Engaging Life

         I have been concerned for a long time now about caring for the environment, and ensuring a place for our children where they will be able to survive. Even just caring for the environment for natures sake, if it has nothing to do with us. I have run into frustrations with the knowledge that I am only one person, and being disheartened with the understanding that there must be an entire paradigm shift in thinking in order for the state of the world to change. However, I haven't before been able to comprehend a method for that change of thinking to materialize.

         I did some reading on engaged Buddhism, in which mindfulness is practiced during all daily actions. It is a difficult concept to understand, as it cannot be broken down into specific steps. As far as I can discern, it is a state of being, of truly recognizing and having the ability to recognize everything around us, and the impact on our lives and the lives of all things that surround us. I recognize that through this sort of action, change could be made. Peace could be found. We need recognition of our similarities rather than the differences between us, and the interconnectedness of us all.

         Nothing is born, and nothing dies. Everything comes from something, and becomes something else. A flower is not simply a flower, but also a cloud, the sun, some water and soil; everything that makes it possible to be a flower. The conditions are right at that moment for the flower to be manifested as a flower.

         I don't think that there is an after life in the sense most view one. No heaven or hell that we magically go to once we die. I think living our daily lives in the current state of being in which we have the ability to have consciousness, we can choose heaven or hell. They are both inside of us, and it is through our choices that we experience one or the other.