Good evening, everyone. Welcome. And happy Independence Day Eve, or Interdependence Day Eve, or Interdependence Day Eve. So Fourth of July weekend, I talk about liberation. and the American ideal of liberation and freedom and justice and how it relates to our practice of Zazen and the Buddhist idea of liberation. And I started to talk about this yesterday, and I'm going to say some of the same things. Fortunately, almost nobody is here from yesterday, but I'm going to say a bunch of different things, too. So, you know, our Zazen is about, in some ways, personal freedom, freedom from our own individual ancient twisted karma, seeing our own personal wholeness, facing all of that.

[01:13]

seeing our personal estrangement and seeing our personal interdependence with all things. The ideal, an idea of freedom and liberation and liberty and justice for all in our country has a lot of resonance with that, I think. And it also has lots of problems. And yet the fact that we have these ideals gives us a way of working with the bodhisattva practices and the bodhisattva vows that I really appreciate. So our practice, this zazen, is the samadhi of all beings. We settle into being present with all beings. We realize our communion with all beings. And our precepts, our bodhisattva precepts, are about benefiting all beings, being helpful rather than harmful, supporting helpfulness rather than harmfulness.

[02:28]

and radical respect for all beings. So what I really want to get to tonight is talking about what that means, this radical respectfulness for all beings, in the context of this is our first 4th of July in the age of Trump. So I want to come back to that. But also, the problems that we have now are not just about Mr. Trump. And so how do we speak with radical respectfulness for the problems of our country at the same time that we appreciate the ideals, the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate on the 4th of July says, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men, it says men, are created equal, endowed by their creator. And of course, for us, it's just the creation that's arising. right now, all of us together, with certain inalienable rights.

[03:36]

Among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And more and more, I think this idea of the pursuit of happiness is a koan for us, along with all the other koans this brings us. And as I said yesterday, Thomas Jefferson used to be a hero of mine. Now I think of him as a total koan. a slave holder, fathered slaves, and who contributed to the theft of Native American land and destruction of Native American cultures. And still, he was a brilliant man who's clearly, who's, some of his writings were brilliant advocacies for democracy, for liberty, for, and continuing inspirations that led to many, inspirations for liberty and justice. He vowed eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the human mind. What a great aspiration.

[04:38]

How do we see all of the ways in which our mind is caught? How do we see the aspiration to free our minds from all forms of tyranny, inner and outer. This is something very radical and noble. He said, the price of liberation is ongoing vigilance. Actually, he said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. But I think of this as a Zazen motto. The price of liberation is ongoing vigilance. It's not enough to realize Buddha. to have some experience of illumination. We need to keep paying attention. Jefferson also said, I hope we 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, unquote. He said this back then.

[05:40]

So we have these ideals of liberty and justice for all. We still celebrate them. So this is wonderful. It shows some possibility for change. It shows just to have those ideals. means that we can look at the situation of our society and think about the bodhisattva vow in terms of what does it mean to benefit all beings in a way that most of the history of Asian Buddhism didn't even have that possibility. Most Zen teachers, Dogen said, don't be involved with political leaders, because it was all warlords and feudal lords, and there wasn't the idea of democracy, there wasn't the idea of participation, there wasn't the idea of changing. I mean, it happens sometimes, and there were Asian Buddhists who were dedicated to reform.

[06:51]

in different ways. Anyway, we need to face the problems and the sadness of all the difficulties and suffering going on now. How do we do that with radical respect? This is a great koan. Thomas Jefferson is a great koan. Donald Trump is a great koan. we still do have the means to produce change and support well-being. Lincoln said, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. And now we have government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. It's very clear. So again, my responsibility as a precept holder responsible to the precepts of liberation is to talk about how our country is doing from the point of view of bodhisattva values and to speak difficult truths as I see them. And so I tried to do this yesterday and got into some trouble and I'm going to try again today.

