Other religions have shown a remarkable inability to impart personal and moral responsibility on people. The only hope (as I see it) for human beings is for them to realize that harming another harms themseleves. And the only way for people to make this realization is to begin appreciating the law of cause and effect. The only effective way I know of to show that this law holds true is to try out this Buddhism.
The reality is, people are so disillusioned, they seek spirituality wherever they can find it. They are inherently trained in our society to distrust any other human being, so they drift aimlessly through seminal works in every religion. In doing so, they seek out small gems to quench their thirst for fulfillment. I say gems because they are rare, small, because in their restricted exposure and narrowed focus, they miss the wider view, the big picture.
In my own, similarly broad explorations, I discovered striking similarities between other religions and Buddhism. Like respect for all life. Do unto others... What I discovered lead me to believe firmly that Buddhism is the purest form of these ideals - the one with the least amount of fluff added later by power-hungry people. That is not to say that I did an exhaustive search, only that the fundamental themes were so similar as to be suspiciously like universal truths. So I leapt down that rabbit hole a long while ago, and my real Buddhist journey began. In fact, it still begins anew each and every day.
I have been thinking recently along the lines of 'opening the eyes' and what that means to us as human beings. Sight, of course, is a primary sensory perception in our world. Without sight, you can live, but without sight, you can't drive (though, perhaps you could still drive better than the people around here), severely limiting your independence, and there are many other issues there as well. I mention this, because I don't think the Buddha meant that we are/were "sightless" from birth per se. Newborn puppies don't open their eyes for a while after they are born, they are virtually helpless until they reach a certain age. They are also fundamentally governed by animal instincts - they instinctively seek out their food source and cuddle for warmth, for example. However, we, as humans, make conscious choices on so many scales that I think the immaturity analogy breaks down - we simply sometimes do KNOW that what we are about to do is very wrong, and yet we set our course in that direction anyway. We can see the path ahead, we see the precipitous cliff, and yet we dogmatically march right over the ledge. (And then we express dismay, as though laws of gravity were supposed to apply differently to us).
What I think the Buddha meant about 'opening our eyes' was slightly different - I think he meant seeing the big picture rather than the small one - opening our eyes WIDER than the narrowed perspective with which we normally view the world. With our eyes focused on a narrow path, we don't see the alternate routes through the maze, we can only see the path we focus on and choose to see. Like in a dark labyrinth, the puzzle becomes infintely easier when we widen the cirle of light around us and are able to observe alternate routes. Once we get to a certain point, the entire puzzle is illuminated, and we can steer ourselves out... Escape from samsara!
The legend of the blind men describing an elephant (http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html) is also applicable here. When we restrict our view too narrowly, we miss the big picture. What I like most about Buddhism is that it encourages us to widen our view - seeking out that which is universal in truth and applying that to our lives.
So, bottom line, I think its all about opening our eyes. Just what exactly that means, is the topic of so much debate.
Did you ever stop to notice... ...Buddhism is about opening our eyes?
Americans don't trust anything anymore it seems. At least, _I_ don't trust the majority of the strangers I meet. I've just read too many e-mails offering to pay me a handsome cut of a big pile of cash if I'll just help this poor western African gentlemen get some money out of his country (see 419 scams). Our TV commercials constantly imply that cleaning products will scrub our floors for us, that obesity can be solved with a pill, and that we really need to take some random drug, (just ask your doctor). Not to mention that I've had some bad experiences with contractors, salesmen, etc... The list goes on and on. So my society has trained me to ignore commercials, politely refuse to talk to door-to-door salesmen, and clearly speak the words "add me to your do-not-call list" instead of hello when answering the phone.
Sometimes it seems to me that we live in a world where there the reward for shafting others is far greater than the risk in doing so. Sure, every once in a while we shaft the wrong person and they go postal and start shooting, but the vast majority of cases seem to reward the offender - the crooks seem to get away with it most of the time. Just ask the majority of people who have been burglarized. Or the companies dumping chemicals all over the place. Recently, 419 profitteers started using the free telephone infrastructure for deaf people in there attempts at scamming.
So it seems only natural to develop a sense of hopelessness - one of pure cynicism, wherein the only hope for mankind is for them to nuke the Earth, go back into caves for a hundred or so years, and then start afresh. Perhaps a little extreme, but then, so is the pervasiveness of the problem. The only hope I have left is my faith in cause-and-effect - that in the end, the scales will be balanced.
So I get to trust, just not naively...
But did you ever stop to notice... ...trust is a lost art?
Sometimes I think people are actually just looking for trouble. It's time for the annual May contributions campaign, and the usual tirades about financial transparency are sure to come to the fore. In fact, I recently read some rantings about it on a web page somewhere... Yawn. Same old, same old. Why do people get so bloody fixated over this? I mean really, can't one come up with better ways to spend time than criticising the organization for fundraising (or keeping its books closed to prying eyes)?
