David Hare - The Buddha in Me, The Buddha in You: A Handbook for Happiness

CONTENTS

Do you want to be happier? Find inner calm? Enjoy a rich and rewarding life? Heres how... The Buddha in Me, the Buddha in You combines the tried-and-tested wisdom of Nichiren Buddhism with the best of popular psychology and personal development, making this a brilliant guide to how life works, and how to get the most from it.

Nichiren Buddhism differs from other Buddhist schools in its focus on the here-and-now, and places great importance on individual growth as the starting point for a better world. This, combined with powerful techniques such as NLP, mindfulness, journalling and coaching, makes The Buddha in Me, the Buddha in You the quintessential handbook for happiness.

Buddha simply means someone who is awakened - yet while Nichiren Buddhists will find fascinating insights into their practice, there is no need to follow a spiritual path to benefit from this book. Through his experience as an internationally acclaimed life coach and practising Buddhist, author David Hare shows us how to wake up to our own potential and that of those around us to discover everyday enlightenment.

David Hare was educated at Oundle School, studied French at St Andrews University, and has worked as a strawberry picker, curry deliverer, pizza maker, university lecturer and a PR director. He is now a freelance writer, trainer and mindset coach with private and corporate clients across the world. David has been practising Nichiren Buddhism as a member of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) since 1985, and lives with his family in Leicestershire, UK.

www.thankingthespoon.com
Twitter: @DavidHareCoach

For Anna, Zofia and Leon,
my treasures of the heart.

The Lotus Sutra has the drama of fighting for justice against evil. It has a warmth that comforts the weary. It has a vibrant, pulsing courage that drives away fear. It has a chorus of joy at attaining absolute freedom throughout the three existences. It has the soaring flight of liberty. It has brilliant light, flowers, greenery, music, paintings, vivid stories. It offers unsurpassed lessons on psychology, the workings of the human heart; lessons on life; lessons on happiness; and lessons on peace. It maps out the basic rules for good health. It awakens us to the universal truth that a change in ones heart, or attitude, can transform everything.

Daisaku Ikeda, third President of Soka Gakkai
International, in The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra

I will teach you how to become a Buddha easily.

Nichiren Daishonin, in his letter
The Wealthy Man Sudatta

I first bumped into Buddhism in Paris in the summer of 1983, after leaving home at the age of seventeen with plans to work my way across Europe. I came from a loving family but was bursting to break free from the sheltered life of my single-sex public school. Studying French at university could wait for a year. It was time to lose my inhibitions and find some excitement in the real world, beyond the dreamy yet claustrophobic cloisters where I had spent the last seven years. I arrived at Stalingrad coach station (now long gone) in the north-east of Paris at dawn, after a fourteen-hour journey from London. I had my rucksack, a basic map of the French capital, twenty Silk Cut, a packet of Polos and 400 that I had saved from working as a hotel barman in my hometown of Peterborough.

Most of the money, the inhibitions and the plans to see Europe evaporated within a short time of my checking into the utterly charming Htel de Nesle, a quirky, bohemian Latin Quarter hostel that was a de rigueur first stop for solo travellers on a tight budget. I was immediately seduced by the breakfast of warm croissants and hot chocolate, followed by a roll-up from a fellow new arrival. We all sat at a big table under bouquets of dried flowers that hung from the rafters in reception. The place was owned by a large, warm and redoubtable matriarch called Rene, who had the air of a Romany fortune teller and called everyone chri.

In this pre-internet age, the Htel de Nesle was the place to network. A warm and welcoming sanctuary where you could get drunk, get high and, if you wanted to, get into brief, no-strings relationships. We were a friendly ragtag bunch of drifters, buskers, EFL teachers, artists and gap-year students, mainly from the USA, UK, Germany and Scandinavia. Our late-night conversations about Sylvia Plath, Jim Morrison or Albert Camus were fuelled by red wine, baguettes and Camembert (which in those days did not settle quite so immediately around my waistline). And before bedtime, the guitars and tarot cards would usually make an appearance. These new experiences ignited a spark within me. Paris was a place that promised adventure and the chance to rebel against my loving but sheltered childhood. I wouldnt need to travel across Europe after all.

I soon made friends with a New Yorker called Ken. The deal was that he would show me round Paris and I would help him learn French. Little did I know that this chance encounter would spark a sequence of events that would change the course of my whole life. Ken had taken a shine to a young Finnish lady called Mina, who was renting a room in an apartment in the 19th arrondissement, in those days one of the less salubrious parts of the capital. As Mina was heading home to Helsinki, she threw a leaving party, to which Ken and I were invited. At the party, we met her landlady, Christiane Alix, who now had a spare room to rent. I knew Christiane was a Buddhist because she told me straightaway and in her lounge she had a strange altar with a scroll in it. But we didnt let her weird religion put us off. Ken and I moved in a couple of days later.

So the Htel de Nesle, meeting Ken, his Finnish love-interest, her leaving party, my first sight of a Buddhist altar, a cheap spare room to rent Did this series of dominoes fall in some preordained sequence? Was it fate? Cosmic coincidence? Karma? At the time, it seemed like none of the above. I had absolutely no intentions of becoming a Buddhist, despite Christianes earnest endeavours. Firstly, I was a devout (if increasingly sceptical) Catholic. And secondly, although I found the philosophy intriguing, the practice was just a bit too far out. In Christianes altar, there was a scroll with some Chinese-looking characters on it that she chanted in front of (sometimes for one or more hours at a time), as well as candles, incense, a gong, prayer beads and fruit. My first impressions were that this scroll and its central mantra Nam-myoho-renge-kyo were at best weird and at worst sinister.

Over time, I learned that Christiane and many of her friends practised something called Nichiren Buddhism, which had been founded by a revolutionary Japanese monk called Nichiren Daishonin (12221282). He based his philosophy on the Lotus Sutra, the ultimate teaching preached in India 3,000 years ago by the first Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Shakyamuni.

In a nutshell, Nichiren, who described himself as merely the son of a commoner from a remote province, believed in the Buddha in me and the Buddha in you. He believed in everyones innate wisdom, courage and compassion (the three main qualities of Buddhahood) and taught his followers how to access these qualities, a full 700 years before positive psychology, New Age affirmations, life coaching, NLP or modern-day CBT had been invented.