And the title of this talk is Zen 2.0. What is it? And this is with thanks to my friend, Reverend Eli Brown Stevenson, who is currently the Tonto or head of Zen at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center near Muir Beach in Marin County, California. I lived there for a year. as a single mother when my child, who's still living with me, was between one and two years old. That would have been like 1990, something like that. All right. Zen is poetry. So Zen 2.0. What is it? Zen is poetry. Poetry is Zen. The late Robert Aitken Roshi, who was my old friend, once said to me, this was in a conversation.

[01:07]

We both love poetry, and I think he had been a high school English teacher in California in his life. And I am a poet, and... have an English degree in English from my college days. So we liked poetry to one another, and we really enjoyed that. So he just said that in this very, like, emphatic way. He said, Zen is poetry. Poetry is Zen. Therefore, here's a poem for you by the former Korean Buddhist monk and poet, Ko Eun. as published in the poetry anthology, What Book? Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip Hop, edited by Gary Gack, which won the American Book Award in 1998.

[02:13]

It's a very nice anthology of poetry. I really recommend it. What book? Exclamation mark, question mark. Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip Hop. This was written in Korean, translated into English. The title is Asking the Way. You blockheads who ask what Buddha is should start asking about everything else instead. Ask about everything. When you're hungry, ask about food. Ask the moonlight about the way. Find a port where lemon trees bloom, where lemon trees bloom. Ask about places to drink in the port.

[03:14]

Ask and ask, left to ask. This particular translation is by Young Woo Kim. and Brother Anthony published in Ko Eun's book, Beyond Self, 1997. For those of you who don't know famous Korean, Soo-ji Kwok Kim, who did another translation of this poem, it's very close, writes of Ko Eun online in poetryfoundation.org. And here's a trigger warning that Ko Eun's life was neither safe, nor pleasant. So Soo-Jee Kwok Kim writes, when he was a teenager, when Ko-Un was a teenager, the Korean War broke out. That was 1950, four years before I was born. Drafted but rejected for combat because he was too malnourished, he worked unloading munitions and loading corpses for burial.

[04:24]

sometimes carrying them on his back. At one point, he poured acid into both ears so he would not hear the sounds of killing and dying. His hearing was further damaged decades later when he was tortured in prison as a political dissident. In an interview in The Guardian, he recalls, Half of my generation died. And I survived. So the guilt of culpability at being a survivor, they had all died and here I was still alive. In 1952, before the war ended, Cole became a Buddhist monk. Without Buddhism, he says of that time in his life, I wouldn't be here because I was lost. So without Buddhism, I wouldn't be here today because I was lost.

[05:30]

It's my experience here in the United States, in North America, that if people come to Zen Buddhist practice in any of the Zen lineages, and I'll mention them, further in this talk, Zen, as I understand this word, that if people come to Zen practice, some may come out of curiosity and think, oh, well, that was interesting, or I didn't like that, whatever they think, and then they go away and they continue their spiritual quest, and perhaps they end up in a group, in another lineage, perhaps they go to some other global faith tradition, a group that has no lineage, that's just been started by someone.

[06:34]

However, if people stay, I probably don't need to tell all of you, this is purposefully not a physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually easy kind of activity and practice. That is because of the history of how these lineages evolved. I just told you part of the circumstances fairly recently of that period in Korean history. And as you know, before that, the Korean War was in 1950. Before that, I think in 2010, the Japanese... had created a brutal, invaded and led a very brutal occupation for many, many years in Korea. And then, of course, at a later point, Korea was divided and families were broken in half, separated by what is now the DMZ or Demilitarized Zone, and that condition persists until this moment.

[07:50]

So without Buddhism, I wouldn't be here today because I was lost. And in my experience, people who stay with this practice in this country come and stay because you have a sincere way-seeking mind, heart-mind, to use a term that I like very much. You have questions that you want to find your own answers to. You want to find community. You want to find teachers, mentors, guides along the way. You want to find teachings. We can do study. And also, we all participate to some extent in the life of the Sangha, the practice of Sangha. the third jewel in the triple gem of the Dharma Sangha, and that may be the most difficult of all because people can be very annoying and not do what we want them to do.

