This
talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre in 2011
I
want to begin with a few quotations from different periods in
history. The first is from an 8th century Indian poet called
Shantideva. He says: "All those who suffer in this world do
so because they seek their own happiness. All those happy in this
world are so because they seek the happiness of others."
(Bodhicaryavatra, 8.129, trans.
Crosby&Stilton,p.99) Then from the 18th century we have
the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who is seen as the father of the
European enlightenment. He says: "The greatest happiness of
the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation"
And
influenced by Bentham we have Thomas Jefferson with the American
Declaration of Independence, which states: "We hold these
truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to
secure these rights governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right
of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organizing
it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness."
Then
coming right up to date here is quote from Professor Richard Layard.
He says:
"Most
people want more income and strive for it. Yet as Western societies
have got richer, their people have become no happier. This is no old
wives tale. It is a fact proven by many pieces of scientific
research. We have good ways to measure how happy people are, and all
the evidence shows that on average people are no happier today than
people were fifty years ago. This paradox is equally true for the
United States and Britain and Japan" (Happiness,
Layard,p.3)
The
first quote sees happiness as a profound paradox. The second and
third quotes see happiness as a right and the last quote says
happiness is much more elusive than is generally suspected. It points
to another seeming paradox; more wealth does not equate with greater
happiness. And perhaps hidden in there is another paradox: even
though most of us may have no difficulty in believing that greater
wealth does not equal greater happiness we still want greater wealth.
The
American Declaration of Independence was mainly written by Thomas
Jefferson who visited Paris around the time he was working on it and
had contact with the revolutionaries there. The French revolution's
declaration of human rights was influenced by Jefferson and that in
turn has had a huge influence worldwide that continues to this day.
The American Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 and it
states that the pursuit of happiness is a God-given right. It also
infers that government that is not effective in helping people to be
happy is not an effective government.
What
has it meant for the modern world that the pursuit of happiness is
seen as a right and that governments are to some extent judged by
their ability to effect the happiness of the citizens? Governments
can only do so much and the way in which they can affect the
well-being of the citizen has often been seen in material and
financial terms. Happiness has come to be associated almost
exclusively with material prosperity. Partly this is because this is
what governments can help to bring about but also it is because the
evidence shows that when people are lifted out of poverty their level
of happiness and well-being increases. It is also one of the easiest
things to measure. However as with many things in the affairs of
human beings we have taken something that brings positive results and
assumed that if we multiply it indefinitely we will continue to get
more and more positive results. The evidence shows this to be untrue.
This
is where the economist Richard Layard comes in. In his book
'Happiness', he quotes many experiments which have shown that beyond
certain levels extra income does not give rise to more happiness and
in fact can have the opposite effect because of disappointed
expectations. In the same vein Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social
Theory and Action at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, has shown that
increasing choice can enhance life up to a certain level but when
choices continue to multiply they can have an adverse affect on
well-being. His book is called The Paradox of Choice. I think these
two books, Happiness by Richard Layard and The Paradox of Choice by
Barry Schwartz are quite important contributions to any debate about
consumerism, ecology and well-being.
We
live in an age of consumerism which is to some extent an experiment
in social engineering. During the 19th and into the early 20th
century there was a strong culture of frugality, however in the
1920's the US the economy was changing rapidly and this had
far-reaching consequences. To quote from America: a Narrative History
by Tindall and Shi "Dramatic changes in efficiency meant that
the marketplace was flooded with new consumer delights. Goods once
available only to the wealthy were now accessible to the general
public. Middle-class consumers could own cameras, wristwatches,
cigarette lighters, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines. But those
enticing new goods would produce economic havoc if people did not
abandon their traditional notions of frugality and go on a buying
spree. Hence, business leaders, salesperson's, and public relations
experts began a concerted effort to eradicate what was left of the
original Protestant ethic's emphasis on plain living. The public had
to be taught the joys of carefree consumerism, and a new industry of
mass advertising obliged. By portraying impulse buying as a
therapeutic measure to bolster self-esteem, advertisers shrewdly
helped undermine notions of frugality." (p.760)
However
the Depression of the 1930's and the world war of the 1940's
reinforced habits of frugality, such as, saving rather than spending,
repairing rather than replacing and valuing what lasted over the new.
