The Buddha teaches filiality as nature's first law. The Buddha speaks truth, with principles older than time itself. Old age is a natural badge of honor. But in the younger generation, being old is often viewed as a crime.

"Can you imagine us years from today,
sharing our park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy."
		--Simon and garfunkel

Until this century, old people lived among their kin, big families held together. Youth honored, and respected the wisdom and experience of elders. Divorces were few, runaway children were fewer, suicides and alcoholism rare. The family absorbed the stress and confusion of life. People lucky enough to have their seniors alive enjoyed happiness, blessings and a sense of belonging sadly lacking in the contemporary, alienated world.

But all creatures fear death and prefer the dream of immortality. Science and materialism give people new solutions to the riddle of impermanence for the first time in history. "No deposit, no return"; throw away the old; hide grandparents in the senior's home. We replace anything that wears out, including old people. We toss out jobs, mates, hearts, and kidneys as easily as changing T.V. channels.

Filiality is forgotten in a graceless scramble for eternal youth. Growing old in the twentieth century is an unpardonable sin. "Everyone for himself" has become a universal disease. We preserve the ego and repair it's failing, leaking, body-shell. We ignore the signs everywhere shouting: "wake up! A tree that cuts its roots cannot stand long."

Buddhists face aging and death with an even mind. Nature's cycles revolve in perfect harmony. Who would feel complete in a y ear without winter?

"To everything turn, turn, turn: there
is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a
time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, at time to die..."
		-- Ecclesiastes

It's time we restored the dignity of old age, time to rescue our elders from solitary confinement at the senior's home. Filiality is nature's first law.

Meat and Disasters

Heng Sure

"When one merely studies but does not
cultivate the Dhama, it is like con-
cocting an efficacious medicine without
curing one's own sickness."
		-- Avatamsaka Sutra
"Bodhisattvas ask for Clarification chapter."

One of the best analogies for the Buddha dharma is medicine and health. Here are a few of the ways to explore the comparison:

-The Buddha is the healthiest being alive. When you get enlightened to the Buddha's Wisdom, you take on the Buddha's healthy body, the indestructible body of dharma.

The Avatamsaka sutra describes a state of ultimate health. Most of us are sick but don't realize it. Once we get sick of being sick and begin to cultivate, the dharma medicine brings us back to health. Then we can see how sick we were.

To illustrate, I spent the first three months on the pilgrimage purging my body of foul garbage. It ran out all my holes almost beyond to cultivate but I recognized it as a healing process. What was flowing out of me were the poisons accumulated over years of bad habits. Determination to fulfill my karma in the way carried me through this dark time. The coarser sickness has now been purged. I'm fighting the subtler effects of illness of selfish greed, hatred and stupidity every day now.

-Don't tolerate being sick. It is not the natural state. The dharma is the road to recovery. You have to walk it yourself. You have to heal it yourself. The walking is the healing.

-The bodhisattva is the supreme medical student studying and applying the cures for the ultimate health of all beings. He has passed his boards and is doing a prolonged internship throughout the dharma realm, before receiving his degree of Annutara-Samyak-Sambodhi.

-The first year of the pilgrimage feels like pre-med studies. Learning the fundamentals, cleaning up the told kit, studying the diseases firsthand, curing ourselves. Purging the yin, building the yang, preparing to focus on health.