Select text to annotate, Click play in YouTube to begin
00:00:07
I would like to begin with a question a rhetorical question what is the most important Buddhist teaching and of course saying that it's it's a
00:00:21
little odd question isn't it it's like we know that Buddhism emphasizes the interdependence of all things but that also applies to the Buddhist teachings themselves
00:00:33
they all seem of a whole wherever each teaching is connected and dependent on the other teachings um although and and especially I think in the Zen
00:00:48
world if if the whole point of the Buddhist teachings is to help us let go open up realize something then we could say well whatever the Turning word is whatever the
00:01:00
teaching that helps us do that that would be the most important teaching but at that time so you know what seems like the most important teaching for me or for any of
00:01:12
us at one time might be very different at another time very different for you and very different for me foreign I'm sure you could see this coming um
00:01:26
there is a particular teaching that I would like to highlight and I would like to approach it in a kind of an indirect Way by starting off with the most famous story in the Buddhist tradition which is
00:01:39
of course the story of the the future Buddha's uh life I'm pretty sure almost all of us are quite familiar with that um
00:01:50
evidently and and and we can't know for sure just how much of this is myth maybe all of it and yet in a way it doesn't matter it's one of those truths that is true whether or not it happened
00:02:04
but anyway according to the story The the the future Buddha must have led a very protected life because he was really shocked when
00:02:16
he finally encountered an old person presumably never seen one before an ill person and finally a dead person a corpse
00:02:29
and the shock of this was so great you know this is going to happen to me too that's what sort of shook him out of his comfortable princely life and sent him into the forest on his spiritual Quest
00:02:45
and there he studied with a couple teachers tried ascetic practices and eventually went off and sat by himself ending up under uh Bodhi Tree next to a little river
00:02:58
where he had according to the tradition he had this Great Awakening and what happened after that well apparently he taught for about 45 years
00:03:13
he got old he got sick and he died so how did he solve the problem in what way did he solve the problem
00:03:31
in a lot of conventional religious Traditions the way he's he solved it is that he realized you know that there's something that doesn't die that there's a pure soul
00:03:44
that survives goes to heaven or or something like that but that's not the way that Buddhism talks that's not the Buddhist understanding rather long before his physical death under
00:03:58
that Bodhi Tree the Buddha had some great realization about his true nature and one of the ways we sometimes try to describe that is the realization that
00:04:14
because from the essential point of view he was never born he can't die it's realizing that essential nature another way to talk about it is to
00:04:37
emphasize the Buddhist teaching about non-self or no self the claim quite extraordinary I mean if you think
00:04:50
about it just about unique in the world's great spiritual Traditions that that there's no such thing as a self right a separate self that the the feeling that there's a me inside and the rest of you and the rest
00:05:02
of the world is outside me that sense of Duality that senses separation or um opposition that that is in fact a um a delusion in fact the most problematical
00:05:15
delusion of all and that's what really leaps out for me that's what I find myself coming back to again and again this claim and curiously you don't find it
00:05:28
expressed in quite this way in the earliest teachings the Pali Canon but basically what it's saying is that this sense of self the sense of separate self is not only
00:05:39
delusion but it's at the very core of our dukkha of our suffering dukkha being the word of course for the word that's usually translated into English is suffering but we have to understand it
00:05:51
in the broadest possible sense um dissatisfaction frustration anxiety dis-ease so that to me is frankly the single most important Buddhist teaching
00:06:06
that I keep coming back to this this relationship between the delusion of a separate self and the fact that there's a dukkha a suffering built into that delusion
00:06:18
in some ways I think we're in a better situation now to understand what the Buddha was pointing at you know given what we've learned from sort of modern psychology
00:06:30
in more modern language we can say that the sense of self is a construct a psychological and social construct it's something it's not something that
00:06:42
infants are born with it's actually something that develops as we grow up our caregivers look into our eyes give us a name that we learned to identify with and also basically we learn to see
00:06:59
ourselves as they see us we internalize that which is why we are so preoccupied with what other people think about that we learned to use language in certain
00:07:11
ways I mean mine you yours his hers and and so forth that's all very essential to it so we could say that the sense of self is
