Tonight's chant will be the Metta Sutta, but we will begin with the repentance verse, which we chant three times. And we'll put that on the screen. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion born through body, speech, and mind. I now fully avow all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion.

[01:13]

Born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. Metta Sutta This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise, who seeks the good and has obtained peace. Let one be strenuous, upright and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous. Let one not be submerged by the things of the world. Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches. Let one's senses be controlled. Let one be wise, but not puffed up, And let one not desire great possessions, even for one's family. Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove.

[02:15]

May all beings be happy, may they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong and high or middle or low realms of existence. Small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy. Let no one deceive another nor despise any being and any state. Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things. suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world, standing or walking, sitting or lying down during all one's waking hours. Let one practice the way with gratitude, not holding to fixed views, endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites,

[03:23]

One who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death. May all awakened beings extend with true compassion their luminous mirror wisdom. With full awareness we have chanted the Metta Sutta. We dedicate this merit to our original ancestor in India, great teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha. Our first woman ancestor, great teacher, Maha Prajapati. Our first ancestor in China, great teacher, Bodhidharma. Our first ancestor in Japan, great teacher, Ehei Dogen. Our first ancestor in America, great teacher Shogako Shunryu, the perfect wisdom, Bodhisattva Manjushri, to the well-being of all those afflicted with ills and to peace pervading for all peoples of the world.

[04:38]

Gratefully we offer this virtue to all beings, all Buddhas throughout space and time, all honored ones, bodhisattvas, mahasattvas, Wisdom beyond wisdom. Mahaprajna Paramita. Good evening, everyone. Happy New Year. So 2020 was a strange, difficult year.

[05:44]

And I'm sure some of that strangeness and difficulty will continue this year, but we may hope for some relief, some change, some benefit in this new year. I want to talk about my 2021 year's resolution, which is to speak truth to power, to the power of wholeness and healing. So one of the 10 grave bodhisattva precepts is that a disciple of Buddha does not lie. And all of these precepts imply kind of the other side. which is to speak truth in this case. So I want to speak tonight to the truth, truth to the power of, first of all, of zazen and zen practice as the deepening communion with wholeness, the wholeness of reality.

[07:04]

the wholeness with the cosmos. And I think wholeness etymologically relates to healing. So we hope for healing on many levels this year. We work for healing in many levels. And our practice of zazen, our practice of just sitting upright, showing up in this body-mind, sitting uprightly, and continuing to do that, sustained everyday zazen and its expression in our everyday life. Just showing up in our life allows this communion with wholeness.

[08:14]

And it takes a while to realize this. Or maybe it happens whether or not we realize it. But to continue this, to continue to show up in our life, to continue to be upright, And this Zazen practice teaches us that, how to just be present with whatever is happening, to inhale and exhale, to feel this uprightness, to feel the Buddha on our seat. Dogen calls this Buddha going beyond Buddha, this ongoing going beyond, going beyond our current awareness of wholeness. So it's not about reaching some destination. It's not about finding some final Buddha and everything is settled.

[09:16]

This is about being alive as Buddha, as home, as being present. What is the healing of our life? What is the wholeness of our life? How do we gradually, sometimes suddenly, sometimes we just suddenly see something. But then we continue, we need to continue to feel the interconnectedness of everything, this body, mind, and our wholeness. So this is one kind of speaking truth of the power of wholeness. But I also want to speak truth to the power of our world. So I like Thich Nhat Hanh's comments on the precepts.

[10:19]

He says, do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. So as we settle into communion with the healing of wholeness of the world, the wonder of the world. We also see the world around us and express this wholeness in the world around us. So speaking truth also means speaking truth to power in the worldly sense. So I want to, I will return to some of Thich Nhat Hanh's comments about the precept about not lying or speaking the truth. But in one of his precepts, he says, do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure.

[11:22]

Always speak truthfully and constructively, but have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice. Even when doing so, they threaten your own safety. So the wholeness of healing is not the false healing of accommodation to cruelty, or in our current situation, the so-called bipartisanship with the racism and with the mass child abuse of the Republican Party's congressional leadership. So I feel I need to speak about this and speaking truth to power tonight. I think we need multi-partisanship, not bipartisanship.

