So I want to talk tonight about war and peace. So I confess I've never read the book, but it is on my reading bucket list, so someday maybe. So, I want to talk about our situation now with this horrible war in Ukraine. So, to paraphrase Dogen, he says that Bodhisattva practice is about relieving suffering and providing joy and supporting liberation and awakening. So, In this practice we find our inner peace and calm in samadhi, in this settling sitting practice.

[01:10]

And then we express this with all the difficulties of the world. And we try to see what our skillful means to respond to the situation in our life in the world. So this very brutal assault on Ukraine by Russia includes intentionally bombing and focusing on civilians. And the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky have been valiant and heroic in resisting this. So we're at this kind of turning point there, it seems. I do agree with President Biden that there have been war crimes in Mariupol and Bucha and crimes against humanity.

[02:18]

We can see it all on our television. This is the world we live in. However, people, you know, we live in life during wartime, but people in Latin America, South Asia, the Mideast, and many places in Africa do not trust United States' claims Because our government's many war crimes and crimes against humanity ourselves. And we don't belong to the international criminal court by choice. So currently there's genocide in Yemen. thanks to the United States weapons being used by Saudi Arabia.

[03:20]

There's also genocide happening in Haiti, in Colombia, in Western Sahara, and other parts of Africa, and Gaza, all supported by the United States and its massive weapons. So all of this is very difficult now and very complicated. And there's no clear, easy definitions or responses. There were fairly recently clear options for peace in Ukraine. President Zelensky and Ukraine were willing to claim neutrality. So the bottom line is that there's no real military solution. The United States and Ukraine seem to be doing very well now, but how do we see diplomacy and

[04:36]

Compromise. This isn't just a problem in Ukraine. This is a problem in our lives and in our practice too. And in our culture, very much so. So, we're in a dangerous time. Any military solution might incite Vladimir Putin to use horrible weapons like nuclear weapons. So I want to talk about how I see what's happening and how we face it and how we respond and practice to it, practice with it. The United States weapons companies are making billions of dollars from the Ukrainian war. Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Boeing, just to name five of the

[05:44]

largest and most dangerous American weapons companies are extreme war profiteers. And as President Eisenhower said, when he talked about the military industrial congressional complex, they have great influence over our whole foreign policy. So these are the masters of war that no one sang about a long time ago. Most of the former generals or admirals who you see on MSNBC or CNN as military analysts and pundits are also employed by these weapons companies to promote weapons use, although they don't identify themselves that way. 53% of the entire United States budget Not probably significantly more than that, but it was 53% goes to the military.

[06:51]

Even as politicians claim that we cannot afford genuine healthcare, even during a pandemic, that we cannot support education. We cannot support decent wages, especially for quote unquote essential workers. We cannot afford. infrastructure repair. This year, global military spending was $2 trillion. This year, the United States military spending was $800 billion, greater than the nine next countries combined, including two and a half million, two and a half times more than China, 10 times more than Russia. And nuclear weapons was the largest increase in the United States military. So we're living in a very dangerous time. And excuse me for talking about this.

[07:56]

I know it's unpleasant to talk about. We don't want to talk about it. We don't want to see it. But our practice is to face difficulties and look for skillful responses. None of this is to criticize are regular American soldiers, many of whom enlist from noble motives or from lack of alternatives. But I'm speaking about the war merchants and the profiteers. The Ukraine war is also about oil and fossil fuels. Russian oil imports are important for Europe and for the Russian economy. This war could be, could have been, maybe still could be, an opportunity for massive conversion to renewable energy projects to protect our broken climate.

[09:01]

Instead, it has been gas and oil companies, gas companies have been price gouging and making billions of dollars from the war, fossil fuel companies. And sad to say, President Biden has recently opened public lands for more oil drilling. So this is the world we live in. And the Ukraine war has produced many, many refugees, millions of refugees within the Ukraine and into Eastern Europe. And they've been graciously received by Poland and other European, Eastern European countries, and some in the United States. But at the same time, refugees from war in Haiti, Central America, Africa, the Mideast, that is to say non-Europeans,

[10:10]

are being deported by the United States and by other European countries, some likely to death in the countries they came from. African students in Ukraine were not admitted to European countries. So yes, what the Russians have But as to United States war crimes, Julian Assange has been imprisoned and tortured in England for years for revealing United States war crimes clearly in WikiLeaks. The crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he faces being deported to the United States where leading politicians have called for his execution. So there's an imbalance in the world.

[11:14]

In our culture, particularly, there's a strong militarization. This may seem beyond or aside from our realm of practice for each of us. We can lobby political and corporate leaders to cut our military budget, to try and emphasize diplomacy, compromise. Change comes from the ground up. It's not from our leaders. So it's up to us in some ways to change all of this. Americans and people have criticized the Japanese Senate war.