This meant that the US economy faced the same problem of over supply
in the 1950's. To quote from America: a Narrative History again:
"To
perpetuate the post war prosperity, economists repeated the basic
marketing strategy of the 1920s: the public must be taught to consume
more and expect more. Economists knew that Americans had more money
than ever before. The average adult had twice as much real income in
1955 as in the rosy days of the late 1920s before the crash. Still,
many people who had undergone the severities of the Depression and
the rationing required for the war effort had to be weaned from a
decade and a half of imposed frugality in order to nourish the
growing consumer culture.
Advertising
became a more crucial component of the consumer culture than ever
before. Expenditures for TV ads increased 1000% during the 1950s.
Such startling growth rates led the president of NBC to declare in
1956 that the primary reason for the post-war economic boom was that
"advertising has created an American frame of mind that makes
people want more things, better things and newer things.".
Paying for such "things" was no problem; the age of the
credit card had arrived. Between 1945 and 1957 consumer credit
soared 800%. Whereas families in other industrialised nations were
typically saving 10 to 20% of their income, American families, by the
1960s were saving only 5%." (p.902)
While
in the Soviet Union and it's sphere of influence there was a
Marxist/Leninist social engineering experiment, in the US and it's
sphere of influence there was what we could call a consumerist social
engineering experiment. The Soviet experiment has more or less come
to an end, however the consumerist experiment continues.
And
now with the wide acceptance of concerns about the earths ecology and
the continuous population growth, some prescient voices are beginning
to question whether this consumerist social engineering experiment
can continue unabated. Apart from the questions about ecology and
population growth, there is the simple question of whether
consumerism works as a way to give human beings a better quality of
life.
The
answer to this question seems to be no - at least according to the
research quoted by Richard Layard and Barry Schwartz. No, having more
and more choice or having more and more money does not improve
quality of life or increase happiness. The reason for this is what is
known in the field of psychology as adaptation.
Adaptation
simply means that we human beings quickly adapt to new conditions and
circumstances. We get used to things so that they quickly cease to
give us greater satisfaction. If you buy a new TV or computer you may
have eagerly anticipated its arrival and excitedly set it up, but
within a very short time it is just another thing in your life and
your level of happiness and satisfaction is back to where it was
before you got it.
However,
the research also shows that there are some things we never fully
adapt to: some pleasant ,for instance, intimate relationships and
friendships and some less pleasant, for instance, bereavement or a
serious illness of someone close to us. Also, those things which give
us a sense of life as meaningful, such as spiritual understanding and
practice within a community of like-minded people. The secret of
happiness according to Richard Layard is "to seek out those
good things that you can never fully adapt to." (p.49)
What
we get used to most easily is material possessions, and to quote
Layard again. "If we do not foresee that we get used to our
material possessions, we shall over invest in acquiring them, at the
expense of our leisure. People tend to underestimate this process of
habituation. As a result, our life can get distorted towards working
and making money, and away from other pursuits." (p.49)
We could say that the problem for contemporary Western
societies is that while material prosperity has multiplied many many
times, the general level of happiness and well-being has either
stayed at the same or declined for the vast majority of people. The
big question is - is it important to be happy? If so what's the best
way of going about it individually and communally? What are the
implications for our daily lives? Can Buddhism help?
Happiness
is about how much one likes the life one lives. There are two
components, firstly, how well we feel most of the time, and secondly
to what degree we get what we want from life. To be happy means that,
broadly speaking, you like the life that you live, you feel good most
of the time and to a large degree, you get what you want from life.
Being happy in this sense has advantages, for instance, research
shows that happy people are healthier and have a greater life
expectancy than those who are unhappy.
This
is a mundane level of happiness and from a Buddhist perspective is
just a stage on the way to complete liberation of the mind which is
the supreme happiness. Although happiness is quite subjective, it is
important that we don't think that our happiness is totally divorced
from that of others. If each one of us pursues our own happiness in
an individual and selfish way, then our happiness would contribute to
the misery of others, which in turn would come back to bite us one
day. And in fact, Jeremy Bentham was quite clear about this, our
own happiness is intimately tied up with the happiness of others
especially those we are in close contact with. He wrote in a birthday
letter to a friends young daughter:
"Create
all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you
are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the
pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for
every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall
find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck
out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be
replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul."
(quoted in Happiness, Layard, p.235.)