[09:05]

I know that as a parent and also as a Sangha member. And that's all purposely meant to have its ups and downs, certainly its good points, but a lot of bad points. because this is not about rugged individualism, and you can get into full lotus posture and just sit, and then you're enlightened, and then everything is cool. Great. Yeah, I hear him laughter about that. That's it. That's a great fantasy, not to be, not to be. So what might this mean for our own practice this morning, July 27th in the year 2026? You blockheads who ask, it's like, what's Buddha?

[10:07]

Cohen says, should start asking about everything else instead. Ask about everything. Ask and ask till nothing's left to ask. Therefore, I ask you. What are the most generative, juiciest questions you've asked? So I'm saying generative, meaning creating, creative, generating something new. What are the most generative, juiciest questions you've asked yourself and or others in your own life? Maybe what is the most generative, juiciest question in your life?

[11:09]

So it could be one question, it could be two, maybe three, I don't know. And what are your biggest, gnarliest, most existential questions? Existential meaning my very existence depends on this. What are your biggest, gnarliest, most existential questions right now? When, as in the famous Mahayana Sutra, the Lotus Sutra says, we could be said to be... huge house called planet Earth that is burning to the ground ecologically, politically, socially, economically, in my point of view. Is it burning to the ground? So I'm assuming from my own experience,

[12:14]

That if you do Zen meditation in a stationary posture, I say that because socially engaged Buddhism has to do with disability justice. So not everyone can sit on the floor. Not everyone can sit in a chair. There are people, including members of this sangha, I believe, who have done whole sessions. Backs are on their sides because of spinal injury, chronic illness, chronic pain. So if you do Zen meditation in any posture for extended periods of time, I'm assuming you know your biggest questions, whatever they are, up like Godzilla, suddenly popping up from Tokyo Bay, screeching and flailing. You know how Godzilla does that?

[13:15]

He's got very short arms, and he's always like this, and he's just like screeching, and he's got that breath of radioactive fire. What you may not know, I'm a big fan of Godzilla, is that I believe Godzilla was activated. He was minding his own dam business, I think, sleeping on the floor of the ocean. And he was, which is a word that's meaningful to us, he was awakened and he went into action coming out on land because of nuclear bomb testing. So he is a product of the era of, in my childhood and youth growing up in Ohio, we called, at that point, the atomic bomb. bomb and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[14:19]

So Godzilla is suddenly popping up from Tokyo Bay. He's all radioactive, screeching and flailing. And if these questions don't come up during some extended period of Zen practice, they're not Godzilla questions. They're not existential. They're tangential and they will come and go. Small potatoes, let them go, I recommend. Go for the Godzilla or Kaiju, K-A-I-J-U level questions, if possible. AI says that the Japanese word Kaiju refers... quote, unquote, to a genre of giant monstrous creatures that are typically portrayed less like animals and more as unstoppable, divine, or atomic level threats.

[15:28]

So AI says that the Japanese word kaiju, which are like Deidre and Godzilla and Mothra, there's a whole gang of them. So it's a genre. of giant monstrous creatures that are typically portrayed less like animals, they're not animals, as unstoppable divine disasters or atomic level threats. I have been quite involved, as perhaps many of you have been, in what is now being called the eco- dharma, the eco-dharma movement. And the eco-dharma movement consists of Buddhist practitioners who are concerned, deeply concerned about what they understand to be the global, regional, and local

[16:39]

effects of global climate crisis, and better understand what it is that we can do, what it is that we cannot do, and how to practice in this time. I've been in touch with, some of you may know, a Zen priest in Colorado named Kriti Kanko. who is an environmental scientist and who said to me, this was quite a few years ago, who said, you can forget, we can forget about saving the polar ice caps. They are gone. So we're not going to engage in any kind of activism or anything like that to try to save them because it is too late. We've gone past that tipping point. And eco-dharma, as I understand it, seeks to make that decision between what tipping points we have passed globally and what we have not passed and to ask ourselves.

