Happy to be introducing Taigen Dan Layton to you this morning. Taigen is a teacher at the Mountain Source Sangha, right? In the Bay Area, in the altered state of California. He trains mostly with Tenshin Rev. Anderson Roshi in the various places at San Francisco Zen Center and also in Japan. Taigen and I have at least three things in common. One is our resonance with the teaching of Dogen Zenji. Taigen has done a lot to bring Dogen's teaching and make it available to English speakers through his translations with Shohako Komura and also with Kaz Kanahashi. We also share a deep resonance with the great Minnesota native, you know who, Bob Dylan. And Taigan actually will be going on a pilgrimage, I think on Wednesday, up to the sacred hometown, the birthplace of the sage.

[01:12]

So that's a pilgrimage that I made, I think at about 21. revere you for your so rich practice. And then the third thing is our feeling, I think, of how important it is for the Dharma and what the Dharma has to offer to our current situation in the world, how important it is for us to really bring that forward in every way that we can. And I've asked Taigen this morning to talk about the dharma and social action, and he's going to be doing that, I believe, with 16 points. Thank you for coming. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Dosha. It's wonderful to be back at Clouds and Water. So I want to speak this morning about precepts and our response of the precepts

[02:21]

in society. So, first of all, Buddhism, and particularly Zen, is a contemplative tradition. In large part, the focus of our practice is turning within. So, one of the basic instructions for Zazen, for our Zen meditation, is called in Japanese, Eko Hensho, to take the backward step and turn the light inwardly. So a lot of our practice is just, as Dogen says, studying the self, facing the wall and facing ourself. And also in our tradition we have the opportunity of monastic practice. So some of us feel the need to take a backward step from the world and go off to the mountains and really deeply study ourselves. Not everybody needs to do this, but some of us do. So I was fortunate to live at Tassahara in the deep mountains in California for three years and to practice at a practice period in the mountains in Japan.

[03:31]

But the point of our turning within in Zazen, whether we do it for three months or three years in a practice period or for 30 minutes or 40 minutes in daily Zen meditation is to then step forth, to come back from the mountains, to get up from our cushion, to express Buddha's awakening in the world. So in our meditation, in our contemplation, we have the opportunity to see clearly, or at least to get glimpses of clarity. which is sometimes better. But then, how do we take care of that in the world? And it's not that we do one, then the other, that you cannot express awakening until you have finished your training program or whatever.

[04:33]

Actually, they happen together from the very beginning, even if you're sitting in Sashin or up in the mountains. So I would say that we express this awareness and kindness in three realms. First of all, just on our cushion, learning to be compassionate with ourselves, learning to face ourselves, to see our habits, to see the ways in which we have been conditioned by the world, to see the ways in which we are caught in patterns and to get to know that very closely, very intimately, to see our own tendencies and to not need to act on them. So a lot of our practice is just expressing this awareness and kindness with ourselves, to learn to be compassionate to ourselves and forgiving to ourselves is necessary before we can be compassionate to anyone else.

[05:41]

But again, it happens together. So there's the practice on our cushion. And the second area of practice is when we get up from the cushion and how we interact with our family, our friends, our co-workers, the people we see day to day. And this is the focus of a lot of Zen training. How do we relate to others? How do we take care of Buddha's awareness in our activity in the world? And then the third realm is how do we express this in our society at large? How do we share Buddha's awareness with the whole environment, not even just the human environment, but also our society and the world of nature and the world around us? How do we see that? How do we express that? The guidelines for how we do this in our tradition is the Bodhisattva precepts.

[06:44]

So in Sutta Zen, we have 16 precepts. And these are not rules or prescriptions, but guidelines, ways of reminders of how to express our awakening with our family and friends and in the world at large and with ourself. So these are just the natural expressions of zazen. It's actually fairly difficult to break the precepts while you're sitting zazen. You might try and see if you can do it. But we have these 16 precepts. I won't go through all of them, but they start with taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, in the principle of awakening, in the teaching of reality, and then in community. And maybe they all just start with and unfold from taking refuge in Buddha, just to return home to our deepest, most Buddhaful self, to come back again and again to our true heart.

[08:02]

So we have, among these 16, 10 grave precepts, they're called sometimes. They sound somewhat like the Ten Commandments, but again, they're not rules or prescriptions or thou shalt not. They're kind of descriptions of awakened activity. And at least in the San Francisco Zen Center tradition, we often phrase them kind of negatively. A disciple of Buddha does not kill. A disciple of Buddha does not lie. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. A disciple of Buddha does not support intoxication. A disciple of Buddha does not misuse sexuality. A disciple of Buddha does not slander, does not praise self at the expense of others, does not harbor ill will or hold on to anger, is not possessive of anything. But each of these has a positive as well as a negative aspect.

