Today I chose this passage about the Twelve Link Chain of Causation and the reality of the illusion and ignorance which leads to suffering. Here in Charlotte we have witnessed first hand in our community the unrest and suffering caused by devaluing and unfairly treating our neighbors because of a difference in skin color. We have in affect based this injustice on an illusion of difference.
I ask is the value of a diamond any less because of the wrapping? Would you throw away a diamond that came to you delivered in newsprint while keeping a diamond of equal value in tissue paper? I suspect you would in fact keep both equally valued diamonds.
The illusion that anyone is more or less important or valuable leads to suffering. Suffering for the individual who has been devalued leads to suffering by the person who is judging because of what they have deprived themselves of. Tossing one of the two diamonds reduces your gain by half.
Everyone around us near and far contributes to our existence and benefits us. If anyone thinks otherwise then I suggest they know little about child birth. From the first seconds when spern and egg unite until the last second of brain activity is only possible because of others.
To assert a self-made claim is both false and arrogant. No one has ever made themselves nor continued to live solely by themselves without the aide of others. Without others the human species would have been a brief speck on the timeline if evolutionary history, though no one would be recording.
The illusion that anything in this moment is permanent or that my moment is better than another person goes against the principles of science. Even if belief in Buddhism is not held the fundamental principles of life and the universe still remain.
There is no scientific basis for skin color as a measure of value, intelligence, trustworthyness, honesty, beauty, not anything.
