Leading a spiritual life in a secular world
by Alex Traczyk
When I watch the news these days and the number who have been killed in the recent wars … I have to admit that I get the impression that the world is falling apart.
Not only is this discouraging, it makes me feel anxious as well.
But then I remind myself of what any student of world history knows … that the world has been falling apart since time immemorial.
I’m pretty sure that the Romans believed that the world was falling apart when the barbarians invaded Rome in the fifth century.
In the wars going on right now in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza … roughly over 300,000 people have been killed so far.
Although that may seem like a lot. The fact is 300,000 deaths is a pittance when we look at it within a global context.
For instance; everyday 166,589 people die on our planet. That breaks down to 6,952 deaths per hour, 116 per minute and approximately 2 per second. Globally, there are a little more than 60 million deaths per year.
Wars and the number of people who get killed in them, might get all the press. But it’s poverty and heart disease that are the true culprits when it comes death.
18 million people die from poverty every year and 17.7 from cardiovascular disease.
When I think of all those who have been killed, off course I’m saddened.
But at the same time I’m reminded that all life, mine included, is fragile and impermanent.
When I was studying Buddhism … practicing Zazen meditation daily … Buddha’s teaching on impermanence was constantly popping up in way or another.
Impermanence, a cornerstone of Buddhism, posits that everything changes … is continually decaying and that nothing lasts forever.
The teaching is used by teachers the same way a rider uses the spurs on his heels to dig into the horses side in order to urge the horse forward.
In Buddhism it’s to encourage the adherents to exert themselves in their practices to the maximum to become enlightened because enlightenment benefits all living beings.
The constant news of war either from Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine or even Syria, with all the images of death and destruction can be disheartening at the very least.
But when I think of all the deaths within a global context, together with the fact that everything and everyone are impermanent, then suddenly life on our planet is not as hopeless as it sometimes seems.
Nope. The world is not falling apart.
