There is a story that 2, coo years ago, while he was giving a teaching, the Buddha placed his big toe pointedly on the earth and with that dramatic gesture revealed to an audience that the universe we live in is pure paradise. Not that what we see normally is the best ofall possible worlds as Voltaire’s Candide tried to convince himself, but that if we understood the true nature of reality, we would see the planet we live on as the perfect theater for positive evolution that it truly is.
A pure land is the environment created by a fully enlightened being so that as many others as possible have the potential also for developing into fully enlightened beings. This enlightened individual is called a buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha was not simply an historical figure who lived and taught 2000 years ago—he is an example of the full flowering of human potential, reached by undergoing inner revlutions, coups of the spirit in which the power of negative impulses and emotions is toppled and we are freed to be as happy, good, and compassionate as we can evolve to be. The Buddha developed an inner science for achieving this revolution, one that was preserved in Tibet after invaders nearly wiped it out of India i ,000 years ago. Since Tibet was built on the foundation that a society’s top priority is to provide all the means for each individual to achieve this inner revolution, Tibet is our toehold for seeing where inner revolution might lead, giving us a glimpse ofthe architectural plans for building that pure land revealed by the Buddha’s toe pointing.
Internationally renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake has a theory he calls “morphic resonance.” Sheldrake hypothesizes that an individual’s or group’s actions, beliefs, and insights create resonances that make it more likely that other people, otherwise unconnected and unaware ofthe thoughts or occurrences, will experience the same events or insights as if spontaneously on their own. If I have an insight, the theory goes, people around meare more likely to experience something similar, even if I do not tell them about it. Sheldrake’s views are controversial, but they make intuitive sense, and experimental data is beginning to prove him right.
Our empirical bent leaves us incredulous in the face of this sort ofpossibility. Consider, however, the phenomena of radio, television, and microwave transmissions. Their signals are generated as patterns in subtle energy fields that move out in broadcast patterns which hang in the air, so to speak. None of us can see, hear, or feel them, but if a receiver with the proper omponents is constructed, the raw pattern can be translated back into sounds and images, a radio voice, a television image. We take this for granted, clicking on and tuning in with no sense fmystery or wonder.
The human brain is an amazingly complex transmission and receiving device. Its hundred billion neurons must be sensitive to many things our outer bodily senses cannot discern. Sensory stimuli are translated for us through complex software rogramming, which enables us to recognize the percepts—the images we perceive as familiar objects—and to have ideas, to see internal images, hear internal voices,have profound feelings, and so forth. Once certain programs have become routine in our brains, we can articulate those programs to other people through language, image, song, rhythm, or a multitude of other means. Whymight we not also radiate the patterns ofthose programs so that they can “hang in the air” and be directly received by other rains? How many times, for example, have we found ourselves commenting on a friend’s statement, “I was just about to say the same thing”?
Our involvement with others does not begin with just our speech and physical movements. Each ofus individually has an effect on the lives of beings around us through the quiet processes going in in our minds. If we are full of good feelings, thev radiate around us and people want to be near. If we are full of bad feelings, others tend to stav away. So if we would be activists for good, for the positive, we must assume responsibility for our minds as well as our speech and our phvsical activities, otherwise our negative ental habits will drag down the entire communitv of beings. On he
other hand, when we break through into the libertv of heart, mind, and spirit in the process of enlightenment, we free others at the same time.
We can envision the planet as the residence ofbillions of human beings each living around a bubble of inner awareness, each having an inner theater of sounds and lights and impulses that is interconnected with evervone else’s through broadcast vibrations and patterns. When one of those bubbles explodes in a burst of insight or jov—when it releases a knot in its interior energy circulation— it influences ever so slightly all the other bubbles. When an educational, cultural, or civilizational movement influences a large number ofthose bubbles in certain ways, an even more powerful resonance which affects all the other bubbles is created. If we see morphic resonance as a principle operating in historv, we can conceive ofthe possibilitv that when a whole countrv or a group of countries adopts a new pattern ofperception or behavior, surrounding countries can be profoundlv inflenced as well.
The 2000 years since the Buddha’s emergence, acted as a subtle wave rippling through the ocean ofbubbles that is the world ofbeings. During the enlightenment process, each individual bubble becomes aware ofthe totality of its own potential and of its resonance with and support of all other bubbles. When a bubble goes through the enlightening unfoldment, it stimulates a parallel experience in so manybubbles that it brings an era of spiritual ro wth to the planet. Think about the world during the sixth century b.c.e. when the Buddha’s bubble burst into enlightenment.Zoroaster had revolutionized Iranian religion; Deutero-Isaiah and his colleagues were beginning to codify five books of Moses; Socrates was soon to educate the youth ofAthens; Confucius was setting down the code for Chinese civilization, and Lao Tzu was providing spiritual relieffrom it; and Buddha’s India was seething with creativity. Historian Arnold Toynbee has called this period the Axial Age— it was pivotal for all urasian civilizations. Such waves have occurred since, driving parallel spurts of spiritual growth in India and Tibet and world ide. In our time ofnearly limitless communication and freedom of choice in so many countries, our civilization is ripe for another step in whatthe Buddha saw as our inevitable evolution toward happiness.