Welcome to everyone, especially everyone who braved the dark, windy road at night coming to Green Gulch. My name is Meg Levy, and I live here at Green Gulch. And we're very happy to welcome Dr. Ariadne of Sri Lanka and Sardovia, along with Walter Link and Wendy Johnson, and of course, Abbot Steve Suki. And Steve, in a moment, will give a more formal introduction of our guests. but he asked me just to say a little bit about how this event came to be. And I met Walter not so long ago, but we wanted to find something that we could do together. And he mentioned that Dr. Ari was going to be visiting and said, well, maybe he could come speak at Green Gulch. And I remember that we were able to host Dr. Ari with Joanna Macy here a number of years ago, and it was quite a wonderful visit. So I said, well, maybe so. And with Steve's help and everyone at Green Gulch, it's happening. And I've had the pleasure to be able to spend some time with Dr. Ari and Walter over the past week, listening to the work they're doing together on Buddhist economics and social transformation and what true leadership is.

[01:08]

And I am deeply inspired by their vision and their work. So I'm very happy that they are here and that you are here. And we hope you enjoy the evening. Thank you, Meg. Sometimes in Zen it's said that Zen is two things, sitting, zazen, meditation, and tending the garden, any size. And so I think we do have some awareness or attention paid to the notion of taking the practice of Buddha Dharma from our sitting cushion into activity, tending the garden, whether it's a temple garden or something more extensive.

[02:09]

So here tonight we have some people who are experienced in tending big gardens in many ways. So I'm very happy to be here Wendy Johnson, many people know, was here at Green Gulch for 25 years, literally taking care of the garden, and also taking care of her own inner garden, which then eventually produced the book Gardening at the Dragon's Gate. And then she just told me that she just co-edited the new issue of Inquiring Mind, which is entitled Transformation. So this is hot off the press. Wendy continues to surprise me. And she was here with Joanna Macy a few years ago when Dr. Ari visited. And then I just met Walter Link a few, well, a couple of weeks ago when we were planning this event.

[03:18]

And I know he said, well, He's working on a book together with Dr. Ariadne, and so maybe we'll hear a little bit more about that. And then I just met Dr. Ariadne earlier today, but I've heard of him, of course. I've heard of him for many, many years, starting this whole movement of taking Buddhist values into the villages of Sri Lanka, where he where he grew up. So as I understand it, the sarvodaya means awakening for all. And the shramadana part, sarvodaya, shramadana, is awakening for all and making an effort. So an actual practical effort to foster that awakening. So he's been a champion

[04:21]

for decades, starting in the 50s. And I just today went on the Sarvodaya website, which it's very easy to remember because it's www.sarvodaya.org. And I learned that there's a particular crisis that's been going on in Sri Lanka for the past, well, since early this year because of the ongoing violence, conflict, which really came from this whole post-colonial era in Sri Lanka. For those of you who may realize that Sri Lanka and India were colonized by the British. And so I think some of the suffering there is following from the whole colonial empire. But anyway, without further ado, I just want to present Dr. Ariadne with one question. To start off with, if you would tell us something about how you understand the Brahma Viharas and their relationship.

[05:32]

This is a Buddhist audience, maybe, and they'll understand the Brahma Viharas and how you understand them in applying to your whole movement. Okay, please. I think your microphone should work right here. Let's try that out. Thank you very much. I'm so happy to be here for the second time. Most of the time I spend in the garden, big garden of Sri Lanka, where 20 million people lived. Out of the 20 million, maybe a few hundreds were maybe very mischievous because they could not understand that we are human beings and we can live as one family.

[06:38]

Because of that, there are political conflicts which grew up into a big internal war. Several thousands were killed, and many more became homeless. And after 30 years of bloodshed, this war came to an end. On the 18th of May, with the government of Sri Lanka getting a military victory over terrorists or what they call armed groups who were fighting for a separate land. So before the war, as well as after the war, I, as one of those gardeners who don't believe in chemical fertilizers,

[07:46]

or any violence to any plant even had to go around professing non-violence and trying to get them to give up arms both sides and try to come to terms and then build peace in our country. So while going out everywhere I find sometimes whenever I get a chance to go to a spiritual retreat, wherever there's a spiritual center, I go there and get myself energized. So after working very hard for two weeks, when I came here, I got a new energy because when you sit down here, when you meditate, that energy you create reaches every living and non-living element.

[08:50]

So it creates a certain spiritual environment which ennobles anybody entering it. So thank you, therefore, for being able to enter that spiritual atmosphere. Buddha wanted us to elevate ourselves to the level of more evolved beings called brachmas. You know that we have the animal kingdom and we have the humans. Above humans we believe that there are devas and brachmas. But all these can change their status and even a brasama can come down, become a human being.

[09:58]

But brasamas are supposed to be the ones who have the highest joy of living. Therefore, Buddha taught us, try to practice these four virtues called metta, loving-kindness, karuna, compassion, udita, detached, discretionary joy, and upekha, equanimity. We learned these four words, prakma-viharyas, when we were children. Similarly, we learned so many other teachings of the Buddha by sometimes memorizing them in Pali stanzas. But outside the home or the temple, the broad world was built in a different way.

