The Maitreya Would Appreciate Birth into a Pleasant Earth
When we throw a banana peel into the garbage, if we are mindful we know that the
peel will become compost and be reborn as a tomato or a lettuce salad in just a
few months. But when we throw a plastic bag into the garbage, thanks to our
awareness, we know that a plastic bag will not become a tomato or a salad very
quickly. Some kinds of garbage need four or five hundred years to decompose.
Nuclear waste needs a quarter of a million years before it stops being harmful
and returns to the soil. Living in the present moment in an awakened way, looking
after the present moment with all our heart, we will not do things which destroy
the future. That is the most concrete way to do what is constructive for the future.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, Our Appointment with Life
