Good morning!
As we get up early and come here, we can enjoy beautiful flowers, bright candlelight, fragrant incense, a beautiful bell sound, and the beautiful singing of birds, flowers, abundant green.
If we don’t follow this way, we cannot appreciate all of these, but rather experience a lot of problems and sufferings, like the on-going nuclear disaster.
The enormous tsunami caused by the record earthquake in Japan shut down several nuclear reactors. For two months nobody knew that the nuclear fuel was exposed to air and in the process of melting down.
Thus, water added to the reactors for cooling was allowed to leak from the reactors, flooding the ruined buildings with contaminated water that poured into seas, sky, and earth, all around the world.
This has caused a sea of tears now and into the future. Even now, people don’t understand where all these problems came from, and they don’t act for the real solutions.
“Mental orientation from the source” (yoniso manasikâra) is critical and essential. What is the source of all problems and sufferings? It is the mind. That’s why the Buddha said:
“I have never seen a single dharma so uncultivated and unfit for cultivation as the mind.”
and also,
“I have never seen a single dharma so cultivated and fit for cultivation as the mind.”
If we cultivate our minds, we can enjoy the sea-seal samadhi, and taste nirvana and amrita, ambrosia of immortality. If we don’t, we must taste samsara-seal suffering.
It all depends on each and every one’s practice – cultivation and verification here and now.
5/20/11
