Good morning!
We have a nice, quiet, peaceful Sunday morning. With three sittings now, we have a little longer day since the time of the winter solstice. Tonight we can see the full moon. We can also see the beautiful flowers on the altar and on the radiators. Kant saw the starry heaven and the moral law with awe and admiration. But it seems that humans have lost the law and are now causing great problems against the total global life system: global warming, mass extinction, wars, poverty. The sixth mass extinction especially is unprecedented in quantity and quality, like irreparable nuclear radiation damage.
Humans kill, steal, lie, and discriminate among genders, generations, and genera. That’s why we sit in zazen. When we sit, we stop our karmas – physical, verbal, and mental – and clear our minds and bodies. So, we can see truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness. Unless we sit, we are driven by karmas like rats or hamsters running in a tread wheel. Only when we sit solid and serene, and stop our karmas, can we partake of truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness, rather than pursuing money, matter, and power, caught in them.
This sitting is not seeking something miraculous or mystic. With this sitting we see the human and natural world clearly, prognosticate what to do, and actually work. It is not just sitting in forests or a jungle. We must see the truth and work for peace for all beings, not for humans alone, and much less for individual relaxation or pleasure. A popular song says, “Have the sun in your heart, have songs on your lips.” Maybe we can have flowers in hour hands and settle in the wide world – the dharma, truth, world – like old trees living thousands of years in truth and harmony with all, benefiting all.
By the way, it is said, “In the beginning was logos.” Logos is not human word, but universal law, penetrating through the whole universe. This law we must see and live, not estranged and enslaved by money and matter, fame and fortune. Only in this can we become liberated and find limitless life like the ocean, rather than bubbles. Then we can live limitless light and liberation. Thus we can live with limitless life and love. But we need limitless learning, because we are all karma machines, driven by karmas.
So, we need to stop our karmas and see the truth clearly, with our eyes horizontal and nose vertical, that days, months, seasons go around, the moon waxing and waning. That’s why we have our triple pillar here: the awakened way, global ethic, and voluntary simplicity. If we are awakened, we must practice a global ethic: essentially, no killing, no stealing, no lying, and equal partnership among all. I don’t forward all the interesting news to our elist, but some I post at www.limitlesslife.wordpress.org. Yesterday, I posted a few articles on the global system, one of them on cyclones causing earthquakes a few years after the event.
This is the 100th anniversary of Wegener’s theory of continental drift. It is not just continents drifting, but whole plates evolving, with the whole globe in one well-knit unit. Ocean currents move around the whole world in a few thousand years. We don’t see far and wide enough, thus becoming self centered and acting selfishly. That’s why we must sit and see to our cores and all corners. Otherwise we are doomed to destruction. The Buddha said, “The world is on fire…the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind are on fire.” Global warming is caused by our fires.
The Buddha also talked about parents, lost in desert, eating their son’s flesh out of hunger and thirst. This is what we do – we eat the future generations of all species. The Buddha knew what would happen if we are driven by karmas: the destruction of the world. That’s why he spent no single day for his personal gain, but lived for all beings always with all, having no home, no food, and no clothes of his own. He had only three pieces of cloth and one begging bowl, constantly moving to share all with all. He lived on joy, without fear for death, losing, and parting, always as Tatha-gata, Thus-being or being in truth.
All are capable of this, if only we learn to sit solid and serene, stop our karmas, see truth, goodness, beauty, holiness, serve others, and save all beings and things. Then we can stay in truth and peace, satisfying ourselves and others in harmony and happiness. All are always in holy (wholly wholesome) truth and peace, harmony and happiness, unless we start driving our karmas, which in turn drive those who engage in them. All can go beyond karma kinetics – samsara suffering.
1/8/12
