One evening, after my Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki had finished his talk, a student raised his hand. "You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour," he said with some agitation, "and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?"
Suzuki waited patiently until the nervous laughter died down and then quietly said, "Everything changes."
A scientist might say, "Gold does not change, plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. Not everything changes; some things change very slowly." But Suzuki was speaking not as a scientist, but as a religious teacher. From his religious point of view, "everything changes" means that everything and everyone we love and care about, including our own precious selves, is bound to age, pass away and disappear. Because we cling to what we love, we suffer. This is the First Noble Truth, and the starting point of all Buddhist teaching.
But there is another, more positive aspect of change. In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki also says:
"'That things change' is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged. [But] when you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason you enjoy your life."
What a startling thought: that the very evanescence of things can be a cause for joy, and a way to see this ever-changing, ever-aging world as a thing of beauty. A plastic flower is superficially pleasing, but only the living flower, shedding its petals and fading away at the very peak of its blossoming, is truly beautiful. This insight is the aesthetic dimension of Buddhist teaching and also a source of its ethics. When we appreciate every person and thing as fragile and precious, we don't want to hurt them. Instead, we practice the first precept -- non-harm -- and aspire to be more careful and kind.
In this regard, I am reminded of the legend of
King Midas. According to Greek myth, Midas, granted one wish by the god Bacchus, wished that everything he touched might be turned to gold. He soon discovered, of course, that this gift was really a curse. He couldn't eat or drink; the food and water turned to gold as soon as he touched them. Even the thing he loved and cared for the most -- his own daughter -- turned to gold when he touched her. "Midas' touch" was really the touch of death. Gold has been a standard of wealth and value from ancient times to the present day, precisely because it seems never to change. But it isn't alive.
In that sense, when Suzuki said that "everything changes," he simply meant that everything is alive. Midas, like each of us, wanted wealth, security and happiness, but he was looking in the wrong place. He didn't understand that the "evanescence of things is the reason you enjoy your life." In the end, Midas gave up his power to make things unchanging and permanent. He realized that true happiness could not be found there.
I reflect on all of this as I read with fascination and horror the daily reports from the damaged nuclear reactor in Japan. Plutonium, these news stories reminds us, remains radioactive and dangerous for tens of thousands of years. It is a gift, but like Midas' touch, also a curse -- capable of poisoning our food and drink and taking the lives of those we love. I'm not sure what the Buddhist attitude might be with regard to this or any of the myriad technological miracles we have created, often with the best of intentions.
Does Buddhist teaching imply that we should go back to living in huts or caves, with none of the marvels of modern life that have made us so much more comfortable? Indeed not, we would say, but the deeper answer remains elusive. We are all in the process of working it out. I love living in a house with electricity, and I have made my living designing computer software; what's more, I would not be here at all but for modern medicine's cancer treatments, which included radiation. But one day my beloved wife will die; one day so will I. Neither gold, nor plutonium, nor any other clever invention will change that. The truth of universal change and passing away is timeless; so is the need for human beings to treat each other with kindness and respect.
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As he was hanging there, he noticed in the side of the cliff, one strawberry was growing. The strawberry was plump and red and as he plucked and ate the strawberry, the monk smiled and thought to himself, that strawberry is delicious and perfect.
That is what buddhism teaches about the beauty of impermanence and change. We are all caught precariously between hungry tigers, but the secret to life is being able to appreciate the beauty and perfectness of life in the moment; to be able to drink every last ounce out of every fleeting moment and waste no time on regrets.
I embrace that universality of change because its something we have in common with all living things which gives rise to the contradiction born out of it's vulnerability we observe of it's mortality for life is so precious meant to be preserved, but saddened by self-knowledge of it's transcendence to feel & enjoy deeply the love for such short lived moments of its beauty
Everything changes. The approach of the Vedas would be the complete opposite: Nothing changes, but everything appears to be changing. Absolute reality can not change. What is transient can not be real. Something can not be real at one time, and unreal at another point. Absolute reality is always the same. What changes is our perception of it.
From our limited view, both gold and plutonium do change. One changes faster than the other. The difference is time.
However, from an absolute viewpoint time does not exist. The idea of time is linked to the mind. It is a perception of a state-change. If there is no change and no perception of a change, there is no time. So the relation between space and objects and between time and events is simply a perception of the mind.