[12:23]

And I'll come back to this. And I do not mean to, in talking about this, I did not mean to include all Trump voters. Many of us, myself included, have relatives who are Trump voters and actually we have people in our saga who are Trump voters. But what I see is that almost all of the Republican Congress people, almost all, have been supporting massive racist voter suppression and have been working before and since the election to disallow black voters in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, recently, but also in the court cases to suppress the votes in those states, the court case sponsored by Texas.

[13:27]

This is an attempted coup. It's treasonous to the United States Constitution and to our democracy. And I'm, again, speaking about the Republican national leadership in Congress and the Senate. Many local Republican officials actually have spoken truthfully about the election count and courageously. But almost all the Republican Congress people have supported, in addition to this suppression of Black voters, have supported children in cages on our southern border. And that's still happening. Children separated from their parents and being tortured according to international observers. And the national Republican leadership in Congress have supported lack of federal support of a coordinated response to COVID.

[14:37]

we now have 350,000, more than 350,000 American dead from COVID and many more predicted in the next couple of months. So trying to have bipartisanship or healing with these Republican Congress people is not true healing. The rule of law and the whole concept of justice in our country is in jeopardy. Or maybe it's, I don't know. We can say that we still have it. And I hope that after Georgia tomorrow, there will be change. And yet I also have to say, speaking truth to power, that we have bipartisanship, we do have bipartisanship by both Republicans and the mainstream Democratic Party in supporting the American cruelty of the military-industrial-congressional complex, as President Eisenhower first wanted to call it 60 years ago, a Republican president.

[16:04]

We have had endless wars my whole adult life based on lies and oppression of other people, from Vietnam to Central America to Iraq and Afghanistan. So, speaking truth to power, 53% of the total United States budget goes to the military, supporting weapons contractors. the United States has 800 military bases around the world. With our huge so-called defense budget, our defense, unquote, our so-called defense department and our expensive fighter jets have not defended over 350,000 American dead. What kind of defense is that? At the same time, Congress says it cannot afford to give relief to people, including so-called essential workers who are hungry, many out of work, many without health care, now threatened with eviction during a pandemic.

[17:28]

And we have this obscene war budget. So this is another truth. Over the holidays, just one example, our current administration sold over, sold $800 million worth of bombs, 10,500 bombs to Saudi Arabia so that it could continue its war of genocide in Yemen. This is our tax dollars. can afford to do that and not to give relief to people who are homeless and have no health care and are hungry. So I want to say I'm not at all criticizing

[18:36]

all military people. We have veterans and military veterans in our sangha, people who joined the military to serve our country and try to find honorable livelihood. But I want to speak to the truth of the military contractors and policymakers who work for the defense contractors, literally. The defense contractors give huge donations to the was talking about. And many generals, I don't know for all of them, but many generals go to work for military contractors after they retire. These military contractors control our foreign policy and they control much of the world. And actually we have in our sangha people who work for military contractors. So I'm not talking about particular people. I'm talking about the systems of power that control our governments in our country and the world.

[19:46]

So how do we speak truth? How do we not lie? How do we benefit beings? So I want to return to Thich Nhat Hanh's comments on the precepts. So in our ten great precepts, he talks about these precepts and and specifically about speaking truth. So just read a few of them. He says, do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive other's viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life. and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.

[20:51]

So I'm expressing some strong opinions tonight. It's what I see. It's the truth I wish to speak to power, both the power of Zazen and the power of our society, but also we need to listen. We not need to adjust our views as we see other, as we hear other people. He also says, do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddha's systems of thought are guiding means, they are not absolute truth. He also says, do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness. Again, going back to the reality that many of us, myself included, have relatives who are Trump supporters and support these, mainly I'm calling out the Republican leaders in Congress.

[22:02]

How do we speak to their supporters? And how do we speak to beneficial approaches to life and society. This is not easy. How do we take care of our world? This has been a difficult year this last year, the pandemic, the exposure of systemic racism in our society and world.

