I vow to kiss the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. Morning. Oh, there you are. I was looking for you. Does it sound okay? It doesn't seem like it's working as it usually does. I don't feel that... Yeah, maybe this is... Yeah, it's on. Can you hear? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, it's nice to see everyone this morning. Friends from Canada, welcome.

[01:03]

And Jeff Kitsis is here from the Empty Gate Zen Center. Thank you for coming this morning. Jeff has some things he wants to bring to your attention after the talk today. So, I have an online news service, America Online. I haven't been able to figure out how to go on the World Wide Web and waste my time there, but I do have an online news service that I can easily read, which I do a lot so that I can be aware of some of the things that are going on in the world. Now, I know that what I read in the online news or in the newspaper

[02:07]

isn't exactly the same as what's going on in the world. What I read there is what the tradition of journalism in the democratic Christian West has defined as what is going on in the world, but still, it's important because it's a shared concept, so I try to read it. It's a little distracting to read all these things that are going on, some of them very far away from where I am, where we are. Sometimes when I read them I get agitated, I get angry, frustrated, most often I get very sad. And I know that probably I would be more peaceful and happier if I didn't read the online news service. But even so, knowing all this, I read it anyway.

[03:15]

Because I think it's important that I read it. And although it's very nice to be peaceful, and I like to be peaceful, sometimes being peaceful is not the most important thing. So I'm going to tell you some of the things that I've been reading online. You know about all these things, but I thought I would tell you anyway. Often, I do this in seven days Sashin, the sixth or seventh day I often bring in the newspaper and read the headlines, so people didn't forget what's going on in the world around them. So everybody knows that the country of Pakistan didn't exist as a country before the mid-20th century,

[04:17]

and that it came to exist as a result of the bloodshed that happened around the time of Gandhi's work in India. Pakistan was always part of India, but when the Muslims came into India, that's when Buddhism disappeared from India entirely. And many Hindus converted to become Muslims, and so the Muslims and the Hindu people in India have been at odds with each other in murderous ways for a long time. And one of the results of that was the partition of Pakistan in the 40s. And the issue of Pakistan was why Gandhi was murdered. He was actually murdered by a Hindu fundamentalist who was upset

[05:20]

that Gandhi was accommodating and tolerant of the Muslim interests. Anyway, today in Pakistan there is a very strong fundamentalist Muslim government. In Pakistan, marital infidelity is punishable by death. And old punishments of stoning and cutting off of hands and other limbs is still legal. I was talking about this with my wife, and she told me that she heard on the news that in Pakistan there is a very high and increasing rate of suicide among women. Because under the strict regime, women are enormously restricted. Women who formerly had careers and so on are now unable to leave the house without religious restrictions.

[06:24]

And so this is disturbing to many, many people. Everybody also knows that in the province of Kosovo in Yugoslavia there is a lot going on. The Serbian minority in Kosovo has been trying to suppress a liberation movement by the Albanian majority. 90% of the people in that province are of Albanian descent. The Serbians are trying to quash that rebellion, and there have been many mass killings by the Serbians that have been documented. And we all know that this is very much in the news now. The international community is trying to bring pressure to stop these atrocities. But from the point of view of the Yugoslavian government, it seems quite unfair that the international community would be trying to do this. Since when the Russians tried to quash a rebellion in Chechnya, nobody threatened the Russians.

[07:33]

And when the U.S. was responsible for the loss of many lives, when it suppressed by assassination and warfare popular uprisings in Latin America and Asia, no one said the U.S. should be bombed for its sins in other countries. So from the Yugoslavian government point of view, they don't understand why they're the bad guys. This is, from their point of view, an internal issue. Right now, as we're sitting here together, there are the leaders of the Palestinian hopeful state, and the Israelis have been meeting to explore the possibility of another step in the peace process that's been going on for many, many years. But every time they try to get anywhere,

[08:40]

there's another terrorist attack, people are killed. And in Israel, there's a very strong right-wing religious party, many right-wing religious parties, who feel as if the West Bank territories have been ordained by God to belong to the Jews and cannot be given up to the Palestinians. And so they are threatening to withdraw from the government if Netanyahu would give up an inch of territory. Education is a very strong weapon in this war. Palestinian children, and in some of the Israeli communities, Jewish children are taught as an integral part of their religious training to hate members of the other side. For many communities among the Palestinians,

[09:40]

to be a Palestinian means, by definition, that you harbor a deep hatred against Jews. And in many parts of the Jewish community in Israel, the reverse is true. Maybe you read in the news a few weeks ago that a person, a diplomatic person, an American person who was in charge of the program of U.S. sanctions against Iraq quit his post in protest because he felt that the sanctions against Iraq were not destabilizing the Iraqi government at all, but instead were only having an enormous impact on the people of Iraq, particularly the children. And he estimated that because of these economic sanctions preventing the Iraqis from selling oil and so on,

[10:41]

about 6,000 children are dying each month in Iraq because of malnutrition and poor health care caused by bad water and lack of basic services as a result of the tremendous bombings in 1991 during the Gulf War. The U.S. also has had sanctions against Cuba for much longer than against Iraq because Iraq was our friend and ally. Saddam Hussein was a close associate of the leaders of the American government for many years before the events of 1991. Fidel Castro has been an enemy of the U.S. since the 50s and there have been economic sanctions against Cuba for all that time. And although Cuba is doing better than Iraq, there is a crushing poverty in Cuba

[11:45]

largely due to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba. I know you know all this, but I just thought it would be good to remind you of my story and myself. This summer I was in Guatemala. One of my sons is living there. In Guatemala there is, thank goodness, a tentative peace after about 30 years of on and off guerrilla warfare, disappearances and so on. In Guatemala there used to be a small group of wealthy landholders who were keeping everybody down, but that changed about 40, 50 years ago. Now there's a whole class of people in the army which is very repressive and there have been up to now military dictators