00:07:27
being a construct it's composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking feeling acting reacting remembering planning and tending
00:07:39
it's the way that these mostly habitual processes work together re-enforce each other but does that give us insight into what the fundamental problem is I think it
00:07:57
does and here's what it is as I understand it because the sense of self is a construct because it doesn't refer it doesn't depend on it doesn't point back to a
00:08:10
real self that has any you know self-reality or or self-identity this sense of self by virtue of its lack of essence is inherently
00:08:27
uncomfortable we can say it's basically inherently insecure in fact it's not only insecure but it's insecurable in the sense that there's
00:08:43
nothing there that could be secured and here's the important point I think we experienced that we experience it as a sense of lack
00:08:58
that is to say the sense that something is wrong with me something is missing something isn't quite right I'm not good enough and the reality is I think all of us to
00:09:14
some degree have some sense of that some sense of lack even though we might ignore it or cover it up there's there's some sense of that but because it's mostly sort of unconscious in the sense that we don't
00:09:29
really know where it comes from you know we're parents language Society keeps reassuring us we're real and this claim that there's a kind of unreality at our
00:09:41
core you know that that that's pushed away but nonetheless it comes up I'm saying you can call it the return of the repressed it comes up at this as this
00:09:54
sense of lack sense of inadequacy but how it is that we're going to understand it is what it is that we lack there's a lot of different possibilities there it seems to me that in times past say in
00:10:08
more traditional more religious time say Medieval Europe I wonder if that explains a lot of the attraction of religion that religion promises us that will be okay that our sense of lack will be filled up
00:10:25
but what about our stronger sense of individuality today without that security of believing you know that in fact everything will turn out okay
00:10:37
how do we differently than understand our sense of lack today especially I think in the United States which has you know we're so individualistic has there ever been a
00:10:51
more individualistic society which is another way of saying that our sense of separate self is much stronger than it has been in most other societies where family and friend you know extended
00:11:04
families and such would be much more supportive one would think of oneself more as a member as a part of that but we're so individualized and if we can say that the sense of
00:11:15
black is something which Shadows the sense of self and we have such a stronger sense of separate self we can see how the sense of lack too would be very strong and then we need to ask ourselves how do
00:11:30
people who are very individuated how do they understand their sense of lack I think it's pretty obvious in a way what we're talking about here in the United States
00:11:48
I mean I don't think it's very difficult to think of some very big some very strong examples of how that works um just growing up in this Society one of the main things that we learn pretty
00:12:02
quickly is that we don't have enough money right and in a way it doesn't matter how much money we have it's not enough that we always need more um not only the money but all the sort of
00:12:17
consumer toys that go along with it there's the sense of competition you know we we want to have a better car or a better house than say the neighbor or the person that we compare ourselves
00:12:29
with I think that goes to the core of a lot of the American dream but of course that's not the only sort of lack project that's my term for it that out of this sense of lack not quite
00:12:42
understanding what's going on we look for something outside ourselves thinking that if only I get enough money or whatever then that will fill up that bottomless core that bottomless pit at the core of my
00:12:55
being and money is one of those But the irony of course is that if this desire if this craving for money if this lack project and we could also call it reality project because another
00:13:08
way to talk about all this is to say that we don't feel real enough and we're looking for that which somehow will make us feel more real more complete more whole right
00:13:20
because whatever the lack project may be it is looking for out something outside that's going to secure this sense of self-insight the tragedy of the whole process of
00:13:32
course is that it doesn't matter how much money you earn it's never going to be enough because what we're dealing with is just a symptom and not the core problem
00:13:45
now I need to add to that of course that doesn't mean that for many people there's generally not enough money okay given the way our economic system functions I mean I don't mean to negate that in any way
00:13:59
I'm talking more about you know middle class upper middle class this how the the preoccupation with making money becomes a kind of a lack project certainly we need money to survive in
00:14:11
