Good evening everyone. This Thursday is August 6th and I was asked to participate in an annual commemoration that will be held In Hyde Park, 5.30 to 6.30 p.m. on Ellis, between 56th and 57th, a few blocks from where Anne and Louis grew up, it's the site of the first nuclear reaction created by Enrico Fermi. And Thursday is the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the had a bomb by our country on Warsaw. And so I'm going to talk about that event and related matters and how it relates to our Zazen.

[01:04]

So that was a huge event in the history of the world and humankind. A colleague of mine discovered somehow that two weeks later, on August 20th, 1945, Time Magazine, of all places, had a commentary report. I'm just going to read it. It's not that long. The greatest and most terrible of wars ended this week in the echoes of an enormous event, an event so much more enormous that relative to it, the war itself, World War II, shrank to minor significance. The knowledge of victory was as charged with sorrow and doubt as with joy and gratitude. More fearful responsibilities, more crucial liabilities rested on the victory even than on the vanquished, rested on the victors than on the vanquished.

[02:15]

And what they said and did, men were still, as in the aftershock of a great wound, bemused and only semi-articulate, whether they were soldiers or scientists or great statesmen or the simplest of men. But in the dark depths of their minds and hearts, huge forms moved and silently arrayed themselves. Titans are ranging out of the chaos, an age for which victory was already only the shout of a child on the street. With the controlled splitting of the atom, humanity, already profoundly perplexed and disunified, was brought inescapably into a new age in which all thoughts and things were split and far from controlled. As most men realized, the first atomic bomb was a merely pregnant threat or a merely infinitesimal promise. All thoughts and things were split.

[03:16]

The sudden achievement of victory was a mercy to the Japanese no less than to the United Nations. but mercy born of a ruthless force beyond anything in the human chronicle. The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend, but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and it put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself. Was man equal to the challenge? In an instant, without warning, the present had become the unthinkable future. Was there hope in that future? And if so, where did hope lie? Interesting that in Time Magazine, of all places, and the most mainstream of our media, there was this kind of reflection right after, two weeks after the Hiroshima bomb.

[04:27]

I think mostly we've forgotten about it, about nuclear bombs in some way, or we don't think about it. And that's what I want to talk about. Growing up, I was born almost five years after that bomb. And growing up in the 50s, I remember, maybe a few of you might also, we had, I forget what they were called, bomb drills or something in grade school? Areas, yeah. So the version of it, of course there's one version that apparently happened where people, students, grade school students were supposed to duck under their desks for safety. Matt teaches grade school, so you might imagine what that would be like for your students. I think in our version we went down to the basement of the grade school and we stood around

[05:36]

It's facing the wall. I think we were facing the wall. I remember this like a dream. And then I realized some years later when I went down to the basement of the building I lived in on Page Street in San Francisco every morning and sat facing the wall. Oh, yeah, this is familiar. So there's some kind of... At that point, people were concerned and aware. There were all kinds of reactions from building bomb shelters to trying to stop nuclear weapons. And we came really, really close to having a nuclear war in 1963 in the Cuban Missile Crisis. So we've somehow lived with that ever since. And of course, we can't, if we went around our day thinking about the possibility of nuclear war and, you know, we could be paralyzed.

[06:44]

So, you know, in some ways it's kind of a biological, natural response to, okay, well, that's there, but, you know, think about it. So we have this underlying psychic denial. And I think it runs straight from Hiroshima to climate damage. And, you know, as the Time magazine said, there's a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. In the dark depths of our minds and hearts, huge forms moved and silently arrayed themselves. So we have this situation and there was an article, actually this is something that was part of an international scientific report that was commissioned by the British government that came out last month, a couple of weeks ago or less, that compared the risks of climate change to those posed by nuclear war.