[12:47]

who came from the army to rule the country. That whole thing started in 1992 in 1954 or so, and this is not the opinion of wild conspiracy theorists, this is documented, proven, that in 1954, I think it was 1954, the CIA, American Central Intelligence Agency, participated in an assassination of a democratically elected popular president of Guatemala. He was killed and from then on... He was exiled. He was exiled? He left. He was tortured though, right? No. Taken out of office. No, he left. Yeah, thank you. Anyway, after that the army pretty much was in control and many of the officers were trained in the US

[13:51]

and supported by US dollars. This is the same story that happened in Chile, which we know more, I think is more well known. So these things were done by our government on our behalf, financed by tax dollars. And although you could read about these things in the newspaper, somewhere the convention of liberal journalism did not include much reporting about these events. So they were somewhat obscure to most people. Closer to home, in our own country, despite the strong economy, poverty and injustice is pretty common

[14:55]

and not often reported. A few years ago we had the Rodney King trial, which shocked a lot of people that the police would behave in this way, but many people were not shocked at all by that. Because there are a lot of American citizens of color who were quite aware all along that the police and the government are basically not their friends. And everybody repeats quite a lot that the percentage of US citizens in prisons is very high, higher than it was in South Africa during the time of the apartheid. And I don't have statistics at the moment, I don't remember, but we all know that the population in the prisons in the United States is expanding at a tremendous rate. And there are more bond issues on ballots

[16:03]

for building new prisons than there are for building new schools. Everyone also knows that in the prisons the overwhelming majority of the population is people of color. And the overwhelming majority of them are in prison directly or indirectly related to drug issues. And that drug issues in communities dominated by people of color are probably a result of poverty and racism. This is normal in America, we all know this is so, but we don't think of it as an outrage or something unbelievable. We think of it as pretty normal. It's lamentable, but it's pretty normal. Here in our own county, just a few miles from our peaceful Zendo here,

[17:05]

we have a very famous and large prison just down the road, in which many, many hundreds of people of color are suffering these injustices. And once in a while, on some evening, when we're enjoying ourselves or sleeping perhaps, one of those people is being executed, killed by the state for those crimes. Recently, not on the online service, but at a conference on youth health and youth, I found out that a high percentage of homeless youth on the streets of America are gay. And the reason why that is is because it's not unusual for a young gay person to be discovered

[18:09]

by his or her parents to be gay and then be kicked out of the home because of this and end up on the streets. And we all are aware of the recent story of this 21-year-old man in Wyoming who was pistol-whipped, killed, more or less because he was a gay person. At his funeral, I think yesterday, there was a sizable and very vocal group of people, anti-gay protesters, protesting the public outcry against this. So, again, I know that we all know all of these things, but it's important to bring them into our meditation hall

[19:14]

so that we can remember that this is our world. Not that this is the only thing that is our world, but these things are in our world. And when we sit in Zazen, we have to breathe in all of this world and accept it. And when we breathe out, we have to breathe out relief and peace and hope. Zazen is not an escape or a denial of the world we live in. It must be a profound love for that world and an acceptance of it, and the cultivation of a firm mind that wants to heal that world and a mind that is capable,

[20:15]

the cultivation of a firm mind that is capable of healing that world. Conditioned co-production is one of the cornerstones, concepts, of the Buddhist teaching. Conditioned co-production means that things arise not separately but always in cooperation with each other, that things co-produce each other, that in reality there are no separate things as we conventionally understand things. There is only the mutual arising of interrelated pattern moment after moment. Practically speaking, what this means, if we understand it, is that what happens in this world is always our sorrow and always our responsibility. And we have to make our mind and our heart big enough to see it

[21:21]

and to accept it, not as elsewhere or someone else, but as exactly our own breath. When we practice Zazen period after period, month after month, year after year, we see our own mind intimately. So much that we have been unaware of, so much that we have not wanted to acknowledge will come up eventually. And we will have to get used to the patterns of our egotism, of our greed, of our hatred, of our jealousy, of our fear. These things will be part of our meditation practice. And we get to see how persistent they are, how deeply rooted they are,

[22:26]

right in the middle of the person that we call myself. Lately I've been feeling that the point of Buddhist practice in a way, we could say, is transcendence. What I mean by that is that the point of our practice is not that we're trying to work on ourselves and improve ourselves exactly, rather we're trying to see through ourselves, to go beyond holding on to ourselves. But this cannot be done by leaping over ourselves somehow. Or by pretending somehow that we're not there, in the name of emptiness or nirvana or something like that. We have to know that we are me. Every one of us is me. I am myself. And this me

[23:29]

is exactly all of my confused and nasty mental states. This is deeply what me is. And if we're going to go beyond it, we must study it well. We need to breathe it in, and we need to breathe it out. We need to be aware of how it unfolds. We need to be aware of how common it is, how persistent it is. We have to learn how to appreciate that which we deeply wished was not there at all, that which we deeply wished we could avoid by practicing Buddhism. We have to learn to face and even appreciate. We are all deeply conditioned,

[24:33]

and human conditioning is a very ancient and a thorough matter. If you sit and look at your mind more and more, you will see that your mind isn't only your mind. It's your parents' mind. It's your parents' mind, your culture's mind, the mind of your racial group or of your gender. We all want to be free of these things, and in a way we are free of them already. Nevertheless, it is necessary that we see how it is that these things come up in our minds over and over and over again. And when you meditate at first, maybe you think you're going to go beyond this. You think that when you sit on the cushion, you're not a man or a woman or a white person or an African-American person. There's just breathing going on.