[17:53]

So this is the existential question. What can we do? What can we not do? Therefore, we must accept. And how do we practice? How do we eat? How do we love? Very importantly, as a mother, I ask, how do we raise our kids, our grandkids, take care of our elders? That's an existential, that's a kaiju level question. So Zen 2.0. As I've said it, what is it? Korean Zen, or Son, and Chinese Zen, that's the mothership as I understand it, Chan, and Vietnamese Zen, or Tian, which has mostly come to me through the teachings and life of the late and great Thich Nhat Hanh,

[19:07]

And I was told by a Vietnamese Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh does not represent Vietnamese Buddhism. He emerged in his own right as a teacher with his own body of teachings. So you say that, that what I've learned about Vietnamese Tien is through Thich Nhat Hanh, and I've been told he's not representative because he was such an innovator. and however there is Vietnamese Zen, all have their own powerful and diverse traditions. Just as in Japanese Zen, there's Soto and Rinzai, both of which I've had the good fortune to practice, have different, albeit related, related approaches. I would say they're possibly all forms of Zen.

[20:10]

And what I see now in 2026 is the confluence due to the internet, due to various causes and conditions, now is the confluence of these mighty rivers. So Japanese Zen, Soto Rinzai, Korean Zen Son, Chinese Zen Chan, Vietnamese Zen Tian, and perhaps there are what we call Zen as well, that what I'm seeing now is the confluence of these mighty rivers, which have not been possibly that much known to one another, not in order to erase and say, oh, okay, well, it's really all the same. Because, no, they're not.

[21:12]

Many years ago, I'd been involved with Buddhist Peace Fellowship for a long time, which Berkeley Zen Center has such a close tie to, due to the late, who was my friend. And I remember one of the BPF... I guess employees or board members a long time ago, Lewis Woods said to me, I think that was his name, said to me, people say that, oh, all religions are the same. And he said, that's just not true because if they were, they would all be the same. And they're not. I've also worked as a diversity equity inclusion consultant, mostly for Buddhist and some other groups, mostly for Buddhist groups. Diversity equity inclusion access, as we know, is a professional field, which has now basically been destroyed in this country at this time by the federal government.

[22:24]

And I've worked as a diversity, equity, inclusion consultant mainly for Buddhist groups in order to honor the diversity, the differences as well. One consultant that I know is the diversity is a mixture of similarities in any given group. It's not just differences. It's also similarities. So I want to just stop here and recognize that this is not about erasing differences. It's about arousing curiosity and creating the invitation for us to learn from one another and possibly from ourselves, from all the, like... what internal family systems is huge right now in psychotherapy. Each of us, as Walt Whitman said, I am large, I contain multitudes.

[23:29]

That we learn from the different parts of ourselves, and very importantly, we learn from how, ways in which we're different. It's natural to bond together through similarities. Oh, you like that K-drunk? I binge-watched it last weekend. Or, oh, you like the same kind of food I do. Let's go together and we'll enjoy this food or come over to my house and I'll cook you that food because that's the way I cook. That is very natural. I would submit that in age, we do live in a globalized world. And therefore... I think evolutionarily, we're being asked to change. And instead of thinking, oh, those are my people, that's my tribe, that's safe, that's where I belong. Yes, that's very necessary for human beings. And at this point, I feel that the question that's being asked is, how do we learn from difference?

