Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Why some animals are more equal than others- Episode III


When we fall

When we fall on the ground it hurts us, but we also need to rely on the ground to get back up.
-Kathleen McDonald.

James: This reminds me of something Thich Nhat Hanh has said, that we need manure to grow roses. It's a great reminder that our problems, struggles and suffering all have benefits if we look close enough. It sure is difficult to be aware of that when you feel depressed and isolated in a hole of pain but the truth remains.

Also, I wanted to just say Happy Vesak day!! I don't have anything enlightening to say about it except to say that for me it is really poignant this year given the situation in Burma, Tibet, China in the aftermath of the earthquake, Iraq and many other places around the world in turmoil. It seems that now more than ever the world needs the Buddha's message of peace, compassion, loving-kindness and oneness.

~Peace to all beings~

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Recycling is the essential concept in Buddhism

Burmakin: Your majesty, I am rather suspicious that you are the creator behind this Burmese Tsunami.

King of Angels: My son. Why are you accusing me as the culprit of the cyclone? There are five main universal principles that happen naturally in the universe. Karma, Mind, Weather, Genome and Dhamma.

If there is a cause, there will be an effect. Nothing is coming and nothing is going. Only cause and effect are there.

Burmakin: Your majesty, in one of the Buddhists’ traditional stories, a white-robe monk got into somebody’s corn field. He plucked the maize and opened up the husks. However there were no corn fruits inside. He was very hungry. Lacking of any food to eat, he became very angry and cursed the benign god of the corn plants, “Damn this useless spirit who guards the corns. He even couldn’t make his crops grow well into grains.”

Related post: Burmese junta “Descending Star”
http://paraussies.blogspot.com/2008/05/burmese-junta-descending-star.html

King of Angels: Yes, this complaint also arrived at my court in the heaven. I know this case very well. Being afraid of my punishment for not taking his responsibility, the benign god of the corn plants blamed the guardian spirit of the soil for not making the soil well-fertilized. Without fertilized soil, he couldn’t nurture the plants into well-grained fruits. So I asked the soil guardian, who later became the main helper of Buddha in driving out the Saturn. The soil guardian said that there was no rain and without rain, his dry ground couldn’t be a fertilized soil. So I called the rain guardian spirit and asked him why he had not done his responsibility to pour down the rain to earth regularly.

Burmakin: By the way, your majesty, in the story I read, the guardian spirits (your warriors) appeared in front of the white-robe monk to explain why they couldn’t perform their responsibility.

King of Angels: Actually they are facing me in the Su-dhamma Court but the white-robe monk in his illusion thought that the spirits were reporting to him. He cursed my men one after another. Why you can’t make grains sprout, why you can’t make the soil fertilize, why you can’t make the rain regularly. Seemed to be endless curses to heap all faults to we divine.

Burmakin: The rain guardian is quite smart. He counter-sued the white robe monk. Without Sila (obedience of people to moral principles of the universe), he couldn’t afford the rain to trickle down to earth. The white-robe monk, who should be the gospel of Sila for the people, himself tried to invade the private property and was trying to curse the divine with ruthless words, that is showing the obvious violation against the universal moral principles, was the real culprit eventually.

King of Angels: Right. It was a very funny scene. My smart man, the rain guardian spirit, (who was also the benefactor to your Burmese Pagan empire with his endorsed jewel rain), upon the approval of my exoneration to him as absolutely non-guilty, threatened this hypocritical white robe monk.

I still remembered his words. “When the universal laws are violated yourself by you men as the leaders and gospels of people, there is no reason for the divine to act harmoniously with the nature. So if I don’t rain, there is no rain at all. If I rain, there will be over-rain with also the bonus gift to you hypocrites. A gift of thunderbolt to crack your head up into eight pieces. The white-robe hypocrite ran away of fear. Ha.. Ha..So funny still even though this incident has lasted millions of years ago.

Burmakin: Thus, your majesty, I am curious that your men are used to be involved in creating such kinds of disharmony of the universe when the moral principles are grossly violated.

