Good morning!
We have a quiet, clear Sunday with bright colorful fall foliage. After a few sittings we now have pure peace, holy harmony, and total truth.
In this peaceful state, like clear crystal, we see the world with its disasters and problems – a big earthquake in Turkey claiming the lives of several hundred people, an unusual period of flooding in Thailand claiming a few hundred lives and a couple million refugees, the nuclear disaster in Japan with more than a hundred thousand evacuees, heavy snow on the East Coast piling up 40 centimeters high.
All over the world we have turmoil, with Occupy movements in squares, streets, parks, banks, and blogs. This may be the movement to change the world. Our world is in crisis, bound to catastrophes: ecological, economic, social, and cultural. We have been witnessing the meltdown of our economic and social surroundings and our nuclear systems.
A New York Times article yesterday, titled “America’s Exploding Pipe Dream,” reported on the results of a study that showed the U.S.A. as ranking 27th among 31 OECD countries on social justice. Another report listed 100 reasons for this country’s collapse, including the disparity between billionaires and those who are homeless, jobless, and hopeless. This epitomizes the whole structure of our modern civilization.
The modern artificial pyramidal power system sends money, matter, and power in one-direction: to the top. The natural system, on the other hand, is closely intertwined in cycles and circulation. In the natural system we can regain our life and return to our homes, but in the artificial system we cannot regain our life or return to our homes, jobs, foods, and roots.
An editorial in today’s New York Times claimed that we have cut the bloated nuclear budget. Our military system is not only wasteful, but also harmful. Our self-centeredness is the culprit of all problems and sufferings in our world. We should use our monetary, material, and human resources for life and living, not for death and devastation.
Nuclear bombs and plants are the most artificial and annihilating of human productions. I hope you will read an article I forwarded on the criminality of nukes. Any mishap, mismanagement, or malice with nuclear warheads targeting major cities or nuclear plants can devastate and destroy the global life system. Selfishness – shortsightedness – has ignored nuclear wastes, etc.
We have been deluded and deceived by such systems for so long – too long. People are now disillusioned and are awakening to the old ominous system. In essence, egoism is ready to explode and exterminate all others. We must become buddhas, awakened ones, to these problems and live wakefully on holy harmony and joy in the natural system.
The Buddha said it is better for us to live one day seeing birth and death, immortality, and the highest dharma rather than living one hundred years not seeing them. We can turn on the switch and tune in to the wave of true peace, beauty, holiness, happiness. The switch is waiting to stop our old, bad karma and to begin the system shift to a new limitless life.
Our practice is crucial to achieve this process in a wholly wholesome way, with truth and peace, without vanity and violence. Speaking of old bad things is not out of pessimism, but optimism in our potential and possibility for the new good world of awakened ones and wakeful living with all, always, in limitless friendship, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
10/30/11