[11:07]

Being a colony for 450 years, we had lost our spiritual roots and the colonial masters always said religion is for the next world and not for this world it's okay you're practicing your religion in your temples and mosques or co-wills but don't bring it out into political or economic or social life now as we grew up, we understood this is all wrong. Buddha's teaching is not only for the next life, but more for this life. And one of those teachings was the Brahma Vikaras. So as a young teacher, myself and several other young men and women who were in the teaching profession, we gave a meaning to

[12:12]

which was of very practical significance to the country. The country where about 80% of the people were living in rural areas, where about 45% of the children recently, not those days it was much less, are suffering from malnutrition. And when people don't have clean water to drink, or enough water for the agricultural work, because the tanks are breached during ancient wars, and most of the development work at that time, when we started this work 50 years ago, was done in cities, and the objective was to make every village a kind of urban community, which they could not achieve in any way because they did not have the resources.

[13:19]

But our village life was like here. It was so good, so peaceful, so nonviolent, so close to nature, much easier to probe, go into the inner life to the mind and purify the mind. But that was not the kind of development that took place outside. Naturally, in the educational system, administrative system, economics, all these sectors, what prevailed was something very artificial, something very materialistic, which had no spiritual content at all. So as school teachers and students, We decided to see whether we could practice these four principles in rural areas, Pueras villages.

[14:21]

We went to those villages, but before going, there were training programs held. We taught children. They were teenagers. 16, 17, 18, 19, that age group, we told them learn meditational practices. Not necessarily going into vipassana straight away, but learn to use your mind to relax your body. Scan your body with your mind. Anapanasati, meditation on breathing in and out. Try to build concentration. Try to build in a relaxed body and a relaxed mind, loving kindness towards oneself and towards all the others.

[15:32]

Metta. try to extend this loving-kindness to include the entire living world. Always think, may my mind be peaceful, may my society be peaceful, may the environment be peaceful. So having taught these children meditation, then several other words of conduct which we have to follow when we go to a community. Tell them, we are going to this community. As you enter the community, as you see the people, even before talking to them, extend your loving kindness to all of them. These are good people. May all these people be well and happy in their body and mind.

[16:37]

We are going to live with them for one whole week. During that week, we should look at all these elders in the village as our parents, our elders. Look at youngsters in this village as our young brothers and sisters. Look at everybody as members of one family. Don't look into their caste, race, religion, nationality or any such divisive factor. Look at them as living beings with a body and a mind. The body consisting of hardness, liquidity, heat and air in space. The mind consisting of receiving impulses, receiving messages from outside to the eyes, nose, ear, tongue, body and the mind itself.

[17:48]

So this mind which has contacts, sensations, perceptions, Volations and finally consciousness is also common to all these people. We are one when we look at our very fundamental physical and mental makeup. Thinking of those things as you get down from the bus, walking up to the village, extend that kind of loving-kindness. We have come to this village to construct ten wells because people do not have clean water to drink. We are going to gift our labor and join with the village people, build self-reliance and community participation in them

[19:02]

so that we could dig wells and then later, of course, they can be built up to provide the people with clean water. When you do that physical work, remember, you are translating that loving-kindness which you developed in your minds and hearts into compassionate action. That is what Buddha meant by karuna. When you do that, every time remember that you are getting the joy of living every moment. This well you are constructing may not give water to you, you do it and you go away. But these people use it forever. And every time you think that, To a group of people who had no clean water to drink, I have contributed my effort to provide that water, you get a dispassionate joy.

[20:16]

That is mudita. Mudita is not only looking at a rich person. I can't do that. Looking at a rich person, knowing very well that he amassed that wealth by exploiting millions of people or killing people, I cannot. develop mudita. Whoever says they can, I can't. I have that weakness. But I don't hate him. I don't dislike him. It is karma. He will, whatever he has shown, he will reap. But for me, to get joy of that mudita, detached joy, I must have, I should contribute something. which is not going to benefit me at all externally. Then when you do this work, there are more critics than admirers. A contractor will come and see that he was denied the opportunity to make some money out of digging ten wells.

[21:30]

So they would come and say, why don't you give us the money you have collected? And then we would have done it. And without your sweating, like this, working very hard, six to eight hours a day for seven days, we could have done it with a machine. Without all this trouble. Then of course, one of our Youngsters, a clever boy, would turn around and say, Sir, yes, it's possible to do it that way, but that way will not give any joy of living for us, any mudita. It has joy to us. It will not give us any education because machines don't have brains. Here when we work together, we begin to appreciate one another's strengths and weaknesses. Maybe a child is working with us. So we are very careful that the child does not get injured while working.

[22:35]

And the whole mother is working with us. And we are not expecting her to put in as much labor as we can. If she tries to lift us big stone, we will run there and say, Mother, you wait, we will do it. So we are learning. to cooperate with one another, appreciate one another's weaknesses and strengths and all that. So this is an educational process for us. They will say the contractor who blames them. And somebody else will come and say, oh, what great people. They are Bodhisattvas. That fellow may not know the meaning of a Bodhisattva. But maybe we tell our children, remember, we have a Bodhikitta. Buddha was not a creator God. Buddha didn't say, I am Mahabrahma. Buddha had been Mahabrahma many times. But that was not the end.