King of Angels: Not always, we are also very busy with many heaven affairs. You know I have 500 angels on each side. Imagine your Burmese king, Than Shwe, has only one wife and your whole country of 50 million people is overturned. In common sense mathematics, my Savadainta Heaven is 1000 times more probable to be upside down than your country. You Burmese also have a proverb “one girl daughter is equivalent to controlling 1000 cows.” So I am also looking like a cowboy to control 1000, 000 cows(a million of cows).

You can imagine how busy I am. Thanks to my relativity speed in comparison with your human life. Actually, as I have 100 human years available for my one day of Heaven, I have enough time to manage to finish both the divine affairs and human affairs.

I am sometimes jealous of Einstein, this super genius who disclosed my secret that our speed and time in the universe is relative. Otherwise you human still can’t imagine how I am controlling 1000 wives, heaven affairs and your human affairs.

Let’s me tell you some secrets of our divine world, my son. Even though I am not that much involved in your human affairs, oft times I am seriously involved when there are crisis to your humanity. Like the revolution in France, like the annihilation of slavery in America, to the Russians in the Second World War, so and so when there is a critical situation. Sometimes helping through the people like Abraham Lincoln. Sometimes my men made disturbances by moving the stars and planets to adjust the weather conditions and to affect the brain waves of the people.

Burmakin: Your majesty. Your first word and the second word are incoherent. First you said nothing is coming and nothing is going. Then you said your men are moving the stars to affect the human lives if there is crisis in humanity.

King of Angels: My son, even though our choices of deciding whether to move the stars and planets depend on our free will, our choices are also deterministic in the fundamental universal principles. If my guys move a planet from its orbit, even though this is nominally his choice, there is always an urge to do this choice. Without this pre-assumption of deterministic nature of the universe, sciences in your human realm could not build up the equation concept of mathematics. 2+2 will be 4 and never be 5 in this deterministic principle in your mundane world. We divine either.

Burmakin: If you don’t mind, your majesty. Could you tell me directly you divine forces create this Burmese Tsunami, probably one of the worst miserable events of mankind?

King of Angels: My son, you yourself believe that recycling is the essential concept in Buddhism. Why are you still asking me this question?

As you know, there have to be alternate cycles of your human world in Buddha’s universal laws. When morality of people declines, your human age will also decline throughout. In the last, there is always a holocaust as the nature couldn’t tolerate any more when the human nature becomes the dirtiest extreme to defame the moral authority of Dhamma.

Burmakin: I think you are unfair then. We Burmese are one of the best-minded people in the world. They are good-hearted, simple and not materialistic. We are relatively very unselfish people in this materially avaricious world. It is very unfair to assume that Burmese society is morally the dirtiest extreme.

King of Angels: My son, do you know the basic Five Precepts of morality all laymen should obey?

Burmakin: Of course I do, why not?

King of Angels: Did you see any word or similar meaning like good-heartedness in these Five Precepts?

Burmakin: No.

King of Angels: Did you see any word or similar meaning like simplicity in these Five Precepts?

Burmakin: No

King of Angels: Did you see any word or similar meaning like not to be materialistic in these Five Precepts?

Burmakin: No.

King of Angels: Then why are you arguing that we Burmese can’t be the dirtiest to the moral principles? I agree with you that Burmese have such kinds of good hearts, simplicity and non-greediness in comparison with today material-dominated societies. But they are not the deciding factors for adherence to the moral principles. What do you think? What is the most important in these Five Precepts?

Burmakin: Of course, not to tell the lies is the most important in all moral principles of the universe. As this is the most important universal principle not to be violated, there was a direct lesson from the universe to punish would-be-Devadatt when he committed this moral crime of telling the lies.

King of Angels: Then what kind of lies could be the worst crime in the universe?

Burmakin: As Dhamma is the highest moral authority in the world, if somebody says Dhama as Ah-Dhamma(justice as injustice), and/or somebody says Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma(injustice as justice), this is the worst crime in the universe.