This
echoes what the Indian Buddhist poet Shantideva said in the eighth
century: "All those who suffer in this world do so because
they seek their own happiness. All those happy in this world are so
because because they seek the happiness of others." And
Shantideva goes on to give a Buddhist analysis of why this is the
case. " the calamities which happen in the world, the
sufferings and the fears, many as they are, they all result from
clinging on to the notion of self, so, what good is this clinging of
mine?" (chapter 8, verse 134.) He is saying that the root
of human suffering is clinging to a sense of self. Or to put it in
more contemporary terms; the degree to which we protect and defend
our ego identity determines the degree of our happiness or
unhappiness.
What
does it mean to cling to the notion of self? The first thing to note
here is that Shantideva talks about a notion of self, rather than a
self. From the Buddhist perspective, the self is an idea, a
construction, a notion. It is not a reality. What does this mean?
It seems to contradict our experience. I experience myself, you
experience you. The notion of self that Shantideva is referring to is
the idea of a fixed, unchanging, separate self, rather than the
empirical self. As Bhante Sangharakshita puts it: “we do have a
self as the sum total of our activities, our thinking, our feeling,
our willing and our imagining. The anatman (no-self) doctrine simply
warns us not to abstract an entity apart from and somehow activating
these processes.” (Complete Works, Vol.14, p.461)
To
put it rather paradoxically, you could say that the Buddhist
perspective is that there is a self but that it is constantly
changing and has no boundaries. It is not fixed in time or space or
anywhere else. What we experience when we experience ourselves is
constantly changing, physically, emotionally and mentally. Nothing
ever stands still. We are not things, we are processes. We are not
nouns we are verbs. Each one of us is a dynamic process of changing
thoughts, changing emotions, changing volitions and even physical
change. This perspective grows out of the more fundamental Buddhist
view that everything changes always.
The
most fundamental teaching of Buddhism is what is referred to as
conditioned co-production (translating the Pali paticca samutpada).
What this says, in a nutshell, is that everything in the entire
universe, material and non-material, arises in dependence upon
conditions. In other words, there is no chance or randomness. There
is an ordered universe in which all phenomena occur because of
preceding conditions. This is relatively easy to understand
intellectually. But the aim of Buddhism is not simply to have an
intellectual understanding of this teaching. Rather it is to have a
full and profound realisation of all its implications, so that our
lives are permeated by its significance to such a degree that our
actions, our words, our thoughts, our emotions, the totality of our
being, functions on the basis of this realisation. There are many
implications of conditioned co-production, but for the purposes of
this talk I want to focus on the implications for the self, the
notion of self, which dictates so much of our thoughts and actions.
Because
everything arises in dependence upon conditions -- everything that we
are, everything that we experience also arises in dependence upon
conditions. The implication for us is that everything that we do,
say and think is a condition in dependence upon which future
experience will arise. Not only are we a process, an ever-changing
flow of thoughts, emotions, actions and words, we are also
participating in the creation of this process. To put it another way,
the self that we are is a self that we are constantly creating. This
fluidity of self and self-creation confronts us with a huge
opportunity; the opportunity to create the best of all possible
selves; the possibility of actively intervening in the evolution, the
creation of our consciousness; the possibility of expanding our
consciousness, or, more rightly, of becoming aware of the expansive
nature of consciousness. And the implication of conditioned
co-production, everything arising in dependence upon conditions, is
that we are part of the conditions that give rise to the rest of the
world, to the social, ecological, political, economic environments,
we find ourselves in. We are part of the conditions that create and
mould the consciousness of a whole society, a whole community.
A
further unfolding of the Buddhist teaching of conditioned co arising
is spoken of as the law of karma. Karma means action. The law of
karma applies conditioned co-arising to the ethical dimension of
life. When we act, we and others experience consequences. An action
can be by body, speech or mind. Thoughts and ideas are actions that
can have powerful consequences. Words are extremely potent forces for
good or ill, and of course deeds can easily be seen to have
consequences that ripple out in all directions. The law of karma
simply states that skilful or positive actions of body, speech and
mind will have positive consequences for ourselves and others and
unskilful or negative actions will have negative consequences for
ourselves and others. It is not just an ordered universe but, you
could even say, a benign universe.
To
come back to the topic of happiness, from a Buddhist perspective, the
happiness of an individual is a condition for a deeper insight into
the nature of reality and the nature of self and it is also a result
of any such Insight. When one sees deeply into the profound and far
reaching implications of patticca samutpada, when one realises in the
depths of ones being that our self is a flow of conditions, many of
which we create, and that we are connected to all other selves by an
intricate web of interweaving and interpenetrating conditions, then
out of this realisation there grows a compassionate imperative.
