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welcome to science and wisdom live where scientists and meditators meet [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] so david it's a great honor to have a chance to talk to you today and i'd like if you can just to start by telling us about your work as a writer
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and academic and especially how that relates to your experience as a zen buddhist teacher and practitioner happy to do that but first thank you scott for
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this invitation and opportunity um yeah i've i've been very lucky i think in that i've been able to combine a very serious commitment to zen practice with an academic career
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you know not as a bidologist but kind of like a philosopher comparative philosopher focusing a lot on buddhism and frankly i i have found that very helpful because each of course has cast
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light on the other so i mean obviously something like zen practice has helped me get a deeper sense of what buddhist teachings are are pointing at um
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but it also works the other way around having having this sort of academic perspective illuminates aspects of the zen and buddhist traditions as well uh so i'm grateful for that but i am actually
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now retired from academia and if i'm quite honest i i don't miss it very much well i won't pursue more questions about academia robert thurman speaks very
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eloquently about the challenges of being a buddhist practitioner and academic at the same time let's get into your work uh with the ecodharma retreat center you're one of the founding members of this rocky
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mountain ecodharma retreat center in colorado where people engage in spiritual practice in i guess what you call an uncontaminated natural environment can you talk a little bit why it's important to bring together
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your inner practice and connection with nature how that helps out to bring a positive change in the world sure although whether we can call that land uncontaminated or not is a good question
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i mean is there anywhere that's uncontaminated uh these days but it's true that it hasn't been you know clear-cut and dug up and exploited like many other places so we do have
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you know a a considerable stretch of very beautiful land there with forests and uh and a little river and meadows full of wildflowers in the summer so it is a really wonderful place to practice uh
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but you know it it's interesting to to look at the pattern remembering that uh shakimune buddha when he left home on his spiritual quest
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before he became the buddha he went out into the natural world right he went into the forest and you know practiced there in a number of ways had his enlightenment uh under a tree there and
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not only the buddha but there's so many other figures milarepa buddhism but also you think of jesus 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness muhammad's cave there
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is something really special about going off into the natural world it is especially by oneself i think that it it can enable us to kind of open up and sort of let go of our usual utilitarian
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way of relating to everything and and and sort of be able to learn what the trees you know what what the meadows what what the river has to offer uh and i think that's that's really
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important and it's also important that you know religious leaders haven't just stayed there something happens and they bring back this special message and that's very much our sense at the ecodharma center as well that you know
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people go there we do practice together some things very something very powerful often happens but it's not as though the idea is simply to continue there but that
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you know one one can therefore re-engage with the world and and and looking at it in another way too if we're thinking particularly of uh ecodharma or or engagement with the
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ecological situation um i think it's really difficult to devote oneself to or or let me say it this way it's difficult to love something if you don't
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have a relationship with it right so i think it's so important if if we're concerned about what's happening to the earth to to reconnect with it which we do up there i mean we are part of nature right maybe
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that's the obvious thing to say but do you think we forget that sometimes and it's easy to forget when we're in cities and the whole point of you know coming to somewhere like the ecodharma center it
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makes it so much easier to remember that yeah yeah one of i've spent a lot of time in nature too on retreats and one of my teachers said you know one of the reasons it's so good to be in nature is
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because there's no objects of attachment so we i mean we can become attached right but yeah uh unless we're a forester you know who wants the tree for lumber or something it it it does kind
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of disorient us away from our usual ends means kind of behavior for sure yeah one of the main themes in your work is the encounter between buddhism and western society
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and i want to ask you a few questions about that in in both directions like what do you what do you think are the main lessons that the western world has to learn from buddhism um and perhaps other related contemplative traditions too
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so well you asked for the main lesson because i i mean i think there are several but but if i had to pick out one i think what i would focus on is the emphasis on personal or individual
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transformation i mean if you think of the history of the western tradition i mean i think there's a lot to appreciate in terms of institutional transformation if you think about something like anti-slavery movements and civil rights
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movements and unions and more democratic forms of government etc and that's really really important but there's also this question is that kind of collective or institutional transformation enough
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unless we also have kind of personal transformation otherwise i think it tends to be subverted if we're still motivated if many people are still motivated by the three poisons of greed
