Good evening. I want to continue a discussion I started yesterday morning. So last weekend, we finished our practice commitment period talking about the teachings of, excuse me, of Hongzhe, a 12th century Chinese Soto Tsao-tung teacher, talking about communing with the deep source of creative energy, of awareness, of openness and illumination, which is available in this practice of serene sitting. But also that then he says that we should graciously share ourselves. The point isn't just to develop skill and meditative awareness, but how do we respond to the world.

[01:06]

And I also talked about wanting to emphasize ancestral Zen, how we carry on this practice tradition, this possibility of being present and responsive in the world. And part of our ancestral tradition or the basis maybe of our ancestral tradition are these Bodhisattva values that we study and that arise in this practice of caring and kindness, being helpful rather than harmful, and the precept of benefiting all beings. So I want to talk about how this relates to responding to our world and responding to our current crisis, the current crisis of our world today.

[02:17]

So our current federal government clearly represents billionaires. not the majority of people, and acts to enrich, further enrich billionaires and harm, take away health care and various other benefits from majority of people. our government's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty and encouragement of climate destruction and other environmental destruction, kind of officially makes the United States now the world's number one rogue nation. I just feel responsible to say that. Responsible to my position as a as a teacher in our tradition.

[03:25]

We also encourage terrorism in many ways. Recently, the agreement to give $110 billion worth of arms above all those we've already given to Saudi Arabia, who gives arms to jihadi terrorists and then bombs civilians, causing encouraging further jihadi terrorists and causing genocidal, now there's a cholera epidemic in Yemen, but famine and epidemic in parts of the Mideast and Africa. All of this for the sake of huge profits for our fossil fuel corporations and war merchants. This is just a little bit of what our government does. We clearly have an unequal justice system.

[04:28]

There's one justice system for billionaires, another for everybody else, and another system for colored people. And our government now wants to increase this stupid war on drugs. All the things that leads to the racist mass incarceration and they want to increase now privatized prisons. And this leads to all the gang wars and the gun violence. And I heard about Xavier Joy and apparently he was a really fine young man. a teacher who is giving back to his community. This is, as Laurel said, just one face on this horrible system that our government encourages. So the question is, how shall we respond? How shall we graciously share ourselves to respond to all of this that's going on?

[05:38]

And there's more that I could mention, and many of you know this. And it's not a simple thing. It's complex, and it's not black and white, and nothing is with human beings. This is part of a huge, you know, our ancient twisted karma is not just individual. and I've talked about this before, but this is this vast karmic legacy of racism and slavery and our economy in this country was built on slavery, North and South. So this is also part of our human legacy of greed, hate, and delusion. We all have a part in this. We all have our own personal struggles with our own portions of greed and anger and confusion.

[06:43]

So how shall we respond? How can we respond? I don't think this is hopeless. I think there are lessons from our ancestral tradition. So I started to talk about this yesterday. I want to continue. This evening, part of this is a sangha that our community of Buddhist practice, our community of dharma provides. So it's one thing to criticize, critique what's going on. And we do need to speak truth to power. So I'm speaking the truth I see strongly. But also, it's not enough to just criticize.

[07:49]

We actually have something to offer. It's not necessary. Maybe human history has been filled with warfare. or the part of it that we know, it's not necessary. People can cooperate. People can be kind. I mentioned yesterday Rebecca Solnit's book about paradise built in hell, that there are, that in tragedies people come together after earthquakes, after Hurricane Katrina, after man-made as well as natural disasters, people come together and help each other. This is possible. We have a positive vision to offer as a possible future if we can survive the calamity that our political system is imposing, that our corrupt economic system is imposing.

[08:55]

So I want to offer a couple of cases, a couple of examples of how we can respond. Case 14 of the Blue Cliff Record is about not a teacher in our particular lineage, but part of our Zen legacy. So we're from the Cao Dong, or Dong, Soto lineage, one of the Five Houses of Chan. Another of the Five Houses of Chan was from Yunmen, actually the last of the Five Houses, who died in 949. Many stories from Yunmen, so I talked about this at more length than I will tonight, yesterday morning, but... Yunmin is famous for kind of brief answers. Once a monk asked him, what are the teachings of a whole lifetime?

