Brexit Day is an important milestone, but it’s part of the process that has lasted for three years and divided the country. Setting aside our preferences about Brexit, how can we engage with what’s happening in line with Buddhist values
Weekend Word, BBC Radio Wales 31.1.2020
However we feel about Britain’s departure from the EU, we can all agree that today – Brexit Day – is an historic event. Britain’s place in the world will change in important ways, and for some Leave supporters – currently busy planning tonight’s parties – this is Britain’s Independence Day.
But for the UK as a whole I sense that this isn’t a celebration like VE Day or a royal wedding. Brexit has divided us, and we’ve only just stopped fighting over whether it would happen at all. For many Leavers, Brexit means restoring British identity, while many Remainers feel they’re losing their identity as European citizens.
So although today is an important milestone, it’s part of the process we’ve been in for three years and is far from finished. Like everyone else, I have my own preferences about Brexit, but I’ve been asking myself what my faith perspective as a Buddhist means for how I might approach it.
Buddhism starts with a recognition that life is difficult – this is what the Buddha called The First Noble Truth. There are obvious forms of suffering like old age, sickness and death but, because we find that so hard to tolerate, we react in ways that create additional suffering.
When they involve disagreements with other people, the obvious solution to our difficulties is trying to get our own way. So we fall out and the disagreement turns into a conflict.
This puts things rather simply, but what Buddhist teachings are asking is that we recognise when a difficulty is genuine, and embrace its complexity. That means looking beyond our preferences and listening deeply and sympathetically to those with whom we disagree. That isn’t the way Brexit debates have usually gone.
The Buddhist meditation on loving kindness involves directing a sense of well wishing towards ourselves, then a friend, then someone we neither like nor dislike, then someone we actively dislike and, finally, everyone in the world. In each case, we wish them well, however strong our differences may be.
Perhaps we could approach Brexit Day in that spirit, allowing space for all our responses, from celebration to mourning. So – leavers, Remainers, Don’t Knows, and people who are fed up of the whole thing: May we all be well. May we all be happy. May we all be free from suffering.