[07:53]

I think many people in our country and around the world understand that our in this country's political and economic business, as usual, is a fraud. Many people reject what is happening. That's the reason many people voted for Donald Trump. And we don't know how to respond. What I want is to try and talk about practical response. I don't feel like wallowing in hopelessness is relevant or... I don't think that's realistic. I think change is possible. How do we do that? What does this mean? But also, we speak of our ancient twisted karma individually, and I've talked about this collectively.

[09:03]

And I'm just going to say a little bit about what I talked about yesterday about the history of our country and how this situation is not just about Donald Trump. We haven't had a real democracy in some time. Citizens United turned over our elections to the highest bidder. The Russians hacked our last elections, but the Republicans have been doing it for a long time, at least since Bush v. Gore, they've been gerrymandering, and now are throwing minorities off the voting rolls in many states. I mentioned yesterday, please check out research of Harvey Wasserman, W-A-S-S-E-R-M-A-N, who documented with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. how John Kerry won Ohio in 2004. The Republicans have been doing this and the Democrats, I have to say, have not been doing much to stop it.

[10:06]

In some ways, the history of our country, I talked about this yesterday and I'm not going to repeat all of this. Going back to the founding fathers, and they were patriarchal fathers, women were not allowed to vote. until less than a hundred years ago. There's an article on the Sordium News I quoted yesterday called A Deep History of America's Deep State. I'm not going to go over that today. But just that we can see the Revolutionary War and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in various ways. In some ways it was a call for freedom, but the people calling for freedom were the 1% of their day. George Washington was the wealthiest person in the colonies. And they were, the word democracy does not appear in the US Constitution. They were interested in A government that was controlled by the well-to-do.

[11:22]

Only property people could vote. And also, the issue of race, which is so much part of our world now, goes back to that. Our country was founded on slavery and racism. Our economy was built on slavery and racism, north and south. So I will quote from a book. by a current historian named Gerald Horne called The Counter-Revolution of 1776, Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. He says what helped to prompt July 4, 1776 was the perception amongst European settlers on the North American mainland that London was moving rapidly towards abolition of slavery. This perception was prompted by a case decided in London in June 1772, which seemed to suggest that abolition, which not only was going to be ratified in London itself, was going to cross the Atlantic and basically sweep through the mainland, thereby jeopardizing numerous fortunes not only based upon slavery, but slave trade.

[12:39]

And this would destroy the economy of the North as well as the South, and in fact, There was total abolition of the British Empire in 1807. So, modern historians are showing that side of the Revolutionary War. Now, history is complicated. The words of Thomas Jefferson, at least, are brilliant and noble. There certainly was a side to the American Revolution that was talking about freedom and justice and so forth. So I don't mean to paint any of this in black and white, excuse the pun, but anyway, racism is part of what we live with now. So everybody here this evening is white, but we know about the violence in Chicago where we live. We know that African American people in our country, in our city are killed by police who are not held accountable.

[13:47]

This happens regularly, almost every week. We know that there's mass incarceration and that that happens mostly of African-Americans and other minorities. And that that's a continuation of slavery and Jim Crow in another form. as slavery because a lot of the prisons are privatized and the inmates work for private corporations at no pay or little pay. And our current Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has proposed to enhance privatized for profit prisons. and increase the horrible so-called war on drugs. So we have gun violence, we have gang violence as a symptom of the lack of equal opportunities for education, for employment, for housing, and for voting as equal voting rights doesn't happen. So there's a lot of things in the current situation that are very extreme under Mr. Trump.

[14:51]

But it's a continuation of things that have been happening. But it's extreme. The Republican health care bill is a huge tax giveaway to billionaires. It eliminates health care for 22 million people, cuts benefits for a great many more. I'm going to just mention some of the things that are going on. But then I want to try and talk about how we respond to it. I want to say some things about climate. I've talked before about the monthly reports on truthout.org by Dar Jamal, J-M-A-I-L. There was another one today, reports of the current climate science and just a few bits of it. 2016 was the hottest year on record again. The sea level rise is accelerating. Antarctica, parts of Antarctica are now green.

