Good morning!
We now have a nice bright Sunday morning with crisp autumn air, a clear sky, the beautiful sound of flowing water and singing insects, the brilliant colors of flowers and leaves, especially pure and peaceful after still, solid sittings.
Yesterday I read a book titled No Need for Nuclear Power Plants by Hiroaki Koide. I thought he was an associate professor but, according to this book published about a month ago, he is actually an assistant at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute.
When he started his study, he believed in “atoms for peace.” But soon he found it not the right way, since he found that a nuclear power plant was going to be built in a remote area, far away from the crowded city where electricity is actually used.
Since then, for almost half a century, he studied nuclear power, serving people in equality to go against it. Now he has become famous, and people offer him money or sake. He and his colleague have promised not to live for fortune and fame. He lives in peace without those things.
Most of us live for fame and fortune. Now we see addicted dictators, with their luxuries and secret services and tunnels, that have been ousted. They want to stick to the top of pyramids. This is of course discriminating against other people, species, and generations – in short, against total truth.
So, if we see far enough, we can’t do it. That’s why the Buddha renounced his kingdom and his royal family. Holy people like Dogen, Ryokan, and Jesus warned against our clinging to fame and fortune, which create discrimination, exploitation, and extermination.
Mr. Koide advocates saving energy (to half the amount currently used, going back to the standards of a generation earlier for Japanese people). In earlier ages we had only small pyramids with smaller damage, but now the global pyramid causes global warming, mass extinction, etc.
Anyone who sees far and wide enough knows that this is catastrophic. This comes essentially from our short-sightedness and self-centeredness, i.e., delusion, and from bondage to the small self, which creates bondage, discrimination, exploitation, and extermination.
We must stop making and holding hundreds of slaves, enslaving ourselves. When we sit and still our karmas, we can reach unconditioned peace and penetrating prognosis. We can see and enjoy the ultimate truth, peace, goodness, and harmony of a wholly wholesome life.
In this way we can become awakened, truly freed, and find equality or sameness in the interconnectedness and impermanence of all phenomena. We are not living separately and independently, but only interdependently, in this whole universe in space and time.
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” The Buddha lived a beggar-like life, but confident in living on joy and tasting amrita (ambrosia/immortality).
We can’t live truthfully and peacefully with discrimination, exploitation, and destruction. Only when we see sameness, have the same compassion, share the same joy, can we live on true joy. We have been shedding an ocean of blood and tears – as the Buddha said.
The Buddha said that religion is cultivation. We must strive in sitting, stilling karmas, and changing our lifestyles, especially those at the higher levels of the pyramid. If dictators, presidents, prime ministers, intellectuals, and the rich change, there will be no bloodshed.
Then we can live on true joy, peace, goodness, truth, and amrita. Linchi said, “If you become master anywhere, everywhere becomes true.” If we sit in truth, everyone becomes master, and lives freely, peacefully, and in holiness with great, mature, and joyful minds.
Only when we change from our cores/coeurs – whole hearts and bodies – can we have a wholly wholesome life and world. Only by our cultivation can we change ourselves, through sitting, stopping our karmas, and doing samu or actual work.
The kind of mentality we work with determines our life and our world. Everybody practices and appreciate true peace and joy by settling in the universal, holy (wholly wholesome) truth and peace. Otherwise we can’t live on genuine holy truth, peace, harmony, and joy.
8/28/11
