Good evening, everyone. So I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to hearing Howard Juan talk this evening as posted about the Dharma of Gate of Uncertainty. Speaking of uncertainty, I found out 30 minutes before Zazen that Howard would not be here and I would be giving the talk. So he had warned me an hour before that that he was going to be a little challenged in giving the talk because his power was out. I have no idea if it's just his house, the power is out or if all Hyde Park is out or whatever. Anyway, at some point in the future, Howard may give that talk. Tonight, instead, I'm going to talk about life during wartime. And I'll also be referring to the International Western Dharma Teachers Conference, online conference that I attended some bits of during this past week in between other things and was as I could.

[01:09]

So I want to, I will be quoting from a few of the speakers who I heard who are really good. Larry Ward, who I'd never heard before. I'd heard about him. Iku Bodhi, who was one of the premier translators of and Kriti Kano, who I had heard before, who's an environmental scientist, and she's very good. So, but first I want to talk about life during wartime. So, yeah, actually that describes most of my adult life. at least when I became aware of it, age 14. And I want to play a song by David Byrne from 1979, before some of you were born, which describes this to some extent.

[02:14]

So let's see how this goes. Tygan, is the song supposed to be playing? Louder? Tygan, I think what's happening is your headphones are plugged in and I think it's playing the song

[03:15]

Could you not hear the beginning? No. I'm going to start over again then and I'll forget about the headphones. Okay, sorry about that. Technical glitches in this age of electronics. i'm getting used to it now I ain't got time for that now.

[04:31]

I've transferred the message to the receiver. Hopefully I'll get an answer someday. I've got three packs of Oyster up on my feet. You don't even know my real name. I've got the Oyster. The ducks are floating. Everything's ready to roll. I ain't got time for that now. What's it called?

[05:36]

I ain't got time for that now. ♪ I know that that ain't a lie ♪ ♪ We dress like students ♪ ♪ We dress like outcasts ♪ ♪ Forming a stereotype ♪ ♪ I've changed my hairstyle since so many times now ♪ ♪ I don't know what I'm doing here ♪ ♪ You make me shudder every time you surrender ♪ ♪ And bring me the pain ♪ ♪ So don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving ♪ So I apologize to our radio listeners for that silent air a little while ago.

[07:14]

Life During Wartime by David Byrne and the Talking Heads was written in 1979, again before some of you were born, but Well, I must make the disclaimer that I said that that defined my whole adult life. And I'm sure that David Byrne, as well as I have never actually been in a war zone with bombs dropping and so forth. And but that is happening in places like, well, it has been happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and Colombia and Anyway, lots of places around the world. For me personally, in many ways, my life has been about opposing war, going back to when I was 15 and demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and various political arrests, including in high school and with 700 people in New York.

[08:21]

sitting in Dow Chemical Company's office when they were burning Vietnamese civilians' skin off with napalm. And then later on, well, there were intervening wars in Guatemala and Honduras and Argentina. But in 1983, when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell lied us into war in Iraq, I was demonstrating, oh, that was in 2003, demonstrating and arrested a few times. But in between, in the early 1980s, also there was a nuclear freeze and there were civil disobedience going on against nuclear weapons. We're very much relevant today. There's a new nuclear arms race. I recommend the Doomsday Machine, a book by Dan Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame.

[09:23]

Um, so the United States, well, they got, they pulled some of their troops out of Afghanistan and, um, but, um, the United States has been spreading warfare again for my whole adult life at different ways at different times. Um, so, uh, just one way to talk about that. Um, The Afghanistan war cost $2.2 trillion with 170,000 people killed. That's a small number of those were Americans, but lots of people in the Mideast. And 55% of our national budget goes to the military. One number I saw was Iraq, and the Iraq war cost us $8 trillion altogether.

