None of us knows what’s around the corner. Only one thing is certain: it’s going to be a mixture of pleasure and pain. As the expression goes, ‘stuff happens’.

Many of us will have visited ancient cathedrals and seen the saints preserved in stained glass, looking serene and beautiful, but also rather anodyne, as if nothing even happened in their lives to disturb their pious expressions. But closer inspection reveals that the martyrs are often holding the instruments through which they met their gruesome fate.

Though he lived into old age and died of natural causes the Buddha was not immune from ‘stuff’ happening. Because we see his serene statue everywhere, from health clubs to garden centres, candle shops to Asian restaurants, we can easily forget that the historical person who grew up as Siddhartha Gautama was flesh and blood just like us. Those images remind us that he managed to preserve his serenity, despite difficult family relationships, troublesome monks and even assassination attempts. If he had lost his cool or succumbed to ‘events’ it is unlikely that the memory of his life would have been passed down through generations of followers. He would not have been seen as exceptional by those who knew him. In short, the life of the Buddha demonstrates that we might not always be able to change what happens, but we can shape our reactions.

Once, on a residential leadership development seminar, I took part in a session which made me extremely uncomfortable. I felt as if I were being compelled to speak about work matters which I regarded as confidential. I wasn’t prepared to do this, and I was concerned that this would be perceived as unwillingness to participate. By the end of the seminar I was both exhausted and upset. What should I do? As I went to bed that evening, I realised I had three options: pack my things and leave; sulk for the remaining day; or confront the situation gently and assertively the next morning. Which option I chose is not the main issue (in the event, I stayed and explained). What I realised, sitting in my room, was that – despite my wound-up state – I could choose which route to follow.

Why had it taken me decades to realise that I could shape my own emotional state and my response? A book by Julia Cassaniti which I read recently seems to sum it up. It’s entitled Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia and its argument is that people raised in a Western environment tend to see emotions as something which ‘happen’ to us, whereas in the Buddhist countries of south-east Asia, where her research was conducted, emotions are understood as something which people themselves construct. Such a perspective gives us far more agency. And it is this sense of empowerment, the possibility of deciding how one is going to feel, that first led me to explore mindfulness and its deep roots in Buddhist tradition.

The ancient narratives tell how the Buddha, with the wisdom derived from the insight of Awakening, managed to hone his responses to an extraordinary degree. Yes, the serenity so powerfully represented in Buddhist iconography is genuine; but it is achieved against the backdrop of many vicissitudes. I’m quite certain that I’m not going to achieve anything like that level of equanimity in this lifetime, but it is encouraging to begin to understand that we’re not inevitably the prisoners of our experience and emotions. At every moment it is within our power to think differently, to make different choices, and to unknot the tangled web of thoughts and emotions which ensnares us. In the Buddha’s own words: we do not need to be troubled.

Graham Dixon

In December 2021, just as I was about to send the final draft of my book on forgiveness to the publishers, The Forgiveness Project’s founding patron, Archbishop Demond Tutu, died. This was followed a month later by the death of the Buddhist monk and spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Both men had been courageous and radical peace activists, renowned for being visionary leaders. It felt like the world had lost two moral giants.

Desmond Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh were also two of the people who most inspired me to spend nearly two decades of my life exploring the complex geography of forgiveness. I appreciated them particularly as they were able to speak beyond the boundaries of religion and, despite having witnessed suffering on a global scale, were able to help people address all the familiar harms and resentments of their everyday lives.

