Elena Poleze's Letter

Aos meus irmãos e amigos.,

Today, I want to write about how we treat the Earth, which is our only home. This is very important because now we are in danger of destroying it through our ignorance.

Our societies have become very materialistic. We focus mostly on products to buy. The economic system is driven by the ceaseless quest for more profits, which leads to manufacturing goods that are designed to break quickly and need to be replaced. Advertising convinces us that we need things that we don't really need. Now that there are more than eight billion of us, this situation threatens all life on earth! Our manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and waste create an unsustainable amount of pollution and waste that adds up without end. Our constitution, mining, and manufacturing are directly destroying natural habitats and biomes at an unprecedented rate. Since all life on earth, including us, is interdependent and interconnected, it's reaching a point where it could easily collapse within our lifetimes! Climate change is yet another threat caused by these activities!

If you were to use the materials in your home to endlessly make things to sell, and left your waste products, biological and other, to accumulate, soon you would have no home left and find yourself living in a pile of noxious waste! The earth is bigger but no different! There is only so much space and only so much of every resource! We need to be wise in how we deal with this!

Sensei talks about dependent origination. Since all phenomena are one and interconnected and are all expressions of the Buddha Nature, we must respect them. Just as you can not have true happiness without caring and acting for the happiness of others, humanity can not thrive without a thriving ecosystem to support us! We will literally destroy ourselves if we don't change the way we do a lot of things!

Another harmful effect of our culture of materialism is our own alienation and loss of real connection with each other.

We don't have to go back to living like cave men in order to make the necessary changes! We can enjoy an awesome quality of life if we reorient our society, governments, and economy to focus on the happiness and well-being of human beings and the thriving of our natural environment! Our continued existence depends on this! We need to take action in this direction. The sooner, the better.

Sensei tells us that these changes start with our Human Revolution and mutually respectful dialog with one person at a time. In other words, it is Kosen-Rufu! Without this, political, social, and economic reforms will fail!

More than ever before, we need to get very serious about doing our Human Revolutions and work harder than ever for Kosen-Rufu! Even people who don't embrace SGI Nichiren Buddhism will help if we can help them to embrace the core principles of Buddhist humanism: the understanding that all people and all living beings are precious and worthy of respect and compassion, and live accordingly!
No time to lose anymore!
Nam -Myoho -Renge-Kyo

*Quero tradução em português* a maioria não lê e nem entende inglês* Gratidão 🙏