Good morning!
Trees are among the most remarkable beings on Earth: they grow the tallest, live the longest, and embody truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness. They live in harmony with all things in nature and provide life-essential gifts such as oxygen to nearly all living beings. Even after death, their heartwood can be nearly twice as hard as iron, supporting their towering height, while the sapwood functions as a conduit for water. Trees live peacefully, in symbiosis with both life and death, nourished by their own autotrophic nature. Because of this harmonious life, the lifespan of their cells endure far longer than those of other living beings.
Interestingly, the words “tree” and “true” share the same linguistic root (endure), and perhaps etymologically linked to “Dharma” (from the root √dhṛ, “to hold, support”).
The Buddha revealed the most fundamental and universal truth: the Dharma of Dependent Co-origination (pratītya-samutpāda), which explains how all things originate depending on limitless causes and conditions.
He clarified essential truths such as:
- The Four Holy Truths and the Four/Eight Sufferings
- The law of karma with the three poisons (desire, divisiveness, delusion)
- Delusion, samsara, and the twelve-limbed Dependent Co-origination
- The Triple Cultivation (ethics, samadhi, prognosis)
- The realities of nirvana, awakening, the Five Precepts, Holy Eightfold Path, the Eight Zen-Samadhis, the Ten Good Actions
Through these teachings, he showed how to live a life of harmony, holiness, peace, equality, freedom, friendship, compassion, purity, and joy, for the benefit of all as friends together (友・共).
By realizing nirvana—freedom from karma and death—he attained the Dharma body, the deathless state, and peacefully lived in harmony with death (of karma), as a forerunner of the Spiritual Revolution through the culture (cultivation) values of truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness.
Humans with the brain and hands, have come to manipulate symbols and tools, surviving and gaining dominance through communication and cooperation.
They achieved a Production Revolution through agriculture and a Social Revolution through city-states, forming nation-states and advancing civilization (= urbanization).
However, civilization is now driving us toward the destruction of the Earth’s life system through its cancer: war.
A paradigm shift from money, matter, and might to life, heart, and harmony depends on whether we awaken to the truth that this is “rust from our own body” and choose to live the life and way of the buddha (awakened).
The Buddha said:
“To be born as a human is as rare as a blind turtle living at the bottom of the ocean surfacing once in a hundred years and putting its head in a hole in a driftwood. But to encounter the path of awakening is even rarer.”
Having received such a rare and precious life, and even more, having encountered the Dharma, we must now awaken from the long night of nescience (no witness of nirvana) and open our eyes to the truth of the Dharma.
Let us cultivate and share truth, goodness, beauty/beatitude, and holiness, and together with all beings, apprreciate peace, equality, freedom, autonomy, friendship, compassion, joy, and liberation!
Thank you very much! 🙏
おはようございます!
木は最も大きく、高く、長く生きて、真善美聖を持って森羅万象と調和し、殆どの生物の命に不可欠の酸素などを与えるなど優れた生物です。それは死んだ心材は鉄の二倍近くの硬さをもつものもあり高さを支え、辺材は導管として水を運び、死とも共生し、自家栄養と共に平和な生命のお陰で細胞の機能・寿命は長く続きます。木（tree）と真理（true）は同語根で、法（dharma, 語根：dhṝ：保持・維持する）とも共通と思います。
ブッダは最も根本的・普遍的法則である縁起（因縁生起）の法を明かにし、四苦八苦、業、三毒、無明、輪廻、三学、涅槃、覚醒、四聖諦、五戒、八聖道、八禅定、十善業、十二支縁起等を明らかにして、自他トモ（共・友）に一生を清浄・調和・平和・平等・自由・慈悲・浄道・聖道・歓喜の生活をし、業の死で涅槃・法身・不死を得て、いわば死と共生して平和裡に、真善美聖の価値をもって精神革命の先駆者となりました。
人間は脳と手によって象徴と道具を操り、コミュニケーションとコーオペレーションで生き延び覇権を得ました。農業による生産革命、都市国家による社会革命を成し国民国家に至り文明を発展させたが、文明（都市化）の癌である戦争によって地球生命系の破滅に向かっています。金・物・力から命・心・和への枠組転換は「身から出た錆」に目覚めてブッダ（覚者）の生活・生命を生きるか否かにかかっています。
「人間として生を受けることは、海底に住む盲亀が百年に一度洋上に浮上し首を浮木の穴に入れる程に稀なことである。しかし、覚道に遭うことは更に稀なことである。」とブッダは言いました。盲亀浮木の喩えの通り稀有な生を受けて、更に稀有な覚道に遭遇した者として、業の無明長夜から目を覚まして、法界の真善美聖を長養・共有し、一切と共に平和・平等・自由・自治・友情・慈愛・喜悦・捨離を享受しましょう！
有難うございます！
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