Tonight we lit 5000 candles at the Mahabodhi temple for 'world peace.' Immediately I thought of my radical friends back home in St Paul, who often deride such useless forms of symbolic protest. What safer way can there be to assuage our conscience without risking the ivory tower of privilege? Light some candles, sing a happy song, and then go back to wallow in affluence without really risking or changing anything. They are undeniably right in some ways, but as I walked through that little glass building I was scorched by the immense heat of those 5000 candles. (Who would believe that a tiny flame could produce such a furnace?! But there was an unmistakable power in such a vast number, and I felt that truth all along my skin.) Between my forced retreats outside for cooler air and my solemn pacing along the tables and tables of burning oil candles, I came to a realization that cut straight to the heart of frail gestures like candles and 'world peace.' First I thought like a scientist, but somewhere unexpected (yet passionately hoped for) I crossed the clear tremulous line of a believer.
The heat from those candles is a real, measurable force. As a chemist, I had studied the basic laws of thermodynamics that govern how that energy moves across systems. The basic pattern should be familiar to anyone -- just imagine a stone tossed into a calm pond. The ripples move outward in a beautiful visualization of energy in motion. In the same way I thought about the energy being generated inside of that tiny room, thought about it flowing out like a wave, being absorbed into the ground, heating currents of air, emanating outward into the world. That world, the world of complex interwoven systems, is beautifully described by chaos theory, the theory of order emerging from immense and vibrant dynamical systems. Those energy waves flowing out of the building were starting a causal chain, and there is no doubt that this unbroken link of causality will have real, tangible effects in the world, even if it would be impossible to point to discrete consequences. It doesn't matter how tiny the initial effect, the outcome can be enormous. The standard metaphor is the butterfly that flaps it wings in Tokyo and changes the weather in New York city. These are not my ideas. Western science calls it chaos theory, Buddhism calls it emptiness. But here is where I crossed the line to something intangible, something that made manifest sense to my deepest sense of self:
Buddhism teaches that there is an undeniable connection between action and intention; when we act, we imbue our motions with the quality of our current frame of mind. This means that food cooked in jealousy or anger will not nourish in the same way that food which has been cooked in love will. But this is much more than just a pretty idea. As our actions resonate in the world – exactly like the energy of the candles flowing outward in a domino chain of contingency– they will reach other people with every ounce of intention that produced them. What this means, essentially, is that lighting candles is just a show!
When one develops a mind of impartial love and compassion, when one abandons the selfish idea of fame or gratification, when one sits in a place of purity, calm, and honesty, then every step becomes an expression of peace, and every minute mundane action from brushing your teeth to handstands to climbing trees or crossing the street sends forth energies that make the world a more harmonious, loving place! With this kind of base, any and every thing we do becomes a vehicle for liberation! But until that time, we take certain actions because they help put our minds in a place where we can generate the kind of positive transformation that we want to see in the world.
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