[25:35]

There's just thinking going on. So in some sense this is true, but also we have to appreciate there is still conditioning. And we are a man or a woman or a gay person or an Asian person at a much deeper level than we ever thought. We are bound to our conditioning. All of our own history and all of the history of oppression and confusion passes through our mind, passes through our life. In the present moment of our meditating mind stands all of the past. There is no way not to meet the past in the present moment. The true and complete present moment is not an escape from the past. It thoroughly includes the past in it. And we can see, we can know that the mind that arises now

[26:40]

is the whole history of our race, of our species, of our gender, of our family lineage. We can't escape our destiny. We can't escape our heritage. And it's true, as I'm saying, that Buddhist practice is a way out, but a way out doesn't mean a way around. It's a way through. And that means that each moment of our practice we have the chance to liberate all of what has happened. We have the chance to turn all of it around for the good. Every moment that chance arises and it's our work on the cushion and off the cushion to meet that moment. I think myself that it's a tremendous shock

[27:41]

to recognize all these things. It's a shock to realize that one is a human being, to recognize this is what it is to be a human being. If you are a human being, you know that you have a strong moral sense. We all have it. Because there is language, there is the possibility of understanding another. Because there's empathy, there can be remorse and sorrow. And where there's remorse and sorrow arises a strong need to be compassionate and helpful. At the same time, if you are a human being, you know that you are capable of great hatred, you are capable of committing great harm,

[28:43]

and you know that that capability is enormous and that it never leaves you and that you have to respect it. It makes you humble. Anything that anyone has ever done in this world, good or bad, you are capable of it. You will see this if you sit with your own mind long enough. The mind is like the great ocean. You can find everything in it. And there are places where it is immeasurably deep and unexplored. In our mind we see the human conditioning of greed, hate and delusion, which is the same for any of us. And we can see the force and power of history, which is different for different ones of us. We can see how history moves through us in the shape of our present mind.

[29:47]

We can see our personal history, the history of our family, of our gender, of our race. And we can see all of that working through our life right now. And then we will know that Pakistan or Vietnam or Apartheid or Kosovo or Latin America are just blood emblems of our own mind of suffering as it meets history. These are the things that happen. These are the things we must respect. These are the things we can't gloss over. These are the things we have to investigate, grieve over, understand, accept and dedicate ourselves to liberating. Only when we have appreciated this can we begin the real work. In classical texts of Buddhism there is a stage called

[30:53]

omniscience, a stage of practice called omniscience. Omniscience means that you see everything without exception. But omniscience is not a special effects superpower like clairvoyance or something. Omniscience means that you see all things in their true aspect, their fluid aspect of emptiness and interconnection. When you see one thing in its aspect of emptiness then you can see everything in that one thing. And each one thing is complete. So if you are a woman you can see everything in being a woman and you can see that being a woman is empty of any fixed reality.

[31:55]

If you are an Asian person you see that everything is included in being an Asian person but there is no fixed reality to being an Asian person. When we can see things like that we can celebrate and honor our own mind, our own conditioning. But we will need to diminish someone else. If you are an Asian person there is an African person in that. If you are an African person there is an Asian person in that. A Palestinian person who can appreciate the empty nature of being a Palestinian person, can thoroughly be a Palestinian person and can see that being a Jew is included in that. There is no need to hurt someone else

[32:59]

or diminish anyone else. The Buddha did not promise us that suffering would disappear and the goal of the path is not to go to heaven. As long as there is consciousness there is going to be some suffering. And in the human world there will always be the suffering of death and disasters that happen, suffering of loss, suffering of love that is unfulfilled, suffering of economic setbacks and all the many things one wants that one doesn't get. There will always be some suffering. But it is really not necessary that we hate one another or disrespect one another

[33:59]

or that we endlessly go on suffering the consequences of this in our world. This kind of suffering is made by people and it can be reduced by the wisdom and courage of my activity and your activity. Everybody is different from everybody else. We say that there are men and women, Africans, white people, brown people. But if we really get close to our mind, we men and women and Asians and Africans and white people and so on, we see that every person is more different than that. We see that really the closer in you get you see how little the general categories of this kind of person or that kind of person applies.

[35:01]

Because we are so different. So if you want to generalize, Asians are like this. If you look at two Asians, they are not the same way. If you look at two women, they are not the same way. Everybody is a different world. And then the difference, each one's difference, each one's uniqueness is an endless, endless depth. So when you really look at your mind at this level, you come to the bottom of the ocean. Dark. There's nothing you can say about who you are. You are completely a mystery to yourself. And you can see what a strange thing it is to be someone. What an oddity to think that one is someone, to speak about this world as though it were something,

[36:07]

to want anything, to find something or lose something. All of these things are very strange to contemplate. I think that if we all appreciated our mind at this level, it would be impossible for us to harm another or to hate another. We would know that we do not understand ourselves and that we do not understand one another, but this would not make us hateful or fearful. Instead, it would make us enormously curious and interested about one another and all the colorful strangeness of the human and the non-human world. And we would want to know everything about everybody and we would be amazed by every bit of it. This is how a little child is. They want to know everything about everything and they are amazed by it all. You have to teach a child to hate things and reject things

[37:12]

and say, these are the things I am interested in and this I do not want. This has to be learned. But it is not so hard to teach this to a child. Easily they learn this because they have the capacity to learn this. So we might ask, why is hatred such a common thing then? Why is it so natural to have this capacity to hate? Is it just something in our minds? Is it just something that we could easily meditate our way through? It seems that way when we talk about it. Why are people so intolerant? What is the matter with them? But it is not that simple. People hate one another for very good reasons, actually. Where there is hatred, there has always been wounding.

[38:13]

And where there is wounding, there is fear. People hate one another, not just out of the blue. Often they hate one another because they feel wounded by one another or they have wounded another out of their own woundedness. And everyone desperately needs satisfaction for their wounds and hurts. The Palestinians who hate Jews do not hate them for no reason. The root of their hatred may be in part blind prejudice, but it really is not fundamentally blind prejudice. They feel they have been wronged. They know that their families and friends have been killed, oppressed. In Ireland, I was just listening on the radio, the people from the IRA are not lunatics. They are operating out of hurt and pain and suffering.

