Good morning!
We saw the full moon early this morning. Today is the Buddha’s birthday called Flower Festival. It is the cherry blossom season in Japan. There they bathe the baby Buddha with amacha, sweet tea, in the palanquin bedecked with flowers.
What is the significance of the Buddha’s birth? The Brahma’s beseech of the Buddha to go out into the world tells it that without doing so the world would be destroyed. We have it now: global problematique with global warming, etc.
In the early stage of his mission he said to about one thousand previously fire worshipper converts, seeing the nearby fire, “The world is on fire: the eyes are on fire, the ears are on fire, the nose.., the tongue.., the bodies.., the minds are on fire.”
The reason he told in the Son’s Flesh Scripture, which tells that parents of a family lost in the desert got so thirsty and hungry killed their beloved son and ate his flesh. This means that we sacrifice the most valuable things out of our thirst and hunger.
Out of the root delusion of separate selves we have craving and anger, the triple poison, now expressed in the triple malady of me-ism, materialism, and militarism. The most urgent crises are nuclear bombs and nuclear power leading to catastrophe.
Thousands of nuclear warheads are targeting us at the hair-trigger alert. They may destroy us and the global life system any moment by miscalculation or mishaps. Fukushima 1-4 spent fuel may explode leading to the chain reactions of reactors.
Yesterday I forwarded an article “Thinking the Unthinkable on Iran” by Jonathan Schell. This article tells the ultimate disaster feared from the very beginning, that is, nuclear proliferation. The only and ultimate real solution is the nuclear free world.
Israel insists to attack Iran even without the U.S. agreement or not. Obama says to use all the means to stop Iran’s nuclear capability, if diplomacy failed. These may lead to the third World War with nuclear weapons with the resulting nuclear winter.
We can persuade Iran to stop nuclear power, because it is proved harmful from our experience of the nuclear disasters. We must truly realize the nuclear free zones in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and America to realize the actual nuclear free world.
The Buddha said to return to the source, yoniso manasikâra, making the mind from the source. Abolition of nuclear bombs and power, both inseparably intertwined, is inevitable to have truly safe and secure world with all at any time and any place.
Ken Watanabe says we need to rethink fundamentally to establish true peace avoiding nuclear power which is uncontrolled by human ability and act to share and save not only the triple tragedy victims and Japanese people, but all beings.
He advocates the Japanese traditional value of kizuna, 絆, especially shown and shared at difficult times. We are all in one tightly knit life net like Indra’s net whose crystal balls on all knots reflect each other endlessly and limitlessly.
The Buddha showed us how to live and to become happy without death, destruction, and demise of individuals, societies, and environments by stopping our old bad karmas and creating new good karmas through simple sitting by anyone.
Seventy to eighty percent of Japanese people are now against nuclear power, much more with nuclear bombs. 1% or 0.1% may remain in the old bad karmas, but 99% or 100% counting all species and generations wont and want original good karmas.
Gandhi said, “There is no way to peace: peace is the way.” The way is near – really right here and now. We can solve and dissolve our problems and sufferings, if only we remain in the original purity and prognosis before bad karmas emerge.
To celebrate our births we must witness the original limitless life, light, liberation, love and learning. The meaning of our births lies in living the unconditioned peace and unsurpassed awakening at each moment and each place together with all.
4/8/12