this Society another really important example I think which has been especially true Maybe just in the last generation or so you
00:14:25
know we spend today we spend so most of us most so much time looking at screens it used to be television screens and a case early Cinema but now thanks to the internet we spend so much time
00:14:38
every day often looking well like we're doing right now right looking at me looking at other people and interacting in that way often it's not interacting though often it's just taking in what somebody else
00:14:52
is saying or doing and one interesting thing about that is how on these screens as well as in magazines and newspapers and so forth it tends to be the same sorts of people who
00:15:06
reappear right the A-list Hollywood celebrities it's uh politicians those who are very good at finding ways to grab attention to themselves and I'll
00:15:18
leave that nameless but that there's a whole core of people who tend to recur right the uh the influencers etc etc so we tend to see the same
00:15:32
people cropping up and there's an interesting kind of contrast these people they have so much presence everyone sees them whereas me I I'm kind of nobody I'm you know I
00:15:46
don't have that kind of a presence and the way I think that translates is the sense that you know to be famous as Freud put it to be loved by many Anonymous people but at least to be known by many Anonymous people that
00:16:01
somehow that would give me a kind of sense of reality and uh you know I must be real but again it's the same problem um I don't think it's hard to think of
00:16:15
examples of say famous people like maybe some pop stars who become rather too famous too early and somehow that destroys them they don't know how to deal with them maybe they expect you know they have the desire but once it
00:16:29
actually happens it doesn't it it doesn't give them what maybe they are hoping from it in other words in our language it doesn't fill up their sense of lack it doesn't make them feel more real and often they seem to go off the
00:16:43
rails they can't cope with that there are many other examples I mean there there's many ways to reflect on this um romance love
00:16:59
maybe this functions a little bit differently now than it did say say I'm pretty sure the story is a little different than it was say between my mother and my son right I think my
00:17:11
mother was still that generation where if you just meet that right person you know there's somebody out there and if you just find them you know then there's this myth and they're going to complete you and uh
00:17:23
you know they're going to be a perfect other half and everything will go okay everything will be right your problem is solved right whereas I think most of us here
00:17:35
you know already know the hard way that your problems may be just beginning right there's no guarantee that that kind of and and you can see how
00:17:48
when one has those role you know very romantic expectations about the other person how that puts a pressure on the other person you know the expectations if they're going to fill up
00:18:01
my sense of lack they have to be a certain way and of course again going back to the fact that that other person you know it's not to say that romance and sex and all of that isn't wonderful but nonetheless the idea
00:18:14
that that other person is going to fill up your sense of lack that's an unfortunate expectation that's going to create that's that's going to tend to create problems
00:18:26
anyway there's a there's a number of other things one can point to um another one that again I think um it's a little bit different now in the last generation or two where we have
00:18:43
what we're being called metrosexuals I don't know if that's still true but our own bodies right I mean certainly through a lot of my lifetime you know there's been a lot more pressure a lot
00:18:54
more internalized pressure among women to have a beautiful body right to be attractive to be thin to be sexy um and I think
00:19:07
that's one of that that's a not uncommon like project um which I think sort of tends to create you know the these problems of of Eating Disorders right
00:19:22
I remember I once read an interview somewhere with with some supermodel can I remember her name Christy somebody anyway it doesn't matter but what struck
00:19:34
me about it was that she was clearly obsessed by the fact that you know on somewhere on her upper thigh or backside she had a little bit of cellulite that she couldn't seem to get rid of
00:19:47
in other words she was always somebody who was widely perceived as one of the most beautiful people on the planet and yet that still bothered her so much that that wasn't beautiful enough for her
00:19:58
again I think exemplifying the fact that you know anything that is our lack project if it's something external including our bodies the way we relate to them then they're not going to be
00:20:12
good enough your body if your body is your lack project your body is never going to be perfect enough one can go on and on um even more simply you know what's the
00:20:27
attraction of Alcohol and Other sort of recreational drugs well you know one of the nice things about alcohol you know you have a couple drinks and guess what you can relax your sense of lack sort of