[24:41]

And how do we... coexist with one another. And that is unanswered as of this point. It's all in process. So all these different forms of Zen, as I see now, confluence of these mighty rivers. Not to erase their differences, but instead to point, I feel, to the immense richness of and the abundance of what I'm dubbing Zen 2.0. So there's so much to learn, I think. And I'm excited and joyful to see Buddhist media here in North America bringing forward contemporary Chan teachers, such as my friends Teacher Guagu in Tallahassee, Florida, and Teacher Rebecca Lee, L.I.,

[25:44]

And Master Guagu has described the nature of Chan Zen practice as, I love this word in English, as wonderment. Wonderment. And that's very close, I would say, in my limited understanding to... The nature of what I believe is probably the quintessential Korean Zan or Son practice called Hwadu, H-W-A-D-U, is the romanization practice. And that is the same as Watou practice from Chinese Chan as wonderment, wonderment. comes with a certain tone.

[26:48]

So the questioning is not like so we're sitting in meditation and we think, Lucian, what's your life? I mean, everything is going to shit. What is it? What do you have to do today? What? You've got to do something now. Because that's That comes from anxiety, that comes from fear, that might come from anger. All completely understandable. However, we're asked to just kind of pull back into one. So the tone of this is, what's the actual meaning of my life? I wonder. And I notice when I say, I wonder, everyone's into somatics and embodiment these days. I think that's valuable, and it really irritates me.

[27:49]

Because for those of us who've done Zen practice, you know, everything hurts at a certain point. You could be thinking at the start, I would really like to be enlightened, whatever the heck that is. But at the end, you're thinking, oh, my knees hurt. When is the damn bell going to ring? And what's for lunch? So it's very physical. So what's the meaning of my life? I wonder. And I notice that actually my chin goes up when I say that, and I look into it. So there's a meaning to that. We're looking at a bigger picture. We're looking at what in some Buddhist traditions is called I believe, the view, translated into English. The big view, the bigger picture. What is the meaning of my human life, this span? I wonder, I wonder.

[28:51]

What's the bigger view? As we know, in, I think it was his last... It's always been very meaningful to me. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his talk, which is usually referred to as, I've come down from the mountaintop speech. And he, as had all of the people in the civil rights movement, as had the country, United States. And I believe what he said as he addressed the congregation was, he said, you know, tonight I'm not worried anymore. And that's always so meaningful to me, that dropping away of anxiety, of fear, of agitation.

[30:02]

He said, I'm not worried. Why? Because I've been to the mountaintop, he said, and I have seen the promised land. I've been to the mountaintop. And there we have the metaphor of we're down in lands and there are dogs rummaging through... garbage and we have to pay taxes and everything's so complicated these days. I got a notice in the mail from, I don't know if it's California, that I had done a bridge toll violation on my fast track and that then I had a fine to pay, but I never, I don't think I drove anywhere on that day. So then I've had to contest it, and then I got emailed back from them saying, okay, it definitely was your car, and we have a photo of it with a surveillance camera.

[31:13]

They're everywhere. So here's your license plate. But we're going to waive the violation fine, and you can just pay the bridge toll fee. I do have money on my Fast Track account. And then, so I went to the website and it said the amount you owe is zero. To apply that, those of us dealing with health care, we're laughing. However, everything, as I'm finding it, is complicated and a lot of systems are breaking down. That's all going on in the lowlands in this metaphor, and rightly so, business. However, the view from the mountaintop is different. Do we see human habitations and highways and ships in the harbor?

[32:21]

Yes, we do. And we see the greater forms of the earth. the salt and fresh waters, the mountains, the hills, and the plains. There's something bigger. Wonderment. Will I find true love? I wonder. I wonder. Presumably, we're in the Zendo, we can't swipe left or right. We might wonder, where is my true love? Do I remember my past? All of the things that might bother me so much, give me such deep pain. Do I remember my past? Or do I just think I remember it? I wonder.

[33:22]

We have time. To practice stopping, dropping, breathing, wondering. Asking ourselves, what is the most important thing for me to do right now? For us to do as a community. Each of us probably has many communities. So in each community, we might ask, what is the most important thing for us to be doing together right now? Here in the United States, only two days ago, the Washington Post report. Panic rippled through communities from Florida to Ohio and beyond in the hours after the Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration Thursday to strip humanitarian protections from Haitians and Syrians and potentially all 1.3 immigrants.

