Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? So we have a number of new people this morning, I believe. I'm Taigen Leighton, the guiding teacher at Ancient Dragons Zen Game. And this is interesting for me. I'm coming to you on a new iPad. My laptop died on Wednesday, so I'm adjusting to a different Zoom world. So we'll see how this goes. I want to talk today about history and karma and book banning. And in some ways, Zen is historical Buddhism. or sometimes I've called it Confucian Buddhism, because we're more concerned with history and story than earlier Buddhism.

[01:11]

Hongxue Zhangxue, who was a great 12th century teacher in our lineage, who I translated in Cultivating the Empty Field, said, No, actually I'm not talking about Hongshu now, I will later. I'm talking about Shito or Sekito, another great ancestor in our tradition from the 8th century. And he said, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. So this is in the Song of the Grass Hut, which we will look at later on. A lot of people do not think of then, yeah, just let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. But I want to talk about letting go. I would say letting go is the essential art of Zazen. Letting go does not equal to denial.

[02:16]

So, and this is an important difference and has a lot of applications to our practice. So, Letting go actually equals facing the hundreds of years and facing ourselves. So the goal of Zazen is not to get rid of all thoughts and feelings, but to actually be present, to not ignore all of the thoughts and feelings, all of the events of our life and of our world. we have to acknowledge our ancient twisted karma and the world's ancient twisted karma to really not be caught by it, to really let go of its power. So, letting go. Zazen is about facing so that, I think there may be a couple people here who had Zazen instruction this morning, maybe it's their first time.

[03:25]

We face ourselves facing the discomfiture of all the lessons. So go in the middle of not ignoring, facing the situations of our life and of the world. and it's about, a punchline is to not be caught by our ancient twisted karma, personally or communally, until we can actually face it.

[04:35]

Dogen, our 13th century founder in Japan, talked about the essential art of Zazen as being beyond thinking. So this is a story of one of the other great ancient ancestors, Yaoshan, who was asked, what are you thinking about when you're sitting there so still and silent? And Yaoshan said, I think of not thinking. And the A student asks, oh, how do you think of not thinking? So there's two Japanese negatives, fushiryo and hishiryo. Usually that was translated as non-thinking, which didn't mean anything to me. What's the difference between not thinking and non-thinking? And Shobako Okamura, who I translated a few books with, translated that as beyond thinking. Just because of that one word, beyond thinking, as opposed to non-thinking.

[05:38]

I went and spent more than two years living in Kyoto, translating with Shogun Fukumura. And another friend, Katsunohashi, one of his translations of Dogen, he calls it beyond thinking. What is beyond thinking? Beyond thinking is not being caught by our thinking, by our thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings naturally arise as we're sitting. And then we just let them go and they may come back and there's some space in between them. But the point isn't to get rid of our thinking. There's a Zen school of lobotomy Zen that thinks if you just don't have any thoughts that, you know, everything will be all right. But no, no, no, no. We sit in the middle of the world. We sit in the middle of thoughts and feelings of confusion and delusion and so forth. So, but there is beyond thinking, which includes all of it. It's not how we usually think about thinking. It's this deeper awareness that goes beyond.

[06:41]

So this is what happens in Zazen. Even the first time you sit, we are aware of the aches in our knees or shoulders or wherever, We are aware of the aches in our heart. We are aware of difficult thoughts and feelings. We don't ignore them. We don't deny them. So this is very relevant to what's going on right now in our country, where there's a major campaign to deny history, banning books, They haven't started burning books yet, but sometimes banning books leads to that. So, there are now states where they're trying to ban any books that mention slavery.

[07:48]

or racism. In Tennessee, they're banning mouse because it talks about the Nazi Holocaust. There are banning books about LGBTQ people. I don't want to talk about that. So some of the books that are, along with mouse, they're banning To Kill a Mockingbird. They're banning Beloved by Toni Morrison. I would say, you know, I mean, that's one of my favorite books. I think the great American novel with all due respect to Huck Finn and Moby Dick. Toni Morrison's book, Beloved, should be required reading for all people to vote in this country, but that's not likely to happen. Anyway, but to ban it is just, you know, it's obscene. This white supremacy sedition party that has so much control over what happens in Washington, D.C.

[08:52]

now, they don't want to make white children uncomfortable by hearing about slavery or about racism, even though, again, last week there was a young black man killed by the police in Minneapolis. They didn't learn anything from George Floyd and his murder. So how do we face history and learn from history? And I think that the people who don't want their white children to be uncomfortable hearing about racism or slavery or LGBTQ people or about women's rights are uncomfortable themselves. The parents are uncomfortable because they don't want to face. the reality of our country and our world and themselves. So, this is a real problem.

