We had an all-day sitting yesterday, and a few different people expressed feelings of concern or depression even, or just feeling overwhelmed when they spoke to me about what's happening in the world today. And, you know, it's quite understandable. the weekly, almost, episode of gun violence and massacre at the college in Rhineland. Anyway, there's so many things to be concerned about. So what I want to talk about tonight, partly in response to that, but also I've been meaning to speak for a while about Pope Francis' encyclical about climate, and not just climate,

[01:09]

how that affects us as people of faith. So, I've been wanting to talk about this for a month or two, and I've been meaning to read his whole encyclical, and I haven't done that yet, but I have read some sections of it. So, he has a lot to say to us. He talks about nature having inherent rights, which is pretty radical coming from the Pope compared to a lot of what Catholicism has said. He talked about integral ecology and that we stopped thinking of the environment in terms of human dominion. And, you know, the idea of nature having inherent rights was something that was vetoed at the United Nations by the Vatican previously when it was proposed as something to be supported by the United Nations.

[02:27]

So part of what he's done, part of what we need to see is how climate damage is tied to inequality in our world. As he says, and I think is true, the urgency of now, the urgency of responding. I mean, climate damage is not something that's, you know, something that'll happen in future decades. It's happening right now. We maybe have five years, I don't know, 10 years to change things. But part of what I want to talk about in the spirit of this encyclical is how it is not hopeless and how there are things we can do. So, I wanted to quote a few things from excerpts from the Pope's encyclical. Just, well, I'll start with that.

[03:31]

But this is also in the context of our bodhisattva practice and our sattva-sama tradition. So, Dogen, back in the 13th century, said that the family style of all Buddhist ancestors is first to arouse the vow to save all living beings, not just human beings, all living beings, by removing suffering and providing joy. So that's what our practice is about too, and that's what the Mata Sutra talks about. So I just want to read some excerpts from what Pope Francis said, and some of this is said, but he talks about integral ecology and the climate as a common good. And that the present ecological crisis is one small sign of the ethical, cultural, and spiritual crisis of modernity. So he's making this really radical, but to me it's very clear, connection between what's happening to the climate and to our planet.

[04:42]

our spiritual practice. And I want to come back to that, and Hasazan is my response. He says, everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures, and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river, and mother earth. I would, you know, I could change the The wording there, as a non-theist, woven together by the love that Buddha and awakening expresses for each of the elements, each of the creatures in our world. But the Pope concludes the earth is essentially a shared inheritance whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. And that's, to me, really clear and really radical in terms of how our world, the usual mindset of our world.

[05:46]

The Earth is essentially a shared inheritance whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. So he talks about climate, but he also talks about social injustice and inequality and how they're tied together. To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is, in reality, interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system. So for the Pope to be talking about interconnectedness is, you know, I think, my own experience, I've had a lot of experiences in Catholic dialogue, and, you know, I think Catholic, the Catholic Church has been influenced by its interaction with Buddhism, and maybe vice versa, but I know that many Catholic, Priests and monks and theologians who've had experience in Buddhist meditation and have helped make available, much more available than they were anyway, Catholic contemplative traditions, Desert Fathers, St.

[06:55]

John of the Cross, and Lester Eckhart, just a few. He gets really specific in his encyclical, and again, these are just little excerpts. Access to safe, drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, he says. Yet many poor people do not have access to it. And again, he talks about integral ecology, recognizing the reasons why a given area is polluted requires a study of the workings of society, its economy, its behavior, and the way it grasps reality. We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis that is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature. So this is really, what he's saying is really radical and actually clear from a Buddhist perspective, to my sense, of the Bodhisattva ethics.

[08:01]

He says, we urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision. So I talk often about wholeness as a function of zazen and totality. This goes back to Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Anyway, he says we need to change and develop new convictions, attitudes, and forms of life including a new lifestyle. This requires not only individual conversion, but also community networks to solve the complex situation facing our world today. Essential to this is a spirituality that can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. So, you know, this is a call to Sangha from a Buddhist perspective. And, you know, I want to talk about this in terms of that and in terms of what's happening and facing that. and a little bit in terms of our Sangha and what we might do. You know, the Pope says that religious leaders and all people of faith, which means all Zen practitioners, need to act now.

[09:12]

And, you know, the feeling of hopelessness, which is certainly available, is not actually realistic. So I've talked about this before, but the Pope is inspiring about this. Just to add some of the situation, this week in South Carolina, as the Republican governor there announced, she said that the rainfall in South Carolina is a once in a thousand year rainfall. It's just been horrendous rainfall there. 2015 was the hottest year in history. in the history of the world, throughout the world. July was the hottest month in world history. This isn't theoretical, you know, the corporate media sponsored by government and economy whose function is to provide, present, and protect government of, by, and for the billionaires, you know, talk about this as extreme weather, but it's just happening all over.

