Yun Rou - The Mad Monk Manifesto: A Prescription for Evolution, Revolution, and Global Awakening

Praise for Mad Monk Manifesto

Monk Yun Rous new book, Mad Monk Manifesto , is a Taoist call-to-action to anyone wishing to save themselves and the planet.

Danielle Bolelli, PhD, author, professor, and host of
History on Fire and Drunken Taoist podcasts

In this wide-ranging, amusing, and thoughtful book, Mad Monk Manifesto: A Prescription for Evolution, Revolution, and Global Awakening , Taoist Monk Yun Rou offers us a vision that can give hope to millions. It is a vision which is rooted in compassion, simplicity, and selflessness, and offers a pathway to a sustainable worldnot just spiritually, but practically too. It is a book for snacking, but devouring too.

Graeme Maxton, Secretary General of the Club of Rome
and author of bestselling books
The End of Progress and Reinventing Prosperity

With Mad Monk Manifesto , Monk Yun Rou presents a utopian treatise that reminds us of what we can aspire to. He has much wisdom to share.

Dr. Carl Pilcher, PhD, Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, NASA (retired)

Uplifting, inquisitive, and elegant in its delivery, Monk Yun Rous newest work Mad Monk Manifesto shines a light on the importance of curiosity, kindness, and transformation in a world beset by overconsumption, the glorification of violence, and the relentless inundation and demands of the Information Age. A wonderful read for anyone looking to gain perspective and insight on the power of simplification and wonder!

Sarah Fimm, American singer-songwriter residing in Woodstock, NY

Mad Monk
Manifesto

A Prescription for Evolution, Revolution, and Global Awakening

Also By Yun Rou

Yin: A Love Story

Mad
Monk Manifesto

A Prescription for Evolution, Revolution, and Global Awakening

Monk Yun Rou

Mango Publishing
Coral Gables

Copyright 2018 Monk Yun Rou.

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover Design: Roberto Nez

Layout & Design: Roberto Nez

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Mad Monk Manifesto: A Prescription for Evolution, Revolution, and Global Awakening

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2018957576

ISBN: (print) 978-1-63353-864-1, (ebook) 978-1-63353-865-8

BISAC category code: PHI023000PHILOSOPHY / Taoist

Printed in the United States of America

For Tasman Rosenfeld, who will most certainly make our world a better place.

Contents

You hold in your hands a manifesto for change, an eleventh-hour emergency survival manual utterly devoid of bright-future reassurances and New Age pabulum. You will find nothing here about how thinking positive thoughts will help you look great in tight jeans, how brilliant your children are, how the whales really love us for killing them, or how the work you do in your high-salaried corporate position is critical to the survival of the universe. Although I hope you will find my words as spiritual as they are political, I am no Pollyanna. I dont believe that all will soon be right with the world or that we are almost through the tough times. I dont accept social media as a substitute for reality, or that our evolving into half-digital cyborgs will take away all our pain. I believe in the transformative power of both meditation and love, but dont believe either or both will solve all our problems. I am a monk, not a carnival barker, and thus skeptical of quick and easy fixes; thus, I hope you will find the ones I offer in the chapters that follow to be substantial, meaningful, and worthwhile even though they may require effort. When contemplating these changes, please remember that change is the only constant our wor ld offers.

I begin with such straightforward urgency because our floating home, zooming through the galaxy at high velocity inside the wildly spiraling solar system that contains it, has become a watery blue purgatory. More slaughterhouse than paradise, more frenzied, violent battlefield than garden of enlightenment, more cesspool of fractiousness than temple to unity, our beautiful planet is dying and we are its murderers. Wonders remain, but the effects of global industrialization, executed upon a foundation of Western values, guarantee such wonders wont last long. The values I refer to are mostly about what it means to be human, but also our greed, material excesses, species-centrism, the religiously-based notion of human hegemony over the natural world, and, of course, overp opulation.

The last item on that list may be obvious to those suffering traffic jams, polluted parks, and the disappearance of peace and quiet, but its global consequences are actually complex, underestimated, and inaccurately predicted. Wars over land, air, and water have already begun. The macro-organism we call Planet Earth, desperate to survive in its current, diverse glory, uses various methods to fight its way out from beneath the meaty weight of the human herd. These weapons include diseases, wars, automobile accidents, gender variances, and religious fundamentalismanything and everything that pares down our numbers. Even so, there are still those who believe that their god encourages them to have ten childre n or more.

And then there is climate change, another feature of our greed, lack of sensitivity, and the religiously fundamentalist notion that the planet is our playground. Regardless of how many political leaders label it a hoax, weather patterns are changing at human, not geological, speed. Its tough to wrap our minds around the size of the changes and how soon they will be here. I write this as a displaced victim of one of the largest Atlantic hurricanes on record, having just watched the state of Texas suffer a thousand-year flood, and now seeing the state of California battling the largest and most deadly wildfire outbreak in recorded history. Tropical cyclones are growing more violent and frequent, ice caps are melting, glaciers and permafrost are disappearing, island nations are in existential peril. Tens of thousands of miles of coastline will soon be lost to oceans which are acidifying so rapidly that jellyfish will be the only seafood they can soon support. Vast continental plains are becoming deserts while deserts are becoming dustbowls, putting our food supply in jeopardy. Deforestation and marine algae die-offs suggest that the oxygen we breathe will eventually vanish. If all these challenges appeared in an apocalyptic Hollywood thriller, the screenwriter would be told to tone things down so as to make them b elievable.

Consider, too, the Sixth Great Extinction. The history of the earthbillions of years long, not the mere thousands of biblical fantasieshas seen five previous events of this type, variously caused by bursts of gamma-ray radiation from space, erupting volcanoes, and even the impact of asteroids. This latest extinction, though, is on usthe direct result of our activities and unchecked propagation. Who would have thought that humans could be so catastrophically destructive? Perhaps our atomic atrocities might have offered a clue. Any way you look at it, Earth is a bad place to be a non-human animal these days, be it an insect (whose indispensable group is severely affected), salamander, rhino, butterfly, tiger, turtle, or shark. The level of loss, thanks to our pesticides, condos, golf courses, cities, ocean trawling, and oh-so-much-more, is so staggering that scientists cant even fully assess it. Bottom line? We will never regain the natural world of our parents, and if our kids manage to survive over the long term, we wouldnt recognize the world they will inheri t from us.