Good morning, everyone. Welcome all. And welcome Tova, Tova Brynjus here, the Vice President of San Francisco Zen Center, former Executive Director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship and she'll be speaking here tomorrow evening so I'm very happy that you're here this morning. Today is an important day, well every day is an important day. You hadn't meant to say that, anyway. In New York today there's the major climate march responding to climate damage and actually tomorrow there's also an important event, the Flood Wall Street event at Wall Street, kind of following Occupy Wall Street, talking about how climate damage has been sponsored and there's massive social profits for Wall Street corporations. All of this is related and I want to talk about this today in relationship to our practice.

[01:04]

So our practice is to sit upright, face ourselves and the world and everything around us, upright and relaxed, but clear and attentive and ready to, willing to be responsive. So I would be in New York today except that Tova brought this wonderful opportunity to us this weekend. Some of us have been chanting the Enmei Jigokunangyo, the Kanzeon to the Bodhisattva of Compassion at the Joffrey Ballet this weekend and some will be there this afternoon. So it's been a wonderful event and I'm glad that some of our Sangha members are in New York and I'm glad that Linda Ruth Cutts is in Central Abbess and her husband Steve Weintraub who spoke here last year are there and I'm sure other people, but I felt like I should

[02:05]

talk about this today and I'm also going to be talking about this in two weeks at the Seto Zen Buddhist Association biannual conference in Oregon, doing a panel on this with, on our response to climate damage with Shodo Springs. So I wanted to say some of what I'm going to say then this morning on this occasion. And first of all, just to say that climate change, climate damage is a really critical moral issue. So part of our practice is just to settle and be present and see our own patterns of greed, hate and delusion, but also our precepts encourage us to, as Bodhisattva practitioners,

[03:07]

to benefit all, to support life, to speak truth instead of lies and so forth. So this is a moral issue for us. Just to say a little bit about what's happening and I've talked about this before and you all know, but just from a report this week, scientists from NASA have confirmed that last month was the warmest August on record globally. Much of the world, including Central Europe, Northern Africa, parts of South America, western portions of North America, had much higher than normal temperatures. According to the National Climatic Data Center, August was the 354th consecutive month with a global average temperature above the 20th century average. The news comes as flooding in India and Pakistan has killed more than 400 people, displaced nearly a million. The flooding is the worst to hit the Kashmir region in half a century. Severe drought in Central America has left nearly 3 million people struggling to feed themselves and is a source of the immigrations of this country that is a controversial issue.

[04:17]

California is suffering its worst drought in over a century. I hope things are okay there. Meanwhile, a new report by the Norwegian Refugee Council has found more than 22 million people were displaced from their homes by extreme weather last year, more than three times the number of people displaced by war. So this is a really serious issue and it's mostly going next month to the American Academy of Religion conference where there will be over 10,000 religious, scholars, Buddhists and otherwise there. The focus there is response to climate change. So this is a serious practice issue for us. To quote Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and she's speaking from a Christian context, but she says, why isn't every single religious person in the United States getting to this climate wash?

[05:22]

At Union we deeply believe that for our Christian faith, faith in God and commitment to love the world means you need to be committed to social justice, I would say. Our Buddhist faith and trust in the Buddha way also. Right now there's no greater social justice on our planet than climate change. We believe that as people of faith we are charged, we are morally accountable for care of the earth and to not engage in divestment and to back away from climate change is to really, in her religious language, to be sinful. So this is a serious ethical question for all of us, in American Zen and in the Age of Dragon and so forth. So I want to try and talk about this from the perspective of our practice and I talk about these things sometimes, I also of course talk about koans and sutras and what is that

[06:27]

for practices, but this is related. So first I want to talk about denial. So there's been of course a massive intentional program of denial sponsored by the fossil fuel companies, millions and millions and millions of dollars. That's not the only reason, this is difficult to talk about. So you know, excuse me for talking about these things, this is kind of rude, it's not polite to talk about the problems of our world and yet I think as Sangha it's really important. But part of the denial that the world faces is not just due to the propaganda or brainwashing or whatever you want to call it of the fossil fuel industry, but all of us have a kind of

