by Nikkyo Niwano

This essay is part of a continuing series of translations from a volume of inspirational writings by the founder of Rissho Kosei-kai. DHARMA WORLD will continue to publish these essays because of their lasting value as guidance for the practice of one's daily faith.

Since the start of the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century, humankind has been eagerly pursuing material progress. We see evidence of the meteoric rise of this development everywhere, from the worldwide growth of the manufacturing industry to the rapid developments in modern means of transport that support it. Machines have taken over most of our hard labor, and even housework now requires only half as much time and effort as it once did. But we must not for a moment believe that all of this equates with happiness.

The distribution of wealth is as unbalanced as ever, people around the world continue to suffer deprivation and die of hunger, and disputes stemming from materialistic interests continue to feed the flames of war. Even in Japan, which had never before seen the prosperity it experienced following World War II, many people are still not benefiting from it, and large numbers continue to lose their lives in traffic accidents and suffer the debilitating effects of environmental pollution. Society is plagued by eruptions of irrational violence, and more and more people experience vague feelings of dissatisfaction and irritation. Is this really a happy life for human beings?

Since the dawn of the human race we have constantly striven to find ways of improving the quality of our lives. Especially in our present age, we have chased after the notion of a higher standard of living leading to a happier life and have stopped at almost nothing to achieve it. Yet despite all of our sweat and toil, why is it that we have ended up with the sorry state of affairs we see around us today? Why are the fruits of all of our efforts so different from what we expected?

I am sure there are countless ways of approaching this difficult question, but personally I feel it has much to do with the fundamentally flawed belief that human beings can buy happiness based on the quantity and cost of the things we own.

Human beings most certainly cannot achieve true happiness on that basis. Rather, it is the quality of our way of life and the spiritual richness within our hearts from which we derive real happiness. After a long history of struggling through trial and error, it appears that more of us are finally coming close to understanding this. We have now reached a peak in attaching value to the number of things we possess and have begun to learn the futility of this. We are seeing that amassing possessions does not bring us happiness after all and are beginning to change our thinking about the way we should live.

Humankind is urgently in need of a spiritual revolution. It has been said that nuclear warfare would bring about the end of civilization, but it is now becoming clear that a more sinister threat to life on our planet is in the making, one that we are forging with our own hands. We are destroying the natural environment and hastening the dangers of climate change, and matters are getting worse and worse by the day.

Underlying this is the view that seems to be popular among many in the West that all things exist to be put into the service of human beings. What naturally arises from such an attitude is the belief that everything that is not human, whether living or not, can be limitlessly utilized and expended in the name of human progress and happiness. In turn this gives rise to the economic theory that we should strive mightily to avoid extreme labor, mass produce things at as little cost as possible, consume such things to our heart's content, and revel in our newfound prosperity. One result of this was the production of and long dependence on strong pesticides to support the mass cultivation of crops, but until almost too late we failed to heed the signs of the damage they were doing to insects and birds that are beneficial to human beings, and of their threat to human health.

We face a crisis of major magnitude, and now more than ever we need a spiritual revolution. This, I believe, has to involve the complete acceptance of the Buddhist tenet "All things are devoid of self." That is, in all the vastness of our universe, not one thing exists independently of any other; nothing has any separate self-nature. All things come into existence through an interplay of causes and conditions and are bound to one another in an immense chain of interdependence. In other words, everything exists sustaining and being sustained by everything else. To put this in human terms, we are living through the nourishment and support of everything else in the universe.

When we come to recognize this truth, when we humbly awaken to the fact that we are being "sustained to live," that is when the human race will take its first real step forward and appreciate the true value of life. That is how our spiritual revolution will begin, with that first step.

Consider the precious oxygen we breathe and depend on to live. The supply of the planet's oxygen would soon run out if trees and plants did not fortunately constantly keep producing it for us. In fact, just as we breathe the oxygen they exhale, so they live by breathing the carbon dioxide we expire. We need to realize that human beings are an intrinsic part of nature and that our continued existence depends on our being in harmony with it. That is why it is wrong to harbor such basically immoral concepts as that it is our role to conquer or master nature. Rather, we should recognize that we live as part of nature and under its auspices.

The Shinto tradition in Japan holds that myriad deities surround us. Just as there are the gods of stones and trees and rivers, there are gods for fire and wind to be revered. But until recently when we have spoken of these things to people from Western countries, who are only familiar with monotheistic beliefs, they have tended to laugh at the idea, regarding it as nonsense and mocking it as primitive.

However, since we have begun to realize that we are living in a world with strict finite limitations, we also have come to understand the firm principle that all things possess lives of their own and that it is possible to either increase or reduce their number depending on actions that we may take. Thus, we know from a scientific standpoint that if we continue polluting and otherwise harming the natural environment as we are now, we will hasten the destruction of our planet. As we begin to appreciate that we are close to the point of no return, we can start to fully understand the way in which all sentient beings in our universe share and value the great gift of life. An ongoing failure to recognize this fact can only lead to our world's ruin.

As I reflect on this situation of our times, I recall the Japanese adage "Even plants and natural things can become buddhas." This idea developed from the Buddha's teaching that all sentient beings are endowed with the buddha-nature, but it also incorporates a Japanese way of thinking. The Buddha's original idea can seem to some people as favoring human beings, whereas the modified Japanese saying emphasizes nature in its wide entirety, teaching us to treat all things with friendliness and fellow feeling.

Unless people throughout the world begin to embrace this type of thinking, there will be no end to our environmental problems, so unless we act against pollution and environmental destruction with the type of thought reflected in Japanese Buddhism, the threat to the continued existence of the human race will increase. It is in times like these, it seems to me, that the long-held Japanese belief in myriad deities can assume renewed importance.