Good evening!
We had a nice warm winter day today with the temperature going up to 61 degrees. When I saw snow recently, I imagined radiation falling like snow, covering everything.
This evening I watched an NHK special on unreliable radiation limits, which reported on nuclear radiation problems in the suburbs of Chicago, with three nuclear plants nearby.
There were graves of one hundred young children who died of cancer. A girl developed a brain tumor four years after moving there. Ex-nuclear plant workers are suffering from cancer.
The International Committee on Radiation Prevention admitted that they had no factual basis for their permissible limits on radiation levels. They relaxed the limits even against evidence.
Now we have many problems, like economic and ecological meltdowns and mass extinction. Unless we change our lifestyles, we are doomed to devastation and destruction.
Zazen is to stop our karma. We take showers for our bodies, but not for our minds and hearts. The Buddhist tradition teaches the washing (dhuta) way of life, with strict simplicity.
Dhuta practitioners live with a minimum of clothing, eating, and dwelling – three pieces of discarded, patched cloth, one begged meal a day, sitting under trees, etc.
And still – or rather because of it – they can live limitless life, light, liberation, tasting amrita, ambrosia of immortality, causing no problems for anyone, anytime.
The more we have, the more we fight, and the more we pollute. So, we must wash our bodies and minds to realize holy harmony and happiness with and for all, always.
12/29/11
Note:
Twelvefold dhuta (zuda: 頭陀) is:
Clothing: decayed robe (material/color) consisting of three pieces of cloth
Eating: one dish, of a meal a day, by alms round, no more prepared
Dwelling: sitting in an empty, quiet place, a graveyard, under a tree, etc., not lying down
