After humankind’s trial and error in conquering things, we have come to a dead end.

Our attempt to conquer nature now knows no gain, but only error and extinction. Our attempt to conquer men now meets no merit, but only error and exhaustion.

The winner produces enmity, because in suffering the defeated one lies down.
Being settled beyond victory and defeat, comfortably in peace one lies down.
- The Dhammapada, 201

The one who desires happiness causing others’ suffering
Is not freed from enmity but entangled in the snares of enmity.
- Op.cit., 291

Enmity is never appeased by enmity here,
but by non-enmity. This is the truth forever.
-Op.cit., 5

Human suffering comes from the delusion of independent and eternal ego. There is no such thing as the self-same, self-sovereign self. Our delusion and desire create bubbles of ego and economy in the great sea of eco-system. Bubbles burst but the sea remains.

Self-centeredness ends in wars, the worst, wishful, wasteful…

The Supreme Court case about the cross in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve is itself a monument–a monument to changing times.

The cross placed in the Mojave National Monument in 1934. Photo by the Associated Press.

The simple white cross was erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Death Valley Post 2884. A plaque accompanying the cross dedicates it to the memory of the dead of all wars. It is similar in design to the crosses we’ve all seen in photographs of the cemetery fields in France.

Fellow blogger Leigh Hunt Greenhaw has said she’ll approach the legal issues inherent in whether the cross’s placement violates the First Amendment’s requirements for the separation of church and state. (the “establishment clause”). There are other issues as well, which are covered in the story published in the Post-Dispatch last week. My own opinions are based not on the fine points…

An Afghan woman and her daughter wail after their relative was killed in an air strike in Azizabad village in the Shindand district of Herat province, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug 23. 2008. The U.S.-led coalition said Saturday that it would investigate allegations of civilian deaths during a battle in western Afghanistan. Afghanista

Wars are always undesirable but unfortunately sometimes unavoidable. But what is very saddening is the wanton disregard for innocent civilian casualties. This disregard is not necessarily new and was there to some extent during the Vietnam War and wars before that. But today it has become a total non-news.

When the Iraq war started, early estimates of insurgents in Iraq was 5000 - 10000. However, as the war continued even as thousands of insurgents were killed ( and tens of thousands of innocent civilians as well) the estimates of insurgents kept climbing to 25000 to 40000. At the beginning of the…