His holiness the Dalai Lama in Cambridge

“If you want to be happy, practice compassion. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion”. Dalai Lama

I recently read an interesting story written by a Tibetan Buddhist Master named Ringu Tulku Rinpoche. The story was about a princess who had a little problem in her eye that she thought and felt horrible. This princess, because of her situation as the king's daughter, was used to have whatever she wanted. She was a spoiled girl and that's why she was crying all the time. Although the doctors where trying to apply some treatment and medicine to cure the disease, they found it impossible and all their attempts to counteract the problem were in vain. After a long time of bringing health specialists in the palace with no results, the king decided to give a reward to the person who could cure the princess. A man, who called himself as a physician but not a doctor, went to the palace. He was sure he could help the king's daughter. He examined the princess and after a while he said: “Oh, I'm so sorry. There's something with you that is really serious”, and the princess asked surprised: “What is it?”. The physicist refused to answer the question, he just told her that without the expressed authorization of the king he wouldn't be in a position of telling what was happening. Even in front of the king, the “specialist” wasn't able to say what he found. After the king's insistence, the man stated: “The eye will get better in just a few days. But what is really a trouble is that a very long tail will grow from the princess' bag. Maybe if we prevent it since the beginning, we'll be able to stop it growing”. There were concern in all the palace. The princess, after hearing the news, decided to focus all her attention, day and night, in her bag, trying to detect when the tail would appear. Thanks to that, her eye stop hurting.

According to Tulku Rinpoche, in my point of view, this story is actually an example of how we tend to make many little dispensable problems in our lives bigger and bigger. We overreact because we put our own desires and rejections as the center of everything that involves our life, losing world's perspective. The idea in buddhism of emptiness, dependent origination (the law of cause and effect), interconnectivity of all phenomena and the nature of reality brings another concept to this way of thinking.

Apparently, in many scientists and experts' words, these characteristic features of the mentioned Eastern intellectual discipline prepared what quantum physics would prove thousands and thousands of years later. The world famous quantum physicist Albert Einstein, who developed the Relativity Theory, quoted:

“Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual; and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security”. (I think it fits perfectly with Eastern mystic philosophies such as buddhism).

It is noticeable how the buddhism is closed from science itself, specially knowing that is also based on experience and experimentation (you have to live it by yourself, see it with your eyes, investigate and examine it through your experience: this is why the phrase “clear your mind” is also really important for buddhism). Related to Buddha's teachings, the follower of the Buddha is exhorted to believe nothing until he has experienced it and found it to be true. Now I understand that the logic behind buddhist religion and philosophy of life and methodology came across many western countries not a long time ago, increasing exponentially its practitioners, specially in the last few decades.

Psychologically speaking, seems that buddhism also provides an in-depth solution, scientifically tested, to many mental diseases as well as relationship issues, essential for personal growth and well being. Psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler, in the nineties, decided to write a book based on the interviews with his holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama entitled: “The Art of Happiness”. What started as an initial approach to buddhist philosophy by modern science and a simple self-help guidebook to deal with our lives in day-to-day practice according to Dalai Lama's beliefs, soon became gradually a complex-but-clear huge compendium of buddhist philosophy and experiences perfectly contrasted with western scientific statements. Scientific research aknowledged Dalai Lama to be right. In a remarkably short period of time, the book was a best-seller and it is still being reedited. In my opinion, there are reasons to believe that we can find important clues for achieving happiness in this religion and philosophy of life.

My personal path to the depths of buddhism started last year, after a period of “inner” imprisonment and extreme over-the-top “ego” that brought me to depression and delusions. I realized how the sense of being an enclosed mental body, with his specific characteristics created by himself and also assuming them as real, as objective, as personal with regard to others, was causing enormous pain, fear and lots of insecurities to me. Metaphorically, the house where I was living wasn't a very comfortable place to stay.

I began to think outside the “box” when I reread “The power of Now” written by Cambridge University's professor Eckhart Tolle. The book brings together the teachings of different spiritual masters from different cultures. I was attracted by the possibility of displaying a state of “presence”, “consciousness” and “self-awareness” in our everyday lives, which could bring anybody to a dramatic change, shift of perspective and also of the way of how they perceive things. What also affects directly our relationship with other human beings (connectivity) and also our inner calm and inner peace. By the law of cause and effect, you do good you get good, you do bad you get bad (pretty obvious, isn't it?), at the end all beings will be benefited from it as a result. From there, I started to read lots of books, articles, programs, blogs... with reference to it, but I will point out more of my own thoughts about the matter further in other posts.

The visit of the Nobel Price his holiness the Dalai Lama in Cambridge this weekend, related to the interesting subject of “Non Violence for Conflict Resolution”, brought me the idea of writing this little extract of my personal beliefs and philosophy of life. How I see it, how I justify it. The idea of going to the conference, where many world leaders will also be involved in, is enormously tempting, although it is going to be accessible only for scholars of the University of Cambridge. (Sugar! I will have to find a way to get there!).