Following the dharma in the 21st century

My quote of the day for today provoked a lot of contemplation when I read it, so I thought I’d expand on my thoughts with a blog post as it’s a Sunday and I’m not running around like quite such a mad thing, having recently started working full time for my own company, Virya Technologies. Please note these are my own thoughts and musings and they might ramble a bit

The quote is taken from Bhante’s book, Essential Sangharakshita:

“Human beings are today less free to think and feel simply, naturally, and spontaneously than at any other period in history.”

The key points I take from this are relating to being free to think and feel simply, naturally and spontaneously – and when I first read it my thoughts were “well don’t be daft, of course I am free to think simply, naturally and spontaneously!” …

Thinking simply….

Thinking simply has never been a strong point for me, and the more reflective I become through meditation and awareness, the more I realise and appreciate how complex my thought processes are – how intertwined they become, and how easily I can be led by my thoughts which so often go charging off at immense speed telling stories and creating stimulus which is both a waste of energy, and potentially harmful!

A classic example is when I am driving somewhere and I pass an accident of any sort, my mind automatically starts weaving a story of what would happen if I was in an accident, how would it happen? Would I survive? Would I be injured? How would my family react? Would I be able to drive again? Would my car survive? If it didn’t, I’d need to get a new car, and I really can’t afford that at the moment! Oh, what is my bank balance – I haven’t checked it recently! I wonder if that client has paid their overdue invoice yet? ………. and the process goes on and on and on until I realise what is happening, and that I SHOULD really be paying my full attention to driving, and not to making stories in my mind about some event that may or may not happen in the future!

A lot of this has to do with being aware of our thoughts, and I am still taking baby steps in this area. I find meditation insightful, in that when I take time to sit, I realise just how many thoughts fly through my mind, and just how difficult it is to still them, even for a short 10 minute period of time! Most of the time they are really quite irrelevant thoughts – it’s almost like my mind has been trained from a young age that it must keep churning things over, or it won’t survive – almost like the sharks who must keep moving water over their gills or they will die. Realising the calmness that comes with being able to still this constant churning, and to be able to practice this regularly, can be absolutely amazing and a real relief!

I really suggest everyone tries to put aside a short period of time every day to just sit – turn off your phone, make sure you won’t be disturbed, and just sit quietly and try to clear your mind. Try not to let your mind wander off on tangents, and see what happens. If you want to try some guided meditation, I thoroughly recommend having a look at the short lead through meditations on mindfulness of breathing and the metta bhavana (loving kindness) meditations at Free Buddhist Audio.

Thinking naturally and spontaneously…

Actually when I started to think about the second part of this quote, I realised that I rarely think about things naturally or spontaneously either – almost always they are triggered by some kind of external stimulus, which is almost always artificial. Advertisements for food make me think I’m hungry. Gardening magazines make me feel guilty that I’ve not paid my garden enough attention! The 50p off Haagen Danz ice cream voucher that came with my latest lovefilm.com dvd’s made me think I wanted to eat ice cream, Haagen Danz in particular!

Everywhere we go, everything we do, we are being told what to think, what to want, what to crave, and in some cases how to act. When I design websites for people, one of the first questions I ask is “what do you want your visitors to want, think, know?” – we are engineering a society which imposes thoughts, feelings and emotions on people according to the message we wish to deliver. Watch any of the popular soaps (if you can bear it!) – is this how people in our society really act and speak to each other? If you don’t think it is, then why are these soaps so popular? What is it we like about them?

Today I read an interesting article on The Guardian (on my internet-enabled, email receiving, twitter and facebooking phone none the less!) which was comparing the current society to that of 18th century England which proposes that one of the reasons behind the dramatic rise in anti-social behaviour is a lack of self respect, and respect for others.

Driving through Colchester town centre on Friday night, it’s impossible not to notice the number of clearly intoxicated young and not-so-young people stumbling around the street, shouting obscenities across the road at others, arguing with door security staff that they were not drunk and therefore should be allowed into the club, and vomiting in the street. I fail to see how these people can have much self respect – or responsibility for their actions and behaviour.

Sad though it is to admit, five years ago I could quite easily have been that same person (as I actually went to University in Colchester, and went to those very same pubs and clubs!). Drinking and getting drunk became socially acceptable and the concept of getting hammered was actively promoted and even sold to young people as “the thing to do” on a Friday and Saturday night! Making a fool of yourself and not remembering in the morning because you were so drunk the night before means that you convince yourself that it wasn’t your responsibility. When I was growing up, if you made a mess or did something stupid, you went back the next day to clean it up or at least apologise for your behaviour – I wonder how many of these people go back to clean up after themselves or apologise to the person they were abusive to the next day? I certainly didn’t.

What would your mother say?! …

Something which really made me consider the way I was living out my life was imagining what my future children would think of me if they saw the way I was acting. What would my mother think if she saw the states I was getting into when I got drunk (and believe me, many will attest that when I got drunk I got into some pretty silly states!)? I spent a period of time imagining that they were there, watching over my shoulder every second of the day, and I felt deeply ashamed and embarrassed.

I was ashamed of the way I was behaving, the words I was speaking, the very way in which I was living my life by taking everything I could take and not giving anything back – it wasn’t who I really was, or what I really believed, so why on earth was I doing this? I was frequently embarrassed by people telling me what I had done the night before, or when having to smooth over problems that I had created by my own actions.

I felt I had lost my own self respect. I had lost the ability to say no, that I was NOT going to get drunk just because everyone else was, or because whenever I went out with my friends I was expected to drink with them. I had lost the sense of responsibility when I was drunk – nothing was my fault, and I didn’t really care about my actions. I felt that I was only a fun person to be with when I’d had a few drinks, that it somehow made me more appealing and more attractive – and I quickly realised this was a dangerous frame of mind to be in.

In considering this and deciding to stop drinking alcohol to excess (even before I ‘became’ a Buddhist), I started to realise how powerful the effect of societal “norms” had been, without my even having any kind of awareness of the hold they had upon me. Just to add, I don’t think anyone who drinks alcohol is lacking in self respect! I totally appreciate that many people have the odd glass of wine or pint of beer here and there or the occasional over indulgence with perfectly intact self respect!

When I told people I didn’t drink, I got some quite interesting responses back (and still do, to this day!):

“What, you don’t drink alcohol at all? Wow, I could never do that” – What really? Why?

“Why would you want to do that? That’s crazy!” – Not really!

“I could never do that, I can’t cope without my wine/beer/etc” – Can’t cope?

Makes you think, doesn’t it!

Is society impinging our ability to think simply, naturally and spontaneously? …

My example of deciding to stop drinking to excess (note I say drinking to excess – I will have a glass of wine at special occasions now and then, so I haven’t completely stopped drinking) was just one example of how I had become completely taken in with a societal expectation. Where did this come from? What made me think that it is acceptable to act in this way? Is this the same reason behind the examples giving in the Guardian article about self respect? Have we, as a nation, forgotten the importance of our own individual self respect and that of our nation?

Young people should be an inspiration, we are the driving force of the world and we are the next generation, and while there are some truly inspirational and incredible young people (and in this bracket I am including under 40′s) there are so many just wasting their lives in self-gratification and greed. Anyway, a bit off topic now (I said it might ramble a bit!)

Bhante says that we are less free to think and feel simply, naturally, and spontaneously than at any other period in history. I have to agree.

“Human beings are today less free to think and feel simply, naturally, and spontaneously than at any other period in history.”

~Urgyen Sangharakshita