[39:17]

So hatred is not some thing in the mind that will go away if we are nice. The hatred that we see in the world has strong roots and we have to respect that. We have to find those very roots in ourselves and vow not to act them out in our own lives and we have to do what we can to prevent others from acting them out. And mostly we have to understand and we have to have a long patience. We all want to practice in order to be more happy and that's a good motivation to practice. But as we go on we see that it's not possible to be happy by ourselves because when we walk the path of happiness

[40:24]

we come to see that our individual life is completely implicated with all other lives. Until we see that we do not have a life outside of all of life, we will always be dissatisfied, always be thirsting for more. If we practice thoroughly enough we will see that the only way to be happy ourselves is to embrace everything and everyone and to care about it. And caring means that we would suffer with everyone and try our best to understand the nature of that suffering. Dogen says somewhere we can only see as far as our eye of practice can reach. Any one of us has a limited view.

[41:28]

I have a limited view. That's why I turn on the online news to try to expand my view a little bit. That's why I talk to people and try to understand what they experience. We all have to do that. We all have to open up our view. Remember that our view is partial. We have to listen to others, open up our world. So that's what I have to say today. And I thought I would... I've been reading... Last time I was here I think I read a poem for you from Paul Celan. And I want to read another one that I think somehow feels in the same territory that I'm speaking. Paul Celan, as I mentioned last time,

[42:36]

survived the Holocaust and saw deeply the nature of these problems that I've been speaking about. The name of this poem is Plashes the Fountain. You prayer, you blasphemy, you prayer sharp knives of my silence, you my words being crippled together with me, you my hail ones, and you, you, you, you my later of roses daily worn true and more true, how much, oh how much world,

[43:38]

how many paths you crutch, you wing, we, we shall sing the nursery rhyme, that one, do you hear, that one with the hue, with the mun, with the human being, the one with the scrub and with the pair of eyes that lay ready there as tear upon tear. You prayer, you blasphemy, you prayer sharp knives of my silence, you my words being crippled together with me, you my hail ones, and you, you, you, you my later of roses daily worn true and more true, how much, oh how much world,

[44:40]

how many paths you crutch, you wing, we, we shall sing the nursery rhyme, that one, do you hear, that one with the hue, with the mun, with the human being, the one with the scrub and with the pair of eyes that lay ready there as tear upon tear. Okay, thank you. May our intentions be...

[45:42]

So this is the discussion period. Anybody wants to bring up something? It doesn't have to be about the lecture necessarily, but something about Dharma practice. Yes? Where is the line between understanding and resistance? If my neighbor tries to take my land or if another people tries to take the land of my people, how do I look at that? What is my posture? Yeah. I was talking to one of our students here on that very point this morning. So, one thing is, life isn't easy and it's not simple. So we know. But I am sure that it's possible to disagree or resist injustice

[46:47]

without being able to see without hatred. And my belief is that if you disagree or resist without hatred, in the long run your position is stronger, although it may not be so in the short run. Which means that if you are committed to being peaceful, you have to understand that you may lose sometimes. You may not be able to win your point of view or keep your land. That doesn't mean that you acquiesce in having it taken away from you. Sometimes you stand up and protest vigorously, but that can be done without hatred. So, in the end, I think peacefulness requires a kind of renunciation. So, in other words, that means you're taking my land. I understand you. I understand the reasons why, the causes and conditions of your doing that.

[47:49]

I'm going to do whatever I can to prevent that from happening. I'm going to use all my intelligence. I'm going to call all my friends. I'm going to do whatever I can to prevent that from happening. I probably will hate you in the process, but when I do, I'm going to be aware of that in my mind. I'm not going to try to emphasize that. I'm going to try to work with that and become peaceful as much as I can. I'm going to know that if you end up taking my land, that could happen. If it does happen, I'll have to give it up. But I try my best not to do that. That's how I feel. I'm also aware of the fact that, as I said before, my eye of practice only sees as far as it can see. And I haven't experienced tremendous injustices that have happened to people. So I can't say they're in the wrong for feeling the way they feel. It's easy for me to say these things. You see what I mean? That's what I was trying to say in my talk.

[48:50]

People who have hatred and resistance and so on, that's understandable. And we have to respect that. And not just say, oh well, they're just full of hatred. But I believe, my belief is, that it's possible to resist and oppose with strength, but without hatred. Anyway, that's an ideal that I work toward, and that I encourage others to work toward. Yes? Yes, a couple of days ago, as an Irish-American with a Scottish background, I'm very proud that two Irishmen were given the Nobel Prize. They let go of their hate, which has been going on for 800 years. And maybe Errol Sharon might get it a couple of years from now if they make a deal in the plantation. But I think that Gandhi died because he believed in something. And his death did create Pakistan. It created an example for us to have a Martin Luther King and other movements which led to a Mandala,

[49:53]

led to Rigoberto Menchú, who got a Nobel Peace Prize in Guatemala. And I think that the inspiration of people who believe in nonviolence and action has worked in this century. And Gandhi's death perhaps was essential. It's hard for us to accept it, because he was killed by two nationalists. But I think his death, he didn't defend himself by doing the kill. And he died because he was so sad about the division in his country and the millions being killed. And he felt responsible because he led the independence of India. But in a sense, it's hard for me still to accept his death, or Martin Luther King's death. But my impression is that these R.H. fellows who hated each other vigorously 10 years ago got the Peace Prize because they let go of hate. Yeah, no, I agree. It's funny because on the way over here this morning to give this lecture, I turned on the radio

[50:54]

and there were two women on the radio. This is the NPR. Two women on the radio who were... I guess there's a play, maybe you know about this. There's a play, I think in New York, where people who actually were in the IRA are putting on this play about their lives. And these were two women who had been in the IRA and now are embracing the peace process. So they were being interviewed. And one of the things they said, they basically said the same thing I said in my talk. They said, if we all just think that the people who were in the IRA were just deluded people overcome by hatred and that there weren't reasons why they were the way they were and did what they did, then the peace process will never work and we'll never understand. That's one of the points I was trying to make. And it's an amazing thing. When that happens, like in South Africa, South Africa has one of the most amazing things

