So, today is 9-11. I wanna talk about that a little bit. I welcome everyone, but I also want to talk about positive visions of cooperation in Buddhist teachings about that. Alternatives to terrorism. So, just as a historical review, and probably you all remember this, but after 9-11, horrible terrorist attack in New York, there was a kind of reflexive response by the government that we have to counterattack somebody. So, aggression seems to be our default mode. And so, we started a war on terror. I think Gandhi said something like, "'Hatred doesn't end hatred.'"

[01:00]

Anyway, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9-11 attack. Maybe some of the people who planned the attack lived in Afghanistan, but certainly not the Afghan people or government. Actually, Saudi Arabia is now one of the biggest partners in that region, had most of the people who were the 9-11 attackers, and apparently had some responsibility for it. At any rate, again, this war on terror seems to be like a war against war. It hasn't worked, it didn't work. Iraq fell, Afghanistan we had to abandon. Arguably, the whole region is much, much worse than the whole world because of our attacks, our invasions.

[02:06]

Before the Iraq invasion, something remarkable happened though. There were demonstrations against invasion around the world, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. I was living in San Francisco then. There were three gatherings with more than 100,000 people in Civic Center in San Francisco on successive weeks before the invasion happened. I spoke at one of them. There were a large number of people from Zen Center and other Buddhist groups who were there at Civic Center in San Francisco, sitting Zazen, sort of to the side of the front of the main stage, the main speaker's platform. And all the people who went by noticed it and appreciated it, just sitting peacefully. Our practice is an alternative to terror

[03:13]

and wars on terror. And our so-called war on terror ended up, we became the terrorists. Many people around the world see our government as terrorists and many coups and invasions. United States government set up a torture program. And there are still people in Guantanamo who are being held without being charged with anything. So how do we respond to violence, terrorism? Now, of course, the FBI and other government agencies responsible for looking at this say that the most dangerous terrorists are the domestic white supremacy terrorists. And we have the state January 6th to go along with 9-11.

[04:17]

This invasion of our Capitol and active threats to kill the vice president and other Congress people. And this is still a grave danger as long as the people who were responsible for planning that have not been held responsible. So, I want to note the terrible things that happened on 9-11. It's hard to talk about it. I don't know that I want to say much. We all saw the horrible images. Of course, I remember where I was. I had lived in New York City. At that time, I was living in San Francisco, but I lived in New York City for a decade earlier. Yeah, so we have these terrible attacks. Now we have terrorist attacks against school children

[05:20]

and attacks against women who attack in reproductive health, whereas the right to carry an assault rifle is held as sacred. Anyway, so we're in some difficulty here. And I could say a lot more about all of that and what terrorism is, and maybe we'll have time for discussion, but I wanted to offer a positive alternative from Buddha's teachings. The vision of cooperation, the vision of working together. I believe that humans do not need to always be at war. They have been throughout my life, pretty much. There are other options in history and anthropology.

[06:25]

I hope Eve Pinsker, who's an anthropologist with us on Zoom might have some examples, but I know that there have been times in the history of humanity when people did not automatically assume we should respond to difficulties with warfare. There have been cultures where there has been cooperation. So I wanna talk a little bit about the Buddhist teaching of cooperation. And I'm gonna keep this talk, try and keep this talk short because I wanna hear what other people have to say. But this is sort of a preview of my seminar next month, October 22nd, on Huayan Buddhism. That's a Buddhist school, Mahayana school in China, and it was present in Japan too, that had a model of how we are all connected.