The
imaginary isolated cocoon of the self that we had previously believed
in and operated from gives way to a fluid sense of a changing and
connected flow of self, which requires no egotistical defending or
protecting. With this realisation we function more freely and
fearlessly in the world, with a cosmic perspective and a natural
kindness that requires no effort. And happiness is never far away,
because the conditions that give rise to happiness are never far
away. We could say that happiness is important because it helps us
to focus our minds in such a way as to lead to a realisation of
something much greater than happiness - liberation. Happiness is not
an end in itself and not something that can be acquired for oneself
in the way you can acquire a new coat or a new television or mobile
phone. From a Buddhist perspective, what is really important and
really worth giving time and energy to are the conditions that give
rise to liberation of the mind, of which happiness is one.CWhat gives
rise to happiness? I’ll have a look at this first of all from the
perspectives of Barry Schwartz and Richard Layard and then see what
Buddhism has to say.
In
his book, 'The Paradox of Choice', Barry Schwartz comes to a number
of conclusions about how to avoid the dissatisfaction brought about
by having too much choice. Some of these conclusions are relevant to
the topic of how to create the conditions for more happiness. For
instance, he suggests that it is better not to take up every
opportunity to make a choice that presents itself to us. Some choices
are not worth making. The time and energy expended is likely to cause
more dissatisfaction than it's worth. A silly example would be if
you were to spend an hour in the supermarket trying to choose which
packet of biscuits to buy from the three hundred choices that are
usually available. Happiness and satisfaction are subjective
feelings and the more objective we try to be about our choices the
less likely we are to be satisfied. Another suggestion he makes is to
deliberately restrict our choices. If you are buying a coat or shoes
just go to two shops, rather than five or six.
He
also suggests that it is far better for your own well-being to just
accept what is good enough rather than always wanting the best.
Another way to achieve greater satisfaction is to make our choices or
decisions irreversible. He gives the example of marriage. He says: "
finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and
trading up. The only way to find happiness and stability in the
presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, 'I'm
simply not going there. I've made my decision about a life partner,
so this person's empathy or that person's looks really have nothing
to do with me. I am not in the market -- end of story'. Agonising
over whether your love is the real thing or your sexual relationship
above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better
is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you've made a choice that
you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving
the relationship that you have, rather than constantly
second-guessing it." (p.229)
The point he is making is that accepting what is good enough and
making a commitment to that is better for happiness. Even in the
Buddhist community we often encounter people who seem incapable of
committing to a particular course of practice or a particular school
of Buddhism. This is no doubt the influence of our consumer culture
of unlimited choice.
Another
suggestion Barry Schwartz makes is to practise an "attitude of
gratitude" by giving attention to what is good and satisfying
and pleasing in your life. Even quite small things or things we
normally take for granted, like being able to see, walk or hear. The
idea is to help yourself to feel better about your life as it is and
less driven to find all the supposedly new and improved products,
activities, and people that will somehow enhance it. In Buddhism we
have the Katannuta Bhavana, which literally translates as development
of gratitude. This gratitude meditation has the effect of making us
happier and more content with our lives.
Another
important point made by Barry Schwartz is that we should anticipate a
tendency to adapt to the new quite quickly. He says: "as the
number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually
becomes a tyranny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and
attention that it becomes difficult to get through the day. In
circumstances like this, we should learn to view limits on the
possibilities we face as liberating not constraining. Society
provides rules, standards, and norms for making choices, and
individual experience creates habits. By deciding to follow a rule
(for example, always wear a seat belt: never drink more than two
glasses of wine in one evening), we avoid having to make a deliberate
decision again and again. This kind of rule following frees up time
and attention that can be devoted to thinking about choices and
decisions to which rules don't apply." (p.235)
This is what is behind much of the monastic tradition. It is
the counter intuitive wisdom that freedom is found through discipline
and restraint of appetites rather than through unlimited choice and
unlimited individualism.
I
think the message of Barry Schwartz's book is an important one for
our time in history and an interesting contribution to the debate
about the efficacy of the consumerist social engineering experiment
which we have all been taking part in for the past few generations.