[10:26]

And that we are now spending $800 million per year. United States has 800 military bases around the world. the next highest country for military bases outside its borders is Russia with eight. So anyway, okay. Um, but I'm not just talking about war, warfare in that sense. So I want to talk about, um, again, this conference that, um, that I attended some of this last week, um, One graphic that I think was Bhikhu Bodhi showed was a series of tsunamis that threatened us. So the tsunami of the COVID pandemic, which has killed 700,000 plus people just in this country, could have been avoided, or a lot of it could have been avoided.

[11:30]

That's one tsunami. There's a tsunami of, racism and racist terrorism, which black people certainly know on a daily basis as a possibility in this country, but also around the world. There's the tsunami that could be coming of fascism. And I'm not using that as a kind of hyperbole. Fascism technically is about government controlled by corporations. And our government seems to be controlled by big pharma in terms of healthcare and who we're not giving the vaccines to around the world and by military contractors, profiteers, weapons companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and others. And then there's the tsunami of climate. climate destruction which is happening.

[12:35]

So I'm not talking about all this just to bring you down, because I wanna talk about how we face this, but I'm gonna refer to some of the things that were said at this conference. First, just to say that the climate damage is really dangerous. It's happening. It's not... It's not speculative. You know, there's a California where friends of mine live has been in drought, and now they're having deluges of rain. which will cause mudslides and so forth. So our whole climate is unstable. I want to share some perspectives from this conference. Larry Ward, I've heard about for a long time. Has anybody heard him speak or read any of his books? Oh, Matt, yeah. I had heard about him. I never heard him speak. He's very powerful. He's very good. He's very strong and also loving.

[13:38]

So just a few of the things he said, that we need to be now feeling non-attachment to the personal, our personal benefit, our personal situation. You know, of course we have to take care of that. But he also said, my ideas are not important. So we all have ideas and perspectives. What's happening though is, he quoted Dr. King as saying that we have to think, have a view of planetary wholeness. We have this teaching now of deep interconnectedness. It's not just a Buddhist teaching anymore. The pandemic has taught us that we are connected. and that people all around the country, well, right now, on some of our Zooms, we have people from many places.

[14:41]

Matt's from Minnesota. I think the rest of us are in the Chicago area. But yeah, we're all connected in this pandemic. And if the pandemic is not taken care of in Latin America and Africa and South Asia, more mutant variants will come, even though things are looking better, much better in this country. So we're connected, we're deeply connected. So another thing that Larry Ward talked about is that institutions do not have consciousness. I might say that mountains and rivers have consciousness, that forests have consciousness, and we can talk about that, but institutions don't have consciousness. I mean, the people in the institutions do, but things that institutions do that cause great harm, they don't have a consciousness, or I could say a conscience either. So, he, talked about how it is pointless to try to have, well, as he said, arguments with fools.

[15:57]

I would say it differently, that to try and persuade somebody else, you know, all the people who, I don't know, think that, what should I, how should I say it? That, you know, that all these conspiracies and that Trump won the last election and, that white heterosexual males are the most persecuted people in history, you know, to try and if people are convinced of such things, it's not, it's not helpful to argue with them or try to persuade them of other things or give them the quote unquote facts, because facts don't mean anything when you have, when people, for people who are set in their beliefs, it doesn't mean we should, we should just ignore them or, or, You know, we are connected to those people too. And, you know, we can talk with them, but we should find things to talk about that are, so this is me, not Larry Ward, but I think we can talk to people who have those bizarre beliefs about things that we have in common.

[17:06]

There are things that we have in common because all people, we are part of all people. We are connected with all people and all beings radically in a deep way. So to discount anybody is foolish, and yet institutions are unconscious, and we shouldn't try and persuade somebody, try and convert somebody to some, out of some view that is, they're set in. So anyway, that's a little bit of what Larry Ward talked about. And I wish I had the whole transcript in front of me, but he was very good. I want to shift now to Thich Nhat Hanh, who is really one of the preeminent translators of Pali suttas. He was a monk for many years in South Asia, I forget which country, I think maybe Thailand, or maybe Sri Lanka.