[07:28]

A vision of cooperation and interconnectedness. Pretty sophisticated teaching, philosophical teaching of bodhisattva activity. So that Huayan school derived from the Flower Omen Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, which we've been chanting together in the group monthly, the first Friday evening of every month. But the Huayan founders, teachers, the school never became very popular because it was difficult to, it was philosophical, it was abstract. Just like that sutra never became so popular. It's supposed to be the first words of Shakyamuni Buddha upon his great awakening. And nobody could understand it,

[08:31]

so then he decided to teach things like the Four Noble Truths, which are a little easier to get. But part of that sutra has images that became important in Huayan Buddhism. And some of you know them. And these are images of interconnectedness and cooperation, and I will dare say love. So some of these were Indra's, for example, Indra's net. Maybe all of you have heard of that. Who's not heard of Indra's net? Well, I can't tell from people on Zoom. So I'll say a little bit about it. That's an image of reality and of interconnectedness. So the image is that the universe, reality is made up of jewels. Or each element, each portion of reality

[09:36]

in the universe is a jewel. And it reflects the light coming from the jewels all around it. And those reflect the light coming from the jewels around them. And so forth forever. So this is a radical kind of holographic image of deep interconnectedness. We are all connected. Our invasion of Iraq affected the whole region and the whole world. Everything that we do actually affects everybody else in the whole world. We can't separate ourselves from this reality because we are enmeshed in it. And each thing is enmeshed in it. The whole, from this vision, from this Mayan vision of interconnectedness, everything is alive in its own way.

[10:39]

We tend to only think of humans. And then we get into wars because we tend to think, oh, only our side is human. And those people are subhuman and we can attack them and kill them and vanquish them. This seems to be the way human beings are. And again, I want to suggest that there have been times in various cultures where people got along together and people worked together and cooperated. It's possible. Maybe in Europe, it hasn't happened in 3000 years. I don't know. I'm not a historian or anthropologist, but I know there have been places and times where people actually did not assume that the only way to respond to some difficulty was to attack. That's a weird way of thinking. We can work together.

[11:40]

And when we have disagreements, we can talk through them and work them out and take the time to do that. And if we feel attacked, we don't have to lash out. There's this possibility. So another image from the Flower Ornament Sutra is this was actually built by Fasan, one of the great ancestors and founders of the Huayen approach in China that I think did this as a demonstration for Empress Wu, who was a patron and was arguably the most powerful woman in Asian history. Maybe in world history, I don't know, Catherine the Great, anyway. Fasan set up a hall with mirrors on all sides, not just four walls, but more top and bottom. And he put a Buddha in the center.

[12:41]

And he brought Empress Wu in, and she looked and saw that there were reflections of Buddha sitting there and going on all around, going on all around. And this is also another way to see how the world is, like those jewels reflecting. Everything is reflected in everything else. You often can't see it so clearly, but this is the Mahayana Buddhist idea of interconnecting the world with the world. And this idea of interconnectedness and interdependence, they're all deeply, deeply connected with each other. We think we can say, oh, those other people, they're not, they don't count. They're not Americans, they're not white or whatever. But that's this kind of funny way of saying things.

[13:47]

So, you know, there's a Dogen talks about identity action, cooperation, to see how others are part of us, how others see us, how we see others, how that is all connected. I actually saw this hall of thoughts once I was doing long, actually Zen Catholic dialogue over some years, and the Zen people involved were people from San Francisco Zen Center, our tradition, and people from the city of 10,000 Buddhas, which is Chinese Chan, the master of law. They have a huge monastery in north of San Francisco in Ukiah, actually it's an old mental institution,

[14:53]

but it's huge complex. They have their Buddha halls as a basketball court, former basketball court with Buddha's images of Buddha, Buddha statues all around all the walls. Anyway, but they also have this hall of mirrors patterned after Fatsa and what he just demonstrated to Empress Wu. And you go in there and there are mirrors all around and there's a Buddha in the middle, and you see Buddha in all directions, many, many, many, many Buddhas. Part of what the Flower Ornament of the Tamsaka Sutra says is that there are Buddhas everywhere and Bodhisattvas everywhere. But on the tip of every blade of grass, on the tip of my staff are innumerable Bodhisattvas. This is a vision of, I don't know what to call it, to say interconnectedness, that's just a word. It's like how deeply everything is interrelated.