King of Angels: Then what do you mean by Dhamma?

Burmakin: I like to define Dhamma only by a negative direction. By pronouncing Dhamma, I mean the judgment of the God for reasonableness of the universe order. If somebody is immoral, this is to be punished. If there is no punishment, everybody will be ready to commit the evils. When stealth first happened to the world, people offered a social contract to Maha Tamatha (the would-be- Gautama Buddha). “By our willing consent, we like to elect you as our government, a brand new institutional structure in human world at that time. As our government, please enjoy one tenth of our production of crops, don’t take care of your regular farm work this time. Today onwards, your duty is to guard Dhamma, that is to protect the people from stealth and punish the immoral perverts as accordingly".

So Dhamma in its strict sense for the human society is the punishment for the immoral deeds. I don’t like to define Dhamma in the positive direction of rewards for the moral deeds. For the best morality is the one without the expectation of any reward. Logically, Dhamma can’t be defined in the positive sense.

King of Angels: Great, my son. You yourself has given me the answer now. You Burmese monarchs have many names of Dhamma Tatt ( Men who guard Dhamma).This also reflects your high Burmese philosophy of assigning the King’s main responsibility for punishing the evil acts for fairness, justice and security to people in society. As devout Buddhists, you will also agree that the most fundamental principle behind the social contract between the people and the government is to lay down rules and regulations to take action against the immoral doings coming out from human nature that some of your human philosphers believe in this way:"Human nature is essentially evil"

Burmakin: Now the Burmese regime is also trying to legitimize his home-made morally unacceptable and immorally unprecedented social contract as the most perfect laws for society, shamelessly telling the lies. This can probably be assumed as saying Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma, the most inferior crime to humanity.

King of Angels: The soverignity of the people is the laws only. Not any individual or any group. Laws should express the will of the people, not the whims of kings, dictators and your military officials. In our divine perception, there is no personal ruler in the rule of Dhamma. Only Dhamma is the sovereign itself.

The primitive people made a plea to Maha Tamatha because they are willing to obey the laws of Dhamma of human society. They didn't make Maha Tamatha as the Dhamma himself.If Maha Tamatha himself made a violation against the rules and regulations of moral laws of Dhamma, he should also have been prosecuted accordingly.No special promise was granted to Maha Tamatha that he was not under the laws of Dhamma even if he was the would-be-Gautamha Buddha acting for the sake of the people.

My son, you are wise to reject the positive reward of Dhamma in the counter direction. In moral authority of the justice of Dhamma,not a single person is to be sacrificed for the interest of the majority or any collective society. Let's see what your self-made Burmese government say in his home-made social contract? “No action shall be taken against the military officers for any transaction of his duty operations during their mandate period”. By this, they are saying that the military is the laws themselves. The military is above the rule of Dhamma, that you say "justice is only in the negative direction" for punishing the immoral doings. Of course, there is no positive reward of an immoral deed that can compensate and outdo against immoral violation of any moral principles of Dhamma.This is the beginning of everything, my son. That is one of the dirtiest extreme forms of violation against the universal principles.This is the worst crime against humanity in our divine perception. In their extreme arrogance, your military people are now claiming that the military should be granted divine rights to freely sacrifice the minors for the majority, that is the greatest insult to the humanity principle of Dhamma.

Even at the time of his perfect enlightenment, Buddha promised to us that he was not still above the rule of Dhamma, the real absolute ruler of the universe. In respect to Dhamma, he appreciated Ven. Kuttapa as a better person than Buddha himself in many attributes. He himself was shy for the fact that he went inside a house and sought comfort to get the alms, that Ven. Kuttapa didn't take such privilege. He himself was shy for the fact that he lived in the well-sheltered Jettavona Monastery and sought comfort for a good place, that Ven. Kuttapa stayed only under one tree after another and didn't take such privilege.