[15:56]

It's raining in Antarctica, and this is winter in Antarctica. In 2016, an area larger than Texas melted in Antarctica. The planet is warming 20 times faster than the fastest natural climate change on record, which is when it came out of the last ice age. So these are just a few little bits of the most recent science about climate change. Oh, and I mentioned yesterday that the EPA, last Thursday, the news included that the EPA, current EPA chief, met with Dow Chemical CEO privately about a decision to allow the use of a pesticide that is sick in farm workers and is known to cause brain damage in children. So Scott Pruitt met for about a half hour with the Dow CEO.

[17:00]

March 9th and 20 days later, he unexpectedly reversed course and approved use of the pesticide manufactured by Dow and many other things the EPA is doing about rolling back drinking water safeguards. Today, Mr. Trump announced the massive approval of offshore drilling on all the coasts and all our oceans, including the Arctic. The hope of supposedly ending the ban on that that Mr. Obama tried to enact in some parts of it anyway. The last thing is, which is not mentioned much, but the endless warfare. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in United States history, and I don't know why we're fighting it. I mean, there's the Trump foreign policy has been characterized as him traveling around the world trying to sell weapons systems.

[18:11]

His first trip was to Saudi Arabia, and he promised $110 billion worth of weapons. The various wars in the Mideast started by our invasion of Iraq when we had to attack somebody after 9-11, even though Iraq had nothing to do with it. All of you know about this stuff. Sorry to repeat all this stuff. We should be having massive cutbacks on wasteful military spending, like the funding of submarines to fight ISIS in the desert. And ISIS, by the way, calls the Trump Muslim ban the blessed ban, because it's a wonderful recruiting tool for them. In April 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King called the U.S. government the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. And I think it's probably still the case.

[19:15]

Okay, so what do we do about this? How do we respond to this? What do our Bodhisattva precepts say about how we respond to this? How do we think about this? I don't think feeling overwhelmed and hopeless is realistic. Things change, we know. There's lots of examples of things changing in our lifetimes. People responding and resisting make a difference. So I want to try and talk about this in terms of precepts and spirituality and bodhisattva vow.

[20:23]

Yesterday I read, I'll just mention that yesterday I read Naomi Klein's, from Naomi Klein's new book, No Is Not Enough, meaning saying no to Donald Trump is not enough. We have to have a positive response, and she has a five-step program. And so you can check that out on Google if you find it on Google. But we have to offer something positive. I think she does. But how do we talk about this? How do we? be radically respectful to all beings. So one thing I want to say is that spirituality does not mean being nice. Buddhism doesn't mean being nice. So I think a lot of us, you know, would like to dialogue with our relatives who are Republicans and try and find a way to talk to people who support Trump.

[21:35]

And I don't wish Trump ill. This isn't about enemies. This isn't about blame. This is ancient twisted karma. It goes back to Jefferson goes back before that. It's not about playing. We are all stuck in this. We're all part of this. And yet we have to speak truth to power. If all we care about is dialoguing with Republicans and being nice to them, we're ignoring all the people who are being damaged. So African-American people, young African-American men who don't have, it's possible to find a way for some young African-American men to get free from the cycle, but many feel caught in a situation of no opportunity.

[22:43]

Muslims are now targeted. Mexicans and other people from Latin America. Immigrants are now targeted. LGBTQ people are targeted. People who need healthcare are now facing, sorry, no healthcare. Elderly people. are now facing the end of Medicaid or severe cutbacks in Medicaid. And women, all women, are facing a threat to women's health care, not to mention women's rights. So, you know, radical respect for all beings does not mean just talking with Republicans and ignoring suffering. So I need to say that. This is difficult. This is really difficult. How do we speak truth to power?