Desmond Tutu would often dispel the commonly held notion that forgiveness means reconciliation. He once explained that if someone is constantly abusing you, being ready to forgive doesn’t mean you have to be a masochist and hang on in there. In fact, it is far better to release the relationship than to renew it. In other words, you can turn your back on toxic relationships and still forgive. He also often spoke about forgiveness being the best form of self-interest, a kind of self-preservation, counselling people to forgive not because those who have hurt you deserve forgiveness, ‘but because you deserve peace’.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s life of reflection led him to believe that forgiveness was the key to creating a peaceful, just and sustainable world, and he maintained that ‘only when compassion is born in your heart, is it possible to forgive.’ In the film The Power of Forgiveness he recites a meditation for the ‘many angry sons and daughters’ who cannot make peace with their parents. In a soft, measured voice you can hear him instructing a room full of people with the words: ‘breathing in I see myself as a 5-year-old child; breathing out I hold that 5-year-old child with tenderness. Breathing in I see my father as a 5-year-old boy; breathing out I smile to my father as a 5-year-old boy.’ The point he is making is that only when you are able to visualise your cruel father or mean mother as a fragile and vulnerable 5-year-old, can you begin to understand and feel compassion for the person they have become.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s process to soothe the wounded hearts of adult children may not be easy but it has been adapted in multiple settings.

So many people who have shared their forgiveness journeys with me, have managed to free themselves from mental angst and bondage. Forgiveness is a virtue based on the ability to love when others are not loving you. Only then will a shift or transformation take place; only then can relationships be rebuilt and restored.

MARINA CANTACUZINO

Travelling is my life – and Buddhism is my compass.

My very first expedition took place when I was only twelve months old: a journey by train from my birthplace in Milan to Aalborg in northern Denmark (my mother and grandmother are both Danish). From the age of three onwards every holiday would alternate: one summer in Denmark with its windswept, green flatlands and wide skies; the following summer far to the south in the remote heartland of Basilicata, with its chirping cicadas and sleepy ancient villages perched on the top of steep hills. Most of the time we would travel in my father’s small car – three full days to reach Denmark, another three days to get to Accettura, his native village …

At the age of 16 I took my first solo trip abroad – to Norfolk to work in an international Summer Camp. It was a momentous experience. For the first time in my life I felt I was a citizen of the world, surrounded by young people like me from all over Europe, Asia and Africa.

Shortly afterwards, I discovered Buddhism through a book I came across by chance in the small library of my secondary school; but it was a further ten years before I started practising meditation.

Aged 27 I left a teaching job in Italy and spent several years studying and working in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands. I continued to take every opportunity to travel: to Japan where I managed to see the giant Buddhas in Kamakura and Nara, to North Africa (Morocco in particular), to the Middle East and to Cuba.

It was when I got a university post in Brunei on the Island of Borneo that my fascination with Buddhism really took off. I had maintained an interest in Eastern spirituality through reading and meditating twice a day, but it was travelling through Buddhist countries that brought up the urge to write and document my various encounters.

After leaving Brunei and before starting my present teaching and research activity here in Malaysia, I embarked on another epic journey: a five-month backpacking tour of Southeast Asia and China. Many other travels followed (including the sites described in this book). All the time I was immersing myself in the world of Buddhism, thanks to the many Dharma talks and retreats I attended in this wonderful multi-ethnic and multicultural country of Malaysia, where the presence of Buddhism is so strong.

Travelling and living in so many countries has been not just a discovery of places, languages and cultures; it has given me a deep sense of connection with the planet and the people living on it. Whenever I have found myself in a different Buddhist country, it has made me appreciate Buddhism’s social, spiritual and artistic achievements even more.

At some point it occurred to me that I could combine travel writing and my interest in Buddhism: hence Buddhism and Pilgrimage. My hope is that readers will feel at least part of what I’ve experienced during my pilgrimage in India and Nepal to the four key Buddhist sites – Lumbini, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar. It is a pilgrimage that the Buddha himself recommended:

‘Ananda, there are four places the sight of which should arise emotion in the faithful. Which are they?

“Here the Tathagata was born” is the first.

“Here the Tathagata attained supreme enlightenment” is the second.

“Here the Tathagata set in motion the Wheel of Dhamma” is the third.

“Here the Tathagata attained the Nibbana-element without remainder” is the fourth.’

Bon Voyage!           

