Well, I'd say it's worrisome that we are adding another billion people every 12 years the last few decades, and it looks like we'll do it again over the next twelve years. So many of us are proving rather taxing on the earth. But at the same time who knows what's really going on here? Maybe there will be a huge catastrophic event which wipes out 5 or 6 billion people. In such a case, a giant population would be a God-send. So who knows? It's all perspective I guess. I hate to admit that. I mean I'd like to go on a good rant about the idiocy of man, and how ridiculous we are for not taking better care of the earth. Giant human populations=environmental degradation. According to me, to my limited mind, my limited knowledge, according to the simple logic of violent extraction of materials and ruthless modern gardening techniques, we are being pretty brutal to Mother Earth. It's not all roses and strawberries. But maybe she can handle it. Maybe we are just doing what we are supposed to.
According to the Teaching of Buddha:
"People cherish the distinction of purity and impurity; but in the nature of things, there is no such distinction, except as it rises from false and absurd images in their mind.
In like manner people make a distinction between good and evil, but good and evil do not exist separately.
People naturally fear misfortune and long for good fortune; but if the distinction is carefully studied, misfortune often turns out to be good fortune and good fortune to be misfortune. The wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.
Therefore, all the words that express relations of duality -- such as existence and non-existence, worldy passions and true-knowledge, purity and impurity, good and evil -- none of these terms of contrast in one's thinking are expressed or recognized in their true nature. When people keep free from such terms and from the emotions engendered by them, they realize Sunyata's universal truth. Just as the pure and fragrant lotus flower grows out of the mud of a swamp rather than out of the clean loam of an upland field, so from the muck of worldly passions springs the pure enlightenment of Buddhahood."
We've been mucking up the world for awhile now, so maybe we are really on our way to enlightenment and visions of the pure land, heaven on earth, Zion, and 7 billion human manifestations of the Creator caring for Mother Earth. That sounds nice. Just for today, the glass shall be half-full.
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