Religion means re-union to the Holy, wholeness and wholesomeness. Religious people have the special task to serve all to become wholly and wholesome. Thus only can we attain limitless life, beyond ephemeral vissisitude of life and death of material and social world.
On top of the traditional, universal life abd death problems, we are now facing the new global life-death problems. We hear “silent spring,” “our stolen future,” “the end of the world.” Towers were on fire and fell. “The world is on fire: the eyes, ears, noses, tongues, bodies and minds are on fire.” More than a hundred species together with their habitats are lost daily forever. Thus, we devour our ancesterŐs frames and our descendentŐs flesh. Familiar flowers and beautiful birds are endangered and extinct. “BirdsŐ fate today is humansŐ fate tomorrow.” This is only a symptom of the whole scale degradation and destruction of the global system wherein only known life system was originated and observed. Humans, only one species out of 30 million, are digging the burial grounds for all life forms. We must wake up and work together now!
Global life system wrought out in billions of years is now at critical terminal state due to the spread of cancerous civilization. The following globally intertwined problems are called global problematique:
This is only an abstract description of civilization system encroaching the ecological system with its Impact ( = Technology x Affluence x Population). Concretely we are doubling population, running out of food, oil, and natural recouces, polluting environment, poisoning life forms and debilitating functions in just a couple of generations. Global warming will reach 6 degree Celsius. This will raise sea level one meter in a few generations, submerging many island countries and coastal cities. This is called Third World War or Eternal War.
Inside the civilization system, parties and partisans wage wars, discriminating, exploiting and exterminating others. Rich-poor gaps are widening among and within nations. The lower 20% of world population lives below a dollar a day, poorly fed or starving, and the upper 20% consumes, thus pollutes, more than 80% fossil fuels, chemicals, military arsenal. One third of the world population is illiterate (half of adults and 2/3 of them women). Meanwhile military spending is a trillion dollars yearly, exceeding education or welfare. Only 10% of it could solve population, poverty, pollution and resource problems altogether. 2% of it could shift the world from military to peace system. Matters, medicines, powers and patents are monopolized. Earth, water and air are merchandised. Life is now the matter of money.
The global problematique originates from the global causes. Essentially, the source of suffering originates in our misunderstanding of “life.” Because of human artifices (conceptualization and civilization) we separate inseparable life system into inside and out, ego and environment, etc. Such separations are conventionally accepted, but are not reality ultimately. The life system is the infinitely interwoven one. Self and system are like fish or foam and sea. From the delusion of independent, eternal “self”, our attachment, discrimination, exploitation and extermination ( = five calamities, all suffering) arise.
The self (self-survival instinct) strive for matter and power (for physical and social success), creating three poisons of delusion, attachment and aversion. Provided with tools and languages, humans achieved the first Production Revolution (Farming Revolution first, 10 millennia ago) and Social Revolution (Urban Revolution first, 5 millennia ago), creating human civilization (=urbanization with walls of wars). Spiritual Revolution (Religion Revolution first, 2.5 millennia ago) incepted to overcome the five calamities of civilization (pyramidal structure with private property and power—appearance of wars, classes, slavery, etc.).
The second stages of the revolutions of matter, power and mind are Industrial Revolution, National Revolution and Global Revolution. The five leading institutions of the present civilization are nation states, corporations, media, schools and religions. Due to the survival instinct, these institutions are caught up in matter and power, or money buying them. Thus, selfish competition for mundane money and matter, rather than holy cooperation in life and mind, brought about the present global problematique. Globalization of human civilization through global material and informational flow are creating global crises in global life system to the global scale.
Fundamental scheme of civilization is the same pyramidal structure, either city states or nation states. Because the scale became so enormous, the last century became that of nationalisms and wars. Wars and terrorism (against other nations, species, environment) are basically to protect and promote selfish property and power. Taxes, even einstein hardly understood, and wars, which anyone scarecely accept, are two wings to fly and both sides of a coin. Other institutions are mobilized for this pyramidal private material and power schemes. Even religions become mortified by Mammon and Moloch. Sin means separateness from the holy, selfishness from the whole. Selfishness may claim justice and goodness privately, but never in the whole and wholesome system. Only selfless wholeness and wholesomeness endows truth and peace.