[18:09]

But he's, you know, he's from Brooklyn, lives in New Jersey now, and has various interesting perspectives. So again, I'm just going to share a little bit of it. He was talking about inequality, And this is part of the wartime that we're in. So he gave some numbers. The richest 1% of people in the world own 43% of the world's wealth. That's kind of astounding. And from a point of view of ethical values, Disturbing. The bottom 40%, I forget the number he gave, but a small fraction, single digit percentage of wealth of the world.

[19:20]

There are 10 men, and they are men. I think many of them in the United States who own tremendous amount. Oh, I think 42.5% of the wealth in the United States is owned by the top 1% of people in the United States. So during this pandemic, workers, people, including the quote-unquote essential workers, nurses and delivery people, the people who we totally depend on lost a total of $35 billion throughout this COVID pandemic. Billionaires, those who are billionaires gained $4 trillion during the pandemics.

[20:23]

So, And he talked about military spending too. Some of what I said before, the United States military spending is higher than the next eight countries combined. So, okay, Buddhist perspective here. How do we respond to this? So, Buddhism is about generosity and compassion and wishing well, as we just chanted, may all beings be happy. But as Bhikkhu Bodhi said, we also need to have a sharp diagnosis and we have to support radical change. He talked about the domains of value, the ultimate sphere, the cultural sphere, social sphere and the ecological sphere. Anyway, B. Kubota is very skillful, has lots of charts, and I didn't have time before.

[21:33]

I knew I would give this talk to try and collect some of those. But he also talked about the ecological crisis, not just climate, but mass extinctions. And how that has to do with, as he put it, the metaphysics of personal atomism, thinking that we are isolated. So part of our work as practitioners is to on our own seats during meditation to see how we are connected with each part of ourselves and with all beings. But if you have a perspective of affirming independent separation of personal selves, that's the fundamental delusion.

[22:36]

Happiness he defined as the participation with everyone and everything in all domains. So just to, this is like, we're talking about going beyond the personal. So we'll have some time for discussion, but I want to say some more. One of the things that, and I don't have a good way of describing this, but one of the things that Bhikkhu Bodhi talked about is the doughnut economy. Do some of you know about that? Matt does. Rather than capitalist models of economy, there's a note about it somewhere here, if I can read my notes. that, you know, to see the outside of the doughnut, to see that, to see our economy and our world really, with the outside of the doughnut is the external forces, the ecological forces, the atmosphere, the limitations on the earth.

[23:51]

The inside is those things that support us, the internal aspects. Okay, going back to some of the other things that Bhikkhu Bodhi talked about. He talked about Buddhist values. We don't have to call them Buddhist, just helpful values that support change. We need to change the way things is. That doesn't mean that any of us individually can fix it, but to see that we are connected and to really share that and help that perspective to flourish, that will change things. So some of the values he talked about is discernment, clear understanding.

[24:55]

So sometimes in Buddhism, we talk about not knowing, and there is a not knowing that we don't know for certain lots of things. There is the not knowing of many aspects of our world, but we can also discern with moral vision and understand some of what's happening in the world. He talked about the value of solidarity, the essential unity of all beings. He talked about love as a value, as a Buddhist value, concern for the wellbeing of all. So this is what the Metta Sutra we just chanted is about. Talked about compassion, which he called the urge to alleviate suffering, which also involves seeing the sources of suffering. not just an abstraction, but what are the practical sources of suffering? So some of the things I was talking about at the tsunami, those supporting the oil companies, supporting climate

[26:07]

uh, damage, climate destruction, which they knew about, um, back in the seventies, actually, when David Byrne wrote the song, just like the cigarette companies knew that tobacco was produced cancer, but continued to spread cigarettes. Um, he talked about the Buddhist value of justice, which he described as, Bhikkhu Bodhi described as just treating all beings, all people fairly. What does that mean to treat everyone fairly? What is, how is that real justice? So all of these are worth worthy of considering. He talked about the value of equity, that all people, needed receiving an equal chance to flourish, to enjoy their lives.