Richard Layard, who is an economist, writes about the sources of
happiness in terms of externals, public policy and the organisation
of society. However, he is also keenly aware of the internal
dimension to happiness and recommends Buddhist meditation among other
things.
Many
studies have shown that human relationships are what make people
happiest -- friendship, marriage, and family. In Britain and the
United States in particular, economic policies that have encouraged
mobility have been very effective in generating more wealth, but have
also had the unfortunate effect of destroying communities and
dispersing families, thus undermining one of the primary sources of
happiness. Many of the things which are lauded as beneficial to us,
such as choice, flexibility and change, are actually not that helpful
in creating a stable society where people trust each other. When the
level of trust drops in a society, the level of happiness and
well-being also drops and this is what has happened in Britain and
the United States. The percentage of adults who think most people can
be trusted is half that of sixty years ago. The upshot of this is
that for the general well-being of society there are huge advantages
to inflexibility and predictability, in short stability. Richard
Layard also makes some interesting points about the role of taxation
in creating a happy society, but I won’t go into that here.
Turning
to the inner dimension of happiness, he thinks that it should be a
major goal of education to develop an inner strength of character,
which allows people to accept themselves better, and to feel more for
others. He goes on to say " for adults there is a range of
spiritual practices that help to bring peace of mind from Buddhist
meditation to positive psychology. For those who are struggling,
cognitive therapy has a good record of success. For those in the
extremes of misery, psychiatric drugs and cognitive therapy have
probably helped more than any other changes in the last fifty years,
and we can expect further major advances." (p.230)
His
recommendations for a happier society could be summarised as follows:
monitor
the development of happiness
re-think
our attitudes to taxation
re-think
our attitudes to performance related pay and bonuses
re-think
our attitudes to mobility
spend
more on helping the poor, especially in Third World countries
Spend
more on tackling the problem of mental illness
introduce
more family friendly practices at work
eliminate
high unemployment
in
schools teach the principles of morality as established truths,
rather than as interesting points for discussion
prohibit
commercial advertising to children, as in Sweden
I
found this last point interesting. I had not given it any thought
before, probably because I don't have children, but thinking about it
I could see his point very clearly. We are conditioning children from
an early age to be consumers. I suspect that in one hundred and
fifty years time people will look back at the practice of advertising
junk food etc., to children in the same way that we now look back to
one hundred and fifty years ago at the practice of sending small
children up chimneys. They may very well wonder why we considered it
okay to abuse the minds of young children with advertising in this
way. Those are some of the thoughts of Professor Layard on the
happiness of society and whether we agree with him and not, his
arguments are well worth considering and discussing.
What
about the Buddhist perspective on the conditions for happiness? Not
long before his death, the Buddha spoke to his followers about the
conditions for the stability of society and the conditions for the
stability of the community of his followers. This is in the
Parinibbana Sutta of the Digha Nikaya. The Buddha outlined seven
conditions for the stability of society and seven conditions for the
stability of the spiritual community. The first four are the same
for both.
The
first condition for a stable society and a stable spiritual community
according to the Buddha is that the people meet together in
assemblies regularly and frequently. This is acknowledging that a
society or community is based on relationships of trust and meeting
together is a way to build those relationships and foster that trust.
The
second condition is that people meet in harmony. The text says "meet
in harmony, break-up in harmony and carry on their business in
harmony." I take harmony here to mean that there is genuine
communication, listening to the views and opinions of others as well
as proffering our own.
The
third condition for the stability of society and the spiritual
community is respect for tradition or not introducing change just for
the sake of change.
The
fourth condition is the honouring of the elders. The text says
honour, respect, revere and salute the elders and consider them worth
listening to. This is of course quite the opposite to the cult of
youth that often pervades our society. The elders are repositories of
the values and the story of society and therefore worth listening to.
The
fifth condition for a stable society is that there should be no
abduction of women. I think we could broaden this out and say that
the exploitation of people for sexual purposes, whether women, men or
children, causes great distress and undermines the stability and
happiness of society.
The
sixth condition is to honour, respect and revere shrines at home and
abroad and continue to give proper support to them. This is a call
to respect the diversity of religious belief.
And
the last condition for the stability of society is to support those
who are trying to live a spiritual life full-time. Support here means
material support, guaranteeing their safety and allowing them to
establish temples or other appropriate buildings.
