I want to start really by, indeed, by putting my comments in the context of my own relation to Buddhism and Buddhism and to other disciplines. I was thinking on the way over that I had once heard my wife, Patricia, about to give a speech at a feminist, I think, Florence Spirituality, wasn't that the conference? But she was preceded by an anthropologist, some of you may know, an archaeologist, Angie Arian, who gave her talk on the fact that there were several universal taboos in primitive societies, in all societies, in various all religions. Taboos against murder, lying, theft, and incest. And when Patricia got up following Angie, she said, as I was listening to that, I was reflecting on the fact that except for incest, the violation of those taboos is what we call foreign policy.

[01:09]

And of course, they correspond rather closely to the precepts under right conduct in the Buddha's Eightfold Path. But... Lying, theft, murder is, in fact, not only the conduct of our foreign policy, but legitimized by it for the security of the nation, supposedly. The idea of rejecting that in the service of the nation, which is to say in the service of our nation's authorities, whether elected or almost elected or whatever, or in other countries, not elected at all, not even a pretense, is regarded as the highest patriotism, highest virtue. People do, in fact, sacrifice themselves in processes of mass killing, called war. I was attracted to read a great deal about Buddhism, starting after the trial, when I had time to read about 30 years ago, by the fact that I was aware that although it's not put on a thou-must-not basis, or a...

[02:23]

command from God, a God, that the proscription on the path to enlightenment of killing was much more absolute than in other religions. There are other religions, Jainism, for example, that are very absolute on that. And indeed, I didn't go from the point of view of being, then or now even, an absolute pacifist myself. Certainly when I was in the Marines, I was not. When I was in the Defense Department, I was not. And when I went to Vietnam, obviously I changed a lot of my sense of priorities and what was right and appropriate. But the idea that, let us say, shooting by British anti-aircraft gunners at German bombers over London when I was 9 and 10, the idea that that was an appropriate thing for them to do and even a very good thing for them to do, the right thing for them to do, has never left me.

[03:26]

The idea that opposing German soldiers invading, let us say, Russia or elsewhere. I say that because that ultimately at vast cost resulted in repelling the invaders. If I were to say Poland, I think obviously the resistance was justified or in France, but it did not succeed actually as a defense. and Russia in great cost that did. And I can't say that the Russians were wrong, even in defending against a regime as tyrannical and murderous as the Stalin regime. But nevertheless, I thought that was appropriate for them to do. So I can't call myself, and I don't think of myself, as an absolute pacifist. I certainly could say I was a, had been now for 30 and more years, a near pacifist. and also almost pacifist, puts extreme burden of proof on the admonitions to violence on leadership that says that war is the only thing we can do or the best thing we can do.

[04:33]

And really virtually no conflict since the Second World War, possibly Korea, but in its results of several million people killed and building up of the Cold War and so forth, even that, highly questionable, certainly was opposing aggression. at that point. Since Korea, where you could question on cost basis, it would be very hard to find a conflict, a use of American soldiers that could be said to be just by any reasonable standards. So from that point of view then, I certainly am a skeptic, extreme skeptic. And why it would be wrong for someone to infer that I wouldn't be in favor of opposing with violence armed attackers under any circumstances it comes close to that. It would not be wrong to say that there are very few cases where I would support the violence. Interestingly, having grown up, I'm a Jew who was raised as a Christian, Christian scientist, not regarded by all Christians as Christian, by the way, because it's not really Trinitarian, but very much on the Old Testament and the New Testament, and with the notion we hear very often on buttons of my...

[05:48]

family, my extended family, thou shalt not kill. I was struck very much maybe 30 years ago when I read an article of all people by G. Gordon Liddy. Remember him? You know, one of the more violent bunglers, speaking of ham-handed. there ever was, a guy who was involved in not only going into my psychiatrist's office, but attempting to incapacitate me totally later on these steps of the Capitol. So I read him saying that he, having gone to Fordham, been raised by Jesuits, that thou shalt not kill is a mistranslation of the commandments. And that the commandment really was better translated, thou shalt not murder. Now, how many people have ever heard such a thought? How many have not? Well, of course, I had the same reaction that you would if you knew G. Gordon Liddy.

