Our Mind is a Constant Battlefield

I recently came across a popular Japanese comic called Death Note. In the story, the character called “Light” happened to receive a black notebook from Death God. This notebook has the power to kill anyone whose name was written on it.

Light is sick of the world, he thinks the world is so unfair and he attempt to use this notebook to kill anyone he thinks is sinful. Having tasted of the power of this notebook, he is attached to the power of control and attempt to play God to build a ‘New World’ free of crimes and free of sins.

It seems like a noble mission at first but it turns out to be just an excuse to support his ambition and egocentric self. In this story, Light is not at peace with himself. He hates his world and his surroundings.

When we look at our world today, there are wars everywhere. There are wars between countries, wars between religions, wars between races, etc. There are constant struggles between human, animals and even Mother Nature, causing great harm and disharmony among the livings.

When we examine these disharmonies, it is often caused by egocentric thinking, supported by a series of excuses and reasoning for a particular action. Man are angry and dissatisfied at themselves, and they directed these anger to the world. We have these constant conflicts within ourselves such as greed, jealousy, hatred, anger, etc. Sometimes, we hated ourselves for behaving in a certain way, we are angry with ourselves for being angry. In attempt to build an ideal world, we cause destructions and use excuses in the name of God, countries, and races.

We might not even be aware of these internal conflicts but these internal struggles are constant. When our mind is not at peace, our world will reflect our conflicting state of mind like a mirror.

Our mind then becomes the biggest battlefield on earth and we can only win this war though peace and compassion. Only when we are at peace with ourselves that the conflicts in our world will cease, love can spread, ignorance dispelled.

From the words of Ven. Dr K Sri Dhammananda

The man who is not at peace with himself, cannot be at peace with the world. There can be no peace in the world until the conflicts of man within himself ended.

War is created by the human mind and the same human can create peace with justice if only man uses his unbiased mind.

Me, My, Mine

Recently, I came across a young child who was diagnosed with leukemia (a cancer of the bone marrow in which abnormal types and amounts of cells are made). The medical team tries to find a matching bone marrow to conduct a bone marrow transplant and finally found one matching bone marrow donor.

When contacted, the donor is more than happy to save a life and his wife is supportive of his decision to donate his own bone marrow. He went through a series of health check and tests. The final consultation with the doctor was quite positive.

In asia culture, it is considered filial to seek parent’s blessing and approval before donating any part of the body. When doing so, he encountered huge disapproval from his parents. Reason being the patient is unrelated and is not necessary to take the risk and cause harm to own health.

It is so sad but I think to certain extent, we are all selfish in certain ways, especially when it comes to things that we deem to belong to us. My son, my bag, my computer. It is ok for someone’s PC to crash but not mine. It is ok for someone to suffer but not me and my family. We just don’t feel the same pain we will feel if these things or events happen to others versus “me”.

It is because of our selfish thoughts that we tend to forget that we are all interdependent in this world. The bread that we eat came about from the effort of many other people. From the people who sell them, to the people who bake them, to the people who sell the flour, eggs, even to the people who plant wheat and rear chicken. How many people that we do not known of are involved in the process?

We cannot live alone in this world, we are interdependent of each other. Only when we discard our selfishness and learn to be grateful to each other, this world will be a better world.

PS: To find out more about donating bone marrow to save lives, please visit

http://www.marrow.org/

http://www.bmdp.org/

The Best Way

The best way to benefit others is to reduce our selfish mind.