[23:36]

He was again reborn. So Buddha put an end to the cycle of births and deaths. So he said, if you strive hard, if you fulfill the paramitas, perfections, you can become a Buddha. That germ, that little seed is there in your heart, bodhicitta. So what we are doing is bodhicarya. When we go like this and practice beneficence, practice morality, practice detachment or renunciation, practice right effort, and so on. We are practicing aramitas. So we will tell him, thank you for praising us.

[24:37]

But we are not getting elated by that praise. We are becoming more humble. In New Delhi in 1992, I was given the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award by the government of India. And the entire parliament was there. Present and former prime ministers were there. Almost all the diplomats or ambassadors in Delhi were there. And with the president and the prime minister, I was seated on the stage. my wife and other people who went were there. Here I was given very high honor, the highest ever in Asia. Now immediately I thought of my own imperfections.

[25:39]

I thought I'm not going to get in any way mentally elated by this recognition. Because when the president was giving it, when the citation was read, I looked at the feet of people seated in front of me, I equated myself to dust under their feet. Then here, a lot of money, enough money, for generations of the R.A. Ratla family. That check. So I thought, now if I use one cent out of this, I'm not fulfilling the Narma, because so many millions work with me, for which this recognition is given.

[26:41]

True, it's given to me, but I don't deserve it. Everybody should get it. So immediately when this was handed over to me, I decided, oh, here is a serpent. Very, very poisonous serpent who can kill me. Right? So immediately I decided I had two and a half acres of land in my name. That's all I had. I thought that will built itself into an international peace and meditation center. Walter Link had seen it. So within two, three years, working with other people, and I formed a trust, gave all this money and land, and today, whenever you come, there's a meditation center

[27:47]

You can stay there and meditate as long as you want. Just like here, vegetarian food, nothing, not a single plant has got any fertilizer, any kind of, not even natural fertilizers. I thought, if nature had given rise to so many natural forests, why not this? So I didn't know any... formal agriculture, scientific agriculture. So I told people, you had better, in these places I mark, you had better make the forest or whatever necessary, because physically I wouldn't have done it alone. Planting I do. There I was a little bit selfish, for this reason. I went to the sacred Bodhi tree, under which Lord Buddha attained enlightenment.

[28:53]

And I managed to get a sapling. I brought it and planted it right to the center of the farm, the meditation center. And a Buddhist monk who knew the art, he gave me the design for the protection of that. And then I planted every plant I could get from so many parts of the country. Looking at the Bodhi, I worshipped the Bodhi, and said, Buddha, I'm offering this plant to you. Hundreds and thousands of plants were planted. Only one died. Maybe I didn't get the correct plant. All the others are thriving. So in a barren, empty place, which was a marsh, where there was only one tree, today you can see a forest and people can't believe in a city like Molotov where I am living, you have such a place.

[30:00]

So there, for meditation, unborn children come. Can you believe it? Children yet to be born, that is pregnant mothers come. with their husbands, once in two weeks. Generally, we get about 50 cuppas every fortnight. They come, they sit down, they practice these four Brahma Viharas meditation, and they learn to communicate with the child while the child is still in the mother's womb. four people are involved, one a gynecologist who tells her mother how, from the medical science point of view, how to look after herself and the baby, and also husband being present to him also.

[31:01]

Then environmentalist who is teaching both the pregnant mother and the husband how to deal with the environment, how to listen to the sounds of birds and plants and all that. Music, call it a singer. All the lullabies are taught because children sometimes who hear these things while still in the mother's womb, after they are born, several months or so after, they begin to sing a part of this and tell, Mother, what is the other part? You see, the human, we all believe rebirth, but nothing like experiencing this kind of thing. So at least out of 5,000 cases, there may be one or two revealing that kind of things. Then, meditator.

[32:07]

meditation teaches how to get connected. So in that place, from unborn children to teachers, students, community leaders, now immediately after I go, I think on the first, thank you, the commissioner of prisons and his staff come to learn meditation, practice one whole day because for the last so many years we got down prisoners but this time they come because they wanted themselves again to get something like a refresher course Then I go there on the 16th of next month and all 6,000 prisoners come and sit in the open air and they meditate together.

[33:26]

Beginning of that was extremely difficult. Imagine a person who is on the death row This door opens and he has to come in a meditation and walk to the place where we are going to have the mass meditation. But to that extent, we have succeeded. But the point is, all this is fine. Good work. But the problem is so vast. Garden is so much polluted. We have to work very, very hard So we have to get more and more people entering this service with the right kind of heart, right kind of objective of enriching their bodhicitta. So Satara Brahma Viharana is a teaching we used that way originally the certain theoretical non-practicing monks.

[34:34]

used to be ridiculous. Then a few very erudite, very saintly-educated monks, like the famous German monk, whose writings will be there even in your center, he wrote to me saying that this is the correct way to do it, apply it socially. Buddha's teaching will not be that effective if we do not bring it to the social, economic, and political life and see that they have clean economics, clean politics, and other kinds of education and health with the Buddhist foundation. So this is very briefly what we practiced. Thank you.

