Have mercy on our souls.

And I'm an atheist.

This latest news regarding the "top kill" failing, further deepens my worry.

Some people think that the earth will exact some sort of revenge upon us in retaliation for our actions or inaction or whatever. It already has.

How?

By not doing a damn thing. The earth doesn't care about us. So, it does nothing. Anything horrible it could do to us, we are already doing to ourselves.

With this oil spill, what fish that survive this; will more than likely be uneatable.

Think about that. We just spoiled a huge fishing industry. A major source of food. A huge economic loss.

What the earth is doing can be summed up in the old phrase, "just keep feeding them rope".

The earth does what it does while we slowly hang ourselves.

I have never been of the belief that we would suffer in the after life due to what we do to ourselves. I have always believed, if there were an afterlife, we would suffer due to our crimes we commit against nature.

One could say, we are just as much a part of nature as is everything else, but there is the rub, we choose to pollute it. I have yet to see a tiger chug down a six pack and throw the empties out the window. (Although that would be pretty amazing to witness).

We befoul our land with our stupidity.

And the rope plays out.

Not to be mistaken for the superstitious Hindu form popularized here in the West. Bad mindset (in this case "greed", the grasping mind) causes stupid, short-sighted behavior which thus causes suffering, for us and for other lifeforms.

As a Buddhist myself, practicing a practical engaged form, I've thought about what karma means.

Karma literally means "action", that was its original meaning....It's not a magical thinking kind of thing that somehow, the bad things come back to us, but more like, the actions we take, the habits of thought that lead to such actions will harden with continued activity along the same path. So, results of the causes we make are assured and completely logical.

like Hiroshima -- People have said that created terrible karma, as if it were some magical phenomenon to be experienced at some unknown time in the future. Also, that karma is somehow unchangeable, once "created".

I see it more as, the mind set that created Hiroshima has thrived. The actions that proceed from such a worldview must, logically, reflect it. Greed, Anger and Stupidity -- the three poisons, which hold sway over most people in the world today, in the "defiled latter day of the Law". But, if we can change our actions, our words, our thoughts, the results we produce must therefore change, with visible response from our surroundings. As Buddhist teacher Daisaku Ikeda has famously said, "“A change in one person can change the destiny of all humankind.” And, "Through the power of strong inner resolve, we can transform ourselves, those around us, and the land in which we live."

Our society is firmly enmeshed in grapsing (consumerism), aversion (TERRA, TERRA!!!), and apathy ("Not my problem").

because of how the New Agers popularized Buddhism along with the cultural superstitions attached to the various traditions, the inherent secular-humanism of Siddhartha Gautama's teachings have been obscured by the theology-heavy intellectual terminology of the time, popular mythology, superstition, and philosophical dogma promulgated by latter practitioners. This has contributed to the popular misunderstandings of what Karma is.

On the flip side Buddhists developed a very accurate practical psychology that is being used more and more in psychotherapy here in the west. My interest in Buddhism actually originated from such "Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy".

And that self change leading to social and world change depends on committed daily efforts.

"Law of Cause and Effect
A most important premise in the Buddhist philosophy is that the course of one's life, generally called destiny is self-determined. Underlying this premise is the concept of karma, a resultant condition arising from the causes one make in life.

Buddhism teaches that the Law of cause and effect is a universal law underlying all phenomena in the universe. The causes and effects one accumulates in life covers not just the present lifetime but the three existences of past, present and future. This is Buddhism's view of eternal life.

Causes may be negative or positive, and they are accumulated through our thoughts, words and deeds. What we are now is the result of past causes made. By the same reason then, what will become of us depends on the causes that we are making now.

Besides, Buddhism also reveals the principle of simultaneity of cause and effect, though there may be a lapse of time before effect is manifest.

Thus, what matters most is the continued effort in laying positive causes, cherishing the present moment as the turning point in life."
http://www.ssabuddhist.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=62



Geez, how weird, the latest issue of SGI Quarterly (a Buddhist publication) that came out in April is focused on the ocean.

Living Oceans

Lord Howe Island, Australia <© David Doubilet>
As a metaphor for travel and trade, for the unknown and abundance, the oceans still hold an element of mystery, longing or fear for most of us. But as we become more aware of the effect we have on the environment, our understanding of our relationship with the oceans is changing.

more: http://www.sgiquarterly.org/feature2010Apr-1.html

archetypes, comprised of similarities in behavioral tendencies, are perpetuated or not by millions of individual behavioral choices and that, eventually, depending upon how well those archetypes adapt to reality, archetypes, souls if you will, either evolve to higher orders of functionality, or they become obsolete/extinct.

for hope but I don't feel any. I am sick in my heart forever.

My species wiping so many out forever has made me sicker than anything.

I knew disasters like this would get more and more frequent the next few decades but I didn't expect something this heartbreaking already. Some sensitive species in the Gulf won't make it.

So many mass extinctions on the earth have taken place in the past. The worst one took 95% of all living things, include the insects and yet here we are.

We are replaceable. ;)

And hopefully those new species will take better care of Earth than us humans have... I am very ashamed of what humans have done to this planet.

Well.....Maybe that really isn't an exactly true statement, since if this ended up being an extinction event, I somehow doubt the other 6 Billion people on this planet would allow the Death Of the Oceans to be the ultimate cause of Tony's exit from this planet.

They might have other plans.

I'll just leave it at that. :)

If the oil keeps flowing until August, could this really kill our oceans--thus
beginning a chain reaction of the end of life on Earth?

Maybe this should be a separate post, because I'd love to see vigorous discussion.
Supposedly, other oil spills have been worse and lasted longer. I see the current
devastation and the area it covers, and I can't imagine that our oceans could handle
even a month more of this spill, at this rate. It appears as if the entire oceans
of the world will be destroyed if we don't stop this within a month.

I'd love to hear others' opinions.

:-)

catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon gusher and it helps to mitigate the effects of climate change. Sooner or later, we're going to have to get off oil anyway. Production has been flat for five years and the numbers don't add up to it ever growing again. We have to break our addiction to oil. Now.

A spill of similar scary proportions hit (Perhaps in Saudi Arabia itself)

The government there had specially equipped tankers, and those tankers went in and sucked up all of the oil, so little in the way of ecological degradation occurred.

The tankers that can do this are not available for our oil spill, as they are all being used by industry for storing the oil that is pumped.

Oh well, I guess the people that really matter are expecting to be "raptured" out of this oily environment and on and up to a far better one.