[23:05]

It's not new, but maybe with the cell phone videos, we are more exposed to it. This week, there was another unarmed black person killed by a policeman in Minneapolis. where George Floyd was killed. This happens almost every week in this country. It's not more than once a week. And we have this pandemic, which is dangerous. Please take care of yourselves. Please continue to be careful. and so forth, many, many pandemics. Climate damage is happening too, accelerating in some ways. So another of our precepts, returning to the power of wholeness, of zazen and uprightness, another one of our 16 precepts is to benefit all beings.

[24:10]

And I take that seriously. So this includes how do we think about benefiting people, people of all races, of all countries. So I think this is not about bipartisanship. This is about multi-partisanship. We see and support all perspectives. So we want to benefit Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Muslims, Latin Americans, Native Americans, Black Americans. And then to look at the history and the karmic legacy of oppression against Native Americans, against Blacks and against women and LGBT people. Maybe we need some kind, maybe some kind of reparations are appropriate.

[25:15]

That's challenging. How do we do that? What is the appropriate response? How do we benefit all beings? All beings. This isn't just about human beings from the Buddhist perspective. So Western religion is totally anthropomorphic. Humans have dominion over the environment. This is the Western perspective on the world. But if we look at, if we really look at the world, if we do this practice of settling deeply into upright sitting every day, and keep coming back showing up, uprightly, we can start to see that we also might consider how do we benefit animals? How do we benefit plants?

[26:20]

How do we benefit mountains and rivers, trees and forests? So I want to talk about this a little bit too. In his Mountains and Water Sutra, Dogen quotes one of our great ancestors in China, Furong Daokai, Fuyo Daokai we say in Japanese, who said that mountains are constantly walking. Have you seen them? Mountains constantly walking. Dogen says that humans need to know that mountains are walking to know our own walking. So this is a different perspective. You know, we have our limited perspective, our own lifespans. Mountains have a different lifespan. Mountains have a different way of walking. but it's related to our walking. December 6th, there was a Sunday New York Times Magazine article about how forests are unified organisms communicating through underground, I don't know if I'll pronounce this right, mycorrhizal fungus.

[27:40]

There's a researcher named Suzanne Simard. It's a really interesting article. And this could be a whole Dharma talk, but she talks about, her research has showed that trees communicate and share warnings and nutrients with each other, including other tree species through this underground web of these mycorrhizal fungus, which also benefits from this. So, Trees can warn each other of danger, even trees of other species, trees share nutrients, trees communicate with each other. So forests are actually this, you know, we think of trees as independent, you know, things that are, that are, don't move, but they're actually, you know, they have a different kind of intelligence, maybe, or a different kind of awareness. And They're alive and they communicate and they're interrelated through this underground web of fungus.

[28:53]

So it's a whole different way of looking at reality. So maybe mountains and rivers and forests as well as animals should have representatives with votes and legislatures. And then I'll add another occupant of our world, a very intelligent one. I've talked about this before. That's the octopus. For those of you who may have Amazon Prime Video, I want to recommend a really wonderful film called My Octopus Teacher. It's a documentary about, so I've talked about octopuses before. They're very intelligent, but they see, you know, at first they seem like extraterrestrial beings, but they can change their color and their shape and their texture, their size.

[30:01]

But they communicate, they can communicate with humans. They, They're kind of solitary, but they're very intelligent. Unfortunately for them, they only have a lifespan of one year. Who knows what they might do, what kind of societies they would have if they lived longer. Anyway, so maybe octopuses and other oceanic animals should have representatives who vote for them in legislature. I don't know. So the fate of our democracy aside, the wholeness of reality and the working out of the karma of humanity in our world proceeds. Wholeness is here. We can meet it through ongoing zazen. We can commune with our world through ongoing zazen, through showing up in our life.

[31:08]

through settling in our life, through speaking truth to the power of zazen, to the power of wholeness. But also, we should not avoid the suffering of all the beings around us. How can we each in our own way, each has their own part in responding appropriately to all the various difficulties in our world. And we're in a difficult time. We're in a transitional time. We are not going to go back to the old normal, whatever that was. It was not a normal, it was not a helpful normal for many people, much less other kinds of beings. So, uh, something new is going to happen.