[09:59]

Which is to say, what are the teachings of a Buddha's whole lifetime? And we know from the story in the Lotus Sutra, which is important in our Sotalan Age, important in Dogen, that the Buddha's whole lifetime is this inconceivably long lifetime. It's happening still. What are the teachings of the Buddha's whole lifetime? And Yunmin said, an appropriate statement, or the teaching meets each situation. It's not some universal absolute principle. It's this situation that we're in now. How do we meet exactly, how do we meet this situation? The commentary to the case from Yuanwu, Great, Linji, lineage teacher, says, members of the Chan family, if you want to know the meaning of Buddha nature, observe times and seasons, causes and conditions. This is called the special transmission outside the teachings, the soul transmission of the mind seal. So the ancestral way is not one size fits all.

[11:03]

What's the situation here and now? So I describe some part of it. That's not the whole story. There are lots of people who are working in lots of ways to resist, to try to change the situation I described in terms of the corruption and the opposition, and to protect the environment, and to stop all the corruption and warfare, and to stop the conditions of racism and inequality in our country and around the world. But that's the situation. What's the appropriate response? And then with Yunmin, There's this teaching about Yunmen. Within one sentence of Yunmen, three sentences are bound to be present. These are called the sentences that enclose heaven and earth, the sentence that follows the wave, and the sentence that cuts off the myriad streams.

[12:08]

So each phrase, each of these pithy phrases from Yunmin, this was, I don't know if Yunmin himself said this, but his disciples said, and many teachers later commenting on him said, that each one of his statements had three aspects. So this response, an appropriate statement, has these three aspects. And there's a verses from, one of his disciples that I'll read. So the first one, containing the whole world. Fundamental reality, fundamental emptiness, one form, one flavor. It is not that a subtle entity does not exist. It is not a matter for hesitating over, clear and lucid. This contains the whole world. So, in our response to the situation, how do we contain the whole world? And I would, interpreting this in terms of our precepts, benefiting all beings. All beings. We include all beings. We don't build walls to keep certain beings out.

[13:12]

All beings. This contains the whole world, all of heaven and earth. The second one, cutting off the myriad streams, the verse says, it is fundamentally not a matter of interpretation or understanding. When you sum it all up, it's not worth a single letter. When myriad activities abruptly cease, that is cutting off the myriad streams. So we could interpret these in various ways. We could interpret these also in terms of situations in our own life and interpersonal situations. We could interpret these in terms of our own meditation practice on our cushions, too. But what I hear here, what I hear in this cutting off the merriest dreams is just say no. Don't kill. Stop the wars. killing black people, stop police killing black people, stop privatized prisons, stop selling arms to corrupt governments.

[14:15]

That's one aspect. But I think these three aspects of Jungman's appropriate statement, really rich way of thinking about how do we respond appropriately. The third one, when you allow the presence of another, follow the sprouts to see the ground. Understand the person by means of his words. This is going along with the ripples following the waves. So I hear in that, Follow the stream. Follow the waves. Listen to the whole situation. This is compassion. Listen to each perspective. Follow the waves. Maybe this means see what's actually possible. Maybe this is referring to real politics. I don't know. I'm trying to think about how to interpret these, how to apply this to how do we respond, this basic question. How do we graciously share ourselves? How do we graciously share the possibilities of our practice in the situation we're in?

[15:23]

That's young men and this appropriate statement. How do we respond appropriately in this situation? How do we look at what's going on? How do we try and understand it? How do we, and then see, cutting through, including everything in everyone, and then following the waves, seeing what's, listening to what's going on, all of the different streams. I also want to share something from Dogen, from our founder in Japan, that may offer something of a way to see positive response. So again, we have to speak truth to power. There's not one right way to respond to all the different aspects of the current crisis and the situation. becoming, being aware, saying our truth, listening to each other.

[16:36]

But I think what we have to share is this positive vision of how, of Sangha, of how we can be together as human beings. And maybe the Sangha can not just be, you know, this community or other small communities, but people, nations, countries. So I wanted to mention Dogen's teaching, the four integrative methods of bodhisattvas, or harmonizing methods of bodhisattvas. So this is a longer teaching, and I'll just mention these four methods. The first is giving or generosity. So just He says a lot of subtle things about that, but just generosity, giving. He says this means not coveting, not being greedy, not flattering. And what he says doesn't necessarily apply specifically to the situations I'm talking about, but it's a kind of very wide open view of generosity.