These
are the seven conditions for the stability of society, according to
the Buddha and of course that stability is the condition that gives
rise to both prosperity and well-being. Some of these overlap with
Richard Layard's suggestions about the sources of happiness in a
society. For instance, promoting community life and having
established moral principles.
Turning
now to the individual: what does Buddhism have to say about the
conditions that give rise to the happiness and well-being of the
individual? In a sense the whole of Buddhism is about the happiness
and well-being of the individual, because individuals are the
building blocks of community, of society, of a nation or world. To
have a happy society, we need happy individuals. What Buddhism says
is quite simple really. All our suffering is caused by clinging on to
the idea of a self, a fixed and separate self, and it is only by
letting go of that idea of a fixed and separate self that true
happiness and liberation are found. To use more psychological
language, ego or ego identity is the problem. Going beyond the
limitations of ego is the solution or rather realising that ego is
only a constructed idea and not a reality is the solution to the
problem.
We
don't just have ego-identity or self-centredness as individuals but
also as groups. For example, nationalism in relation to a nation
state is a kind of group egotism, a limiting and separating idea. A
nation state is an abstract idea that we give reality to by a complex
system of symbols and rules. An individual ego-identity is an
abstract idea that we give reality to by a complex system of desires
and habits.
Although
what Buddhism has to say about happiness, liberation and suffering is
quite simple, nevertheless, it is difficult to achieve this state of
egolessness. It is easy to think it, but not to live by it or from
it. And so the whole of Buddhism is essentially a pragmatic system
of practices that help us go beyond the habitual, narrow, limited
state of consciousness. Buddhist practices, such as meditation,
ethics, reflection and ritual, aim to help us to integrate our
personalities, so that we can focus our energies and develop positive
emotions -- gradually transforming greed into generosity, hatred into
love and delusion into wisdom. This process of practising
meditation, ethics, reflection and ritual leads us to the stage of
what we might call positive egotism, having a notion of self, but a
healthy positive self, imbued with the aspiration to expand beyond
the narrow confines of family or national conditioning, the confines
of habit and assumptions. This is the level of what we could call
mundane happiness. From here the practices are all about what is
often referred to as spiritual death, followed by spiritual rebirth.
Spiritual
death refers to the experience of egolessness, letting go of the
notion of a fixed, separate self. It manifests in a total lack of
selfishness, of self-centredness, and in a spontaneous response of
goodwill towards all living things, spontaneous compassion. This
spontaneous flow of energy towards others is the spiritual rebirth.
I
have been a Buddhist for many years and I'd like to talk a bit about
what that has done for me. It's always a tricky thing to talk about
oneself in a way that is objective and observational rather than
subjective and either inflated of deflated, but I'll have a go and
I'm sure you'll make allowances for any lapses into bad taste. I grew
up within the world of Irish Catholicism in the 1960s, and what I
gained from that was a non-materialist outlook, an emphasis on the
importance of the spiritual dimension of life. I'm not sure if that
is what I was meant to get from it but I did. I left home at eighteen
and went to London where I drifted into a career in accountancy.
There a combination of what I observed in the people around me and
what I felt in myself led me to a sense of meaninglessness; a sense
that I was living a meaningless life. Sometimes I felt quite
despairing and wondered whether there was any point to being alive or
was it all just a cruel joke. When I was twenty two, this came to
such a pitch for me that it led me to give up my career before
completing my training. I decided that I must discover the meaning of
life. I just couldn't bear to live for the sake of money,
possessions, family and a cosy retirement. For whatever reason, none
of these conventional life purposes satisfied the yearning in my
heart.
For
the next six years, I did odd jobs and spent a lot of time
undertaking symbolic journeys, either on foot in the British Isles or
by bicycle around continental Europe. I just travelled around,
camping out in the woods, because it was the cheapest way to live and
all the time I had in my mind that really my travelling was symbolic
of an inner journey. But I didn't really have any idea of what I was
looking for. Eventually, in January 1981, I settled in West Berlin.
I had many adventures, and it was there I discovered Buddhism or
perhaps Buddhism found me. I met a monk from Sri Lanka, who taught me
the meditation for developing loving kindness and told me about the
five ethical precepts of Buddhism. This was a big turning point in
my life. I knew immediately that I had found what I was looking for
and that I was a Buddhist. I felt very happy, even ecstatic. That was
in August 1983. I have been a Buddhist ever since, but I didn't
remain happy. Happiness was not so easily attained. Happiness proved
very elusive.
