Good morning!
We have the bright sun on a quiet Sunday just after the Summer Solstice. This morning I went into the garden and saw that the big mallow flowers have started blooming, the morning glories are blossoming brilliantly, and the gladiolus and other flower are now blooming. Here also a lot of flowers are blooming all around us. I see that many trees are now bearing fruit: plums, peaches, apples, chestnuts. Plants are great – especially when we see trees grow so grandiose and live so long.
But the animal world, especially our human world, has big problems. Yesterday I got the news that the Fukushima No. 1 plant, No. 2 reactor, now has 880 mSv radiation in the ambient air above it. We are allowed to receive radiation under 1mSv a year. They don’t know why it is happening, as they cannot approach it. Last year the prime minister announced that the reactor was in a cool, safe shut down “state.” Now he wants nuclear reactors to restart; all reactors in Japan had been shut down as of May 5, but two reactors may restart soon.
Last Friday 45,000 protesters marched around the prime minister’s residence to repeal his decision. Nuclear power, bombs or reactors, is the most imminent explosive danger to all living beings. Yesterday I forwarded an article titled “Nuclear scientists and Engineers Embracing Nuclear Power as Religion” to our e-list. These scientists are called “nuclearists.” They are a special group, considering themselves great in creating new big power, but with a sense of sin behind their minds for mass killing and millions of years irradiation.
“Nuclearists” is actually also the name of other people pushing nuclear power for money – for matter and power, not for mind and life – believing in their value only, nothing else. Essentially, animals are nuclearists, as they have egos as their nucleus, to survive and satisfy themselves. Birds, bunnies, and squirrels are cute until they invade and infest our flowers, fruits, etc. Humans are the most advanced in their bodies – brains and hands: sciences and technologies – causing global problems and mass extinction, and possibly themselves too, together with all.
Animals cannot produce their own nutrition to nourish themselves, so they depend on plants or devour other smaller, weaker animals. Plants are self-nourishing and support themselves and even animals, working with water, wind, light, etc. When they are together, they seem to cooperate with others retaining wind, water, etc. rather than competing. In Asia, we call animals “moving beings” and plants “still beings.” Plants stay still in the ground and grow into the sky working with the sun, stars, birds, bees, water, and worms.
Trees and truth share their etymology, deru or dhri, durable and enduring, thousand, ten thousand years, and for eternity. So, we need to learn from trees, becoming truth and peace, by sitting and stopping our animal karmas. The Buddha recommended that we go back to the origin and orient our minds from the origin or source (yoniso manasi-kâra). We need to constantly go back to the origin and see truth, peace, harmony, and happiness in greater perspective and priority. That’s why we sit, stop karmas, and see the truth of dependent origination.
Yesterday I read about a new index, the Global Happiness Index, taking into consideration the experience of well-being, lifespan, and ecological footprint. The top country is Costa Rica; also the top nation in its General Happiness Index instead of GDP. It abolished military power and uses its money for education and ecology, prospering with ecotourism, etc. We need to avoid our pyramidal system and adopt a cyclical system with more local communities and ecology.
We must sit, see, and strive for the global system and global ethic of our life and mind in truth and peace. Plants are systemic, sustainable, safe, simple, and saving all (the five Ss of the Global System). Humans, however, are destroying them, their own life system. So, we must observe the global ethic to have truthful, peaceful, harmonious, and happy lives with all, tasting amrita, ambrosia of immortality. They accord with the law (of dependent origination and interdependence of all), life, love, liberation, and lielessness (five Ls of Global Ethic) here now.
6/24/12