[35:39]

That was a wonderful response to one question. Let me give the microphone to Walter for a commentary and what you'd like to tell about your work with Dr. Ari. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank you that I can wear my cap. I know that this is a great breach of protocol. But what I learned from my... best teachers is that form has to follow content and usefulness. And since I got a little sick traveling around and having many of these talks with Ari, I think that this is hopefully okay and in the spirit of healing. Yeah, so we went to many different kind of places and so For example, yesterday and before yesterday, we spent with many different students at UC Berkeley in the Center for Developing Economies and then with the Rotary Peace Fellowship and then with a class on conflict resolution and peace work.

[37:00]

And the question that comes up there, of course, is why is inner work useful. Is that really necessary to do this kind of work of developing economies, addressing poverty, working with war, working with conflict, working with environmental degradation, et cetera? And then we, of course, also spend time at the Buddhist Center in Berkeley and yesterday at Spirit Rock with Jack Cronfield. Now here, and maybe to some practitioners, the question is, is work in the world really necessary? I think we have come a long way as an inner work community. Myself have been part of both sides of that discussion for 30 years.

[38:02]

And one of my great joys in life is that what was very separate 30 years ago is much more integrated now. So I think that actually many people in the inner work community understand that practice is useful and important, but I think there is still a lot to be learned about how to actually integrate it, to not just do both, but to do it as one thing. as we discussed yesterday at Spirit Rock, you could say that sitting meditation, which of course has its own purpose of self-realization, is also a practice. And from the perspective of the practice of life, it is really only the practice for life. And the real meditation of life happens in life and is

[39:05]

much more challenging as we know. It's harder to be a mother or father or run an organization or be a peace activist or politician or even a gardener or running actually a monastery rather than sitting in it and integrating the depths of realization into every action, to every moment. And I think we are really Learning that, maybe that's the most challenging of discoveries of being a human being, is to fully integrate realization and actualization. And that's really what made me say yes when Ari recruited me. We had just met in New York. He had read a book of mine or part of it called Leadership is Global, which is... actually the work of 22 co-authors from around the world that are all working in societal and organizational transformation.

[40:15]

Different kind of what we call also leadership work, whether it's conflict work or working in companies or non-profit organizations or as governments are in between those sectors to optimize the processes that help us to work together and live together and function and build a healthy and sustainable world. So we wanted to bring views from all over the world, from different countries and cultures and different genders and generations and different streams of work and different disciplines, because I think nobody holds the understanding of what works. This is really a totally different age in which we will either win together or lose separately. So these profound spiritual teachings, whether they're Buddhist or from the various Buddhist traditions, which as you know can be quite different, or other spiritual and psychological and philosophical traditions,

[41:35]

I think, are very important inspiration. And at the same time, I think they can be profoundly inspired and deepened by facing the needs of working in the world. And that's really what we are doing together, is to explore how even an organization like Savodia that already functions... beautifully in many ways and has done great work, how the understanding of inner work practice can be even more deeply integrated into the functioning because there too, for example, there's a big microcredit bank which takes microcredit many steps further, I think, than normal microcredit institutions and that it's not you know, one bank handing out loans to many individuals, small entrepreneurs, but actually they're creating village banks where the people was in the village in a way lend to each other and then support each other to create the enterprises.

[42:47]

And it's a very innovative and powerful development scheme. And of course it really builds community and really helps people to live in a very real way with each other because as we know it's one thing to say hi to somebody it's something else to lend the money and to work together to co-create an enterprise so in a way it's a profoundly spiritual undertaking in that it forces people to live together wisely but the people who are working in these organizations are not necessarily thinking of themselves as spiritual practitioners. I mean, they do some meditation maybe, or they have some background in Buddhist teaching, of course, having grown up in a predominantly Buddhist country. But for them to discover how to run a micro-credit bank and how to be in this interaction in a profoundly dharmic way is also a discovery.

[43:58]

And it's important not to idealize people around the world that just because they're Southern or they're poor or different, they never necessarily have understood it all. So I think the wonderful thing in working with Savodhya is the desire, the deep desire to cooperate and to really learn together how it can really work. to live a spiritual life and to run an organization spiritually in a real way and to support a society to recognize the value of this integration of inner work and outer work. So that fits well with work that I do in other places around the world where, for example, working with a bank in Europe, and the bank is only lending to sustainable projects or companies or organizations.

[45:09]

And so their commitment is very deep to sustainability. But then the question is, what's sustainability? Is that only doing something that is good for the environment? Does it include social sustainability? What does that mean for my relationships? Is there such a thing as sustainable relationships? How do I treat myself? Am I working 14 hours a day, neglect my family and my relationships just because I'm so busy giving out sustainability loans? And do I have a profound relationship with my heart? and my mind and my spirit, or however we want to call it, so that that connection to presence and to emptiness is sustained from moment to moment. So that organization too, even though it's a bank, realizes that in order to sustain its kind of leadership in society and be a model for

[46:25]

other companies and other organizations, it needs to work deeply these values and practices. And they started out actually as an anthroposophic institution. So they were inspired by Rudolf Steiner and his ways of looking at the world. But they also were wise enough to see that not everybody who's joining this bank today necessarily wants to follow a particular teaching. So they asked a colleague of mine and myself to develop a leadership development process that is neutral as to the origins of the spiritual teaching and psychological teaching. So we are really looking into what is the essence of meditation? What is the essence of heartful interaction? What's the essence of effective

[47:26]

implementation that is sustainable and heartful and peaceful, but not wimpy. There is, I think, a wonderful big movement in the world now of people who do not want to follow in the footsteps of a quite warlike culture that either starts real wars, like We have them at the moment. Or conducts business like war with its competitors, with societies and against nature and so forth. So when you see such a difficult societal expression, it's easy to have strong aversion and to want to go to the opposite. But what you then often do is you just kind of pull away in the aversion and close down and give up what you see there, such as power and strength, which are manifesting in the warlike culture in a false way, in a distorted way.