[51:58]

that anybody ever did in the world, which is this reconciliation... I don't know what they call it, but they have a commission, a truth commission, I think they call it, right? Truth and reconciliation. Unbelievable. Can you imagine a government having a truth and reconciliation commission and willing to bring out the truth and forgive people? Unbelievable, you know? So when these things happen, after many, many years of tragedy and hatred, it gives us all hope. And I think that's the situation now in Ireland, we hope, if it continues. But yeah, no, I'm sorry if I implied that... that Gandhi was responsible for the tragedies or the partition of Pakistan or anything like that. No, I agree with what you said, that he wanted it to be one country, I think, and he wanted to love the Muslims, and that's why... And somewhere I read that... I forget what I was reading, but... Oh, I think I was reading some essays by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz,

[52:58]

who writes the most wonderful essays, if you ever have a chance to read them. I think it was he who said that, horrible as it is, and this is echoing what you just said, horrible as it is, it seems as if peace comes with... there's sacrifices. And when you think about... I mean sacrifice at this level, a sacrifice of a Gandhi, of a Martin Luther King, that seems to be what happens, that anybody who is working for peace at that level is at a tremendous risk. And often, that's how peace comes. Yeah, yeah, right, right. So, it's sort of terrible to think about that, but there's some truth to it. Yes, Martin? In the last couple of months, I've spent a lot of time watching the financial news online.

[54:00]

Yeah. And there's been tremendous turmoil all over the world. I know, I know. And I noticed that I was getting more and more tense, more stressed out. So, I just, like around a week ago, I realized this, and I hadn't even changed, so I started getting out more and going for a walk in the morning. You were sitting there that much, huh? I was walking all that stuff. And there's been a drastic change in just three days. I've just taken better care of myself. I've managed that. Before, I was so absorbed into it, I felt like it was my responsibility to be there just to see what's going on. But that stuff can really affect you tremendously. You should try an experiment, you know,

[55:01]

and give all your money to someone else to manage for a little while, or a certain amount of it. How about this? Give a certain amount of your money to someone else to manage, right? And then take the same amount of money and manage it yourself. And then see who makes more money. And then you can figure out how much it costs you. See what I mean? If you make more money than the other guy, and you have to pay the fees and everything, you can figure out how much it costs you. Then you can figure out how much peace of mind is worth. You know what I mean? So that would be an interesting experiment. You should try it as an experiment. You could always take the money back. And then what would it be like to log onto the Internet and read... see all the news, but you're not investing. Somebody else is responsible. You're not responsible. Would it be different to see the news if you...

[56:03]

You'd probably be calling the guy off. You should do another practice period, Martin. Jeff? I'm thinking from your talk, you said something about the hatred that grows out of the wounding, out of all the wrongs. I'm thinking kind of the flip side of that, the hatred that grows out of the fear of losing something. Because for every person that's wounded, or every group that's wounded, they're usually wounded by a group who is trying to protect something that they have. So there's the whole flip side of the fear of losing something. Yeah, I guess I thought about that. I guess I would say that our fear of losing what we have also comes from woundedness. Woundedness is so... According to Buddha, my interpretation would be woundedness is the condition of samsara.

[57:05]

And even if we can't say, these things happen to wound me, these traumas or tragedies, as long as we're in samsara, we're wounded, and therefore we're afraid, and therefore we're protecting already what we have never lost. And that fear is what causes all the grief. Yes? You know, today when you talk about the conditions in Chile, it arose something in me that it's a constant problem. Because here, in the United States, people talk based on things that they hear in the news. Yeah, I know. And it has nothing to do... The news has nothing to do with reality. And the reality in Chile, when everything happened, was one that is not known by people. And people always wanted to say that the CIA did all this, which is not the reality. And also leaves the Chilean like babas

[58:08]

that are just being manipulated by the CIA, which also is not the reality of what was in that country at the moment that these things happened. So, I have the situation whereby... Were you living in Chile at the time that this happened? Yes, I was there. Were you a young man, I guess? Pardon me? A young man at the time, yeah. So, without going on forever, could you explain your view of how that happened there? Number one, I voted for Allende. So, I was a socialist at that time. Belonged to a middle class, upper middle class. But I was a socialist, you know, studying Trotsky and everything, and going for it. So, Allende got elected by 33% of the votes because of the division of the country. And he said that he was going to expropriate only the crucial companies in Chile, like copper and things like that.

[59:09]

But he went ahead and expropriated 200 industries in the first year. So then, those industries started not making money because it was nationalized. It was not producing money. And by the second year, there was an inflation of 60% a month. 60% a month, you know, multiply it by 12, you get 700% inflation. So, you receive the money, and you have to go and buy things right away, because then afterwards, they're in value. So, what happened is that also, Allende started going into the judicial power, which is a separate power from the president, choosing judges and things, people that were of his side. And then, the country started going against that. And also, with the view that he was going to expropriate only

[60:09]

the top critical things for the country, but he went into the middle class. Because in Chile, truckers, you know, you get two trucks, three trucks, they're all independent people. So, he went really into the middle class. So, by the time that the coup happened, all the professional associations of Chile, they were on strike. So, no professionals were allowed to work. All the commerce was shut down. And the mines were also on strike. And then, what it did is that all the truck drivers, which Chile is a very long country, they shut down too. At the same time, you have the women of Chile were hitting pots at seven o'clock. You know, everybody at seven o'clock were hitting pots, protesting against the government. And also, they were marching in front of the house of the General Pinochet,

[61:10]

calling them bad names, because they were not doing something for the country. Not opposing Allende. Opposing Allende and saying, do something for this country, because we're completely paralyzed. So, my belief is that the CIA communicated the generals of all the different divisions in Chile to have, you know, because the CIA had ways of communicating without getting to be known. So, I think, and also, they gave the go-ahead of the president at that time, was Ford, that they would recognize the new president as a legal president if they take over. My belief is that with Ford, but I'm wrong. Okay. And so, then the strike happened. But, like I say, most of the country was paralyzed.