[15:56]

And this idea of cooperation or identity action that Dogen, our founder in Japan talks about, is an image of what we call love. Everybody and everything in all the world is part of us and vice versa. That's not how we usually see things. So going back to the war on terror, there's this idea of do unto others before they do unto us. And I think we all have taken it for granted that that's the way human beings have to be. We have to have warfare. We have to have a huge military budget. But Buddha taught love, really, taught cooperation, he taught kindness. And our practice of Zazen is to see all of our, as we said, what's really difficult in some ways

[17:03]

about Zazen and sustained Zazen practice, we seek all our ancient mystic karma. And we have a practice of acknowledging that. We confess our ancient mystic karma. So beings in the world, at least human beings, animals too, I'm dealing with a bunch of animals in my house. But we think we're separate. We think if we feel attacked, we have to react and attack back. And that's, it doesn't have to be that way. It just doesn't have to be that way. So I had a story, an example of that this past week, last Wednesday, I was out on my weekly exploration with some realtors to look for a new space for ancient dragons, Zen Gate. And I couldn't find my cell phone. I thought it must be in my bag

[18:03]

because sometimes I lose things because there's all these different pockets. I just couldn't find it. I thought maybe it's at home. And when I got home, my wife told me that somebody had called, or no, that she had called me and somebody picked up the phone and said, oh, I've been waiting for someone to call. And this was a guy, a worker who was up in Glenview at the time, a little north and west of where we now live in Southwestern Evanston. He said, I was waiting for somebody to call. Yeah, I have your cell phone. Do you want me to come and bring it to you? Sorry, kindness is part of who we are. No, we said, no, no, no, we'll come to you. So we drove up to Glenview and where he found where he was and he was outside, he was working in a house there

[19:04]

and he came over and handed me my cell phone. And I was just, you know, I kind of feel if I don't have my cell phone, I kind of feel like somebody's gonna arrest me for not having all my dossier and all my papers in order. Anyway, I felt like he saved my life. And he just said to me, I always try to treat others as I would like to be treated. Wow, it's just simple. Anyway, so, you know, that's an example of, you know, losing your cell phone. Somebody might take it and steal it and sell it or I don't know, but no, he was waiting for us to call so we could give it back. We are all that deeply connected with each other.

[20:07]

We can practice kindness, we can practice generosity, we can practice ethical conduct and patience, energetic response and calm and insight, clarity. So what I said about Hoi An Buddhism as one way of seeing Buddhist teaching and its dynamic connectedness, I'll be talking about in our afternoon seminar next month, but I may be talking about it again before then. How do we recognize that we are part of each other? And when we have disagreement, how do we work that out and take the time to do that? And how do we see each other's viewpoints and listen? A lot of our practice is about listening.

[21:13]

The Bodhisattva, the awakening being of compassion, her name is the one who listens to the cries of the world or the suffering of the world. So we practice sitting upright and still listening to our breath and listening to the raindrops. It was raining very actively during Zazen Herbst morning. Actually really interesting sound. I love the sound of raindrops. It's paused now. It hit the pause button on the rain. So maybe you can hear me better. Okay. So, but going back to our basic practice of Zazen, it's also about listening. It's about listening to our own greed, hate, and delusion as it comes up. It's about listening to our own karmic afflictions as they come up. And it's not about getting rid of those.

