Transforming the City
Living in the city is not just a question of coping with it as best we can.
Kulaprabha believes that Buddhists should take the initiative.
Go now and wander for the welfare and the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, welfare and happiness of gods and men. Teach the Law that is good in the beginning good in the middle and good in the end, with the meaning and the letter. Explain a Holy life that is utterly pure and perfect. There are creatures with little dust in their eyes who will be lost through not hearing the Law. Some will understand the Law.
(Life of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Nanamoli).
There are of course differences between the situation in the Deer Park at Isipatana two-and-a-half thousand years ago, when the Buddha uttered those words, and the situation we find ourselves in now. Then, the Buddha was addressing sixty-one Enlightened human beings; now, those of us reading this are probably not Enlightened. Then, those followers went forth into a predominantly rural society containing a few small towns and cities; now, we live in great conurbations of millions of human beings, in cities large enough to appear from space as myriad lights weaving humanity's constellation around our planet. To go now and work for the benefit of the many is to carry the light of the Dharma into the streets of our cities. In those cities are to be seen great beauty and great ugliness: complex scenes where extremes of wealth sit side by side with extremes of poverty- material, cultural and psychological. Glasgow, where I live, is one such city.
Driving around it brings a series of vivid impressions of its life: a hallucinating vagrant wandering along the street, his arms gesticulating at unseen enemies; an illuminated concert hall, the shafts of light surrounding the building an external parallel to the beams of sound surrounding its enraptured audience; bargain hunters jostling each other; football crowds; a painted phoenix rising the entire four-storeyed height of a tenement gable wall; mothers waiting at the school gates, a protective cordon against the ever threatening 'stranger'; advertising hoardings offering instant solutions to any unsatisfactoriness that life may bring.
Above the level of the traffic lights the city's Victorian heroes and heroines hold ships, books, and musical instruments in their outstretched arms and lift their gaze to far horizons from their vantage points on well-proportioned buildings erected when Glasgow was one of the world's biggest ports. Inside those buildings is the hum of business, study, research, machinery, discussion; deals are made in some, lives saved in others. Such scenes are repeated in many other cities. Do they need changing? Can they be called 'good' or 'bad'? Is it a realistic task to transform a city? And, anyway, is that not the responsibility of professional agencies?
Before considering these questions, it is important to be clear about our purpose, about what is being transformed and why. In sending his first followers to work for the welfare of the many, the Buddha was acting from an Enlightened standpoint. His definition of 'welfare' had not the limited meaning to which we have become used in a phrase like 'the Welfare State'. A Buddhist working in the world may become involved in projects for social change, but social change in itself is not the main objective. Such a person will wish to see ethical, non-exploitative, non- discriminatory attitudes in their personal and business communities; but, again, such helpful living and working frameworks are not the Buddhist's final objective.
The transformation of our cities cannot be left solely in the hands of politically or socially motivated people, worthy though their motives may be. A spiritual perspective is required. A spiritual transformation is not merely what is better. What is better may well lead to a longer and happier life, but that life will still end in death just as surely as will any other life. What needs to be transformed is our vision of ourselves and of our cities. Our lives, instead of being meandering attempts to avoid acknowledging the inevitability of death, could become currents for our own personal experience of Wisdom and Compassion. Our cities could be supports for the spiritual life of their citizens. With the advantages of humanity's scientific and technological discoveries at our fingertips, with easily available access to inspiring art and music, and with our personal practice firmly established in the Buddha's teachings, what could we not achieve?
This is a far cry from the accepted goals of a materialist society. But is it possible? Co-operative businesses, Buddhist centres, and communities of Buddhists living together will sound familiar to readers of Golden Drum. These are some of the practical ways in which we have made a start in transforming our cities. To such external structures can be added an eye for the wider opportunities thrown up by our present-day political and social situation.
In Glasgow, for example, there are Buddhists adept at unearthing the government help available for new business initiatives; others are finding that meditation classes can be of help to the long-term unemployed; the organizers of a series of workshops for women have asked us to lead one on meditation; another small group of women have recently asked for someone to teach meditation to help them cope with the emotional after-math of surgical trauma.
Those of us with children are becoming more active in talking to teachers about the kind of religious education we want for them; and teachers with their pupils are coming to the Buddhist Centre. We can also act effectively in co-operation with non- Buddhists whose aims coincide with our own-concern for the environment and concern for human rights are two areas in which much has been done by organizations sustained by the 'grass- roots' individual efforts of their members.
Not everyone in our city will respond to Buddhist values and ideas, but some will, and if others benefit indirectly then so much the better. It is easy to think of ways to communicate the Dharma, easy to write them down in impressive lists. But finding the most effective ways and maintaining effort over a long period of time is difficult, and brings us back to the most important ingredient in any attempt to transform our city-ourselves.
An expanded vision of our city needs to be rooted in an expanded vision of ourselves. In our attempts to transform the city we need as much awareness of ourselves and of our ultimate spiritual motivation as we need of the city itself. Our desire to change ourselves must be as firmly held as our desire to change our environment-indeed the one is the reflection of the other. Our city is a mirror of our own lives. To consider again those scenes from Glasgow life, are they not really scenes enacted within our own minds? Do we not sometimes gesticulate mentally at imagined enemies, or dwell in self-absorbed rapture, enjoying the fruits of our skilful actions but becoming complacent about maintaining our previous efforts? Do we not allow ourselves to become caught up in the pursuit of pleasure, envious of' or secretly craving, others' possessions? These are our own manifestations of the realms of the unenlightened mind which appear in the Tibetan 'Wheel of Life'.
Appearing in us they also appear in our creations-which include our cities. A city reflects, on a large scale, those factors of which we need to become more mindful in ourselves. Perhaps there is not too much difference between bringing our own inner realms of existence into awareness, and making a real connection with the objective realms which surround us.
And, with the help of the Dharma, our awareness of those subjective and objective realms might include some awareness of the way out of them. The eventual choice is not between good and bad, right and wrong, skilful and unskilful, but between the mundane and the transcendental, between seeing things as they appear and seeing them as they really are. This is perhaps the most important reason for carrying out the task of transforming the city.
Reading about Buddhism only bears fruit when it leads us to practise the Dharma. In the same way, will not our personal practice lead to an involvement with our wider environment as we become aware of our intimate connections with other human beings and with our social and cultural context?
Further, just as personal practice feeds back into and lends added discrimination to our reading, will not some active involvement with our environment lend new discrimination to our personal practice? What starts off as a quest for greater personal understanding and perspective can lead to the discovery that real perspective is imbibed with an experience of solidarity and concern for other human beings.
No doubt our present experience will need time and effort before it matures to the level of those first Enlightened followers of the Buddha. In the meantime let us appreciate the value of our wider perspective and of those feelings of solidarity and concern which we experience already-and put them into practice.