[09:57]

Zen practice is about going beyond our comfort zone, being willing to be uncomfortable, being willing to hear new information, being willing to hear difficult comments, being willing to not know all the answers, being open to how do we talk together? How do we share together? How do we listen to everybody? How do we listen to people's fears, to people's hurts? How do we open to that. This is what's really difficult about Zen practice, not getting your legs into some funny position. And it's necessary, Zen practice is about continuing, just showing up, sustaining that openness to facing the difficulties of the world and of our own lives.

[11:08]

So when my laptop died Wednesday, I had a bunch of notes for this talk, which now I tried to scrawl on this page. And that means I have to try and read my own bad handwriting. This is a difficult time. You know, the book banners are also attacking women's health and women's rights. There was a Republican legislator, I think in Tennessee, I'm not sure, who said that even in the case of rape, we can't allow abortion because somehow, I don't know if he said God, but somehow a woman who gets into that position, well, they just have to deal with it and just have to go through with having a child. This is obscene, excuse me.

[12:17]

I'm trying to speak from the sense of ethics and morality that are in the Bodhisattva precepts and the Bodhisattva ideal of we sometimes say, may all beings be happy, of universal liberation, including everybody. This is difficult, especially now in these times. How do we express kindness to everyone? So I mentioned the Foxkoan. So I'll just briefly, the story goes that the great master Bajah who lived in the eighth century was, when he gave talks, there was somebody in the assembly in the back, an old man, and eventually this old man came and told Baizhang that in some past eon, in some ancient age, he had been a teacher on Baizhang Mountain. And somebody asked him, do greatly cultivated people, are they subject to cause and effect?

[13:28]

When we talk about history, we're talking about cause and effect. We're talking about consequences. We're talking about, well, it's the second noble truth that things happen for a reason and that everything we do has an effect. But this ancient teacher had said, no, greatly cultivated people are not subject to cause and effect, are not subject to karma. And because he said that, this old man said, he had spent 500 lives as a fox in East Asia. Foxes are not just tricksters, but very malevolent. So Baizhang, the current Baizhang in the story, Hakujo is how you say his name in Japanese, great mastership. Greatly cultivated people are not blind to cause and effect, do not ignore cause and effect. So this is axiomatic consent.

[14:30]

We don't ignore history. We're not blind to history. There's also letting go and going beyond. But first we have to face cause and effect. We have to face the consequences that we all are facing communally, in our society, and I'll come back to how this affects our personal practice. I'll come back to that later, because it very much does. How do we face cause and effect? How do we not ignore cause and effect? How do we not ignore the history, our country's history of racism, slavery, patriarchy? wiping out, or trying to wipe out the indigenous people, all of that cause, all of that cause and effect, all of that karma, which affects each and all of us in one way or another, and each of us in a particular way. So, you know, Dr. King, Martin Luther King talked about the fierce urgency of now.

[15:43]

that we have to respond to this current situation. But he also talked about the long arc of history bending towards justice. This is an encouraging encouragement and also practical. It's very helpful to see that, to see this wider view of history. This is an important part of Zen and Zen lore. that we are part of the web of cause and effect, and that everything we do is part of that. But also, you know, there's the immediacy of that, and there's the longer view. So, our Zen practice and tradition offers us a wider view of time and cause and effect. We talk about the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived 2,500 years ago.

[16:49]

I'm talking about Baizhang, who lived in the eighth century. I talk often about Dogen, who lived in the 1200s in Japan and brought this tradition from China to Japan. We talk about Shonryu Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, who brought this to California way, way back in the 1960s. So all of this is part of this web of interconnectedness in time, of interconnectedness of cause and effect and consequences in history. And we don't ignore that. But Hongzhe, who I mentioned before, Hongzhe Zhangshui, who lived in the 1100s, He says, one thought of the 10,000 years goes beyond all delusions.

[17:49]

I think I translated it as disgrace, goes beyond all disgrace or defilement. Anyway, one thought of the 10,000 years. This is like Dr. King talking about the moral arc of the universe. And it's built into our Zen tradition that we sometimes recite the names of our Dharma lineage and ancestors going back to Shakyamuni and to Bodhidharma and the sixth ancestor and so forth. So we have a sense of not history in the sense of modern academic history necessarily. We have a sense of stories going way back, stories of cause and effect, stories of consequences, stories of people who acted and spoke and sat Zazen and tried to face history and the history of now. And so here we are. I said before, the Zen is historical Buddhism.

[18:57]

I sometimes call this Confucian Buddhism. When Buddhism came to East Asia, it took on this, you know, Buddhism always takes on the, some integration with the culture that it's moving into. So now we have this American Buddhism developing. It's very young. It's only 50 years old. So maybe it's more by now, 70 years old, you know, depending on, depending on if you want to count Nyogen Senzaki and some of the early greats and people who came to the West. Anyway, maybe it's a century old, but still that's pretty new in terms of the history of how Buddhism shifts and changes. When it came to East Asia, it adopted, in China and Japan, kind of a Confucian viewpoint, which is to venerate the ancestors. So we do talk about Baizhang, Dogen, and Suzuki Roshi, and many, many, many, many others. We honor our past, we honor history, or at least the versions of history that we have.