[27:10]

He talked about the value of peace as a Buddhist value. And he talked about how that included educating people about our military budget and the way Uh, we have been living a life during wartime for decades and decades and often spread by this country, other countries as well, of course. Uh, he talked about, uh, his, um, eighth, I think he had eight of them, of these values, Buddhist values for change. And the last one was courage to, um, bring out these values into action. And how to do that is challenging. And I'm going to talk some about that in terms of what Kriti Kano talked about. But how to see

[28:14]

how to see encouragements for actual change. He also mentioned three sources of what he thought of as hopefulness in the world now. And I think these are right. Maybe I could add some, but diversity. And that's clearly true in this country. There's more and more diversity, more different kinds of people, more people from different countries, more of an acceptance of, at least by some people, of diversity. He talked about another aspect of hopefulness, the role of women. There are many, many more women in leadership in governments around the world and in sanghas, although, There aren't any here right now, unfortunately. But anyway, hooray for women. And I want to note the way that women are being persecuted by some of the politicians and corporations now, anyway.

[29:23]

And then he also talked about the value of indigenous people. So up in Minnesota, where Matt is, they're leading a campaign against one of the tar sand pipelines, which is already leaking and causing damage to the environment. So anyway, that's a little bit of what Biko Bodhi talked about. I want to mention Pritikano. I've heard her speak before. She's associated with David Loy's group in Colorado, but I think she's practiced with a number of groups and she's spoken to the Soto Zen Buddhist Association. And I think what she said was, she talks about climate and climate destruction. She's an environmental scientist and actually studies all of this as a scientist. One of the things she talked about, she said that, 60% of all people in the United States have been abused by their parents or have some trauma from their parents emotionally, if not physically.

[30:35]

That's a startling number. She talked about how we have to go beyond shame and find joy even in the midst of trauma. And I think one of the things, I'm gonna talk about this more next Sunday, but we all are suffering from trauma. I refer to this as PTSD in one of the sessions, and with Joel and Michelle Levy, who were students of Joanna Macy in Hawaii. And Michelle said, it's not P, it's not post-traumatic stress. We're in the middle of a trauma. We've been, you know, for, getting close to two years of this pandemic. And some of us are starting to get out more, but it's still, you know, having all of this time being to some degree quarantined or just avoiding groups or anyway, this has been a traumatic shift.

[31:51]

And, you know, one of the things that I feel, and I've said this, is that this is good preparation because the following tsunamis of racist terrorism, perhaps, of fascist governments, of more and more climate destruction are gonna require us to change, to shift, to respond with joy even in the midst of trauma. So this has been good practice. And at the same time, we should not, cannot, need to not minimize the sadness of this, of how our world has changed just in the last two years. how our lives have changed. Even those of us who have not suffered extensively from loss of friends or families to COVID or from economic distress, we've all changed.

[33:02]

We've all suffered. There's a sadness to it. She talked about Sangha action. how to take action and support others who are doing actions. She suggested, and I'm not sure how we implement this, Alex is involved with our social action group, but she suggested small groups working together, affinity groups, four to eight people, more than that. So we have seven here. So we could all talk together about what to do, but four to eight people who meet regularly. What did she suggest? Two hours at a time. Did she say once a week? Anyway, a couple times a month. So what is Dharma resistance? How do we find Dharma resistance? She also talked about the times are urgent.

[34:03]

People have felt that times were urgent, maybe all through history. And, you know, in Dogen's time, there were civil war and bodies in the streets of Kyoto. Always, you know, it's possible to feel like the times are urgent. But when we look at the level of mass extinction now, the possibility of nuclear warfare and so forth and so on, I'm not saying this to scare you, but that we have to face this. And we have to find a new way to respond, not acting from guilt or shame. So we all have you know, maybe not all of us, but many of us have regrets. And if we look at our personal karma, we can feel grief, we can feel shame, but that's not, we have to acknowledge it, but then we have to also see how to create islands of sanity.

