VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 3
This Paradise Is Being Pushed Toward Hell
The last section counted out those seven of paradise, and its tone was warm. This section turns to a heavy fact, and its tone has to sink: this one and only paradise is, right now, being ruined one thing after another, being pushed toward hell. The air is growing foul, the water polluted, the soil poisoned, the seasons disordered, living things dying out. This is not scaremongering. It is a fact that is happening now. This section makes this layer plain as it is, not to frighten people, but so that people see clearly: those seven proofs of paradise are taking harm one after another. Only by seeing this harm clearly can the resolve to guard it and keep it in the chapters that follow grow.
One. Paradise Is Not Solid and Unbreakable
First, break an illusion. People enjoy those seven of paradise, enjoy them so long that they think it solid and unbreakable, lasting as long as heaven and earth, never changing whatever happens.
This is a dangerous illusion. Those seven look vast, look everlasting, but they are in truth fragile, limited, unable to bear being trampled without measure. The air looks endless, but it is only a thin layer wrapped round the outside of the planet; pour enough foul gas into it and it grows foul, falls into disorder. The water looks boundless, but clean, drinkable fresh water is only a tiny share of it; foul it, poison it, and there is no water to drink. The soil looks wide, but the rich soil that can raise all living things takes a thousand years to build up an inch; poison it, wear it away, pack it hard, and it will not grow crops. These seven do not go on forever however much is taken, nor stay unbroken however much they are trampled. They are a balance, just right, that this planet took hundreds of millions of years to raise. Once this balance is stirred up, pushed past a certain line, it may never come back. Paradise is not solid and unbreakable. It is fragile, and cannot bear being trampled without measure.
People fall into this illusion easily because these seven are too vast, too long-lasting, and within a person's short life almost no change can be seen in them. A person from birth to death has only some decades of winters and summers, while the harm to these seven is often what piles up over several, a dozen and more generations, so slow that one generation cannot easily notice it. So every generation thinks it as solid as ever, and every generation adds a measure of harm to it, generation after generation piling it on, until in some generation the harm suddenly shows, and by then it may be too heavy to turn back. It is exactly this "slow" that breeds that illusion of "thinking it does not break." And it is exactly this illusion that makes people look at the harm happening now and not see it, and take it lightly. To break this illusion is the first move in guarding this paradise: know that though it is vast, it is fragile; though it is long-lasting, it cannot bear being trampled without measure, one generation after another.
Two. The Seven, Taking Harm One After Another
Look again at these seven, right now taking harm one after another.
The air is growing foul: soot and exhaust are poured into the sky, that thin layer of atmosphere grows dirtier and dirtier, and what people breathe in is no longer a breath just right. The water is being polluted: waste water and poisons are poured into the rivers, lakes and seas, the water that could have been drunk and used grows dirtier and more toxic, and clean water to drink grows less day by day. The soil is being poisoned: poisons seep into the soil, the rich soil that could raise all living things grows packed hard and poisoned, and cannot grow clean crops. The seasons are in disorder: heaven's time turns abnormal, cold and heat out of place, what should be cold is not cold, what should be warm is not warm, and the seasons that were just right lose their measure. Living things are dying out: one kind of living creature after another dies and dies out amid this harm, and the web of life that renewed itself without end grows torn and thin. The seven proofs of paradise are, right now, taking harm one after another.
These harms are not isolated cases, one place here, two places there. They are one whole stretch, across the whole globe, tied to one another. The air grows foul, and what falls is acid rain, and acid rain in turn poisons the water and eats away the soil. The soil is poisoned, and the poison comes back into people's bodies through the crops and the water. The seasons fall into disorder, drought and flood lose their order, which in turn drives living things to move away or die out. The seven were always one body joined together. Harm one, and the rest are pulled with it. The harm passes from one to another within this body and makes each worse, like a sore in one place spreading through the whole body. More worrying still, some harms cannot be undone. A kind of living creature, once it has died out, never comes again. A layer of rich soil, once worn away, can hardly come back in a thousand years. Some balances, once pushed past the tipping point, can never return to what they were. So this harm is not a small ailment to be patched up and put right. It is a grave wound where pulling one hair moves the whole body, and some of it goes and never returns. Looking at these seven taking harm, you must look at them together, must look deep, and only then do you know how dangerous the trend is, how urgent the matter.
Three. This Harm Comes from the Greatness of Power
This harm, why is it so heavy only in this generation? Because the power in this generation's hands is greater than ever before.