[62:12]

Yes, yes. And that is a reality. So, it's not that the CIA, you know, did all of this. Right. No, thank you for filling out the picture. And, yes, when you look at something close up, it's always a lot more complicated than, you know, the bad guys and the good guys, for sure. And yet, my belief is that the American government, let's put it this way, was operating in Chile when it had no business to be operating in Chile in the first place. And in the second place, I don't think that the interests of the American government were in the well-being of the people of Chile. I think that the American interests were operating into their own interests. Yeah, right, right. Now, who knows what would have happened if the Americans were uninvolved completely. It seemed as if President Allende was an intelligent man

[63:14]

and maybe he totally blew it. Perhaps he would have, we can imagine, he would have said, wow, this is not working. Pretty obvious. We have to reverse course. Now, maybe he would have been able to do that, maybe not, but what would have happened if he had had the time to do that? We don't know what would have happened. And it's not like, yes, it's not like these countries are sitting there and the CIA, we all know that the CIA is actually rather incompetent. We know that, you know, because they never figured out that the Russians were falling apart, you know. Or if they did, they didn't tell anybody, so they're either incompetent or they're not even telling their own government what's going on, or a combination of both. So we can't imagine that the CIA is in control if they're going to do this and they're going to do that and everybody's just going to... So it is complicated, yeah. So I appreciate, I didn't know, you know, all of that, so I appreciate that. Yeah, so here's another view, I think. We'll hear another view. Yeah.

[64:34]

No. So, yeah. So this is the trouble, you know. No, this is the trouble with... No, no, no, no, no. What I mean, the trouble is it's hard, when you look close, it's more complicated. Yeah, and of course, I don't know, I was quite aware of the fact that I was listing this whole litany of things, every one of which we could stop and we could say, let's look at this more closely. And I was sitting there thinking, I hope that nobody minds this because there's going to be somebody there who knows,

[65:37]

you know. But the point that I was trying to make that I think stands, regardless of all of this, is that because of misunderstanding, greed and a lack of an ability to empathize and be for others, these things happen. And we look at it, many years later, we can fight over what did happen and nobody really knows what happened. Certain things we can say are established facts, but even that, if we look real close to that, you know, I don't know how to establish those facts. I have a very close friend who was an expert on the assassination of John Kennedy. And he did research for many, many, many years on that. And I remember I would go talk to him, you know, over and over again and all this stuff. And I just came to the conclusion myself, that on some level, history is a mystery. You never are going to, even the established facts, if you want to spend enough time looking at them, there's doubt.

[66:38]

You know, so there's doubt about all this, but about our mind and about what hatred does, there's no doubt about that, I think. So, I appreciate your point. I think your point is well taken, that it's not correct to say, we can say that the CIA is entirely responsible for this or that happening. We can say that the CIA was not a force for good, and I think that's true. And I think we can be, I think as an American citizen, a person has to feel badly about that, has to feel like, this was done on my behalf, I was not aware of it, or I was aware of it and I didn't complain, whatever. I think we have to take responsibility for that, but we can't say it's so simple, you know. So I appreciate that. Did you hear on the news that Pinochet was caught having surgery in London? Yes. He was caught having surgery? What does that mean? He was found out. He's in a hospital in London for medical treatment,

[67:39]

and while there, he's been arrested for various crimes. In Spain. But eventually he will get his. Why was he, he committed crimes in Spain, Pinochet? He killed a Spanish citizen. In Chile? In Chile. I see. I see, yeah. Yeah, we should. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let's take a moment to breathe in all of this. No, really, let's settle with all of this, and then breathe out some peacefulness. And to remember that

[68:55]

although it's difficult, it is possible to act righteously in this world. It is possible, and there are examples of that. And that's what we have to try to do. You mentioned about the confusion about history, what actually happens. I'm reminded of Descartes saying history is a pack of agreed-upon lies. Yeah, which version of history do we want to believe in, you know? Who decided that history was what Pinochet did, you know? One of the things that now, you know, there's much debate about the nature of history, right? What people are seeing now, there's all these unknown and untold stories of history that need to be brought out. Yeah.

[69:57]

You mentioned something in your talk this morning about acceptance, and I'm curious how you reconcile our intentions of acceptance and understanding with action. Because to take action means we need to draw a line and choose a course of action. For myself, I've been living in Europe for the last two years, and I just returned this week, and I'm appalled at what's happening in America. I'm appalled on many levels, but especially being in Europe, where there's really, for me, my experience, a lot more political discourse, people talking about issues, people participating. In Switzerland, where I was living, 80% of the people vote in every election. 80-90%. It's considered

[71:02]

your responsibility. Here in this country, our electoral system is a joke. Even though polls indicate one thing, our representatives are doing something else. And so I find myself in this position of great pain. Position of great pain trying to continue my work in the world, but feeling like I'm called to be involved politically at a different level, even though that's not my chosen identity. And the slang of the man last week in Wyoming and the response to that

[72:02]

on one level is heartening, and on another level, for me as a gay man, is very discouraging. Because I've seen more and more how as things get more and more difficult on the economic level in this country, we are the new scapegoats. The Christian right has been setting us up and, for example, Reverend Phelps, who goes to the deaths of anybody who dies of AIDS. His people go to the deaths, the funerals of people who die of AIDS and picket with God hates fags. He's been doing this for years. What I want to know is why the religious community in this country has not condensed. I want to know why the Baptist church that he represents has not defrocked him. I mean, that level of intolerance and hatred

[73:06]

for me that we accept is absolutely outrageous. And I feel afraid for my life in this country. I feel afraid for my life and at the same time I know that it's not in my best interest to hide out. That if anything, I need to step forward and be part of that larger discourse. Yes, I accept that those are all parts of me. I accept that the intensity of Reverend Phelps' passion is also my passion. We're in different places but what I cannot accept is endangering lives and hatred is directed at all people.

