Prayer to protect the earth by one of the Dudjom Tulkus

[gnegirl]

http://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/An_Aspiration_To_Protect_The_Earth:_by_Dudjom_Yangsi_Rinpoche

[Aemilius]

I've read the prayer. I find it ambiguous & disappointing, what does he intend to ask for ? -that we could continue as before, and then pray that the consequences of our actions would disappear ?

[Aemilius]

To explain it better what I meant with "ambiguous", the prayer says: "the polluting fumes of some electricity generating technologies". Here is ambiguity because you don't know whether it means coal-fired power stations or nuclear power stations? Both can be harmful to the atmosphere, depending on the level of technology used, ( and on unpredictable factors).
Also, are we praying for diminution in electricity consumption and thus also in electricity production? Or something else ? That isn't quite clear.

[gnegirl]

It could be a bad translation, we dont have the original tibetan....

[Aemilius]

I think that the prayer is very interesting, in another line it says: " when the world and its inhabitants are nearing dissolution". Does this mean the dissolution phase of a tantric visualisation ? I.e. that the world and its inhabitants is our visualisation ? And that we can dissolve it to emptiness? That is indeed amazing!

[username]

http://www.ecobuddhism.org/wisdom/inter ... ema_zhepa/

http://www.khoryug.com/

[Aemilius]

The interviewer of Yangsi Dudjom is slightly off, the answers are good, but the tone of the interviewer is hysterical. You can look to the history of planet earth and see how there have been different epochs, and at the end of each epoch there has been a massive extinction event, after which life renews itself and a new epoch begins, see for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93T_boundary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

Personally I believe that there have been human cultures for a very long time on planet Earth, like buddhism and hinduism traditionally teach. This means human cultures on past epochs that have been destroyed completely. There are not much traces of these, or the evidence of them has been systematically ignored.

[username]

He is not mechanical on issues of many millions dying like some with limited knowledge, but compassionate.

[caveman]

I think that the prayer is very interesting, in another line it says: " when the world and its inhabitants are nearing dissolution". Does this mean the dissolution phase of a tantric visualisation ? I.e. that the world and its inhabitants is our visualisation ? And that we can dissolve it to emptiness? That is indeed amazing!

You were born in this dream, you live in this dream, you will die in this dream, you will be reborn in this dream etc etc etc.

Until one day you realize that this dream you live in is not even your dream.

Shechen Kongtrul Rinpoche told Trungpa Rinpoche when asked about enlightenment, "There is no enlightenment, this is it".

You are a "TULPA", no more and no less.

A Buddha knows he is a "TULPA" and we don't.

[kirtu]

The prayer follows a particular pattern (a literary formula) but is operating at different levels. It begins with a homage to his guru and by extension to Guru Rinpoche, there is a prayer for blessing, it highlights the dangers that we face and delivers a pointed teaching of the disruption of the elements and the disastrous consequences that will then ensue, it raises an aspiration and esp. for blessings from the deities and protectors, and concludes with a dedication for the happiness of all beings. It's also a kind of inner teaching as well. It was written to reflect this outer and inner structure.

The dissolution part is talking about the death of beings and the destruction of the environment. It's very straightforward in that line.

It's a heartfelt plea to wake people up.

Kirt

[Aemilius]

The prayer follows a particular pattern (a literary formula) but is operating at different levels. It begins with a homage to his guru and by extension to Guru Rinpoche, there is a prayer for blessing, it highlights the dangers that we face and delivers a pointed teaching of the disruption of the elements and the disastrous consequences that will then ensue, it raises an aspiration and esp. for blessings from the deities and protectors, and concludes with a dedication for the happiness of all beings. It's also a kind of inner teaching as well. It was written to reflect this outer and inner structure.

The dissolution part is talking about the death of beings and the destruction of the environment. It's very straightforward in that line.

It's a heartfelt plea to wake people up.

Kirt

I understand what you say about the dissolution line, what I mean is that so far nothing like a real catastrophe has occurred, when you compare it to the ancient castrophes that started new archeological eras by finishing the previous era.
If say 10 000 or 100 000 humans get killed or starve to death, it doesn't have much effect on the level human population on this planet.
Although such things as hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes etc are termed "catastrophes" they do not give us an idea about the size of the events that wiped out most of the living creatures on planet Earth. And even after these the life starts anew from a scratch ! And is not dissolved totally.
It is premature to speak about "a dissolution" at this point of history, when nothing like a real catasrophe has occurred.

[gnegirl]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

[Aemilius]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

I don't get what you mean. As Individual human beings we are going to die with or without climate change. Climate change doesn't alter our nature as impermanent individuals, impermanent creatures.
In a longer perspective there is human population as nations and states, that have a continuity beyond what indivual humans have. Human population can and will adapt to environmental changes, sudden changes and gradual changes. This has been occurring for 100 million years. Climate has been changing most of time, in historic and prehistoric times. There is nothing new in that, the outer world is not stable nor constant. So where is the problem? I can't see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

[gnegirl]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

I don't get what you mean. As Individual human beings we are going to die with or without climate change. Climate change doesn't alter our nature as impermanent individuals, impermanent creatures.
In a longer perspective there is human population as nations and states, that have a continuity beyond what indivual humans have. Human population can and will adapt to environmental changes, sudden changes and gradual changes. This has been occurring for 100 million years. Climate has been changing most of time, in historic and prehistoric times. There is nothing new in that, the outer world is not stable nor constant. So where is the problem? I can't see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

Again, wikipedia is your expert source? Really?

