happier and kinder. Being a ‘good person’ is not a matter of denying yourself but of knowing yourself, and the better, the more clearly, you know yourself, the more everybody wins. Thus although many people are drawn to Buddhism for ‘selfish’ reasons, they discover that the package deal on offer includes a greater sense of natural concern for others, as well as the anticipated peace of mind. (In fact the emphasis of different schools of Buddhism is somewhat different in this regard – some stress the personal and some the more social benefits – but at root the development of equanimity and magnanimity must go hand in hand.)
The fact the Buddhism helps people to become kinder as well as more peaceful is not just a fortunate by-product, however. If the first question that drives the search which may lead to Buddhism is, ‘How can I be happier?’, there is a second one just behind it, ‘How can I be helpful? How can I lead a life that is not only happy but worthwhile as well?’ People who are neither terminally cynical, nor suffering from acute ‘compassion fatigue’, are aware of the suffering and distress in the world, but at a loss as to how to respond to it. There is so much of it, the result of stupidity, cruelty, madness or bad luck, in the papers and on the TV every day, that it seems impossible to know where to start – especially when one’s resources are stretched as it is, holding one’s own life together. There is Band Aid and Oxfam, Save the Children and Help the Aged, telethons and little envelopes in the letter box. There are causes to give one’s time to as well as one’s money: Fight the Cuts, Save the Seals, Rebuild the Church Tower, Campaign for Anti-Racism or Back to Basics in the local school … The list of ways to be helpful, to promote one’s ideals, is endless and intimidating. Confused about what to do for the best, it is small wonder that we tend to retreat from these impossible decisions into issues that seem somewhat more manageable – what to give Sam for her birthday, or whether we would be less tense if we moved out of London.
Because Buddhism works, it offers us not only teachings and practices, but also the example of people who seem more cool, calm and collected than we are. Such people, as we have seen, often provide the stimulus for getting more involved with Buddhism; but they also constitute a continuing resource. We have a chance to learn from who they are, from how they deal with everyday life, and to pick up some of their skill at living in the time-honoured fashion of the apprentice – by watching them at work. In some ways, though, this method of teaching by example is unfashionable, and serves to make people suspicious. The individualistic spirit of the times tends to produce a rather anti-elitist attitude, in which the idea of having ‘heroes’, people you look up to and admire, is seen as an unhealthy dependence. To be a ‘grown-up’ is to be as good as the next person, and to be able to make it on your own, thank you very much. Such people tend to see the acceptance of another human being as a mentor in the art of living as dangerous, because it gives one person power over another, and thereby creates the possibility of exploitation. In some measure this is true, and we shall talk more about this kind of risk later in the book. But the attitude of students of Buddhism, whilst not naive, is more likely to be that they are actually not making a terribly good job of it on their own, and could do to swallow a bit of false pride and accept some help and guidance.
In addition, one might think, looking around at the world at large, that a few more people with integrity and wisdom would not be a bad idea; people who are not embarrassed to talk from the heart about deep issues, both personal and global, and who are able to remind us of our better natures. People who, especially in confusing and conflicting situations, are able to keep sight of the ‘big picture’, and to act confidently on the basis of true values rather than expediency. A meditation teacher who now lives in France, Thich Nhat Hanh, tells the story of the hazardous voyages in rickety boats undertaken by refugees from his native Vietnam. In the frequent storms people would be inclined to panic – and in doing so increase the risk of drowning. But the presence of even one person in the boat who could stay calm and not lose his or her presence of mind would exert a calming influence on all the passengers, and they would be able to respond to the situation in a more intelligent, less hysterical way. Just so, he says, the world needs all the wise and peaceful people it can get, and to be on the look-out for them is a sign not of dependency but of basic sanity. Despite the misgivings of the ‘rugged individualists’, therefore, Buddhism’s concern with wise and responsible leadership is another reason for its timeliness.