[09:08]

and really their heart is also this positive aspect. So a disciple of Buddha does not kill also means that we, when we return to Buddha, we support life and vitality. And not lying means also to support truthfulness. And in its deepest sense in modern times, we could look at Gandhi's teaching of Satyagraha. of speaking the truth, of being truth, as the heart of this precept of not lying. And not taking what is not given, not stealing the positive side of that is to actually support equity, to support generosity and even-handedness in how we are with each other in the world. These precepts also are not just that we should take care that we are following these precepts, but also we support others to follow these precepts.

[10:10]

So if we see someone else taking life, harming life, harming life and vitality, we try and stop that. We try and encourage the end to lying and thievery and so forth. So as it happens in the history of Buddhism in Asia, up until very, very recently, the way in which society was organized was basically around feudal rulers and warlords. They didn't have any model of democracy or participatory government or free speech even. So for the great Buddhist teachers, we look back towards in Asian history, for example, for Dogen, who I've been speaking about this weekend, whose teachings were the beginning of Japanese Soto Zen, from which Dosho and I come.

[11:18]

He didn't try to, in fact, he encouraged people to step away from the world of politics and the world of society, and he actually went off into the deep mountains and spent his last ten years training a group of very good disciples. And this is one basic mode of Buddhism's engagement in society in Asia, to kind of set up a counterculture, going back to the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago, who founded an order of monks and nuns, and the Buddhist order has been a kind of model of an alternative to the usual way of things in Asian society. And the other major way that Buddhism in Asia has influenced society is by actually engaging in with and trying to influence the warlords throughout India, China, Japan, and all the other Asian countries.

[12:31]

So Shakyamuni Buddha himself was, would have been a king, was a prince who abandoned that. And there were many great Buddhist teachers. Dogen also was descended from an emperor, we think, and trained to be a nobleman and trained in the military arts and so forth. Many of the Buddhist teachers. But they also had a positive effect on society in Asia by actually influencing a lot of the rulers to be kinder, to in some ways not be as harsh in terms of how they conducted themselves in their society. But anyway, here we are in America, in the West. And there are various ways in which Buddhist practice has found entryways and found grounds for acceptance in the West.

[13:34]

So there are lots of areas, psychology, in interaction with Western religions. But I would say in America, one of the great entryways, one of the great opportunities for Buddhism is that we have the ideal of freedom and liberty for all. And I think this resonates a lot. It's not exactly the same, but there is a way in which it resonates a lot with the Buddhist ideal of liberation, of saving all beings, of freeing all beings, of just our basic Buddhist wish, may all beings be happy. So Thomas Jefferson talked about founding this country on principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[14:39]

And as I understand it, one of the reasons I love Thomas Jefferson is that when they were writing the Declaration of Independence, initially it said life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. And Tom Jefferson insisted they change it to the pursuit of happiness, so I bow. Tom Jefferson also said, if there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. Tom Jefferson said that in 1791. In 1816, he said, I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." So even in 1816, when he said that, he was concerned about the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations.

[15:42]

Would you put this on the altar? So we have a complicated cultural karma here as American, oh, could you put it so the picture is shown? Thank you. So, you know, we have a complicated cultural karma. There are negative and positive aspects of it. Of course, we know that Tom Jefferson was a slaveholder. So there is the legacy of slavery that's part of our karma and part of our situation as we try and practice together.

[16:43]

And there's the near genocide of the Native Americans and the mistreatment of our environment and many aspects of complicated karma. So our current situation is not something that just happened suddenly it's a product of lots of positive and negative karma. So we in American Zen have also some guidance from our Japanese roots as a negative example. So there's been, there was a book not so long ago called Zen at War talking about the ways in which Japanese Zen people including some Zen teachers, important Zen teachers, went along with the militarism before World War II. And some of them even seemed to have encouraged and supported that.