[32:11]

If we, you know, if when we finish this pandemic, if we have some time before another pandemic, how do we, you know, and one of the things about this idea of the forest as a community, as a, I don't know if you can call it an organism, it's a community of trees. It's an ecosystem combined with this fungus that's underground. You know, and Paul Disko was talking yesterday about the difference between Japanese society and American society. And Japanese society has this authoritarian kind of sense of people have their own place in the society. We are, you know, individualists. And I was thinking about Sangha. So Sangha for them is, you know, kind of set in a way. It's very important. For us, Sangha is even more important, I think, because we don't have communities, or we have communities, but we don't have a, it's difficult to find a sense of belonging.

[33:21]

Part of the issue with this scientist, Susan Simard, who's exploring this way in which forests are an ecosystem, she's confronting Darwin's idea of of evolution as being combative or capitalistic or competitive by showing the system of cooperation that happens in forests. And maybe the truth is somewhere in between. How do we find ways of cooperating? I think we're going to need to do that for our society to continue. and the whatever the new normal is going to be. And Buddha's Sangha is a wonderful model for that. So here we are, and we have to, in this new year, and in this new world, and in the whatever post-pandemic world there is, how do we benefit all beings?

[34:25]

How do we cooperate with each other? How do we speak truth to the power of wholeness and healing? How do we speak truth to the power of those who are supporting war and supporting racism and so forth? So I'm challenging myself and all of us to think about this in new ways. And how do we do this together? How do we find the wholeness that is healing? So maybe that's what I wanted to say tonight. Happy New Year. I'm interested in hearing your comments, responses, questions. Please feel free. So you can either raise your hand or if you go to the participants window, there's a way to hit the raise hand button at the bottom.

[35:35]

You can help me call on people. And thank you for your comments, Zoe. I don't know if you want to say anything more. Zoe? Oh, I don't have anything to say. I just the only thing I will say is I wrote down a few things of what you said in my notes because I found them very quotable. So thank you. You beautifully said so many different things. Yeah, this is one of those talks where I had a lot of different things to say and and so I wrote a lot of notes. Yeah. Yeah, I take it. Thank you for your talk. I was also struck in that article about the point about how this research on trees is leading to a reconsideration of kind of classic Darwinist ideas of evolution.

[36:39]

And the like political implications are really interesting, right? So the classic, I'm an anthropologist. So of course I'm interested in this. So the classic Darwinian idea is a natural advantage, selective advantage, right? That in any species, certain individuals are going to be adapted to the environment so that they can extract more resources. And those individuals will have more mates and have more children and the children of those individuals will survive, right? And it's individual competition. And she was saying that with trees, it's almost the opposite. That the individual only survives because of how it's connected to a broader network and a trans-species network too. That individual survival depends upon the unique contribution that that individual can make to the collectivity and how it's connected to all sorts of other tree species.

[37:42]

It's just stunning. And so it's a wonderful little way to completely reconsider how we can all survive. We survive by reaching out and helping each other in ways that we're probably not even aware of. Anyway, I don't know exactly where I was going with that, but thanks for bringing that up. I thought that was a beautiful part of that, that article. Yeah, it also said that there was, there's some, you know, some questions about that. Some scholars think that there's also competition involved in that. So, you know, this is all, you know, up for debate, I guess. But it raises so many wonderful questions. And part of, you know, Dogen says, all the time, please consider this carefully. So this helps us to think freshly about what is reality? What is our world?

[38:43]

What are we doing here? What, how, you know, we've been taught, we've been, our culture teaches us about competition and do unto others before they do unto you. And maybe, maybe being cooperative and friendly So, other comments on anything? Or questions or whatever? Yes, David, David Ray. Thank you, Taigen. So a comment on that same thread, and then a question. And the comment is about, Ben, the way that you described so well that Darwinism can be thought of as a projection of 19th century British capitalism onto the great animal kingdom, where everybody is a subjectivity looking to better itself at the expense of everyone else.