[07:45]

So we kind of have the same situation. I do talk about climate damage sometimes here and think about it, but to go around just thinking about it in dread and fear could be kind of paralyzing. That's not why I'm talking about it. I don't think we have to have that response to it, but there's something going on. Well, just to read a little bit about this British—actually, it was an international report that talks about the comparison. is assessing the risks surrounding nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation means understanding interdependent elements, what science says is possible, what other countries may intend, systemic factors such as regional power dynamics, and the risk of climate change demands a similarly holistic assessment.

[08:56]

So there's a great parallel, and in some ways what the scientists are pointing to is Well, you know, equally catastrophic from nuclear devastation. What is possible in terms of what's happening with the rise of global sea levels? Possibly, according to some scientists, as much as 10 feet by 2050. The scientific estimates keep being surpassed by reality. We don't really know what's going to happen. So I have lots of data about what the scientists say about what's happening and the degree of climate damage. I had a couple of different articles, but Rebecca Solnit about this, one of which is, well, she compares the dangers of climate to the relatively minor event of 9-11.

[10:25]

The scientific reality is clear, and it now turns out that Chevron and ExxonMobil and Shell Oil knew about climate damage in the early 80s, but went ahead. And if the fossil fuel companies go ahead and liquidate their assets and bring all their oil up to the surface, Clearly, the environment will be uninhabitable, and already we're losing many, many species. They're going extinct. It's very serious what's going on. So, how do we respond? But before we even respond, the point I really want to emphasize today is how do we face these realities? And I think it has implications for what are Zazen practices?

[11:48]

We're connected to all the species of the earth. We're connected to, you know, we breathe oxygen and according to some scientists, half the plankton in the ocean are in peril. What's going on, what's happening to the ocean is really drastic. Salmon are being shipped up north from the Northwest United States, further north where it's not as warm and where it's the right temperature and so forth. Anyway, it's very serious and yet, you know, I feel like I'm being impolite in talking about it when I talk about it. You know, we don't want to think about it. How do we face sadness? How do we face difficulty?

[12:51]

How do we face what seems overwhelming and painful? And I came across a discussion of leprosy. In one of Rebecca Solomon's books, she's talking about a young Che Guevara as a doctor traveling around South America and being involved in leper colonies. It turns out that leprosy, and I hadn't realized this, is caused, what happens in leprosy is that there's a numbness in the nerves, especially the extremities. It's a bacterial infection, they don't really know It's not very contagious. Most people are immune to this infection. But what happens and how the disease works is the nerve endings kill off feeling.

[13:54]

And people can't feel their fingers and their feet. And that's what causes the damage. She says, the disease strangles nerves, kills off feeling, and what you cannot feel, you cannot take care of. Not the disease, but the patient does the damage. So, because people can't feel what's going on in their extremities, and this bacteria is particularly, this celestial leprosy is particularly at home in the cooler parts of the body, skin, hands, forearms, feet and lower legs, nose and eyes. So there's no nerve sensation there. And so people don't feel pain when there's some cause to feel pain. And because of that, they actually damage themselves.

[14:56]

their feet and fingers and so forth, get damaged by their own actions because they don't feel the pain. Pain serves a purpose. Pain protects. You get something in your eyes and you do something about it, but delicately, gingerly, or it hurts. Rumi says the cure for pain is in the pain. And in Buddhism, the first novel truth is the truth of pain, you could say. The truth of, well, sometimes it's translated as suffering. Things aren't the way we'd like them to be. So this denial, both of the reality of the possibility of nuclear weapons being used, the reality of what's happening to our climate.

[15:58]

You know, with climate, of course, there are the fossil fuel industry that's spending hundreds of millions of dollars to misinform people and to pretend that it's not really happening, although it's pretty evident with all the extreme weather. The fire is in California now, storms in the Midwest. Last year was the hottest year on record, and heat records keep falling. But it's not just the disinformation from professional climate deniers. There's something about us as human beings, too. we want to avoid pain. It's biological. It's this kind of response. And yet I think there's a kind of, our species has a kind of leprosy, kind of, we can't sense pain.