[23:50]

How do we respond, each in our own way? Some of us go to demonstrations or call Congress people. And if you're so inclined, I would encourage you, but just to be kind to talk to Republicans, but also talk to Muslims. Also talk to, we have Muslims in our Sangha, by the way. Be aware of immigrants. There are people here in our Sangha who are trying to take care of immigrants who are feeling threatened, who are threatened. So I was thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh's Precepts of Interbeing. Amongst them are, well, one of the things he says, do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people.

[25:01]

Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. It's pretty difficult when we live in a world of division and hatred. We can talk about the situation without talking about it in terms of hatred. I do not hate Republicans or Donald Trump. I don't even hate Democrats. How do we talk about the situation in terms of the situation without blame, but trying to speak truth? Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. So I'm trying to talk about the things, the truth that I see. I'm trying to share information. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Well, I don't know how to speak constructively. It's my job to try and speak about truth. what I see in terms of precepts, in terms of the situation of independency. Thich Nhat Hanh says, have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.

[26:10]

Thich Nhat Hanh was in the middle of the Vietnam War. He spoke out against both the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese government, and he had to leave because he was in danger of being killed by both sides. So he had to go into exile in France. How do we speak truth about the injustices that are happening now? without blame. What does it mean to radically respect all beings in a situation of great polarization? This is a great challenge to us. I also want to read number 12 of Thich Nhat Hanh's 14 Precepts of Interbeing. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war. So we're living in a kind of civil war. and it's violence.

[27:11]

Eliminating health care for 22 million people is a kind of violence. It's going to kill people. So I think one of the things we have to offer, in addition to just being willing to speak truth to power, being willing to do that in a way that's not about enemies or blame, but just looking at the situation, knowing that this isn't about, I mean, our Secretary of State from ExxonMobil may be responsible for climate damage in a lot of ways. So I could talk about his company and how it helped create climate damage and so forth.

[28:19]

But we have to get over personal blame. We have to talk about the situation. It goes way back. How do we present instead a positive vision? And I think part of what we are doing here, doing this practice of zazen, this ancient practice that's been handed down to us, is providing a positive vision of the kind of way in which human beings can be, the kind of human potential that's possible. We don't need warfare. Billionaires seem to feel like they need more and more and more money. It's sad. These poor people. have billions of dollars and feel like they don't have enough. It's sad. How do we practice, how do we model kindness and cooperation, non-blaming, but also speaking truth about what's going on?

[29:29]

So our response on Independence Day, our bodhisattva social vow. You know, we can borrow the U.S., you know, American ideals of equal justice under the law. We don't have equal justice under the law, clearly, right now. There's one system of justice for minorities and African Americans, another system of justice for, you know, white folks. One system of justice maybe for men and another for women. And then there's a different system of justice for billionaires. Anyway, how do we see liberty and justice for all? And then again, what does it mean to pursue the pursuit of happiness? I think our Zazen teaches us something about the pursuit of happiness or at least contentment. How do we find wholeness? How do we find a way to respond to each other with kindness?

[30:35]

And how does that present some positive vision? that is part of what we can offer in response to what our country is doing now, what our government is doing now. The people of our country, I think, understand. It's not about the people. It's about the power systems. But of course, that means that lots of people are caught up the ideas of the media system and so forth. Anyway, okay, I'll stop. Comments, responses, questions, reflections. Caitlin, any thoughts? Yeah, yes, I guess.

[32:04]

Right, that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I didn't hear it. What did he say? Good to see you. Thank you. Yeah, we, it's, things, there is change.

[33:09]

There's so many examples of change. You know, I mean, it's only 100 years ago that women weren't allowed to vote and women, you know, marched in the streets and went on hunger strikes and, And they got the vote. And it was only very recently that LGBT gay people weren't allowed to be themselves in public. And now we have gay marriage. And they fought for that. So it's, yeah, change happens. Other comments? Michael. I don't think about it now.

[34:12]

It reminds me of how radical an idea non-ruralism is. It's an interesting thing to write, to make a piece of writing without conversation. And also, you know, one of the things I've been, that I keep starting to find so interesting right now about this practice is trying to open myself up to a greater understanding of just the possibility of the constraints of time.

