Introduction(4)

This is not to say there is something wrong with animals. But when you look at this world you see that animals tend to act together only with their own species, and don’t like other animals. Dog-minds like dog-minds; they do not act with cat-minds. Snakes and lions and rabbits do not get along with each other. A snake-consciousness only follows other snake-minds, and has no compassionate action that can connect it with the suffering that someone else is experiencing. Birds also don’t like other species of birds, so they make groups of their own species and fly around together in these groups. If somebody attacks one of them, often the whole group will attack back. That is the nature of this animal-mind. The political situation in the world today is the same. We now live in a world filled with many smaller countries and political and ethnic groups-many with private militias-all fighting each other. Children become involved with guns and other forms of violence at earlier and earlier ages, doing things to other human beings which were unheard of just ten or twenty years ago.
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This all comes from having too much animal consciousness dominating our minds. Nowadays, many, many human beings are like this. They have some kind of animal consciousness inside, so there is a great deal more suffering because they cannot connect their consciousness to human life in a crowded world. Most people only look after their own interests. There is a greater tendency for some fighting-mind to appear. They only follow their own particular ideas and opinions, no matter what is going on around them. Something is out of balance, so naturally suffering appears.

I had one student in America in the 1970s who owned several exotic pet snakes. She loved these snakes very, very much. She would carry them around on her neck wherever she went. Many people were afraid of them, but she was very natural with these snakes. They would even sleep in her bed at night. One day, she came to the Zen Center. I asked her, “Will you sit the three-day retreat this weekend?”
“No,” she said.
“Why?”
“I cannot find someone to take care of my snakes. I love my snakes very much. But no one can take good care of them while I am at the Zen Center. So I cannot do meditation.”

Introduction(3)

For centuries, if a man wanted to eat meat, he went into the forest and shot maybe one or two animals with bow and arrow-piitchhuu! Then he went home and ate it with his family. This animal died. But there was some kind of relationship between the animal and the person who killed and ate it. Their karma was somewhat clear. When the animal died, it could perhaps understand a little of what was happening: “Oh, this man will eat me! Maybe next life I will get him!” so the karma was very simple: it was only between this one man and this animal. It could be resolved between them and eventually brought back to a balance through the simple operation of cause and effect. In the twentieth century, however, human technology has grown up too quickly. Many special guns and techniques have been created to kill a greater and greater number of animals. Every single day, millions and millions of animals are routinely and mechanically slaughtered all over the world just to satisy human beings’ desire-minds. Now one man pushes a button in a factory, maybe far away from the animals. When these animals die, many consciousnesses are suddenly and violently released from their dying bodies. These animals’ consciousnesses then wander around and around and around, looking for a new body. Where they go, they don’t understand.

The Buddha taught us that everything comes from primary cause, condition, and result. When so many millions of animals are killed this way every year, some of their consciousnesses are inevitably reborn as humans. Perhaps only 0.00001 percent become human beings, but that is still a lot of humans that have some kind of animal consciousness operating inside them. If you look at humans in this world nowadays, you see that while they may all have human faces and human bodies, their consciousnesses are not completely human. Some people have dog consciousness, some have cat consciousness. Others have rabbit consciousness or snake consciousness. Cow minds, pig minds, chicken minds, lion minds, tiger minds, and snake minds are all mixed together. Most people live with perhaps five or ten percent of our original human consciousness functioning inside them and the rest is some animal consciousness controlling their mind. Instead of having the original human capacity for love, cooperation, and compassion, people nowadays only fight with each other and with this world. They cannot do correct together-action with other human beings.

Introduction(2)

So nowadays it is very important that human beings wake up. They must soon attain their correct job. Why do you live in this world? What are you doing in this world? When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Everybody says, “I don’t know.” That is a human being. Human beings think that human beings are very clever animals. But despite all their intelligence, if you look closely at what has happened in the world you see that human beings are actually the stupidest animals, because human beings don’t understand human beings. A dog understands what a dog should do, and cats understand what cats should do. All animals understand their job and only do it. But we don’t understand our correct job and correct way in this world, and instead we live only for ourselves. So meanwhile time passes, everybody gets old and dies. When you die, where do you go? Despite all their intelligence and cleverness, human beings don’t understand the answer to this very important question.

If we want to understand ourselves and help all beings get out of suffering, we must first understand where this world’s suffering comes from. Everything arises from our minds. Buddhist teaching shows that everything comes from primary cause, condition, and result. This means that some primary cause, when it appears under a certain condition, will always produce a certain result. So what is the reason for so many human beings appearing in this world, and what is the result of it? Why is there so much suffering, and why does it seem to increase every day? Perhaps the most important reason for such a dramatic increase in the amount of suffering in this world is the increase in the amount of meat-eating that humans do. Before World War 11, human beings did not eat so much meat. In Asia, people have always generally eaten meat only on special occasions, perhaps only twice a year, on one of the major holidays. Nowadays Asians eat meat sometimes several times a day. The same has been true in the West for generations. This century has seen a very big increase in the amount of meat-eating on the planet. But how is this connected to the dramatic increase in suffering all over the world?

introduction(1)

Zen Master Seung Sahn. 1997. The Campus of Zen (Shambhala:Boston)

Introduction
Where are you going?

A long time ago, the world was a very simple place. Nowadays this world is very complicated. The main reason for this is that there are too many human beings living on this planet. The human population has increased far too rapidly. In 1945 there were some two billion people living in this world. Through thousands and thousands of years of human history, only two billion people appeared on earth, and that was enough. Compared to today, people’s minds were relatively simple and clear. But in just the last fifty years since the end of the Second World War, three billion more people have appeared, and now human beings have become very complicated. Today there are nearly six billion people in the whole world, and some scientists say that in the next thirty years another three billion people will appear. There facts are directly connected to the sudden increase in the amount of suffering that humans and other beings are now experiencing. Let’s look at this more closely.

Nowadays humans live more closely together, so their relationships have become more complex. Their desire for material things becomes deeper and stronger. Their thinking is more complicated, their lives are more complicated, and consequently there is much more suffering than ever before. Even the kinds of suffering in the world have become more complicated as humans come up with new weapons and new ways of hurting each other. Human beings not only make each other suffer. Nowadays, we bring much more suffering to all of the other beings in this world. We hurt the air, the water, the grass, the trees, everything. Human beings cut down whole forests, and take away the green belt. We pollute the water, the air, and the ground. Human beings always say they want freedom, but actually they are the number one dictators in this world.