[22:15]

It's about listening to them and seeing them as gateways, doorways to awakening. We awaken through seeing difficulties, through seeing our challenges. So again, the so-called war on terror is really kind of absurd. It makes us, our war on terror made us terrorists. We can't terrorize terrorists and feel like we're not them. And of course, in every war, the main victims are children and civilians. More and more in every war. When it was gladiators fighting hand to hand,

[23:16]

well, they were, well, they were victimized too. Gladiators in the Coliseum were slaves. I don't know if David Ray's here to talk about that. Anyway. Okay. So I believe, and I've heard that there are cultures where people don't automatically start wars and fight each other, where wars are not the norm, where people work things out. So I want to start our discussion period by calling on Eve Pinsker, who's our resident anthropologist, or one of them, just on Zoom. And Eve, can you say anything about, you know, cultures? Yeah. Who did not assume warfare? Yeah. I mean, well, there's an anthropologist at Rutgers, R. Brian Ferguson, that's dedicated, you know, much of his career to this. And he has argued that, yeah, no, war is not hardwired into human society,

[24:21]

that there have been, you know, places and times without it. And I think, you know, other social scientists would also agree that, you know, war is connected with, I mean, for one thing you have to distinguish between war and homicide, right? I mean, clearly, you know, we have the capacity to kill. I mean, it's a possibility. But as you've said, we also have the capacity not to. But, you know, there's a difference between, you know, individuals killing each other and warfare as the act of a social group. And, you know, in human history, yeah, the warfare as a social group is connected with, you know, with the rise of the state. I mean, before that, complex chiefdoms, as power becomes more centralized,

[25:24]

as some, you know, leaders assert power, or control both over their own group and over resources, and start conceptualizing, you know, ideas about the connection between the power over a group and the group's power over resources like land or, you know, access to, yeah, I mean, access to territory. So, you know, where you see less, I mean, Ferguson has argued, where you see less evidence of war in human history is, you know, before the rise of centralized power, you know, which makes sense. So, I mean, you know, so there's a lot of,

[26:29]

I mean, and another question is, you know, is warfare, do you have to assume warfare when you have, you know, differences in groups, and people perceive cultural differences in groups, you know, living in the same area? And I mean, the answer to that is no. I mean, historically, there's been periods of having, you know, different cultural groups coexist in the same territory, but, you know, usually, like defining themselves in complementary ways, like, you know, one group was agriculturalists, another group was herders. And so, you know, sometimes they can, you know, use more or less the same territory, but they're using it in different ways. You know, sometimes that has resulted in conflict, but not always. I mean, sometimes people do find ways to coexist. And, you know, you have areas of the world like Kerala, for instance, in India,

[27:30]

where, you know, there was a tradition of, like, you know, cultural and religious diversity. I mean, there were Jews, Hindus, and Muslims and Christians living in the same area, and for several centuries, you know, managed to do so peacefully. And then with the coming of colonialism, that changed. But in colonialism, frankly, as far as warfare, isn't always bad. I mean, there's some areas of the world, in the Pacific, where colonialism actually helped, and indigenous warfare. But so it's not, you know, it's not hardwired, right? I mean, but at the same time, there's these complex dynamics that support conflict. And one thing I think happens, you know, frankly, when you talk about, like, individual humans, I mean, I think, you know, there is something biological about, you know, young males and testosterone that make them more prone to violence.

[28:31]

And, but, you know, but when you're in a social group, it's like, obviously, there's ways of controlling that, ways of channeling that, you know, they can play football instead, right? I mean, you know, well, I think there's problems with football, too. But anyway, there's ways of channeling those impulses and helping them grow out of it. But on the other hand, I think you have this sort of insidious alliance between, you know, between leaders who wanna use young men to fight for, you know, so that they, that the leaders gain more power. And so they become cannon fodder. And, but that's not, you know, because there's this, it's not alone, because there's a, like, propensity to violence among young men. It's because the, you know, that you get conditions where centralized political leaders,

[29:34]

you know, use that, right? And use it, you know, to serve their own purposes. Yes, thank you so much, Eve. Yeah, so it's not essential to human beings to go to war. It's just not. It has been, I think, in our lives, and we tend to assume that that is the way things are, but when we actually are willing to slow down and pay attention to our hearts and minds and each other's and see that we're deeply interconnected, it's not the only option. So thank you very much, Eve. I'd like to open up conversation. Anybody else who has responses or questions or perspectives that you would like to share? Please, feel free. Yes.

