Good morning!
We had nice rain last night. So, suddenly from hot dry weather, we feel like it is almost the rainy season with fresh, moist, and cool air coming in. In Japanit is the rainy season now. I remember when I stayed at Zuioji for ango – rain retreat – it was raining day after day and the clothes we washed didn’t dry. My travel inIndia following the Buddha’s life path was also in the rainy season. I prostrated to him atVulturePeak surrounded by thick mist. When it cleared the town at the mountain’s foot appeared with people coming up.
During my journey there, I had severe diarrhea due to drinking the water. The Buddha had severe diarrhea also at the end of his life journey, but he could survive it, barely. After this, the Buddha turned around like a great elephant, and said, “How pleasant was Vesali, the Udena’s old tree, Gotamaka’s old tree! This world is beautiful. Beautiful is life.” He discarded his home, fame and fortune, and attained awakening and unconditioned peace. Now we have the awakened way after a long night of nescience thanks to his long journey.
We usually go through ups and downs, births and deaths through six ways, and now we do so on a global scale: pollution, wars, global warming, mass extinction, etc. We – individually, as a species, and as the global life system – seem to decline and are doomed. From fear of death and demise we want to accumulate more power, matter, and money. Our civilizations for comfort and convenience are vain flowers and fruits, not sustainable, systemic, safe, simple, and saving, ever evanescent, eventually extinct like Solomon’s pomp.
Our digestive, nervous system, immune system, etc., are all for self support and survival. Professor Tomio Tada, a scholar of immunology, talked about the illness of parts and of their relation and super systems beyond the self system. Indigenous people are immune to their native water, but foreigners are not, and so become sick. Immune and other systems function depending on lifestyle. Sticking to stiff small selves creates ills of relation and super system – delusion, discrimination, exploitation, extermination, etc.
Professor Tada had a stroke at 67, becoming hopeless, unable to move, speak, or even taste. Later he found a more vigorous vast life, finding something greater than the past self after losing his conventionally healthy life. Only when we lose our small, stiff selves can we find free full function and live limitless life, light, liberation, love, and learning. We used to see sick, dying friends, family members, et al, and could see the limit of small selves, and seek greater selves or a selfless states.
Apparent misfortune can become fortune to find true life, true flower, with wholly wholesome truth, peace, goodness, and beauty. Search or success in small self satisfaction, a fake flower, leads to sickness and suicide for the wholly wholesome world. Only when we settle in the wholly wholesome way, can we have the wholly wholesome world, becoming truthful, peaceful, harmonious, and happy. Possession is possessedness. Losing limited small selves, views, and values liberates them.
Only when we understand difficult situations and the hard truth of existence, can we eventually find true flowers and fruition, not deluded by vain flowers and fruits in our mundane world. When we settle in this vast vista, we can enjoy nice, fresh, cool breezes. Otherwise we are always uneasy, unsatisfied, unsettled in true, total peace with a gust of wind blowing off the life light at any moment. No one knows whether the next moment will bring sudden darkness, with death taking over.
Most people do not understand vain flowers and fruits. This is the true cause of our problems and suffering, sticking to false peace and prosperity. Some people are awakened to true peace and prosperity as in the nuclear disaster. Some seem never to be so. When they stick to false flowers and fruits, they cannot attain a wholly wholesome, harmonious and happy life. As the majority of people become awakened to vain, false flowers, we can understand true flowers and fruition. The Buddha showed us who, when, where, and how can attain them.
6/17/12
