“Live as though today were the last day of your life.”
For many years, I have carried this thought with me as a reminder to live gratefully and carefully. Perhaps for that reason, I have often returned to the same question: if you were to look back upon your life, which day would you remember most?
Recently, I asked myself the question again. I searched through my memories. My mind travelled through glittering cities, across tables crowded with glasses at five-star hotels, and beyond spectacular fireworks above the sea. Countless scenes flashed past, yet my memory finally settled somewhere far less remarkable: a park in Southampton. I was sitting alone on a bench that afternoon, looking across a wide expanse of grass. For several hours, I felt a stillness I had rarely known before. Two women walked past me, talking happily, one of them pushing a pram in which sat a little girl who could not have been much more than a year old. I looked at the child and found myself thinking something very simple: I hope she will be healthy, safe and happy all her life. The women had already walked several metres beyond me and were still absorbed in their conversation. Perhaps there are forms of communication between people which cannot quite be explained, because just as I watched the little girl with that quiet wish in my mind, she suddenly turned and looked directly at me. I wanted to wave, but worried that her family might misunderstand, and I have always been rather shy, so instead I simply smiled at her as discreetly as I could, hoping that somehow she might receive the goodwill behind it. They continued walking, yet to my surprise she kept turning back to look at me. Then suddenly she began to giggle. The two women stopped in astonishment, clearly unsure what had delighted her so much, and immediately took out a phone to photograph her. Their excitement was almost like that of parents watching a child take her first steps: something tiny, yet somehow momentous enough to preserve.
There was no music, no spectacle, no applause and nothing remotely glamorous about that afternoon, yet when I look back over more than twenty years of my life, it remains one of the days I remember most vividly. This still surprises me. So many experiences that once appeared dazzling — fireworks, rooftop restaurants in great cities, large banquets in luxury hotels, jewellery glittering beneath bright lights — have long since faded from memory. That afternoon, by contrast, I did almost nothing. I simply sat there and looked across a great stretch of green grass in a Southampton park. For those few hours, my mind felt extraordinarily peaceful: there was no past and no future, no anxiety about the present, no pressure from life and no demand that I should become somebody. There was only a quiet mind, and a sincere wish for the happiness of a child I did not know. If I were asked what I love most about Britain, perhaps it is this sense of quiet. I love its almost painterly countryside: the fields, the small streams with ducks moving slowly across the water, the paths rising and falling through the landscape; I love, too, the intricate and imposing cathedrals which seem almost to command reverence, and the sight of thoughtful students hurrying through college cloisters, each absorbed in some private world of ideas. Together, these images form a kind of inner landscape for me. And that afternoon remains, even now, the most beautiful scene of my life. What it gave me was not excitement but peace; not desire but contentment; not possession but a kind of purposeless joy.
Perhaps that is why I have increasingly found myself asking another set of questions. What makes a work of art good? What makes a novel good? And, more fundamentally, what do we mean when we call anything “good”? If we return to the simplest human understanding of the word, perhaps goodness begins with this: someone benefits from it. A person is called good not because he possesses a great deal, but because, even in poverty, he is willing to divide his bread with someone else. Human beings formed communities and states partly because we discovered that living together, protecting one another and creating order could make life safer and more stable than solitary existence. Should a “good” work of art not meet at least the same modest threshold — that someone, somewhere, becomes better because it exists? I studied music, and I know that every age has produced experimental and avant-garde artists. I admire genuine talent wherever it appears, and I do not deny the value of artistic exploration. But I still believe we ought to ask: why do we create? Is it to prove our originality, to acquire reputation, status and recognition within an industry, or do we genuinely hope that, even if only one person encounters the work, it might give that person courage, clarity or strength, and perhaps help them towards a slightly better life?
