Featured in the ‘G.I. Joe’ movie are nanomites, which are super-microscopic robots measuring in nanometres. They are used in missile warheads, which are fired to start plagues of remote-controlled metal-eating frenzies – capable of causing the Eiffel Tower to ‘rot’, and rendering tanks and planes to metal dust within a few instants. The scary thing is, I think such nanotechnology will be available pretty soon. As much as it can be used in the field of medicine to do micro-surgery within the body, they can be used as virus-like assassins. Struck me that if there are no nano-defilements of hate within humans, there would be no destructive nanomites invented.
We too are attacked and ‘eaten’ away bit by bit by nan0-defilements when we are unmindful… sometimes rapidly and sometimes more gradually. These nano-defilements are more devious than nanomites because they cannot be detected or inhibited physically. It is thus crucial to increase mindfulness to prevent the three poisons of greed, hate and delusion from mindlessly eating away our spirituality. All evils start small, and it is the continual lack of mindfulness that allow them to fester ‘out of control’, to become mega-defilements. However, similar to the nanomites, they can be controlled remotely… not by the push of a physical button, by an instant spur of mindfulness.
Think lightly not of evil,
‘It will not come to me’,
for by the falling of water drops
a water jar is filled.
The fool with evil fills himself,
he soaks up little by little.– The Buddha (Dhammapada)