Expanding Awareness Transforms The World

I am a staying at a clown doctors place who is a Buddhist. She has a little meditation place out the back. We had a good conversation about conflict and she said it is about non attachment to the thought. I do know this but for many of us it is hard to detach when we feel passionate about what we feel is good or right or true. In my inner work of peace this is precisely what I am practicing but I have some strong beliefs. So slowly I am learning to undo my strongly held beliefs. I do understand at the end of the day we cannot change another, we can only be the change ourselves, for me, that is being peace.

One Buddhist who I resonate strongly with is is Thich Nhat Hanh. To my joy I saw a book lying around here called ‘The World We Have’. I am delighted to read about the call for Buddhists to protect the natural world. I always wondered why Christians were not passionate environmentalists, I suspect the literal biblical word relates to 2,000 years ago rather than how it is now. Yet the true message of Jesus was to be the presence of love, that includes the natural world as it is all creation. Thich Nhat Hanh mentioned the Buddhism of the present day rather than the past. To live the Buddhism as it lives in you. So updating it to now. So many people can see it as out of their hands or they have no power, or all life is impermanent, I always smile when people advocate for personal responsibility.

What I find interesting about reading this little book is the call to action. I like the ideas that we are one with the planet, we are the rock, the tree, the planet the stuff that makes up life. Some people may say no we are not, but in truth we have come from this planet and we return to it. Humanity’s presence is only 1 minute to midnight, a very short time experiencing this planet. We are intimately woven into the fabric of life and the great lie of the economic world we created was the separation from nature. This was done in a way where we really have lost the connection to growing plants, to finding food sources, to understanding the movement of the stars and natures timing, the phases of the moon, the activity of the sun and the mythologies that sprang up around such an incredible world.

It was interesting as I spoke to a woman yesterday who told me a story about South Korea. I like the synchronicity of reading about the very story I was told about today. I take note when things turn up more than once. The story is about the militarized zone between North and South Korea. Aside from the fact that humans in warfare cannot resolve their differences and so create spaces that are ‘no go’ to hold onto control they really don’t have, apart from that, life is still happening oblivious to the confusion of humans. In the book Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of a rare red crowned crane, the second rarest crane on earth after the whooping crane. Apparently the birds gently fly between North and South Korea. The environmentalists are concerned that if the North and South make peace the developers will come in and destroy this rare habitat. So they are proposing a peace park as there are only 1,500 of them left. Some may say, who cares about a few birds. That is the voice of ignorance who has no idea of how intimately linked every species is in this web of life. It is not until we reach real limits will people complain at politicians for not doing anything. What Thich Nhat Hanh so masterfully states, it is up to the people to make the change. I agree with this. We must unlearn what we’ve taken for granted and start to live in a new way where we are living in harmony with the natural system. This is the new earth which is coming. Either learn or don’t, either way we learn.

He speaks of a collective awakening and artfully describes it as the bells of mindfullness ringing. In one of my poems I called it the clarion call which is a strong and emotional appeal to people to do something. He speaks about other countries in Asia and china and how they are aspiring to have a cell phone, a television, fridge, car, house etc. He translates the situation in China and states that in 25 years there will be 1.5 billion people in China and they will be demanding 99 million barrels of oil a day to supply their consumption. World production today is 84 million barrel’s a day. He calls this the American dream and the clarion call is to make sleepers awaken. We are living unrealistic and unsustainable dreams that will sink the planet. It would be truer to say that the natural world will not be able to satisfy our wants, so the future could look bleak for the next generation, unless we act.

I personally heard this call back in the 1980’s, this was around the time green products were introduced in Australia and people were starting to think more environmentally. It only lasted about 5 years and then business-as-usual became the comfort zone again. I noted the apathy and almost it seemed like if people were not constantly told the environment must protected, they just kept on with what they were doing. I really noticed this apathy and saw it slide into more and more consumerism. When I was a child there was no McDonalds or fast foods. We cooked at home and we played outside. I used to skateboard with my brother and then down at the skate park. We used to go bike riding at the back of Garran (Canberra) where I grew up. I even did some horse riding. My sister was passionate about horses and still is. I was out with friends and seldom in front of the television. We knew our neighbours, the doors were unlocked and we lived within our means. We ate together as a family and we fought, we laughed and lived a simple life. We had a modest house and for a long time one car. We would be termed middle class, my dad was a printer and my mum a typist. So your working class was where we lived. Yet we always had enough. I can even remember black and white t.v. So the society has changed a lot now where many people are working long hours, acquiring more things, living in makeshift mansions (duplexes) and all have new cars. The focus on status and new toys is deepening, I find this particularly obvious with males. Socially they are receding more and more into games or computers. I’ve seen a few marriages break up over the constant time spent online. So our computer revolution which was originally designed as a labour saving, leisure provoking activity has become recreation and full time work. It has not lessened the paper trail it has expanded it and reduced the amount of time we have alone or with friends. I often hear my friends saying they have no time. If they have children they drive them everywhere to every activity imaginable. It is stress stress stress. That is why I am a clown. I feel relaxed already.