[17:54]

He says, to offer flowers from a distant mountain to a Buddha, to give away treasures from one's past life to living beings, in terms of teachings as well as in terms of things. Well, in some ways this is sharing the ancestral way. now in the world today. He says, when one leaves the way to the way, one attains the way. When attaining the way, the way is necessarily being left to the way. So to explore, what does it mean to be generous? In this situation, what's the appropriate way to be generous? Maybe the appropriate way to be generous is without ill will to to impeach the president and maybe the whole Congress and Senate. I don't know. I don't know. What is the appropriate way to be generous? It's not clear. What is difficult to transform is the mind of living beings, Dogen says.

[18:58]

How do we give, give the possibility of transformation to beings. The second one is kind speech. So in looking upon living beings, one should arouse a mind of kindness and love. So I think this is relevant here. I can speak strongly about the way I think our government is working, but I don't have to say hate, I don't have to descend into hate speech. I don't have to say hateful things about any of the particular people involved to say strongly the actions that I think are very harmful and that I would oppose. How do we use kind speech in the middle of speaking truth to power? I think that's actually a very skillful part of how we can respond. The third one is just beneficial action. Again, benefiting beings. How do we act beneficially?

[20:01]

And this is not just about, you know, this happens in a local level too. So Xavier Joy was a very talented young man. He was an athlete. He graduated recently from college. Maybe you know more about him than I do, Laurel, but I just saw a report on the news. He just seemed like a really brilliant young man. I don't know if he was teaching grade school or? Yeah, yeah, I saw that, yeah. He was just, he was giving, he was sharing with his community. He was just a good guy. Beneficial action can happen in many ways. So that models something. And then the fourth one is really important, cooperation, which Dogen says means non-opposition. It's also been translated as identity action. How do we cooperate? How do we see the ways in which we can work with others?

[21:04]

So these are clues to responding to what's happening, but also to what we have to offer as an alternative to what's going on now. Because it's not enough to just say, this current situation is terrible and corrupt, and we have to tear it down. which we do, but it's not the only way that human beings can be. Our practice teaches us other possibilities, and we can show that and model that when we graciously share ourselves. This is not easy. But I think our practice is about not just... Again, not just that we learn how to more fully express ourselves and enjoy ourselves and develop our own personal creative energies, but then, as Hongxue says, how do we graciously share ourselves?

[22:21]

And we do this together and we support each other in this. And then, how do we share this in our world, which is so troubled? And in our city, which is so troubled? And it doesn't have to be that way. And it's important to know that it doesn't have to be this way. People give up and think, oh, this is the world and it has to be this way. There has to be war. There has to be corruption. There has to be cruelty. It doesn't have to be that way. And we can show that and we can say that. interested in looking at what is possible and also saying no, what's happening now is not good and should be opposed. So I welcome comments, responses, questions, reflections from any of you. Thank you. Yes, Ben.

[23:25]

Since, again, I appreciate the comments that it doesn't have to be this way, I think we're living in a world where we think that sort of individual accumulation is the goal, but also that that accumulation comes sort of at the cost of someone else not accumulating, that one should be able to keep all one's income and not spend any of it on helping other people. individualistic competitiveness is something inherent in human nature. And a lot of anthropological research has shown actually quite the opposite. In fact, research, especially with non-market societies, people who live outside of or at the edges of a market system, shows that people cooperate and share all the time. In fact, that's probably one of the core human instincts.

[24:28]

And the people do this not because they're better than us, but because they've built societies that systematically encourage them to do this. So, one of the examples that I like to use with my students, there's a hunter-gatherer group in Botswana, the Chukwasi. And men, when they hunt, they have to uh, hunt with arrows that somebody else gives them. And whatever they kill, um, actually belongs to the person who gave them the arrow that they used to kill it with. Um, and then that person, uh, in turn, of course, distributes that meat to a bunch of other people. And so I often point this out to my students and other types of generalized giving in a society, and my students often find this very strange. And I point out to them that we do this in our society all the time, we just don't notice it. So I point out to them, for instance, when somebody stops you and asks you for directions, do you demand $5?

[25:30]

Do you refuse to do it unless they pay you? You give them directions. And so we have these types of generosity and we have these modes of sharing in our society, too. I think we often don't see them. And of course we need to build social structures to encourage them. Yes. Yes, thank you. Yes. Yes, Jen. in your state government.