[74:07]

Yes, thank you for saying the things you've said. In a way, what you're bringing up is very much like the question we began with. Does acceptance mean non-action, acquiescence, passivity? And as I said earlier, I don't think that it does. I think acceptance is something that happens in a very profound effort that we make simply to recognize that this is our world. This is the world. It is this way. And I think that in order for us to sustain our action of protest against some of the ways the world is, over a period of time, we have to be peaceful in order to sustain it. And we can act strongly even though we have this feeling. Now, I went to an event not too long ago

[75:13]

where a youth coalition, international youth coalition, and they had a speaker there. I wish I could remember the man's name, but he stood up on the stage and took a very... Actually, my talk today was in a way a response to that man's talk because he stood up on the stage in a very aggressive stance and he said something like, well, maybe people here are trying to be peaceful, but he said, I don't want to be peaceful. I want to promote conflict because I think that there is a lot of bad things going on and I don't think that peacefulness is going to help. I think we have to promote conflict and get out there and shake things up. And he said, and I'm not peaceful and I don't want to be peaceful. And he said many things that were very powerful about things that are going on and things that we don't even know about and don't inquire about and why aren't we inquiring and so forth. You can imagine all the things. And so I was very moved by his talk

[76:19]

and it gave me pause. I would never argue with him. I understand him and I understand where he's coming from. I can only say that for me in my practice, in my life, I can't promote conflict as a way of acting in the world against these things. It's just not a path that I can walk at this point in my life. But I could understand his passion and I want to be a person who can hold hands with him and I want him to be a person who can hold hands with me because we both want the same things. We both want justice and peace. And I think that the biggest tragedy would be for me to condemn him and for him to condemn me. But he needs to say what he has to say and I think I need to say what I have to say. I can't do otherwise and neither can he.

[77:20]

So yeah, I understand. One thing, this is a little aside, but I got something on the... You know how you get all these forwarded messages on the Internet? I got a message from Michael Moore. Not personally, but it was forwarded to me. Did any of you get this message? I think I sent it to you actually. I sent it to a bunch of people because I forwarded it. And the message said something like... Michael Moore is this guy who made the movie Roger and Me and other movies. He said something like, I didn't even vote for Clinton in 1996. I'm so disgusted with him. Him and all the Democrats, they never stand up for anything and they're just like the Republicans warmed over and they're not in favor of the things I'm in favor of, he was saying. He said, but I'm so mad that the polls, just like you were saying, the polls say we should go on with business and they're saying we should impeach the President. I'm so mad about that that I'm actually going to vote.

[78:25]

I wasn't going to vote. I'm going to go vote and I'm going to vote the straight Democratic ticket and get rid of these guys. Even though I don't like the Democrats, I'm just so outraged that that's what I'm going to do. And so he wrote that email message and is spreading it all over the country and I sent it to a whole bunch of people all over the country and some of them wrote me back and they said they already got it from somebody else. So I actually thought, I hate to, I actually have to confess that I don't mind expressing my political views. I have my own opinions. But I really hate to do that sitting in the Dharma seat. But I don't want to do that because I really feel like people are coming here and they need something else from me and from us. So I hate to say it, but I'm going to do that. I'm going to do what Michael Moore said. And he said, everybody's counting on the fact that we'll all stay home.

[79:28]

And then the 25 to 30 percent of the population will elect all the Republicans and all this stuff will go on. It's not going to amount to anything anyway except for a tremendous waste of time. But I think it would be, never mind about what you believe or what you care about, but wouldn't it be an astonishing thing if they had this election and all the Democrats won and all the Republicans lost? It would be like so incredible. Just as a piece of theater, never mind the politics of it. It would be extraordinary. And so I think that would be a nice thing. But like I say, who knows, the people, you all sitting here, who knows what you think or what you believe. I think the important thing that I want to communicate to you and I want you to be able to hear from me is about the Dharma. That's why if I say, vote for so-and-so, you might not be able to hear about the Dharma. That's why I hate to say that. If I sit down off the seat and you find me somewhere else, I'll tell you exactly what I think and I'll tell you who to vote for

[80:29]

if I know, which I probably won't know. But in this role and in this seat, I don't feel right about doing that, so I want to be clear about that. Nevertheless, I wanted to report about what Michael Moore said, so I did. So there's something to be said for promoting conflict and anger and it's a very, very fine line. It really is, because nothing more natural than to be peaceful and to value peacefulness and to accept and value acceptance and to acquiesce and not notice. There's nothing more natural than that. And that's why I give a talk like the one I gave today. That's why I do it. I was saying to Jeff, I'm not that well informed, I'm not that political, but I feel that to keep myself honest and all of us honest, I have to give a talk like this once in a while just so that we remember that it's not all about... And I said in the talk, I said, I like to be peaceful

[81:30]

and we all like to be peaceful, but there are times when value is more important than being peaceful. That doesn't mean that we indulge in hatred and aggression because I feel like, in the end, hatred and aggression is always a losing proposition. And if we hate our enemy, then they're going to hate us back and it's going to go on and on and on. I think we do have to be, in the end, we have to go beyond hatred. But I appreciate all that you say and I also am very well aware of the fact, as I said before, that it's easy for me. I don't feel at this moment threatened where I can understand that you would. And so your passions are aroused in a different way than mine are. And I appreciate that. Yeah, okay. The Michael Moore email is basically along that line. I haven't seen it, but that's basically what I sat down Friday morning and did. You sent emails too?