[35:16]

So that's what Sangha is about. to actually face the sadness, to face the grief and trauma. And I'll talk more about that next week. We have to be willing to be vulnerable to our sadness, to our grief, not to ignore that. And then when we face that, how to shift to strategic action to supporting activities that can help make, actually make a difference, not just to feel good about some, you know, going to some demonstration and feeling like, oh, I'm okay, you know, but actually how do we effectively look at what to do? And that's a lot of work and it's not, and the Bodhisattva idea is lifetimes of work. So none of us can do everything, but how do we take on some particular, uh, project of helpfulness together?

[36:27]

But again, first we have to, to, uh, just be willing to be sad or to be angry if that's where what comes up, but to feel what we feel. Um, and to recognize that we are being traumatized by all of this and we're all wounded. So, that's a little bit about the contours of life during wartime. And that's where we're at, actually. That's what's happening. And it's sort of, you know, climate is like a slow war, you know, climate damage, although it's not so slow anymore with fires and floods and so forth. Um, white supremacy, terrorism and possible fascism seems like a slow war. There's a slow coup going on, um, since January 6th.

[37:31]

How do we face all of this? So, um, Maybe that's all a little heavy. Maybe you came to sit and feel some calm and equanimity. And we need that as well to be able to face this. So comments, questions, responses. I really want to hear what you all have to say. Ed, are you about to say something? Oh, sure. Thank you for the talk. And I'm sorry to hear that you had very little notice. I know you're very occupied, and it's difficult to do all these talks. So thank you for doing that. You know, it's interesting. I'm sorry.

[38:32]

So it's interesting to me because you mentioned several things and I can group it a little bit. This interiority of trauma that is unique to the individual, the present, often hidden away and obscured by the individual in a self-protective manner. And then the presence of injustice in the exterior world. And maybe the relationship between those two states is having something to do with first occur to the individual to address their own trauma, and then having addressed it, to then have the power or the courage or the strength to address an exterior world of injustice. And so the one must first occur precedes the other. Is this the case? Well, yes and. Yes, each of us has our own personal karmic trauma, but actually we're not alone in that.

[39:41]

Part of interconnectedness is that we are all in various ways, maybe in particular ways, traumatized. Maybe that happens just by living, even in good times, but certainly now, the pandemic and with white supremacy terrorism and with the climate damage and the environmental damage, all the species that are going extinct. I think Patrick can probably talk to some of this. Patrick works for the EPA, so I'm happy of that. This trauma is personal and it's not personal. So that's one of the things Larry Ward talked about it. It's not personal. Going back to his quote of Dr. King, again, I just, I happened to put these notes together earlier today, not knowing I was going to be giving a talk tonight, but

[40:48]

that we can have a view of planetary wholeness, planetary interconnectedness. And that means that our, even our personal trauma is connected with everybody else. We each have our own version, but we're all, so we're in it together, even at, even though we each have to do our own work. Yes. So I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm taking it to another part. Other comments or reflections, please feel free. Yes, Patrick. So, thank you again for the talk. One of the things that I've struggled with is that action step, and that action step in the face of monumental challenges. And at least for climate change, I've started to hear the language, you know, shifting more towards

[42:12]

people's livelihoods being affected. Before it was always the polar bear swimming in ice. That is, it is bad, but it's remote for myself in Chicago. And so I've started to hear news stories about people's impact, people's sort of suffering at the hands of climate change, not necessarily things I had heard before. And so for instance, there's this article in NPR that heat waves are a pregnancy risk. And so there's more black and minority women are at risk for early pregnancies during heat waves.

[43:16]

They don't really understand it. And so it starts to build this human story. And so when thinking about, you know, what to do, to your phrase earlier, like islands of sanity, it could be like islands of help. And so it, it, it can start by simply helping one person, um, or sort of one, um, minor, but connected issue. So, um, where there's heat waves, you know, they have cooling centers and stuff, but maybe there's getting people to those cooling centers is a problem. Um, and so I, I, I just say this to, to throw out, um, that there might be more tangible things that could be done locally to help individuals in addition to, you know, the big protests and like email, like emailing representatives and elected officials.