[20:04]

The teaching stories, sometimes called koans, that are part of our practice now because they teach us about something of our own personal practice when we are willing to dig into them and really engage them. So we tell stories. Zen is a tradition of storytelling, and then even though Zen according, you know, attributed to Bodhidharma goes beyond words and letters, and that's the part about letting go, that's the part of going beyond, but also This going beyond words and letters has led to huge libraries full of commentaries on these ancient stories and commentaries on those commentaries. And now we're commenting on those commentaries on the commentaries about the commentaries anyway. So there are libraries full of books about Zen history, to put it that way, all Zen stories.

[21:08]

And we venerate the ancestors. We very much appreciate that they kept alive this teaching and practice tradition, which we're now engaging as best we can and struggling with and appreciating here now. So not, not, depending on words and letters, this Zen slogan, which has led to huge libraries of words and letters, it only means not being caught by them. How do we not be caught by these stories? How do we not be caught by the history of racism and slavery in our country? For example, it means we don't ignore it. It means we pay attention to the history and consequences of patriarchy, for example.

[22:14]

How do we look at this situation and the causes and effects of it? And going beyond means, okay, here we are, how do we practice with it, we say? How do we engage it? How do we, in some ways, see through it, not be caught by it, But we can't not be caught by it. We can't let go of cause and effect. Unless we know what it is. Unless we study it. So we study the old stories. And Baizhang was saying, don't ignore cause and effect. Don't ignore history. Don't try and expunge all the history books so that people will feel more comfortable and not have to face the facts. Well, I don't know, facts is a contentionous word now.

[23:22]

Anyway, so I want to talk about another example of not facing cause and effect. This part of our world now, And again, this may be challenging to some of you, but I want to challenge the current call for war, the situation in the Ukraine. And a lot of the mass media and a lot of the politicians are saying, oh, Russia's gonna invade Ukraine. We have to build up our troops. There's a great forgetting of history involved in that. We're forgetting the history of Vietnam. This is recent history. There's older history, but let's just look at the recent history of Vietnam. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.

[24:24]

Bottom line, and I'm going to say more about this, but there are not military solutions to these kinds of problems. Our culture has, and maybe this has to do with Ah, human karma in general, but there's this tendency to think, oh, well, we can, tendency towards aggression and okay, we need more military, we need to defeat. So much of our language is about winning and losing and conquering and defeating. So it's almost hard not to talk about anything without talking about attacking. This military is built into our culture. And it's really harmful. So this strong push towards, oh, we have to have a war. We have to send in more troops. We have to make sure that Russia doesn't invade Ukraine.

[25:30]

Well, I'm not saying that Vladimir Putin is a good guy. We have to pay attention to what's going on. But trying to just send in more troops is not a solution. Trying to conquer our so-called enemies is not a solution. This is something that we've learned in recent history. So some of that recent history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, An example of big change happening very suddenly, something that couldn't have been predicted, you know, just months before, like the end of apartheid or like the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage, you know, so many examples. Change happens after lots of work, but the Soviet Union collapsed for lots of causes and conditions. I think one of them was nuclear disaster in the Ukraine, actually. But anyway, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Secretary of State at the time said to Gorbachev, who was the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, Russia at the time, that NATO will not expand into East Asia.

[26:48]

And NATO has spent $1.1 trillion on military compared to $65 billion, much less by Russia. There's this huge push for war. And it's not just a problem in our society. It's part of this pattern of human aggression that we have to overcome. We need to sponsor, speak for, try and encourage cooperation and kindness rather than aggression and conquest. This is the challenge of humanity now. But NATO's official goal is to increase military spending. Again, there's no military solution.

[27:53]

We have to, as difficult as it often is, pursue diplomacy. And there are forces that are, you know, besides our ancient twisted karma and the history of aggression in our species, there are current forces promoting this war. That's being promoted by our media and by most of our politicians, not all. There are five companies, five corporations, massive corporations, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, to name names, not of individuals, but of corporate institutions, who are making huge profits from war. They have made $2 trillion since 2001. 200 million of that, maybe it's 200 billion, has gone into, yeah, I think it's 200 billion, has gone into lobbying to encourage federal and state governments to have more wars because they make a lot of money selling weapons all over the world.

[29:13]

The CEO of Raytheon recently talked about how the situation in Yemen and Syria and the situation in the Ukraine is great for their business. They're going to be able to sell lots more weapons. And this Space Force that got started recently by the last president is now We're now spending more on that now than we are on health care, even in the middle of a pandemic. It's strange, it's bizarre, and it's really sad. And there will be consequences to this kind of thing. So I want to encourage people to think about Another peace movement. Some of us are veterans of peace movements.

