It is beautiful outside. Would that it were as beautiful inside. The sun shines, bulbs are breaking free of their earthly confines, and robins are scampering to and fro, pecking for worms.
I walked down by the Mississippi yesterday as the sun went down. As dirty and polluted as the water is, it is still a beautiful flowing stream. Ducks and geese honked and brayed like waterborn camels.
I see prisoners being set free, bodies burning, hungry people sailing across seas in rickety boats, prisoners being tortured, and dead animals on the television. I see buds bursting with life on the real vision.
The dreamlike quality of existence is particularly illuminated for me in spring and fall. You can easily see the transitory nature of phenomenon. Every thought, breathe, word, and action sets in motion the ripples of constant change.
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1 year ago
3 comments:
If you think the Mississippi is polluted in Minneapolis, never ever look at the Delaware in Philadelphia. Your waters there are pristine in comparison.
Hi there, Andrew.
Your proud father told me about your blog and thought I'd check it out.
We have a drainage ditch we call a river a few blocks away. The girls and I take our bread crusts to a little bridge and throw them to the ducks. Sometimes carp surface to suck them down, sometimes crows swoop down to steal them from right under the ducks' noses/beaks, but mostly the ducks get them. Eryn picks boquets of dandelions poking up through the asphalt. Life is beautiful, especially through a child's eyes, even in Tokyo!
Your Christian aunt in a Buddhist country
Hey Christian Aunt,
Life is beautiful in many places, but is it beautiful in, say, Iraq or the Sudan? I find it interesting that you live in a Buddhist country as a Christian missionary. Buddhism and Christianity have a lot in common, but they diverge when it comes to the origin of suffering, and the way out of suffering. Which, on second thought, is quite a big difference. I suppose I meant to say the results of the two "religion's" philosophies are similar, but the paths toward nirvana/heaven/freedom are quite different.
Buddhism doesn't believe in a God outside the self and infinite everything, Christianity believes that God is seperate from man and the infinite everything. Buddhism believes that ego can be surpassed and man can be infinite, Christianity believes that God became man in order to allow man to become saved from himself(ego?)
Buddhism is about awakening from ignorance, Christianity is about ignoring awakening. Okay, that last one was a cheap shot, but I feel that where my idea of reality diverges from a lot of Christianity's philosophy is when God is created outside of reality to save humanity. This is because I don't see humanity as a particularly blessed animal. Reincarnation seems to make more sense to me. Humans are the animal that can choose to do wrong, are thy not? Why is this so?
Now I have given myself questions to ponder, and I shall leave this comment for any other remarks.
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