[30:40]

Two stories came up for me during your talk. Thank you for your talk. You're welcome. The first is the story of Paul, once Saul, who was persecuting the Christians and how his great awakening didn't happen while people were trying to convince him or fighting back against him. He was all alone on the road with no resistance and suddenly was able to see, oh, oops, and his life changed. Seeing that resistance looks nice. And there's also a story that I've been working with for a long time about a Chan master, a young Chan master at a monastery that the country was invaded and everybody left except for him. And he had a confrontation with the leader. And there's back and forth, but it ended with him being stabbed, his head cut off, depending on the story. And the scream could be heard for miles and the question is, why? Well, what a gift, like this resistance list. Here's the consequence of your action.

[31:44]

Look at this pain that you're afflicted and there's nothing to fight against. You just have to see it. That's really loud for me. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, there's another story that a Japanese temple where the samurai, invading samurai came in and the samurai came up to a monk, a teacher maybe, who was sitting silently and drew a sword and said, I could cut your head off with one swing. And the guy said, I'm someone who could have my head cut off with one swing. And it was just totally calm. And the samurai sheathed his sword. There's a longer version of that. Yeah, so, nonviolence is also relevant to this as an alternative. And as you said, football isn't the only alternative,

[32:47]

but there are alternatives too. You know, that kind of rush of energy, rush of energy that do not need to be included in warfare. So anyway, just knowing that we are connected and Buddhism doesn't talk so directly about love, the Metta Sutra does, but you know, it's really, when we see that we are so deeply connected, how could we do that to ourselves? So anyway, other comments, responses, questions, please. Yes, Kathy. It makes me think about where does that start? With each of us individually. And from my mind, that takes me to when I was a kid, I'm three years younger than my sister, who can be a bit bossy.

[33:48]

And as kids, we got literally into physical fights. I think we're lucky we didn't do serious damage to each other. But we're also very close friends. But, you know, sibling rivalry is a real thing. And I think sometimes that's where aggression begins. You know, you can go into the psychology of it, but there is a competitiveness in us. And I think it's one of the things I've worked at, you know, internally, psychologically, my whole life. Now, for example, with that same sister, who can be a bit controlling still, I have to set boundaries without being too aggressive. And I think that leads me to the idea of skill for leads. And because I think it's true in our lives in general,

[34:52]

and I think that's probably where it starts, there's a ripple effect. If we deal with things in life by being aggressive, even emotionally, on a consistent basis, it sets a pattern, it sets a cultural norm. And so I think examining those parts of ourselves and how to, I don't know, set boundaries because they are needed oftentimes, but to excel the lead, that's something we all have to do. Thank you. Yes, as you were talking, I was thinking of how to be assertive without being aggressive. How can we state, you know, present our own viewpoints, put it that way, without, you know, trying to defeat the others?

[35:53]

How can we talk together? And yeah, and there's a positive, very positive way of seeing that. You know, Dogen talks about taking one's Dharma position. How do we take our position through our karmic life in our world with all those we interact with without having to, you know, go to war with others? It's just, it's, that's kind of silly, but it's, there's that tendency. I'm actually, I don't want to go too long, but I'm working with that as an animal energy. In our home now, we had two cats and Wednesday night we brought home a puppy. It was wonderful and lively and active, but getting them all to be together is very challenging. So this is part of, we're animals, you know?

[36:56]

And how do we use our animal biology and express that fully and wholly and wholesomely, but not have to be, even be competitive in a cooperative way. Anyway, it's a great challenge to us, but thank you, Kathy. Anybody else, any other comments? If not, I can make some announcements, but again, if anyone has any perspective or reflection or comments, there's a song that goes, war, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Anyway. Except for, yeah, except for, like I said, giving more power and resources

[37:58]

to the people who control it. I mean, it's good for like Boeing, I guess. Whoever's making the armaments. Yeah, yeah, there are people who make money from war. That's true. Oh,

[38:17]

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