00:20:40
tends to disappear for a little while right and it gets easier for me if I'm sitting at a bar and there's a pretty girl next to me right well maybe that self-consciousness before that would you
00:20:52
know what should I do what should I say well now I'm kind of relaxed and you know it's it's easier you're not you're not so afraid of making a fool of yourself and likewise recreational drugs I think
00:21:05
are good examples what they really point to is they are I mean so much of their attraction is they temporarily managed to help us forget this sense of
00:21:20
lack I'm reminded of something Dr Johnson the 18th century um writer he was once at a he was once had a kind of a party I don't know the details of the party but
00:21:36
it was getting kind of crazy and the hostess spoke to him and said I wonder what pleasure men can take in making in becoming beasts or making beasts of themselves
00:21:51
and Dr Johnson said it gets rid of the pain of being a man or in less sexist language it gets rid of the pain of Being Human it helps us let go of it for a while
00:22:09
anyway I I hope that this makes some sense because this this is a pretty significant I think perspective certainly once this became clear to me in terms of how I understood why people
00:22:21
did what they did it it did seem to change things and also why I was pretended to be preoccupied with the things that I often was
00:22:34
um but I do want to point out one more really significant implication here which is how it affects our experience of time all right
00:22:47
it's the nature of lack projects insofar as we become preoccupied with them that they tend to be future oriented naturally I mean the whole idea of a lack project or a reality project is right here right now
00:23:01
is not good enough because I feel this sense of inadequacy this sense of lack but in the future when I have what I think I need when I'm rich enough or famous enough or
00:23:15
my body is perfect enough or whatever when I have all this then everything will be okay and what of course that does is that future orientation
00:23:28
traps Us in linear time in a way that tends to devalue the way we experience the world and ourselves in the world right here and now right it treats the now
00:23:41
as a means to some better ends Now isn't good enough but when I have what I think I need everything is going to be just great
00:23:54
foreign so many of the spiritual Traditions end up taught especially the mystics right and the Zen Masters right they end up talking about what is sometimes called the Eternal now
00:24:18
or the Eternal present a different way of experiencing the now as long as the present is a means to some better end this future when I'm gonna be okay then
00:24:30
the present is experienced as a sense of as a series of Nows that fall away right as we reach for that future but if we're not actually needing to get somewhere
00:24:44
that's better in the future it's possible to experience the here and now as lacking nothing and myself in the here and now as lacking nothing it's possible to experience the present
00:25:00
as something that doesn't arise and doesn't fall away in Buddhism we're so familiar with the emphasis on impermanence the eye that everything that arises passes away but
00:25:15
what's the one thing that doesn't it's always now and the fact that we don't realize that why it's so obvious and yet we tend to overlook that because we're trying to get to that place that we think we need
00:25:28
to get to anyway I hope that this makes some sense um what about the Buddha Dharma what about the path of Buddhism well that too I would call a lock project
00:25:51
a reality project the difference is that it's a lack project that can actually work doesn't always I think for some people it stays that at that same level of
00:26:05
you know trying to get somewhere people can still plug the Buddha path the Buddhist path into that but the basic idea is that to say it
00:26:18
like this if if the sense of lack is the shadow that haunts the sense of self well what happens if through our practice we can let go
00:26:32
open up let go of this sense of self that dogen for example talked about by letting go seeing through the delusion of a separate self then we also let go see
00:26:45
through the delusion of lack I'm sure most of us here are so familiar with this famous quotation from dogen Genji koan and his show begins though where he just sums it
00:26:58
up so perfectly to study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self study in the sense of inquire into huh to study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self
00:27:09
to study the self is to forget the self to forget the self is to realize your intimacy with the ten thousand things your into relationship your non-duality with
00:27:22
all things right so we can understand that's what the meditation process is all about what's going on when we're meditating well obviously things come to mind the
00:27:35
all these habitual ways of thinking and feeling etc etc they come into the mind but if we're meditating we learn not to cling to them but let them go they'll they'll arise and they'll pass away and in the process
00:27:48