[07:29]

biological response of denial. So this is referring to Joanna Macy's book Active Hope, which we have some copies of in our library and Joanna was here a few years ago and I'm going to refer to her more later, but she talks about the different types of denial or she talks about it in terms of blocked response that of course when there's a problem our usual biological response in the face of danger is to respond, either to fight or flight or some kind of response. In this case our response has been blocked not just by fossil fuel misinformation, but our own sense that, well she breaks it down into seven categories, that we don't think it's dangerous, that it's not my place to do this, to respond to this, that I don't want

[08:29]

to be, you know, that I don't want to stand out, that some people feel if I threaten their commercial or political interests, so these are all kinds of, one kind is denial. The other is that they're based on pretending that this isn't happening and the science is so clear, it's obvious all around us, it's not a question. It's like questioning whether the earth is flat. But also there's the kind of response that is too upsetting and I'd rather not think about it or maybe getting closer to home, I feel paralyzed, I know there's something going on but I don't know what to do. Or maybe even worse, there's no point doing anything, it's hopeless, it won't make any difference. So these are our own responses apart from the fossil fuel companies and I think it's important to see through these. So I want to talk about these, I want to talk about how, the principles of response, how to respond.

[09:29]

But also I first want to say a little bit about just our own tradition, Suzuki Roshi's way, Soto Zen Buddhism, Dogen Buddhism in general, but particularly our tradition. I think we, you know, religious people from other faiths are responding very actively and many of them are there in the streets of New York right now as I speak. But our own Dharmic background is, provides us with a really clear, helpful context for responding to this, to climate damage, to problems in the environment. So I'm just going to mention a few of these, all of which I've talked about much more before but the Lotus Sutra, for example, talks about bodhisattvas under the ground ready to spring forth. The Buddha asked who will come and respond in the future evil age and these bodhisattvas

[10:35]

under your cushion, under your chair, are ever present to spring forth in times of danger. So this is pointing to the resource of the earth itself and all the people all around the world who are responding now to what's going on. Another source is from China's Huayan Buddhism, the Flower Ornament Sutra, which has all these wonderful images of interconnectedness, how deeply we are connected with all the people around the world. Of course, with the people in your own life, all the people you've interacted with this week and your family, friends, teachers, loved ones, past, present and future. So this Flower Ornament Sutra provides all kinds of images like InvisNet where every place in the network of reality, it's reflecting the light and each of us is reflecting the

[11:38]

light from all those around us and it goes on forever. So we're deeply, deeply interconnected and this isn't just some theory, this is what we start to viscerally feel when we do this practice of zazen and stick with it and see how we are connected in so many ways. So, you know, this is not about, this is about seeing how our taking care of ourselves is also taking care of the world. We depend for our life, for our breathing on the oxygen produced by plants around the world and by forests and the deforestation of the world is part of this and part of

[12:40]

us causing climate damage, but also it affects the quality of the air we breathe. So this is not about something somewhere else. Then just to mention a couple things from Dogen, the 13th century founder of our tradition who I talk about a lot, he says in one of his earliest writings that when one person sits zazen, even for a little while, all space awakens, all space becomes enlightened. And he talks about this in terms of the earth and grasses and trees and even fences and walls, pebbles, tiles, that we and everything around us live in this realm of mutual, inconceivable guidance where we're supporting each other. So the earth is calling us to support it and it's supporting us in lots and lots of ways. So Dogen is so rich with environmental teachings. We talked earlier this year during our practice period about the mountains and water sutra or the landscape sutra and how Dogen says that mountains are constantly walking, of

[13:44]

course, in so many ways and that we need to learn our own walking, our own walking meditation from the mountains and that the landscape of our lives is alive and that we are part of that. So it's not that the environment is something out there that we need to protect. Our teaching shows us very clearly that we are expressions of that landscape. We are the effects of the prairies and lakes, mountains and waters, wherever you are. And again, just mentioning briefly some of our dharmic resources, there's this story about the great master Rinzai, who we're also related to, by the way. We think of Rinzai and Soto as sacred, but our Ketsunyaku, our lineage paper, shows that we're also coming from Rinzai's line. He used to plant trees way up in the mountains in the monastery where he lived and his teacher