A less contentious way in which Buddhism suits the times is in its rational, non-magical nature. This may sound odd, as it is often thought of as complicated and ‘mystical’, and indeed some forms of Buddhism do look rather weird on first acquaintance. If you want to take your Buddhism with a pinch of spice and mystery, you can do so. If you want to see pictures of enormous golden statues of Buddha, to hear stories of monks who can keep themselves warm while sitting overnight wrapped in wet sheets in a snow-storm, or to learn how to chant in Tibetan, there are lots of books that will show you and tell you. But this isn’t one of them. In fact much of the popular view of Buddhism is not central to its concern. Any particular form of ritual, of clothing, of haircut, of name is not essential. Being a vegetarian is not essential. Not killing mosquitoes is not essential. Being able to tie your legs in a knot is not essential. The details of Buddha’s life story are not essential. Reciting long chunks of the sutras (scriptures) from memory is not essential.
The heart of the matter, which I am trying to concentrate on here, is most straightforward and pragmatic. You do not have to believe in miracles, nor stretch your powers of credulity. The possibility of enlightenment is entirely reasonable, and the proof of meditation is in the doing. There is an important role for understanding, even for remembering, what the great teachers have said, but this is always an adjunct to the development of your own, first-hand understanding of human nature based on unshakable self-knowledge. Close to the end of his life, Buddha is reputed to have said, ‘Do not believe anything just because some authority, even me, has said it. Be a light unto yourself.’ What the teachers have to offer are maps and guide-books for the journey to self-realization, not edicts that are to be taken as ‘gospel’. Even the doctrine of reincarnation, which some people find hard to swallow, is not an essential part of the Buddhist prescription, and can be interpreted in a way that does not clash with a scientific way of thinking.
Perhaps there is just one leap of faith that is required, and that is the belief that it is possible for one’s personality, one’s way of looking at the world, to change. For people who are wedded to the idea that the way they see things is the only possible way, that their point of view is the only point of view (or the only right point of view), for such people the suggestion that things could look different, or that other people who don’t share their opinions might be at least as ‘right’ as they are, is going to be hard to take.
Yet it is this egocentric attitude that begins to look irrational when we examine it, not the possibility of change. We know that our own perspective alters depending on whether we are in a good mood or a bad one. A problem that had seemed insurmountable becomes much more manageable after a heart-to-heart with a friend, or a good night’s sleep. When we are ‘on good form’ the fact that it is raining on the day of the picnic can seem funny, and an opportunity to do something silly like go anyway and get wet, or to sit on the living-room floor eating with your fingers. When we are ‘off-colour’ the whole thing is a disaster, and the rest of the day is spent sulking or picking a fight with the children. All that Buddhism is asking of us, as the price of admission, is an openness to the possibility that we can acquire the knack of being on good form more powerfully, and more of the time, and that there are other people from whom we may have something to learn. We do not have to accept these people as authorities because somebody tells us to. All we have to do is to be on the look-out for people who seem to us to have mastered the art of living more comprehensively than we have ourselves. The odds seem to me to be overwhelmingly in favour of the existence of such people. (Of course there are also charlatans, and we have also to trust our intuition in steering clear of those candidate ‘gurus’ who do not feel right. We shall have more to say about ‘shopping’ in the last chapter.)
Buddhism, whatever else it does, provides a good antidote to the compulsive business of the present age. Stress is on the increase, not only because of the demands and uncertainties of modern life, but because we are in danger of forgetting how to relax. People are coming to feel guilty when they are not doing anything, as if gentle sources of refreshment, reflection and recreation were of no real value. Traditional forms of meditation in our culture, such as knitting, walking the dog, gardening, fishing and watching county cricket after a good lunch, encourage a peaceful, reflective state of mind, yet they are often given up for activities that favour instead emotional excitement (football matches) or which merely swap one form of mental activity (worrying) for another (watching soap operas and quiz shows on TV). Buddhism at the very least provides a framework and a rationale for being quiet.
The final reason why Buddhism is exercising such appeal in the West is the failure of our own religions to deliver the kind of guidance that people are after. To many people, eager for help in clarifying their own cloudy misgivings about the selfish, narrow, materialistic life they have come to live by default, Christianity is a dead loss. It seems like a husk, a precious relic which is no longer useful for anything, and which instead is guarded and interpreted by an army of curators who are, in their own lives, as much at sea as the rest of us. Of course there are exceptions, Christians whose faith makes them glow with health, and priests who seem to have a better than average grasp of human nature and a love of people with all their faults and foibles. But when people look at the Church as a whole, many of them see something that resembles a trade union or a multinational corporation more than a source of spiritual inspiration and guidance, and they find it unprepossessing and dessicated. Even in the vastness of the Royal Albert Hall in London there are few people who do not feel the difference in quality between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dalai Lama. Instead of warmth and wisdom we seem to be offered instead a fairy-tale world of Holy Ghosts and angels, of water that turns to wine and wine that turns to blood, of incantations and rituals that may be good theatre but which do not help me with my drink problem, my furtive infidelities or my gnawing sense of emptiness inside.