PAOLO COLUZZI

Whenever I mention ‘Buddhism and Computing’ as a title, the response is almost invariably the same: surprise followed by curiosity. Google seems a bit taken aback too, for typing that phrase (in quotation marks) into its search box initially indicates hundreds of thousands of matches, but barely two pages of actual results. So it’s official: ‘Buddhism and Computing’ is a rare pairing because Google says so! Well, not necessarily, but it is worthy of special interest.

I originally set out to write only about the phenomenon of social media, which, despite its vocal advocates, I’ve long felt is deeply flawed. It fosters a dwindling quality of attention, an impoverished sense of friendship and a growing sense of bewilderment – yes, there are good uses, but in many ways it’s anti-social. I’ve been trying to understand how we come to be in this situation since 2007, when I was persuaded to register for a Facebook account. It has meant carrying out historical detective work and delving into the nature of the human mind, often facilitated by walks in Wytham Woods, fortified by refreshments at the village shop. Many ideas occur to me in the midst of nature, away from computers.

Digital technology is increasingly tied to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms. The implications of this trend often get lost in complexity, jargon and mind-boggling sums invested in futurology. There’s always plenty of potential and room for speculation. But what of the here and now? How come so many people’s subjective experience in the present moment is a growing sense of dis-ease and unsatisfactoriness?

For the Buddha the problem was not technology per se; it was dukkha. Human flourishing could come about only with the eradication of dukkha, and in order to achieve that we need to follow a clear and balanced path. Nearly all of today’s online ‘journeys’ involve digital technology of some kind or another, so understanding what that path entails means exploring fundamental questions about mind, machines and intelligence. That’s basically how this book began. I found myself writing a series of thought-pieces about computing as seen through the lens of Buddhist ethics, each chapter somewhat self-contained, but leading by degrees from the past to the present, and from first principles to application.  This particular Mud Pie ‘Slice’ is, therefore, made up of several smaller slices.

What about the growing body of literature on cultivating ‘digital wisdom’ by drawing on various philosophical and religious traditions? The reflections may be profound, but I fear they are having little effect on the juggernauts of ‘Big Tech’. That’s because the ancient teachings are rarely applied to the specification and design of software systems.  Instead, they are mainly used to adapt to and accommodate them. The tech companies, meanwhile, under pressure from financial interests, continue to massage and manipulate the ‘attention economy’. More dukkha.

The Buddha’s teachings were delivered over two thousand years ago, but they have never been more relevant. In this book I show how they can readily be applied and incorporated into systems architecture and user interactions. Yes, we can indeed enhance our cognitive abilities and thrive – but only so long as we are vigilant and everyone actively participates in these developments. This is how to flourish in the Age of Algorithms.

Paul Trafford

It was singing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ that did it.

We have the great good fortune to live in a street with wonderful neighbours and it’s always a pleasure to invite them round on Christmas Eve for a noggin and a carol or two. It was during one such Yuletide singalong that an idea was sparked for a book based on numbers. I began to think of it as a kind of countdown to enlightenment – hence the rather provocative subtitle.

All religions seem to have a penchant for numbers – especially the number 3 – but Buddhism goes further than any of them in its numerological fascination (probably to do with its Chinese influence). The Buddha is supposed to have delivered 84,000 teachings – though why that precise number and who was counting is a matter for debate. 

I wanted to be far more concise. To the well-known numbers – Three Jewels, Four Truths, Five Precepts, and Eightfold Path – I wondered if it might be possible to add a few others, thereby setting out some of the key ideas of Buddhism in a clear and simple format. 

Here’s the full set:

TEN Worlds; NINE Consciousnesses; EIGHT fold noble path; SEVEN Seas; SIX Paramitas; FIVE Precepts; FOUR Noble Truths; THREE Jewels; TWO but not Two; ONE-eyed turtle and the floating sandlewood log.

Several of these number/chapter/themes will be familiar to readers of this Mud Pie blog – but there are a few which might be surprising, especially my favourite number ‘Two but not Two’. In this chapter I explore the idea of interdependence or ‘inter-being’. It is impossible, I argue, to overestimate the importance of this concept for the future of life on this planet.