So the organizations books are a mystery... big FRIGGIN' deal! If you don't trust the organization with your hard earned moolah, then don't friggin' contribute money. For pete's sake, continuously whining about it just ticks me off. There are plenty of ways one can help the organization without donating money - just give time instead. Time teaching a new member to learn gongyo. Time studying Buddhism with a friend. Time listening to another member's problems. Time chanting with local members. And if you are really gung ho, find out what your local community center needs and go get one and donate it. Send a check to their utility company to help keep the lights on, or the water company to keep the bathroom toilets flushing. Go help clean or garden at the community center. Hell, you can even be REALLY radical and go help a member mow their lawn or practice some other pseudo-random act of kindness for a member. It's not like there isn't a plethora of good-karma generating alternatives to giving money to the organization.
To be a little more fair to the other view, I do understand that people want to know how their money is spent when they contribute to an organization. Organizations sometimes have a couple of shifty folks who ruin it for the honest ones. Typical cynical distrust of organizations aside, I think it is important for transparency just to take the wind out of similar criticisms. However, such criticism should be tempered by the fact that many of us members trust that our money will be used wisely and appropriately, without the added expense of publishing a detailed accounting of organizational funds.
I mean really, when you get down to it, cause and effect is very strict. Misappropriation of money (especially that which was sincerely donated for the purpose of kosen rufu by SGI members) is a cause, and is certainly one that would reap an equal effect. It's fundamental to this Buddhism, after all. It is perfectly logical for people to see both sides of this issue, there's no need to get in a twist over it.
Just expressing my exasperation;
Did you ever stop to notice... ...people pick the darnedest things to get in a twist over sometimes?
Recently, on a Soka Gakkai discussion chat room, I ran across a thread pertaining to a perceived deficiency with regard to general Buddhist works derived from independent scholarly sources. My simple answer is simply, "SGI leaders are real-world Buddhists." Read on for my long answer.
SGI leaders are very often people with real lives; they have jobs, familes and relationships, commitments and constraints, which do not apply to religious studies teachers or monks who study Buddhism many hours each day. While this may be (strictly speaking) a disadvantage when talking about certain scholarly works, they are aided by an insight into overcoming their obtacles through practical Buddhism, giving them an edge when dealing with real-life problems.
This is a crucial point, and there are some natural, salient implications and inferences that come to mind:
1. Practical vs Theory: This is the age old fallacy about theoretical solutions always being practical or realizable (in theory...). I could elaborate, but I won't right now for time, hopefully this is enough to convey my meaning. The crux of this point is that the leadership structure of SGI is organized around leaders who have kids, jobs, and other relationships and constraints (that they must deal with in their daily lives) and therefore naturally place emphasis on the practical advice and "nutshell" literature available. For people with the aforementioned constraints, perhaps these sources of Buddhist knowledge provide a foundation rich enough in theoretical basis and yet practical enough for those people to use in their daily challenges and assist them in their (bodhisattva-practice) attempts to help and encourage others. Kinda like walking the middle (way?) ground between the researcher (theory) and the engineer (practice).
2. Optimization of the Problem: How do you get maximum traction towards your goal? If your goal is to inspire others, it is simply more effective to concentrate on strengths. When I meet someone for the first time, I don't introduce myself and then immediately rattle off a list of all my bad habits (besides, my list is always outdated according to my partner anyway). Similarly, we in SGI are lucky enough to have a large corpus of encouraging works handy, and very often the sources cited during our meetings are from that corpus out of convenience. In my observation, this is because the problems being faced by members and leaders often has some bit of encouragement in that corpus that directly applies (or at least is very relevant), thus making it easier to recall and share later. To understand similar encouragements from works originating from outside the SGI corpus, I've often found it is necessary to give a background summary before sharing such encouragement, so that the point can be shared. This digression noticably lessens the effect on the listener and mutes the actual communucation of ideas (despite the desire to broaden horizons in doing so). In my experience, the "old-timers" that have dealt with problems similar to those I face have a wealth of encouragement from SGI sources, and when I'm down, I'm not capricious about the exact origin of the source I derive encouragement from. Maybe I should be, but I don't see the point if it works. Of course, I still have a rotary phone in my house, because the darn thing still works...
3. Time Ain't in Infinite Supply: There simply aren't enough hours in the day. This is true of leaders that lead normal, hectic lives. Studying works from outside the SGI may be an admirable effort, but many people I know and love in the SGI can scrape together a few minutes to peruse a magazine, but are not able to set aside the time necessary to finish a book, particularly when that book requires at least passing familarity with a slew of other reference materials and terminologies. This means that, in general, SGI leaders are often less familiar with outside sources, than say, a monk who studies such works many hours a day.
The above points are not generalizable to all leaders, because I know quite a few that have a very broad background/understanding in Buddhism, to which the above circumstances clearly do not apply. However, I do think these points are well suited to leaders in the trenches, on the front lines in SGI chapters and districts, who are looked to most often, and who form the bulk of the leadership in sheer numbers.
So I'll sign off with a final thought;
Did you ever stop to notice... ...that SGI leaders have a life too?