[17:04]

And there's a section here where Rebecca talks about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the term psychic numbing to describe the arrival, the survival strategy of disassociation and apathy, a diminished capacity or inclination to feel, a lack of empathy for ourselves as well as for others. So, leprosy patients say about their own limbs, I can see them, but in my mind they're dead. And so this process that the human race is involved with, of pretending that everything's okay, again, it's kind of beyond the fossil fuel industry or whatever.

[18:16]

It's something about us that we don't want to face. this reality. And I think this has a lot to do with Dzogchen, too. Our Dzogchen is about finding the steadiness, the stability, the breath, the openness to face our own pain. So this works on the level of our species and it works on our individual level, too, and they're not separate. where we are deeply interconnected and we're each a particular version of all being, all humanity, whatever. And there's stuff that's really painful that we don't want to face. And maybe it's appropriate to not, you know, for people who've been traumatized in various ways, psychologically or physically, We need to not be able to not be overwhelmed by it.

[19:22]

But our practice of zazen, and why it's so important for the world now, I would say, or some version of zazen, is that we develop a kind of steadiness, a kind of confidence, and it happens over time as we sit regularly. a sense of the possibility of just being present and upright and open and aware, and seeing our own stuff, seeing our own grasping and craving, our own anger and frustration and fear, our own confusion, and being able to just keep sitting and be present in it and witness this. So again, the cure for pain is in the pain. to be willing to sit and face our own individual sadness or regret, our own individual pain, is related to the problem of how we face the possibility of nuclear weapons and the reality of what's happening to our climate.

[20:35]

And when we actually face the pain, we can see that there is a way to respond. So I don't believe that it's not in accord with what I could gather of scientific reality, that humanity will become extinct inevitably. It's not clear yet. It's possible. Many species are going extinct. At the Field Museum, or where else associated, they have a counter that has the number of species that have gone extinct in the current day. And you can see it ticking off species. How do we face the reality of what is happening in the world, and in our own lives, and stay present and upright, and be willing and ready to respond?

[21:38]

So, as bad as all the scientific data about the climate is, It's also clear that we still do have, I don't know, 20 years, 30 years, in which to really make a change. And maybe it's just going to take more and more, quote-unquote, extreme weather and other calamities. And one of the things that's going to be happening is food production. Food's going to be much more expensive. All these changes are going to happen in our lifetimes. And yet, if enough people respond, even our political and corporate leaders will have to respond to people and to the need to, you know, what can be done is to, it's going to be pretty radical, but to change from a fossil fuel based energy system to

[22:43]

solar and wind and other sustainable energy systems. The technology is already there. It's just how we apply it. And it means a radical change in our culture. And there is going to be a lot of suffering. And more suffering amongst people who are... countries and people who are less well-off. So that's already happening. There are climate refugees. There will be climate wars. The war in Syria is partly a climate war. It would drowse them and lead up to what's going on. But our facing this can make a difference. The cure for pain is ending pain, as Remy says. So this image of leprosy, of what happens to lepers, This really gets to me in terms of seeing how we maybe in some ways have this talent for denial, for being numb, for not feeling the extremities of our own body and of the human body, the body of humanity.

[24:04]

But again, it's, you know, There are good things that are happening. There are bad things that are happening. It seems like President Obama, through his diplomacy, is managing to avoid Iran from having nuclear weapons. Anyway, there are possibilities. Change is possible. Change happens. One of the things that is a problem in our country is that we don't believe in change. We don't think there's really change. In other parts of the world, Europe saw the change in World War II. We forgot. We forgot that things were different. And we also forget the future. We forget the future being so... A friend, Joanna Macy, has been working on this since becoming aware of the numbness from the atom bomb, that we have this psychic numbing because we can't face all of this all at once, maybe.

