Quote:
“There’s a cease fire in the Gulf, but organized killing continues within Iraq and in bloody conflicts in over 20 Third World countries on three continents.
Proud politicians and military commanders assault us with endless commercials and about their “smart” technology, including “smart bombs” ;that delivered “clean surgical strikes” against Iraqis.
Are we supposed to ignore the fact that thousands died, many or even most of them innocent civilians? Should we ignore the truth that modern warfare is an indiscriminate destroyer of people, cultures and Environments.”
Peace and Planetary Survival
Campbell River, April 20, 1991
(This speech was offered by Charles at a peace march in Campbell River)
There’s a cease fire in the Gulf, but organized killing continues within Iraq and in bloody conflicts in over 20 Third World countries on three continents.
Proud politicians and military commanders assault us with endless commercials and about their “smart” technology, including “smart bombs”; that delivered “clean surgical strikes” against Iraqis.
Are we supposed to ignore the fact that thousands died, many or even most of them innocent civilians? Should we ignore the truth that modern warfare is an indiscriminate destroyer of people, cultures and Environments.
We cannot separate the Peace Movement from the Environmental Movement. They go hand in hand. It would appear that the main intent of the middle east war was to guarantee a standard of living dependent upon the extraction of the carbon that the earth has deposited in her bosom to balance the chemistry of the atmosphere.
For ten years Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle has without half of his income taxes in protest against the arms buildup in the U.S. What have we done. Did we complain about the high price of gasoline during the recent war. Did we stop driving. Did we stop heating our homes with oil? There are 500 million automobiles in the world, and there will be 600 million by the end of this century. The universe can’t withstand this amount of pollution.
So we all make confessions of guilty bystanders. I think we would be really stunned if we realized what we must give up, how drastically we must change our life style and patterns in order that the planet may survive. But we have to look at this.
To bring peace to the earth, we have to be at peace ourselves, be at peace with ourselves. How do we arrive at that peace?
By realizing the grace of the present moment.
By walking meditation.
By making the passage from the Cenozoic to the Ecozoic Era.
THE GRACE OF THE PRESENT MOMENT: we did not ask to be born at this time. But we each have something. We are chosen people, each one of us is chosen,
BY WALKING MEDITATION:
I think of Thich Nhat Hanh. He would be pleased at our march today, an example of walking meditation. Early 1970’s he was head of the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by
Martin Luther King.
Author: Walking Meditation. Mindfulness.
Walking Meditation: is practicing mediation while walking. It can bring you joy and peace while you practice it. Sorrows and worries can drop away. To have peace of mind, to attain to self-liberation, learn to walk in this way. No hurry, no goal, no direction in space or time. Going is important, not arriving.
Daily lives are burdened with anxieties and fears. Walk in peace.
FOLLOW YOUR BLISS:
This will bring you peace
Cosmic Cross: Significance
Centre: True action flows from
non-action.
Go with your bliss: Journey
of the heroes with a thousand faces.
Means great sacrifice
Not the Atman project
Death to the Separate Self.
PEACE MOVEMENT:
In the beginning was concerned with the atomic bomb and the arms buildup.
We see today that we will never have a peaceful earth without having a peaceful environment.
SOME THINK THAT THE BOMB HAS ALREADY BEEN DROPPED.
Dr Suzuki has been helpful in pointing out what we have done. We are acting on a geological and biological order of magnitude. We are changing the chemistry of the planet. We are altering the great hydrological cycles. We are weakening the ozone layer that shields us from cosmic rays, tec (P 206, Dream
of the Earth). We have been closing down the major life systems of the planet: the geosphere, the hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, the noosphere.
Paul Erlich at the conference on the Future of Living Species sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian points out that “humanity will bring upon itself consequences similar to those expected from a nuclear winter.” And he expects them to be accompanied by the famine and epidemic disease generally associated with the concept of nuclear winter.
WHAT CAN WE DO:
Man stands halfway between the beasts and the Gods.
Archaic, magical, mythical, classical,
We stand at the threshold of a new consciousness, called fourth-dimensional by Hugo Lasalle.
The Ecological crisis is pre-eminently a spiritual crisis of the greatest magnitude. Its resolution depends on a basic transformation of human hearts and minds, a profound spiritual renewal that deepens our kinship with life and creates a new vision of human presence within the earth community.
The earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation. We are being asked to learn an entirely new mode of conduct and discipline.
THE TRANSFORMATION that we are to make is a fantastic one period we are presently in the third of the great biological ages of the earth of visible lifeforms. Paleozoic, Mesozoic 265 million years ago.
CENOZOIC: beginning 65 million years ago. Wave upon wave of life expansion took place for 65 million years period what we’re doing when we extinguish species of trees, animals in rainforest is negating 65 million years of effort.
Perhaps 20% of all living species will be extinguished by the end of this century. Irreversible. Neither heaven or earth can bring back extinguished species.
We have to be terrorized by what we have done, crash situation.
We must get into the Ecozoic (T. Berry) We owe so much to him.
How do we get into the Ecozoic:
1) Realize that the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. It is a community of beings to be communed with, not objects to be used, primarily, or plundered or whatever. It is primarily a communion experience. If we forget that, then we’ll destroy it, and that is exactly what has happened.
2) The second thing is to remember that the planet earth is a one time endowment. We don’t get a second chance. It is in a sense of one way process, and unfolding, and certain things have to be done at certain times. That, again is both a threatening thing in an encouraging thing. What we
are creating now is a new mode of religious consciousness.
3) The third thing I would suggest we must think about is that the earth is primary in humans are derivative. The earth is Primary Health wise. The first obligation of medicine is not to take care of humans but to see we have an integral, healthy earth. You cannot have well people on a sick earth
no matter how much technology you have period doesn’t work that way. First obligation of economics is that the gross earth product must be integral to have a rising gross national product with a declining gross earth product makes no sense whatsoever.
4) The Ecozoic is going to function very, very differently from the Cenozoic. In the Cenozoic all the beauty that was developed was entirely without human participation. We weren’t asked how many thousands of flowers we wanted. We were given this infinite number of flowers and insects in
the gorgeous world we live in given that. With no effort of our own we were given all these things. It was a gracious endowment. We were simply asked to be present to it in some gracious, honoring way.
In the Ecozoic, almost nothing is going to take place of significance that will not in some way be related to the human in this sense. That whereas we cannot make a blade of grass, there’s liable not to be blade of grass unless we accept it, protect it and foster it. Accept, protect and foster.
The way I phrase it at times is this: that the human community and the natural world will go into the future as a single sacred community or we will perish in the desert period now it’s a bit of hyper
bowl in the sense that how much of the earth would perish in all of its life systems-due to these things that we do. But, it would perish in an extraordinarily large dimension of its existence.
This question is so important: that we appreciate the fact that the human community and the natural world must go into the future as a single sacred community.
In closing
The grace of the moment
Continue your walking meditation
Follow your bliss, have a sacred space in your life.