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dharma TALKare undergoing birth and death right now because mentallyand physically you are of a cinematographic nature. You arerenewed in every instant, and if you know how to do it, yourrenewal is beautiful.In every moment we produce thought, we producespeech, and we produce action. That action will have an effecton us and on the world: that is our karma. If you knowhow to handle your thinking, your speech, and your action,you’ll be more beautiful. You don’t have to wait until youdie to see what happens to you. Look in the present momentand you see that birth and death are going on in you at everymoment, both in your body and in your consciousness. Everymoment of our daily life there is input and there is output. Youbreathe in, you take food, you have new ideas, new feelings.And things go out from you, like urine, air, and water. So thecosmos is renewing you and you are releasing things to thecosmos. Birth and death does not wait; it is happening now,in the present moment.Suppose one part of the cloud transforms itself into rainand the rain falls and becomes part of a river. The remainingpart of the cloud is looking down from the sky and sees itscontinuation on the earth. It says to its rain part, “I enjoyfloating up here but you’re part of me and I hope you enjoyit down there. To be floating up here is nice, but to be flowingdown there is also nice.” The cloud is both floating in the skyand flowing as the rain.As a human being, we can see that too. I see myself inmy students and in my friends. I wish them good luck, becausetheir good luck is my good luck. When my disciplesand my friends carry me with them, I wish them the best. Myhappiness and suffering depend on them. So when I look, Idon’t just see me here. I see me there, and there, and there. Iwave and say, “Have a good time in there!” That is the way tolook. You see yourself not just in this body, you see yourselfeverywhere, because every moment you produce thought,you produce speech, you produce action that continues youin the world.One hundred years from now, if you come to Plum Village,you’ll still see me in different forms – and younger andmore beautiful! [laughs] Because it is possible to be morebeautiful in our way of thinking, in our way of speaking andacting if we know how to generate right view. With right view,we don’t suffer. We can produce thoughts of compassion,understanding, and forgiveness. A cloud can do the work ofself-purification up there, so that when it becomes snow orriver, it is beautiful. It is possible.KarmaWe began our talk with the notion that both consciousnessand object of consciousness are manifestations ofconsciousness. Consciousness is a dynamic force that is atthe base of manifesting living beings and the world. In Buddhistinsight, the world is a manifestation of consciousness.Many scientists have begun to agree that the cosmos is aFour Views of EthicsI. Theistic TraditionsJudaism and Christianity teach that the world wascreated by a loving, all-powerful God to provide ahome for us. We, in turn, were created in his image,to be his children. Thus, the world is not devoidof meaning and purpose. It is, instead, the arenain which God’s plans and purposes are realized.What could be more natural, then, than to think that“morality” is a part of the religious view of the world,whereas the atheist’s world has no place for values?In the major theistic traditions — Judaism,Christianity, and Islam — God is conceived as alawgiver who has laid down rules that we are toobey. He does not compel us to obey them. Wewere created as free agents, so we may choose toaccept or to reject his commandments. But if we areto live as we should, we must follow God’s laws. Thisconception has been elaborated by some theologiansinto a theory about the nature of right and wrongknown as the Divine Command Theory. Essentially,this theory says that “morally right” is a matter ofbeing commanded by God and “morally wrong” is amatter of being forbidden by God.II. Bertrand Russell’s “Scientific” ApproachThat Man is the product of causes which had noprevision of the end they were achieving; that hisorigin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his lovesand his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidentalcollocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, nointensity of thought and feeling, can preserve anindividual life beyond the grave; that all the laboursof the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all thenoonday brightness of human genius, are destinedto extinction in the vast death of the solar system,and that the whole temple of Man’s achievementmust inevitably be buried beneath the debris of auniverse in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyonddispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophywhich rejects them can hope to stand. Only within thescaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundationof unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitationhenceforth be safely built. (Bertrand Russell, “A FreeMan’s Worship,” 1902)III. Recent Scientific ApproachThe universe is some 15 billion years old — that isthe time elapsed since the “big bang” — and the earthitself was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Theevolution of life on the planet was a slow process,the Mindfulness Bell 7