[44:30]

So there might be like just some shorter personal things, just helping someone cool off when it's 110 degrees. I don't know exactly what that might be, but since we don't have a physical space, maybe it is just helping people get rides to certain places. And yeah, going from there. And there isn't ever a perfect solution, right? So an idea would be, I know for like Lyft, I'm not a fan of ride sharing, I suppose. But you can create a code on Lyft tied to like a certain dollar amount. And so you can have like a $500 pool associated with that code and give that code out to people and then they can use it to get to cooling center kind of thing.

[45:34]

So that being said, you're using a gas powered vehicle to get someone to a cooling center who's being affected by a heat wave caused by climate change. So there's no perfect solution, but there might be sort of those tangible steps that at least you're helping Thank you, Patrick. Yes, I think small individuals, not small, individual things collect, you know, collectively do make a difference as to it being climate being tangible for human suffering. I think that's, you know, that's been happening for a while. I, you know, I moved to Chicago from Northern California and I have lots of friends and family in Northern California. They're facing fires and now floods this week. And then the people on the Gulf and on the East Coast facing intense hurricanes.

[46:38]

So yeah, I think that first is just about that part. I think climate is now not just about the polar bears. It's about us. And of course, it is also about the polar bears. But yeah, there are things that can be done. There might be small things, but those add up. And so I appreciate all your suggestions. One thing that occurred to me as you were talking, though, one of the things that I've said and that was said again at this conference is that there is now amongst environmentalists or climate, people concerned about climate, some sort of sense of planetary hospice. that the planet is dying or that the human, human beings are dying. And that's not realistic. Um, it was certainly the human species is going to suffer a lot through the various kinds of climate issues that come up, but, and all the other things, all the other things, but, um,

[47:39]

The sense of being overwhelmed and there's nothing we can do and just not getting numb and feeling dull is not helpful. In fact, that's the new version of climate denial. So the oil companies who are still spending millions and millions of dollars lobbying to continue fossil fuel are encouraging, you know, kind of sense of despair and overwhelm that, well, there's nothing we can do about climate damage. That's not realistic. There are things we can do to mitigate this and the kinds of things you were talking about, Patrick, and also just looking around and finding organizations that are doing constructive things in various ways. in supporting them. Anyway, you know, the problem is huge, but we're all in it together. Anyway, just to say that. Other comments or perspectives or questions, please.

[48:44]

Hey, everybody. I'll tell you on short notice. Pure Music is my favorite album. And that's one of my favorite songs. And that whole album is great. Yes. Thank you. One of the reasons that I enjoy it so much is the theme of the album is fear. Every one of those songs on that album has something to do with some form of fear, which is kind of an interest of mine. And there's a lot to be afraid of. And there's you know, whoever they are, are using fear to manipulate us, too. So it goes in any number of directions. I work, as some of you may know, in a facility for developmentally disabled adults.

[49:44]

It's way, way out in the suburbs, over the element that is seated there. Everybody knows the thing's been going on for two years, nearly. And it's not like this is any big news or any big mystery, but this past week, they had to close down another house because of COVID cases springing up. And it's not like they took it, this is a big surprise. And there are still, still staff I mean, there's some resistance on the part of the participants too, but there are still staff that are refusing to get vaccinated, people who work cheek by jowl with people who are disabled. I mean, close, close, close quarters. These aren't big condos we're talking about.

[50:50]

And I mean, I don't know what to do. I do what I can. I try to tell my colleagues I know how, you know, this needs to be done. I meet with some resistance. I try not to be hostile, although I have to admit, I feel pretty hostile. And the way, David, although I think you, didn't go quite far enough. I don't think he would have predicted Facebook or the Russian disinformation campaign. When I say Russian, I don't mean that in the non, you know, to talk about non-dualism. I mean, this is a campaign of disinformation that's aided and abetted by our penultimate president and American tycoons, Mr. Zuckerberg and others. So, I mean, it's not our side versus theirs.

