Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakeable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.
Afraid, adj. Civilly willing that things should be other than they seem.
– Ambrose Bierce
EVERYBODY wants to be happy. Everybody wants to be loved and accepted as they are. Everybody wants to feel clear and strong and loving in their turn. Everybody wants to live in a happy and peaceful world. Everybody wants enough food. Everybody wants to be free from pain. Understanding what we all want is not difficult. It is how to get there that is the problem. What steps can we take, what ‘game plan’ should we follow, to be as happy as we can in a world that is indelibly marked with old age, disability, sickness, physical pain, accident, bereavement and finally death? This is the 64,000 dollar question, for all of us now, just as it was for Siddharta Guatama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But most of us do not go into it in quite as much depth as he did, and we therefore do not discover as profoundly satisfactory an answer. We sort of pick it up, and make it up, as we go along, and vaguely hope that we’ve got it about as right as we can. We equally vaguely assume that the anxiety and irritation and jealousy and guilt and restlessness we feel are all part of the package deal into which we were born, to be put up with, or avoided, or ignored as best we can.
Buddha’s shocking discovery is that our half-baked game plan, far from being a little wide of the mark, is just about as wrong as it could be. Not only does it fail to deal with the intrinsic pains and upsets that are bound to befall us all sooner or later, it actually generates an untold amount of extra suffering. Through our misguided efforts to generate happiness, peace and love, we are actually creating distress, anxiety and animosity. Now this is a hard idea to swallow. Can it really be that most of the population of the world, for most of history, has been so crass? That all our philosophers and saints and philanthropists, as well as the rest of us men, women and children in the street, have been earnestly and energetically barking up the wrong tree? That what millions of people experience as inevitable hardship is in fact optional and homegrown? We shall need some convincing. Apart from anything else it will be rather embarrassing, if Buddha does turn out, against all the odds, to be right, to admit to such monumental stupidity. The only recourse in that unlikely event would be to howl with laughter – which explains, perhaps, why for many people an experience of ‘enlightenment’ is indescribably funny.
In this chapter I want to turn the tables on ourselves, and to make Buddha’s proposal look less absurd and our own normal point of view more questionable. First let us make explicit what this ‘common sense’ is, so we can submit it to some scrutiny. Most of us have never articulated it clearly to ourselves, yet it underlies and controls what we do, and the choices we spontaneously make, just as the program in my word processor never appears on the screen itself, yet it determines absolutely the responses that my little machine makes to my key-strokes. We were not born with this so-called common sense, but picked it up intuitively from those around us. So easily and unwittingly did we do so that now, if we are aware of it at all, it seems to us as natural as the air we breathe. To follow the familiar game plan is second nature to us. Yet if this is second nature, we might pause to wonder about the first. Might there be an even deeper strategy for living that has been eclipsed by a ‘common sense’ which could turn out on inspection to be riddled with common nonsense? Might there not indeed be more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies?
This is the Buddhist starting point and the Buddhist programme of research, this enquiry into the premises on which we have, by default, been basing our lives. First this structure of habits and assumptions must be floated to the surface of our minds, and then it must be picked over in the light of experience. What have we been up to? And has it been working?
I am going to make a few educated guesses about what this second nature consists of, but as I do so, please remember that these are not Great Truths to be believed, but suggestions to be tested. Although Buddhism often seems to present us with ideas that are strange or outrageous to our normal way of thinking, all we are required to do is to suspend our initial reaction and try the ideas on for size. We are not supposed to take them on trust, but merely to stand inside them for a while, to adopt, 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.