[34:26]

from over a dozen countries who had been previously shielded from deportation. This refers to TPS, temporary protected status. Thus, I submit to you today is very important and tomorrow. I get a daily email from an organization called Paryati, P-A-R-I-Y. You can get it too if you like. They never ask for money. I think they operate by dhana donations. It's called Paryati, Daily Words of the Buddha. And it's always just a little quotation from the... I think from the Pali suttas.

[35:27]

And there's also a link that you can click on to listen to, I guess, Theravadan monks chanting. Just a very brief little quote, then a translation into English. Just recently, the daily words of the Buddha through Pariyate I'm sorry, I'm not trained as a scholar, but said something like, Those who mistake the unessential to be essential. To be unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential.

[36:35]

Those who mistake the unessential to be essential, and the essential, unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, as we know, the Eightfold Path, there's right thought or intention, Some people don't like the word right, so wise, beneficial, skillful. There can be unbeneficial, as we know, thinking. It's what I call garbage thoughts, of which I have a lot. And the sutta says, never arrive at the essential. This is actually from my favorite text, the Dhammapada. It's a translation of a verse from the Dhammapada. So my own practice began somewhat by chance or karma in Korean North American Zen in the United States and Canada in 1982 and eventually led me on the period of my life.

[37:46]

I was lived under a vow of poverty and renunciation, so monastic-style training. And eventually this path led me to eight months of Zen training on a very famous mountain, Toksungsan, so Mount Toksungsan, Toksungsan Mountain. And Toksungsan is in the northern part of South Korea, going up toward the demilitarized zone, and above that is North Korea. And from the top, I talked about the view from the mountain, The top of Toksungsan, which I don't know, maybe it had about 10 temples on it, and monks' temples, nuns' temples that had hermitages. There were laypeople who lived in residence. And on the weekends, it was like a national, and therefore tourists would just come thronging through.

[38:49]

At that point, that was in 1987, 88. I think probably plastic stuff had just really come into Korean culture. And tourists would come and bring all of this packaged food and drinks and stuff like that. And when they finished eating it, they would just like throw it onto the side of the path and into the creek bed on the mountains. So there was just this incredible like litter problem on this beautiful place. And at the top of it, there was a kind of an elite Zen monk's temple called Jonghae Sa. And that overlooked, had a magnificent view overlooking the China Sea. In Korean Zen, if you go into, if you ordain and you go into the monasteries, into the monastic life, it's called Ip.

[39:54]

Ipsan, Ipsan, I-P-S-A-N, I think. San is mountain. And so that translates, they told me, as going into the mountain. So you're, you know, that samsaric world of, I don't think I was even driving the day that you're telling me I have a bridge toll violation. What the heck? And all of that stuff. And quarreling children, that sort of thing. I've worked a lot with children. They'll spit on each other, try to strangle each other. Sometimes people say, oh, they're so pure. They're naturally like little Buddhas. No, they're not. They could be like all of us. And then on other days, no, definitely. So Ipsan, going into the mountain. And I would submit that for each of us,

[40:55]

through this practice that we're doing, which requires so much introspection, which requires so much discipline, spiritual, emotional effort, which requires so much aggravation, again from aforesaid annoying people in the Sangha, that each of us understands in our own way what ipsan means, what it means to enter, and to seek within ourselves and within our community that greater view, that view from the mountaintop in which we gain a different and greater perspective without engaging from day-to-day life. So I was on Toksungsan, and... It contained all these different temples at different levels.

[41:58]

And the headquarters temple, Sudoksa, was closer to the base of the mountain. And the Buddha Hall there, I found out, I looked last night on the internet, is, it's all wooden. It's still there. It's the oldest wooden building in South Korea. So not just in a temple, it says in South Korea. And when I was there, we used to occasionally have... have fire drills, that if it ever caught on fire, how would the fire truck make it up the mountain from wherever it came from? I don't know, from the village at the base of the mountain? I guess there was a fire department. But anyway, we had to have resources so that we could save the Buddha Hall. It's the oldest wooden building in South Korea and was built around 1308 during the Koryo dynasty. designated as Korean National Treasure No. 49.