[12:22]

Information that has been published now about how Japanese and people supported the militarization of Japan in the 30, 40 years leading up to World War II. So, of course, Japanese Zen was more important and powerful than Americans in America, but we still need to see. How can we respond skillfully? So the world needs diplomacy and dialogue, not aggression. This is not just, this is a cultural problem. This is an issue for our culture that we are all part of and that we all influence. Not all of our culture, but much of our culture includes aggression.

[13:31]

It sometimes seems like the only, or the first option in conflict resolution is aggression, attack. military metaphors. Our society is caught in this. Our practice is about peace. And peace isn't some simple thing where we just, you know, turn to the wall and don't pay attention to the conflicts in our world, in our sangha, in our own body and mind. All of this is difficult. How do we face the reality of the aggression in our culture? This mass militarization is in some ways the basis of our economy now, not exclusively, but pundits are now talking about how we need to renew

[14:38]

manufacturing in this country. We sort of got rid of it all. We sent it all off to China. Now we have problems with China. Now we have sanctions here and there. So we need to renew simple manufacturing of things other than weapons of mass destruction. So part of this, part of the response is Our practice and also our vision, our seeing from our experiences as us and that actually something else is possible. It's possible for human beings to encourage cooperation and dialogue and listening and problem-solving not based on aggression.

[15:40]

We can do that in our own everyday lives. So it's kind of seems like a given that human beings fight wars. You know, the historians say this has always been the case. A lot of history is just the history of different wars. But for Just folks, for us, for each of us, how do we see the possibility of aggressiveness in our own hearts and minds? How do we see that we can convert this to caring, to kindness? We just chanted the metta sutta, the wish for may all beings be happy. To not exclude other people, us in them, to see that we are all connected.

[16:44]

The whole world is so connected now. To see that what happens in Ukraine and many other places affects all of us. This is the work of Sangha. This is the work of community. But not only within our particular Sangha, but in how we see not just the people, but all the beings of the world. I believe that it's possible to not have a world that's just about warfare.

[17:45]

My whole life has been in the midst of war, from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the many other wars that the United States supports surreptitiously, and other countries too. How do we actually imagine as John Lennon said, a world of peace, a world of kindness, a world where we can actually talk to each other and we can somehow get President Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to talk with each other and figure out what is it that each side needs? How do we provide that? I do believe that this is possible and that part of our practice is to be a seed for that.

[18:48]

To create seeds for caring and compassion, cooperation, dialogue. So this brutal, horrible war in Ukraine where so many civilians, so many children are being assaulted and attacked intentionally. It's horrible. But worse, any wars are horrible, including the wars that our government has perpetrated. So I don't have answers to this, but I want to encourage us to think about Peace. What is it like? What would it be like to have peace? And how do we start that? How do we, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, how do we be peace ourselves? How do we see our own possibility of aggression and turn it to caring?

[19:59]

dialogue, cooperation. So, I felt like I had to say something about all this. And I'm interested in your comments, questions, responses. Please feel free. Those on Zoom, you could raise your physical or digital hand to be acknowledged. Thank you. And those of you here at Ebenezer also, if you have responses or comments. It's uncomfortable to talk about this in a Dharma talk, I'd much rather talk meditation practice and the things that help bring us our inner peace, but we have some responsibility to the world.

[21:20]

Teigen, Ken Anderson here. Hey, Ken. Hi. How you doing? Always nice to hear you speaking. I don't have a video, so I can't raise my video hand. Oh, I see. OK. Good. But yeah, this has been an interesting topic for me and, of course, for everyone. But there are two aspects to it that it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it. For one, the diplomacy part of it is clearly very crucial. And starting in 2008, the Russians told the United States that they would not tolerate a state adjacent to them that was part of NATO, because of the possibility of putting military hardware and, you know, rockets and the whole, you know, the whole caboodle right next to Russia. But the United States

[22:25]

through the program of promoting democracy and the color's revolutions, kind of shined them on on that, and up to the point of last fall, where Blinken was negotiating with, I think, Lazarov is his name, the Russian representative. Professor Mearsheimer of the U.S.C. has gone so far as to say that NATO and the United States were to a big extent, you know, they were part of the linear equation in terms of what the cause for this war was. And then the other part of it, my second point or second topic is that You know, as you say, sometimes it takes skillful means to prevent, and I think prevention is better than solving, but to prevent war-like situations. And after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated, you know, a test ban treaty and then limits on weapons and that kind of thing, and they avoided

[23:40]

nuclear war from 1950-55 until recent history when some of these limits are being eliminated or allowed to expire. Ukraine opted to give up the nuclear weapons that were on its soil in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union Would it have been a skillful means for the Ukraine to keep, to have kept their nuclear weapons to avoid, well, to have that deterrent for anybody who that would try to invade Ukraine? Just two topics that came to mind and, you know, it's tough to make a call on them, I think, but it'd be, do you have any ideas on that? Thank you, Ken. Yeah, I didn't want to get too far into the weeds, but you've brought up a couple of really important points about all of this.