[48:41]

But if we want to create change in the world, we need power and we need strength, we need energy, we need this red force. but not in its distorted way, in its real way, where it is totally congruent with compassion and love and equanimity. And so there needs to be a deeper understanding in order to resolve what appears to be in the superficial level paradoxes. And that's really, I think, where for so many people who want a different world, inner work is inevitable. because that's where the wisdom is. And when you look at a lot of people who want a different world, they often can't make it happen because they don't have the understanding. There isn't a path. And good intention and trying is often not enough of a path. And I think that after...

[49:46]

the integration of, let's say, social and environmental values with business and politics over the past decades, we are coming to a time where we recognize that, and it's maybe slowly, but obviously enough people in this room are interested, where we recognize that we need to bring together what is very difficult to bring together, functioning in the fast, of the day-to-day world, running a life organization, a company, a country, and using the profound psychological and spiritual practices, be they Buddhist or be they from other traditions. And I think we are the explorers here. This is the Explorers Club meeting. Because nobody really knows how to do it totally. We are all experimenting. And we can all learn from each other.

[50:47]

And that's why we wanted to also meet with you as we are writing this book because it's the book about the Explorers Club and what we found out. And want to hear what you think and what interests you and what we can learn from you and the other people that we've met around the Bay Area during these last seven days when we were here. So we look forward to hearing from you. Let me pass it to Wendy for her comments. I think with so much richness and true wealth in the room, maybe a minute of sitting in silence and taking in the harvest season. We're just sitting together in one another's presence.

[51:50]

One minute, one precious minute. in gratitude for the fierce peacemakers of this world, of these times. Dr. Ari, some of us have the privilege, real privilege, of working deeply and closely with young people for whom sitting for long periods is not so possible.

[52:56]

One of my very close friends is in this room, and he is a teacher in the public schools in Berkeley. working with children in the garden. And you can be very mindful turning compost, very mindful learning about the mystery of growing an oyster mushroom from raw straw, and very alert planting seedlings. At the end of the school year, about 100 children come in three different groups from that particular school here to experience meditation. And it is truly terrifying. We hear them as they get out of their bus at the ocean. We hear them in the fields while we are following our breathing. And they come roaring through the farm and make their way

[54:01]

from the great garden of a public school into this garden and eventually into this room. And they're curious. They agree to be quiet, to listen, and to experience this room. And I've had the privilege of watching what happens and of being with them when they greet this figure behind you, the protector of children and travelers, the one who accompanies us to the underworld. And they look very carefully at the figure, not as something to worship outside of themselves, but as an expression of living compassion. I have learned... so much about Buddhist meditation or deep, mindful presence from disobedient young people because every moment matters.

[55:09]

So on their behalf and on the behalf of the many beings born and to be born, tremendous gratitude for that work and for the peacemakers. It's wonderful to welcome you home. this place and to have sat with you in the garden we should have taken you to the greenhouse to see our suffering Bodhi tree it's looking pretty good because we have a wonderful garden team however it's longing for Sri Lanka longing to get out of here and I'd like to say we've only killed one but we've only cultivated one successfully so that tree is precious though and reminds us of everyone wake up together and of the work. So on behalf of all the beings that everyone expects cannot meditate, cannot hold still, we know differently.

[56:16]

When a child sits very still, the world gets much wilder. And there are people in this room, one new student for the practice period grew up in this room coming, he was a very naughty boy. And now he's locked down in practice period by his own decision. So I know that tremendous transformation can happen in the simplest of activities. And I also want very much to acknowledge that yesterday when you were teaching at Spirit Rock, the David Brower Youth Awards were offered, honoring environmental leadership and spiritual presence for young people age 15 to, I think, about 22, maybe a little older. And the young man who was awarded the primary award is a citizen, historically, a citizen of India.

[57:20]

Mm. awarded for his work growing plants that can be distributed to his home community for biological diesel. Very good grower. So I know that the gift of the Bodhi tree continues in many different forms. So thinking of that tonight in your presence and feeling such gratitude. And I would like to offer a gift, a song, and I'm very nervous about this, but a song that I know that some people in the room can help me, a song that comes out of our young people's programs in honor of the Brahma Viharas. Metta Karuna Mudita Upeka. We learn this song from some wonderful monks, and Betsy Rose sent it to music. And every summer we have a family retreat, always here at Green Gulch and at Spirit Rock.

