A man wrote a letter to the editor of The St. Petersburg Times in the spring of 2009, saying that he wanted oil companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the west coast of Florida “because we need a victory over the all-powerful environmentalists.”
That was about a year before the BP oil spill.
Why would anyone demand that their nest be subjected to potential fouling? “Please subject my home to fouling so that I may have a victory over those who tried to prevent it.”
Another letter writer informed us that our legal system provides a presumption of innocence to all accused persons and that accused terrorists had no right to be tried in federal courts because an obviously guilty person should not be presumed innocent!
He concluded that we need to try “jihadists” before military tribunals after they have been tortured “to extract valuable information from them.”
A book could easily be filled with examples of ignorant reader-ramblings that newspaper publishers feel compelled to print.
Almost everyone alive today is seriously deluded. The ignorant who demand that their nest be fouled so that they can experience the thrill of victory while losing their habitat is the part of us that is that stupid.
The people who think we defeat terrorism by becoming terrorists are the part of us that is that stupid.
That’s what the Buddha taught. There are no two people, there are no two things. Consciousness or Awareness is a seamless whole and there is no such thing as an independent individual. Every being in the human dharma realm shares the same consciousness. All of us, even the profoundly ignorant, have Buddha nature as an inherent characteristic. Our shared Buddha nature unites us all, and we can’t condemn or dismiss anyone without doing that to ourselves.
The proof of that assertion can be proven but not by chaining words together. It can only be experienced and it can only be experienced by those who cultivate, i.e., those who practice authentic Zen every day.
