Plenary, 09 Feb 2005

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 9, 2005

Official Report 422KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our leader today is Mr Rawdon Goodier, the Zen Buddhist lay minister affiliated to Portobello Buddhist Priory.

Most of my life prior to my retirement was spent working as an ecologist, studying the relationships between living organisms and between them and their environment, trying to influence the interactions between tsetse flies, cattle and people in Zimbabwe, or between deer and trees in the Highlands. The more I learned, the more complex the interactions seemed to become—the saying among ecologists that "It is impossible to do one thing only" was brought home to me very strongly. Any act, however simple, has more consequences than we anticipate, or indeed can anticipate.

A deep intuition about the interconnectedness of everything, generally referred to as "Dependent Origination", lies close to the heart of Buddhist thought and experience, and indeed appears to have been one of the elements of the Buddha's enlightenment, manifesting through his meditation practice. A conviction of relationship, variously expressed, is probably common to all religions. It may also be at the root of our specifically human ability to sympathise with the sufferings and joys of others and to express that through compassionate action.

This acknowledgement of interbeing stands in contrast to the sense of the alienation of the isolated individual that we commonly find in contemporary society. On the contrary, it affirms that we are not helpless victims of our genes within a hostile environment but very much part of the whole constitution of the universe—indeed, of its very substance. Many of the problems that mankind faces today seem to stem from a disinclination to acknowledge this fact of interbeing and to act upon it. Instead, we seek to disconnect ourselves from a problem with a quick fix, but the really serious issues, such as global warming and the increasing resistance of disease micro-organisms due to the careless use of antibiotics, do not seem to be amenable to such treatment.

Through the cultivation of an understanding of relatedness we may, with patience, learn to regard each step on the path of being as an exploration rather than a conquest or defeat and come to perceive events in our lives as benefactions received rather than prizes won. This is a more realistic perspective because indeed everything does come to us, though we have to practise to receive effectively, just as talent requires cultivation. Of course things also come to us that we would rather not receive, which we tend to look upon as penalties rather than prizes, but a world in which this could not happen would be a world without freedom or possibility.