It was tempting to end the book with a piece on the all-important number of Zero – but such a chapter could have gone on for ever! For, as the Buddhist concept of Sunyata makes clear, nothing gives rise to everything. I did, however, indulge myself by craving an audience with the great Professor Marcus du Sautoy whose book The Number Mysteries is full of fascinating games, brilliant insights and intriguing challenges. He confessed that he has always been drawn to the prime numbers 17, 41 and 43. And he also admitted to having a bit of a soft spot for the number 108 (3 cubed x 4) which is considered a sacred number by Jains and Hindus as well as Buddhists.

Which got me thinking. What’s your favourite number? And why? Everyone seems to have one. Send an email to info@mudpiebooks.com and we’ll post it on the website. If enough people do this we could end up with a galaxy of interesting numbers – and no doubt some fascinating reflections on different aspects of Buddhism.

The possibilities are, well, numerous.

Tony Morris

Why should Buddhists think about God? Why should Christians or other theists think about Buddhism? Answer: to get beyond the quick dismissal based on an abstract caricature. Surely, the central concerns of these religions involve facing up to challenges, engaging with the Other? Yet too often Buddhists dismiss God, and theists dismiss Buddhism based on a shortcut abstraction, a mere piece of groupthink in which the complex experiences that underlie the other tradition are turned into a reductively conceptual belief. Belief in God is eternalist error, say Buddhists. Buddhism is a merely human religion with no link to the true inspiration of God, say theists. All is one, say universalists. Surely qualities valued in all these traditions – faith, mindfulness, love, or wisdom – require us to go beyond these inadequate brush-offs?

There are two underlying problems. One is what people are attached to a particular account of what is ‘essentially’ meant by God or by Buddhism. Another is the assumption that religion is all about ‘beliefs’, so that opposed religions are just set in intractable opposition. My own process of thinking about this subject, based in an understanding of the practice of the Middle Way, leads me to question both of these unhelpful sets of assumptions. The Middle Way is not just a Buddhist practice, but a more general way of making sure that we base our judgements on experience rather than dogma, whatever tradition we may be working in.

That we should let go of our supposed ‘essential’ definitions is perhaps the hardest thing for many people. What is God, for instance? An abstract definition of perfection and infinity? A source of certainty? Or a massively empowering archetypal experience of potential, going beyond what we recognise in our current limited lives? The abstract definitions of God, which become a matter of ‘belief’, set conflict in stone before we begin, because absolute assumptions inevitably conflict with each other. 

If, however, we recognise God to be an experience, there are no such necessary conflicts. Recognising that experience to be archetypal is a way of understanding its power without in the least underrating it. A symbolic God is no less powerful in our experience than a ‘real’ one, and far from being psychologised away or made ‘relative’, can be seen as all the stronger once liberated from the tyranny of abstract ‘beliefs’.

Of course, much of the perspective that might help us sustain such an experiential attitude to God comes from Buddhism, with its emphasis (at least as interpreted in the West) on practical engagement and working with mental states. But, despite these advantages, Buddhists have no call to be triumphalist, because all the same tendency to use absolute ‘belief’ as a shortcut (in enlightenment, or in the Buddha’s revelation, for instance) can be found in Buddhism as well. 

Many Buddhist dismissals of the experience of God come from an out of date error theory that charts the path as one between ‘eternalism’ and ‘nihilism’. If you see the Middle Way in such fixed terms, it is likely to become fixed itself – just another piece of metaphysics. To stop Buddhism also being a matter of ‘belief’, based on inflexible assumptions about what it ‘really’ means, we need to focus, not on concepts of the ‘dharma’ as ‘truth’, or of enlightenment as an end point, but rather on the principles we apply to judgement at each point in our lives. The Middle Way is not a metaphysical abstraction, but a principle of judgement – avoiding both positive and negative absolutes, seeking experiential meaning and justifiable provisional beliefs at each point.