[14:46]

asked, well, why are you planting these trees? And he said, it's just a guidepost for future generations. So he's showing us. And there's a long tradition. I know at Green Grove State, they would plant trees regularly and of course, the Buddha awakened underneath the Bodhi tree and of course, in India, they didn't sit facing the wall. They didn't have meditation halls like this. That developed in China. They wandered around and they sat facing trees. They sat under trees facing the trees. So anyway, this is just to point to some of the context that we have in our teaching and practice for responding to this climate damage. The other thing is just the awareness that we have of stretches of time. So I've just been talking about Rinzai and the Buddha and Dogen and these ancient teachings from India and China. We have, as part of our practice, this practice has been preserved over many generations,

[15:47]

over 2,500 years, maybe a lot longer, by people doing what we're doing, sitting, facing ourselves, breathing and being upright. So we have this sense of time and that's really important in terms of climate damage because part of the problem is that people are continuing to use fossil fuels and promoting that, promoting nuclear power, which also is going to be damaging long term because we don't know what to do with the waste. And we have a responsibility to future generations. That's what responding to climate change is about. And the people who continue promoting fossil fuel and coal and so forth, you know, are doing this because they're getting a huge profit off it and the quarterly profit margin is their priority. So we have a sense of future generations. We are practicing here.

[16:49]

We were sitting here this morning for ourselves, for everyone else here, but also for the people walking by out front 25 years from now and 50 years from now and 250 years from now. And what will their planet be like? So the next important point is that we don't know. This is an important teaching in Buddhism, not knowing. One of the koans we study says not knowing is most intimate. So we don't know what will happen to the climate. There are all kinds of dreadful apocalyptic predictions. Actually from what I can gather from listening to scientists, things are definitely already going to get bad and are bad and we're going to get worse. But it's not like the apocalypse. We're not going to all turn into zombies necessarily. We still can make a difference. The degree of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is getting dangerous, is already dangerous.

[17:56]

And how bad that gets is up to us. The people marching in New York today, the people flooding Wall Street tomorrow, but not just today and tomorrow, continuing. How will we respond to this? Because we don't know what will happen. We know that the scientific predictions, which some people pretend are like, anyway, people who don't believe the earth is round, the scientific predictions continue to be more conservative than actually what's happening. So we don't know what will happen. It's not clear how bad it's going to get. But I believe that the human race will survive. What conditions will we be in, in 100 years or 250 years? That's up to us in this generation.

[18:57]

So the other thing we don't know is what to do in response. And this is part of what Joanna was talking about, about blocked responses. We feel like there's nothing we can do. But we don't know. There's a wonderful new important book out from Naomi Klein called, This Changes Everything Capitalism Versus the Climate. And she's talking about how profit-seeking at all costs is damaging our climate. And I'm going to refer back to that. But she also refers to how things change and happen in ways we couldn't possibly expect. And she talks about 1989 and the Berlin Wall falling. And that was something that the experts on these things, the policymakers, couldn't have predicted a couple months beforehand. So how change happens is not clear. We might think, oh, there's no hope of change. There's no hope of response, of a serious response to climate. We're just entrenched with fossil fuel and we can't do anything about it.

[20:02]

Well, there are people doing things about it. And Germany is one example now. But anyway, we don't know how things change. And yet, and we don't know what exactly to do to help respond helpfully. And yet, there are, I want to talk about principles of response in various ways. And I hope we'll have some time for some discussion as well. So Joanna talks about, Joanna Messe talks about active hope. She doesn't mean being hopeful, just kind of optimistic, just, you know, thinking things, the Pollyanna way, thinking things are best. But to act on our best hopes, what is it we hope for? Active hope is to act based on what our hopes are and what can happen, what might happen. Of course, we don't know. So she talks about, so I want to mention her analysis, which I've talked about here before, but it's worth mentioning again.

