This video has been posted by Jampa, a Dutch Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition, who suggests that inner peace is the most solid foundation for world peace. His blog contains a thought provoking and interesting article by Claudia Sobrevila on Environmental Healing and World Peace.
Today, October 15, 2007 is Blog Action Day. In its inaugural year, bloggers around the web are uniting to write posts about environmental issues and we are proud to be joining in with the thousands of blogs across the blogsphere. It is estimated that the combined blog posts will be read by over 13 million people, which makes blogging a pretty powerful medium for change.
Man has been impacting the environment since first walking the earth but it seems to me that the most harmful actions occur when we try to gain personal advantage at the expense of someone else, or even at the expense of other creatures. Look at illegal logging, the environmental damage caused by massive dam projects or the current arguments about who controls the Arctic. Consider the arguments surrounding the Hawaiian Superferry project or global warming, whale hunting and over-fishing; you get the idea; the list of examples is endless, from cheap air travel to political zealots driven by greed.
The inference of the preceding observation is that we can perhaps do most good for the environment by avoiding the acquisition of personal advantage at the expense of someone else, or other creatures. Interestingly this is essentially the Buddhist creed, expressed by AmidaBuddha.org in their thought for the day, Lead a righteous life; lead not a base life. The righteous live happily both in this world and the next. - Buddha.
Easily said, hard to argue against, but even harder to live by.
An ancient cave, with 55 wall paintings that depict the life of the Buddha, has been discovered in Nepal, at its northernmost tip jutting into Tibet.
A team of scholars and climbers, Funded by adventure gear maker North Face and a US-based production house, stumbled upon the cave which had been preserved by the extreme cold and remained untouched for thousands of years, Nearby caves have piles of manuscripts in an ancient Tibetan script, which could provide information on Tibetan forms of Buddhism and possibly the history of Tibet, Mustang and even Nepal and India.
Organizers aim to re-create the pilgrimages that were popular prior to the Meiji Restoration, including trips to the Ise and Kumano areas of the region. It also aims to revive Japan's religious tradition of paying homage to both Shinto deities and Buddhist saints, a practice known as Shinbutsu Shugo, the syncretization of the two religions.
On completion the new route, dubbed Saigoku Shinbutsu Reijo (Shinto and Buddhist spiritual fields of Western Japan), is expected to connect about 100 temples and shrines of various sects. About 20 temples and shrines have already agreed to participate in the scheme. They include Hieizan Enryakuji temple in Otsu; Kongobuji temple in Koyacho, Wakayama Prefecture; Kinkakuji temple and Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto; Iwashimizu Hachimangu shrine in Yawata, Kyoto Prefecture; Horyuji temple in Ikarugacho, Nara Prefecture; and Sumiyoshi Taisha shrine in Osaka.