[10:31]

They used to talk, there used to be explicit talk about sacrifice zones, so that the effect of climate might happen in the middle of nowhere, just like it was in the South Pacific. But then, you know, with Hurricane Sandy, it hit New York City, So this is just a couple of years ago. So how do we respond? I think there are ways to respond. And I think this again has to do with that bodhisattva vow that we chant in all of our events. Part of it is just facing all of this. you know, the first noble truth is that there's suffering in the world. And there's always been suffering. And part of this situation of the trashing of the natural world and the trashing of marginal, you know, so-called marginal people, indigenous people, African-Americans, women, you know, it goes back to

[11:41]

Well, you know, it goes back further, but at least in our country we can talk about it in terms of the, you know, going back to Columbus and the destruction of Native American cultures and peoples. And of course it has to do with slavery and racism and our economy, North and South, was built on slavery. So, you know, we have this complicated long karma. This is a complicated problem. This is not something we can fix overnight. And yet, we can make a difference. So, there's a book, actually a new film coming out called Time Changes. This changes everything. Based on Naomi Klein's book, this changes everything, capitalism versus the climate. And she talks about how this is an opportunity. And I think that's a really, you know, this is a very dharmic way to think about things.

[12:47]

Dharmic gates are boundless, we've got to enter them. Each obstacle, each problem is, when we see it, you know, from our own and our together wholeness, it's an opportunity. And so Naomi Klein was invited by the Vatican to their climate council this summer. Alice Nolke has spoken here. met the Pope, but it's really radical how much he's reaching out to different peoples and to people of different faiths and traditions. But anyway, there's a new movie called This Changes Everything, Capitalism Versus the Climate, and Naomi Klein has done a lot of good work on looking at what's going on and the facts, some of which I've been talking about. What's happening to our climate? But there's some good news, and it's important. So she talks about blockadia as a force that's happening in the world.

[13:50]

It's happening in the West, in Montana and Idaho, where people are blockading the new oil pipeline. The basic fact is that our fossil fuel energy system has to be changed. The business plan of the fossil fuel corporations, which is to liquidate all their assets, all that underground oil, scientifically will make this planet uninhabitable for human beings. So the oil has to stay in the ground, it really does. Some of it's going to come up, but we need to make a quick transition fairly quickly to alternative energies. And those resources and those technologies are available. It's just a matter of human will. So people are speaking out about this. It doesn't look like it in this country, but in Greece and Spain, there are people who are standing up to the idea of economies built

[15:05]

for the benefit of the very, very wealthy. And this is what Pope Francis is also talking about. And so, there are positive things. One, another thing was that, really wonderful important thing, is that Shell Oil, after sending a ship into the Arctic to explore drilling there, And with the approval of President Obama, even though he went to the Arctic and talked about how we have to protect the climate, he approved Shell to go to the Arctic and drill. But they, just this last week, decided they are going to stop any drilling in the Arctic. It's too expensive. It doesn't work. It's not safe. Shell Oil decided that. Of course, they were encouraged. another activist in Washington and Oregon, trying to block the shell ship from getting up to the Arctic.

[16:12]

Some of you may have been here when Florence Kaplow spoke last year. She's one of the editors of the Hidden Lamp about the history of women in Buddhism. Anyway, she was one of the people who was out in a kayak with Greenpeace people trying to block boat from going and delaying them. So part of that decision by Shell is actually that people are speaking out. It's too expensive for them. And if nobody was talking about it, maybe they would just go ahead. But of course, practically speaking, drilling in the Arctic would have been a disaster. They can't even control a leak in the Gulf, let alone where it's really difficult to access in the Arctic. Part of the reality is that it just kind of came out in the last couple of weeks that ExxonMobil, another major oil company, did, actually sponsored good research back in the 70s about climate and climate damage, and then you,

[17:31]

in the late 70s that fossil fuels would produce climate change and be really, really damaging. This has been documented now. And at first, after supporting the research that proved this, they shifted to denial. and they've been putting massive amounts of money into pretending that this wasn't true, and into fake science that said there's not climate damage. So it's very much like the tobacco companies who used to, even though they knew otherwise, used to promote cigarette smoking and knew it was cancerous. So, okay, how do we practice with this? And Naomi Klein says it's not about just pointing out the negative.