[06:52]

Sure, Gordon Liddy would think that. He's found that somewhere in some obscure fundamentalist cult of some sort. And in bringing it up to theologians, though, could there be anything to that? What's he talking about? I was presented with an annotated Bible with very comprehensive notes that showed he was right, according to this annotated Bible. And you can look it up. And actually, if you think about it, One can interpret this pretty well. The notes simply said, yes, there is a Hebrew word for killing. There is a Hebrew word for murder. This is murder, usually translated as killing wrongly. Now, murder, then, is killing that is not sanctioned by the community or by your authorities, by your priests' authorities. That's very much narrower than killing. How could that interpretation of the Bible not be true?

[07:54]

If you look at the same book of Exodus, or Kings, Leviticus, Numbers, Judges, you find absolutely blood-curdling accounts of God ordering massive killing, and not in just war notion, not sparing non-combatants by no means. Genocidal killing. Look at it. Look it up. You can look it up, let me see. the Philistines, the Amalekites, and so forth, are to be wiped out. Man, woman, child, and beast. Nothing to be spared. In some cases where the Jews saved some of the women for concubines or some of the men for sacrifice to Jehovah, they were extremely condemned for doing this. The order was everybody... Not sacrifice, not kill them all. I was amazed to discover that Joshua made the sun stand still, or the sun was made to stand still for Joshua, not to enable him to win over his immediate enemies, but to complete the total slaughter of everybody before darkness fell.

[09:10]

Furthermore, there's many, many admonitions for capital punishment, as you think about it, as the fundamentalists keep telling us, stoning gays to death in these same books. So, how could we imagine that that teaching, that biblical teaching, was thou shalt not kill? Capital punishment and war are definite, and holy war, holy war, meaning slaughter of the unbelievers and the people who might infect you with their heresy, or their unbelief. Kill them all. Now, people can say, well, that all changed in the New Testament. That's another story. But these admonitions were not ruled out. There was nothing. I won't go into all that. All I will say is that having had my eyes open to this, I was very interested in a religion that didn't say, thou shalt not murder, but said, right conduct means do not kill, and even extends it to other living beings.

[10:15]

Do not cooperate in killing, do not allow others to kill, and so forth. And that attracted me, as I say, not because I was an absolute pacifist, but because I felt there is a tradition that might save us, might point in the direction of saving us, where thou shall not murder will not save us. Keeps us on the path to hell. Most Americans believe, I read from polls, in a literal heaven outside the earth and a literal hell and a literal Satan. No, I don't. I do believe heaven exists, I know it, on this earth because every morning and every evening as I lie in Patricia's arms, we just lie there together and one or the other will say, as this morning, this is heaven. And I would wish that heaven for everyone, no exceptions, no matter what they've done.

[11:17]

But we also know there is hell. And not only have we been creating, we and others, we're not alone in this, create hell on earth for many people. We are threatening hell with our nuclear weapons plans and threats, which are being made this week and this month over Iran, a kind of hell that has never been seen on the surface of this earth. And glimpses of it, well, more than a glimpse, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if you've seen pictures of them, how many people, you've all seen pictures, right? Anybody not seen pictures? You're looking at the picture, of a city that was hit by the trigger to a modern thermonuclear weapon. Every H-bomb, every fusion thermonuclear weapon, which we in Russia have, is triggered, detonated, by a Nagasaki-type bomb.

[12:29]

That one, the Hiroshima bomb, killed perhaps 80,000 people, Nagasaki, for geographical reasons, killed fewer, perhaps 48,000, immediately, a combination of about 300,000 over a six-month period. But that in turn, as I say, those bombs take a hole out of a medium-sized city like Hiroshima. They didn't kill as many as the U.S. had killed on the night of March 9th and 10th, 1945. How many people know that particular act of terrorism? Okay, how many don't really know what I'm talking about there? Thank you. Most Americans don't, have hardly even heard. In fact, I'm surprised, almost surprised, not in this audience, but it's striking that as many as a dozen or so do know. I won't go into it at length, but just to say, the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9th in 1945 killed between 80 and 120,000 people

[13:36]

in one night. The upper limit of that is more than both Nagasaki and Hiroshima together. Regarding that as a success, having created a firestorm in Tokyo, this was, remember, under Franklin Roosevelt. LeMay then proceeded to try to do the same, create a firestorm, in each of the 67 largest cities in Japan, next in order of population. He could never get a firestorm going again, which requires not only particular tactics and bomb loadings, which they used, but particular winds and configuration and so forth. They could never really get a firestorm, which, again, I won't spend time on that, but I'll just say it produces temperatures of the surface of the sun, 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

[14:29]

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