The problem with Christianity especially is that its living message has become incarcerated within a prison of metaphor taken as fact, symbol mistaken for reality and ritual for its own sake, a prison with bars of coral, slowly built up from the skeletons of once-useful images that no longer point to anything beyond themselves. God the Heavenly Father (who used to be accompanied by God the Earthly Mother before she was edited out of the Gospels) was an originally helpful but ultimately expendable way of pointing at the reality of a world from which we all emerge, and on which we all depend. But the experience of kinship and at-home-ness that Jesus was trying to convey gets disregarded when we start thinking in terms of God as an entity – or perhaps a team of entities – real and separate from us, whose creatures we are and in whose charge we remain. God becomes a vaguely person-like projection: external, controlling, creating, and usually male. Having missed the point, we are left with a fuzzy surrogate in which all we can do is believe, and which all too often comes to symbolize not the potential for liberation but the necessity for obedience and the inevitability of guilt.
The story gets even more tangled when we are taught to accept that the instrument by which we are to increase our love for each other is Will – a gift from God which, however, like a cheap Christmas toy, is inherently faulty, and which is occasionally (when we are ‘good’) serviced by the manufacturer with a lubricating dollop of Grace. By the time people had done their literal-minded worst with analogies like ‘the Kingdom of God’ and ‘heaven’, and he had found himself involved in such ludicrous conversations as the famous ‘render unto Caesar’ one, Jesus must have had serious doubts about the wisdom of opening his mouth in the first place.
So for many people Christianity will not do. Its officers seem lost, its language archaic, and, because Jesus is presented as definitely a one-off, the best it can offer them is the possibility of falling just a little less short. They are looking for an alternative that is more inspiring, more comprehensive and more optimistic – and Buddhism is a good candidate.
The plan of the book (#ulink_6383e431-f86a-5e47-ae23-57e5b2b0a453)
Despite the inherent appeal of Buddhism, it is sometimes presented in a technical way, which emphasises the difficulties of translation and obscures the heart. Or the differences between the different schools are stressed, so that one becomes either entranced or bemused by the distinctive styles – the deities and mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism, the complicated philosophizing of the Mahayana or the bizarre behaviour of Zen Masters. When these are put first it is easy to mistake the skin for the banana. Conversely, when the heart of the matter is understood, only then do the vast range of practices and doctrines make sense. This book is first of all an attempt to convey the spirit of Buddhism, in its most rational, practical and mundane form; and then, from time to time, to look at some of the ways in which the great Buddhist teachers, using language and examples where were intelligible within the context of their time and culture, have tried to communicate the essence of their own transformation to others.
First I want to explain the Buddhist point of view. In the course of this I shall explore what it has to say about several aspects of people’s lives, especially our thoughts and feelings, our relationships, and our attitudes to death, bereavement and loss generally, as well as its implications on the social, political and global levels. Then I shall say something about the Buddhist ‘cure’, and particularly about meditation – what it is and why it works. In the process I shall try to introduce, without losing the flow, some of the more traditional language, teachings and practices of the different Buddhist schools in order to illustrate the simplicity that underlies the welter of diversity.
2 (#ulink_a6599dfe-e34f-510f-9913-ba43db6a59a0) A PEACE MISSING
Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakeable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.
Afraid, adj. Civilly willing that things should be other than they seem.
– Ambrose Bierce
The programme of research (#ulink_a6599dfe-e34f-510f-9913-ba43db6a59a0)
EVERYBODY wants to be happy. Everybody wants to be loved and accepted as they are. Everybody wants to feel clear and strong and loving in their turn. Everybody wants to live in a happy and peaceful world. Everybody wants enough food. Everybody wants to be free from pain. Understanding what we all want is not difficult. It is how to get there that is the problem. What steps can we take, what ‘game plan’ should we follow, to be as happy as we can in a world that is indelibly marked with old age, disability, sickness, physical pain, accident, bereavement and finally death? This is the 64,000 dollar question, for all of us now, just as it was for Siddharta Guatama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But most of us do not go into it in quite as much depth as he did, and we therefore do not discover as profoundly satisfactory an answer. We sort of pick it up, and make it up, as we go along, and vaguely hope that we’ve got it about as right as we can. We equally vaguely assume that the anxiety and irritation and jealousy and guilt and restlessness we feel are all part of the package deal into which we were born, to be put up with, or avoided, or ignored as best we can.