[30:18]

Back during Vietnam, part of how the Vietnam War ended, a big part of it, was that there was a peace movement, not just in the United States, but amongst the troops in Vietnam. And the war couldn't be sustained. In the early 80s, there was a nuclear freeze movement. trying to stop MX missiles. We now have these intercontinental ballistic missiles. That movement and nuclear freeze movement in the early 80s actually accomplished, didn't get abolished nuclear weapons, unfortunately, but there was a great decrease and there were treaties about not using nuclear weapons. So, We're now spending, I think, $140 billion a year on nuclear weapons. And 53% of our national budget goes into the military.

[31:20]

Although nuclear weapons are in the energy department, I don't know if that's even included in that. We're spending 10 times more on nuclear weapons than we are on the CDC, even in the middle of a pandemic. So how do we not ignore the cause and effect of history with that? We still have the United States government. People think that nuclear weapons are sort of a thing of the past, but we still have a policy, our government, of first use, that we are saying that we will do first use of nuclear weapons. And we still have many weapons on hair trigger. which means that if a president thinks that we're being attacked, and there have been many accidents where this almost happens, they have 10 minutes to decide whether to launch all the nuclear weapons. This is so dangerous. So, Peace movements have effects, as they did in Vietnam in the early 80s.

[32:29]

So I would like to ask you to consider calling, contacting your representatives, senators, congresspeople, and saying, please don't go to war in the Ukraine. Military solutions don't work. Okay, so all the stuff about book banning and about our current military is about the world around us and the history of that. And that Baizhang said we shouldn't ignore. We should face these causes and effects and consequences. But I want to end by bringing this back home to not ignoring Personal karma. So as I said in the beginning, I'm working with this iPad. Some of you always come here by iPad, but it's strange to me. How many people are here?

[33:31]

I can see less of you than I used to be on my laptop, which died Wednesday, as I said at the beginning. So who else is here? Oops. Oh, well. Oh, there we go. I can see the second screen now. Hi, everyone. Hi, Jay. Debra, hi. You're back from Green Gulch, I guess, or maybe you're still out there. Anyway, so I'm just looking to see who's here. Randy's here. Anyway, and some people who I don't know yet. Eric Locker's here, hi. Anyway, okay. Oops, oh, I lost it. Can you still hear me? Okay, so I wanna end by talking about personal karma, because everything I've said applies there too.

[34:36]

We have to face our personal history. And, you know, Zazen and Zen practice and Buddhist practice works, it's all interconnected. How all of this is implied in the situation of our world and our society is also part of our own personal situation, our own personal Dharma position, as Dogen calls it. So, how do we face our own personal karma. This is, how do we face it and also let go of it, you know? So I started out talking about letting go as the essential art of Zazen, but letting go includes facing what's in front of us, facing suchness in all its dimensions. Famously, Dogen, who I referred to before, said, to study the way, to study spiritual reality, to study the way is to study the self.

[35:49]

So we look at the wall and we face ourselves. He also says to study the self is to let go of the self and to be awakened by all things. But we have to first study the self. And that means the self of our world and our society and everything around us. It also means our own personal history. And, you know, I, I think of that as facing regrets. So, um, we all, we've all made mistakes in our lives or, well, I shouldn't speak for anyone else. Most human beings have made mistakes and, um, One of our teachings says that making mistakes is auspicious. We've learned by making mistakes. And we may have many regrets about things we did or things we failed to do.

[36:52]

I understand that in AA and other 12-step programs, part of the process is making amends. Sometimes it's not possible to make amends. There are people who have passed away who I wish I could make amends to personally. We all have our own ancient twisted karma. So, the Bodhisattva path of universal liberation trying to awaken all beings, not ignoring all beings, caring about the kindness of all beings, listening to all beings, includes listening to ourselves. It includes all the teachings of early Buddhism, Brahma Paharas and the Eightfold Path. And anyway, Buddhism builds on itself. And it's, you know, that's happening in interesting, strange ways, and I don't know, strange anyway, ways that are familiar to us in American Buddhism and Western Buddhism, integrating with Western psychology, which is a great tool, a great skillful means, great benefit, integrating with Western religion, integrating with Western social engagement, all of that is part of

[38:20]

what we sometimes call American Buddhism. But personally speaking, we have a chance to acknowledge, which I think we'll do later, to acknowledge our ancient twisted karma. So all of the mistakes we've made, all of the regrets we might have, at least some of us, there might be someone listening now who has never made a mistake, I'm sorry. It's helpful to make mistakes. We have to, you know, trial and error. Skillful means is a process of trial and error. We try to be kind. We work at kindness. We work at communication. We work at facing our lives and facing the lives of those around us, listening to everyone in Sangha. And this is difficult. But we acknowledge our ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, going to body, speech, and mind.

