Good morning!
We had a small shower last evening after the long, severe heat wave. So, our plants have enjoyed a brief moment of shower – life water and cool air. We can now enjoy the sound of falling water and the cool morning breeze.
When we cultivate the ground and water, we can see more seeds sprouting, flowers blooming, and fruits flourishing. If we are too busy to take care of them, we cannot see these things, and even lose them.
While I was busy with my trip to Japan and our events here, I couldn’t take care of our vegetable gardens. I watered the vegetable gardens, but I didn’t really look to the corner of the yard. Yesterday I found a blueberry tree dried up. I put it into water, but I don’t know if it will survive.
It is too late to cry over spilt milk. If we have radiation contamination, we cannot go back home and cannot be safe anywhere. Even if Fukushima Prefecture has announced its policy to abolish nuclear power, some residents may not ever be able to return home.
Professor Koide started studying nuclear power when the world thought nuclear power was a dream energy. When he found that nuclear plants have to be built far away from the actual energy users, he sensed that something was wrong. Since then, he has been against it – for almost half a century now.
A radio interviewer asked if it was good to have had the accident, as a caution to people. He said, “No, it would have been better not to have the disaster.” People still don’t see far into the future, but he knows that it had a devastating effect not only in that island, but across the world.
He is determined to work for reducing energy use – Japanese people at least to one third of their current usage, which is still a lot more than necessary. Emory Robins has said that we use twenty times more than is needed, as if one person uses 50 slaves. Americans use 250 times more energy than Tunisians.
We are not living according to truth, equality, and peace. We are bound by our selves or karma. So, we always live in doubt and fear. That’s why we have a military-industrial-political complex: to keep this selfish interest, causing big deficits and other problems as well.
Unless we settle in truth, equality, and peace together with other people, species, and generations, we are not systemic, sustainable, safe, or simple enough for the wholly wholesome system, much less are we saving all beings.
Dogen said,
To learn the awakened way is to learn the self. To learn the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all dharmas (forms/norms). To be verified by all dharmas is to drop off the bodies and minds of the self and others. The trace of awakening is at rest and extinct. Traceless awakening is furthered on and on.
Only if we go back to the truth of this universal life system can we be equal and peaceful. Because of our delusion of self, we have bondage, discrimination, exploitation, and extermination. Only when we are awakened can we be in equality, love, and peace.
Only when we settle in the dharma can we become free, fearless, and in full function of limitless life, light, liberation, and love, with the mountain, river, great-earth mind. Until then we must live with problems and sufferings, not with wholly wholesome happiness.
Unless we have prognosis, we have sufferings. Unless we act accordingly, we are like the dead. Only when we cultivate, can we witness more beautiful flowers and fruits. Only by acting within the wholly wholesome system can we be freed, fearless, and find genuine joy and happiness.
7/31/11