[39:48]

Scholars of the Iliad used to say, oh, we can see that there's nothing but competitive values in warrior culture. And it's just so obviously clear that that's not the case. When you read things like the Iliad and other ancient texts, it's so clear that the values of cooperation are at least as important. So the question that I have tied in is a word that you used that I don't think I've ever heard in a Zen context before, but maybe I just haven't noticed it. we talked about communion and communing, you know? And so, you know, related to the idea of common, commonality, or being one with. And so I wonder if you could say more about, you know, about the specific resonance of that idea inside Zen practice. Does it have a Well, I don't know that it has a traditional, I don't know if that's a translation of a traditional Zen term, but certainly experientially, yeah, when we're sitting together in a Zendo, and maybe even in this funny Zoom world, where there's little boxes everywhere, there's a kind of communion, you know, we're all here talking together, we're all on the same

[41:18]

a big square. And speaking of mushrooms and fungus, there's an image of a zazen, of a zendo, as a pumpkin patch, where everybody in the, so some of you have never been at our Irving Park zendo, a lot of you have, but sitting in the zendo, you know, you can imagine out of the top of the head, a stem coming up and then all joining together. And so we're all part of this network. So this is sort of the opposite of the trees growing, the tree roots going down to this, uh, this fungus world. Um, but we're all part of this, this Zen pumpkin patch. That's a kind of communion. Um, or we can commune with, um, you know, with our, you know, lineage and with our ancestral teachings, or, you know, you mentioned the Iliad, you know, one of the things about so that so bodies, one of the so I was talking about the military and the way the military contractors have corrupted our country.

[42:40]

But people who go into the military as soldiers, it's very common to talk about the bond, the band of brothers, the bond that happens between, and now I guess it's brothers and sisters as there are women in the military, but in combat. And this is, you know, like in the Iliad, there's this tremendous bond. And, you know, the idea of the bodhisattva is sometimes talked about as spiritual warriors. I don't think we have to be, spiritual warriors fighting against some other group, but as spiritual warriors banded together, there's a tremendous communion, you know, in terms of working together to benefit all beings. The idea of benefiting all beings is so incredibly radical. because we're so trained to think of others, you know, who are, who we have to fight against or work against or compete against, you know, Muslims or Mexicans or whatever, um, you know, and whites and blacks.

[43:49]

And, you know, there's where it's so deep in our culture to think of others who we, who are, you know, we're fighting against, but if we think of, all beings as spiritual warriors fighting to liberate all beings and that communion of that. It's hard to get that, but there's a communion there too. So I think communion, I like the word communion. I like the word commune. That's what we're doing when we're all sitting together. So I'm not sure what traditional Buddhist term that would translate, but I'm not talking about, you know, Catholic communion, but, you know, there are words that are used in particular ways in Western religion that also may have different meanings in In Buddhist, the Buddhist world, faith is a good example, because faith has one meaning in Western religion, where it's belief in some dogma or deity or something, whereas faith in Buddhism is just a kind of trust or confidence in maybe in Sangha or in Buddha or in just sitting upright.

[45:02]

So anyway, I could go on. I'll stop. Maybe that responded a little bit. I believe Xinyu had her hand up. Xinyu, hi. Hi, and thank you for your talk, Taigen. I very much appreciate how you speak honestly and truthfully in this talk. And I think I admire your courage a lot you had in the talk. I can notice myself experiencing some tension during our talk and especially so I admire Thich Nhat Hanh a lot and I really appreciate your quotes on sometimes we

[46:05]

reinforce ideas on other people, especially children perhaps, through means of education even. And also, as I came I came to the United States a few years ago and so I can't help but notice how extremely polarized the society is and it is just striking and I feel very baffled and among many other things and I'm for One reason or another, I am very happy actually to hear that there are Trump supporters in the Sanka group. In some ways, I am amazed by that fact that the space can allow that.

