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It was eerie walking with an enlightened Buddhist master, a Westerner who teaches the three distinct Buddhist traditions and sees no insurmountable differences between them. They are various routes to the same fundamental realization (emptiness or the impersonal nature of all phenomena the Buddha called anatta and sunnyata). High in the hills that serve as the backdrop for the San Gabriel Valley, dividing it from Orange County, we spoke of the coming super wolf "blood moon." He paused and immediately referred to it as "an inauspicious sign." But surely the devas ("shining ones") will intervene to save humanity, we offered. He said they were only interested in doing so when humans are behaving in such a way as to merit the help. Are we? There are Ten Courses of Wholesome Action (karma), which anyone can review for him or herself. We pressed him: "Surely, you're not afraid of a red moon?" "It's just a sign, an indication" of which there have been several that serve as warnings to what is happening. He did not detail what is happening, but he did say the Tibetan tradition and, in fact, all human societies have known of such signs and have ways of attempting to ward off the danger. Our world merely reflects us. In the Agganna Sutra, "A Buddhist Genesis," the Buddha points out how the karma of beings on earth, who devolved on earth after coming here, led to devolving external conditions as their internal intentions, the basis of karma, led to cruder and cruder conduct. It's something to think about. But who's afraid of signs and omens in the sky? We kept asking him about this and many things. He kept referring to the "suchness" of things.
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