[21:05]

So some people see the world as business as usual and if you look at the mass media, everything's fine and we'll figure out, science will figure out how to fix all this somehow. Or we don't have to worry about it. And then other people think that, see that things are falling apart. She calls this the great unraveling, that we live in a time where lots of things are falling apart and we don't know what, but we don't know what to do about it. But the third position is what she calls the great turning, which she says we're in the middle of. And this is how humanity and the planet is turning from the world of violence and aggression and competitiveness and profits at any cost to something else. And it's hard to see this. It's happening kind of like the grass coming out through the concrete. It's happening underneath the surface of the business as usual. But she talks about this great turning in terms of three major modes.

[22:10]

And so I want to talk about that. And we're all involved in it, at least one of them. Some of you are involved in others. So first is holding actions. This is lobbying a government, trying to work with corporate powers, trying to mitigate the damage. This is important that we see that this, that what's needed now and the occasion in New York this weekend is that the UN Secretary General has called the leaders of the world to come and talk seriously about doing serious change. I don't really think that the leaders are going to make any difference. It's up to us. But that's the situation. We need a systemic change. This isn't just about recycling or changing light bulbs. I mean, it might be helpful for us to all do positive things in response. But what is going to make a difference is systemic change so that people supporting divestment campaigns from fossil fuel, universities, pension plans, labor pension plans, the cities

[23:17]

are starting to do this. So there's lots of ways of lobbying governments and corporations, including demonstrations. So as a kind of ceremonial, ritualized response to go, you know, so when I go to demonstrations I wear, not my full rose, but I wear a pari, a laksu, you know, I'm there as a clergy person. And there's a power to that. And all of you can go and participate in these things in a kind of ceremonial way, in a respectful way, in a dignified way. So we have something to offer to that response. Part of holding actions is also social work and helping people who have been displaced. So we have people in our sangha, not only in New York today, but also whose life work is working with people who are suffering.

[24:21]

And part of the suffering that we all have, we all have our personal suffering, but also in the back of our awareness is this concern, this anxiety about what's happening to the world and our planet. So all of this is part of the first mode, the holding actions, taking care of people who are having a hard time and speaking out and responding. The second mode that Joanna talks about is alternative structures. And some of the people here in our sangha are doing this, developing alternative regional economic structures or agricultural structures, farmers' markets, organic gardeners like they have at Green Gulch or Tofumas. These are all another kind of response. If our ordinary systems of media and education and economics and food prices are going to go way up with increasingly with droughts, as that's unraveling, we need alternative

[25:28]

structures. The third mode is what all of us are doing here today. This is the work of Zazen, changing the paradigm of how we see ourselves and our hearts and minds. So just by sitting, just by being present and upright, being willing to face your own grasping and confusion and frustration and fear and anger, we also can promote a kind of sense of non-denial and of cooperation in our society and in our world. So how do we change the way people think about things from competition and aggression to collaboration, cooperation, seeing how we're connected, caring about others, instead of trying to do unto others before they do unto us, which is kind of the mode that most of the world is living in. So I just want to say a little bit more.

[26:32]

Part of what is happening now is that lots of people around the world are thinking creatively about how are we expressions of the environment. I don't even like to use that word environment, as I've said, because it sort of makes it out there. This floor is made of wood that came from trees. The air we're breathing, the oxygen comes from plants. The water we drink, in some places, is in danger. How do we see ourselves as expressions? So I'll just mention that there are creative approaches, and last spring when we were talking about the Landscape Sutra, I talked about the Dark Mountain Manifesto, which tries to go beyond environment to talk about e-stories of cooperation, e-stories about how we are

[27:39]

expressions of the landscape around us, to express this in poetry. So the Dark Mountain people have sort of given up on going to demonstrations. But they're still part of a response. So you can Google Dark Mountain Manifesto to read about that. There's also the Planetary Hospice. So I don't like to use that term anymore, because it sort of feels so negative, like the planet is dying. But the fellow who wrote that Planetary Hospice, you can Google that too, and get it online, actually works at the San Francisco Center Hospice, he's training there, and he's talking about eco-psychology, how do we respond to denial. So all of us, of course, have our own personal difficulties in the world, and I don't mean to diminish the need to face that as part of our practice, but also, we are affected