[Dechen Norbu]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

I don't get what you mean. As Individual human beings we are going to die with or without climate change. Climate change doesn't alter our nature as impermanent individuals, impermanent creatures.
In a longer perspective there is human population as nations and states, that have a continuity beyond what indivual humans have. Human population can and will adapt to environmental changes, sudden changes and gradual changes. This has been occurring for 100 million years. Climate has been changing most of time, in historic and prehistoric times. There is nothing new in that, the outer world is not stable nor constant. So where is the problem? I can't see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

For one, human civilization depends much more on technology today than ever before. If this fails, humans who don't know how to survive without it will drop like flies. We aren't particularly biologically well adapted to dramatic changes as we are quite frail organisms. Dramatic climate changes bring about natural disasters of biblical proportions. That alone will kill hundreds of thousands. Extinction? Perhaps not. Millions of dead, for sure. If you can't see the problem, perhaps you should go to the optometrist .

[Aemilius]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

I don't get what you mean. As Individual human beings we are going to die with or without climate change. Climate change doesn't alter our nature as impermanent individuals, impermanent creatures.
In a longer perspective there is human population as nations and states, that have a continuity beyond what indivual humans have. Human population can and will adapt to environmental changes, sudden changes and gradual changes. This has been occurring for 100 million years. Climate has been changing most of time, in historic and prehistoric times. There is nothing new in that, the outer world is not stable nor constant. So where is the problem? I can't see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

Again, wikipedia is your expert source? Really?

I think the article is good and comprehensive, if you can read german here is also a good one http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-51449044.html, I see no reason to be sarcastic about the Wiki article !

[gnegirl]

Wikipedia is not reliable because anyone and their first cousin can edit the articles in most cases, causing them to have a serious bias and reliability issue.

Citing a single wiki article as a source is problematic at best.

[kirtu]

No disasters eh?

Human-induced climate change anyone?

I don't get what you mean. As Individual human beings we are going to die with or without climate change. Climate change doesn't alter our nature as impermanent individuals, impermanent creatures.

Human impact is changing the climate directly and at a faster rate than the environment can react to. The Siberian permafrost is melting and in some years does not freeze over in some places where it had been frozen during the winter for hundreds of years. Human pollution is killing coral and is hostile to our oceans generally. Arctic summer sea ice has consistently been diminishing since 1979 and will likely disappear totally within 20 years (the upper date on this prediction used to be the end of the century and isn't even bothered with anymore). Polar bears who are dependent upon Arctic sea ice are dying off by drowning. Polar bear fertility is also dropping in part because these animals evolved to mate on the ice (they for sure cannot adapt to the situation). I could go on.

Most scientists are agreed that climate change is a fact. We have slowly been accumulating hard facts on climate change since the 90's. Unfortunately as a process is occurring the evidence can be controversial. We also have not been maintaining direct climactic observations for more than 150 years and white people in particular are loath to accept regional/tribal/local climactic wisdom (seriously - farmers and fishers and waterpeople collectively do not know what they are doing? Get real) and are apparently loath to accept clear evidence of previous climatic collapse. Previous evidence of climactic collapse also gives some naysayers room to doubt the seriousness of this current climatic change.

The only viable alternative to human induced climactic change is climactic change caused by a change in the Sun. This is possible, even probable but the only study I have read about that addresses this directly has indicated that changes in solar output cannot account for the dramatic changes seen. The basic cause is humans dumping tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that cannot be absorbed primarily by plant life. This leads to a cycle where the planet is rapidly warmed and excess carbon is absorbed in the oceans leading to ocean acidification.

In Hawaii when I was a boy my family marveled at some very white coral that we could see in one particular bay. It had to be explained to us that coral bleaching is a bad, bad thing and was thought to be a result of water pollution generally. It is actually caused by rising water temperature. Since Hawaii is itself so warm, no one thought to check the surrounding water temperature. In some bays the water is warm on top but if you dive just 20 feet down it can be cold. This change at Haleiwa Beach went unnoticed because mostly tourists or short term residents snorkel there - the surfers are at a different part of the bay totally across the bay from the snorkeling area and the old time residents come to a slightly different part of the bay to harvest seaweed. Surely someone did notice (maybe Save our Surf) but this went unheeded until too late. At one point I had heard that much of the coral in the bay had been bleached.

Kirt

[gnegirl]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

NOAA's link to FAQ's about Climate Change/Global Warming.

[Aemilius]

Human impact is changing the climate directly and at a faster rate than the environment can react to. The Siberian permafrost is melting and in some years does not freeze over in some places where it had been frozen during the winter for hundreds of years. Human pollution is killing coral and is hostile to our oceans generally. Arctic summer sea ice has consistently been diminishing since 1979 and will likely disappear totally within 20 years (the upper date on this prediction used to be the end of the century and isn't even bothered with anymore). Polar bears who are dependent upon Arctic sea ice are dying off by drowning. Polar bear fertility is also dropping in part because these animals evolved to mate on the ice (they for sure cannot adapt to the situation). I could go on.

Kirt

I agree with you wholly, Der Spiegel article says that the human induced climate change was first predicted by a swedish Nobel Prize winner in his speech back in 1880's, and that they collected data for it already in the early part of 1900's !

You could form the aspiration-prayer that: "May the CO2 production on this planet decrease, may its producers decrease! May the trees that consume CO2 grow and may they increase in number! etc..."
I don't think you can put anything "that people shall be happy" in this aspiration prayer, the opposite would be more appropriate: "That they be depressed to the bone, that they decrease in number, that they decrease in industrial productivity! etc..." an other kind of wishing prayer would be self-deception,