Buddha’s shocking discovery is that our half-baked game plan, far from being a little wide of the mark, is just about as wrong as it could be. Not only does it fail to deal with the intrinsic pains and upsets that are bound to befall us all sooner or later, it actually generates an untold amount of extra suffering. Through our misguided efforts to generate happiness, peace and love, we are actually creating distress, anxiety and animosity. Now this is a hard idea to swallow. Can it really be that most of the population of the world, for most of history, has been so crass? That all our philosophers and saints and philanthropists, as well as the rest of us men, women and children in the street, have been earnestly and energetically barking up the wrong tree? That what millions of people experience as inevitable hardship is in fact optional and homegrown? We shall need some convincing. Apart from anything else it will be rather embarrassing, if Buddha does turn out, against all the odds, to be right, to admit to such monumental stupidity. The only recourse in that unlikely event would be to howl with laughter – which explains, perhaps, why for many people an experience of ‘enlightenment’ is indescribably funny.
In this chapter I want to turn the tables on ourselves, and to make Buddha’s proposal look less absurd and our own normal point of view more questionable. First let us make explicit what this ‘common sense’ is, so we can submit it to some scrutiny. Most of us have never articulated it clearly to ourselves, yet it underlies and controls what we do, and the choices we spontaneously make, just as the program in my word processor never appears on the screen itself, yet it determines absolutely the responses that my little machine makes to my key-strokes. We were not born with this so-called common sense, but picked it up intuitively from those around us. So easily and unwittingly did we do so that now, if we are aware of it at all, it seems to us as natural as the air we breathe. To follow the familiar game plan is second nature to us. Yet if this is second nature, we might pause to wonder about the first. Might there be an even deeper strategy for living that has been eclipsed by a ‘common sense’ which could turn out on inspection to be riddled with common nonsense? Might there not indeed be more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies?
This is the Buddhist starting point and the Buddhist programme of research, this enquiry into the premises on which we have, by default, been basing our lives. First this structure of habits and assumptions must be floated to the surface of our minds, and then it must be picked over in the light of experience. What have we been up to? And has it been working?
The game plan (#ulink_c2bb50aa-5ec4-5c61-87c3-f0837bde587c)
I am going to make a few educated guesses about what this second nature consists of, but as I do so, please remember that these are not Great Truths to be believed, but suggestions to be tested. Although Buddhism often seems to present us with ideas that are strange or outrageous to our normal way of thinking, all we are required to do is to suspend our initial reaction and try the ideas on for size. We are not supposed to take them on trust, but merely to stand inside them for a while, to adopt, without prejudice, a Buddha’s-eye-view of things, and to see if it doesn’t ring true in our own experience.
The first and most reasonable-looking assumption that we make is that the way to be as happy as possible is to reduce the unhappiness as much as possible. Happiness is the result of having what we find pleasant and congenial; unhappiness is the converse or the lack of these things. I am happy when I am warm, and loved, and safe, and relaxed, and successful. I am unhappy when I am cold and wet, waiting for the breakdown truck (that is going to cost me a fortune) on the motorway in the dark, furious with myself for forgetting to check the spare tyre, and anxious about what my family will be thinking. What could be more natural, more sensible, than to take precautions against such distressing events? Tomorrow I will buy a new spare and renew my membership to the AA. I might even get that carphone fitted so at least I can get hold of people to let them know, or to have a friendly voice to talk me out of my black mood while I am waiting for the stupid garage to turn up. The most basic element of the game plan is to do what one reasonably can to keep out of trouble, and to anticipate it so that one can minimize it when it happens. Zen Masters and Tibetan lamas do not deliberately drive on the wrong side of the road, pick fights in bars, or eat bad meat.