I once wanted, almost obsessively, to become a novelist. I prayed sincerely to the Buddha that I might be published and that my writing might be seen, yet the wish was frustrated again and again. Much later, I began to understand how fortunate some of those failures may have been. On one occasion, shortly after I had once again prayed for my writing to be published, I happened to see a video which asked a question that frightened me deeply: if irresponsible words can alter another person’s life, how will you bear responsibility for what they cause? If someone develops darker, more destructive or more despairing thoughts because of something I have written, how could I repay that debt? Money can, eventually, be repaid. But a wounded mind, or a life diverted onto a more painful course, may not be something one lifetime is sufficient to repair. At the time, the video felt almost like a rebuke. I was grateful for it, and ashamed. I realised that I had sometimes placed the shining identity of “artist” or “novelist” before the possible effect of my work upon other people. I had cared intensely about my own dream without seriously asking whether a dream that came at the expense of another person’s inner life could still be considered admirable. From within my Buddhist faith, I choose to believe that the Buddha could see what I could not: the foolishness, self-interest and ambition hidden within what I had imagined to be a noble wish. Perhaps mercy sometimes takes the form of preventing us from receiving everything we ask for. Even now, I feel uneasy when I remember how immature I was. I have gradually come to think that life is not always about achieving something as quickly as possible; sometimes it is more important to understand the consequences first. There is little virtue in travelling faster if one is travelling in the wrong direction. So before rushing to create, perhaps every artist should ask: how do I actually wish to spend my life? Have I placed the interests of the audience before what I myself hope to gain? What am I trying to communicate, and why does it need to be communicated? Is what I am adding merely more noise in the universe, or is it a genuine act of goodwill towards another person? If a good work of art begins as a seed, then perhaps the first seed is intention. Intention alone cannot make a work great, but it determines the direction in which the work first begins to grow.
We often repeat the familiar idea that there are as many Hamlets as there are readers. That is true. Every person interprets the world through his or her own experience, intelligence, wounds and spiritual condition. Yet at times we invoke “freedom”, “equality” or “multiple interpretations” as though they required us to flatten every moral distinction — as though, ethically speaking, a knife and a rose were simply two equally valid objects. This risks confusing the responsibility of the giver with the interpretation of the receiver. If you wound someone with a knife, the person you have injured may possess extraordinary wisdom: he may come to understand the pain as a lesson, refuse to resent you and even feel grateful for what the suffering taught him. Likewise, if you offer someone a rose, another person’s history may lead them to suspect poison beneath its fragrance. The way we interpret what happens to us does indeed depend partly upon who we are, but this does not absolve the person who acts. If an audience possesses the wisdom to transform a “knife” into a “rose”, that tells us something admirable about the audience; it does not automatically prove that the artist was right to hand them the knife. Indeed, precisely because we understand that a knife may wound, why should we choose to use it against another person if we have another choice? If we know that certain forms of expression are likely to produce fear, agitation, despair or suffering, yet casually transfer the burden of those consequences onto the audience and afterwards defend ourselves in the name of “artistic freedom”, I am not convinced that this represents a sufficiently mature artistic ethic. I sometimes wonder, therefore: late at night, when the applause, exhibitions, prizes, reviews and status have all disappeared, would we ourselves still wish to live for a long time in the presence of what we have created? Does the work leave another person’s mind more peaceful, lucid and spacious, or does it disturb the mind, leaving it more anxious, frightened or troubled?
I realise that some of what I have written here may offend admirers of celebrated artists, past and present. Yet in an age of rapidly advancing AI — an age in which almost everyone may soon possess the ability to create, publish and influence at enormous scale — I believe the question has become more urgent, not less. When the ability to create is no longer scarce, responsibility becomes more important. We should value the peace of another person’s mind as carefully as we value our own, and treat another person’s inner world with the same seriousness with which we protect our own. A world filled with rather similar roses would, in my view, still be preferable to a world enriched by one more bloodstained knife. If someone argues that the knife makes the world more vivid, provocative or interesting, perhaps sometimes that is only because he is not the person being cut. And if a work of art can allow people of different ages, sexes, races and nationalities to encounter it without first learning a private code, without being instructed that they ought to find it profound, and yet naturally come away with a greater sense of peace, joy, harmony, compassion or reverence for life, then I believe it has touched upon one of art’s most precious possibilities. It may not be the most avant-garde work; it may not be the most shocking; it may never occupy the loudest page of art history. But it contains something more enduring than technique, reputation or novelty: goodwill towards human beings — past, present and future.
Perhaps this is what I now mean by “good”. And perhaps the greatest art is not art that leaves us more fascinated by the artist, but art that makes us leave the work more willing to look upon another life with gentleness.