The Buddhist Way of Life - Christmas Humphreys

The book was planned some years ago on the lines of my Studies in the Middle Way which had been in print already for some twenty years. The content were drafted , a number of chapters written, and considerable notes prepared for many more. Then for some reason the folder was laid aside and its materials became, as is the fate of many unfinished works, a quarry for later articles and lectures.

I the result, When I returned to the subject I had to collect a number of articles from journals in all part of the world., and to extract from the tape-recordings of the lectures the substance of what I had left as notes for chapters. A few independent articles and talks have also been included as further contributions to the same theme of Buddhism applied to daily life. For Buddhism, though usually referred to as a religion, and replete with a magnificent range of philosophy, metaphysics, mysticism, psychology, ritual, morality and culture, is basically, it seem to me, a way of life. Up on this Way all aspects of the human mind have relevance, but the dedicated Buddhist is ever concerned with the Way itself which deal, so he find from experience, to Enlightenmnt for himself and all mankind.

In this belief I have concentrated my own study and writing on the actual practice of Buddhist principles, making use the criterion of value. To this and I write Walk On!, The Buddhist Way of Action, Zen, a Way of Life and other works, and have made the same emphasis in count less articles and talks.

But the application of a set of principles and daily life is not a matter of straightforward thinking, as the exposition of the principle may be. The conditioning of the individual, his education, mental make-up and cultural environment, the balance of his mind’s development in terms of intellect an feeling and intuitive development, all these are relevant, and his approach to what Marcus Aurelius called ‘the ambit of one’s moral purpose’ will be all time multiple. I will include digression and even retraction, and the same point may be studied  from many point of view before intellectual acceptance is matured into spiritual growth.

Mo apology, therefore, is made for overlapping and reputation in the chapters which follow. When a western mind attempts to understand, deeply and thoroughly, the basic principles of an Eastern way of life, there much to do, and a wide field of literature, scripture, text-books, and articles representing a hundred points of view, must be absorbed and digested. From such synthesis of doctrine and methods the enquirer’s mind move never to spiritual experience and logical path from accumulated facts to responsible inference therefrom; the East moves differently, and I have a mind which prefers the Eastern point of view.

In nearly 50 year’s study of Buddhism I have used all means of approach to understanding. To intellect I have added a blend of feeling, intuition and applied psychology, and happily use tradition, analogy, and also consistency with that ‘accumulated Wisdom of the ages’ which I believe to be the common heritage of the great Teachers of mankind. And using, as may go let me, the wise addition of patience and humility, I read again and again, from a dozen point of view, the doctrines which I wish to understand, until the hard walls of preconception begin waver and fall before the repeated battering of a new idea.

I repeat, therefore, that I do not apologize for saying the same times, for thus have I learned what little I know. May the following chapters help the reader to tread that Middle Way proclaimed by Gautama the Buddha which leads, as I have found, as far as one has strength to tread towards that light of wisdom-love which is ever here and now, and waits but our unveiling.

I have added a few poems. If firmly believe that at times I say more in a sonnet than in any essay, and ‘Beyond’ is a sense, though highly compressed and at times elliptical in expression, the distillation of a lifetime’s study.

I am grateful to editors of the following journals in which some of this material has appeared: the American Theosophist, the Aryan Path, the Buddhist Annual of Ceylon, the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society and the Middle Way, the journal of the Buddhist Society, London.

I am equally grateful to all those ladies who have retyped material for me. If at times, in attempting to read my written improvements, they have produced remarks and doctrines utterly new to me, the fault was ever mine, and I have at times adopted their exciting regardings

From preface by the author, CHRISTMAS HUMPHREYS.

Christmas Humphreys was the founder of the Buddhist Society, London. Stephen Hodge has published 12 books on Buddhism, philosophy and oriental languages.