[51:54]

I mean, we're destroying ourselves and they're destroying themselves too. Mr. Putin has been quoted as saying, I can't understand why more Russians aren't using masks. It's madness. And I'm not sure what to do except just to call it out and be as be as amicable as I can in the process, which I find hard. So I didn't think there was called this kind of emotion, but thank you. Thank you. Yes, yes, yes. It's hard. And, you know, there's anger also, and how do we deal with that? We have to face We have to face how we feel. We have to face our feelings and thoughts. And I want to go back to, you know, you started talking about fear and courage to go to one of Bhikkhu Bodhi's Buddhist virtues is not the absence of fear.

[53:05]

It's actually the study of fear and facing fear. So yeah, what's happening in the world, what's happening in our country is scary. So courage again is to face our fear and then also to face our anger and see in terms of that. And it sounds like Joe, what you're doing a really good job of, or at least you're working with in a constructive way, feeling that anger at the people who are not wearing masks or whatever, but also trying to be not hostile is one of the things you said. It's difficult. This is all difficult. The first noble truth in Buddhism, as I've said, sometimes is the truth of suffering, the truth of dissatisfaction.

[54:08]

So we're talking about suffering tonight. We're also talking about how we face suffering and how can we respond helpfully. And it's a noble truth because we can face it. That's what our Zazen is about. We sit upright, still, silent, and we feel what we feel. We don't have to figure anything out. Although, you know, if, if you, if you do figure something out, you know, use it helpfully. Um, but, um, the point is just to be sitting, to, to be upright, and settled and calm and quiet and with equanimity, right in the middle of the chaos. So that's what Islands Amid the Chaos is about. And that's something that we as community can do just by talking about this together. We are manifesting in some ways, sanity.

[55:11]

sanity is to actually look at what's happening. And then, you know, it's not that we rush out trying to fix things, because we don't know how to do that. But, you know, as a critic kind of says, in small groups, we can discuss this and look at positive things we can do. And I appreciate all your suggestions, Patrick. And, you know, we can work with you know, how can we do helpful things? So anyway, it's, uh, so thank you, Joe, for, uh, sharing your fear and anger. Thanks for listening. So we're getting along to time to wrap things up and we do have some major announcements, but, um, does anybody else have something you want to say, Patrick, please? Um, the phrase joy in the midst of trauma.

[56:15]

And then I was thinking of, I never, I don't know who it's attributed to anymore, but the quote that the same thinking that caused the problem can be used to solve the problem or something like that. I think I'm paraphrasing pretty poorly. And when, So one version of that is hatred can't be ended by more hatred. Right. If I am, I don't know, let's say fearful or reacting from like an emotional base, but like uncontrolled, unfiltered. I'm closed off to the possibilities of solutions. And that phrase, joy in the midst of trauma, I think resonates with me in all of these different tsunamis.

[57:27]

And that moment of joy or that feeling of joy can help produce those solutions. And you still have to address the trauma and work on it personally, but I think there's a lot of creative potential then in that joy and even working through the trauma. Yes. Amen. Thank you. Yeah. It's not that the, the facing of it, the joy, it's not to expunge the trauma or the sadness. You know, there's this phrase, spiritual bypassing, spiritual bypass. So some people will, you know, get involved in spiritual practices as a way of avoiding these difficult feelings. So how do we not ignore them, not try and crush them,

[58:30]

part of the work of Zazen is this process of facing our suffering, facing our own trauma, facing our fears and our anger, settling in them so that we don't have to react in some ways from them. Although that's part of the process is we do react and we watch that. And you know, so the joy and the settling comes in the middle of all that. So yes, yes. Thank you. So thank you for listening. Thank you for joining in this discussion. So we still are in the middle of life during wartime. How do we respond? And, you know, some of the lines in David Byrne's song, I've changed my hairstyle so many times now, I don't even know what I look like. Why go to college?

[59:36]

Why go to night school? Going to be different this time. Yeah, we don't know how to. how to act in the middle of all this, but we we can talk about it together and explore. So thank you all very much. Alex, would you close us out with the four bodhisattva vows? Thank you. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it.

[60:38]

Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Tarma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[61:43]

I vow to realize it.

[61:48]

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