A handful of readers tell me, often bluntly, what I write is NOT a Buddhist perspective. I have regularly replied to such a reader. Since the reader implies he or she knows a Buddhist perspective, I politely request the person to write a Buddhist perspective adding I will post their Buddhist perspective on my blog.
So far, no correspondent has e-mailed me a true Buddhist perspective. Not one single reader in 15 years of blogging, more than 1000 blogs and over 800,000 views.
My blog addresses a wide range of topics including significant issues in the public mind, such as environmental destruction, the global pandemic and war. A reader can go to the top right-hand corner of the home page and type a key word in the Search bar. You may find a Buddhist perspective in your area of interest.
Topics include books, photos, films, business, science critiques, Dharma reflections, daily life, mindfulness, poems, music, politics, retreat environments, social, the Buddha and the spiritual.
I would prefer to use A Dharma Perspective. Unlike the word ‘Yoga,’ Dharma lacks street recognition, except among Buddhists. Hindus and those with interest in the teachings of the East.
What do I mean by a Buddhist perspective?
In Alphabetical order.
In my view, the text of a Buddhist Perspective stays true to areas referred to below.
- Addresses the truth of suffering, conditions for suffering, resolution of suffering and way to the resolution.
- Challenges corporate behaviour, such as addiction to profit, power and exploitation of customers, workers worldwide and the environment.
- Develops community over individualism and endeavours to write what is true and useful.
- Establishes calm-insight meditation, the power of mindfulness and all features of the noble path.
- Ethics of non-violence, non-harm and non-abuse.
- Expands the heart of empathy, love, appreciative joy, compassion and equanimity
- Explores dependent arising of all experiences and situations instead of fixations of ego of self-made.
- Teaches ethics, concentration/unification of mind (samadhi) and wisdom to give support to the diversity of people, creatures and habitats.
- Offers critiques of narrow, dogmatic claims in science, medicine, religion and other institutions
- Offers critiques of features of democracy, politics and secularism while recognising spirituality accessible in the arts.
- Offers training to end stress, not just reduce it, end problematic states of mind, not just reduce them.
- See and know an unconditioned freedom, unbound to any events between birth and death, and including both.
I look at a blog to ensure I keep to the spirit and letter of a Buddhist Perspective. Sometimes. readers send me a valid point about a blog, so I regularly adapt the point to the text to offer a more balanced view.
If we write with conviction, we enter a world of praise and blame. Via the blog and other forms of social media linked to the blog, responses or reactions land in front of me. I can understand why people resist writing anything, as it can be hard to handle the wrath and anger thrown at the writer. You do not need to be thick skinned. You do not need to use your sensitivity as an excuse to stop writing. We cannot write well unless we know a depth of sensitivity.
Fear of views of others, and old patterns of contraction form a writer’s block. Sensitivity cannot do that.
We can regard people’s reaction as grist for the mill, whether we agree or not with their comments.
I suspect Facebook automatically adjusts its algorithms to reduce readers of my Facebook page when I criticise Facebook. Instagram and the Covid vaccination industry. I don’t believe in so-called ‘free speech,’ and I don’t believe in censorship by powerful corporations, or the government. That is another blog to write – with a Buddhist perspective.
Let us not go quietly into the night.
Christopher Titmuss is the author of:
The Political Buddha
The Explicit Buddha
The Buddha of Love
The Mindfulness Manual, based on the Buddha’s teachings.
“Buddhist” seems to imply something based on a written concept.
The more some view is based on a book – composed of words and then concepts – the more it moves towards fundamentalism. Hardening. Division.
When actualisation is moving towards experiencing of the things described “in the book”. Whichever book one might refer to. Then beyond is beyond words and beyond concepts.
Sensitivity towards life and nature and living beings and their wanderings and wonderings also shows wisdom.
Of these – sensitivity and wisdom – it seems, one can never have enough. Isn’t it.
Thanks for your inspiration and encouragement.