Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [62]
Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That’s Buddhist morality.
Real morality comes from each individual, from each of us. Yet this isn’t an “I make my own rules, man!” morality. Morality has nothing whatsoever to do with rules—not my rules, not your rules, not Buddha’s rules. Real morality is based on a single criterion: right action, appropriate action, in the present moment and present situation. Doing what’s right in this moment is the only good there is, doing what is not right at this moment is the only evil. A war stops when people stop firing guns at each other. Treaties and ceremonies are just window-dressing. World peace happens when no one fires guns at anyone anymore.
You bring about world peace when you bring about peace within your own body and mind.
Man that sounds lame! I used to laugh out loud at that kind of thing and it still looks like a load of hippy-dippy crap when I see it written down. And yet, as it turns out, it’s also true. It’s what I’ve seen, based on my own experience in my own life. And it’s what you’ll see if you really take the time to look.
Real morality is based on seeing how the universe actually operates and avoiding doing those things that make ourselves and others miserable. It’s not that if we’re “bad” when we’re alive, we go to hell when we’re dead. It’s not that if we do wrong now, we’ll have “bad karma” recorded on some kind of cosmic accounting ledger and we’ll be spend our next life as a dung beetle. God is the source of you and you are the source of God. If you understand the natural law of cause and effect in your bones you naturally refrain from doing stupid things—because it all happens to you. You create the cause and you experience the effect.
There are people who think that they can do wrong and get away with it, even profit from it. It don’t work that way. This is always and inevitably the case. No one gets away with murder. No one gets away with anything. You can’t escape the consequences of your immoral acts any more than someone who drops a big-ass amp directly on his foot can escape having broken toe-bones. Your life and the life of everyone else in the universe are one seamless whole. To cause another living being pain isn’t evil—it’s just stupid. Because that being is you.
THE INTERESTING THING is that the more clearly you understand the law of cause and effect, the faster the law appears to operate—because in actual fact, cause and effect operate simultaneously. The cause is the effect. For the severely deluded, things may seem to take a very long time to have any effect. That’s why a successful thief thinks he’s gotten away with something. He hasn’t, he’s just too boneheaded to see what’s happening even now. The degree of your delusion determines how long it takes to notice the effects you’ve created.
Maybe you think you’ve got this down pat—you don’t, by the way, because it’s an ever-changing thing that can’t possibly be pinned down—but maybe you think you do. But what about those other people out there? What about the people in the Middle East who seem like they never will? What about gang members on the streets of Parma, Ohio? What can you do about them?
You want peace in the Middle East? Do what Nishijima did at the spry age of eighty-two, a month after the September 11th tragedies in 2001: Go to Israel and tell people about this stuff. And if the people you talk to won’t listen, go and tell somebody else. And maybe in a few decades, word will begin to spread. Or maybe it won’t. Treat the people you meet with kindness and respect. Go out and appreciate