[35:14]

The which? Like the constraints of time. Yeah. Right. I'm not a real designer, it's more a sense of just laying it out, the idea of... Good.

[36:39]

Yeah, it's one of the gifts of practice. Yeah, the bodhisattva time, that we have this sense, and I think we get it, we start to feel it from Zazen, that, you know, so we can talk about, you know, Thomas Jefferson and Buddha and Dogen and this sense of, and the future, too. and this sense of time. And at the same time, we have the constraints of, you know, all of our lists of things we have to do and, you know, and that we can feel stifled by, but also having this sense of, having this sense of a wider sense of time.

[37:39]

Bodhisattva time allows us more air in which to respond, that there's possibility, and that the Republican Party, as it currently stands, is not the end of the world, that change happens. Matt, I felt you thinking something. I've been recently rereading the Lotus Sutra and the whole thing about time comes up where eons have gone by and if you put them all together it's still and so that sense of time I think that larger sense of time that's incomprehensible really is a wonderful gift I think to have that sense and also the sense of that the bodhisattvas under the ground I've been really feeling that lately like just feeling like even though there's so much suffering and everything and so crazy there there is so much

[38:50]

they're there. I know a lot of people that my wife works with now for some political action groups and things like that. They're so busy now. They're so active at that. And before November, they weren't doing anything. Now it's like there's so much, at least where I live, going on. And it's really hopeful, even though everything seems so dire. Yeah, Gary Snyder used to say, he said this a good while ago, but it keeps applying more and more, that we have to act as if our heads are on fire and as if we have all the time in the world, both. So, David, last word. Yeah.

[39:52]

Yeah. Yes. We're all born free. changing in the last couple of weeks. And I think what's so important is to be for something. But also part of our police apropos is to be respectful. Not that we have to be kind to Democrats or kind to Republicans, but to be respectful, and to listen, and to talk to each other, and not right away to make something wrong. And what we're doing, I think that's part of our call to this practice. Right.

[41:38]

Okay, but, excuse me, I want to interrupt because, I'm sorry, I interrupt. That's a bad habit of mine, but there are bad actions. So it's not that, okay, the person across from you is part of you, and so therefore everything is fine. Everything is fine, and there are things that are happening that are really harmful. I hear you saying that, and it's as if it's like brushing that aside. Jerry? I'm trying to take what you're saying into play. It's like Kevin said so well, it's like being for something. And if we're making other people wrong, we're not being for something. But their actions may be wrong. Their actions, right. It's not about the person. It's the actions. OK, that's better. And that's the thing that we're focusing on. OK, Jerry? I think there were other things going on. But he wasn't wrong.

[43:04]

I think there was a little bit of racism here. And so I got on the board. And so I took over the president and said, OK, you know, everybody else gets the barricade. We can't tell them they can't burn. And it had to do with the smoke coming into his house. And I was like, you know, I said there's smoke everywhere. I said, I hate the smell of burning meat. But I smell it. You just have to get over that. But what I realized was my friend So he said, we demand an apology. And the president apologized to him in a very nice way. But what I realized is he was still upset. And he said, you know, Jerry, it shouldn't be you and Susie apologizing to me. It should be there are racist people in our building. And what I realized is he was trying to call the end of it, not necessarily Because for a moment I thought, you know, he's more accepting than he used to be.

[44:22]

But then I realized it wasn't about the barbecuing, it was about the fact that there are racist people living in our building and we need to be able to call that out and to say, hey, this is not acceptable in this community. And America is racist. America is created with racism. We're all affected by that. We have to acknowledge it. You can't just say, oh, we're post-racial now. It's like part of our DNA as a country, and we're all impacted by it. So how do we acknowledge the ancient twist of karma of this? It's a huge koan. Yeah, yes, okay, yes, yes. Yeah. It's a huge koan, yeah.

[45:24]

Thank you.

[45:25]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v005
@Score_86.27