The question is: is this enough? And in adopting this strategy, must we necessarily give pain or inconvenience the status of an ‘enemy’, to be removed at all costs? Are we inevitably led to the attitude that it is wrong to suffer; that it is a disaster if things do not turn out to my liking; that my preferences are necessities and their non-fulfilment therefore threats? It is here that Buddhism begins to part company with common sense, for common sense often seems to be committed to the idea that happiness lies in the obliteration of our dislikes and the stabilizing of our likes. The ploy of avoiding what hurts is pushed beyond its limits, and we find ourselves trying to fix in place a world that obstinately refuses to be manipulated to our liking. Trains and stock markets crash. Children do not turn out as we hoped. Loved ones die or leave us. Promotions are missed. Manuscripts are rejected. Exams are failed. Bodies sag. Inoperable tumours are diagnosed. House prices fall. Lightning strikes – and sometimes twice. Secrets are discovered. Impossible decisions have to be made. We die. Yet despite this massive uncontrollability we persist in our opposition – regretting, fretting, getting angry, feeling guilty, trying to nail down and outwit. The game plan seems to rely too heavily on security. We decide what it is that we think we like or need, and then judge our happiness by our ability to get it and hold on to it.
Part and parcel of the game plan is the belief that happiness depends on circumstances. If we can only get the conditions of our lives right then everything will turn out well. What I need is a best-seller, or a beautiful lover, or another baby, or a bigger house … then it will be OK. We presume a close association between what’s going on and the way we feel – and that is indeed the way we experience it. When someone insults me, I get angry. When someone ignores me, I feel hurt. When someone threatens to leave me, I am jealous. Given this attitude, the only thing I can do is to try to control my circumstances, for it is they that hold the key.
Having made up my mind what it is I like and need, uncertainty and change become threats in and of themselves – because they make my precarious hold, such as it is, insecure. If I don’t know what to expect next, how can I plan for it or insure against it? So I tend to go for the familiar, for ritual and routine (even though I am bored to death by it), and become depressed or outraged when someone dares to take my parking space, or when my teenage son stops being intimidated by my stern lectures.
The problem with the game plan is obvious: beyond a certain point it stops bringing happiness and starts generating its opposite instead. The more closely I hitch my contentment to my conditions, the more at risk I am when the unexpected or the unwanted happens – as it must. The more tightly I define these conditions, the more surely I call into being the occasions of my disappointment. The more carefully I lay my contingency plans, the more hard work my life becomes. And so it goes. Beyond a certain point the effort to remove suffering becomes not only tiring but actually counterproductive. Alcoholics Anonymous use a famous prayer that catches something of the balance that we are in danger of losing if we ‘take up arms against a sea of troubles’ too often and too earnestly: ‘Lord, give me the courage to do those things which I can; the serenity to accept those things which I cannot; and the wisdom to tell the difference.’ For Buddhism serenity and wisdom are at least as important as courage.
The final consequence of the ‘common sense’ approach to life is that it makes a degree of self-centredness inevitable. If my happiness depends on conditions being to my liking, and they happen to conflict with what you want, then I’m afraid one of us is going to be unlucky – and I would rather it wasn’t me. Other people’s peace, happiness and kindliness can be abused or trampled on if necessary. I can be generous only when to be so doesn’t threaten my security. If I need an affair to combat my mounting depression and distance from my family, then so be it. If I’ve set my sights on that promotion, then I can almost convince myself that the stealthy efforts to denigrate my rival are quite legitimate. ‘All’s fair in love and war, old boy, didn’t you know?’ And the small trickle of unease that manages to escape can quickly be sponged off with a bit of bravado and another round of drinks.
The game plan thus comes to strangle the very qualities that we value most – ease, spontaneity, friendship, openness. We think we are unhappy because of the ‘problems’ and difficulties that come our way, and set off each time to lick reality into shape. Yet the equally obvious fact, that we experience things as problems when we are not on good form, and that they are less problematic from the vantage point of a better mood … the implications of this seem to go unnoticed. ‘We see things not as they are, but as we are’, said Koffka, a German psychologist. If that is so, then our game plan needs to pay attention to the state of mind of the looker, as well as to the objects at which he or she is looking with such longing or revulsion. If it is possible to be in a good mood independently of what is going on – even if this freedom is only partial – then we have opened up another important avenue for promoting our well-being. It is precisely this powerful possibility that Buddhism has exploited to the hilt: the possibility that one can learn to remain at peace, to keep one’s equanimity, not just on the surface but deep down, in the face of situations that are difficult or painful.
