Why Buddhism ?
Excerpt from "The Buddhist Handbook" (1992) John Snelling. London: Rider. (Reprint).

Buddhism has gained enormous ground in the West during the past 20 years...There is every indication that interest in Buddhism will continue to grow, for it clearly supplies some deep spiritual need in the people of the Western world that their established religious traditions fail to fully supply. On might well ask, then: 'What does Buddhism possess that is especially valuable and helpful?'

Freedom from dogma and finding the truth for oneself

Buddhism does not demand that anyone accepts its teachings on trust. The practitioner is instead invited to try them out, to experiment with them. If he finds that they work in practice, then by all means he can them on board. But there is no compulsion; and if he happens to find the truth elsewhere or otherwise, all well and good. This essential freedom from dogma is enshrined in the Buddha's words to the Kalamas, a people who lived in the vicinity of the town of Kesaputta:

"Come, Kalamas, do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in your scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view after pondering it over or with someone else's ability or with the thought 'The monk is our teacher'. When you know in yourselves 'These ideas are unprofitable, liable to censure, condemned by the wise, being adopted and put into effect they lead to harm and suffering', then you should abandon them.... (And conversely:) When you know in yourselves 'These things are profitable...' then you should practise them and abide by them...."
Excerpt from "The Life of the Buddha" (1978) Nanamoli. Kandy: B.P.S. pp. 176-7.

Tolerance

If one reserves the right to find the truth for oneself, one must logically accord the same right to others - and also respect them if they arrive at different conclusions. From this comes that basic tolerance that the world so acutely needs today. There have inevitably been exceptions - some Buddhists have fallen short of the very high standards set by the Buddha himself - but on the whole Buddhism has kept its record remarkably clean of inquisitions, pogroms, religious wars and massacres, heresy-hunting and the burning of books or people.

A liberal tradition of free inquiry

If Buddhism is a non-dogmatic tradition, not founded on a book or articles of faith, what makes a Buddhist a Buddhist rather than nothing in particular? To start with, there is respect for the Buddha himself and for the manner in which he conducted his own search for spiritual truth. From this directly stems a sense of belonging to the tradition that the Buddha established: a liberal tradition of free inquiry into the nature of ultimate truth. Then too is a sense of community with others of a similar (though not necessarily identical) outlook.

Practical methods

If the Buddhist emphasis is on finding out for oneself, this necessarily places primary emphasis upon direct religious experience, as opposed to belief or blind faith. However, one doesn't in the normal course of events just receive deep religious experience as manna from above. Though that can of course happen, one generally has to make a concious effort. So Buddhism does not so much offer things to believe as things to do: a vast array of spiritual practices, ranging from moral precepts that one can apply in one's everyday life and virtues that one can cultivate, to meditative practices (a profusion of these) which help to develop untapped spiritul resources: faculties like profound wisdom or clear-seeing, and an all-embracing, selfless compassion. Put in Western terms, the ultimate aim of Buddhist practice is to engineer mystical experience: to penetrate the great mystery at the heart of life and find the answers to the knotty problems that have perennially enagaged the most developed minds of the human race. This implies a complete spiritual transformation of the person as well.

Healing and transformation

C.G. Jung once wrote: 'The whole world wants peace and the whole world prepares for war. Mankind is powerless against mankind. And the gods, as ever, show us the way of Fate....'

This is a succinct summary of our contemporary dilemma. The world today is beset by many grave problems, social, psychological, ecological, economic - and of course the threat of nuclear destruction casts its shadow over all. Our planet has now literally become a great time-bomb - and it is five minutes to zero-hour. As the final seconds tick away we seem hopelessly in the grip of deep dark forces that we don't understand and over which we have no control.

Sometimes we project the evil outwards and lay the blame on other people and groups. Sometimes too politicians and social scientists claim to have solutions; but these are invariably partial and temporary, touching the surface and relieving superficial symptoms rather than getting down to the root causes. If we are honest, these root causes lie in the individual human heart, in our hearts, where a primitive but fanatical self-centredness holds sway. It is our own personal greed, hatred and delusion, collectivized and amplified on a massive scale, that cause our planet's grave problems. Yet just to see this is not enough. The dark forces within each of us must be acknowledged and brought up into the light. Then, through awareness and understanding, they can be transformed into the stuff of true wisdom and compassion. Buddhism offers us ways and means of doing this.

So we need Buddhism. And our world needs it too as never before.

The late John Snelling was for some years the Editor of The Middle Way, the journal of the Buddhist Society.

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