Repair (Heal) Your World

Dear all I just wrote this email to my Sangha, i.e. the group of people who I practice with at my local Buddhist Centre and I want to share it with everyone. Everything "private" in it is about me and my thinking, so I am happy to share it. The "Bodhisattva Project" is a program that the Kagyu Buddhist Centre in Kenilworth, Cape Town, started in 2010. Some of us have stuck it out and are in our sixth year. Some people have left and come back. Some new people have arrived and some have gone on other journeys. There are two ways to achieve Enlightenment. One way is the path of the Arhat. The Arhat's path is to achieve enlightenment for their own sake, although I must say that them being enlightened has a profound effect on the world. The other way to achieve Enlightenment is the path of the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva makes a commitment to achieve Enlightenment in order to help others. The Bodhisattva achieves enlightenment or Nirvana and then returns to ...

No electricity for several hours or longer could lead to no water (water is pumped using electricity) and no petrol and diesel (petrol and diesel are pumped using electricity and are made using electricity). This will lead to hunger. Then violence. Isn't it about time that people took responsibility for their own electricity, water, food, sewerage provision, just like our grandparents used to do? My grandmother lived in Bantry Bay when it wasn't so expensive as today. She collected rain water. She had a septic tank and French drain for sewerage. She had hardly any waste because nappies and all that kind of stuff was recycled. And she had hardly any plugs in the house. Things got done. Cheaply. And she had time for holidays and all that kind of thing. Then along came the government and said they could do all these things for her cheaper. And they did for about 40 years, and then once they had us all by the short and curlies, the government became a business, the biggest of t...

Yesterday an 8 year old domestic servant's child died in a friend of a friend's pool. She couldn't swim. Only the domestic servant and her child were in the house. Who is responsible for this accident? The pool? The child? The mother? The owners of the house? The Government? Legislation? Who? As far as we know, the domestic worker is blaming the home owner, but even if the pool had a fence, the child would have been tall enough to open the special hook on the gate. We have a swimming pool. Our pool is surrounded by walls. When we have guests we ensure that someone is watching the pool at all times. Or we keep the house gates locked and we keep everyone inside. As it is our house gates are locked most of the time, so no one can get to our pool unless they climb over a wall. We don't have a net. And even if we did, the child could get tangled in it and still drown, whilst the parent fumbles around trying to untangle the kid from the net. So much easier to just dive ...