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| Picture kindly provided by Great Beyond |
The story of Sadako Sasaki
Imagine a little girl 12 years old playing one day in a playground, after having recurrent spells of dizziness, she collapses. Her parents take her to the hospital; she and her family are told she has leukemia with only one year to live.
Her name is Sadako Sasaki. Her best friend, Chizuko visits her in hospital and gives her a golden origami crane, as a symbol of good luck and hope, and tells her of a myth, that if one folds 1000 paper cranes, ones wish would come true.
Sadako is determined to live in desperation she starts folding cranes frantically, she only has the strength and the time to get to 644 cranes, before dying six months later.
Following her death, Sadako's friends and family finished 1,000 cranes for her and bury it with her.
Sadako becomes a symbol of peace, hope and a sad memory and a reminder of us to be compassionate to all living things and the environment
In 1958, a statue of Sadako is built at Hiroshima Peace Memorial, and in her hands is a golden crane. The plaque that is on the memorial states:
"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world."
This weekend I am folding one thousand paper cranes at my kid’s school as a fund raiser for Japan, we are also baking vegan chocolate chip cookies for the bake sale. I need to see if I can get an Origami cookie cutter….
These sort of catastrophic events bring the world together, and remind us of the frailty of life and the need to support each other. Our shallow worlds are given a shock, and we are humbled. Diverse people show genuine concern, empathy and compassion towards the suffering of others regardless of country, caste or creed.
I was at a donation collection table last week, when a Japanese colleague dropped by and asked me, “do you have family in Japan?” as I was the only non-Japanese at the collection table, I said
"Yes, I have the brotherhood of man there in Japan..."
I ponder what I would wish for if I it was magically granted to me after folding 1,000 paper origami cranes.
This is a very difficult question to answer, from a spiritual perspective, there is no such thing as a random event, and everything is precise like clockwork, even the darkest of days, has an underlying cause and reason. It’s difficult to comprehend this with our limited view of the world. Saying this, witnessing the suffering is also too hard to swallow...I quote his holiness the Dalai Lama:
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe...Dalai Lama
After pondering this, I know the answer; I have known the answer all along.
Like the thousands of people that go to Sodaka's monument and that pray for world peace, instead I pray silently for inner peace, for myself and everyone in the world.
At the bottom my heart I know that:
If people are in tune with themselves, they will be in tune with the environment and sensitive to their demands on it, and so will others around them including corporations and government.
Disasters could be minimized; shortcuts would not be taken at the expense of saving money or self gratification:
The spent fuel rods of six years would not have been left in Fukushima reactor, the radioactivity would have been six times less damaging if care was taken.
Millions of animals would not be slaughtered ever year for the sake of high protein foods which places an enormous tax on our environment, in terms of competing land, food, water requirements and production of methane. Methane is 21 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than CO2. 100 million tons of methane is produced every year 85% of this comes from livestock.
If people are in tune with themselves, this would automatically flow through to Order, Love and Harmony in the world and the environment.
We would realize our real needs are a lot smaller than our desires and that underneath our superficialities and egos, we are all but one single, living, breathing entity...Planet Earth!
Peace,
Kirpal
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