[24:42]

And by the way, Ken is one of our strongest armed forces veterans. So I appreciate that, Ken. Well, thank you for your service. Yeah, well, you know, that's Thank you for the word service there because that's part of, a big part of what our practice is. We sit upright and enjoy our inhale and exhale and study the self, as Dogen says, see all the, you know, part of that is studying our own capacity for aggressiveness, each of us, but also seeing our capacity for caring and kindness. So, yeah, the thing about NATO is true that, you know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States Secretary of State promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east.

[25:48]

And in some ways, what's going on now in the Ukraine is very parallel to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 62, which Maybe there's nobody else here in the room who remembers that. I do. It was a time of, yeah, Joe on Zoom raised his hand. Yeah, it was a time when everybody was afraid there was going to be a nuclear war any minute. I mean, it was palpable. There was just fear in the streets in America and around the world. And thanks to the test ban treaty and other nuclear arms limitation treaties, you know, we've sort of forgotten about that danger, but it's here again. And partly it's, you know, just like we were, did not want to have missiles in Cuba, so close to the United States, Russia, you know, reasonably from their point of view, doesn't want to have countries with American, with Western NATO, American missiles, whatever, right near their country.

[26:56]

So it was very significant that President Zelensky offered to not enter NATO and to be neutral. Anyway, those negotiations weren't able to be worked out. There might still be a way. It's very complicated. Diplomacy is But, you know, Kenny also brought up the treaties, and one of the things that causes mistrust of our government around the world is that, well, under President Trump, we broke those treaties, but we haven't, some of them, we never signed on to the international court in The Hague, and there was a working nuclear, anti-nuclear treaty with Iran. But Trump got rid of that and Biden has not renewed it.

[28:03]

And so we're, you know, this isn't just, this is not just a function of one political party. Again, it's part of the question for all of us is the way in which our whole country has been since Cuban Missile Crisis has been significantly militarized. We can't decrease the military budget because there are military bases and defense contractors in almost every congressional district, certainly in every state. So it's very complicated and it's very difficult. But what I want to actually emphasize is the way in which it affects all of us in our culture. I mean, there's so many examples, the mass shootings in schools, the popularity of police shows and

[29:15]

which I watch myself because they're very skillfully done and dramatic, but, you know, it's just part of our culture, this militarization. So, how do we respond and encourage and really actively promote discussion, cooperation, caring, seeing that we're not separate from the people around us. It's not us and them. This has been one of the gifts of the pandemic, as horrible as it has been for so many people that thanks to Zoom and just this awareness of how The pandemic won't be really taken care of until people all over the world can get the vaccine. Anyway, thank you for your comments, Ken.

[30:20]

Thank you. Thank you, Tiger. Other reflections, responses. Yes, hi. What's your name? Mvanwi. Where are you from? We're in Australia, in Canberra. Oh, great. I don't think there's more people from Australia here yet. I was listening to one of your Tay shows on a podcast this morning, and Alex decided to Google a sangha, and we realized that the service started in 11 minutes. So I've been reading the book, so that's how we kind of found out about all this. So I'm glad that we were able to come and actually see you in person. But something that I kept reflecting on as you were talking is even the desire for there to not be war and violence in myself has a kind of violence to it.

[31:29]

There is this kind of rejection, but you kept saying, and every time you said this, I think you said it two or three times, this is the world we live in. And I think that kind of was the key point for me in your talk, is that we can talk about all the problems and we can analyse and agonise over it, but this is the world we live in and then what? How do we actually embrace that? And I find that as soon as I start getting kind of in my head about like all the complexities of the political situation, which as an individual really have, I have very little power over. It just takes me so far away from my practice. Um, and for me, it's, it's finding a way back to how I practice with that right now, that, that tension and that, that anguish that I feel of, just this is the world we live in, and then what?

[32:33]

So I was wondering if you could speak to that. Thank you. Yes, yes. And thank you for coming from Australia to be with us. And please check out the schedule on our website and come to, we have many other offerings. Please come again. And you're not the only people coming from overseas. I see Juan Pablo Restrepo has joined us and he's a member of our Sangha in Patagonia in Argentina. So the world is all connected. The world is all connected. It's important that we feel that. So one of the things you said is that there's nothing, you know, in terms of all the complexities of the political situation, you know, we feel like there's nothing we can do. I hear that. I understand that. I agree in some ways. Yes, that's seems like what can you know? I mean, there are people in Chicago are helping Ukrainian refugees, for example.

