Introduction(8)

The current situation in the world is like this fruit. Many, many centuries of human development made this fruit. For a long time, this single blossom was only belief in some God or outside power. Then the fruit appeared and developed. But only one side ripened at first; only one side had a good color and good taste, while the other did not. This was the emergence of capitalism and communism in this world. Then recently the changes in this fruit have started to happen very quickly. Communism disappeared, and now the whole fruit is the same color. The fruit has become ripe, and has just one color and taste now: money. Nowadays, there is no longer any ideology for separate belief. The whole world only wants money, and everyone’s energy is going very strongly in that direction. This world has no true way – there is only the taste of money. Already many rotten spots have appeared: places like the Middle East, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, North Korea, even now in America, Russia, China, and Japan. Since the communist world broke apart, we see the emergence of many smaller groups and nations, all fighting each other. There is also the spread of many private armies and the routine buying and selling of weapons of mass destruction.

So human beings must soon wake up and find their original seeds, their original nature. But how do we return to our original nature? Around twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha had a very good situation. He was a prince named Siddhartha, and had everything he wanted. But he didn’t understand himself. “What am I? I don’t know.” In those times in India, the Brahman religion of Hinduism was the main religion. But Brahmanism could not give him the correct answer to his questions about the true nature of life and death. So Siddhartha abandoned the palace, went to the mountains, and practiced various spiritual austerities for six years. He found the Middle Way between self-indulgence and extreme asceticism. Early one morning, while meditating under the Bodhi tree, he saw a star in the eastern sky. At that moment – boom! – the young prince Siddhartha got enlightenment. He woke up, and became a Buddha. He attained I. This means that the Buddha attained the true nature of a human being without depending on some outs8de force or religion or god. That is the Buddha’s teaching.