[47:15]

And I guess my question is around how can you How can you communicate and how can you communicate effectively? Yeah, I don't know how I can phrase my questions properly. And yeah, I guess, how can you communicate effectively? Well, that question is the reason why one of their inspirations for giving this talk, because there are a number of people in our sangha who have talked about, have asked about how to talk to their relatives who are Trump supporters. And I said that there are Trump supporters in our sangha, and I don't know how many there are.

[48:23]

I know of at least one person in Hyde Park who's a Trump supporter, and maybe more. So I maybe exaggerated that. And I, you know, I felt some trepidation in talking about and criticizing Republicans and also Democrats. But I think there's a problem if we think we have to, part of what I wanted to talk about tonight was if we think we have to somehow be bipartisan and heal with Republicans, Because then what are we doing about all the Black people who the Republican leadership is taking their votes away? That's why I wanted to talk about multi-partisanship. So, but going back to your question, which is a real question, sometimes If somebody is set in their views, we should not try and I think it's not helpful to try and convert somebody or persuade them.

[49:31]

If somebody is a fundamentalist Christian, for example, to try and convert them to Buddhism is silly. Why do that? That's part of what Thich Nhat Hanh says. But if somebody is, you know, a relative of yours, You know, my cousin who I love is a Trump supporter. I don't talk with him about politics. I've thought about trying to do that, but it just, I don't think it would go anywhere. So I don't. I owe him a phone call. Maybe I'll call him tomorrow. But sometimes there are people who you can't talk with about certain things. But that doesn't mean you should not continue to have some relationship with them. This is difficult. Yes, our country is totally polarized, but it's not polarized in just one way between Republicans and Democrats. And there's polarization between Democrats and between Republicans and between whites and blacks and between, you know, it's not one, it's complicated.

[50:40]

So that's why I think to think about multi-partisanship and including, and really this thing about benefiting all beings. What is that? How do we really think about that? So, you know, some people try, so, you know, I could try and talk with some Trump supporters and just listen to them, you know, and there might be something that we have in common because they have some fears that actually I can relate to. So it's complicated. But there's this, there's what part of what is, to me, why do I want to talk about the, not Mr. Trump himself, but the Republican congressional leaders have been encouraging violence. And this is just as, just horrible. They've really been encouraging violent responses.

[51:42]

And there are, so I'm just going to say this, there are local Republicans officials in some of the states in Arizona and Georgia, who the Republican national officials have attacked. And some of the white supremacist militia, I don't know what to call them, Proud Boys, whatever, have, you know, threatened their children, threatened to rape their wives. I mean, this is just horrible. There's certain things that should not be tolerated. So that's part of why I wanted to talk about them. And I think it's not, to me, it's not Mr. Trump, it's the Republican national leadership that have supported this kind of stuff that is really dangerous.

[52:44]

So I'm just saying that. If that's too political and the Ancient Dragons Engage Board wants to fire me for talking like that, fine. I don't care. I have to speak the truth, I see. And I'm sure that didn't help resolve your question, but anyway, there it is. Fushun has her hand up. Hi, Fushun. She's a new board member, so we'll see what she says at the next board meeting. So communication is not only a matter of speaking, obviously. I'm asking about the issue of support.

[53:48]

and supporting all beings and what that means because I don't think it's supporting all views. I think support is a matter of not holding on to views. So, but this is just my view and we have to have some view, and Taigan, you're expressing your view this evening that some of us may or may not particularly agree with or have questions about. But I think it's important when we're speaking of support, first of all, not to think of all beings, because it's impossible to think of all beings. We can't think of all beings. So, but there's this wonderful image of the moon and the dew drop, right? So, we have our environment that we're in and we support the beings in the environment to the best of our ability, right?

[54:59]

And understanding that those boundaries are porous. I mean, the boundaries of our, the horizon of our, you know, they're interrelated. I'm just, I don't agree that thinking of all beings is always very helpful, thinking of all beings. And yet, we can understand that this is interconnected with everything. We can understand that, but we can't understand beyond, we can't think beyond our present circumstance. We can't do that. But there's a lot in our present circumstance, like lots of views, lots of information that's coming in from all sides, you know, about the industrial military complex, which is really not a defense department at all. It seems to me it's more like an aggression department.

