Good morning!
After a long spell of rain and storms, tornados, we have a very fine, peaceful Sunday morning. We are now having a very bright and beautiful world, especially after our silent, serene sittings.
Last night I watched a special TV program titled “Gigantic Earthquake,” about the M-9 earthquake that took place in Japan on March 11, claiming almost 30,000 people’s lives and still threatening: thousands of aftershocks; the threat of continuing nuclear disaster; evacuations; and the suffering of people, displaced by the tsunami, in shelters.
The program showed some unusual episodes – someone escaping from the broken window of a sinking car and climbing onto a building; a man jumping out of a car in the receding tsunami to a bridge, the last resort, helped by someone who had also found safety there; a woman climbing onto a roof, pulling up her mother who vomited swallowed water and resumed breathing; a man breaking a closed highway gate and thus escaped the pursuing tsunami.
The subtitle of this program was “How to protect life.” A woman among them said that men and machines may not save us. Each of us must prepare for disasters and help each other. Even though we may not meet such disasters, no one is saved from death. So, we must find out how we can live on joy, rather than suffering.
We have this kind of beautiful world, but also a very ugly world with natural disasters and artificial human-made ones. These worlds are manifesting into beautiful or ugly forms by the same natural or human powers, dynamics. All forms or phenomena of nature, plants, animals, and humans depend on karma, creation, action, or habit.
These forms and formations depend on the dynamics of 40 billion years after life started, or 150 billion years after this universe started. We see beautiful flowers, trees, stars, and the sky. Tree and true came from the same root, deru or dhrî (root of dharma, form/norm), enduring, because trees survive hundreds, thousands of years – truth also.
Humans evolved into these bodies and brains, and thus we have more faculties than trees. This makes us more individualized, particularized. We must face and fear decay and death. Trees, without brains, do not fear death, but we with conceptions and emotions fear decay, death, disaster, and devastation. Humans are actually causing devastations – pollution, etc.
That’s why we must sit and stop human karmas to see truth, and live according to truth. If we continue our karmic, separated, selfish, shortsighted lives, we will destroy our own future and our own species. Not only for those future things, but right here and now we have problems and sufferings. So we want to solve them.
We want to live in peace, harmony, and joy. When the Buddha did not get food in his begging bowl, the devil whispered into his ear to go back. The Buddha said, “No. I live on joy.” What kind of joy, do you think, is there without food, clothes, dwelling, family, company, and country? It’s difficult to have joy without food, etc. Why and how could he live on joy?
He could stop human, animal habits and be awakened or enlightened to dharma, form or norm, phenomena and law operating through them. He could be delighted in this dharma. He found joy in dharma beyond the apparent forms of vicissitude, that of universal eternal truth without discrimination of decay, death, disaster, and devastation.
Anyone can experience this in sitting and stopping karma, like the Buddha, so to speak, going back to the limitless ocean from the limited bubble state, from an individualized, limited state to universal, limitless dharma – truth, peace, beauty, goodness. It is good for oneself and others, in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end.
Religion means reunion with the holy, wholesome whole, from karma life to dharma life, where we find absolute, unconditioned peace and harmony. But this is not known unless we are awakened from dreams and delusion – unless we cultivate and verify it. We can cultivate, verify this dharma, live on joy in this dharma, and share it with all.
We can give the joy of dharma – truth, peace, harmony, holiness. It all depends on our aspiration, determination, practice, and living. We can live a peaceful, beautiful, holy, happy life by practicing the awakened way, or we may live in suffering with disasters. It is nice to live on joy, giving joy in truth, peace, and harmony to everyone.
With this sitting and practice in our actions we can beautify the world in peace and truth, not only for humans, animals, but for butterflies, bees, plants, and the earth. Actually, they have been giving us life in beauty and bounty. Humans only exploit them. Why can’t we give back the grace of all beings, which has made our life possible here and now?
5/8/11