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you know ill-will delusion so i guess that's what stands out for me yeah it's such a paradox there isn't it though because there's an anarchic aspect to buddhism where you have to
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make that decision for yourself right and yet somehow we also have to transform society well i i think that that's it that's maybe the most
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important the single most important thing that buddhi buddhism has to offer which is the ecosatur path frankly or sorry not not just regards ecology but let's call it the the bodhisattva path
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or the new bodhisattva path that that what's what's so wonderful about that path is one has a double or dual practice you know we we continue to work on our own transformation but we know that
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that's in itself insufficient it's still at a certain point that can actually reinforce the the root delusion of separation that my well-being is separate from yours and other people
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so you know we also are engaged out in the world and and what i think one of the really important things about that i think is the way those two reinforce each other that um
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it's not simply that they go well together but that if you are working and transforming yourself by being engaged in the world it's helping to overcome our kind of deeply rooted self-preoccupied habits so
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i think that that's really important in fact given the kind of very critical situation we face right now may be the most important thing of all that buddhism has to offer yeah could we talk a little a little more about that the
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because as you said there is an emphasis on individual forms of suffering in you know certain strains of buddhism but a lot of the a lot of the pains the we're more aware than ever of the global
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challenges and collective forms of suffering so what can dive deeper into how you how you practice a spirituality that promotes both an individual well-being and the
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health of our society and our environment like well it's interesting you ask that question because at the root of it or you could say the the presumption of that is is the kind
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of duality or separation between the two right yeah exactly i mean i'm i'm reminded of something joanna macy uh said um the world has a role to play in our awakening
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um i think many of us still have a kind of romanticized idea about the path even the bodhisattva path the idea that somehow you might go off to a cave and meditate really hard or something and
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then when you're deeply enlightened then you return to the world and become engaged you know returning to the marketplace and i think frankly that's a bit simplistic if not if not naive it's like
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the two go hand in hand uh because they reinforce each other you know um i think that when we start buddhist practice perhaps inevitably there there's a kind
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of self-preoccupation because what brings us to it i mean there's some some suffering some dissatisfaction in our own lives why else would we spend so much time energy and money you know
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making sore legs and backs for ourselves um but as we progress you know as as we get more insight into what's going on then if things are going well we eventually
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begin to realize that at the root of our dissatisfaction is the delusion of separation yes from from other people and from the rest of the world so a practice
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where we continue to think only about our you know my own serenity my own emptiness my own awakening at a certain point that's reinforcing the the fundamental problem you know i i'm very
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i'm very inspired by something uh nisargadatta said he was he's he wasn't a buddhist he was a neo vedante in india but he said when i look inside and see that i am nothing that's wisdom
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when i look outside and see that i am everything that's love between these two my life flows and and i think he's nailed it there in the sense that
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uh as as we begin to get in touch with who we really are that we're not separate from others other people another world then there's a certain re-evaluation of the meaning of our
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lives away from you know what's in this for me to you know what can i do to make this a better world for all of us and so that's the sense in which i think they really go naturally together it's
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not one or the other and and i think it's so important to see that because so often we still think engagement social engagement is a distraction from serious practice whoa well wait
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wait a minute i think it's an essential part of it at at this point and and i think that's one of the changes that's uh beginning to happen today i don't know if that makes any sense but uh oh absolutely i mean you're
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you come from a zen background and i come from a tibetan buddhist background which are both mahayana traditions so one of my one of my teachers once said you know you're more likely to find a bodhisattva
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in a football stadium than at a in a meditation cave you know because there's more there's more beings to benefit you want to go out and help but you know there's something that really struck me as as i started studying mahayana
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buddhism once is that you know you have the three jewels you take refuge in the buddha dharma and sangha but at least i want to ask in fear if it's similar in your tradition but in ours there's another jewel which is all other
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beings that you take refuge in and and in fact that's the one you genuinely can't attain enlightenment without other beings to benefit there's no there's no way for you to to
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strengthen your own qualities of compassion and and action you know engage buddhism without others to engage with like is that part of you know your tradition and your your path to well it's interesting it's not part of the