[56:02]

So, but I just, I wonder what support means. And that's just another way of phrasing the questions that you were asking this evening. Thank you. Yes, thank you. That's very important that we realize that. So it's to benefit all beings. But that's like one of the inconceivable vows, I've got beings are numberless, I vow to free them. Well, what does that mean? And, and a part of what we need to do is to acknowledge our limitations. I can't do everything. And that we have, you know, Tolkien talks about being out in the middle of Lake Michigan and you can't see the shoreline. You can't see all the details of the shoreline. You can't see the shore. So, yeah, we don't see. So, humans see water one way,

[57:06]

Dragon and fish see water another way. Dragon see water a different way. Hungry ghosts see it another way. So yeah, of course, it's very important that we see the limitation of our awareness and perception and understanding and yeah. So that's part of what Thich Nhat Hanh is saying. We don't, we can't see everything. So we have to, you know, keep listening. So thank you, what you said. I know Alex had his hand up a while ago. I don't know if he still wants to say something. Sure. Thank you, Tygen, for a really wonderful talk. Yeah, my comment is a little bit off of this tangent, which I so appreciate this conversation. But thinking about perspectives and this reference to the Mountains and Waters Sutra, which is one of my favorite, it always makes me think of

[58:09]

one of my favorite books I've ever read, which is by a Brazilian anthropologist. It's called Cannibal Metaphysics, and it's about the Arawaka people of Brazil, I believe. And basically, his whole thesis in the book, you know, he's describing how these Native people live and describing their worldview. And he says pretty much the way that they see it is that we have multiculturalism. We have this idea that, you know, there are people and we have all these different cultures, but people are people. To the Arawaka, they have multinaturalism. So there is one culture, there is one human culture that is manifested over a number of different natures. So the idea is that, you know, when we go out and we hunt a jaguar, and we think we're hunting a jaguar, Whereas when the jaguar goes out to hunt, it actually thinks it's a person. It thinks it's a person. And when it's going to, you know, get a taper or whatever, it sees that as whatever prey that it's hunting.

[59:10]

And I just think it's such a fascinating way to think about the world. And it links to that mountains and waters sutra that, you know, the mountains are walking. We just, we don't see it that way. Thank you. That, um, riffing off of what Alex said is something, a similar idea is something that's helped me in thinking about the political division in the country is I think it's really easy to demonize. Um, but then I, you know, I have my viewpoint and it's easy to say, ah, the other viewpoint is evil. But then you hear the way that people in the other viewpoint are talking about it, and they view themselves as morally upright and protecting all of the things that I feel like my opposite view is also protecting.

[60:20]

And they're demonizing my side for the same things that I'm demonizing their side, right? I, it's, it's like multi-naturism, naturalism, whatever Alex was, I misheard the word. So I don't know, I'm struggling with how do we, how do you find common ground when, when both sides feel a sort of righteous superiority? And you know, it's easy in movies to hate the villain because the villain legitimately loves evil, but that's not the way that people work. Everyone thinks that they're good and is, um, you know, I don't know. I don't know where I'm, where I'm going with that because the, all the flip side of this is that you can fall into false equivalency. Um, And so the truth is somewhere between, well, both sides are just the same, and the demonization.

[61:34]

Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Yeah, I think that there is a precept that responds to that issue. And I think, and I don't know if I, I probably did not manage to avoid this in what I said earlier, but one of our precepts is to not speak of the faults of others. So I think, ideally, we don't talk about, rather than demonizing people, we talk about the actions and ideas of others rather than that they are bad people. So I don't know about the Republican Congress people who I was talking about. My problem is not with them personally as much as what they have been doing.