[33:38]

There are things that can be done. And yet, As you say, it feels like beyond us. I'll come back to that. But what I wanted to emphasize was that how we are with the people we are engaged in, engaged with, with the people that we can see, can change things. for people here in the United States, and I think it's probably true in Australia and Argentina, and even in Los Angeles where Amina is, that the culture of militarization, which we don't like to think about, it's sort of like beyond what we can deal with, but this sense of, we solve conflicts through violence and aggression. It's just part of our culture now. We can make a difference. as Sangha, as practitioners, in our own life, in our own body, mind, and in just how we express caring and compassion and cooperation.

[34:52]

That change, that can start to change the culture and we start to see the world as not a world of us and them battling it out, but a world of we're in it together. How do we work together? So that's the main thing I want to say, that our individual practice changes the world. We don't see how it does necessarily, but it does. But the other thing I wanted to come back to was we all feel like there's nothing we can do right now about climate breakdown, about wars, about corruption and so forth. And Yes and no. I think, as I said before, change happens not because of great leaders who decide to make things peaceful, but by people demanding it. As an activist myself, and there's some other people in our sangha who have been out on the streets trying to lobby and protest and writing to Congress people and so forth.

[36:00]

All of that can make a difference too. But what's most important from the point of view of practice is how do we express cooperation and kindness ourselves? And how do we share that and encourage it with the people around us? So thank you very much. question. And please do come again. So we have time for one or two more comments or responses. Ashen, hi. Um, you know, I don't actually think that we solve conflicts through violence and aggression. I think what we do is defer conflicts through violence and aggression. that those means don't actually change anything. They temporarily make things happen in one way.

[37:02]

But I don't have anything different to say than what you're saying, which is that the way that we change things is by you know, working with our own inner violence and aggression and, and, and coming to see reality and, and, and with each person that we meet, you know, also, um, you know, having a real interaction with them and, um, bring some caring and concern. And that, I think, is really what changes things. It's lovely that we can do that in our enclosed space, but also within the Zoom sangha, so that we then, as we interact with each other, either locally in the room or widely through Zoom or with all the other beings we meet, we change the possibility that each of us will then go on to have healing and productive and caring and changing interactions with other beings.

[38:12]

And we'll then bring that to someone else. It's a very hands-taking and laborious process. And it's not as fast, maybe, as violence and aggression. But I think the only thing that changes anything Thank you, yes, well said. Yeah, violence and aggression doesn't actually really solve anything, it just defers solutions. But yes, in our own, you know, part of our practice is to work on our own cushion and see all of these conflicts within ourselves, but then how do we take it out into the world? Through sustained practice, when we go out into our lives, into our workplaces, into our engagement with our families and neighbors and all of that, we start to become peace. We start to become caring and concerned, as you said.

[39:15]

And that has a ripple effect. And so that's slow. And I do think there are ways we can respond, socially but politically, The main thing is changing hearts and minds. Seeing, caring. So thank you, Asha. Mother, we have time for one more comment. Or response. Oh, hi, Wade. Hi. One delusion that I struggle with frequently is thinking that the world would be a better place if everyone just Everyone just thought and acted the way that I think and act. And so that's, I don't have much to say about it other than that's a good thing to practice with because that is for sure a delusion.

[40:17]

If Putin just thought the way that I thought, he just did what I thought he should do, then everything would be solved. But of course that's not really true. And it's also not the world. But yes, that's a really important point, that our, for all of us, we have some impetus or desire to control things. You know, there are things we want to control. And Vladimir Putin certainly wants to control a lot of things. And he thinks he can do it by being incredibly brutal to the people of Ukraine. But that's the problem. We can't actually really control much of anything, any of us. We control some things. I can decide when to stop talking, but, you know, there's things we can control, but mostly the world has its own karma. There's the karma of, you know, we have a collective karma that dictates a lot of what happens, but we can work against the grain of that by

[41:30]

committing to practice and committing to caring and concern. But what you said, Wade, about seeing our own wanting to control things, that's a big part of the problem. Let go of your idea that you can If Vladimir Putin did that, we'd be better off. So thank you for that. It's time for us to close. Ken, your hand is up on the screen. Did you want to say something else? That's not Ken's hand. Oh, that's just the cursor. OK, I thought I saw a hand on the screen. OK. Well, thank you all very much. This is, of course, something that we need to work with the rest of our lives. And please take care of yourselves and be kind. So let's, if the Kokyo would lead us please in the four Bodhisattva vows which we chant three times.

[42:37]

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