Basic Buddhism
Although modern life is full of stressful situations, we do not have to get sucked into the whirlwind.
Instead of feeling frustrated when we face difficulties, we can learn to cultivate a strong and stable mind that can respond to everything with equanimity: then we find ourselves in the eye of the storm. The chaos may continue to swirl around us, but our peace of mind is unaffected.
The key to finding this balance is first to realise that no situation is stressful from its own side. For example, we may think that our boss is a cause of stress because as soon as we catch sight of him or her our anxiety levels ratchet up a notch. But, if he were an actual source of stress, then everyone would immediately feel stressed when they saw him. And maybe everyone who works alongside us does feel this too – but presumably, his mum finds sitting down with him for Sunday dinner quite relaxing. He is not the cause of our stress: our own mind is.
This is the real essence of Buddhism: to realise that our happiness depends on our mind, and to make a determination to develop that inner peace which is the foundation for real happiness.
Happiness and suffering are states of mind, and so their main causes cannot be found outside the mind. The real source of happiness is inner peace. If our mind is peaceful, we shall be happy all the time, regardless of external conditions, but if it is disturbed or troubled in any way, we shall never be happy, no matter how good our external conditions may be. External conditions can only make us happy if our mind is peaceful. We can understand this through our own experience. For instance, even if we are in the most beautiful surroundings and have everything we need, the moment we get angry any happiness we may have disappears. This is because anger has destroyed our inner peace.
We can see from this that if we want true, lasting happiness we need to develop and maintain a special experience of inner peace. The only way to do this is by training our mind through spiritual practice – gradually reducing and eliminating our negative, disturbed states of mind and replacing them with positive, peaceful states. Eventually, through continuing to improve our inner peace we shall experience permanent inner peace, or ‘nirvana’. Once we have attained nirvana we shall be happy throughout our life, and in life after life. We shall have solved all our problems and accomplished the true meaning of our human life.
It’s actually a huge step towards attaining inner peace when we can acknowledge that our stress is coming from our own mental responses, not the external situation. Then we can start moving in the right direction. For as long as we think the only way to relieve our stress is to remove ourselves from difficult situations, it never gets better; even if we go on holiday we still feel stressed because we know we’ll soon have to go back and face the challenges we’re trying to escape from. When we start trying to change our mind, rather than the outside world, then we’re moving towards a stress-free life.
I’ve referred to that as ‘the eye of the storm’ because a stress-free life isn’t one characterised by lying on beaches sipping cocktails; we will continue to be surrounded by difficult people and unwished-for occurrences. Our external situation may not change at all, but that’s the point: it doesn’t need to. We’re in a calm and peaceful space in the midst of all that stormy weather, and that’s a real achievement to aim for.