[28:45]

by all of this that's going on. How do we respond? So one of the things that I want to say is that just talking about it is a response. So I've been doing that sometimes here, and encouraging us to talk about it. And I don't have answers. And I don't know, you know, exactly what to do. I can suggest things. There's all kinds of possible responses that people are making. People on our sangha using simpler modes of transportation, public transit, bicycles, using air times less, not eating meat, lower energy use, all of these, doing gardens, urban gardens, there's all kinds of ways to respond. But one of them is just to talk about it, because, you know, it is kind of rude to

[29:49]

talk about. It is kind of, you know, people don't want to hear about it, it's scary. And yet, just to be able to talk about it is maybe one of the most important responses right now. That people need to know that this is happening, and to know that they can say something. And that's what's happening in New York this weekend. And then the last thing I want to, well, almost the last thing I want to say is that there's not one right response. There are many, many, many possible responses. So I don't want to tell any of you how you should respond. Whether you should go to demonstrations, or write Congress, or build gardens, or whatever. Whatever you are drawn to is part of the response. We each have our own way of responding to the difficulties in our life and in the world. And when we do this from this settled place of just sitting, we can respond more helpfully.

[30:51]

We can be more flexible. We can see more options. We can find some steadiness, even if we're afraid. So I want to just say a little bit from Naomi Klein, whose book I mentioned, This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs. the Climate, and she's pointing to the way in which our society is organized as a source of this problem. So I'll just read a little bit of what she said in recent Democracy Now. Climate scientists don't know what to expect. Things start going nonlinear. It changes everything about our physical world if we just simply do what we're doing and continue down this road. We do have the opportunity to get off that road, but in order to do so, we have to change pretty much everything. There's some really fundamental things about our economic system and our society. So this is what Naomi Klein says, and I recommend that new book.

[31:57]

And you know, things are going to change anyway radically, given the effects of climate change, you know, in our lifetimes, certainly in our children's lifetimes. She goes on, the good news is that the things we need to change, many of them are broken anyway. We need to make vast investments in the public sphere, which would create millions of good jobs. We need to invest in health care, in education, in the sciences. So doing, we will tackle one of the most intractable problems we face, which is gross wealth inequality. This is part of the context of climate damage. We can't fight climate change without dealing with inequality in our countries and between our countries. So far, most of the effects of climate have been in what we call third world countries. I don't know, we're becoming a third world country in lots of ways. But we can't fight climate change without dealing with inequality in our countries and between our countries.

[32:59]

But really, this is quite hopeful. I think if we do respond to climate change, she says, with the decisiveness of the scientists are telling us we need to, if we respond in line with that science, we have a chance to remake our economy, the global economy, for the better. This is not going to be the kind of change that comes from above. It's going to be the kind of change that is demanded by mass movements from below. So mass movements have many context to what that means. It doesn't just mean demonstrations. It means all of us, in our own way, being aware of this, talking about it with each other, and responding. So I wasn't sure how long all that was going to take, but we do have some time. And I'm interested in, and part of the work of responding to this is for us to talk about it. So you don't have to agree with opinions I've expressed. And yet I feel responsible to the precepts to express some of these.

[34:01]

But I'm interested in your responses. Maybe if I may, Tova, just call on you. So some of the people who are here today won't be able to be here tomorrow evening. So if you could say a little bit, please. Well, I think like you, if I weren't here, I wouldn't be in New York. And the oldest can't be in New York. And there are representatives of a number of censors going to New York, and I hope they find each other. And there's a big interfaith partnership in Washington. And I hope also that this has an effect on the United Nations perceptions. And what can we just do at home in our families and ourselves? I think talking about it is the first step. And I really appreciate you bringing it up here. And also your essay, which is based on talking and questions.

[35:08]

Looking at how we practice the precepts, not only in our daily lives, but as we think about, as a resident of the world, our contributions to that. So for all those bringing it home, looking at what we can take public transportation or use energy-efficient and water-efficient light bulbs in showers and so on, I think every small thing makes a difference. And we keep talking with our friends and family. So it doesn't seem like it's such an impossible thing to change. I tend to be optimistic, so I look for those calls that there's still time for us

[36:13]

to do some things that might mitigate the effects of what's happened. Thank you. Yeah, I heard a climate scientist from the University of Chicago last month who was saying we're halfway to the terrible, really terrible things. So things are, but there's still time. There's still time to make a difference. Thank you, Jennifer. Other responses? Any comments, questions, responses, please? Jenny, hi. Well, following up on what you said, Toby, and what I was saying to you, Charlie, about the potential of hopelessness. I thought about giving up a gift. What do you think about that? Because, you know, I drove here, type of, all by myself, getting my car. And when I look back, I swam, part of the trip.