[58:25]

And so at the end of the retreat, the young people sing this song. So may we do this? I'll teach you the song. We can sing it to Dr. Ari, and then the floor is yours. Can't wait to hear. Walter's invited us to speak. Metta, Karuna, Mudita, It goes like this. I'll sing it once and then we can join in. Very simple. And again. Let's sing it a few times. It is not a dirge. It's a celebration of living practice on the front lines.

[59:27]

Okay. Thank you. Once more and we'll get quiet. Metta. Good children.

[60:31]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you, mom. I'm mom with long teeth. Would you like to say anything further before we invite questions? No question, then, really. Link everything with the person, then. So we have almost... We have about 25 minutes, so it's time for some questions and comments from all of you. So maybe if we pass the mic around, then it can be part of the recording. Is that okay? Then we need to use yours maybe to answer. Yeah. Good evening. My name is Janae, and I have a background as labor management negotiator, community activist, working on the peace and in Israel and Palestine now as a Jewish person.

[61:34]

And so I have a dream of making peacemaking school. A peacemaking school? Peacemaking school as popular as anything from after school sports to Hebrew school that kids go to and adults go to all the time. There's such a different range. But there isn't something called peacemaker school. And so given your incredible, between you, experiences and wisdom and your own practices, I have three or four things in my heart that I would love to have as curriculum for Peacemaker School. It would include things like something like heart math or something about how to be quiet inside. It would include something like Marshall Rosenberg's novel about violent communication about how to listen to how you speak and judge or not judge. It would include learning basic negotiation skills and maybe some other things. But I'm so curious, what would you see as curriculum for kind of an adult or child Peacemaker School? that it just became a more common thing in our world, that that's something that we want our kids to learn how to be.

[62:35]

Thank you. He asked me to say something. This is good, this is good. Well, in Savodhya, there is this beautiful statement that Ari was elaborating on earlier, which says, we build the road and the road builds us. So one of the powerful mechanisms that Savodhya uses in order to bridge divides, divides of caste and of ethnicity and religious difference and gender and age and whatever else in these villages that have diversity and often there is the same kind of dislike or judgment of other. that we have here or that we have in cities. So by actually doing something very concrete together, they have a common purpose and they need to solve concrete problems.

[63:46]

And so they need to work together. In order to work together, they have to communicate together and they have to be together and they find out that each other are real human beings. And so I think this very practical doing things together is a very powerful way. Another thing that I was thinking of when you were talking about that it's hard for children to sit down, I think as beautiful as zazen or other sitting meditations are, they are but a practice. They are not the goal of the practice. They are a means to a goal. And you can, as you said, there are appropriate means, skillful means, as Buddhists say, to support people. So I've been working with a very successful management consultant in Europe, and he consults through the board of directors of governmental leaders and so forth.

[64:58]

And at some point in our coaching practice, I suggested to him, do you want to try to meditate? And he said, I can't sit still. I can only sit for a minute. And I said, that's wonderful. We're just going to sit for a minute. And before you knew it, he sat for five minutes. And six months later, he had a solid half an hour meditation practice, and it was the best part of his day. So if you start him off with half an hour, he gets frustrated and hates it. But if you take people by the hand and do it step by step, the other thing is he is a runner and he is also a world champion sailor. So rather than just taking somebody and teach them a practice that is foreign to them,

[66:00]

I take what they already do and love and see how it can be turned into a practice. So it doesn't really matter what they do. And I think that's particularly true for such a curriculum. If you need to get everybody to do the same thing, it's beautiful, like here, right? But it takes particular people. I mean, there are not 50,000 people sitting here. There are relatively few people who you can get to do this. But... I love it, you know, but I'm a crazy guy, you know. So you can get me in here for a month and I love it, right? But there are tons of people who do things. Whatever they do, it doesn't matter what they do. Anything can be turned into a practice. We all communicate with each other. Well, how can we make that act of communication a conscious act?

[67:04]

And how can we then help people in order to, because they might have a desire to either work together or communicate together, when that desire is there and there is a passion for that, an interest in that, and then they might recognize, oh, there is something in me that's a problem. in this communication. Like I get always angry at some point. Ah, then it suddenly makes sense to work with anger. Before that, it didn't make sense. So what I want to say is one can make a list of curriculum items or one can make a list of qualities and capacities that one wants to cultivate. And then one can see what are, for this particular person or group of people, the ways how we can support the cultivation of these qualities and practices, and maybe without telling them we can do Buddhist work with them.

[68:09]

We don't even have to say that we benefit from the wisdom of Buddhist teachings. I worked a lot with people with AIDS at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and they were basically gay men, prostitutes, interveners, needle users, and junkies, and some homophiliacs. Now, for the first three categories, if you'd say that you do spiritual work, they'd be out the door. I mean, they were so rejected by religious communities that the last thing they wanted to do was do something that these people were offering. But by putting them into a learning environment in which they were supported to be still, follow their breath and be for example held by somebody when they were in pain and somebody sits behind them and holds them and just synchronizes their breath with them and you just kind of breathe together and you can feel how you can relax and being held by somebody and suddenly the tears come and the tensions let go and before you know it there's some more relaxation and peace you're basically doing a

[69:25]

you know, profound meditation practice, but you don't have to use the word once. And then months later, when they, deep in the practice, when they would come sometimes and say, well, what do you call this? I mean, what are we doing here? Say, oh, you know, there was like 2,500 years ago, there was this guy, you know, and he's, you know, he wanted to deal with suffering. And this is what he came up with, you know. He says, oh, that Buddha guy, that's really good, you know. Anyway, that's some of my ideas. I told you about the peace building with unborn children. Then we have programs. Children below five years of age, before they go to school, they don't know that it's very profound, meditational practice, but they do it as a game, for example.

