Earth Day Special: An Awakened Earth
Human kind has been very enamored of technology. On the one hand we like to invent things to make life easier, and we like to solve problems as a challenge. We are clever like rats.
We have invented the telephone when older tribes used to use their meditation to communicate across distances. We invented GPS when animals can find there way all across the globe just fine. We invented internet and Skype and robots nearly as small as a molecule. But the cost of the greed and fear that has gotten behind the development of technologies is extremely high. I say greed first because I feel this comes almost before the fear. But who knows?
Now, it comes full swing and the humans disconnected from the earth (not all are by the way), now see the damage all around them. Rivers literally on fire from fracking, mass die offs of all kinds of species washing up on beaches. Flocks of birds falling from the skies all at once and the earth trembling all over trying desperately to shake off this annoying parasite colony called humans.
From a Buddhist view, many of the elemental disturbances we see happening now, which by the way are predicted in many different religious texts, are the result of the retaliation of the five Mamos or elemental mothers. It is a natural and balancing process even though our actions as humans are fairly unnatural and self-destructive.
The images of the earth in trouble even in remote places are now in plain view over the internet which has become our human-made feedback neural network. Artificial or not, this network is helping us all understand the extent of the repercussions of our actions. The images expose wrong doing of corporations and our culpability in all these cycles as well. We are the traffic, we are the slaughterhouse, and we are the energy consumers that set the rivers on fire from fracking. Some of us see what is in front of us and others deny it because it is, as Al Gore said, "inconvenient". Others know that it is more inconvenient for the species to die just because of a handful of irresponsible short-term tenant / stewards.
But the internet and the tragedy has done something else for us. The feedback loop is working. Our Amazon forests are disappearing and we know it in New York. Now, when someone steps on our collective foot the pathway from our feet to our brain tells us it hurts somewhere. So we try to stop using palm oil, for example. We are weaning off main stream media which has been co-opted by spirits of greed, control and agendas of our enslavement. We are coming to trust the more silent voices in our hearts as compared to the toxic voices in our heads, and we are learning to sit down and listen to nature's ground. The ground in Buddhism is very important as it is not our thinking. Failing to see the ground of all, we mistake al the images and distorted perceptions as real and we react to them creating more negative karma.
But now, something else is happening. We are truly awakening. Not just one person but many. Like a forest fire, flu or viewpoint, it is catching. Today we celebrate Mother Earth and the five Elemental Mothers. Today we should make an offering to them with awareness. An offering such as a sacrifice. Not sacrificing an animal as if that life is ours to give to the mother who made it to begin with, but as in the form of a self-discipline. We should recognize our own fault as an offering. We should recognize our complicit role in the earth's destruction and we should offer self-control. Offer eating less meat maybe, or no meat, offer using less gas, or less plastic, or by preserving nature somewhere, or by working to expose what is destroying our mother. Or, if none of this seems possible because your mind is overwhelmed, then offer your sitting period and time on the mat. Mother needs your offerings. Please be generous in these ways.
This is offered by Man, Son of Peace