Crazy life. But do we wait for collapse or do we intelligently and compassionately look at the world and start to inspire changes that benefit the wellbeing of people and wildlife? Always the choice is ours and whatever we choose we will learn from.

Thich Nhat Hanh talks about a global ethic that will transform society. I certainly have been inspired by that. I recall on the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies program in Bangkok, Thailand being called to explore transformative peace. When I say called what I mean is that I feel this pull, I have to find out, I feel I must look there. The course focussed on conflict resolution which is great and conflict per se, but for me, the feeling was focus and expand the real peace. Transformation is where you change. I have felt this as when I was athiest and transformed into a spiritually aware person, I felt it distinctly as a shift. I am struggling to find the words, it felt like a step up. Even that is not the right words, it is more that I was feeling life with my heart not my head. Where the idea of being a successful analyst would have driven me in my career, it slid away as I started to feel to imagine light on people I didn’t know. Where did I learn that, nowhere, it just came naturally as I tuned into the suffering of others or sensed goodwill and sent love in my way. I marvelled at this desire to place light on people, it was a nice thought and I wondered what they would think of a complete stranger having such good will for them. I can remember doing this when I worked for a company in Market Harborough, Midlands, UK. I sat at a meeting and the voices tuned out and I felt unconditional love for them. I put light on each of them and noted how I was changing. I started to tune into the humanity and the love would probably be the best way to describe my personal transformation. This became real rather than competitive mind games to be seen to be. I started to be. Of course this takes you out of your comfort zone as your desires change. You feel the pull to serve humanity not just live for your self. Yet in truth it is expanding yourself as the world becomes your family. A really remarkable way of feeling life and love. When I studied Peace Studies that was when the commitment was made to move away from security. There was no job in the offing and I found myself having to make up my new life. This meant not much money and plenty of creativity. I also started deepening my own values. So for me, I would say not a global ethic, but global universal values. That is where I was inspired, to develop the values that are inherent, not socially learned right and wrong or ways to be, but to feel the true nature of myself emerge and the Lotus comes into my mind now.

When you transform, you can never look back. Life is changed forever and the new you you discover is hard to explain to people but it is the road you will travel. I have had to be brave and announce my beliefs and for me any acknowledgement of god in the past was absolutely what I didn’t agree with. I never liked people coming around preaching. Funnily enough I heard myself speaking more of compassion, love and opening of the heart. I found myself preaching in a way that was not ‘I know better’ but more ‘I wish to share the joy I feel’ and it took me out of my comfort zone as I knew I could be judged and probably have been many times. I used to laugh at how I found myself in the shoes of a spiritual person a place I had never wanted to be, yet that spiritual person is my true nature it is not separate, it is not religion, love is my only truth. The spiritual is just connecting to the positive virtues within, the emotions that connect us to the world. That is all it is. It is not for some and not others, whenever you feel love, you are being spiritual.

I use my time to connect with people now and to share with them the beauty of the clown. I don’t care if people know god or not, it really doesn’t matter, just love life is the same thing and know you are changing life in every moment through thought, word and deed. I see myself as connecting to this planet and I am consciously working on it as I have much to learn about nature and its brilliance. I am staring at a tree right now and it just amazes me how from a seed a great tree emerges with branches, leaves and you hear the birds fluttering around in it. Some dart in like torpedoes and you marvel at the engineering of nature, so precise so finely tuned. So much we don’t understand, so humility will be what we learn in the future.

So folks be the change you wish to see. The politicians and business people are not going to do it for you. They are not saving the planet, only you will. When you save yourself. That means when you love yourself, when you think your children are worth sustaining in a future that is balanced and in harmony. You are the change agent, you are the decider of the future. I truly believe in you. Without doubt.