The Third World War

Seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War. We’ve had a few close calls. The Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. Like an old Corporation bus running late the apocalypse rumbles into view. All writers are prophets for hire, waiting for the Virgin Mary to make an appearance before we take the fare. Here we have a Vision of Geronda Ephraim Addressing the Ukrainian Situation and casually flinging in his bombshell, don’t worry about that it’s the beginning of the end.

In Buddhist theology, that isn’t a theology, the perfection of wisdom can take more than one lifetime. The stage before that VIPAŚYANĀ offers a different kind of insight. The baggage of the past is let go and the tyranny of the future holds no fear. Bodhisattvas  and saints go on right on doing what they are already doing. The Buddha gets his begging bowl and begs.

Great men, of course, never beg. They’d rather set the world aflame that admit human weaknesses. There’s a certain beauty in the idea that we are all each other. The ideology of hate and contempt for the other, the so-called beggars, drives us apart. Beggar’s belief drives us to war.

God’s plan is straight, the path to achieving it is not. When we play the all-or-nothing game we must think we can win. Viktor Frankl warned us not to forget Auschwitz or the dropping of the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. That generation is dying off and their antiquated beliefs with them.

In any narrative there’s the smoking gun and ticking clock. In Marxist narratives it was called the contradictions of capitalism that would usher in a new age of the proletariat. We’re still waiting. In the most advance industrial nations, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. Technology, once thought of a process that would free workers, now speeds up this process.

More than half the world’s wildlife is in decline. Climate change undermines our ability to think rationally.

Whether you believe in God or your body is a simple carbon receptacle that rot and dust will return to dust, enriching the soil and feeding plant life the end is still the same, we are reliant on water. Our ecosystems are falling and failing. Without water we cannot feed ourselves. Every puddle, stream, and river becomes a battleground.

Yet the biggest public share issue that outstrips the value of Apple is based on oil wealth from Saudi Arabia. Fossil fuels are the most valuable bits of paper you can own. Contradictions of capitalism are for now paper talk.

A finger pointed at the moon is not the moon is a Buddhist dharma. A Greek orthodox priest predicting the end of the world is nothing new. Every decade brings its own apocalypse. But how do we nurse our planet back to health and prove him wrong?  Write your answers in the wind or it will be written on the bodies of your children.