My
first task as a Buddhist was to change my ethical practice, which I
found fairly easy. I was already a vegetarian, and I had given up
alcohol too. I just had to stop some activities that contravened the
second precept. Meditation proved to be much more difficult for me.
I was a very restless and active young man and I found sitting still
for more than ten minutes very difficult. Sometimes I would prepare
my place to sit, light incense and sit down with great anticipation
of the wonderful experience about to unfold and then ten minutes
later I was in the kitchen making toast and I had no recollection of
getting up and going to the kitchen. It was as if I lived in a
restless daydream.
In
spite of the difficulties I had with meditation it did begin to have
an effect on me, and as I became more aware I discovered that my
personality was quite dispersed and even in conflict. This is quite
common. When people take up meditation and gain greater awareness it
can seem to them that they are experiencing more difficulties than
before. This is because what we first become aware of is the aspects
of our psyche which were previously unconscious. When what was
unconscious comes into consciousness, it can seem as if our sense of
who we are is disintegrating. This was my experience. But gradually
through communication with people more experienced than myself,
through meditation and reflection, I began to integrate all the
seemingly disparate parts of my psyche into something more coherent.
This probably sounds simpler and more straightforward than it was.
The actual experience for me was painful and messy, sometimes leading
me into despair and depression and was characterised by almost
violent internal conflict. It was a period of great unhappiness in my
life. But the most intense part of this experience only lasted for
about one year.
However,
there was still further to go before I could be happy. There are
habits of thought and emotion which are deeply ingrained. We are
conditioned by our families and our societies; by school, religion
and even politics, and this conditioning can leave a residue of
patterns in our mind which dictates how we think and feel, how we
perceive and experience life around us. In my case, I regularly fell
into a sense of isolation and loneliness, and I rationalised this to
myself as being to do with other people not caring about me. I tried
to explain my experience of myself in terms of the imagined thoughts
and actions of others. This is another surprisingly common
phenomenon. Eventually after another couple of years, I saw through
this. I realised that what I was experiencing had nothing to do with
others and was a habitual reflex of my own mind,which led me to
dislike myself and project that dislike onto others.
It
was through communication with a good friend over many months, and
intensive reflection by writing, that I broke through into greater
awareness and freed myself from some destructive mental and emotional
habits. Sometimes I used a stream of consciousness style of writing
which seemed to enable me to objectify some intensely subjective
states.
When
I broke through this habit of feeling very isolated and lonely I
started to experience a genuine happiness for the first time. I can
even date that to April 1989. I mean, I experienced very positive
emotions without an undertow of worry and anxiety that they were
about to disappear. And the consequence of this was that I felt able
to consider the needs of others in a clearer and cleaner way than
before. I had always been helpful and wanted to help others, but I
now realised that often that had had an unconscious motivation of
wanting to feel good about myself or even of wanting to feel superior
to others. Now, it felt different. After about five years as a
Buddhist, I had finally reached a point of happiness, but from a
Buddhist perspective, this was just the beginning. I won't go into
what has happened for me in the intervening years, except to say that
I'm deeply contented.
The
point I am making here and perhaps the main point I want to make in
this talk is that happiness is important, and for some people like
me, it is quite an achievement, but nevertheless it is not an end in
itself. There is much more to life, there is much more to being
human. Meaning is beyond happiness, not just a means to happiness.
And what we ought to be aiming at is complete liberation from all
delusion of self, so that the fountains of compassion can flow
freely. The higher evolution of consciousness beyond happiness,
beyond psychological integration, to the heights represented by the
Buddha, the perfection of Wisdom and Compassion ;this is what makes
life worth living. We should not settle for less.
There
are levels of happiness. From the fleeting happiness we experience
when we buy something new, to the deep happiness found in friendship
and other personal relationships, to the happiness of a healthy and
integrated psyche. All these levels of happiness prepare the ground
for the possibility of something even greater. The happiness of
liberation from the confines and limitations of ego-centredness, even
from subtle ego-identity. This liberation, this awakening from the
delusion of self, leads to an awareness of the expansive nature of
consciousness and a spontaneous response of loving kindness to all
other living beings. This is what is hinted at by Shantideva in that
quote with which I began this talk and which seems as good a place as
any to end: "all those who suffer in the world do so because
of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the
world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others."