Namaste
"The fool tries to control the mind with the mind—what folly! The wise one delights in Self alone. There is no mind to master." (Astavakara Gita, 18.41)
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The Buddha said, “Monks, if you want to be free from suffering, you should contemplate knowing how much is enough. By knowing it, you are in the place of enjoyment and peacefulness. If you know how much is enough, you are content even when you sleep on the ground. If you don’t know it, you are discontented even when you are in heaven. You can feel poor even if you have much wealth. You may be constantly pulled by the five sense desires and pitied by those who know how much is enough. This is called “to know how much is enough.”
http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading0605.asp
Yes. If you want to become enlightened. Sorry.
And to where does happiness goes?
In the world, happiness or fulfillment occurs momentarily when a desire is satisfied in reality or mentally. It doesn’t last long. Contentment, on the other hand, is an afterglow of happiness that is more subtle and longer lasting. Both require a mind empty of further desires in order to sustain themselves.
It (happiness) results from an initial contact of a desirable object with one of the sense organs. This generates a feeling of love or attachment. This feeling of craving is then extended into thought patterns which attempt to cling to the object of affection, in other words, tries to capture it and keep it forever. Happiness is acquiring this object. Unhappiness is the fear of losing the object, or the trouble of marinating the object. The original happiness cannot be maintained for long before it turns into a psychological liability.
So happiness originally comes from an object, then a contact of that object with a sense organ, and finally an arising consciousness within that sense organ.
All of this is spelled out in detail within Theravada Buddhism.
But this thought about accepting the impermanence of being applies equally to all things that we have or want. When we have it, we soon lose interest. We lose interest in love of another, the reason for our high divorce rate perhaps. We cheat and steal. That is the human condition.
Remember the Drugs that kill people and the Snake Oil salesman?
Nothing wrong with working in balance with mother nature. The Atomic Bomb and Atomic Energy have been follies that man rushed into.
It was a long time ago these technologies should have stopped and pondered if they had value in mand future. There is no rush now. Taking a breath and not moving foward until man can solve the waste problems is not going to destroy Nuclear Power if it make sense.
The key is does it make sense. Will it aid man and nature as we go foward.
For Chirst sake if it does not, can we please stop it now. And just maybe you should think about over population before you over populate. The world had control of this once. I guess the thought of selling endless Coca Cola is just technology that cannot be retired, yet.
Human beings are uniquely able to rationally deconstruct physical reality and turn it to our own purposes. What we usually forget is that rationality hasn't changed our purposes. Radiation treatment may have saved your life, and nuclear generators may produce cheap electricity, but nuclear bombs also flattened two Japanese cities and everyone in them. Technology is a tool and nothing else. It has no positive normative value although we like to think so, living in our ascendant western country with one of the most far-reaching standing armies the world has ever known. No need to pine for simpler times. We are who we are and Buddhism doesn't seem to be changing it any more than any other pattern of neurons firing in our heads.
You are right man will do what he damn please. An Buddhist will go on accepting the world as it is. But surely don't say they cannot see it for what it is. WE ALL CANNOT BE BLIND, ALL OF THE TIME
They do NOT "accept" suffering - but they RECOGNIZE the unstable and precarious nature in all existence.
The Buddhist central teaching of Four Noble Truths started with stating the problem of existence, i.e. suffering due to the insecure nature of existence which is prone to upset and grief. (Think earthquake and tsunami) But it did not stop there. It explains how to get rid of the problem.
Buddhist teaching is not easy for most people to understand and accept. It's central theme is called the Noble Truths, and as the famous movie line says: You Can't Handle The Truth.
This "Godless religion" that stress development of wisdom and refuted the idea of a Creator God was wiped out in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan where it was a dominant belief for a while. It was displaced by the Muslims, Hindus and other believers of god(s) and deities. Its demise in this part of the world is perfectly understandable.
I get that Plutonium is a curse, yes indeed but how exactly is it a gift? Essentially what it does is provide us with a way to boil water. When you factor in all the environmental and human costs associated with nuclear power it is the most expensive power source in use today. In no way is it really commercially viable. That's why there has never been a truely free market nuclear power plant. Every such plant has to be insured by the government because no free market insurer would take the risk.
France is really no better. Ask the Russian who get their waste.
Yet we do know the horse and buggy was self sufficient and renewable. Not sure if we have a valid replacement. But then the Rothschilde would sell there NYC rentals and buy all the grass and it would not work either.
Have you seen the big money in Wind Farms, British Common Wealth owns many in the USA. All paid for by the workers for CASH which is now buying our Power Companies.
I told my brother Bin Laden maybe the next Christ. If not for his lack of Non-Violence. But what do you expect from a Bourne Supremcy from the CIA
Also ask the people of Africa. That is one reason for the Somali pirates some of them are fishermen who lost their livelihood due to mass contamination from Europe.