[70:40]

Then, for school-going children, in our centers, we have quite a large number of centers We are working in 15,000 villages. Each village has a center where people can get together. So it may be in those places, after school hours, they may come together for meditational practices. In the same way they come together for other work, other extracurricular learning activities. Then we have a specialized group between 14 and about 24, called Peace Brigades. We have about 130,000 children, youth, who are in Peace Brigades. Each Peace Brigade has a leader and 10 others.

[71:45]

One village may have one or two or three. So all the villages we are working, have peace brigades and they have 12-step training program, how to get themselves engaged in conflict resolution. One way is, of course, getting people together to do something constructive, like building a road. That's what Walter said. We build a road and the road builds us. So when people get together and work on the road, they don't know or they are not interested to know who is working with them, what race, what caste, what politics, what religion. They work together. So comradeship, brotherhood is developed between them through work. Actually, one of the best remedies for

[72:50]

to remove peacelessness from the minds of people is to get them to do some constructive work. So in that way then of course for adults we have other programs. So for any age group we should be able to implement programs that help to build peace. Then one last thing I would like to mention is peace building has to take place in three integrated areas. Consciousness, our mind. We sit every morning and evening, maybe say for half an hour meditation, which is very good to keep ourselves refreshed. But then other times we have to remember There are four postures in which you spend the day.

[73:54]

Either we are seated or standing, walking or lying down. So if we can mindfully spend this, mindfully be seated, mindfully walk, mindfully lay down and all that, so that mindfulness is the cultive, meditational work during the day. So whether you cook or bathe or do whatever, If you do it mindfully, that is really meditation. So meditation need not be confined to a room and to a particular pattern or anything like that. We look at the mind. In vipassana, you know that in the highest possible meditation, inside meditation, Buddha taught us first to look at your body, kaya nupasana, that is meditating, contemplating on the body.

[75:04]

Then contemplating on the emotions, vedana, vedana nupasana. Then contemplating on the mind itself, chitta nupasana. and meditating on phenomena, Dhammanupassana. Maybe when we are alone or when we are even in seated meditation or walking meditation, there's a very beautiful peace garden here. Nice little seats there. You sit there and begin to start from one point. What created this thought that came to my mind? It was created by my ignorance, if I got angry, by ignorance.

[76:06]

Ignorance created this thought, thought formation. Avijya, Pachya, Sankhara in Pali. Sankara, Pachya, Vinyana, these thought processes, this created the consciousness. Because of the consciousness, we identify a name and form, body-mind. Because we have body-mind, what happens? We have these six or five aggregates. Because of the five aggregates, We catch things, craving. Like that it goes on. So you can contemplate on 12 factors that are dependent on imagination, but it's a samukpada. So that is advanced meditation. That is dhammanupassana, contemplating on dhamma. So these four kinds of higher meditation helps you to develop wisdom.

[77:13]

So when you are a wise person, You know how to act under any circumstance. It's not to react. Reaction is out. In a meditator's life, you can't react. Sometimes I feel I should react to this fellow. He's so bad. Then immediately it comes to me, oh, that is not a wise man's thing. I should not react. I should respond. Response, okay. Because when you respond, you think. We consider. Then respond. So meditation, the Afu, probes into your mind, find out what this mind is, trains the mind, like training a wild ass. If not, mind is worse than a mad monkey, somebody had said in the Dhamma. So controlling this mind is so difficult. So meditation helps you to control it. Like that, deeper and deeper you can go into it.

[78:17]

And according to various schools of meditation, whatever you choose, you can always progress into dhyanas, for higher states, which sometimes would not take you on the right path to enlightenment, but they purify the mind. When Buddha's right-hand and left-hand disciples, Hariputta and Mungalana, they were laymen, householders, they were going in search of truth. So they went in two different directions and they said, if you find the truth, immediately I'll contact you. So there was a young monk walking on the road. So this person looked at him. His way he was walking, he knew he must be some enlightened person, though young went and asked, who is your teacher?

[79:21]

He said, if there's any phenomena, if there's any dharma in any situation, the person who discovered the cause, leading to that situation, in other cause and effect, you know, that doctrine. taught us to remove the course, that is my teacher. That's all. But when the two sentences were uttered, immediately, he understood. So, where is your teacher? There. His creator went to the Buddha, and with his friend, he found. And both of them were coming. Buddha said, those are the two people who are going to be my right-hand and left-hand disciples, Sareputta Moggala. So in these things, always remember, at any moment, our mind, our personality is influenced by three factors.