[26:55]

And some of our underprivileged students have grown at Stanford economics, a business graduate, and probably millions of dollars. Actually, it was a business student who rides with a small amount of confidence in how to sustain themselves financially. It's just a wonderful family to enjoy all around. I can't sit there and go, uh-huh. Laurel, would you please, I know you sent that to me, would you forward it to Neosan and people who are in Hyde Park, our song.

[28:04]

Katie's in Hyde Park, yeah, and Howard, and yeah, please forward it to, we have numbers of people in Hyde Park, and maybe you can mention some of this. Thank you very much. Yes, Jen. There's so many, yes. And I know you've been concerned, and I appreciate your ongoing concern about nuclear power and nuclear war. And that's, you know, along with climate, threatens the entire future.

[29:08]

And so I appreciate your work on that. Yeah. And they got that from our government. That comes from the United States. The white phosphorus is the generation after napalm, and it was used in Fallujah in Iraq by our forces, US forces directly, and developed in, I don't know if it was Dow Chemical, they developed napalm, but probably.

[30:15]

I'm not sure, but yeah. But I know that that's an extension of the napalm we used in Vietnam, and it was used in Fallujah in Iraq. So yeah, the atrocity, our government is, as Dr. King said, 50 years ago, the U.S. government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. I think it's still true, which is not to condone the horrible terrorist attacks by jihadi terrorists, but they were incited by our actions, our government's actions in the Mideast, which created a lot of that. So there's a cycle of violence and it goes on and on and on. And how to cut through that is, you know, one of those problems that somehow we have to, somebody has to say no. That's the cutting through part of, you know, the good man's appropriate statement.

[31:28]

Oh yeah. that are even worse are not, are considered. Yeah, a lot of this is not reported in our corporate mainstream media, but our government has actually, our government recently has withdrawn from the United Nations From the United Nations, human crimes, crimes against humanity. panel.

[32:39]

And we have not, even though landmines are illegal for the rest of the world, our government has continued to. We never signed on to that. And this isn't just about the current president. This has been something that's going on that our government has been doing for a long time. Yes, David. Kindness, generosity, and in that essay he talks about generosity in a very subtle way. So generosity is a whole study. What is giving? What does it mean to really give? Not just as a transaction. So as a practice, generosity is very subtle.

[33:42]

Kind speech is the next one, to speak kindly. And somewhere Dogen says, to speak kindly about someone, even when they're not, when they don't hear it or not present, actually helps them. for example, and then beneficial action to act, to do helpful actions without seeking to be, to receive some, you know, credit for it. And then the fourth one is identity action, to actually, you know, so when we talk about the actions that, the harmful actions that some people in our government do, to actually see that, we're part of that doesn't mean to condone it. And to see the complexity of the whole thing, but identity action, to see this cooperation. So what you were talking about, Ben, about how we call them primitive societies, how societies that are not caught up in this competitive worldview actually

[34:55]

have subtle practices of cooperation and working together to see that kind of identity action, cooperation. Identity action. Just to see, not to see that I have to benefit myself at the expense of you, but to see that what benefits you actually benefits me in some way. And it's not you and me, it's that we are all together as the Beatles said. at the same time, to see you as a human being.

[35:58]

And I don't know, it's hard. It's a real touch. I think to take it out of the realm of particular people and hating them or wishing them ill, you know, we don't harbor ill will as a basic precept. But it's not about particular people. It's about the whole pattern of how people think. And how do we change the way people see how we are together and how we live in the world? It's not about there's certain, it's not about there's bad guys and good, it's not about good guys and bad guys. It's about how do we see what the world is and how do we live there and how do we change that and how do we model good behavior? Yeah, so the work we're doing here just by sitting on our cushions and being aware of ourselves and each other and the world is transforming the possibilities of seeing more deeply how it is to be alive.

[37:40]

here, and that's slow work. But all of this developed through long history of, yeah. As I said, yeah. Yeah. So what I'm saying tonight is we have something to offer. And this ancestral way is about providing something positive. It's not just about tearing down what's going on, which has to happen, but that there is

[38:42]

an alternative to that. And we are creating that by modeling something else. And this is a long, long work.

[38:53]

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