[17:46]

There were others who tried to oppose it. There was one Soto priest who was executed early in the 20th century. So here in Americans and at war, I think we need to speak truth together and not be afraid to speak truth together and listen to each other. So Thomas Jefferson, one of the great things he did was to try to actually to institute in this country the principle of separation of church and state. But he did not mean by that to take all spiritual values and ethical values out of our considerations of how we function together as a society. Rather, he meant to remove the domination by any one view or any one church so that there would not be a state church, there would not be one

[18:55]

dominant, controlling view of what morality and ethics is. So I feel my responsibility as a Buddhist teacher in America and as a precept holder is to speak not only of Dogen and Juyi and Ryokan and, you know, many great Asian teachers, but also to speak about Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. So I feel like I need to say something from the point of view of Buddhist precepts, hopefully, about the massive corruption in our society now. Because I believe that the teaching and the principles of the precepts and the principles of looking within and the principles of insight and compassion don't just apply to what happens on our own cushion or in our sangha, but that actually they have something to offer to the larger society.

[20:05]

So this is not, to me, really a matter of politics. This is, how do we see the precepts? It's not about Republicans or Democrats. So I want to speak about the massive corruption of the current Bush-Cheney administration. But there are many good Republicans, honest Republicans, who are also speaking up about this. And there are many Democrats who seem to be happily going along with it. And there's this long karma that led to what's going on now. So it's not about any a particular group of people really. Part of our looking at such a situation is to see how we are connected individually too. So we must see our own greed and our own capacity for greed when we see the incredible greed of oil companies and weapons companies and corrupt Pentagon contractors.

[21:17]

And we should look at our own tendencies to want to make evil others. That it's a human tendency and capacity to to have somebody out there who's the evil other and then we can feel good about ourselves. So, you know, Saddam Hussein thinks that Bush in America is evil, or Osama bin Laden, or whoever our evil other is this week. And of course, we have our list of evildoers, according to Mr. Bush. And we each can do that, we each can. So I don't want to make Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney into an evil other either. I don't wish them ill, personally, actually. We have to see the humanity and the pain of the other. So there will not be peace in the Middle East until Palestinians and Israelis can actually feel each other's pain and fear and suffering.

[22:26]

When they can hear each other and hear the pain of each other, there can be peace then. given what's happening in the world, I think we need to try to speak truth to each other. And this is not about having the right opinion. So I don't, you know, I don't expect you all to agree with everything I say. In basic Buddhist teaching, there is the Four Noble Truths, which the fourth of which is the Eightfold Path. And that includes things like right effort and right meditation and right insight and right view and right speech. It does not include right opinion. So there's no one right opinion. In fact, right view means that we understand that there's no one single right view, that we need to listen to others, that we need to talk together and hear our truths and hear how others feel and hear others' fears and listen to each other. And I think this is also the principle of free speech in our American

[23:33]

ideal of democracy. It's also important that there's not one right way to respond. So even if we agree about the problems, each of us may have our own appropriate way to respond from our own practice, from our own calm and insight and caring and concern. So some of us may feel moved to write or call congresspeople or to write letters to the editor or go to demonstrations. Some people may actually have a positive effect on the situation just by sitting and meditating and extending this basic wish, may all beings be happy. That also has an effect. It does have an effect. So the second noble truth is that everything that happens has a complicated chain of causation, that due to grasping and desire we have suffering and disharmony in the world.

[24:48]

But also this means that everything we do has an effect. So trying to ignore what's going on also has an effect. not responding to what's going on also has an effect. So from the view of precepts, when we are applying precepts to how to respond, we have to keep returning to our own center and our own uprightness and our own calm to see how can I respond to this? But I deeply believe that actually awareness has great power to affect the world. So I want to say a little bit about how I see what's happening.

[25:50]

And again, so first of all, just the massive redistribution of resources in our country. And it's been happening over some years. But in the last two years, the looting of our economy and environment that's been going on is extraordinary. So in the last two years, our national budget has gone from a surplus of $200 billion to a deficit coming up of $700 billion. So some people call this government a kleptocracy, which relates to the precepts of stealing. And many of us know that health insurance costs are skyrocketing, that many teachers are being laid off, that infrastructure is being neglected, while there are tax breaks for the extremely wealthy. And the economy is being looted and science ignored, pretending that there's no global warming.

[26:54]

The national forest management being turned over to logging companies. So the effects of neglect of our infrastructure we recently saw with blackouts in New York and Cleveland and Detroit and other places. And this is directly relevant for me in my experience in California. So in California we had George Bush's friends at Enron and other energy companies come into California and basically by manipulating distribution of energy really loot the economy and severely damage the economy of California. There were other causes too. And so now we have this odd recall going on in California. They've managed to scapegoat the Democratic governor, and not that I have a whole lot of respect for him, but he certainly wasn't the cause of all this.