Buddha’s deep realizations were just how much of our suffering is self-inflicted, and just how much elbow room we have to dissociate our serenity from our situation – not by perfecting our defences, so that we become invulnerable, but by seeing for ourselves that defence is quite unnecessary. An Islamic proverb says, ‘Trust in God – but first tether your camel.’ If we will only learn to tether our camel, do our best in the exam, repaint the shed when it needs it – and then realize that we are not destroyed by the thief or the tricky question or the hurricane – then we can keep our balance between doing and accepting, intervening and sitting back. But we cannot leave well alone; we seem to have lost the ability, let alone the serenity, to abide with unavoidable adversity. Whatever it is, it feels like a problem that the right activity would solve, if only we could figure out what that was. So we are embarrassed, for example, when we can do no more than sit with a dying friend. We fidget and chat in order to fend off the experience of impotence, anxiously sneaking glances at the clock and further exhausting the weary friend into the bargain.
But worse than this, we are full of strange ideas about what needs defending, what needs running after and what must be avoided. As in a fairy story, we have dreamt up dragons to beware of, castles to defend and beautiful princesses or priceless treasures to go in search of. Nothing wrong with that, we might suppose – except that we then take these games for real, and spend our time complaining about how tired and busy we are, and how desperately we are looking forward to the end of term, or to Christmas. (‘Unfortunately though, we always spend Christmas with Sheila’s parents, and after 36 hours of her mother, well, to be honest I shall be looking forward to getting back to the office!’)
People need a certain amount of material – food and shelter for example – but the game of making money can become so serious that they ruin their health and make strangers of their families in pursuit of it, and jump off tall buildings when they lose it. People need friendship, or most do anyway, so they equip themselves with toupees and false breasts in the quaint belief that they will be better liked if they hide the effects of age. People value communication, but tremble with strangulated rage when someone jumps the queue rather than risk a ‘confrontation’. We all have our personal portfolio of such hostages to fortune, and are quick to chuckle at those which we do not own, or own up to, when we spot them in other people. I am ready to joke with you about people who grow long clumps of hair to paste from one ear to the other. But don’t start on my little pot belly, or I shall suddenly become rather waspish.
Some of these premises on which we live not only send us off on wild goose chases; they bamboozle us about ourselves as well. They set up rules and regulations about which bits of us are all right and which are not – which to be proud of and display to impress people (‘Cambridge, actually,’ I murmur modestly), and which to feel ashamed of (‘Well, if you must know, it was a third,’ I declare defiantly). Events in the past are sorted into ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘indifferent’, while whole categories of human experience are condemned or exalted. To cry is ‘weak’, so I must fend off your tenderness lest I ‘break down’. To assert myself is ‘unfeminine’, so I meekly go along with your stupid suggestion, and compensate for the ensuing self-disgust by secretly rejoicing when you get your comeuppance. To feel afraid is shameful, so I have learnt how to make myself physically sick before school on the days when I have French. To feel violently towards my howling child is too dreadful a thing to admit, so I wake exhausted and cannot tell you about my frightful dreams.
Buddhism knows all about these buried beliefs that keep us in a state of dissatisfaction. Much of what we cherish is dross, the Buddhists say, and in the protecting of it we run ourselves ragged. We become more or less skilful at putting on a phony front and at keeping our skeletons well locked away. The process of freeing ourselves from anxiety by dredging up these pernicious convictions and putting them to the test of adult reflection is part of the Buddhist programme.
It is for this reason that Buddhism has some strong relationships with psychotherapy, though they are by no means straightforward. But they are not really the heart of the matter. Students of Buddhism are after bigger fish, and though grappling with these standards of conduct and feeling offers invaluable practice in the art of hauling up and putting an end to particular sources of self-made distress, they are not the root cause of that distress. For that a longer line is needed, and greater courage still. We shall return to the hunt for Moby Dick in a little while.
Pain and death (#ulink_f616cda1-12c8-5187-b94b-dea43842e897)
So far we have begun to explore the Buddhist insight that much of what we are trying to fix up and escape from is in fact home-made. But surely, you will probably have been wanting to say for a while, not all of our distress is avoidable with a change of attitude? I can see what you mean about shame and jealousy, but what about the real pain in the world? What does Buddhism have to say about that?
