Causes and Conditions.

 Everything including this Earth and the solar system is created by causes and conditions. Every situation, every conflict is created by causes and conditions. Nothing ‘just happens’! There are accidents, but they again are a result of causes and conditions: it all depends how deep into the game you are looking.

 Our thoughts and emotions are created by causes and conditions. Our personal identity is created by causes and conditions. Every effect has a cause. Politics, in all forms, is a manipulation of these cause and conditions.

 If something is created by causes and conditions, it has no inherent existence of its own: like everything else, it will comes to pass. Everything is an impermanent event – however, these events create the cause and conditions for another event. Every-thing we hold dear will not last. In time, this body – and everyone that we know – will all dissolve back into subtle energy.

 It’s good to keep ‘things’ in perspective.

 However, we can still ask questions like: “When things happen in the world, are they by stupidity, by design or do they just happen?” The answer is, for some things just happen, for others it is stupidity, and for others it’s by design. It depends how deeply one looks. There is always a cause.

 It’s interesting that anything in the ‘news’ can be traced back to a cause, and a cause behind that. As in chess, an innocuous pawn move is intended for the pawn to be queened at the end when everything else on the board is annihilated…and we’re not supposed to notice!

 Politics works on a 40-60 year period, maybe even longer, and definitely not on a four year basis. To plan ahead, one has to take in account of all possibilities…and wait for the right causes and conditions (for the politicians, and not necessarily for the people!).

 Fortunately, Buddhism works on a much longer time scale – lifetimes. Sow a good seed in one incarnation, and it will flower in another at some time…when the right causes and conditions arise. Check mate!