WORLD UNREST: EVERYONE'S BUSINESS In the past year our world changed irrevocably. It will never be the same. And we will never be the same. In the United States, on the 11th of September, several thousand people died. They died in New York, in Washington, in Pennsylvania. They died because someone wanted revenge. They died because people do not understand that the consequences of everything we do will come back to us. If we kill, we will in turn be killed. If we destroy the security of others, we ourselves will not be safe.
SOURCE OF ANGER If, out of our anger, we seek revenge thinking that it will solve our problems, we are tragically mistaken. Revenge solves nothing. If we believe that an eye for an eye is reasonable and fair, then the whole world will become blind and we will all be lost in darkness. The anger, which led to the desire for this revenge, did not begin in this lifetime. It began many, many lifetimes ago. And this cycle of anger has not ended. We will have to pay a dreadful price for deliberately destroying the lives of others. This is not a threat. It is a simple statement of reality, of a natural law called karma. Every thought, word, and action becomes a seed, which is then planted deep in our most subtle consciousness. We have lived innumerable lifetimes. We have lived as humans, as animals, as beings in the hell realms. We have even lived as heavenly beings. None of these lives were permanent. Some have been short while others have been incredibly long. At the end of each lifetime, the consciousness moved on to be reborn as a new being. We die and are born, over and over again. If we are good, we rise through the cycle of reincarnation. “Good” means we do not have thoughts of self-benefit. “Good” and that we unconditionally help others without counting the costs to ourselves. We are filial to our parents and respectful to our teachers and elders. We are compassionate and do not kill any living beings. We are generous and do not steal. We are honest and do not lie. We are faithful to our husbands or wives. We do not use language that is harsh, divisive, or enticing. We do not gossip. To be good means to do all these. Due to our exemplary thoughts, speech and behavior, our lives become better and better. Then, at some point, because we had been thinking selflessly and had created and accumulated goodness, our lives become very comfortable. Having comparative position and wealth, we begin to think that it is our right to just enjoy ourselves. We forget about being good. We stop helping others, become selfish, and start to enjoy the benefits we accumulated over many lifetimes: happiness, intelligence, and prosperity. We gradually use up our store of good fortune which we created. Just as we rose through the cycle of reincarnation, we now begin to descend. Our greed leads us to the hungry spirit realm. Our ignorance leads us to the animal realm. Our anger leads us to the hell realms. We rise and then we fall. And then we rise again, only to fall once again. We have done this over and over innumerable times. In each of those lifetimes, we planted many seeds. One of those seeds was anger. Unfortunately, instead of nurturing the good seeds within each of us, like the seeds of compassion and selflessness, we nurture those seeds of anger. We do this because we do not understand the true reality. We do not understand why things happen. We do not understand that all these lifetimes are connected. We do not understand that we are not individuals, but that we are all part of one another: We are all one. To hurt another is as pointless as one's left hand picking a fight with the right hand. Presently we cannot see this. We think that each one of us is an individual. We think that we need to protect who we are individually. We think we can hold on to material possessions and beliefs. We believe that we are real and permanent. We think we are right, that others are wrong. And therefore, we logically conclude, “I am right and you are wrong so you need to change and think as I do.” And so we become wrapped up in our own egos and own views. Then we may even be able to justify the thought that because our ideas and beliefs are superior to those of others we have the right to kill another, to kill hundreds, even thousands of people. The anger that leads to conflict, to murder, to war goes back a long, long time. It began innocently enough. Most of the time when we are speaking with another, we fail to be mindful of what we are saying. We speak without thinking. We may have carelessly said something and hurt another's feelings, but all the while we were unaware of our deeds. We may not have realized what we have done, but we have contributed to planting another seed of anger in the consciousness of the other person. They may not think anything of it, at least not until we meet again lifetimes later and that seed matures. This next time the other person will say something to us and this time there may be a slight trace of animosity. Not much, just a minor irritation. Again, this incident is registered in our consciousness. This enmity is passed back and forth each time we meet, over ensuing lifetimes. If we do not meet for a thousand lifetimes, it