Reversing Impurities

by Leong Tuck Yee

Today, impurities in human hearts are on the rise. Manifold, frighteningly. While half the world’s families survive on less than two dollars a day, man’s greed has led them to amass individual assets amounting to tens of billions. Man’s anger has grown to hate not only a nation but all the continents on earth. In modern warfare, killing was no longer about killing the whole enemy clan, but aimed at massacring millions of people without any discrimination for gender, faith or creed. In the race to dominate others, governments are willing to squander precious trillions to research and develop weapons so powerful that they can destroy planet Earth many times over, besides improvising excuses to make the usage appear legal, just and even compassionate.

Although no nuclear bombs have been used since 1945, the proliferations of such ‘unusable’ weapons have never slowed down. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the world currently has about 27,000 nuclear weapons with about 12,000 of them ready for use at any given time. It must be stressed, repeatedly, that some of these bombs are capable of wiping out whole cities, flattening concrete buildings and steel structures in a matter of seconds. In fact, in 2002 the US has dropped the 24-year-old pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. This means that US is free to employ nuclear weapons against any countries attacking it with Weapon of Mass Destruction, possibly leading the way to nuclear wars and ultimately the end of life on Earth.

The reason for such actions was clearly due to erroneous beliefs that the use of force is needed to deter the first nuclear attack from enemies and as a guarantor of peace - a kind of Roman peace. Centuries of victory and dominance have a way of warping man’s thoughts into believing that to ensure one’s prosperity and security, one need to oppress or control everyone else, instead of accepting the fact that mutually helping others would eventually benefit them in return.

Hence the race for stockpiling of these diabolical weapons continued and since these are ‘unusable’ like other conventional weapons, numerous other horrible weapons have been invented, all with a perverse mind to maim and kill as many and as quickly as possible. In fact, reading about these ‘great’ devices one is amazed at how far a human being’s ingenuity goes and how small human lives have been disrespectfully reduced. Agent Orange was used in Vietnam to drive the Vietcong out by killing the vegetations. Incendiary bombs such as napalm quickly set huge areas ablaze and suffocate enemies by consuming oxygen and creating huge volume of carbon dioxide. When napalm was banned by international bodies, MK-77, an equally horrendous version, was invented. White phosphorous generates heat up to a thousand degree Celsius, continuously burning the flesh down to the bone while poisoning the poor victims with it. There are also biological and chemical bombs but the most devastating one is undeniably Depleted Uranium (DU).

DU Is in Reality a Nuclear Weapon

A waste product in the process of producing enriched uranium, DU is both toxic and radioactive, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Used in shell, it can easily penetrate steel tanks. In addition it burns and spews tiny particles of uranium oxide into the air which can travel for miles in the wind.

Even one particle, when ingested or inhaled by humans, lodged in a vital organ can cause illnesses from headaches to cancer. Long term exposure to huge amounts of exposure, such as have been unknowingly suffered by the Gulf War veterans, have multiple cancers, kidney damage besides other strange and rare illnesses. They also have children born with birth or genetic defects, abnormal skulls, missing eyes and limbs, to name a few. Two thirds of all breast cancer deaths in US could be traced in people living within a hundred miles in the vicinity of nuclear power reactors. In view of this, DU can be considered a genocidal weapon. ¹

In 1991, an estimated 375 tonnes of Depleted Uranium were used and dumped on Iraq, and approximately 2200 tonnes were dumped in the war in 2003. According to Geophysicist Leuren Moret, the equivalent of atomic bombs released by the use of DU in Iraq in 2003 is 400,000 Hiroshima bombs! In 1996 the United Nations passed a resolution that DU weapons are WMD, beyond doubt a form of nuclear weapon.

Furthermore, Moret, an expert in atmospheric dust, also points out that vast regions around the world are contaminated with DU, without the world having to undergo a proper nuclear warfare. It takes only four days for DU to reach the US, carried by the winds and dust storms from the Sahara Desert. It is time to realise that soon - if not already now - DU will be all around us, faithfully accompanying us forever, throwing the whole world into a darker gloom.

While those weapons are ultimate embodiments of aggression and destruction of human life, they are man-made, products of man’s fundamental darkness. Hence, SGI President Ikeda, in the editorial of The Japan Times, says that “it cannot be beyond the power of human wisdom to eliminate them ... Peace is a competition between despair and hope, between disempowerment and committed persistence” ²

A committed and unshakeable persistence in choosing hope and trust in the preciousness of human lives is turning our thoughts from helplessness to hope, reversing the direction headed by impurities. Nichiren Daishonin writes in On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land, “Therefore, you must quickly reform the tenets that you hold in your heart and embrace the one true vehicle ... then the threefold world will become the Buddha land…” ³

“We are standing at a crossroad of life on earth,” Dr Lawrence E. Carter, Dean of the Martin Luther King Jr International Chapel at Morehouse College, USA pointed out. He spoke out about new superpowers - peace and non-violence - while urging us to initiate a consciousness of active non-violence globally, becoming ‘the ideal itself to transform the national presidencies and the political culture of prime ministries.’

Five Impurities

Also known as five defilements. They are the impurity of the age, of desire, of living beings, of thought (or view), and of life span. The ‘Expedient Means’ (2nd) chapter of the Lotus Sutra says, “The Buddhas appear in evil worlds of five impurities ... In this evil world of the five impurities those who merely delight in and are attached to the desires, living beings such as this in the end will never seek the Buddha way.”

1. Impurity of the age includes repeated disruptions of the social or natural environment.

2. Impurity of desire is the tendency to be ruled by the five delusive inclinations, i.e., greed, anger, foolishness, arrogance, and doubt.

3. Impurity of living beings is the physical and spiritual decline of human beings.

4. Impurity of thought, or impurity of view, is the prevalence of wrong views such as the five false views.

5. Impurity of life span is the shortening of the life spans of living beings. According to The Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra, the most fundamental of these five are the impurities of thought and desire, which result in the impurity of living beings and the impurity of life span. These in turn give rise to the impurity of the age.

[ Courtesy April 2007 Cosmic]

(1) Gabriel Cousens, M.D. Posted in War & Peace, News & Views, United Nations.
(2) COSMIC, February 2007, p 6.
(3) Nichiren Daishonin, (WND-1, p 25)