of doing that basically what's happening is that the sense of separate self is deconstructing it's not that we're doing it because we're the sense of me or an or a self it's not that the self is deconstructing
00:28:02
itself but the meditation is actually how you can say it's happening and then what we call kensho or some opening some Taste of enlightenment
00:28:15
is happen some moment when that sense of self really does evaporate or disappear to some degree for a mom for a moment for a while anyway
00:28:39
a good time to sip some tea we can ask so what does all this have to do what does it imply about a lot of the social issues that we face today and I would like to
00:29:08
so follow up here by basically talking about how everything that I've said about our individual predicament what Buddhism
00:29:22
has traditionally said in other words what I've offered so far is really my take my way of presenting what I think is the essential Buddhist teaching here
00:29:34
what I find absolutely fascinating is the parallel between that and the ecological crisis right now and I'd like to finish my talk just by talking a little bit about that there's
00:29:47
more in the Eco Dharma book for anyone who is interested but in fact it seems to me that if we really understand what Buddhism is saying about the sense of self and the issues there I think we can see the
00:30:00
ecological crisis is really just a larger version of the same thing the macrocosm of the microcosm because we have not only individual senses of self right we also have Collective senses of
00:30:12
self right [Music] um I'm I'm not just David I'm a man not a woman um I'm wide I'm not a person of color I'm
00:30:23
American I'm not Canadian or Mexican etc etc but in this case it refers to the largest Collective sense of self which is what it means to be a human being at least a human being in its present form
00:30:37
part of this you know now global civilization that we have finally achieved in the last century ago ironically a civilization that does seem
00:30:50
to be in the process of self-destructing but just as the fundament just as the fundamental problem on the individual level is the delusion of a separate self so on the collective level it's the same
00:31:04
thing and and I guess just this this needs to be stressed again and again because the ecological crisis you know it's not just the technological problem or economic problem or a political problem
00:31:19
you know fundamentally I think it's a spiritual problem because it has to do with our Collective relationship with the Earth just as individually we feel this sense of Separation so we as a species feel
00:31:31
this sense of separation and if we're ever going to really resolve the problem I think it's going to be necessary for us to come to some kind
00:31:44
of new understanding of of that relationship right right where it's interesting is if you lack of if you ask about things like lack projects or reality projects on the individual level you know I was talking
00:32:01
about how the separation is a delusion it's uncomfortable we become preoccupied with trying to find something out here that'll fill up our sense of lack and you know we can Wonder is there
00:32:13
something comparable at the civilizational level and frankly I think that there is I think that it is our Collective preoccupation with progress
00:32:26
although interestingly I think that Collective lack project may not be working so well anymore certainly it was pretty pretty active when I was born right post-war the world is getting better you know
00:32:38
economically politically yeah you got a cold war but nonetheless things are going to get better and better and it's that same relationship with time you know whatever problems there are now everything is
00:32:51
going to be okay in the future and unfortunately of course [Music] um given especially the ecological crisis I think it's harder and harder to believe in that life project
00:33:03
and I wonder whether that disturbance in in the lock project is is actually contributing to some of the manic quality to some of the crazy quality that I think many of us feel
00:33:15
today just reading about all these crazy shootings and and and the incredible divisions politically as well as economically if there's a parallel on the level of
00:33:31
lock projects we can also ask well so what about the solution right on the individual Buddhist level we have something like meditation you know we have ways to
00:33:44
deconstruct as it were the sense of separate self what's going on on the collective level and I think that's a really good question and something that I think
00:34:01
yeah I think this is at at the least a very important part of the solution uh Paul Hawkins many years ago wrote a
00:34:13
pretty important book called blessed unrest and what's fascinating about that book is that he says there's something going on now that's never happened before in human history that there are a very large number of
00:34:26
organizations groups that are springing up most of the mall and small right non-profit uh often oftentimes very localized you know to save that stand of
00:34:38
trees threatened by a flyover or something but so many groups of people springing up to work for social justice and sustainability
00:34:52
