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1994-05-29
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BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #1 (Summer 1985)
A NEW UNDERTAKING
by Bhikkhu Bodhi
This year has been a time for the BPS to initiate new undertakings.
Having outgrown our home of the last twenty years, we recently moved
into spacious new quarters equipped with the larger facilities our
expanding work requires. Another new undertaking inspired by our
growth is the issuing of this newsletter, to accompany each of our
future mailings. The newsletter gives expression to our wish to
establish closer contact with you -- our members, readers and
friends. In these columns we will be providing you with information
concerning our activities and publications, as well as book reviews,
news notices and short Buddhist essays.
Perhaps we can best begin this regular essay column by exploring the
purpose which guides our work at the BPS today. Put quite simply,
that purpose is to offer to the world the teaching of the Buddha as
set forth in the oldest collection of Buddhist scriptures, the Pali
Canon. However, we do not aim merely at providing objective factual
accounts of the Buddha's teachings of interest solely to Oriental
scholars and their students. Our purpose, we candidly admit, is
advocative and prescriptive: we are convinced that the Dhamma
communicates a message which is still very much alive and relevant,
and through our publications we seek to make that message widely
known.
In line with this aim it is essential for us that the Dhamma be
addressed not only to its original and primary task of indicating
the timeless path to deliverance, but also to those vexing
existential problems posed by the particular circumstances of our
age. Prominent among these is the widespread moral and spiritual
deterioration evident in so many spheres of human life. For
increasing numbers of people both East and West, cynicism,
skepticism and a narrow fixation on material goals have toppled
traditional views and values without offering any satisfactory
alternatives to replace them. Thus, while our sciences unlock the
most obscure secrets of nature and yield its powers to our control,
we find ourselves beset with a sense of inner poverty, destitute of
those fundamental guiding principles which can give a deeper and
richer meaning to our lives.
At the root of our current spiritual disorder lies a distorted
conception of value which locates the ultimate end of human activity
in the satisfaction of personal desire. Tacitly accepted and adhered
to without reflective awareness, this thesis has become the dominant
working basis for contemporary civilization. Mobilizing individuals,
ethnic groups and nations alike, it draws them into an enervating
chase after the achievement of power, wealth and pleasure, and pits
them against one another in a struggle for supremacy marked either
by cool suspicion or by vehement hate. Given a creed of
self-fulfillment in an age of declining moral vigor, it is not
astonishing that in the midst of plenty we witness all around us a
frantic search for instant gratification and a rising tide of
destructiveness unconstrained by even the least human sympathy.
To remedy this disturbing situation, moralistic preaching will not
suffice, nor can much be expected from economic, social and
political reforms isolated from more fundamental changes. For at its
core our crisis is a crisis of consciousness. Its real origins go
deeper than our institutions, deeper than our cultural norms, deeper
than our avowed motives and goals. Its origins lie in the hidden
strata of the mind, in the breeding place of those tumultuous
emotional and volitional forces which the Buddha summed up in the
three "roots of evil" -- greed, hatred and delusion.
What is most crucial, therefore, if there is to be any change in the
direction of the world, is a change in those who make up the world,
that is, in ourselves. To achieve our own genuine welfare and
effectively promote the welfare of others, we require the acumen to
distinguish clearly what is truly in our interest and what may be
immediately pleasurable but ultimately harmful; and we require too
the stamina to undertake the work of liberating our minds from the
bonds of greed, hatred and delusion. Admittedly, the number of those
who will see the need for inward change and make the appropriate
effort will always be small. However, the difficulty does not annul
the necessity. For those of clear vision who are responsive to the
call of the good there can be no choice but to take up the long hard
task of self-transformation.
If the work of inner cultivation is to come to full fruition, it
must begin with and be guided by correct understanding, by that
discernment of the true nature of existence which is called in the
language of the Dhamma "right view." The unfailing pointer which the
Buddha has provided for right view is the teaching of the Four Noble
Truths. It is this perspective of the Four Noble Truths, with the
light it sheds on the perplexing relationship between desire,
happiness and suffering, which may be the most important
contribution the Dhamma can make towards dispelling the rampant
confusion of our time. In contrast to the whole world, which stands
on the assumption that happiness is to be achieved through the
satisfaction of desire, the Buddha teaches that the entire
enterprise aimed at appeasing desire is doomed to futility, that the
pursuit of desire leads not to happiness but to suffering. In the
teaching of the Enlightened One the way to genuine and unshakable
happiness lies in the restraint and mastery of desire. It is only by
training ourselves to resist the lure of pleasure and power, to
abandon the quest for self-aggrandizement, and to relinquish our
hold on our attachments, that we can find for ourselves the
indestructible peace of deliverance. And it is only thus that we can
act with true compassion for the benefit of others, for the good,
welfare and happiness of the world.
* * * * * * * *