Good morning!
After some cloudy days, we can now see an almost half-full moon in the mid-sky. We
couldn’t see how big and bright the moon was, but in the east we could see the beautiful
morning star.
On the earth now, we have a lot of turmoil going on: global warming, economic
meltdowns, mass extinctions, and revolutions – the toppling of dictatorships after thirty
years or forty years in power; military men quitting, diplomats disavowing. Thirty or
forty years are long in the human scale, but very short in the planetary one.
After a few hundred years, the slavery system couldn’t last. Lincoln said that he didn’t
want to own slaves, because he didn’t want to be a slave. If everybody thinks so, we
won’t have the slavery system.
If everyone thinks and lives as the Buddha did, we’d have no kingdoms, no pyramidal
system.
Beyond the apparent shifting phases of the moon is the round perfect moon always. The
morning star and evening star, Venus, is much bigger than the moon.
If we observe the truth long enough, we can see the truth of the impermanence of all
things in our world.
Ryokan made a poem:
See and know this:
What is permanent?
Earlier or later,
No flowers remain.
The Buddha said, “The world is on fire. Eyes…, ears…, nose…, tongue…, body…, and
the mind are on fire.” At about the time of the Buddha, in the Indian (Sindhu, Hindu,
Indus: source of civilization) tradition, we hear that only truth wins.
The Buddha also said, about the truth, “Better than conquering thousands upon thousands
in the battlefield is conquering one’s self. This is the true conqueror.”
2/23/11