[82:31]

I sent emails. It's like, use the power of this free technology to reach as many people as I can, basically saying, yes, I don't agree with the Democrats. I'm not happy that Clinton sold many of us out. And we need to do this. This is just the first symbolic step in the work that needs to happen. I think it would be good just to make the statement that business as usual is no good. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between anger and hate or are they really the same thing? Well, this is a tricky matter to define psychological states and terms carefully. So, I make a distinction between... I define anger this way. I define anger as being an intention to harm another. That's how I define anger.

[83:33]

And I make a distinction between anger and the energy, the energy that one applies for the good. And I think that when we use the word anger we don't make that distinction usually. And because we don't make that distinction it's difficult to figure out how to practice with anger. So, I think there's nothing wrong with having a very powerful energy come through you, like we heard from you a moment ago in your remarks, a powerful energy. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and there are times in which this is absolutely necessary. However, I think one has to check oneself to see that the source of that energy is not an intention to harm. So, given those definitions we could say that anger is always negative, which is traditionally taught in Buddhism, that anger is always negative. But you really need to understand anger in that particular way

[84:35]

in order to agree with that perspective. So, anyway, that's what I feel. So, in that sense, anger and hatred are really always go together. Now, the thing is that we're not perfect. So, it's not that I'm not saying, well, now you have to wait until you have absolutely no intention to harm another before you can act. It's like saying, we'll be politically active when we're enlightened until then sit on your cushion. Actually, sometimes I say that to people. I mean, if somebody comes here to practice full-time residential practice, sometimes I say to them, forget about the world for now and just, you have something to do here that requires you to let go of that for now. So, sometimes I do say that. But I don't say, wait until you're enlightened fully that might take a while. So, that means what I'm saying is

[85:38]

that we may notice that we have strong energy to do something and we may notice that we have, along with that energy, an intention to harm or a dislike and hatred of another. We still may have to act. But if we're clear that there is that intention in us and if we're clear that that's the intention that will lead to suffering and that that's the intention even though we have to act now and our action is going to be complicated by that intention, we're clear what that intention looks like and feels like and that that's not the intention that's going to further our deepest wishes, then we go ahead. And we try our best in the process to purify ourselves of those feelings, because it's not going to be perfect. You have to be a saint, basically. You have to be a saint to be able to go into the world like Gandhi was a saint or Martin Luther King was a saint in some way, to be able to go into the world with tremendous energy and not without hatred. That's really hard.

[86:39]

So we can't expect that we're going to be able to do that, but at least if we know that's what we're trying to do and we look inside ourselves with honesty, then I think that's pretty good. And that's what we have to do. Because I know I was very politically active when I was young and it ate me up alive. And I could not continue because of fear and anger and hatred. And that's when I began practicing because I saw that I could not sustain the lunacy of my point of view and my way of being. So I had to find another way. So that's how I look at it. Because we get a lot of discussions about this point. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious. What you just said, all these points of views you had and notions when you were younger,

[87:40]

I mean, I guess you were conditioned to react in a certain way by practicing and it just dissipated over time? Well, on the one hand, on the one hand, I could say practice really does make our lives different, otherwise we wouldn't do it. That's true, I think. And I could probably say my life is different now than it was 25 years ago. But first of all, I'm not even sure that that's true. And if it is true, who knows why it's different? Is it because I practiced Dharma? Is it because I got older? I don't know. I don't really know. I wouldn't say, yes, because I practiced so diligently, now I'm different in this and this way. I don't really know, I'm just trying my best now.

[88:43]

That's all I know. Could you say a few more things about dealing with anger for people who aren't full-time and for people who don't practice all the time, and yet from anger comes up frequently in dealing with difficult people in difficult situations. I hate to say this, but you have to practice all the time. Practicing full-time is the only way to practice. There is no other way. That doesn't mean you have to live here or be a monk or something. But actually, if you think that you can practice part-time and do any significant work with anger, forget it. It won't work. You really have to be a full-time practitioner. The best way to work with anger is to have a feeling of studying anger,

[89:54]

to recognize that anger is a very difficult emotion to have, very unpleasant, very harmful to oneself. It causes much unhappiness. And then, if you know that much, and a lot of people don't know that much, you can get quite habituated to anger. There are people who are habituated to anger. It's just like dangerous drugs. People are habituated to dangerous drugs, even though their very body is wasting away and being destroyed by cocaine or heroin, they're still using it. And they're going to great lengths to get it. People are like that with anger, too, sometimes. But if you have come to the place where you recognize that anger is harmful to yourself, then the thing that you need to do is study anger. Be very meticulous with yourself and watch what happens when you get angry. What are the conditions that bring about anger?

[91:00]

What are the results of anger in your life? How does anger feel in the moment of being angry? How does your body feel? How is your mind? What kind of thoughts are associated with it? And once you study anger very thoroughly and study the effects of anger in your life, if you do that thoroughly enough, you will see, I believe, this is what I have seen, that anger is not useful for one's true purposes in life. And so then you develop an experiential intention, not because someone told you, but because you figured out on your own, by your own experience, that you really would like to find another way. And then by the sheer practice of awareness with that intention, in other words, I really don't want to be victimized by my own anger anymore. It just isn't good for me. I really don't want it. And I know that. I'm not just feeling that way

[92:01]

because someone told me to. I really know that. When you have that intention and you practice full time and look at your anger honestly, what happens is the anger gradually dissipates in your life. Because anger arises because of your own action. We think that it's the other person who did something and made us angry. You made me angry. That's never true. You never made me angry. You did something and I made myself angry. I became angry because of conditions in my life. But when you start reducing the conditions in your own life that make you pre-set up to be angry at someone else's action, then you don't get as angry. And then little by little the fires of anger die down and it's more rare in your life. So it's a gradual process. There's no secret thing that you do. Gradually you can become less angry

[93:01]

and your temper can become less strong. And yet you can still have energy for your life and energy to do things. Take the energy of anger and turn it around, in other words. So you have to see. Work with it and see. But, like I say, you can get another view. You can find somebody who will say, anger is good. who can say, anger is good. You can get another view.

[93:31]

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