Good evening!
Snow covered the ground, but it’s almost gone now, with the spring sun warming, supporting sprouts shooting up and out.
In the human world, suffering snow spreads over the globe, and the globe is warming with human minds, lives sacrificed to a mass extinction.
The Buddha said that the tears we have shed amount to more than a great ocean. He also said that the world is on fire and that our sensory and mental world is on fire.
When I was taken to the place where a truck severed my mother into halves, I started crying. My mother said, “Osamu, don’t cry!” She passed away long ago, remaining only in my memory.
Now, tanks cut the mother earth and tankers cleave the mother nature. Our mothers can say nothing. They just disappear, as our life system is devastated.
How can we stop crying? Where there is birth, there is death. When there is up, there is down. Everything is impermanent and going against our desires.
The Buddha said, “Better than conquering thousands upon thousands in the battlefield is conquering one’s self. This is the true conqueror.” We can never conquer others’ selves, much less others’ souls, but only our own selves.
How can we conquer ourselves? We cultivate our body-mouth-mind systems. We must stop our karmas, i.e., the three poisons and accruing samsara suffering.
The Buddha said, “This is the come and see way. Anybody can come and see.” When we sit calm and clear, we can witness wholly wholesome peace and truth here and now, tasting amrita, immortality.
He said, “This is good in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end.” It is good for oneself and others – individual, social, and ecological systems – throughout space and time.
2/25/11