[80:31]

One is the karmic factor, our past births and all that, certain habits we developed. So sometimes it's difficult to remove them. But you understand, I had this weakness, maybe I inherited it. So I am going to fight it and remove it. That is, in Mahamangala Sutra, they say, That is the environment in which you live. If a person with a bad record in the past birth is born into a kind of permanent environment, he will continue to do that. But if that same person is born into a different environment, That environment will influence him not to engage in such evil activities. So third thing is the mind, purification of the mind. So mind can control both those things. What happened in the past, mind can control the karma, mind can control the environment.

[81:37]

So these three factors influence our day-to-day life, moment-to-moment living. So whenever you are faced with a challenge, please remember, These three forces are working within me. I'm not giving in to the, if it is bad, to the first. I'm not giving in to the second, if it is bad. I will see my mind is always supreme. Mind controls these things. So that is where meditation helps us. I'm sorry I took talk to one. Maybe time for one more. There now.

[82:40]

Is it good? All right. Thank you both or all of you for coming this evening. My name is Valerie. I'm a resident here at Green Gulch. You have talked about working with the villagers in Sri Lanka who might, for example, represent people who have a home, a spouse, perhaps a child. There are two other groups that I'd like to ask you about your work with that represent another side of all of us, and that is the people in the refugee camps who appears that the government is dragging their feet. in getting them out of the refugee camps, especially with the monsoon season coming. So I think they represent the dispossessed part of us, perhaps, the part that doesn't have the home and the family. And the third group that I'd like to ask you about, specifically to Sri Lanka, but then the broader context, is the people who lost the war, the Tamil Elam fighters. What is the strategy that you have worked with

[83:44]

in particular, of working with people who don't have a family or a home or a place to go, the dispossessed, and the people who lost. Sorry, I need to talk about the refugees and also the people who are affected by the war, both in Sri Lanka and abroad. So I think that there are... that those three populations represent parts of us that have something, the parts that have been dispossessed, and the parts that have lost. So if you might comment on your work with them. Thank you. So these people also represent something about us. Yeah, like parts of us. Okay. So now a big challenge. See if you can keep the remarks to about five minutes. All right. And we can close on time. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. At this time, the government of Sri Lanka as well as civil societies in Sri Lanka are faced with this tremendous responsibility of resettling and rehabilitating 300,000 internally displaced persons.

[85:12]

I'm not going into the history of this displacement. You know we have had a 30-year war. And from January this year, when every other attempt for a negotiated settlement failed, the government also decided to go all out and militarily defeat the LTTE. Which they did. I mean, both sides, I would say, government had to behave better because they had to conform to the international laws pertaining to even wars. So they had to be fighting according to rules. I don't believe in those. I believe no fighting. Anyway... They fought according to rules and the other people did not obey any rule.

[86:14]

If from their area people tried to escape into the government control areas, they shot down children, anybody who tried to cross down. So it was an inhuman exercise in killing the arms for which were provided by not Sri Lanka but other countries who manufacture arms to both sides. So May 28th, the government declared, now war is over. We have eliminated terrorism. They eliminated armed fighting, that's true. But the wounds caused in the minds of people will take a long time. Second, the people who asked to come from that side to this side to give protection, 300,000 of them came. Still, I think there are about 265,000 left there. Now the monsoon season is coming.

[87:17]

From January itself, Sarodaya was working. And even today, we may have about 300 volunteers working every day in these camps. And we have collected and spent about $3 million worth for food, medical treatment, water, and sanitation, and all that. And then organizing mobile libraries and things like that. Not only Saroadeh, several are working, UNICEF and the UN organizations, but most organizations are not allowed to come in by the government. But Saroadeh is trusted, because right through, we were against any kind of violence on any side. So we had a track record, and right through the 30-year war, we were in the war areas. So most recent was the rains, and actually a few doctors and my wife visited the camps, and they came back saying that somebody suggested that 400 children are born every month in the two hospitals.

[88:33]

And when they are brought to these camps, they have to sleep on the ground. But when it rains, The whole thing gets soaked up. And at least for children, they thought they should make cots. So 400 cots per month were needed. So in our workshops in Saro, the headquarters and other places, we started building them. And at the time I left the country, about 500 were already delivered. There are people, when we heard about it, local as well as internationally, they gave us money. So we got money for about 800 quarts, but there will be many more needed. So we are involved in every way to help them. We managed to get cooks from five-star hotels in Kalambu to come in teams, the chef's union, and give a decent meal with available food. So certain items are given by the World Food Program. Other things we had to buy from outside, and things like that.

[89:37]

So things are much better than what they were now. But we are still not satisfied. But the numbers are huge. And the landmines everywhere. So government is also afraid to send people. So they'll ask people over 60 years to leave and go to their relations. Then children are also being... given a chance to get reunited with whoever is remaining in the families. Child soldiers through UNICEF are handed over to various organizations to educate and rehabilitate, confidentially. Actually, Saro there has been asked to rehabilitate a very big number, which we do. without any kind of publicity. We don't newspaper men to go and take photographs and put these things in the papers saying that these were children who carried guns at the age of 9, 10, 11, 12 carrying guns.

[90:45]

Guns were heavier than these children. So everything possible is done by us, but it cannot be done as fast as we want or some critics say too slow. It's a slow process. Thank you. Thank you.

[91:10]

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