What the Ancient Precepts Say

I’m often inclined to cite Buddhist teachings, however these ancient precepts predate Buddhism. How telling it is in this present time, in this country that is controlled by scoundrels, to witness how the ancient teachings are abandoned.

One of the most fundamental teachings, and one that is laid out in the Noble Fourfold Truths, is that suffering exists. Understanding that is the beginning of the process of reducing suffering.

Have you ever been to a place where the toilets were disgusting and filthy? Think of the feeling you had when, in need of relieving yourself, you enter a restroom only to find that it is appallingly dirty and unsanitary.

Now imagine living in a place where all the restroom facilities are always filthy and disgusting. Imagine every day of your life having to experience the disgusting filth and excrement splattered all over a restroom and having no other options.

Contrast that with living somewhere where the restrooms are very clean and sanitary. Think of the nice feeling you have when using such a restroom.

If you could distill the state of being between those two experiences and contrast them with one another, that is what I’m talking about. Forget the restrooms, focus on the states – the mental, physiological, and spiritual states of being that accompany those experiences.

Now examine and study those states. Why do those states exist? How did they arise?

Sadly, many if not most people are too ignorant to even think about this They are like a leaf being blown by the wind, with little or no real control of their destiny. The restroom may happen to be pristine and clean, or else filthy and disgusting. But there’s no understanding about it. No connection with causality.

Those are precisely the type of ignorant people in positions of authority in our society now, who are responsible for destroying it. They do not understand causality – oftentimes it is more than just ignorance – there’s a malevolent aspect to these people because they honestly don’t care what types of suffering are caused by their actions. They could care less that their actions result in the infliction of suffering on millions of people, so long as they or those they work for are gaining benefit.

As I was out walking and observing trash laying all around my neighborhood, I was thinking of this. I saw a trash bin overflowing with trash and a bunch of trash lying on the ground all around it. Recently I read that the city intends to purchase new, supposedly tamper-proof trash bins that cost $50,000 each.

If that isn’t an admition of failure I don’t know what is. Think about it. Go back to the restrooms: What is it ultimately that makes one place good and one bad? Is it the fault of the place?

Of course not. Ultimately, it is the people who use it that imbue it with either good or bad energy. It is not the restroom’s fault if people leave it filthy and disgusting, if there’s excrement spilled all over around the toilets and onto the floors, etc. It’s the fault of the people who use it.

The solution, if you want a good restroom that’s not filthy and disgusting, is to change the people.

If you went back in time 50 years or more in my city, there would not have been trash everywhere. They didn’t need $50,000 trash bins. Because the people who lived in the city were not disgusting litterers who treat the environment like shit.

What changed in the city was the people. The city has been invaded by a deluge of third worlders, mostly from China and Mexico but certainly many other places as well. These people think nothing of dumping trash anywhere. It’s sickening and appalling.

The people responsible for allowing this deluge to occur are guilty of causing injury to the people who must now live with this as part of the daily backdrop of life.

In thinking about the sanitation issue I remember the gripping narrative about one person’s harrowing experiences during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Isn’t it funny how, on television they almost always depict ‘minority’ groups in ways that are totally unrealistic and not based on actual life? They depict people who do not look like actual, common people and people in situations that are usually far removed from actual, common situations.

They are deliberately skewing reality and trying to cover up and hide certain very common aspects of reality while creating fictitious ones that have little if any bearing on actual reality. And these skewed depictions are exclusively directed and making certain racial groups appear different than reality.

Read Katrina Diary to see what reality is really like. Read what the sanitation was like inside the Super Dome.

In addition to Katrina Diary, read many other stories people have written – stories written by teachers in schools, stories written by nurses in hospitals, etc. Read what is really happening in reality – reality that is deliberately and concertedly being covered up by those who are happy to see everyone living in a sickening cesspool of filth, shit, abuse, and crime.

Some groups of people are fundamentally oriented towards existence in a way that ensures sanitation and wholesome environments, and others are not. That is reality on Earth, with so many different groups of people.

There are tribes of humans who have integrated within their way of living and being that causes them to build wholesome environments and be averse to creating unsanitary and unwholesome places. And there are other tribes of humans who have not done so.

Mixing the latter group with the former is fundamental violation of the former’s human rights.

If you want to make your reality better, you must start with the truth. But there are those who will attack you and oppose you for trying to do so, because in the process of doing so you must recognize and contend with the truth. And nothing is a greater threat to the evil tyrants in power than the truth.

On a final note, the states of reality I wrote about above – those extend even beyond the realm of humans. Those states also extend into animal realms. People have a false sense of security or smugness because, in this present lifetime, they happen to be humans and still have relative choice.

But there are realms of suffering which go much worse. And I believe that when a human being incurs the karma of causing this kind of suffering to other humans – by removing those people’s feelings of security, happiness, and wholesomeness in their environments – that they too in a future life will necessarily experience such a loss of security, happiness, and wholesomeness.

People may have been fortunate to have been born into a tribe of humans who have a mode of being that creates order and wholesome environments, yet out of ignorance or malevolence they may take that mode of being for granted and cause destruction and harm.

If, in this lifetime, you have a choice to either help others feel more wholesomeness and security, to make their environments more healthy and sanitary, or else out of evil and/or ignorance you remove that wholesomeness and security from people, in a future life you may not have that choice to make any more.

Such people forgot a very important lesson about existence. They forgot the millennia of struggle and long process of cultivation and self-realization that their ancestors achieved. And when they suffer the consequences of losing it, they will have to regain an appreciation for that lesson and why some humans evolved in the first place. Or they may simply fail to evolve, and Earth will remain a cesspool of shit and filth.