[25:20]

And yet, being present, being upright, facing the first noble truth, we have a chance of responding. So maybe that's as much as I want to say at this point. We keep talking about all of the data about climate, and we don't realize how serious it is. I can send you articles about it, or I can talk some more now about it. But the point is that we don't know what to do, and yet we can do things. And what has to happen has to happen on a massive global scale. Just using less electricity ourselves, for example, having a lesser carbon footprint. Well, that's good, but that's not going to actually affect the situation enough to make a change.

[26:27]

So we have to think in terms of how can all of this change. And again, in terms of our zazen, how can we face the pain of our own lives and of the difficulties of the world? And zazen teaches us that we can do that. We can be present and feel the sadness and actually be responsive and open and imagine other possibilities. Comments, questions, responses? If anyone wants to just wail, go ahead. Laura. I might not wail, but I did have a very discouraging few minutes at the grocery store this morning. Everybody probably knows that on a Saturday,

[27:29]

The ordinance took effect that you don't get plastic bags at the big grocery stores anymore. Yeah, good thing. And I was buying groceries, and I got to hear several customers and several checkout people discuss how stupid, inconvenient, moronic, et cetera it was. and all the ways that we're going to try to get around doing it. And it was pretty... I think time and again I disagree about how important it is, what each individual does. I do think it makes a huge difference in lots of ways. And I just tried so hard to think, what would skillful means? What can a person say that might changed some minds, but they couldn't think of anything except being frustrated.

[28:33]

One person said the reason you didn't want bad ordinance was that if you reused plastic bags, 100% of them were filled with E. coli and everyone was going to get sick. The whole city was going to get sick. So there's the tiniest change that's trying to be made in our policies, which have been made in hundreds of other cities all over the country, literally all over the world. But the tiniest bit of inconvenience was just rejected by people as too much for them to get attention, but to actually compliment it. It's such a tiny little thing to ask of people. So I was discouraged in my negativity. But to hear that, and to hear your own pain about it, you know, and I do agree with you that each of us making changes does add up, and to do it on a citywide level does add up.

[29:48]

And it changes the zeitgeist somehow. Yeah. But people don't know. People have denied what's happening. So, I don't know. One can't always respond, you know, in hindsight. One might, you know, perhaps you could have said something about climate or about the species going extinct and how this contributes to that. I wanted to say something like, this is a little bit like victory gardens in World War II, but how could each do our little part for the greater effort? Well, that consciousness is not here because we've, as a culture, as a society, denied the pain of reality. But it's going to have to change. The thing was, it was such a selfish worldview. It was all about them.

[30:49]

It wasn't about there was this bigger thing that we should all care about. Yeah, that's so painful. David. You and I have had discussions about this. And this is where I disagree. And I hear Laurel talking. For me, the biggest thing is to work on individual people so that they change their consciousness. So the whole thing is not so much that turning off the lights is going to save electricity. If 20 people turn off the lights, we have 20 people thinking that way, and then we have another 30 people thinking that way, and another 50 people thinking that way. When everybody's changing their consciousness, then we could and talk about denial of World War II.

[31:51]

I don't know how many people know that 60 million people died in World War II. And hardly any were Americans. All of them were in Asia and Europe. And more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in the atomic bomb. 100,000 people died being burned to death. I mean, it gets horrible. You don't want to look at that. on here when you talk about the war. And it's this, like you say, denial of pain. It's a matter of bringing it to our consciousness. Like you say, bring it to consciousness. Then have everybody bring it to their consciousness. And it's only when that consciousness is there can we have change. If you could be able to say to somebody, if they don't understand, ask them, do you know why this was passed? You know, it's inconvenient for me to say this for anybody else. The thing is that it's going to be safer for our children and everyone in the community in the long run. And that's the most important thing. If I have to bring an extra bag of my own somehow to take things home, that would be an inconvenience.