will lie dormant for a thousand lifetimes. When the time is right and we meet again, the irritation will surface. Each time it is passed on, it increases and grows more serious. At some point it will turn into hatred. At some point that hatred will explode and one of us will kill the other. At some point, killing one another will no longer satisfy our desire for revenge. Then, one of us will devise a way to exact revenge and will kill thousands of people. The ensuing response of the United States and her allies to bomb Afghanistan will likewise solve nothing. We have once again nurtured the seeds of hatred and murder, and next time the tragedy will be even worse. Cause and effect are a continuous cycle. A cause triggers a result. That result then becomes a new cause, which will trigger another result. This becomes another cause with another result. Over and over, ad infinitum. This chain not only affects us but others as well. We do something and it affects someone with us. In their response to us, they affect someone else. This creates a wavelike response of cause and effect that moves out in an ever-widening circle. The ripple effect of one drop of water splashing in the ocean thus results in all the other drops of water in the ocean moving. The rage that leads to such calculated revenge, to killing, will result in more killing. It may occur on a large scale. Or the revenge may produce a result much closer to home. We are led to our next lifetime by our final thoughts in our present lifetime. If we die in terror, pain, and anguish, those emotions are very likely to lead to the overwhelming desire to retaliate. This desire for retaliation could lead us to our future parents, perhaps even as early as in the next lifetime.
We are drawn to our parents by our karma for one of four reasons, and are lead to them as a level of consciousness is drawn to a single beam of light shining in the darkness. We are drawn to our parents to repay kindness, to have kindness repaid to us, to repay a debt, or to exact repayment of a debt. The person who dies in terror, pain, and anguish, and who follows that karma to his or her future parents will exact a dreadful repayment from them. It is imperative that we understand what is happening around us. As individuals far removed from the geopolitical decisionmaking process, we cannot stop today's wars in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, in other areas around the world. But we can stop the wars within ourselves. We can become aware of our thoughts and feelings. We can become alert to what we are saying and doing. We do not have to give in to negative emotions. But we do give in because it is easy and because we are very lazy. Thus, we fall back into the negative habits of countless lifetimes. We may not be able to stop the bombs today: but, we can change the way we think, the way we react, and in this way we can gradually bring about changes throughout our world for tomorrow. Just as our lives today are the direct results of what we did in the past, what we do today will create our futures. If we helped someone today, we have planted the seeds for being helped in the future. But if we hurt someone, we have planted seeds for more suffering. When we understand this, we can resolve that we will make a difference, for us, for those we love, for all beings. How can we do this? Our thoughts are perceived by others. We all know people who upon entering a room cheer everyone up. Unfortunately, we also know those whose very presence seems to dampen the atmosphere. Others seem to radiate tension and unease. We can sense their thoughts and emotions. Actually, thoughts go much further than the walls of just one room. We are all one. Throughout the universe, there is only one being. A thought arising from us is instantly perceived throughout the universe. If we are happy and calm, others will perceive that. If we become agitated and irritable, those are the thoughts we are emitting. When anger starts to arise, most of us are initially not even aware of it because we are so accustomed to being angry. It feels normal. “This person always irritates me. What is unusual about that?” This is how we react from our human nature, not from our true nature. Our true nature, which is the same as all other beings' true nature, already has perfect happiness, perfect compassion, perfect goodness, etc. But we have not yet uncovered this true nature. We keep burying it deeper and deeper under our greed and our selfishness, under our idea that others must think as we do, and under our belief that happiness comes from outside ourselves. The Buddha told us about three poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. We incessantly want things. We want to be right all the time. We want to be happy all the time. We think that getting something new in our lives, be it a new job, a new house, a new person, a new pair of shoes, will make us happy. But on the rare occasions that we get what we want, the object of our desire begins to lose its appeal soon after. We start thinking that we want a better job, a bigger house, a younger person, a nicer pair of shoes. Why not? After all, the old one is no longer making us happy.
