Everyone wants to be happy. According to all
the research, what makes people most
happy is their connections with other people. To have a sense of belonging to a
loving family or loving community is what makes us happy and apparently adds as
much as 10 years to life expectancy. Before I became a Buddhist I was very
self-sufficient and cultivated independence and self-sufficiency. This was not
a bad thing, but it did take me many years of practising Buddhism before I realised experientially, that I did need other people – that my
spiritual practice was nothing without other people and that the family of
Sangha really was a blessing and a boon in my life. I can say now that I am
happy most of the time and I believe this is largely due to being part of this
alive spiritual community of Triratna. Bhante Sangharakshita says in Wisdom beyond Words that
there is only one thing we need in order to be able to give to others. We need
“to love ourselves and know that we are
loved by others. Appreciate ourselves and know that we are appreciated by
others”. This is also what we need in order to be happy.
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
Life
EM Forster –the English writer – said: “ We can
spend our whole life preparing to live” . And John Lennon said “Life
is what happens when you are busy making other plans” . In other words the
urge to control life and make it secure and comfortable can lead us to miss out
on actually living our lives. We can spend a lot of time and energy trying to
create an imagined future or trying to protect ourselves from a feared future
and in the meantime our life is almost on hold.
But as Sangharakshita puts it in his poem of
the same name – Life is King.
Hour
after hour, day
After
day we try
To
grasp the Ungraspable, pinpoint
The
Unpredictable. Flowers
Wither
when touched, ice
Suddenly
cracks beneath or feet. Vainly
We try
to track birdflight through the sky trace
Dumb
fish through deep water. Try
To
anticipate the earned smile the soft
Reward,
even
Try
to grasp our own lives. But life
Slips
through our fingers
Like
snow.
Life cannot belong to us.
We belong to Life.
Life
Is
King.
The great Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is
as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Mindfulness is the Buddhist way of living
your life as though everything is a miracle. For Buddhists it is not the
walking on water that is a miracle, it is the simple fact of walking. When we have mindfulness and when we have
love, we have everything and without needing to control, we are able to connect
to the pulsing heart of life.
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Conflict
There are always conflicts in the world - Israel-Palestine, Syria, Ukraine, DRC, Sudan, Venezuela - and many more. And those are just some of the violent conflicts. There are many more conflicts between different political ideologies, labour and capital, racial, religious, linguistic groups and so on.
Looked at rationally it would seem obvious that conflict doesn't really solve any problem but simply creates more problems. But humankind is not rational, or at least not just rational.
Often we, as individuals, are in conflict with ourselves. We want to be happy and we do things that make us unhappy. We want to be loved and we behave in ways that make it less likely to happen. We want to be free and we give up our freedom out of fear. There are forces at work within us that are not under our conscious control and this creates tension and conflict. And because there is conflict within human beings, it is not surprising that there is conflict among humans. (for more on this see my other blog (ratnaghosha.blogspot.com) and the talk entitled Demons for Every Occasion)
To reduce conflict within we need to become more aware of ourselves; more aware of our thoughts, emotions, motivations and actions. Becoming more aware requires some effort and is helped by the techniques of Buddhist meditation. The Mindfulness of Breathing helps us to get to know ourselves better. The Development of Loving Kindness (Metta Bhavana) helps us to experience our emotions more clearly.
If we develop more awareness of our own minds, we will over time gain a greater understanding of others too. And with that greater understanding comes empathy. Awareness and empathy help to reduce conflict, both internally and externally.
Looked at rationally it would seem obvious that conflict doesn't really solve any problem but simply creates more problems. But humankind is not rational, or at least not just rational.
Often we, as individuals, are in conflict with ourselves. We want to be happy and we do things that make us unhappy. We want to be loved and we behave in ways that make it less likely to happen. We want to be free and we give up our freedom out of fear. There are forces at work within us that are not under our conscious control and this creates tension and conflict. And because there is conflict within human beings, it is not surprising that there is conflict among humans. (for more on this see my other blog (ratnaghosha.blogspot.com) and the talk entitled Demons for Every Occasion)
To reduce conflict within we need to become more aware of ourselves; more aware of our thoughts, emotions, motivations and actions. Becoming more aware requires some effort and is helped by the techniques of Buddhist meditation. The Mindfulness of Breathing helps us to get to know ourselves better. The Development of Loving Kindness (Metta Bhavana) helps us to experience our emotions more clearly.
If we develop more awareness of our own minds, we will over time gain a greater understanding of others too. And with that greater understanding comes empathy. Awareness and empathy help to reduce conflict, both internally and externally.
BuddhaBites
22nd April 2014
I am intending to use this blog to write short pieces that give an idea of the Buddhist perspective on various issues. There is of course no one Buddhist perspective, because there are so many schools of Buddhism, so what I say is very much the view of this Buddhist who has been practising for over 35 years and teaching for about 30 years.
I am intending to use this blog to write short pieces that give an idea of the Buddhist perspective on various issues. There is of course no one Buddhist perspective, because there are so many schools of Buddhism, so what I say is very much the view of this Buddhist who has been practising for over 35 years and teaching for about 30 years.
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