From another review of the new book, "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World," by Pankaj Mishra (appearing in the latest New York Review):

"Perhaps the central figure among such thinkers is Nietzsche, who saw early on that the fading of the Christian god might propel people toward a rational philosopher from the East who proposed a struggle against suffering rather than a struggle against sin. Buddhism, for Nietzsche, 'is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity - it has the heritage of a cool and objective posing of problems of its composition, it arrives after a philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years; the concept 'God' is already abolished by the time it arrives."

Methinks Nietzsche was a little too optimistic about the West rejecting superstition and embracing rational thought as the basis of their spiritual seeking.

More interesting stuff from the same review:

"The Buddha, though entirely Eastern by origin, provides an example, in fact, of the very qualities that Mishra has long admired in the West: reason, rigor and the power of the mind (Buddhism can more easily be called a highly empirical 'science of mind" than a religion)."

...

"It is central to Mishra's story that we owe the rescue of the Buddha from complete obscurity to Europeans: it was Europeans, he tells us, who invented the very word 'Buddhism' around 1820 ... and it was European amateurs who worked hard to recover texts that had been lost ..."

It is fascinating to contemplate how Western admirers unearthed and promoted the Buddhism that many of us now find so attractive in the West.

A couple of interesting observations from a book review of "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World," by Pankaj Mishra.

"the Buddha, as Mishra describes him, was not a prophet -- not a religious figure, but a secular one. Indeed, 'he had placed no value on prayer or belief in a deity; he had not spoken of creation, original sin or the last judgment.' He likewise ignored the question of why sin and evil exist in the world, which has obsessed nearly every major religion. The Buddha's concern was purely practical: to relieve suffering, both material and existential."

...

"But Buddhism ... is 'not easily practiced in the modern world,' where almost everything is 'predicated on the growth and multiplication of desire, exactly the thing that the Buddha had warned against.' In the United States, particularly, 'as Alexis de Tocqueville had noticed in the early 1830's, individual self-interest was the very basis of the brand-new commercial and industrial society that Europeans had created in the seemingly unlimited spaces of the New World.'"

A summary of "Training our minds to the Happy," in the February issue of Psychology Today:


"Living in the present may be the key to happiness, says Carlin

Flora, a staff writer at the magazine. "Our sense of well-being

is intimately tied into our perception of time," she says.

Age also makes a difference, she says, citing research by a

professor of psychology at Stanford University. The professor,

Laura Carstensen, has found that younger people focus more on

the negative, while older people release bad feelings faster and

maintain good ones longer.

"Carstensen thinks this shift toward the positive occurs because

as we age, we become aware, consciously or not, that time is

running out," Ms. Flora writes. "The awareness of life's

fragility turns our attention to the present moment, so we worry

less."

Ms. Carstensen is also investigating how Buddhist meditation,

which involves an intense focus on the present, may affect the

brain."

"The finding suggests," Ms. Flora says, "that if we train

ourselves to become more mindful and slow down our sense of

passing time, we can learn to monitor our moods and thoughts

before they spiral downward. We can, in other words, make

ourselves happier."


So, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. Another field of study that confirms ancient insights. Alas that we live is such a magnificently unmindful society! Distractions and entertainment tossed at us constantly.

The full-text of the article is at:
http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20050119-000002.html

Since Buddhism requires mindfulness throughout the day, I have found it helpful to keep short passages memorized. Here is one of the best that I have found. I have no idea where it originally came from, but it can be found in Edward Conze's Buddhism: It's Essence and Development:

OF whatever teachings, you can assure yourself that they are conducive to
Dispassion and not to passion;
To detachment and not to bondage;
To decrease of worldly gains and not to their increase;
To frugality and not to covetousness;
To content and not to discontent;
To solitude and not to company;
To energy and not to sluggishness;
To delight in good and not to delight in evil;
Of such teachings you may with certainty affirm;
This is the norm; this is the discipline; this is the Buddha’s message.