[37:16]

So I can switch the light bulbs in my house, but when it comes right down to it, I'm complicit in this climate change. I'm still making choices that help it. Well, but I think, so thank you. Yes, that's true. Absolutely. This is not about somebody else. This is about all of us. We're all part of this system. We have our electric lives and so forth based on fossil fuels, or nuclear, which is bad. So how do we, but, you know, I think feeling personal guilt about this isn't so helpful. So, Jenny, also a distinguished visitor, came from, is a member of our sauna, but came from St. Paul, but she drove rather than take the plane. And I didn't want to there. Well, okay.

[38:18]

That was not an impact anyway. So we live in this world. How do we, you know, we are still in this world that is based on fossil fuel energy. So it's not about any one of us. Of course, I think doing the specific little changes that Tova talked about is helpful. But maybe it's most helpful just in terms of appreciating awareness. The more that people all around the world are aware, so people should know that Jenny drove instead of taking a plane if you're in St. Paul. This is a good example that can inspire us. Yeah, there is a problem. Not that, you know, some of us need to take planes to go to places sometimes. But how do we see the whole process of what's happening in the world systemically? So each thing that we do is part of that third mode that Joanna talks about,

[39:26]

about changing the way of thinking. As you know, this is a big issue for me as well. Part of it is consciousness. And what I was really struck by today is you talk about awareness, consciousness. For us to be conscious, that's why we face the wall. And it's a matter of consciousness. You may have to go to St. Paul. That might be a reality. But if you can keep with you the consciousness, there are other things we can do with our daily lives. And I think what I feel is sometimes a little hurtful from the environment is that everybody has to have a green halo. And it's like all or nothing. And it's not. It's steps, in a way. I had a wedding in Columbus, Ohio. I grew up, but I grew up at 65 rather than at 80.

[40:31]

And I make sure my tires are at the proper pressure so I can get, you know, decrease my dependence on gas. And there's things that we do. If we have that consciousness, little things begin to happen in your life. And that consciousness, from my perspective, stretches to other people. And that's why I think it is so important. God wants us to be aware to be connected. I think it's more important. The fact that you're aware of that, man, I don't know if Gil's like, like Tigard said, it's a good thing. But just stay the conscious, okay, and the next time you do something else. And the next time you do something else. It's not about having a green halo. Right. And so I'm flying to the Buddhist Association meeting in Oregon to talk about this. That's not the point. How are we going to change? There are alternatives.

[41:33]

Germany and other places are using solar and other alternative systems. That's going to have to happen. And how that happens is going to happen only based on all of us, as you say, David, changing consciousness so that there's pressure from many, many, many people all around the world. And that's happening. We have time for a couple more responses or comments. Yes, Libby. Well, as you were talking, there were so many parallels that I was thinking between what you were saying and experiences I had when I was in the Peace Corps in Southern Africa and I was involved. I was assigned to work with HIV and Israeli issues. I came at an interesting moment in the epidemic. That's like the episode. Rates of infection are just like excruciatingly high. It's just amazing. But I was there.

[42:35]

Excuse me. Welcome. Anyway, but when I got there, there was just still people who were living in denial. It was like, couldn't talk about this. And the only explanations that people had for it were sort of fantastical. But nobody wanted to talk about it or think about it. It was really striking. I spent two years, two and a half years, sitting with this question, what is going on? Why does this feel so stuck? And people are dying all around of this, but you can't talk about it. And as I got there, there was push around testing and education and actually ARVs. There was a treatment. There was actually things that people could do so that it wasn't so hopeless. But what I didn't feel about it was that the biggest barrier was this terror. It was like an abject terror that people had that made it just that that was what was fueling the denial.