"Yet we do know the horse and buggy was self sufficient and renewable. Not sure if we have a valid replacement."
I don't believe we need to go back to the horse and buggy. When you look at technologies such as Wind and Solar they are practical now. The problem is, and this is amazing when you think of it, that not only is our government doing very little to support wind and solar we still are putting a ton of tax money into propping up nuclear and fossil fuels. The oil companies show record profits and yet they still get tax breaks for drilling oil and they pay a pittance to US tax payers for the right to drill on federal land.
I have to disagree with the Bin Laden as Christ though. Even if you forget about the violence (which is pretty hard to do) Bin Laden's core philosophy is one of an intolerant male hierarchy that tells everyone else what to do. Now, I realize there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians that have that same mind set but to me its not what Jesus was all about.
Actually, what he was describing is a pretty good description of one of the fundamental laws of physics: the law of entropy. Things inevitably moved from low entropy (ordered) to high entropy (disorder).
There is no Death only Change -Yogananda
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter just changes from one form to another. Why we live for the spiritual world of eternity and not the material world of death to the flesh
It seems that even our best efforts at anticipating the ravages of change are never quite good enough.
Like rebuilding house in a flood plane, tornado alley, huricane path or doing what the NRC did on 1/10/2011 and decide to keep all Nuke Rods in every USA plant for a 120 years.
When they are sitting in a 10 year planned water pool for 30 years. Now there is no science to remove the Hot Water or keep the rods cool when the water is remove (remember Japan, now). Let alone ship it safely.
Remember Home Land Security to protect us from 2 occupied countries where we have since killed their children for a few bad guys that wanted self determination
It is really hard for me to understand how gullable the American consumer is. How many bad cars do they have to buy from very bad car salesman before they WISE UP
To do risk assessment, you need to make reasonable assumptions about exactly what kind of risk you expect. You need to basically guess at its magnitude and duration and then the catastrophes that are sure to follow. There is no question that the planners of the Nuke plants did a very dumb thing in locating auxiliary power generators in the basements, below sea level! They seemed to have forgotten Murphy's law, which every engineer in the US gets in his/her freshman year.
There is probably no question that costs played a major role in determining the risks. Building for a mag 8.5 and building for a mag 9 quake is a whole lot of money. We here in the Seattle area now know that if the Cascadia fault rips, then we had better plan for a mag 9 quake, we do have geological records of quakes that large.
Heres an example of workplace risk assessment.
Why as the owner operator of a factory forging extruded aluminum tubing & channel iron spend a 2.5 million dollars to adopt an input/output mfg. process change to save lives in my plant when in Red state pro business climate like Arkansas has as it's maximum payout liability requirement for a Workman's Comp workplace fatality is $40,000 to the beneficiary?
You wouldn't & they don't.
Risk is a business decision. Always has, and it's pandemic to every industry.
Except in Japans case its far worse, as it's become actually, a potential crime against humanity.
Having retired from the field of Fire Protection/Paramedical Services/Nuclear HAZMAT Emergency Response Preparedness & Training it is routine to do what is called; a Pre-Attack Plan(Assessment) & commensurate Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for which you drill-critique, drill-critique, drill-critique & hold joint mutual aid multi-agency what's called live event type drill exercises.
These exercises are manipulated in such a way to recreate to the extent possible an actual live-event simulation as if its really happening down to every minute detail, & for those thongs you can't do safely which would be real, are simulated for which it is critiqued, modified for doing it better next time and done again until you are as prepared as possible leaving no future planning & formal adoption leaving no stone unturned in accounting for every conceivable outcome & one's you have not thought of.
You account for every possible contingency, even for those you have not thought of because those of us who come from being 1st responders within the Fire Protection know full well that means we feel Murphy was an optimist.
There were Nuclear Safety Engineers I worked with at INEL asked me all the time when they were always updating their Security Safety Plans, "what possible emergencies could ever befall a nuke facility"?
I remember one time being asked by one Safety Engineer I shared an office with, what the risk was for a 747 crashing into a research reactor site and what the damage assessment would be in property, casualties & rad exposure.
It seems clear from what I see here and it's a culture of safety I encountered before I retired in a former life before moving on into Education as Performance Improvement is pre-planning & having a set of SOP's in place to minimize further risk & potential harm.
What I see is throwing what they think of up against the wall and seeing if it sticks using what working knowledge they have versus a laid down set of procedures to follow specifically designed to mitigate whatever emergency arises.
All-one is fun.