[28:02]

And it turns out that Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually involved in meetings with Enron during the buildup of this energy crisis in California, and efforts to deregulate the California energy industry even more than it had been right in the middle of this looting that went on. So that's one part of what's going on. And then there's the question of our democracy. And of course, this isn't all new. There's been corruption in American politics and in American governance and in American society. And it's true that there is always war. seems to be. And there is always poverty and inequity. So this happened throughout history.

[29:05]

But I think what's happening now is extraordinary. And so I feel like I need to speak about it. So in the Florida elections in 2000, there's now quite good evidence that this election in Florida was fixed months before the election. Tens of thousands of voters in Democratic districts were removed from the voter rolls. So there's a book by Greg Palast, P-A-L-A-S-T, called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and it's all very well documented. And now there's concern about the election in 2004 because the voting machines that are being instituted in a lot of the country. Sort of as a response to what happened in Florida, it turns out there are questions about how secure they are. And the fact that a lot of the companies that control the software for those voting machines are owned by major contributors to the Republican Party.

[30:09]

And so there's a concern about the 2004 election. And there's the concern about our safety and our national security by the corruption of our intelligence agencies. I'm going into all these specifics because, I don't know, maybe you all know it, and I just want to share information and my perspective on it. And I don't expect you to agree with everything I say, but this is what I see. This is the truth I see. There are some, there's a group of four widows of September 11th, the September 11th attack, who have been pushing for an investigation into September 11th. And what's been happening is that, and this is according to Republican congresspeople, not just Democrats, the Bush and Cheney government is blocking and obstructing and trying to cover up an investigation into September 11th. And the corruption of our intelligence agency has gotten a lot of publicity in terms of how it was manipulated in the promotion of the war in Iraq.

[31:22]

And right now in Iraq, I've heard from people who've been there, there's massive chaos. So the blackout that happened in New York and Cleveland and so forth was minor compared to what people in Iraq, who are used to air conditioning and fans and electricity and a modern secular government, but they're going through for months now. No electricity, no water, no infrastructure. It's not safe to go out on the street at all. They can't get to their jobs. It's just massive chaos. And yet, Dick Cheney's company, Caliburton, has massive contracts that were given without competitive bids to rebuild Iraq while this chaos goes on. And recently, one of the people who reported on how the intelligence about what about the weapons of mass destruction supposedly in Iraq, how that was manipulated as a way to try and warn others against this.

[32:33]

His wife was exposed as a CIA agent by leading members of the Bush government. We don't know who, but it was linked to a conservative columnist This is a felony and considered treason, actually. John Dean, the Watergate figure who was a lawyer for Nixon at one point and was very much involved in the Watergate trial, has said that what the Bush-Cheney government is doing now is much worse than anything Nixon did and is impeachable. Okay, so, I just wanted to get that off my chest. And Dosho encouraged me to say what I wanted to say, so I did. But the point is, how do we approach this from the point of view of Buddha's precepts, if, you know, however much of this is true?

[33:35]

And there's so much more, actually. The encouragement of, I just have to add, the encouragement by our government of so-called usable nuclear weapons in the new Pentagon budget. Even people in the Pentagon have talked about the amazing waste in the Pentagon budget, and parts of that budget are officially not auditable because they don't know where a lot of that money went. They can't find it. Anyway, what do we do about this? So I don't think what we do about this is feel afraid and feel hopeless and feel overwhelmed. I think that is not what our practice teaches us. And as my favorite Minnesota Dharma teacher, Nodosho alluded to, said, if you cannot bring good news, then don't bring any. So I want to talk about the good news part of this now, which is that we have this wonderful opportunity

[34:43]

to speak about the truth, to have some effect on the world, to try to promote kindness rather than killing, to try to promote respect for international law rather than preemptive wars and perpetual wars. So again, there's not one right way to respond, but I really believe that awareness makes a difference. So that's why I've mentioned some of these things. And if you have questions about specifics for me, I'd be happy to share that with you after the talk or in the discussion. But we should be open to listen to what's going on at the same time that in our practice we turn within and pay attention to how it feels for us on our cushions. And for some of us, Just paying attention to what's going on in our cushions is a way of responding to what's going on in our society.

[35:51]

There's not one right way. And we should be open to listen to others and to hear other perspectives, to really hear each other. So we don't know what will happen. we don't know how our actions and our efforts and our deep wishes will affect the world and the course of events in the larger world. It's hard enough just, we were talking yesterday in the workshop about saving all sentient beings and people feel like this basic vow that we take in Mahayana Buddhism to save all sentient beings, to free all sentient beings, seems so Inconceivable, so impossible. How can I have any effect on that? So I said, well, okay, make it a much smaller subset.