Many people in the well-protected, affluent West, especially those like myself who are not old enough to have lived through the Second World War, have so far been spared the direct experience of pain and death. I remember my first encounter with a Zen Master, Asahina Sogen, who was at the time abbot of one of the most famous Zen temples in Japan, Engakuji in Kamakura. He asked me one or two polite questions, and then, out of the blue, enquired whether my parents were still alive. I told him they were, and he said how lucky I was, and went on to talk about how the death of his parents when he was just a boy, and the need to understand the grief he felt, had precipitated him onto the Buddhist path.
Because of our wealth, our technology and our habit of avoidance, it is perhaps easier for us than for any other society in history to minimize our first-hand experience of big suffering. We all know about the pain in the world, yet, until it touches us directly, are able to keep it at arm’s length. I do not like to contemplate how easily, with just one little twist of the kaleidoscope, it could be me who is starving in the Sudan, me who is imprisoned, tortured or shot for my beliefs in Turkey or Chile, me who is dispossessed and oppressed because of the colour of my skin in South Africa or Australia. I have never yet had to choose between my physical survival and my self-respect, between being a passive collaborator or an active resister, when I know that for my resistance I will very likely be killed.
Yet I can, if I am honest, sense in myself the potential to be the villain. I can see that it is the same obsession to be comfortable, to accumulate and hoard, that I have which makes multi-national companies turn vast stretches of Africa into farms that only produce cotton which the people cannot eat, and beef which they have to sell. It is the same urge for release and avoidance that I have which makes the subsistence farmer take this payment into town and blow it all on beer, while his wife and children grow hungrier. It is the same wish for power and control that I have which makes governments spend money on arms rather than on small, easily-serviced water pumps for the poor people in the countryside. It is the same short-sightedness that I have which makes people cut down trees for shelter or profit, which loosens the top-soil, which washes away in the next flood, which turns farmland into yet more man-made desert, which makes yet more famine. It is the same need to look good and impress that I have which makes presidents, prime ministers and first secretaries spend millions of dollars on inauguration or commemoration parties and lie and twist and bribe to protect their reputations. I cannot be sure that I would not have manned the gas chambers, nor that I would not have joined the others in hurling rocks at Jesus. What’s more I cannot even be sure that I would have felt reluctant as I behaved barbarically. If I am to follow the Buddhist path, I have to be prepared to seek out in myself just those attitudes that I condemn most vociferously in others.
But whether or not pain is caused by other people, whether or not I can understand it if it is, real pain exists. Even in an enlightened world there must be the pain of childbirth, the pain of cancer, the pain of accidental injury or food poisoning. Can Buddhism get rid of this? No, it can’t. As Michael Carrithers says in The Buddha:
It is not claimed that liberation puts an end to physical pain this side of the grave, for painfulness is admitted to be the nature of the body ... It is rather mental suffering, the extra and unnecessary anguish of existence, that is progressively dispelled by the Buddhist training.
And Aldous Huxley in his utopian novel Island adds his usual touch of poetry to the same sentiment:
Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact – sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature, and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world that is wholly indifferent to our well-being, towards decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two-thirds of all sorrow is home-made and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.
We are back to courage, serenity and wisdom. There are some pains we can avoid by taking pains, and it is sane and healthy to do so. There are others that we can seem to avoid or reduce, but there are buried costs in doing so, costs that will damage our well-being and our relationships in a wider sense. If we blame others we can avoid the pain of responsibility, but incur the pain of loss of goodwill. We can drink to forget, but must pay the price of addiction and incompetence. Then there are the self-generated pains that we can avoid if we wake up to what we are doing, and stop doing it. And finally there are the pains that must simply be borne – par excellence the sadness of bereavement, the sensations of sickness, the dependency of disability, the decline to old age, and the final unknown of our own death.