he says I think he originally estimated maybe up as many as like a million and a half but now I think he would say well over 2 million very and again this is not something that's
00:35:04
ever happened before in in human history and the thing I particularly love about that book is the point he makes about this can be understood this
00:35:21
mm-hmm rising up almost spontaneously of all of these groups of people you know to help heal our society and our relationship to the natural world he says
00:35:34
this is actually the immune system of the Earth this is how the Earth is trying to heal itself and this is how when when those of us who are trying to
00:35:50
contribute to this we are really part of this immune system notice that the immune system is always like in our own bodies the immune system is part of our body is not separate from
00:36:03
the body right it's how the body heals itself to say that we are part of the immune system of the earth is to say the Earth the Earth is acting through us
00:36:30
in us as us through us that this is in a way how we heal our relationship is opening up to that that when we're responding in a non-selfish way to that
00:36:45
that urge when when we open you know how to say this if it is the immune system you can see how that implies that when we are doing this
00:37:01
the whole presupposition the whole context is it's because we are non-dual with the Earth that we are not separate from it that's no guarantee of success as
00:37:16
Hawkin himself emphasizes you know immune systems can fail right remember HIV AIDS um so that in itself we don't know what the
00:37:28
result will be but it does emphasize our our non-dual our non-duality and and the possibilities there instead of these lack projects of indefinite economic growth right more
00:37:42
and more money foreign of more and more technological progress instead of getting caught up in that we have this alternative where we can see
00:37:55
that the great challenge for us today the great challenge facing us is this need for playing our role in this
00:38:07
healing in this healing process it's interesting when you go back historically and you look at the archaic civilizations um the older civilizations say before
00:38:20
Christianity what's quite striking is they all felt that they were you know they didn't feel that they were separate they they felt that their political and religious systems were in fact just as
00:38:34
natural as the ecosystems that they were embedded within it was all part of the same thing and one of the important implications for all of them that I've been able to study is the
00:38:48
belief that as part of that ecosystem you know their civilizations they had a role to play in keeping the cosmos working and often that came out in a way that we
00:39:02
wouldn't necessarily like it often involves sacrifices think of the Aztecs and uh the one thing most of us know about them is that they like to sacrifice large numbers of War captives to the Sun God
00:39:16
why well that was necessary to keep the Sun God on his way I think it was a male God right and that if you didn't do it the Sun God I don't know if he would get angry or lose his way whatever but that
00:39:28
was essential to keep the cosmos working and a lot of our dukha today I think can be understood as a result of this sense of Separation if human beings if we're not part of something greater than
00:39:41
ourselves if we don't have a role to play if we're just accidents of evolution then what's the whole point of life maybe we're just all we can do is enjoy
00:39:53
ourselves have fun if we can while we can as long as we can until we die whereas I think what we're seeing now with the ecological crisis and all of
00:40:06
the other aspects of the Pali crisis is that it's become clear it's becoming clear that collectively you know we have an important role to play I'm constantly thinking of something you
00:40:21
know Noam Chomsky said a couple of years ago he said that this is the most dangerous time in human history the most dangerous time in human history if you put together the ecological
00:40:35
crisis nuclear weapons the decline of democracy rise of authoritarianism which are the things that he cited I'm a bit of a history buff so I tried to think of a counter example and I couldn't he's right this is the most
00:40:48
dangerous time in human history and one of the implications of that for those of us on the Buddhist path is what does that mean for how we understand and
00:41:00
practice Buddhism it's really important that we don't understand our path as simply a matter of individual Enlightenment individual Awakening with the kind of indifference what's going on to the larger order
00:41:14
and here of course we return to I think the most important thing that Buddhism has to offer which is the bodhisattva path or as I like to say the ecosat for path the New bodhisattva
00:41:28
Path because I think we need to understand the bodhisattva activity in a some somewhat different way the whole point of the bodhisattva path
00:41:40
is a double practice we continue to work on our own Awakening with zazen Etc but we know that that's insufficient that we are it's also really important to help other people
00:41:52
and ultimately that's because at a certain point we realize that we're not separate from other people to continue to become preoccupied with our own Awakening our own Serenity after a certain point that becomes part of the
