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