[18:32]

It's about fully articulating the positive aspect of this, that responding to climate damage, we have to look at how we have to change many things. The way our economy is constructed now, for example, has led to all of this. So, and the Pope has talked about that, too, and about inequality and the message of Jesus to take care of the poor and how, you know, things are changing. In Congress, even, there's a bipartisan move towards less incarceration that we have, especially for young black men. huge percentage have been incarcerated, and part of it is the so-called war on drugs, which is ludicrous.

[19:33]

We need to treat the causes that lead to the problems that drugs seem to be a response to. So again, the Pope has encouraged all people of faith that means us too, to respond. And there are ways for us to respond, to take action. And so, you know, that's what I also want to talk about. I would say that our Zazen is part of that too, just to build awareness, to be come more sensitive to the realities of the world and to the facts of interconnectedness, which Buddhism has spoken to for a long time, and which Pope Francis is speaking to. To know that we're connected. What happens to the Amazon rainforest affects our oxygen. To know that we're connected to the polar bears, who are in peril now, and many other species, and what's happening to the ocean.

[20:41]

This is available information. We know this, unless you're kind of shutting yourself off. And we feel like there's nothing we can do, and it's hopeless. I think there are things we can do. But Saucen feels resilience. The people who responded to Hurricane Sandy at the East Coast wasn't the government or the bureaucrats. It was the people who had been down at Occupy Wall Street who decided to get organized and went into those communities. started helping people. So, first of all, I want to say that Zazen, I think, helps us to, you know, our Zazen is not about reaching some perfect state or getting rid of troublesome thoughts, but learning how to be present and upright when stuff happens, when things get bad, you know. So, there's many areas to work on. There's so many problems. that it can feel overwhelming, the other side of that is, there's lots of things to do, that each of us can do, and I'm, you know, looking at, and I know that lots of people in our Sangha are working on things, on making a positive change in their own way, and we're starting to think about things to do together, and I think, I want to encourage that.

[22:00]

We're, you know, we're kind of, what's the word, diverse, sluggish, and, you know, there are many different people who show up here on any given Monday night. You know, if everybody who might show up came, we'd have, you know, 60 people here. But we managed to keep going. And so one thing that's happening this month that Katie's organized through the Lakeview Pantry, where she's working now, a Sangha collective action to help support feeding the hungry. So we put out the call. It's already filled, but we're going to be doing more of these, trying to do it every couple of months, every few months, in connection with Buddhist holidays. We're doing it in connection with the Sagaki Feeding the Hungry Ghosts ceremony this month, coming up. But there was a quick, some people in this room, there was a quick response and it filled up.

[23:03]

And so thank you, Katie, for organizing that and we'll continue with that. So there's lots of things to do. One of the people I talked to yesterday was concerned about, was upset about the gun violence. And this is a huge problem all over the country, particularly in this country, in Chicago. sensible gun control. President Obama spoke eloquently about this. So one of the people I spoke to yesterday is going to try and start working on developing gun control. There's other things that we can do together or individually as part of taking action as people of faith about all of this. So one thing I've been working on a little bit is fossil fuel divestment. So it turns out San Francisco Zen Center, which we're connected with, my home temple, that's a work, received a massive donation, which is wonderful.

[24:14]

It'll help Zen Center keep going for the next generation. But part of it was involved with investments in fossil fuel or mutual funds with fossil fuel investments. We're all so interwoven with the system that is built on fossil fuels. So some of us have been working to try and encourage Sun Center to divest. And there's a lot of divestment campaigns going on. And that looks like that's going to happen. It's a question of how quickly it can happen. 350.org, which you might check, one of the organizations that's really great about talking about climate, targeted a number of museums, five museums in the country, saying keep the fossils in the museum and stop the fossil fuel. One of them they mentioned is the Field Museum.

[25:14]

So I've written to the president of the Field Museum. And if any of you want to write to the Field Museum, speak to me, and I can give you information. They're actually a really good institution. They do a lot of good work to protect the Amazon rainforest and to help indigenous people in Africa and South America. But they also have investments that are tied to mutual funds that involve fossil fuels. There are other things to do. One thing that definitely each of us can do, and I don't know if people want to organize, so I can't arrange all of this, but if any of you want to organize a saga gathering to write letters to Congress, there are lots of things to write letters to Congress about. One is about gun control and gun violence. Another is, just today, there was an agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

[26:17]

Do you know about that, the TPP? Yes, some of you do. It's based on some of the other so-called trade agreements, but what it means is that basically it's agreed on behind closed doors by big corporations and it protects the profits of corporations at the expense any legislation. It trumps national sovereignty. Any kind of legislation that would be for health or for workers' rights or for the environment, if it damages a big corporation's profits, it can be overturned. So that's been passed today. agreed on today by the corporations in secret, but the Congress has 90 days to block it. So it's going to be difficult for that to happen, and still, if you want to write senators or congresspeople about that, it can make a difference.