00:42:06
problem we're just reinforcing the sense of Separation so as we practice we begin to open up realize that our own well-being is not separate from the well-being of other people and we naturally this you know what's in it for
00:42:19
me that kind of turns around what can I do what difference what can I contribute that might actually uh help in some small way the the healing
00:42:31
of our Earth but here I think we need to understand the challenge in a somewhat different way because the three poisons that Buddhism has always talked about greed ill will delusion I think they are now
00:42:43
institutionalized you have to find ways we have to find ways to come together to create stronger sanchas to work to contribute what we can in order to challenge these
00:42:57
institutionalized three poisons [Music] problems at the Buddhism that the Buddha didn't face and so we can't simply turn to the Buddhist teachings to get specific
00:43:13
answers about what we should do but that we can use the Buddhist teachings to understand them and in particular to understand how it how it is we do what we do
00:43:26
so when I talk about the institutionalization of the three poisons I mean it seems to me if greetable delusion if greed means you never have enough I think that's a pretty good description of
00:43:39
corporate consumer neoliberal capitalism frankly our economic system um institutionalized ill will aversion aggression I think there's a lot of
00:43:51
things that that covers including our militarism here in the U.S remembering that you know despite our paranoia about what other countries might do our military the money the
00:44:03
amount of money we spend on our military is what the equivalent of the next seven or eight highest nations in the world and then institutionalized delusion I used to talk about that in terms of
00:44:15
advertising and keeping us consumers but I think in the last few years with some of the incredibly manipulative media um and of course we just found out what yesterday or the day before Fox News
00:44:31
admitting I don't know if they officially admitting to responsibility but had to do this huge payout because of the some of the lies that they perpetuated we have to understand
00:44:42
this is a new challenge a challenge for the Buddhist tradition it's not sufficient simply to think of individuals helping individuals we've become a lot better in pulling
00:44:56
drowning people out of the river but we have to ask who or what is pushing them in the river Upstream why are there so many more drowning people and frankly it seems to me that if Buddhism or Buddhists aren't willing to
00:45:11
move in that direction then maybe Buddhism isn't what the world needs right now but in fact what I've tried to touch on in some small degree is how
00:45:23
I think Buddhism the Buddhist perspectives can indeed give us a great deal of insight into the problems we face today and how we might respond to them anyway I realize I've really wandered
00:45:35
far astray here starting out talking about our individual sense of lack but then trying to tie it into some of the larger social issues that we face um
00:45:47
I think this would would be a good time for me to stop and open the floor if we have time for some questions or comments one online who would like to ask a question
00:46:01
there's a reactions button at the bottom you can or you could I think unmute yourself and simply begin speaking that might be
00:46:14
also or if there's anyone in the sento here yes Molly uh I'm wondering if you could um speak a little bit more about the relationship
00:46:31
between the real and the good um I'm having a little bit of trouble understanding the equation of them because it seems possible to have the sense that one is whole and quite bad
00:46:44
um so thank you um you know it's it's interesting that the the preeminent abrahamic
00:47:02
judeo-christian Duality between Good and Evil is is not is not the way Buddhism thinks right in fact from a Buddhist perspective you can say that that is is
00:47:13
quite problematical um is an example of what's called bipolar thinking where you have two things that we might normally think of a separate
00:47:25
from each other and yet they're actually completely dependent on each other because um the meaning of each is the negation of the other what do I mean like big and small right seems like you have two concepts there but really it's two sides
00:47:38
of the same concept if you don't know what big is you don't know what small is right and the problem with Good and Evil and the reason this is not a foundational Buddhist concept is that
00:47:49
that's a pretty good example of bipolar thinking that if you have if if you become preoccupied I mean just think it's it's our favorite story but it's it's very dangerous
00:48:04
because once you identify something as evil you don't need to sort of understand it rather if it's really evil the whole point is to destroy it and I think that goes back to sort of you know
00:48:17
the judeo-christian idea of of Satan or something like that and historically you know this has been this has had enormous implications if you think for example heresy trials
00:48:29