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formal zen that i received but it is very much part of the new eco-dharma tradition that we're starting as it were up at the eco-dharma center so we begin our eco-dharma
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retreats by taking refuge in in the four jewels right yes in the buddha dharma sangha but also in the wider in the wider sangha um the the the sangha of of the natural
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world of all the beings there and and we we see that as an essential part of it it's i mean i think buddhism maybe to a lesser degree but but still there's kind of been it's been a
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preoccupation with other human beings you know we have to remember that bodhisattvas vowed to save all sentient beings all living beings and in this time of incredible ecological
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catastrophe that that clearly has to come to the foreground yeah almost everyone aware of these issues um sometimes feels anxiety depression um powerlessness in the face of these these
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gigantic problems like you know we're talking mostly about climate change there's also social inequity racial injustice um how do you deal with that how what would you say to people
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feeling those feelings like how do they um how do they engage with these these problems without these strong feelings of hopelessness and so on so
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i i think the problem isn't feeling those feelings the problem is is what we do with them yeah i mean i think because of the kind of powerlessness that that many of us feel the tendency
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is to repress them it's like we just don't know how to cope or how to deal with them on an everyday level uh and maybe the most important thing i think is
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to distinguish between grief which is something we feel right here and now and kind of this this duality of hope and despair that we can get caught up in which is which has a certain kind of
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future i mean it's a head trip it's a sort of future orientation you know we'd yeah um it's like grief what was that famous saying uh once in downtown london
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i saw a little memorial to the victims of 9 11 and and it's just simply said grief is the price we pay for love and i think if we're not feeling grief about what's
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going on now i think we're we're we're not in touch with our feelings or we're we're not really open to perceiving what's actually going on but that that sense of grief i think that's
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very powerful and and it can be really very helpful uh helpful in a number of ways one of the main ones i think it can cut through so much of the of our lives if
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you'll excuse my english here uh you know it's like it's so easy to get caught up in what i've sometimes called lack projects or you know making money or becoming famous
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or you know having a career and thinking about our lives and individual terms and the kind of success that we want to have and i think if we really wake up to what's going on
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now to the earth and and to society and and we're really taking that in then it can really help to sort of inspire us to ask the really essential
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questions you know what do i really want to do with my life in the face of as noam chomsky said last year this is the most dangerous moment ever in human history you know that
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that has that has enormous implications on the individual level in terms of what we think about the meaning of our lives but also institutionally frankly i think it has enormous implications for a
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tradition like buddhism you know it's like what does buddhism have to offer here and if it doesn't have something really helpful then maybe buddhism isn't what the world needs you know yeah but obviously i think it does
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it's just that this is going to encourage buddhism and buddhist traditions to sort of develop certain aspects in in a stronger way in order to remain most uh relevant and most
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liberative today i have a few teachers who have said more and more about you know losing and not winning you know and in some of our our tibetan buddhist texts too the
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importance of you know letting go of like winning and our culture is very much about winning you know and even the environmental movement a very very you know the odds are a little bit against against us in terms of winning
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um but you know as a buddhist i think you have a very different approach toward winning and losing like like you are saying um but you talk about that more specifically you know um what happens when you quote fail
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uh how do you how do you deal with that how do you how do you keep going [Music] well i'm i'm i'm struck by these dualities yeah that hopefully buddhist practice helps us see through and you
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know success and failure winning and losing hope despair gain and loss i mean one of the really important things about our practice is we see how those trap the mind
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make us future oriented and keep us from seeing something really essential right here and now you know something that can't be gained or lost so in a way failure
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sometimes failure is better than success i'm i'm not sure i'm going to say this with with regard to ecology you know but sometimes failure is better than success in the sense of failure
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can sometimes motivate us more to to let go and again to to help us realize that which we can't lose right yeah so i think that's
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that's an important issue here though you know what you're saying about non-duality it's just so it's so important it's one of the i think the the more subtle forms of non-duality i
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first learned from his holiness is that the non-duality of concepts you know that you there is no hot and cold even right there's only and they only exist in relationship to others so like you're saying even success and failure their
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their labels their dualities um and they kind of relate to this there's like famous buddhist stories of just not knowing whether something that has happened is going to have a positive or negative