[27:23]

Another thing, and this is where maybe I disagree, well not maybe, I disagree with a whole lot of the Pope's perspectives, or the Catholic Church's perspectives, but there's this attack on Planned Parenthood now. And, you know, what I consider a war on women and women's health, it's horrible. And, you know, thinking about this in, you know, various timelines, the, you know, talking about slavery and the wiping out of the Native Americans and, you know, the trajectory timeline of all of this. It's less than 100 years ago that women were were deemed human enough to vote in this country. It was 1920, so it was less than 100 years ago that women had to vote in this country. And along with trying to damage women's health and attacking Planned Parenthood, one prominent political pundit has said that we should repeal the vote for women.

[28:31]

So Roe v. Wade is under attack, but even anyway, And this is, by the way, this political pundit is herself a woman, but she thinks women shouldn't be around. Anyway, okay, that's a lot of stuff, a lot of, you know, to me it's not politics, it's about how do we, as Dilkens says, save all beings, and by removing suffering and providing joy, how do we bring health and kindness and basic justice to our world. And I really appreciate Pope Francis being very active about calling for this, coming and speaking to somewhat hostile Congress about it and going to Cuba. Anyway, this is a really great religious leader.

[29:36]

So I feel some responsibility to talk about this, and I will continue to do so, in between talking about Dogan and all the koans and Lotus Sutras and stuff like that. So maybe that's enough for me to say. Well, I'll just mention that, in conjunction with this, that next Sunday, instead of saving this for announcements, Joe Beluski's going to be here. He's the co-leader with Khezon Titus, an ancient dragon priest who, some of you can remember, before he had to move to Albuquerque, but he and Joe are co-leading our affiliate sangha in Albuquerque, if any of you ever get down there, Valley Dragon Sangha. Joe Goliski is also, as well as being a Zen priest ordained by Marvin Fisher, is a climate scientist. He works at the University of New Mexico, so he's going to be talking next Sunday about Buddhist responses to climate.

[30:40]

So this is sort of a prelude to that. So, mostly I want to encourage all of you not to, you know, to be upright and face, you know, the first novel truth again, that there is sorrow and sadness and difficulty in the world, and yet it's a noble truth because we can sit upright and breathe and face it and respond. So comments, responses, suggestions, I didn't know that the Pope spoke with Naomi Klein. That just boggles my mind. Yeah. He invited her to the Vatican Council on Climate this summer. He's pretty big. Yeah. I was wondering if the, I forget what proper noun it was, the Council or Delegation.

[31:46]

There's the statement, there were two statements. Actually, President Obama wasn't there himself, but a lot of his representatives were at this event I went to in May, which was billed as the first U.S. Buddhist Leaders Conference at the White House, I'll quote. But anyway, there were 120 of us. A good majority were from Asian American communities. Not all, but out of that came this, and actually there's copies of it, I don't know how I meant to bring one in, but a statement on racial justice and also a statement on climate. And I think the first step, which is what we're doing here, is to talk about it, to recognize the reality. And to talk about it was, it may not, many of us have What should I say? Fundamentalist friends or family who maybe aren't going to hear because they've been so conditioned by the fossil fuel company's denial, but, you know, as much as possible to talk about it.

[33:30]

So I do try and mention it here. And so that's one thing. You know, as Sangha, how to respond to climate, there are many things. A few people in our Sangha are involved in urban gardens. That's one of the kinds of things that's going to need to happen. Also, just part of the problem, and this goes to Naomi Klein's piece about the economic system, and the Pope's talking about that now as well, Encouraging kindness rather than greed. I mean, the corporate domination that's led to the climate and other problems, and the problems with Wall Street and big banks and so forth, partly has to do with values.