My son, you should agree with me for the fact that only Dhamma principles could decide who is good and who is bad. Not because you are a Buddha or a monk or a leader of a community.
Buddha himself confessed that he was not that good in many respects. Your Burmese military supremos are now claiming to the whole world that no Dhamma principle is able to decide a military officer whether he is bad or not. They have now reached their highest form of ignorance, highest corrupted form of evil human nature, and overruled even Buddha to say that they are all good in every respect. In our divine perception, your Burmese military has been revolting against laws of Dhamma throughout. We could tolerate up to this point, not any more at this watershed when they are trying to annihilate Dhamma by legitimizing Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma at this time.

If this self-inflicting regime (I mean the government who will drive the people to the ugliest violation of moral principles) could institutionalize this Ah-Dhamma concept, the next Burmese generation will come to believe that the wrong doings are never to be punished in terms of communal interest. It is perfectly legitimate to discount any moral principle if the duty-holder thinks there is fruitfulness to the community from his action . The Karma doctrine of Buddhism is no longer the moral authority. The next Burmese children will believe this pervert concept as the universal laws, bad deeds never render the bad results.Or they even believe that there is no bad deed if you serve for the interest of a group or an ideology. So why you are afraid of choosing the deeds as whether good or bad? Let’s do any deed that will endow the most profitable results for "Us". Lokapala Dhamma (shyness from doing bad deeds, afraidness from doing bad deeds) that are the protectors of the harmony of the universe, are no longer able to have any role in this completely dark Burmese society.My son, you Burmese will use the mantra of "we" as absolute truth in the next generation. If you dictate the mantra of "we", there is no bad deed, there is no bad Karma; only there is fruitfulness if you have a mandate of "we". The people who dictate the mantra of "we" have to be crowned as Bodhisattvas or divine. Upon citing "we", any pervert action of these hypocrite Bodhisattvas will become an unrivalled mandate of moral order of Dhamma in your coming stumbling society. This is the most dangerous happening to the universe, Ah-Dhamma is legitimized as Dhamma with people's willing consent in your next Burmese society.

Burmakin: Yes, your majesty. I now realize that this concept is the worst violated against the moral authority of the universe. It also means that if you are a uniform person, all you do is always fair and no law can't be strong enough to punish you because what you do as you wish is perfectly right when you are wearing a trouser.

They are blatantly claiming that even the god has no legitimacy to punish a uniform in Burma. Everything what the uniform man does has to be assumed as perfectly mature and balanced, and has to be accepted as completely fair. This is the crisis of humanity that no country seems to be aware of. Burmese are now coerced to agree to this Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma; have to live up with this Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma for their whole life. They have to accept this Ah-Dhamma lie for the whole life; later they themselves are willing to believe Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma. As if Winston Smith fell in love with the greatest Lier, Big Brother at last, Burmese will finally fall in love with Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma. The future Burmese will adore and worship trouser people as divine and would-be-Buddhas because they act the best for "We". These Burmese divine will displace three jewels from our Burmese altar." We" is the only altar Burmese have to worship as "We'" is the supreme Dhamma of the universe. They will put "We" in place of Five Precepts. They will also throw away the Precepts of ten Ah-Dhamma sins. There is no sin if there is "We". Only "We" will be echoed in the next Burmese anthem, only "We" will be the idol of the next Burmese Shrine, only "We" is the absolute Dhamma of the Burmese. For "We", there is no deed that is not fair. "We" is the justice. "We" is the morality."We" is the entitlement. "We" will be god. "We" is everywhere. Ah-Dhamma is everywhere but the next Burmese believe it as Dhamma. They like it as Dhamma. They worship Ah-Dhamma as Dhamma as Ah-Dhamma will become the only way of survival for them.

King of Angels: My son, as I said, we dont move the stars and planets by ourselves. Nothing is coming and nothing is going. You human should not be such extremely arrogant to defame our divine forces. Even we divine forces cant be arrogant against the moral order of the universe. Recycling of this evil matrix of Burma has to be done at last. Something comes and something goes. But nothing is coming and nothing is going either.