[36:52]

What about just saving all the sentient beings in St. Paul Minnesota? Much smaller subset. People felt that was maybe even more difficult. Or what about saving just all the sentient beings in your immediate family, spouses, children, brothers and sisters, parents, just that small subset of all sentient beings. And for some people, some people felt like, oh, well, I can see about how I could be helpful. And some people felt that that was just as impossible as saving all sentient beings. But what we do does have an effect. You know, there's also just the possibility of saving all sentient beings who are now sitting on your cushion. That may also seem awesome. They're all related.

[37:53]

This is basic Buddhist principle. We are all deeply, deeply interconnected. So, the Second Noble Truth means that what we do does have an effect. that our awareness has an effect, that our sharing information and talking together has an effect, that our upright sitting has an effect, that calling Congress people does have an effect. It really does. So we don't know what will happen. And sometimes things happen seemingly suddenly. Like, very suddenly, it seemed, apartheid was finished relatively peacefully in South Africa, and the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union dissolved. Quite suddenly. But of course, there were, as the Zen saying goes, thousands and millions of sweating horses that led up to that. So we don't know what will happen. We don't know how our awareness and our own personal response will affect the situation. And we don't have all the answers.

[38:56]

And we don't know the whole truth. And still, we should speak our truth to each other. So maybe I've said enough. I would love to hear any of your responses or questions or information. Thank you. Yes. I don't think people in government would have more wisdom than they do. Good, thank you.

[40:08]

Very, very important question. Could you all hear him? He says he wants to believe our leaders. He doesn't want to think that our government would lie to us. But something else you said is very important, and I left it out. So I'm really grateful to you. First of all, we have to just see our own sadness. There's tremendous grief about what's happening in the world. So underneath the fear and underneath the anger is just sadness. And maybe we can't do anything, and we're not ready to respond until we just sit with our own sadness. Could it be that our leaders would lie to us so viciously. So there's tremendous sadness.

[41:10]

We want to believe in the precepts of our society, too. And it's really important to just spend time and be willing to face that sadness. And the sadness of the world and, you know, the wars in the Mideast and the attack on the World Trade Center and our own fears about terrorists as well as of our own government because there are terrorists out there and we do need a government and a good intelligence agency and we do need a good military to protect us and so there's tremendous sadness and tremendous fear and I think the first step in responding to all of this is just to face that and really sit with it and be upright in the middle of it and feel your own place of sadness and your own place of fear. When we do that, then we don't need to hold on to the anger that arises, although we have to also face our own anger and sense of outrage and so forth.

[42:14]

But really, the precept about anger doesn't mean that anger never arises. It means that we don't hold on to it. Anger is corrosive to ourselves, and yet we have deep patterns and habits of anger. So how do we breathe into our own anger and let it go so we can actually respond effectively? Because it's, you know, being angry at whoever in the government is not going to help me respond. It's not going to help the situation. It's not really fruitful. And yet we have to face whatever anger as well as whatever fear and whatever sadness arises. So it's an important point. Thank you. Yes. I think they used to have a wrestler here as governor, right? Yeah. So I appreciate the independence mindedness of Minnesotans.

[43:17]

I'm not running for governor of California. If nominated, I refuse to run. If elected, I refuse to serve. I've got plenty to do. Just holding this up. I'm actually going to vote. I'll just tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to vote against the recall, but then I'm going to vote for a Republican to replace if the recall goes through, which is Arianna Huffington, who's a conservative Republican and is speaking the truth about a lot of this in a very strong way. I really don't think this has anything to do with liberal or conservative or Republican or Democrat. This is about, can we uphold the principles that our country is supposed to be based on? Second question. Me too. It doesn't seem like Well, I think there's a reality to what happens in our society that's deeper than what happens in elections.

