Earth...home...and heaven or hell?

[Goldensilence]

Why is it that Earth can be seen as hell so easily? Given the direction we have taken it I can see that. But we are only following scripts written by man. That Earth is not good enough for heaven. That Heaven is out there and could never be here. That almost everything is a enemy of man. We've leveled quite a good bit of them so far.

Consequently Heaven could just as easily be here. If we dropped the old scripts and adopted new ones. Started opperating on a paradigm that does allow for altrusim.

In a sutra i read the buddha, in the presence of many boddhisattvas, arhants, and multitudes of other peoples and creatures, placed his foot on the ground reavealing pureland. They looked upon this with astonishment and amazement at such beauty. When his foot left the ground things went back to the way they were before. Perplexed they asked how he changed the world so dramatically. He response was not that he had changed the world just that he had momentarily changed their perspective of it.

Discuss the matter?

[greenman3610]

1. sounds like a good story. any links online?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Of course, the Buddha is right

It is all in our perspective of things. Inayat Khan, the Sufi master from India, said that we cannot change the world, but that we can change our view of the world, and thereby learn tolerance and obtain peace.

I walked outside this morning. I live on the side of a mountain in the Ozarks. It has snowed, perhaps five inches, enough to make silence predominant. It was a sacred moment as I felt the peacefulness envelope me. As the Lakota people say, "all things are sacred". It's a matter of seeing this.

[varkam]

3. Perspective matters.

I think that, in our lives, we can find both good and evil or heaven and hell, depending on our own individual psychologies. The man who feels persecuted all his life and focuses on the negative is in a living hell, whereas the man who counts his blessings and focuses on the good things in his life, is in a living heaven of sorts.

[Goldensilence]

4. nice way to put it

:)

Peace n respect