as a diamond grinds

 

The evil a witless man does by himself,

born of himself

and produced by himself,

grinds him as a diamond grinds a hard gem.

~ Dhammapada 161 ~

Rules - Who Needs Them!

Recently in a discussion, the subject of rules came up. Why do we need them?

While they may seem restrictive, rules help to restrain chaos. When in Malaysia, I had spoken about driving in the United States in one of my talks. Later, an audience member came up to me and said that when he and his wife had visited the US, they had been amazed by American's behavior at four-way stop intersections. Out in the middle of open country, with no one other car in sight, people stopped at the stop sign! They then proceeded on their way. The speaker said in Malaysia, the situation would have been very different. 

Rules enable us to know what to do. Following them, we are able to relax, confident that we have done what is deemed correct. 

Imagine visiting a country where you had never been and not knowing the local customs. You'd be worrying all the time if you were doing the right thing or if you were offending others. If you knew the rules for how to behave, you could relax and enjoy the new sights.

Rules can be liberating since we do not have to spend time puzzling over what to do or worrying that we might have done something inappropriate.

She Who Hears the Cries of the World

A very long time ago, Avalokitesvara, Guanyin in Chinese, vowed that if she ever became disheartened in saving sentient beings, may her body shatter into a thousand pieces. Once, after liberating countless beings from the hell realms by teaching them the Dharma, she looked back down into the hell realms. To her horror, she saw that the hell realms were quickly filling up again!

In a fleeting moment of despair, she felt profound grief. And in that moment, in accordance with her vow, her body shattered into a thousand pieces. She beseeched the Buddhas to help and many did. Like a fall of snowflakes they came. One of those Buddhas was Amitabha. He and the other Buddhas helped to re-form her body into one that had a thousand arms and hands, with an eye of wisdom in each hand. In this way, she could better help all sentient beings.

Guanyin Bodhisattva is also known as "She Who Hears the Cries of the World."

Right now, our world is crying for help. She is listening.

Are we?

Either Way—It's Us

 

Everything is manifested by the mind and altered by the consciousness. In other words, with our thoughts we create the world.

As Buddhists, we learn that our thoughts of craving and greed result in floods. Angry thoughts result in fires, and ignorant thoughts are the cause of disasters involving wind.

Causality: every cause will have a result. As we continuously crave more material goods and experiences, the results will likewise intensify. As we become more frustrated and upset by our failure to gain all these objects and experiences that we want, we become more angry.

Look around. What are you seeing more and more? Recording-breaking floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, drought.  

The other way?

It's another way of seeing the causality. The more electronic gadgets and more exotic goods we want, and the more we travel looking for new experiences, the more we're impacting the environment.

Negatively.

We buy more "stuff." This "stuff" comes from nonrenewable resources, which are being rapidly depleted. Producing "stuff" creates toxic waste that seeps into the earth, works it's way into our rivers and oceans, and is spewed into our air. The exotic foods have to be shipped halfway around the world on ships, planes, and trucks that belch toxic fumes and pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Non-Buddhist cause and effect. The more we buy, the more we destroy what is natural and in it's place leave our garbage and waste.

Thanks to our greed, we're destroying our world. We. Together. All of us. With our greed, whether you look at greed from the Buddhist perspective or from the scientific facts.

Either way you look at it.

It's us. 

Freeing Ourselves from This Prison

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein