Good morning!
This is the first day of spring or the spring equinox, which we call Higan, Yonder Shore, meaning nirvana, because it is equal in day and night, chill and heat. We say heat and chill up until the equinox. However, we had snowfall, making the world white. It covers everything in one simple color, looking beautiful, but if it continues, the abundant beauty of the multicolored life world becomes frozen and forlorn.
Uchiyama Roshi in his Nurturing Together tells about the danger of modern education, reflecting society in competition for economic growth, resulting in doom. He sees modern people divided into four groups: a group believing in cooperation, that is marginalized; another believing in competition, in stresses; another working neither in cooperation nor competition, in neurosis; and the last speaking of cooperation, but engaging in competition, in prosperity.
The Buddha said:
Enmity is never appeased by enmity here,
But by non-enmity. This is the truth forever.
The Dhammapada, 5
Better than the one conquering thousands upon thousands in wars Is the one conquering oneself. He is the greatest of war conquerors.
The Dhammapada, 103
Gotama was awakened to the truth (Dharma) of dependent co-origination, that is, all phenomena (dharmas) are dependently co-originated on causes and conditions. This means that all are interdependently intertwined in creation and destruction, cooperation and competition, like the Indra-net whose crystal balls reflect all others infinitely and endlessly in space and time. One can’t be selfish, separated, and short-sighted.
3/20/16