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outcome that that humility you're talking about is really important it reminds me of something you and i before we started recording you and i were talking about kim stanley robinson and in his book you're reading i'll try not to make it a spoiler
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but he he talks about um the oil companies you know and in the book it's it's a book called the um ministry for the future it's quite a
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realistic portrayal of how we might be able to claw out of the environmental crisis and one of the things that happens in that book is that they enlist the oil companies to help um lower the lower the antarctic sheet
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that's sliding off of the land there and they realize that they cannot solve the climate crisis without oil companies because they're the only organizations that know how to act on the earth at a global scale so if they take the same
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equipment and steer it towards you know pumping the water out from below the the um sliding ice sheets in the antarctic um they could accelerate the solutions to climate change you know it makes me
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really happy hearing that because you hear sometimes you know joe biden who's a environmentalist but it'll talk really negatively about oil companies and angry at them um but i love that kim stanley robinson's perspective like wait a
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minute if we just change incentives slightly then these might be the the one the one of the the one technological group that could help us claw out of this can you talk sorry to go on about
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that but i i just curious i think a lot of times environmentalists are there's a very strong duality against like technology corporations versus us natural people out in the forest can you talk about that duality and and how we
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can deal with it yeah uh i mean i think there i think there's two sides to it uh definitely sort of corporate capitalism in the way that it functions now has a very serious
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problematical side given the way that what happens is motivated by profit and so if profit is the goal everything else is the means and you know we see how that can lead to
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to all kinds of problems uh i mean not only in terms of fossil fuels but in general you know consumerism and and let's say industrial agriculture you know which pollutes and
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destroys soil for example so there's definitely that side to it as well the question is can that somehow be reigned in and as i think kim stanley robinson is pointing to
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i think you're exactly right in the sense that large corporations have this this ability to work on the kind of scale that's necessary and i also think that if
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if some sort of leftists have the idea that we're just going to get rid of corporations and everything will be okay i think that's a real huge mistake i think given their presence and given what they have to offer it's much much
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more a matter of sort of revisioning what it is that they can do and i i think those possibilities are generally there but it's tricky because you know at this point we have to say they're
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they're understanding their goal profitability is slowing down as much as possible the shift to renewables in ways that just keeps kicking more carbon into the atmosphere so i think it's a
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two-sided issue there yeah yeah yeah i mean there is is a level of authority higher than corporations that are setting because money and and what's profitable and what's not is just is set arbitrarily at the highest level you
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know we decide that some things are inexpensive and some are expensive you know we could have i was telling my wife we watched this documentary about the coral reefs last night you know and afterwards we were talking about it saying you know we have all the
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technology all the money to solve right now it's actually just a matter of diverting the trillions of dollars everything's we could do it tomorrow if you saw how we responded to the pandemic so um and even without changing to a
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socialist system or anything like that just changing the capitalist incentive so it became you put a 10 tax on gasoline and a 10 incentive on renewable energy and so all of a sudden every all
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the corporations would steer towards that new profit right um so i i find that more encouraging that like some modest changes to our to even the capitalist incentives um rather
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you know i love noam chomsky too but um the idea that we have need a global political revolution maybe um we may not need that much to solve this
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well it it may not happen that way yeah again i think it's important to appreciate the don't know mine it's clear we're you know we're really headed into uncharted territory you know not only ecologically but socially so so
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many things are happening you know with population with uh movements of fast population uh with this incredible and i would say
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obscene and still growing gap between rich and poor there there are so many things going on here and actually for me this highlights one of the really important things that buddhism has to offer you know which is
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the kinds of practices that we do cultivate don't know mind cultivate openness responding appropriately to the situation wherever it may be and maybe that'll be the most important thing of all given
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you know covet obviously isn't the end of all the huge emergencies that we're going to be facing and and the ability to face them without freaking out without panicking is is is going to be a
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real premium uh i think frankly this is not only the greatest the most dangerous time ever in human history as chomsky said i think it is
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also the greatest challenge to the buddhist traditions and also the greatest opportunity so in that regard i think we can cultivate a kind of excited spirit about wow what are the
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new possibilities that are that are going to arise here and and i for one am very excited you know to be alive at this time to be a buddhist practitioner at this time
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] you
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