Witchcraft Trials uh how it rationalized the way that Christian Europe colonized the rest of the world because you know they were spreading the good and and how important it is to destroy
00:48:43
the false religions but we don't need to go back that far [Music] um George W bush and Osama Bin Laden I think they're playing the same game right what the one thinks is good the
00:48:56
other thinks is evil but it's both the the game of good versus evil and each trying to destroy the other leading to the incredible irony that one of the main causes of evil in the world has
00:49:09
been our attempts to get rid of evil Switching gears a little bit very quickly though I you know I realize that I didn't emphasize at all I was speaking
00:49:25
more about the wisdom side and I didn't really talk about what comes along with that which is the compassion side I mean one way to try to summarize what I was saying in the first part of the talk is that is that wonderful little
00:49:38
quotation from these argadata who said when I look inside and see that I am nothing that's wisdom when I look outside and see that I am everything
00:49:51
that's love between these two my life flows foreign he's nailed it you know wisdom and love or as we more often say wisdom and
00:50:04
compassion the two pillars of the Buddhist path and I think he shows why they fit together so well uh you know if if we have the wisdom of realizing that we're not separate from
00:50:15
the world then as I alluded to that turning around of the meaning of Our Lives as we see through the delusion of separate self-seeing through the
00:50:28
self-obsession and all the problems that creates there's this natural turning outward concern for the well-being of everyone and that's what we call Compassion so that
00:50:42
that's another way to talk about the good of how I think from a Buddhist perspective it it really flows from the understanding that we're not separate from each other and therefore our own
00:50:54
well-being isn't separate from the well-being of others in the earth and therefore it feels quite natural to become quite spontaneous too to become
00:51:06
concerned about that well-being insofar as we begin to wake up and realize that that non-duality okay I went off a little bit of a Jag there is that does that answer your question we have another question online please
00:51:20
chat is it more effective to work for justice within existing organizations which may as you suggested have institutionalized the three poisons or work as an activist independently
00:51:34
from outside our government and conventional non-governmental organizations it's a great question um for example a a couple years ago pre
00:51:48
-covered I was quite involved in extinction Rebellion here in the Colorado area you know some of us got arrested blocking a road in Denver trying to sort of highlight the issue so
00:52:01
that's going outside sort of the official channels but I don't see that as negating the importance of working institutionally as well that is to say trying to get Congress trying to get the
00:52:15
political system to acknowledge in fact what I tend to see is how they really depend on each other it's not a matter of either or but
00:52:27
both really I do want to add one more thing here though which is to highlight something that the bodhisattva path emphasizes the idea of skillful means
00:52:38
and the way I understand that is is is a lot of emphasis on uh creativity um I just spoke a couple days ago with someone I met in New York some some
00:52:50
years ago and he I think he's a wonderful example of that he started an online Group which basically got people to sign on it was like a kind of
00:53:02
petition or they they they signed on by by signing on they took a vow that they wouldn't vote for anyone who accepted corporate donations
00:53:14
and then you know he would get a list of several thousand people and then he would go to the candidates and I think at this point it was New York assemblyman or assembly people excuse me and he would say you know oh my these
00:53:34
people want to know do you accept corporate contributions oh and by the way there's 25 000 people here and um you only won your last election by
00:53:44
about 10 or 15 000 votes so please let us know do you accept corporate contributions and I thought it was brilliant you know and it seems like it was having some effect so I mean one one can go into
00:53:57
some detail about that but it's really taking advantage of the internet and the possibilities there you know and even if somebody accepted corporate money at the very last moment you know you could send
00:54:09
out an email to all 25 000 people the day before the election and keep them updated so that to me is uh it is a lovely example of a Paya casalia the
00:54:22
skillful means sometimes I think that'll involve working through the system sometimes it'll involve working trying to put pressure by working outside the system but uh it seems to me we need
00:54:35
both thank you again David we've uh you've been so generous with your time and you're heart and your wisdom deep well wishes to you David
00:54:56
and we look forward to having you at Mountain cloud in person sometime me too thank you all I'm so sorry I can't be with you in person thank you great gift thank you
End of transcript