[62:37]

But that's a hard distinction to make. And it's easy to fall into demonization. the precept is about, you know, how do we talk about conduct or actions or, or, or speech, or even thought without making them demons. So that's challenging. But anyway, that's, that's my response to your, your, you know, the point you're making, good point you're making. Yes, Zoe. I don't wanna go down too much of a tangent, but this does make me think of, and you mentioned divisions between Democrats too. So I think I may be getting a little bit more down this route. Speaking of referring to somebody's actions alone,

[63:45]

And this is very prevalent in my age group and cancel culture and that whole situation. So it's very on my radar. But it does make me think of the lengths in which people have been going recently in order to condemn somebody for an action that they did. when they were 18 and this person is like however old 29 now or whatnot. And it's focusing solely on this individual action that in relation to the person that they are now can be completely irrelevant. But it's interesting just thinking solely on actions and the far edge that that can go to. Um, so you just got me thinking about that. It's, it's interesting, isolating, um, different things and how they can all be twisted. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, the cancel thing is a little weird to me, because we know that people can change.

[64:48]

People who do bad things can change and become, and then end up doing good things. There's so many examples of that. Yes, David Ray? I love that point that you're making, Zoe, about cancel culture. And again, I think this might really tie back to the point about communion and unity. I mean, it's a really ancient concept and cancel culture is the same primitive gesture as excommunication, which is older than the Catholic church, but this idea of ostracizing or putting somebody out and saying, okay, we're not going to give you access to fire or water or food. And canceling somebody is kind of like that. And it's saying, you're not in our community. You've done something and we're not just going to condemn your action.

[65:50]

going to condemn you. And I feel that sort of the way that, you know, I live in my own news bubble and people who have different opinions live in their news bubble with their news feed. That is, that's really, that's really profoundly against the value of community. I feel that in my youth, I don't think that people on opposite sides of the political spectrum lived in alternate realities, but it really seems that way now. And I can't be in community with somebody if I don't share a reality. Yeah, that's a part of all this that I was going to get to, but I didn't. And part of how, for me, I can kind of excuse, I don't know, people who I'll just say the Trump supporters, or the virulent Trump supporters, or I don't know, whatever.

[66:55]

That's putting an adjective on somebody, demonizing them. Anyway, there's this, yeah, the propaganda apparatus. The, so, so strong. The way of talking about this disinformation campaign is so skillful. I mean, Gerpels never would have dreamed of this, you know, it's just excuse the reference. But so yeah, there's a whole different world view realities. And how do we get past that? I don't know. But yeah, that's a big part of it. And so somebody who has been, who has been propagandized with disinformation very, very skillfully,

[68:06]

It's hard to necessarily blame them personally. I don't know. It's just, this is the challenge that we all have now. I don't know if any of the anthropologists present have any responses to what we do about that. And that's actually getting a little late. So maybe, maybe it's time to stop. But we're going to be talking about this for a long time. So if anybody has something else they really want to say, we can take one more comment. Taigan, I feel like Doug, I have to check myself in these debates that I want to win, and that I get so passionate that I'm not listening. I think you said something right off the bat, just the fact that we are tolerant of and have people in our sangha that are of a different viewpoint is something to focus on.

[69:29]

We have a slogan in AA that's always inclusive, never exclusive. So I think as we as we attempt to be to welcome people of all beliefs and misbeliefs, if, you know, And just, you know, I think it's just really important that I stay open and that I not try to, like you're saying, demonize, but that it's not a debate to be won, you know, the competitiveness that I think our culture is so competitive with, you know, we gotta win and make somebody else a loser as we do it, you know? Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah, it is a problem. And with the disinformation, like you say it, it's, I have to avoid it. I really, I've let an awful lot of people go because I just, I can't tolerate it.

[70:32]

I, I quit a job. I had a nice little side job. I, the guy was just harping on it all the time. And I, you know, I felt like I was wanting to shred him all the time and it, it, I just had to let it go. So I think sometimes the wisest thing is just to step back, step aside, step out, you know, if there's not a way to cooperate, if there's not a way to communicate, if there's not a way to just find something you can be together on. Sometimes you have to do that. I think that's okay. Anyway, it is time to to do our closing bodhisattva vows and announcements. But thank you all for joining in this. Happy New Year, everyone. Wade, could you do our bodhisattva vows, please? Yes, I will put that up on the screen. We chant this three times.

[71:37]

Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it, beings are numberless. I vow to free them, delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them, dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them, Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them.

[72:44]

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize.

[73:06]

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