[39:24]

It's important to forgive ourselves for being human beings who make mistakes. How do we learn from our mistakes? I've heard it said to make good mistakes. Some mistakes are more harmful than others. It's true. So to let go of being caught by the web of conditioning, of personal conditioning, group conditioning, Sangha conditioning, societal conditioning, all our ancient twisted karma, we have to forgive ourselves and forgive others for being human beings. How do we, one of our precepts is to not speak of the faults of others, to respect all people.

[40:33]

I recently went to a a seminar on Zoom where a verified Buddhist teacher said that corporations don't have Buddha nature. Institutions don't have Buddha nature. All of us are Buddha nature. So, you know, it's not that we shouldn't talk about difficulties in the world. So I've been talking about militarism. I've been talking about book banning and slavery and racism and patriarchy and so forth. We can talk about how those situations affect all of our lives, but it's not that we can blame any individual. Even individuals who we think can cause great harm are all products of this web of causation, of cause and effect. And alas, there are people in our world who ignore cause and effect and go ahead and don't look at the

[41:38]

realities of racism and slavery. Don't look at the realities of our history of militarism and so forth. And act without facing that. And for ourselves, studying our own personal history, not wallowing in it or dwelling in it, but just being open to thoughts and feelings that come up. And they do come up in Sazen if you keep sitting. and breathing into it. Sitting upright, which means inhaling and exhaling and facing our lives and facing the world, studying the self. When we let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.

[42:42]

We can be aware of the 10,000 years and let go of delusions and defilements. And then in, you know, our friends in the world and everything, bring them up again. But how do we not be caught by that? And I'm suggesting that not being caught by history, personal history, history of our society and world means looking at it, facing it, not turning away, not being afraid. So a lot of this is about fear. There's this great promotion of fear now in our, well, in our mass media anyway, by our politicians. We should be afraid of Russia. We should be afraid of China. And I'm not saying that Russia and China are perfectly wonderful societies, unlike ours, but facing the situation of cause and effect, facing ancient twisted karma, can help us to be present and try to respond uprightly

[44:03]

with diplomacy to each other as well as, you know, between countries. So sorry, that's a lot. One talk. I encourage people giving talks to not try and talk about too much sometimes. And recently I felt like I can't talk about anything without talking about everything. It's all so interconnected. So I'll stop. And I want to hear your comments, responses, questions, reflections on any of this. So Reuben, are you still here? Reuben is our host. Maybe Reuben has been kicked off the internet. I'll happily help call on people, Tygen. Okay, David Ray, thank you. So yes, so again, please feel free, even if you're here for the first time, to respond, question, reflect on any of what I've been talking about.

[45:13]

Oh, gosh. Can you still hear me? My, my, my new iPad is doing things that I don't understand. Okay. So David Ray, would you help me call on people? If you, if I, if you can't, if we can't see you, you can go to the participants window and there's a function there where you can hit the raise hands thing. So please comments, questions. May I make a comment here? Please. Yes. Yeah. Stop it here. I was gonna say one when we're talking about history it kind of struck me, and it. by studying the history, you can also think about like what actions you might be able to take and think about the effect that you might have in the future. So it, the studying of history actually can influence what actions you might be able to take. And you might actually draw from past action, what might be most effective and things that might be well-meaning, but that don't work really well.

[46:22]

And I think that's true. And, you know, personal life or, you know, activism or whatever other, other domains. Yes, thank you. There's an important Buddhist teaching called skillful means, which is a way of, it's actually a teaching of compassion to pay attention to the different needs of different beings and try to respond appropriately. And, you know, Buddhas understand it all and they can do that perfectly. But for the rest of us, as Bodhisattva practitioners, it's trial and error. And even for Buddhas, it's trial and error sometimes. As you were saying, Steph, we try things and we make mistakes. So, yes, thank you. Other comments, responses? Eve's hand is up. Hello, Eve. I don't see you, but I... When you talk about fear, I mean, I think one of the things going on is fear of complexity and fear of uncertainty.

[47:30]

And to me, that applies to the study of history as well. And there are, you know, I think I assess this on both, you know, the left and the right. That, you know, the idea that you can straitjacket history into a single narrative, you know, is I think problematic. I think that kids, you know, parents of, you know, of white kids who complain about being, you know, made to feel responsible for the tragedies of the past and made to feel guilty. I mean, I think they do have a legitimate complaint. And I mean, I think there's been good stuff written under the umbrella of critical race theory. There's also been some, you know, problematic work I mean, there have been, you know, there are historians who I think have legitimate critiques of some of the stuff coming out of the 1619 Project.

[48:41]

And when you talk about banning books, I mean, people on the left have, you know, organized to ban Huckleberry Finn because he uses the N word. I mean, there's been, you know, more book banning coming from the right than the left, but there has been some coming from the left. And, you know, there have been, I think, you know, excesses of political correctness that make it difficult for people to speak their own experience and their own truth. I mean, one book that I think is really important is Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land, where, you know, she is a, you know, well-meaning, you know, left coast person, went to Louisiana to try to find out more about you know, what people on the right there were experiencing in their lives and how that connected just, you know, to some of the rhetoric and fueling some of the divisions that have gone on.