The first section of this chapter laid down that the power of the dozens of generations before, however great, was never greater than this planet, and could not harm its root. This generation is different. Tools flourish, and the power in people's hands is strong enough to stir up the atmosphere, foul the rivers and seas, poison the soil, throw the seasons into disorder, wipe out living things. This power, used to do good, could have nurtured these seven even better. But once it is used crooked, used for taking without measure, pouring out without measure, trampling without measure, it is enough to ruin these seven, one after another. The greater the power, the faster the ruin, the wider its reach, the deeper it goes. This generation is the first generation with the power to ruin its own home. And precisely for this, it is the first generation that must take up the duty of guarding this home. The greatness of the power is both the reason this harm is so heavy and the reason this generation's duty is so heavy.
Here one layer must be told apart. That harm, does the guilt lie in the power? It does not. Power in itself is neither good nor evil, just as the tool, as the chapters before laid down, is neither good nor evil. The same power that can stir mountains and rivers, used right, can hold back floods, can water fields, can make the desert grow green. Only used crooked does it become pollution, poisoning, dying out. So for this harm, the guilt is not in how great the power is, but in the people who use the power: in those who set gain, taking, a moment's pleasure, above these seven; in those who, knowing the harm, still pour out without measure, cut down without measure, take without measure. This is of one lineage with the lawmaking the earlier volumes have held to all along: the guilt was never in the tool, never in the power, but in people. See this layer clearly, and you know that to guard this paradise, what must be done was never to destroy that power, but to bend right the human heart that uses the power, so that the power strong enough to destroy paradise is turned to nurturing paradise. The power is still the same power. Once the heart that uses it is set right, the force that destroys becomes the force that nurtures. This is exactly how the one root of this whole book, saving people and bending the human heart right, looks when it comes down to the matter of guarding Earth.
Four. Pushed into Hell, What It Looks Like
If this harm is let go on, and these seven are ruined one after another to the end, what will it look like? It will be hell.
What is hell? No need to imagine it in the next life. Ruin those seven of paradise to the end, one after another, and that is hell: air so foul it cannot be breathed, water so polluted it cannot be drunk, soil so poisoned it cannot grow crops, seasons so disordered there is no way to farm, living things so wiped out that only a dead silence is left. Then this planet that once gave birth to and raised all living things becomes a dead, poisonous ball of waste, unfit for life. If people trample paradise into such a state, they push themselves and their descendants, with their own hands, out of paradise into hell. This is not a far-off fancy. That harm is happening now, that trend is carrying on. If it is not stopped in time, this paradise really will be pushed, step by step, toward that look of hell. Paradise and hell are not somewhere else. They are the two faces of this same planet: guard it well, and it is paradise; trample it to the end, and it is hell.
This layer most needs people to wake with a start: paradise and hell were never two places. They are two possible futures of the same planet. People often picture hell as a terrifying place somewhere else, not knowing that the hell can be this very same land, as it looks after it has been trampled to the end. This land under your feet today, where you can breathe, drink water and till, if it goes on being trampled like this, may, a few generations on, become the dead ground under your descendants' feet, where nothing can be breathed, nothing drunk, and not an inch of grass grows. For paradise to fall into hell, no disaster need come down from heaven. All it needs is for people, generation after generation, to trample those seven, bit by bit. This is the most fearful layer: what ruins paradise is nothing else but the very people who live in paradise and do not know to cherish it. See that these two faces are the same planet, and you know how urgent it is to guard it: to guard it is to keep your own home from falling, in your own hands and your descendants' hands, from paradise into hell.
Five. Seeing the Harm Clearly, to Grow the Resolve to Guard It
This section has made this harm plain as it is, not to frighten people, but so that people see clearly, and from that grow the resolve to guard it.
Some may not want to hear this layer. They find it heavy, find it a spoiler, and would rather look only at the beauty of those seven of paradise and not at the fact of this harm. But look only at the beauty and not at the harm, and that beauty cannot be guarded. Only by seeing clearly both how precious those seven are and how real this harm is can the resolve to guard it and keep it grow and stand. The heaviness of this section is not heaviness for its own sake. It is for the sake of that resolve to guard: people must first see clearly that they themselves are pushing paradise toward hell, and only then will they wake with a start, only then will they turn back, only then will they reach out a hand to stop it. To see the harm clearly is the first step of turning back. To grow the resolve is the first step of guarding it. This section makes this harm plain, and the chapters that follow will go on from here. Some say it does not matter if this planet is trampled to ruin, people can move somewhere else, Mars for instance. Is this right? The next chapter makes it plain, head-on: Mars is a barren waste, and that so-called moving is a murder. Seeing clearly that this paradise is being pushed toward hell is also seeing clearly that once this planet is ruined, people have nowhere to fall back to, and those words of "at worst we just move somewhere else" hide beneath them a danger beyond telling.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.