[34:37]

Really, I'm concerned about this from the point of view of values and how Zazen inspires a concern with values and a sense of kindness, a sense of interconnectedness. And when we do that in our everyday activity as well, it's not about just going to demonstrations or writing promise people, although that may be helpful too, but actually support kindness and a sense of interconnectedness, changing the way we think. So the Pope talks about this too, to think about how we're connected and how we're not, and not to scapegoat, you know, certain groups as, you know, if we just build a wall to keep them out, then everything will be okay. So, you know, that's, oh, one thing that was actually suggested by, the one person at the, or one of the people at the, one of the spokespeople at the White House, was that in terms of Buddhist values, which we were talking about, that when we write to Congress, people have started doing this to say we're Buddhists and we have these values of compassion and kindness and connection, so that

[35:56]

So even though there are many more Buddhists or more Buddhists in this country than Hindus or Muslims, Hindus and Muslims are recognized in Washington, D.C. and the political power structure as interest groups in Buddhist arms. So to actually say, you know, we're speaking from values of compassion, we're speaking from values of, you know, Buddhist practice and so forth. So that's a little bit, you know. We don't have all the answers, and yet there are things that can be done. And there are positive things happening. Any other comments or thoughts or reflections? Katie, I know you were working until recently with immigrants, Now you're working at Lakeview Pantry. Can you share any perspectives on how those work activities relate to helping with all of this stuff?

[37:11]

Well, I can respond specifically to what resonated with me about what you just said about kindness. I do notice sometimes that this isn't really work-related, It's easy for me to not notice my inner connection with other people. It's easy for me to be really judgmental and see people walk down the street and find things that I don't have in common with them instead of finding things that I do have in common with them. So, I think that's a really good point about, you know, finding that kindness within ourselves and finding ways to relate to other people because there's always something that we can relate to others. One of the biggest barriers is that we're not able to talk with each other. And something that I'm very guilty of myself, but I think it's something that is a very hopeful and possible thing of just our one-on-one relationship with other people. Thank you.

[38:13]

Yeah, I think that's really important because, you know, it's not just that the fossil fuel corporation CEOs or, come on, the big bank CEOs are evil, bad people, you know, they're doing damaging, harmful things to the whole planet. But, you know, people do what they do from their own perspective, from their own fears and concerns and personal history. And so, you know, when we can consider other people's, you know, the fear of people who work in fossil fuel and are threatened by hearing about changing that. Of course, there'll be many more jobs if we start really a full program of alternative energy development. But, you know, change is frightening. It is.

[39:15]

It can be wonderful too, you know. Bad things change also. But most of us are kind of caught in inertia. So, yeah, being open. And the thing you said about seeing your own tendencies to not be kind, that's, in a way, the heart of our practice. We see our own fear or greed or unwillingness or impatience. Seeing that is... And really getting to know that and befriending yourself gives us a chance to go beyond those, to see through them. So what Naomi Klein says about this being an opportunity, it's an opportunity for humanity. We can see what's going on with climate and see how that's connected, as the Pope says, with everything.

[40:18]

the integral ecology, and start to make those changes, and that's actually happening around the world. Whether it'll happen fast enough to, you know, mitigate one of the worst effects of climate damage, well, you know, it's not gonna, we're not gonna fix it all right away, but change is possible. But yeah, it starts with looking at our own. Or one part of it starts with looking at our own, And we can do that. Any other last comments? Tom, hi. So I was interested in your references to Spain and Greece in the course of your talk. And in light of that and in light of the rise of Syriza in Greece,

[41:21]

I was just wondering how, or if you could speak a little bit more about how your practice in light of the impending climate crisis? Well, it's not just impending. It's in South Carolina right now. Yeah, I think we have to look at it. The good news, so yeah, the changes in Greece and Spain, and Corbyn, who Tom mentioned, is the new head of the Labour Party in England, and very outspoken and very much not supported by the mainstream labor party, but he got a huge popular vote.

[42:26]

Because people, you know, people understand. A lot of people understand. And he was speaking about ending austerity and about the way the current system is causing damage. There are politicians talking like that in this country who are also supposed to advocate for particular politicians. I won't mention names, but there are candidates in this country talking about equality and you know, government not just for and by the billionaires. And there's a very strong response to that. So I think, you know, government, when we wait for governments to make change, that doesn't work. Women's suffrage didn't happen because some Congress or president decided women should be able to vote. It happened because women were in the streets saying, we demand we vote.

[43:31]

So, you know, it's up to us. But yeah, there are signs of concern, there are signs of change. And each in our own way, there's not one. So this is challenging, because I really would love to have a song of that. So thank you again, Katie, for the Lakeview Pantry event. But I'd like to have events that we can do together, letter writing, I don't know, whatever. Maybe investment movements in Chicago or things that we can do together to stand, sit. You know, some of us were sitting at Occupy, doing Zaza at Occupy, Wall Street down at the Federal Reserve in downtown Chicago when that was going on, there are ways we can represent our concern.

[44:35]

And yet we each can do that in our own life by looking at this stuff. So I don't know if that responds to your question, Tom, but there are lots and lots of different ways. Joining groups that are supporting gun control, joining groups that are supporting Planned Parenthood, supporting groups that are trying to feed the homeless and so forth.

[45:08]

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