The remarkable discovery that Buddhism can make available to us is that even physical pain changes in its quality and intensity when we give up the abortive attempt to avoid it. There was an unsensational programme on the television the other day about a clinic in America that was treating children who had some rare disease or other, I forget what it was, that required daily injections directly into the spine which were, undeniably, intensely painful. Their special approach was to teach the children everything they could about the injections, to allow them to practise giving the injections themselves to life-size dummies, and to encourage parents to be involved all the time. What they did not do was tell the children that it wouldn’t hurt, nor did they tell them to be ‘brave’. Through this process the children, incredibly, were able to stay completely relaxed and peaceful throughout the injections, experiencing the pain, but not resisting it. Precisely by not resisting, the experience became bearable. Millions of mothers have thanked their ante-natal classes for something of the same transformation of labour. Thousands of meditators, as we shall see later, have learnt to sit peacefully through long retreats while strong sensations of various sorts arise and fade away in different parts of their bodies. It is no mere fatalism, but active intelligence, to give up trying to avoid the inevitable, for in doing so it actually becomes less aversive. (As I heard a politician say on the radio a year or so back, ‘We must plan for the inevitable; and unfortunately these days the inevitable all too frequently happens.’)
To the medical profession, there are no two ways about it: pain and death are the enemy, to be reduced and postponed wherever and for as long as possible. In a sense this is the easy way out of the impossible moral dilemma with which medical technology has confronted us. If we have drugs that can soften pain and prolong life, then it is hard not to use them, or at least to believe that we ought to use them. In the old days, doctors did what they could, and lots of people died anyway. Now they are frequently confronted with a choice that they would rather not have to make. In many individual cases it looks as if the best thing to do is to keep on trying your hardest to keep people alive – despite the increasing misgivings of families and patients themselves. Yet the collective upshot of these individual decisions is an increasingly elderly, infirm and dependent population, many of whom have had enough.
The decisions involved are truly difficult, for families and especially for doctors, and I would cope no better if I were in their shoes, I am sure. But the medical profession has largely brought the difficulties on themselves. By persisting in treating pain and death as technical problems that can and should be fixed, they have educated the world at large to think likewise, and have undermined the vital resources of serenity and acceptance that we are all going to need sooner or later. And at the end, when medical science has given its all and ‘failed’, as it must, dead bodies are spirited away and either hidden or spruced up as if they were going to a party. How many dead bodies have you seen in your life? How many opportunities have you or your children had to get used to the physical fact of death? If your teenage daughter persisted in writing English assignments around the theme of her parents dying, and what it is like being an orphan, would you feel this was a healthy attempt to deal in imagination with the greatest and most legitimate fear of all, or would you think her ‘morbid’ and try to encourage a more cheerful outlook?
How at ease are you with bereavement – can you feel sadness and regret without also feeling anger and guilt? Is death to you the enemy of life, or simply one of many threads that run inextricably through it? And what of your own death? Some people are scared of the fact of being dead, and hope for some kind of Hereafter, so that it shall not end. To them for death to be a full stop makes a mockery of life. Others feel less worried about death itself, but are scared of dying – of the unknown process with its fierce connotations of pain, loss of control, and loss of consciousness. Perhaps you are not aware of any apprehension at all – but do you act, in your daily life, as if death were a friendly acquaintance that could stroll over and tap you on the shoulder at any moment?
There is a Sufi story about a man who was walking in the market place one afternoon when someone tugged at his sleeve. ‘I am Death,’ said the figure. ‘I just came to warn you that we have an appointment at six o’clock tomorrow morning.’ The man was very scared, but he thought he would make good use of the advance information. Cashing in his shares, he bought the three finest, fastest horses in the town, and packing just a towel and a few valuables, he set off across the desert to a distant town where he hoped Death would not be able to find him. All night he rode like the wind, exhausting one horse after the other, until, as six o’clock approached he came to a small oasis where he dismounted for a quick drink before continuing. As he walked over to the well, the figure who had been sitting quietly beside it looked at his watch and stood up, saying, ‘It’s remarkable. I really didn’t think you were going to be able to make it.’
One’s attitude to death is very important in Buddhism. When we forget our mortality and the mortality of our loved ones, it is possible for our priorities to go haywire, and for us to become bamboozled into thinking that all kinds of peripheral things – wealth, status, popularity – are of the essence. Sometimes it takes an angina attack or a stroke to remind us of what we value most. In one of his books about the Yacqui Indian sage Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda reports him as saying, ‘When your death makes a gesture to you, an enormous weight of triviality drops away.’ Though, being forgetful, it is perfectly possible for us to pick it up again!
