the world may be rotten

Zen Master Seung Sahn would often lecture that many people were speaking about the end of this world. As we are becoming more aware we are beginning to realize that perhaps there are too many human beings on this planet. We are also bearing the fruit of all our human impact and we have done much to throw this world out of balance. It seems as if there are more crazy people appearing and the world situation is going from bad to worse. With such enormous populations and many Governments, Religions and Ideologies that are strongly holding onto their opinions, conditions, and situations, there seems to be constant friction between these very large entities. If we don’t learn how to open our minds, World Peace will not be possible, and in the future, many people will continue to die at alarming rates.


Zen Master Seung Sahn pointed out that in 1950 there were about 2.5 billion people on this plant. He reminded us that whatever your world view about the appearance of humans, which might be as short as 10,000 years or as long as 2 million years, that from that time until 1950 only 2.5 billion people had appeared. In retrospect if we look at the world population right now, at the beginning of 2010, the population has reached more than 6.8 billion people. This means that in only 60 years the population has increased by more than 4.2 billion people which is a 2.7 fold increase in this very short time period. Some estimates are that we may reach a population of 9 billion by the year 2050.


We human beings have done much to take all we can and give back very little to this world which sustains us. Zen Master Seung Sahn was fond of saying that “human beings are number-one bad animal”. We have polluted the earth, the water, the air, leaving us with a highly questionable future. A lot of this stemmed out of the Industrial Revolution which began in England in the last 18th Century. As Western Societies gained more control over their environments we gave little regard for the abuse we were creating within our environment. Animals understand their jobs, dogs do dog things like chasing bones, cats usually run away from dogs, the animal kingdom used to have a balanced hierarchy until humans started manipulating the environment. Of course, we in the West are becoming more aware and are trying to regulate and control the damage that we have begun. On the other side of the equation, because of the life style we live, other large segments of the world are now aspiring to become Westernized and enjoy the same luxuries that we have come to expect. China and India, as they try to move their very considerable populations towards economic independence, are now repeating the mistakes that we in the West have made. We are also feeding their industrialization by consuming more and more of the products that we somehow need to feed our lives.


Zen Master Seung Sahn sometimes used the following analogy. This situation can be likened to the maturation of a fruit. In the beginning there is flower which blossoms on the tree; eventually, the petals fall away and the small fruit appears on the end of the branch. As the fruit begins its transformation it has a pleasant color, but is still not fully matured. As the fruit ripens the colors begin to fade, but is now ready for us to eat, and it has a wonderful fragrance. If the fruit is left on the branch it eventually will rot, and at this stage we won’t eat the fruit. Finally the fruit will fall off the branch and if it lands on fertile soil, the remains of the rotting fruit will help the seeds inside the fruit to sprout and grow roots. This means that a bad situation is a good situation. If we can see our mistakes, we can begin again. If we don’t see our mistakes we may be in for a lot of problems ahead. As the great Chán Master Báizhàng once said, “cause and effect are clear!”


In the early 1970’s Bhutan's then King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, opened the borders of Bhutan to the West, and set about trying to enter into the modern world. So Bhutan set up Government Ministers to move the country forward. During this process they started to adapt certain Western Style measurements which included “GDP” or “Gross Domestic Product.” They soon realized that they would always be last, so the King wanted to measure something a bit more meaningful for his country. The King decided to replace the measurement of GDP with the measurement of “GNH” or “Gross National Happiness” and this was developed in an attempt to define an indicator that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than gross national product or GDP. He used the phrase to signal his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's unique culture based on Mahayana Buddhist spiritual values. At first offered as a casual, offhand remark, the concept was taken seriously, as the Centre for Bhutan Studies, under the leadership of Kaarma Uru, developed a sophisticated survey instrument to measure the population's general level of well-being.


If we can begin to look at what it means to be happy, outside of our consumer economy, perhaps we can begin to grow again and make positive changes that flow in harmony with our innate humanity.