[49:42]

And I mean, I totally agree that, you know, when you're talking about war and militarism and corporate involvement, that war is not a a solution to threats to democracy. But I think that, you know, what we have to look to is, you know, what does a real democracy look like? How can we strengthen conversations that reflect what democracy can look like in a multicultural, pluralistic society? And that means, I think, living with the fact that we're all children of both the oppressed and the oppressors. And there is, I think, one simplistic narrative that can address the interactions between

[50:54]

you know, for instance, gender, race, class, and the effect that it has on inequity in society. And I mean, one thing that's struck me lately is the importance of satire and the importance of humor and making sure that there are spaces for that to live. And, you know, as I said, that's been kind of stomped on by You know, people on both sides of the political spectrum. I have a student that lives in New Orleans and he was talking about, you know, the kinds of political satire that are central to Mardi Gras. And then that's been important for him. And I don't think it's accidental that, you know, Zelensky in Ukraine was a comedian as well as a lawyer. Although I guess recently he's been, you know, critiqued for also, you know, in some ways like Putin trying to centralize his own power, but, you know, making the spaces.

[52:01]

So, I mean, I think, you know, in terms of, I guess, what I'd like to see is a peace movement. I think there's two things. I think, you know, trying to figure out how we can listen to each other and talk to each other, like I said, in ways that encourage true democracy. and making sure that there is a space for humor and satire, which is this one weapon against overly simplistic narratives. Thank you. Thank you, Yves. A few responses to that. Just democracy, which seems to be threatened now, is an ideal. Maybe we've never had it completely in this country. And now voting rights are being attacked and so forth. But it's an aspiration. And Dr. King talked about that as developing the rights of democracy.

[53:06]

So just to say that, and that it is being seriously threatened right now. But I also want to talk about, well, yes to Huck Finn. Huck Finn along with Beloved are important to me. But, you know, you were talking about ideologies. I don't know what left and right mean anymore. Maybe that's just my problem. There's another important Zen koan, Zen story about a monk going out on pilgrimage and his teacher, Jizong, Japanese Jizo, said to him, what's the purpose of your pilgrimage? Why are you going out wandering? Why are you going to go out and wander around and meet other teachers and all of that? Something that's still going on in Zen today. And when asked what was the purpose of it, he said, I don't know. And to some extent, not knowing is most intimate, not knowing is nearest.

[54:12]

So our practice is not knowing. And that completely accords with what you were saying, Eve, that people who have entrenched ideologies, you know, who think they have the answer to what is the strategy or tactics to respond to some situation, that gets in the way. So not knowing, is, you know, not knowing is maybe not the whole answer. It's beyond not knowing and knowing is another one of our famous koans says, but, you know, to be open to not having the answers and whatever I think might be a good response to anything that's going on these days, you know, that might be my response. That's not necessarily, what everyone should do. So, Sangha is about we each, you know, we're all connected, totally connected, and we're all, you know, particular.

[55:18]

Zoom exemplifies that, each of us in our own box. But even when we're practicing in person, we all have our particular way of responding. So not being hung up on some particular ideology of knowing this is really important. That's letting go. Yes, Mara. Hi. So I have a question. A lot of times when I go to engage Buddhism type of things or read books, people talk a lot about fear and definitely as a negative where it's something that paralyzes you, it prevents you from doing what you should do. But I also sometimes think that there's a place for, say, a risk assessment. And for example, if you are a person of color, you're queer, you're disabled, activism carries a lot higher level of risk for you than it does for somebody who's, you know, young, white, male, healthy, able-bodied, and all of that.

[56:25]

So I was wondering if you could speak to kind of the distinction between the bad kind of fear versus, you know, maybe this is just too risky for me individually kind of a situation. Yes, I agree with you completely. Courage is not the absence of fear. It's facing our fears. And, you know, this is an immediate situation for our sangha because we're trying to figure out how to get back to sitting in person, which we were doing for a month or so ago. you know, what COVID is changing. And so, you know, we each have to make our own risk assessment as to our own personal situation. I think that applies in the situations you're talking about as well. So even though, you know, I have Myself, gone to demonstrations and been arrested for civil disobedience back during Vietnam, back during the nuclear freeze, back during the lead up to the war in Iraq.

[57:26]

I would not recommend that to anyone particularly. I'm happy to talk about it if anyone's interested, but, you know, it's changed and it's maybe more risky now. And everything you said about that. So facing, it's not about getting rid of fear. It's about looking at fear, looking what you're afraid of and working with that. So yes, I agree with you. Thank you. That's important. Fear is a part of the reality we face when we acknowledge cause and effect. Yes. Thank you. Other comments, questions, responses, David Ray or oh, Eileen has something. Hi. Oh, I'm responding, I think, mainly Eve, you spoke a lot of things that I would not have spoken very well. Thank you. And throughout this whole talk, I've been thinking of Joan Didion, you know, we tell ourselves stories in order to live.

