Living in Our New World Part 1: Time for a New Normal

For the next week, I am going to focus on a subject that a good number of people will not want to read about. I understand. But I still need to speak. If the subject makes you uncomfortable, I am sorry. If it frightens you, again, I am truly sorry.

But our only hope for the future is to understand the present.

When our leaders and those who have pledged to serve us fail to do so, it is our responsibility to look after ourselves and one another, and to protect our children. And all children are our children. We are in the terrible situation we are because at first we didn't know better. Our parents didn't know better either. But things have changed and now we do. We can't claim ignorance any more. Besides, looking around for a suitable candidate to blame will accomplish nothing. It will only exhaust us and rob of us of valuable time. The reality, which we all know at some level, is that each of us is to blame to some degree.

Earlier this year, I wrote a paper about Climate Change and Peak Oil. I imagine my experience leading to the writing of that paper was similar to that of others who write on these subjects. At first, those of us who stumbled across the right sources of information learned about climate change. Gradually, we read the more frequent reports of what respected scientists, like James Hansen director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, were discovering. It seemed that the forecasts were no longer about the next century or even just five or six decades in the future, they were sliding down the timeline towards us. Rapidly.

Then we began to read increasingly of peak oil, which seemed even closer to us on the timeline than climate change. We realized that these changes were not going to happen many decades away. They were going to happen in our lifetime.

Some people became aware of climate change and peak oil a few decades ago. Some of us have learned much more recently. But I imagine each of us went through a similar learning curve whether it happened gradually or has come rushing at us so fast it's been a constant struggle to adjust.

Recently, as we felt like we were beginning to adjust just a little bit, we began to read more about financial difficulties in the United States. So then we moved from climate change being a few decades off and peak oil affecting us in five or ten years to a financial crisis that was unfolding on the evening news. With the evening news came the realization that we just slid down that timeline so far, that we're no longer in the future. We're here.

We now have a subprime mortgage crisis. Freddie and Fannie, banks, and insurance companies are failing. Retail stores are closing and companies are cutting back their workforce and days worked. Shortages of food and gas are being reported from different cities around the country.

But this is not just a US problem. Whether you look at it from the perspective of globalization or the principle of interconnectedness in Buddhism, one thing is clear—we’re all connected. We’re all in this together.

What is happening in the US will affect every country in the world to some degree. Countless financial institutions worldwide hold US dollars as well as US investments and packages of those subprime mortgages. Also, imports and exports lie at the heart of almost every national economy. Over the past few decades, as the US closed factories and sent production overseas to cut back on operating expenses, it no longer focused on making things. Instead, it became the world’s consumer; a consumer with one very large shopping cart.

A major filler of that shopping cart is China. So the Chinese economy is tied to that of the United States. The interconnectedness doesn’t stop there however. According to an article in the Asian Economic News on May 12, 2008, “China has overtaken Japan to become Australia's largest two-way trading partner in 2007 [and t]he United States is Australia's third-largest trading partner.” So what affects the United States, affects China and Australia and Japan. And then there’s Vietnam, India, Cambodia, and Korea who we have been increasing our trade with. You get the point. One pebble (and the US financial collapse is one extremely large boulder) tossed into the pond of our globalized world will quickly send out—not ripples—but waves of economic repercussions.

So we here sit. I’m in Australia as are a good number of readers. Maybe you’re in the US or Malaysia or Canada. Or maybe you’re in Europe or in one of the dozens of countries that people come from periodically to read this blog. If you’re still with me (and I hope you are :-)) you’re probably wondering where this is leading. Or perhaps you’re thinking that you really don’t want to know and are calculating when this week will be up and you can safely come back and start reading again. ;-)

If we let it, what we have learned can lead us to despair. But we know by now that we have the capacity to focus and control our minds if we try hard enough. I wrote that our only hope for the future is to understand the present. Hopefully, we now understand our “present” just a little better. It’s not the rosy picture we have been lead to believe.

But just because it’s not, doesn’t mean it has to be such a bleak picture that we want to go out and spend like there’s no tomorrow or climb back into bed and never leave again or pretend that the world situation is just a blip in the timeline and that soon everything will return to normal.

The truth is we need a new normal.

And the reality is that it’s already begun.

(Tomorrow: Living in Our New World Part 2: Sleeping Beauty and the Fairy Godmother)

The Best Learning Environment

Because we have cultivated good roots and formed Dharma relationships in past lifetimes, we are able to encounter Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism, and to learn together in this lifetime. We need to practice according to the teachings. The most important thing in doing this is to put aside one’s own personal opinions.

I often teach people to put aside their views about life and the universe, and their thoughts, speech, and behavior toward all beings. Why? Because these are all wrong. If we do not put aside these mistakes, we will fail in our attempt to emulate Buddhas and bodhisattvas. If we put aside all these mistakes, we will succeed in emulating them.

