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