Religion must regain the wholeness and wholesomeness, returning to supra-mundane, i.e., beyond limited self, matter and power. Especially religions, which initiated Spiritual Revolution and aspired for the five blisses, must wake up from the dreadful dream and delusion in the universal truth (law of causation or dependent origination) and work up to the universal ethic (common ethical codes, now declared as the global ethic by all religions of the world to revere, restore, relate and regenerate life). In selflessness, religious people, holy ones, realize limitless life, light and love— great, mature and joyful minds.
If one is truly awakened in the limitlessly linking, enlightening and liberating life system, one realizes that everyone is responsible for everything. Then one serves, without reservation, for everyone and everything. Service should not be a slavery service to kings, but liberated awakening to the truth (naked kings) and masterŐs service to all for true peace and bliss. It is to liberate oneself and others from narrow knowledges and small selves.
Service in Sanskrit and Hindi is seva, dedication, practice and perfection. Service in Japanese, sewa, means to take good care of others, giving, not getting from others. Awakening beings save all beings first and the self last, well aware of the law of interdependent origination. Holy Way or Great Way is always with all to provide compassion and skillful means. Our ideals, not idols, are Maitreya, Messiah, Mitra or Mithra are “friends” in need and indeed. If not holy, or with all, it is not true religion. If not wholesome, truthful and peaceful, it is not genuine religion.
All holy people must not hold onto dogmas, the pointing fingers to the moon, rather than the pointed object (the bright full moon of truth and peace itself). They should not be shackled by doctrines limited in certain ages and areas. Dogmas divide; actions accord. So, we should see actuality, not artifice and activate truth, not tradition. We must penetrate through naked reality (naked kings, killing, etc.), not deluded by false ideas (fictitious robe, holy wars, covering “killing”.). Holiness allows no killing, stealing, lying, and sexual misconduct. All religions agree on these ethical principles, based on universal law of causation or dependent origination.
For easy memory and reminder I put these principles into 5 Ls as global ethical principles, and 5 Ss as global life principles:
| Law | Systemic |
| Life | Sustainable |
| Love | Saving |
| Liberation | Safe |
| Lielessness | Simple |
For global thinking (information flow) and global action (material flow) I propose 5 As and 5 Rs respectively:
| Access | Reduce |
| Assess | Reuse |
| Agree | Recycle |
| Act | Rearrange |
| Advise | Restore |
Recently an Italian scientist found “mirror neurons”. Through our cultivation, we verify our habituated (store-), selfish, dull and lazy consciousnesses purified as mirror knowledge, equality knowledge, observation knowledge and duty fulfilling knowledge. The Indra-net illustrate the universe as the network of limitlessly reflecting crystal balls on its knots. When purified, the entire world becomes a clear crystal ball. It is the mountain-river-great earth-mind, vast, free, and solid, unmoved by anything.
We must return from small self, reunite with the holy, and restart our limitless life in holy harmony. All religious pople must reunite with inter-net like the Indra-net, and other skillful means to make the entire world limitlessly illuminating, reflecting, and embracing and enlightening. Religious populations which compose the majority of the world can move the mountain, if only they become holy and wholly united. Let us make a “holy-net,” never horror-nets or holy-wars. Let us open our heart and original home of all for holy happiness! Let us serve all in limitless life for the warless world! In limitless life lies limitless luck!
—Ryokan
All are limitlessly interrelated, inter-responsive, inter-responsible. Thus all must serve all for better relations, regeneration and rejoice. Thus only holiness, harmony and happiness come true. Essential point is to awaken to and activate this, here and now with all limitlessly.
Paper for the 1st International Conference of Sai Foundations on World Peace Through Faith and Selfless Service. (Not read, but its gist presented with the stress of the paradigm shift required for "guiding (?) institutions.")
By Rosan Osamu Yoshida, January 14, 2002 C.E.