[42:59]

So I was living and practicing. You know, you just kind of would go out into the dirt courtyard in the temple complex from the meditation hall and boom, be looking right up. There were steps, there were stone steps and then on a kind of a stone foundation, natural cut rock, there would be very ancient Buddha hall. And that's where the Zen master of the mountain would take the Dharma seat in order to give the Dharma talks on the full moon and half moon during the days during the three-month winter meditation or winter gilche and the summer three-month rains retreat, the summer meditation gilche. So it was there in a little bit of a lower building, office building, with next to that ancient Buddha hall in 1988.

[44:04]

Received instruction in Korean Zen or Hwadu practice from the Zen master of the mountain, Wondam Kun Sinem. Sinem means monk or nun, like venerable or reverend. And kun means big. So like a big room like this. Well, this is a zendo, but if it were, like, also used as a community hall sometimes, it would be called the kunban, literally the big room, which we could use for various sangha activities. So he was a big, big monk, kun sinim. And he had been, I think, on that mountain since he was a teenager. And what he told me has carried me through the past 38 years and up into this moment now, so I'm sharing it with you. I was just minding my own business, and a man who was fluent in both Korean and English.

[45:09]

So I was talking to him, and he said, he said, if you like, I could ask Wondam Kunsenim if he would... Meet with you individually. And I said, really? It occurred to me to ask. And he said, yeah, I'll let you ask. So he came back to me and he said, yeah, he'll talk to you. So come with me and we'll go see him at such and such a time tomorrow. So I went in and I did my bows. He was very happy. First level nun. or bhikkhuni ordination, kind of junior bhikkhuni, on that mountain. So I was now officially part of his spiritual family. He said, you are my daughter. And he gave me this instruction, this practice instruction, which I'll be with you now to end my talk. So Wanda Mkhunsenim said, we meditate,

[46:15]

in the meditation hall, only because to build a foundation for a practice, only because it's simpler. So as you know, you don't have a lot of choices. You don't have to think about, oh, what am I going to look at on my phone? I hope. You don't have to think, oh, what time will I eat and what will I eat? They eat what the kitchen serves. You don't have to think, what am I going to do this afternoon? Should I go to Trader Joe's or should I work on my taxes? No. You're there to do the afternoon schedule, whatever it may be. So he said, we meditate sitting down only because it's simpler. He said, but our practice is actually to go deeper, deeper, and deeper, moment by moment, in all our waking hours.

[47:21]

He said, when we're walking to the outhouse, we're washing our clothes, which we did by hand. When we're eating, just keep going, he said, in raising up that question, in wondering. And the practice, as I understand it, is traditionally called aiming. Emoko, which roughly translates to, what is this? What is this really? Beyond appearances, beyond my limited understanding now, wonder. What is this for real? And Wandan Kunsanum said, so he said, he said, he said, every moment you practice this, you practice this.

[48:30]

And then he said, you will have many spiritual experiences. By which I took it, he meant, you'll have little, what I think in Japanese then it's called, like, kensho, little flashes of insight. He said, You will have many spiritual experiences. And I thought, oh, good. And then he said, ignore them all. By which I take it to mean, you know, that was then. This is now. It's not that they don't have impact. Yes, they're very encouraging. But don't get stuck. Don't get fixated. Wow, that insight I had in the Zendo at 3 p.m. yesterday just blew me away. Well, that's okay. And now is now. Okay. So he said, ignore them all. He said, just keep going until the final explosion.

[49:36]

And as we know, it's through that primal explosion that the new world, is created. So thank you very, very much. And we have just a few minutes if you have questions or your own insights. Do we have any questions online? Yes, and people online. Thank you so much for your talk, Mushim. I wonder how to ask this question. I appreciated the range of things you brought up from climate catastrophe to the sangha being annoying.

