Good evening!
After a long spell of heat wave, we had a small shower. So, all plants and animals felt a brief relief. I watered our garden and found some small plants (salvaged from garbage) withered. Big trees are rooted deep in the ground, however, so they can survive hundreds, thousands of years.
In the same way, when we sit in zazen, we are deeply rooted in the dharma world – truth and peace of all, like trees. We become one with the great earth, space, the whole world in holy (wholly wholesome) harmony.
There is a story of pumpkins quarrelling in the backyard of a temple. So, a monk there taught them how to sit in zazen. Soon they became quiet. The monk then told them to feel their heads. They found that they were all connected and rooted in the ground.
Today, the people of Hiroshima are observing the 66th anniversary of the atomic bomb disaster. We still have more than 20,000 nuclear warheads. We have millions of tons of death ash accumulating, and some spreading. The whole world can be devastated by disasters or mishaps at any time.
Why we are like quarrelling pumpkins? Actually, pumpkins do not quarrel. Only humans quarrel and quit truth, peace, and holy harmony. Because we don’t sit down and stop karmas, we are not rooted in the dharma, and we see only short and small.
Thus we go through brief, bubbling birth and death. Only when we stop karma and go back to the ocean state can we solve our human problems and sufferings – global warming, nuclear disaster, mass extinction.
8/5/11
