The Japanese writer Yuyu Kiryu (1873-1941) described the world as 'the path of animality'. Because there are all too few truly 'human' beings, people start wars simply to prove who is strongest. We find ourselves tossed about in a society that is locked in the grip of animality (Conversations on the, Lotus Sutra, no.29).

For the first twenty-seven years of my Buddhist practice in SGI-UK, my main contact with 'humans', outside of Buddhist activities and my working environment, was when travelling to work and to activities.

Travelling to and from work meant commuting on the London underground system, one hour each way. Travelling to activities meant driving, mostly on the North Circular an orbital road used by motorists to by-pass the suburbs of north London. The tube trains I used were well-named - cramped, crowded and not always trouble free.

For the bulk of travellers, who probably lived in the world of animality, in order not to lose one's sanity it was (and still is) necessary to think of one's fellow commuters as not being human. This is probably because with so many people around, the normal human expressions of politeness, consideration, gratitude and respect, are almost impossible to express. The same situation existed on the North Circulai; but this time the 'humans' were in cars or lorries.

What happens, of course, is that travel becomes a strategy to protect your 'space'. Anything that invades, or threatens to invade that space must be repelled. In effect, as all of us are not necessarily aggressive, human exchange becomes a combination of avoiding eye contact, racing for seats, or gaps in the traffic, or sometimes (quite often) confrontation, especially when conditions are made worse by signal failures, traffic jams, and so on.
Being a practising Buddhist during all this was a wonderful experience because after a rousing morning session of reciting the sutra and chanting Nammyoho-renge-kyo, I would be more aware of the situation as I lived it.

As the years passed, my view of my fellow travellers changed from me, a person with a lapel badge saying, 'I am an extremely powerful person and you had better keep out of my space under any circumstance', to a person with a message in my eyes and heart, 'I am a very contented person and your presence is quite pleasing to me.' It transforms your life.

Of course, it is not just a process of deciding to think a certain way. We have certain traits, certain characteristics; personalities that make us wonderfully different from each other. What is necessary is for us to display the best of those traits, the human side of them, the Buddha nature of our true selves.
In the above quoted instalment of his Conversations on the Lotus Sutra, President Ikeda also talks about the act of praying:

'Meditation' sounds calm and peaceful, but it is by no means an 'easy' path. It is a fierce struggle against the pull of negativity and darkness. Shakyamuni squarely confronted, fought and defeated the 'destroyer of life', a function pervading the universe. In so doing, he was able to conquer the darkness that is called unhappiness.

This is the quest of all of us - including people of all or no religious convictions. We can make a difference each day if we give the 'benefit of the doubt' to our fellow human beings and confidently allow them to enter our space.

But we have to practise to the best of our ability. It is only through the struggle of trying to overcome the suffering of our animality, that the quality of 'humaneness', our Buddhahood, appears. Therefore the suffering that we confront with our chanting and bodhisattva activities is the path to the fulfillment of that which is right for our lives.

RICKY BAYNES
General Director, SGI-UK

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This page was last modified on Sunday, August 20, 2006.