[44:35]

So putting aside Democrats and Republicans, just awareness of how our society is working does change it. And I don't mean to say that all corporations are bad. McDonald's, I don't eat mammals myself, but McDonald's recently did something really good they are telling their suppliers that they will not use uh... chicken or meat that is that is raised uh... with antibiotics and and uh... with harmful chemicals so uh... there there are all kinds of levels of how society changes and how do we get information is a big problem because i my opinion is the most of the mass media in this country is controlled by a very narrow uh... group uh... and yet thanks to the internet and other sources there are sources of information and so we have to uh... look for information in more widely so i can recommend websites later but uh... anyway we have to also and see what feels right to ourselves so it's a big job so uh... you know for those of you who are dedicated zen students maybe you don't have time to go on on the internet and look and search all this out and actually you know

[45:49]

Working on your cushion is part of the solution. But if you want information and want to look at what's going on, you have to actually make some effort beyond what the major media is saying. And I say this having worked in TV news myself for numbers of years in the 70s. Yes. the trade towers were destroyed the way that they were. If we unified the country, we might have been a monster who was playing president. And so the experience of the media, and also in public life, if it was a surprise attack, how did the media have so much terrorizing footage of the actual attack, if it was a surprise? How did that happen? And so these are things I can't let go of or have trouble letting go of. Can you respond to that? Well, just briefly. If the government didn't know they should have, and Clinton was concerned about it, and tried to warn Bush... Our government let that happen.

[47:14]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answers. I don't know what happened. I just know that It's also clear that the current administration is obstructing investigation into this. So this is pretty scary. So anyway, I don't know what else to say except that somehow our intelligence agencies should have been more intelligent and should have been coordinated better. And that needs to happen. Yes. Yes, did you all hear him? He spoke about fear and looking at his fear and feeling the selfishness, the self-concern behind that.

[48:20]

And I think it's an important practice, even in an ideal social situation, to look at fear. Because fear is part of our human situation, always, as well as sadness, as well as anger. And so it's a big topic. But one thing I'd say is that courage is not about getting rid of fear. Courage is about being willing to be afraid. So don't be afraid to be afraid. We have fear, so be willing to look at that. And yet, we can speak the truth, we can talk to each other, we can be upright, we can keep sitting zazen, we can keep talking to each other, we can keep trying to inform ourselves and others, and just to be aware in the middle of our fear. And this works on all kinds of levels. It works on the level of being aware of what's going on in the world, but it also works on the level of really studying the self and studying one's own fear, and getting to know it, and becoming friends with their own fear, and becoming friends with their own anger.

[49:28]

And of course, both the self-clinging and the sadness and grief that are beneath them. Maybe there's time for one last question or comment. Yes? I just have a lot coming up from what you're saying, and some of it comes from dual personality. So a lot of the observations that I'm having citizen more than I lack. But I think, you know, that from my work I've seen a lot of what I would call just unethical behavior, corruption. It's very subtle. And, you know, I guess the danger is, because I see it at all levels, and it seems to me the most frustrating part is how easily We get into the good and bad. The corruption is at the highest level of the corruption. Our own complicit part in the corruption, our passive stance for so much, Republican versus Democrat.

[50:37]

I think the Democrats have proven to be honest as well as the Republicans as a whole. I can't disagree. So the challenge for me, I think really comes from the fact that John Dewey is one of my favorite writers. He wrote about the same stuff in the early 1900s. So I don't think that it's really that much different. Although I do think the abuses of power maybe are more glaring or egregious. But I guess the really challenge for me And I see that at all levels. And I think a part of that comes from people, including my own, difficulty in accepting the responsibility and the power that we have. And so I was hoping you could maybe say a little bit more about that.

[51:40]

Because it's so easy when you distance it and say, oh, Bush is corrupt. Oh, Cheney and Halliburton and Enron. But I just don't buy it. I agree with you. I appreciate what you've said. We're not separate from that. So we all have this capacity to act from greed. We all have this capacity to not be willing to respond or to let things slide. So this is part of our own human situation. And it's not just about any particular people, a group of people. It's part of the karma and the complicated interactivity of our whole culture. And yes, we all are complicit in one way or another. We're all part of this system. And it may be that's what the world is.

[52:41]

So Buddhism talks about turning away from the world of fame and gain, the world of accumulation and materialist or even spiritual gain. to look at real kindness, real letting go, as Dogan says, dropping body and mind. And yet, as human beings, and we have to forgive ourselves for being human beings, we are part of this problem. So maybe we could talk about the corruption of any government anywhere at any time. And yet, again, as someone trying to speak from precepts, I have felt that I needed to say something more because I feel like this situation is more dangerous when we're talking about usable nuclear weapons and so forth. So it's not just about what our national government does, though. It's about how we respond to trying to remember precepts in our own workplace, in our own situation, and to see that Buddhism is not about being perfect.

[53:50]

But it's about this direction of returning to Buddha, returning to awareness, doing our best to try to take each step with awareness, with kindness. So this is an endless path, and this is just one step on the way. Thank you.

[54:07]

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