[50:40]

And it brought up a question for me. At one point in your talk, you quoted some text from AI. And I have a view of AI as very problematic technology sort of contributing to a lot of ecological issues. So a lot of anger arose for me when you said that. And I'm just wondering, like, how do I... how do I relate to my anger when it feels like it really, really wants my attention and it really thinks something is sort of not going right or sideways or something is off. And so I'm sharing this very openly because I am genuinely really curious when something like a view like this comes up, I'm thinking of...

[51:42]

data centers being built and energy use and a lot of powerful rich people getting more powerful and more rich and us and how we figure into all of this and how I relate to this when it arises because I suspect it will arise much more frequently going forward. So what's the question? How do I relate to this anger when it feels it really wants my attention? How do I relate to this anger that is non-harming to me and to the people I care about, even if my perception is some harmful? First of all, to state the obvious, realize you are not alone. I'm angry. I'm afraid, too. So at least it's you and me. But it's much more, as you know, than you and me.

[52:43]

So realize you're not alone. I often quote, there's a quote from a published article from many years ago, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, the title of the article is, the justifiably angry Marxist. And His Holiness said, I'm Marxist. And he said, anger at social injustice is a good anger. It is a justifiable anger. Not if we use it to harm ourselves. If we use it as fuel for that question, I would say, I don't know how you would put it, is, okay, AI is here. That's not going to be put back into the box. So what do I do? What do we do? The answer is for you.

[53:46]

As a Buddhist teacher, I am more and more emphasizing something which isn't Buddhist at all. It's basic, critical thinking skills. We'll take the question, Amon. Is that me? Yes. It's Karen. I really appreciated your talk. I was thinking about your comment about the Supreme Court supporting Trump, allowing immigrants to... be deported without any humanitarian consideration. And so I'm wondering how to take the big view of that.

[54:51]

How do you take the view from the mountain when you see so much suffering? I can only speak for myself and I do work with some undocumented immigrants and of course I myself am a third American and we know what happened to Japanese immigrants and their Japanese American born children during World War II. We were put into concentration camps in this country. I do speak from that point of view. And just to be really frank, in the biggest view, in the biggest view, the way I see it, it's that all civilizations rise and fall.

[55:59]

And everything that comes, that is created from various parts will disaggregate at a certain point. However, that's a view that's big. However, it doesn't give me any particular comfort because it sucks. And the problems that are created, we have created. It's not like some giant comet that came whirling from outer space and, well, there was nothing we could do about it. We've actually created this. And so what I do, Karen, every day is I devote to the practice of grieving. And I grieve the many losses. I turned 72 this year, so my... Classmates from undergraduate college, some of them are going through diagnoses of dementia.

[57:06]

They're forgetting things. Having the driver's license taken away from them, that kind of thing. And so I spend part of every day grieving. I do. That's a really good thing to do. And doing it generatively, creatively. doing it with gratitude because I can't grieve something unless it was something that was meaningful to me. And then at the same time, I do seek Karen to, with what limited time and resources I have, I do give monthly donations, for instance, to Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, and a few other organizations. I give one-time donations sometimes to the ACLU and so forth. So I make discriminations of what I can give in a small... And mostly really what I try to do is to, through whatever platform I may have as a community member, as a community activist, and as a community... I'm looking at you on the screen, but I should be looking at you.

[58:22]

And as a community... organizer in the ways that I work. I'm now interested in what's called integrative medical care and equity in health care services. And I'm also interested with a group of activists locally and nationally who are working for food justice equity. So all of that I seek to work with others in saying, what can we do now? The highest quality of life, of happiness, of health, well-being, and joy for our communities in this time and in this place. So in other words, to use the old phrase, think globally and act very closely.

[59:24]

Thank you so much. Thank you very much. And I believe we're at the end of our time together. Thank you all for your practice. It means more than what we might sometimes think. It's very, very important. Ask questions. Ask questions. Ask the big questions. And share what you come up with me and others, please.

[59:54]

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