[58:35]

The center will not hold. And it's almost like we're, not almost like we're, I think we are sitting in a big, big old, An example of that in the world today, if we're telling ourselves stories, we're sitting and there are all these stories and we let them go and you look at your fear, you look at the story, but we have our own individual stories, we have our collective stories, and then that collective can be divided any which way, depending on who you are, the identity to whatever collective you are. attached to or identify with is probably better. And then you have this whole wide world full of people telling themselves stories in order to live. And very often, you know, I don't want to start, I don't know. Cognitive dissonance, in order to hold on to those stories in relation to other stories that you see, the cognitive dissonance starts, and when cognitive dissonance starts, we all know all sorts of defensiveness and anger and war and book burning and all those things happen.

[59:45]

And I'm just thinking in those terms, also the Buddhist concept, which I think is more than a concept of we're all connected, So there are all of these voices. Oh my God, remember Herman Hesse's Siddhartha with all the, with the river and the voices and the final, I, how do we, hear these stories, hear our own stories, hear other stories. They are just as human as we are, and maybe they were plunked down into some awful society that's, you know, really confusing them, but that's my judgment. It's probably right, but that's my judgment. How do we go to the humanity of others before we start, um, trying to connect, trying to negotiate, like you're not negotiating, you see it the way I see it. How do you have that conversation with somebody with a gun? I'm not sure. And just as briefly as I can, this month ago or so, I stayed up in Creston, Colorado, and there's a lot of energy there and a lot of interesting characters.

[60:52]

And my next-door neighbors happened to be These kind of freewheeling may have brought this up before freewheeling. they just let go of all of their possessions and people kind of, when they need, things have shown up. And he's lovely, and she's lovely, they're from Georgia, and he, no, he's from Georgia, she's from Alabama, the Southern accents kind of flip me up, so I'm not used to hearing them, I'm a New Yorker, you know. And it's the spirituality of these people, she, I don't know, the, was extraordinary. And also, I mean, really, the wisdom and the light coming from them was amazing. And also, they were QAnon. Yikes, okay. So what the hell do you do with that when you're talking to people? And I think there's probably more of that kind of, that's an extreme example, probably more, and we did actually, we did manage to talk and I did manage to get something in.

[61:55]

I think I let, I think I got them to understand that Ashkenazi Jews are not this crazy race of people who are trying to It's amazing the stuff that they believe. So how do you have these conversations and without starting a war, without telling the other one that they're crazy or dangerous? I don't know, I'm posing a question, but it's more on the, I just see this forest of stories. I don't know what to do with that. Just to respond briefly, I think David Ray also wants to respond, but yeah, this is a question that comes up a lot. How do we talk with people who have very different worldviews? And one thing is to not try and convert them, not to try and start a debate, because that's usually futile.

[62:55]

But how do we just listen to them and try and find the spaces where we share? common values, common perspectives, common fears, and so forth. And from speaking in that way, you know, maybe you can introduce your different worldview, but trying to rush in and convert people doesn't really help. So it's a big challenge now. Our country and our world is very divided. it doesn't mean that we can't find commonality with people who really disagree with us. So thank you for that story and that question. And it's a real question now. So thank you. David Ray, did you want to say something? Well, I do. It's not so much a direct response to what Eileen said. What an amazing story.

[63:59]

But there are two groups of people that I tend to place a high level of hope and confidence in. One is young people, because I teach. I taught in China for four summers in a row, and it was remarkable because the values that I saw in these young people, who were admittedly highly privileged, were so commendable and admirable. To me, in so many ways, I visited the LGBTQ center in Beijing. One year, my co-instructor was a sociologist who has been doing a lot of work with PFLAG in China. And one day in class, a student opened her mouth and came out. She said, as a lesbian, I'm so grateful for the articles that we read about the experience of people growing up and so many things that I thought were my own unique experience turned out to be common experience.

[65:04]

Nobody gasped. Nobody laughed. This is a group of Chinese high school students. Another thing I want to say is that book banning seems not just absurd, but also quite futile in the world that we live in. Any young person who wants access to any bit of information can get it. It's no longer a world in which people can be barred from access to representation of people who look like them. You know, anybody now anywhere on the planet can see, for example, LGBTQ people who look successful and happy and healthy and are laughing and making fun of people who want to oppress them. So that kind of satire is thriving. The other class of people that I want to signal my faith and confidence in is formidable matrons. Because another thing that I heard when I was in China was that the government had just once again banned all LGBTQ representation.