Finally, too, apart from fixed assumptions in theism and in Buddhism, there is a third kind of dogma – the naïve universalism that claims that Buddhism and theistic religions are ‘all one’ because they all point to the same ‘ultimate reality’. There may be a genuine attempt to overcome conflict in such an approach, but its claims about ‘ultimate reality’ are just as dogmatic as anyone else’s. In my book I argue not for a naïve insistence that ‘all is one’, but rather for a critical universalism. In critical universalism, we don’t assume that all traditions are of equal value, but we do subject them all to the same standards, seeking to sort out what is helpful and unhelpful in them. Thus we do not need to abandon our traditions for any kind of vague mish-mash, but can nevertheless be empowered to get beyond the habitual abstract assumptions that entrench us in conflict.

Robert M. Ellis

After a lifetime in book publishing I’ve grown accustomed to the art of the elegant disclaimer: the modest suggestion in the Acknowledgements that the author couldn’t possibly have written it without the support of his/her (long-suffering and devoted) family; the invaluable input of (Great and Good) colleagues; and the helpful comments of various close (namedrop) friends.

This is customarily followed by an apology for any remaining errors and oversights (slavery, the empire, global warming etc) and/or a declaration of monstrous self-effacement. The most immodest author I ever worked with began his magnum opus with the statement, ‘Nothing in this book is original.’

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found myself penning words which I can only describe as sincere. When I wrote that this was ‘a genuine case of the more I found out the less I knew’ it was nothing less than the chastening truth. I was, I admit, being slightly less honest when I thanked various friends and scholars for their advice and comments. What they said was often dispiriting because it exposed my all-too-obvious limitations – though I did find some consolation in the fact that none of them seemed to agree with each other. After all, ‘The jewel of Buddhism has many wonderful facets.’

Another unfortunate by-product of a lifetime in publishing is a tendency to be more excited about the book that hasn’t yet been written than by the one that’s about to appear. Pocket BUDDHA already felt very old by the time it popped up on Amazon. Moreover it‘s slightly embarrassing to confess that the 128 pages (including Preface, Endmatter and of course Acknowledgements) took me two years to deliver.

In fairness I had other things to do along the way, and the final 22,500 words were culled from more than five times that amount, after at least thirty rewrites. In fact when I think back to how long it really took me – it’s been over half a lifetime. My desire to write a biography of the Buddha is as old as my interest in practising Buddhism.

I’m struck by three words from that last sentence: ‘Buddhism’, ‘practising’ and ‘biography’.

Who or what is a Buddhist? I have a long-held scepticism of all ‘isms’ (including Scepticism) and the more I found out about the varieties of what is labelled ‘Buddhism’ the more difficult it became to generalise with confidence. It was all so much easier before I started!

As to practising, I’ve always struggled with sectarian divides and ‘faith’ groups; but the paradoxical effect of bumping up against the limits of my intellect was just that – a recognition that Buddhism is about more than merely rational argument. I think I’d always known this in my heart of hearts. Deep truth lies in poetry rather than prose.

In terms of biography, the more I wrote the more I was struck by the essential paradox of trying to encapsulate the ‘life’ of a man whose teaching was all about impermanence and the idea of ‘no fixed self’. I remain convinced that the Buddha was an actual historical human being. But the idea of writing a ‘biography’ with its conventions of ‘proof’ and ‘evidence’ became increasingly difficult as it was obvious that the evidence was so distant and had been so elaborated over time.

More and more I realised the importance of a book I’d read many years ago – Siddhartha by Herman Hesse – and the love affair I’d had with the beauty of his writing and the sublime quality of his vision. This, I realised, had shaped my quest for someone (no doubt idealised) who not only asked the questions I had, but actually embodied the answer to those questions.

I guess what it boils down to is giving myself permission to find out what I thought and why I thought it. That way, I figured, at least one reader would be happy. I’m not sure I succeeded; but I excuse myself that, in the pursuit of an essentially selfish goal, I may have reached out to some other people along the way.

So there you have it. A disclaimer to a disclaimer! I just hope the Buddha would have understood.

Tony Morris