[32:59]

But it's a lot more convenient than going to the hospital because I have asthma from breathing bad air. Like Peter Cairoli said, why are they thinking that way? And not to attack them, to try to understand their point of view, or try to raise their consciousness to a more global level, so to speak, and see which is a greater pain. I don't disagree with you, of course. What we need to do, individually, collectively, on all kinds of levels, is to face the pain of our world. Nobody knows how the change will happen. So whatever you're drawn to do to encourage people to become more aware, part of the cure. The cure for pain is in the pain again.

[34:01]

It just keeps coming back to me that this is the first noble truth. To face the suffering. Yes, Ben. Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that there are a lot of parallels between our society-wide denial of global warming and our society-wide denial of death. Okay. And then it seems to be a very similar dynamic, right? We don't want to face death, we don't want to face our own mortality. And our society tells us, consume, consume, consume, distract yourself, distract yourself. And it seems that one of the things that Buddhism teaches is suffering and death and impermanence have to be faced. And I don't know how to translate that into a type of narrative that would resonate with a broader audience, because it seems like things like the plastic bag ordinance are perceived as limitations upon individual freedom.

[35:03]

And I don't know how to fashion a narrative that would let people see that that concept of your own individual freedom is a loser. But it's paradoxical, because the same people, right, in that grocery store, if you fell down, probably a bunch of those people would help you get up. And, you know, I mean, the same people have the instinct to be compassionate and to cooperate and to help each other out, most of them. But for some reason, when the message has to do with environmentalism, it's interpreted as an imposition upon our freedom. It seems so clear that we all live in the same environment and we should take care of it for ourselves. That's a meaningful thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[36:08]

But that's, you know, we see that partly as a function of our practice. So, there are narratives like what you're looking for in Buddhism. To see karma the way Dale and I were talking about it, not as a personal thing, but as a cultural, collective thing. If we don't take care of the planet, it's not just going to wipe out the polar bears and the bumblebees. who are endangered, but that affects the air we breathe. And so there's just this ignorance, not stupidity, but just that there is an ignoring of the reality of how connected we are, as you were saying, and how we need the plankton in the ocean to provide us with oxygen. On one level, maybe as things start to get worse and that's happening and it'll happen more, and that part's already inevitable.

[37:20]

That's already happened. The effects haven't happened, but what's happened in the atmosphere. Things will get worse and that's going to help people see more. And so one of the things that we can do I don't want to say as Buddhists, but just as people who can face pain. You know, if you sit all day, you have to face the pain in your knees or whatever. And to talk about how we're connected and how this is about all of us. And yes, we have to give up our individual plastic bags. David, something you said then really resonated with me, being a historian by trade, looking at that. And I think one of the things that happened in our global, not just here in the United States, the horrors of war and the horrors of nuclear explosions killing everyone.

[38:35]

And the fact that we're now able to go into space, we're challenging some of our old precepts of God. And people always had God to fall back on, in a sense. It was another form of denial. But people had this Somebody up there is going to take care of us? Yeah, exactly. And I remember being in college, and Time Magazine comes up. God is dead. And the cover, you know, that is so striking for us as students who are reading this. God is dead. And this whole analysis of what's going on. And that's how people feel. So they're going to think of themselves and try, because they evangelize, but we need more practice in the sense of not denying ourself, facing our pain, you know, that is part of our practice.

[39:45]

And partly it's, you know, maybe how we define God or whatever we see as the ultimate, and doing that in terms of how we are connected, rather than in some beings from some other planet that did a bunch of UFO sightings this week, and they're going to come and save people. People look to that as, they'll come and save us. Maybe there are other beings out there, but... We have to face our own pain. I don't think we can get around that, and if we do, we have a chance of responding. So there's, of course, less I want to say about this, but we'll stop for now. And we'll continue pondering how to face our pain and respond to it. So we'll close formally with the four bodhisattva vows.

[40:47]

The evenings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. The dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. those ways unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. The meanings are numberless. I vow to free them. The delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma beings are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[41:51]

I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. The delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. The dharma debates are boundless. I vow to enter them. The Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it.

[42:30]

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