Today we have afflictions and residual habits within us. We all admit this fact. Indeed, we have many karmic obstacles. The power of temptations is very strong. In Buddhism, temptation is called mara, or more specifically, deva-mara. Deva-mara refers to the temptations of all worldly pleasures, prestige, and wealth. It is hard to succeed in cultivation today. If for one moment we are not careful, we will forget our aspirations. This is the reason why there are many Buddhist practitioners but few succeed in their cultivation.

Because of this reason, the Buddha introduced to us a place that provides the best learning environment—the Land of Ultimate Bliss. When we are in the Land of Ultimate Bliss, it does not matter that we have many afflictions and residual habits within us because the external environment will not cause those afflictions and residual habits to arise. In that world, we “can be together with all these Beings of Superior Goodness.”

In this world, it is hard to hear and learn the Dharma. In the Land of Ultimate Bliss, Amitabha Buddha and great bodhisattvas lecture on the Dharma continuously, so that we will be able to study and practice continuously. Whichever Dharma door we want to learn, there will always be bodhisattvas to teach us. The learning environment is truly wonderful there.

But in this world, it is hard to find a good teacher and a good learning environment. In addition, there are many unexpected obstacles blocking us from learning and making progress. Therefore, the Buddha urged us to go to another learning environment—the Land of Ultimate Bliss. Is it difficult to attain rebirth there? It is not difficult, but it is not easy either. We must have three requisites: good roots, good fortune, and favorable conditions.

Having good roots means that we have firm belief and firm vows. We have firm belief when we do not have the slightest doubt about the Pure Land teachings. We have firm vows when our one and only wish is to attain rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss, and we let go of everything in this world except this wish. We must have these two conditions to be considered as having good roots.

~ Based on Ven. Master Chin Kung's 2003 lecture series on the Amitabha Sutra

Oops! That's Not What I Meant!

The other day, I wrote about being mindful of what we think. Today it's what we say.

Last night, one of my brothers (we call our fellow nuns, not just monks, brothers) and I went on a last minute errand to the office supply store. We needed to get something for the office here at the Pure Land Learning College in Toowoomba. This is a dangerous place for both Venerable Wu Chin and I because while nuns don't do much "shopping," both my brother and I are unusually fond of pens and pads. It must be the colors. (What can I say—it's hard to eradicate ALL of one’s attachments!)

Since we were there, and knowing I don't like to go shopping, my brother thoughtfully suggested I look around to see if there was anything I needed. I quickly got some pads and pens (honestly, I'm hopeless) and a few other things and we went to check out.

The checker asked if I wanted a bag. I don't like to use plastic bags and while I carry a fold up shopping bag in the regular bag I carry when going out, I felt it wasn't necessary. I replied that I didn't need a plastic shopping bag and concluded with "I'm used to putting things in my bag."

Oops.

Realizing that hadn't come out quite as I had intended. I quickly added "After I pay for them!"

Sigh...

We really do need to be careful of what we say...

Shoot Me First

I've been doing a lot of editing in the last few days and am now working on Teacher's address that he gave at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in October 2006. He was talking about Chinese education and the importance the Chinese placed on "benevolence and justice, love, and supreme harmony." When I came to that line, I remembered something that happened in the US almost at the same time Teacher was giving his talk.

It began with one of those senseless acts, when a person is in so much pain that the suffering overwhelms him and he lashes out at the most innocent beings he can find.

In a Lancaster County schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, a man entered an Amish school and bound several girls. One of the girls, thirteen-year-old Marian Fisher, realizing what the gunman was going to do and trying to save the younger girls in the room said "Shoot me first."

Then Barbie, her eleven-year-old sister, said, "Shoot me second."

Barbie survived. As did four other girls.

Five girls died: Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7; and Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12.

And Marian Fisher.

Benevolence and love and supreme harmony. They are possible in our world. But to such a degree, I'd say they are rare. And yet they existed, surely in pure perfection, in two young Amish girls. To have such love for another human being to be able to quietly say:

"Shoot me first."

"Shoot me second."

But How can We Tell?

Question: How can we know if we are practicing properly?

Response: We know if our behavior begins to improve even just a bit. How? We might find ourselves reacting more calmly. Instead of becoming frustrated with the person at work who always gives us a hard time, we might find ourselves wondering why he does so. And wondering if he’s unhappy about something. Or worried. Or afraid.

When something occurs that previously would have had us angrily voicing our frustration, we might find ourselves wondering if we could have contributed to the situation. Did we do something that frustrated the other person in the past? Perhaps instead of quietly pointing out something they had done wrong, we blurted it out and embarrassed them in front of other people.

It's not uncommon to feel that we may not be making any progress. But others notice a difference and comment on it. They may say that we're more patient and less irritable. That we seem more considerate, less hurried when we do things.

We know we are practicing properly if we just feel happy when chanting. We look at the Buddha or bodhisattva image and just feel good. We feel that this chanting is the most important thing to be doing, that this is one time we don't need to worry about doing anything else.

And we smile.