[66:10]

And I was told that a lot of formidable matronly women descended upon the TV stations to say, my son or my daughter is a citizen of China and their life and their nature should be represented on your station. And of course, Chinese culture being what it is, you know, the poor executive had to sit there politely, you know, and listen to this woman who he had to respect. So anyway, you know, In some ways, I feel like the internet is kind of like a new version of the Silk Road. I'm thinking about how the version of Buddhism that we practice is a product of this Silk Road exchange. I don't know. Those are things that I feel grateful and in some measure hopeful and confident about. Thank you very much, David. Yes, there is plenty to be, there are things to be hopeful about or signs of hope and young people and you're talking about matrons.

[67:14]

I have to tell a story about when I was living in Japan and Tanaka Shinkai Roshi, the teacher I was doing sessions with, I was asking him about Japanese Buddhism, and he said, Japanese Buddhism lives in the old women now. And on the street where I lived, there were a lot of old women. They were out on the street early in the morning cleaning, washing down the street, cleaning the streets, and sending off the kids to school. You could see the spirit of practice and of awareness there. So yes. It's not, the situation of our world is challenging, it's not hopeless. We, to think that, that we should just, you know, the climate, climate breakdown is going to destroy all of humanity and it's, there's nothing we can do. That's not realistic. There are things, there are, you know, there's going to be lots of

[68:16]

There has been lots of damage. The pandemic has been terrible, but there are ways in which we can move forward. So thank you for that, David Ray. So Ruben and or David Ray, I can't see all the people here. So please call on people. Anybody who hasn't spoken yet, who has something to add, please. I mean, I defer to anybody who hasn't spoken yet, but nobody said anything. I just wanted to have a shout out as far as, you know, when we're looking at spots of hope, you know, for both Taigan and David, I want to shout out to teachers. Because, you know, and I mean, it's true, we've got all this information, but

[69:20]

So it's not the information itself, it's the skills that we need to critically assess it. And that's what we look to teachers for. And, you know, teachers have been really important in my own life. And I, you know, this last, well, one day, the first book, you know, that I read that really helped me critically assess information was Hayakawa's Language thought and action and I finished reading that 50 years ago on January the 31st, 1972. And, you know, it was significant enough to me that, you know, I remembered that and I reached out to my ninth grade English teacher and I was, you know, I did get him an email and I talked to him and he was, you know, he said, Anyway, he did remember me, which frankly didn't surprise me. But he, you know, he did, he was, you know, appreciative of the fact that he, that I still remembered him and, you know, remembered the class.

[70:34]

And I, yes, I just wanted to say, yeah, that, you know, teachers are really important and really valuable. And thank you to all of, all of you teachers. Thank you. Thanks again. David Ray was talking about the internet as a way of communicating. And I heard that when Maus, the story of this graphic novel about the Nazi Holocaust was banned, that it became number one on the Amazon list or something. So yeah, that's an example. There is also all this disinformation that's spread on the internet. So I think Eve is right that critical thinking you know, caring about what's happening is important. So maybe we're finished if there's nobody else with their hands up. I just wanted to say hi to Deborah.

[71:35]

How are you? I haven't heard from you in a while. Still out in California. Maybe she can't hear me. It looks like she has left the building. Her box is still there. Here I am. I'm sorry. I'm on a phone call. Oh, hey, Debra. Hi. Yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you. And I appreciated your talk today about non-thinking. And I'm doing well. Beyond thinking. I was just going to say, though, just as a human person, these issues are very overwhelming. And it is one thing to approach them, but it's also extremely challenging to approach them. So I'm just trying to bring in the human component of our frailty and our vulnerability. Zazen helps, but sometimes people, I think, may struggle, what direction do I take?

[72:37]

I know I have. So I just wanted to throw that in. Thank you. Yes, this is challenging stuff. Facing our lives, facing the wall, facing what's going on in our world. It's not easy. It's not. And what response do we have? Yeah, and I can talk about responses. Mainly, I want to say that there are responses, but that there's not one right response. That's the not knowing part. And we have to be willing to shift our response depending on how it fits. So this is really challenging stuff. And this is the meat and potatoes, excuse the expression, of our Zen practice. This practice is challenging in various ways, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially.

[73:40]

So again, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to respond is exactly the right response. And then looking around and seeing, well, those people are responding to this situation in a way that seems helpful to me, so I'll you know, work with those people. You know, that kind of being able to look around and seeing what seems helpful. It's not easy. This is difficult stuff. Being a human being and being alive is a difficult practice. But here we are. And yes, we should give ourselves permission to, you know, not rush into some response. and to spend time. So, you know, our practice is sitting still, uprightly, inhaling and exhaling and enjoying our inhale and exhale.

[74:44]

And sometimes the best response is just silence. It's just to keep sitting. If we're not, if we don't see anything to do, just keep sitting. That's a response in itself that can make a difference. So thank you for that, Deborah. And thank you all for listening.

[75:08]

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