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Individual Well-being, Collective Well-being
Benito Carral
Translated from Spanish
by José Manuel Atienza
It is not good that the man should be alone
Genesis 2.18
If we should ask an African youngster who
is slowly dying from starvation about what well-being means,
I think all of us could guess his answer: "A little food."
If we should approach a single mother who can hardly pay her
monthly bills and whose security at her job is as stable as
jelly, it wouldn't be hard to read her thoughts either: "A
little security." If we should come across a young, sad-looking,
lonely man, and show interest in what's wrong with him, perhaps
he would say: "I feel lonely. I don't know people I like
to be with. I would like to find the right girl to build a
family, but I've been waiting for years and I can't find her.
All I want is to know someone who understands me and wants
to spend her life with me." And in a radio programme
we could listen to a woman telling her story: "I feel
so bad, I feel useless. When I was a child I was never welcome
to join into game groups, my workmates are always one step
before me, and my family don't respect me. I forgot about
my dreams. I'd like to feel respected, to do something that
is really worthwhile."
Most of us have felt like this some time
in our lives, haven't we? We may even be experiencing a similar
situation now. In those moments we are clear about what our
well-being would be and we try to draw near to it. But that
is not the end of the story. As soon as we satisfy our basic
needs and the euphoria of the celebration has faded away,
we discover that there is still something wrong. We feel a
lack and we don't know what we lack; we feel dissatisfaction.
Then we start to listen to what people have to tell us about
it and we get involved in trying out all kinds of possible
solutions. We may need a change in our outlook, a holiday
at the beach, a brand new car, a class of yoga, a Japanese
girlfriend, jogging, a change in our diet, a raise in salary
at work, a renewal of our wardrobe, a dog to walk, sex, drugs,
strong emotions…, perhaps. But the feeling of lacking
something remains there, and sometimes it's so strong that
we can hardly breathe. We don't know what else we can do and
we wonder what is wrong.
We've been talking about ill-being so far,
because the contrast will help us to understand better what
we are looking for. Let me tell you a story now.
Some years ago a couple kindly invited me
to visit China. It was a very special occasion since I had
been longing to know first-hand the monasteries I'd heard
of for so long, to pay homage to masters of past times, and
to have interviews with their abbots and to interchange ideas
about our school. It was a dear time. But I didn't only meet
people in robes and shaved heads. I tried to pay attention
to everything around me. And that was how I observed a little
man who made a living repairing bicycles in a street of Beijing.
He seemed to be a relaxed person, one of
those who don't have many worries in their heads. He used
to sit quietly enjoying the sun, the birds, and the bustle
of the city. Every now and then someone came to have a puncture
repaired or to have a chain oiled, and then that man focused
his attention on his job, which he did carefully and in a
refined way typical of one who masters his job. Every day
he was visited by the same friend of his. He would sit close
to him and they would enjoy a good conversation with no haste.
Then he would tidy up everything carefully and go on his bicycle.
Because of the language barrier I could never talk to him
nor could I know what his life was like beyond those hours
we shared, but I imagined that he would have a lovely wife
waiting for him at home with whom he would enjoy sharing the
rest of the day. He was a person at peace with himself, with
a simple life, little luxury, and simple customs.
We can take this man's life as a good example,
don't you agree? If we pay attention to his story, we will
make out some qualities we could take into account and perhaps
we could give them a try in our lives. The Buddha always urged
us to try out by ourselves those things we think are good.
We have nothing to lose but much to win.
That man had the ability to be astonished
at the fantastic spectacle that life gives us at every moment
if we bother to stop and observe. As he was focused on the
present moment, he didn't feel uncomfortable being alone,
and when he was visited by his friend, he enjoyed that close
relationship. He didn't look like a person of superficial
social relationships. By his look and his buying habits, mainly
a matter of the purchase of sunflower seeds in five different
flavours, and some tea, which was always at hand, it was easily
noticeable that he was not very interested in material things
and he didn't care about what the dressed up and hasty people
from the city could think about him. It was evident that he
didn't follow the American dream. What's more, he looked
spontaneous and with a sense of humour. A lovely person —
one of those you feel attracted to, and want to get close
to.
So, is this well-being? Just partly. So
far we've only limited our discussion on what we could call
individual well-being; however, it's not possible that
a person experiences plenitude in his life without bearing
in mind the collective side of his well-being.
The Buddhist teachings teach us that the
ultimate source of our dissatisfaction is a wrong view of
reality that leads us to believe that we are isolated entities
living outside the rest of the universe. Luckily this dysfunctional
conception is beginning to be in crisis and is giving way
to what is already being called the great shift.
Spiritual traditions have always talked
about the "death of the self," and although this
metaphor has done a good job, I think it's time to renew it,
so I propose to talk about the "expansion of the self"
instead. We human beings have limited ourselves with several
beliefs which, apart from perpetuating our personal uneasiness,
have helped contribute to the suffering of many living beings
and risked this planet's life.
The thing is, we are not only a body or a mind; members of
a family, a community, or a nation; human beings or living
beings… We are all that and much more. We are integral
processes of a complex system which we call universe.
We are the goods we consume, some of them
produced by children and adults who are being exploited; the
pollutant substances we dump into the atmosphere and the seas;
the homeless people we see lying around the streets; the ecosystems
that are dying because of our ambition… And until we
are not aware that we are part of a whole, that we live closely
related to one another, that our personal well-being can't
be separated from our collective well-being, we won't be able
to experience a complete life; in fact, if we don't get rid
of this illusion and start to act accordingly soon, our own
existence is in danger.
We have already seen that well-being does
not mean consumerism, and now we see that it does not mean
to close our eyes to suffering either. Well-being consists
of satisfying a series of basic needs and developing an inner
peace which lets us live centered on the present moment, enjoying
the wonders of life and being aware of our personal and collective
suffering. Our true well-being doesn't consist of getting
isolated from the world (something that's not possible since
we are an integral process of it), but to acknowledge who
we really are and act accordingly, helping that way to maintain
the delicate balance of the system we are part of.
To finish, I would like to remark that one
of our basic needs is to share life and to establish reciprocal
relationships based on understanding, respect, and love with
other people, and because of this, family and good friends
are two fundamental aspects of our well-being.
Good friends are those who care about us
and who help us to grow, to be aware of the nature of reality,
and to act in a positive way for all of us. On the other hand,
we shouldn't consider good friends those who don't care about
us, who limit us, and waste our resources: time, energy, goods,
etc., in hardly beneficial activities. The Buddha left us
a good piece of advice about this subject: "It is better
to live alone than being accompanied by a fool person."
On the other hand, the crisis in the family
system is one more example of the ill-being which self-centeredness
leads us to, that limited vision we talked about before. Part
of the process of expansion of the self necessary for our
survival and well-being means to understand that a family
is much more than a group of people who live under the same
roof. A family in which all of its members look for the best
for their false and belittled self would be like a body in
which every one of its members wanted to do different things
at the same time. In good conditions, a body works as a unity;
the left hand understands that it's not only a left hand,
but that it's an integral part of a wider whole. In a similar
way, a family is a system that to work perfectly needs its
members to understand what their true nature is. By what we
have said, it could be understandable that the purpose of
a healthy family is to supply a true well-being to its members
and to help the well-being of the wider system it belongs
to, that is, the universe.
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