[43:47]

Yeah. But, and I mean, I could go on about the different parallels of that. So one part was the denial piece, but also part of it was this sense of hopelessness that people had to have what I had on me as I was doing the work because I felt like I had no evidence of anything I was doing. I was involved in all kinds of different efforts. But I developed this analogy for myself to survive it, that all of us who were doing this work, you know, people from that somewhere, you know, local people, everybody involved, were sort of, it's like suddenly we were on this steep hill and there was boulder with this enormous weight coming down and that we were sort of trying to push it. And that we wished that we could just sort of push it and it would just be gone or there would be some enormous sense of movement. But that was not possible because it was such an enormous, complex thing.

[44:50]

And so more there was a sense of, well, I don't know if we're making any headway. I don't know if we're just going backwards. But whatever we're doing, we have to do something or else it's just going to wolf down like a crushed grape kind of thing. And the nice punctuation mark at the end of this was that just recently I, and I never knew whether I did it, but, you know, I spent, you know, two and a half years of that. But, you know, but, yeah. But the nice, I used to listen to NPR and there was a study coming out about this push that I was a part of, it was a big push that was going on at that time. And that it did seem to make a big difference. That the corner was torn around the HIV rates by these fears that so many people put in energy. And I was just one small particle, you know, in this larger thing.

[45:53]

So anyway, just wanted to share that. And I feel like that, of course, there's many examples of that kind of movements making a difference. But when you're inside of it, you really don't, like you said, it's like a mysterious quality of what, how it's working and what you're doing. Thank you very much for that story and testimony. Yeah, there are lots of examples, you know, the Berlin Wall coming down in 89. There's so many things, apartheid ending. And part of this, again, thinking about it in terms of time span, that part of all of this, it's like the racism, and I talked about this in relation to Ferguson a couple weeks ago, that is so deep in our psyche as well as our society, the legacy of slavery and racism. And the same way, the way of thinking of the environment out there that we can dominate it

[46:57]

or even, you know, think that we can take care of it as some self-sacrifice. But to see that as separate, as something that we can exploit and cut down forests for their, you know, to maximize the assets of the trees and, you know, and exploit the fossil fuels and so forth, we see the world around us as separate and dead and exploiting. And that karma is so deep that this is going to take a while to change, and yet we have to do it fairly quickly. But how that happens, at some point, the Berlin Wall comes down, or people are smoking stuff being popular. I've told this story too. One of my very young accomplishments is when I learned to smoke when I was 17. I thought I was so cool, and I could actually, I had to force myself to learn how to inhale. And with all due respect to any of you who are smokers, now that's not socially cool.

[48:01]

That changed. How did that change? Anyway, yes, Alan. For climate change gases, let's say that half of our climate change gases are from the food elements that we eat. So every meal, every day, I don't eat them. Compared to the meat here, from food, my gases are half. And what I expect is to get the health and longevity, the sustainable street corners, and our influence to deal with everything else like changing fluoride pumps. Yeah, thank you. Yes, meat and meat production in our society is a huge source of the climate. Any other, thank you. Any other last comments? Yes, Alan. You know, one parallel I was kind of struck by, as you talked as well,

[49:06]

I thought, like, this isn't just like it's in our practices. It's like a way to think about and approach climate change. How is that? Why don't we approach it in our own practice of food? It's been like, I, you know, I try to stay by myself. But I started, when summer came along, this summer, I've got a bike in my garage. Once I planned how to do it, I rolled my bike here instead of driving. And it was nice. I got to, you know, reach some athletics and enjoy this weather. But I think of it like, you know, those are the choices in how practice goes too, you know. We're not always capable of being mindful. What do you mean? In every situation. And to be able to breathe that every moment of our lives.

[50:07]

Practice is trying to cultivate that and reward that into our lives. So, you know, I feel it's good for people to let themselves slack. Yeah. Recognize that this is just like practice. You're not enlightened for it, all right? You're working towards bringing more, cultivating more mindfulness to your life. So, this is just another aspect of that practice. Exactly, yes. So, yeah, this is not a practice for super beings. This is, you know, we're practicing as human beings. And we see the best that human beings have gotten ourselves into. But we're also part of the solution. Yeah. Thank you for that. So, thank you all very much. Thank you.

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