I bow to teach the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. Lately I've been talking about karma and today I'll talk about karma, volitional actions, and the result of karma, which is called phala or fallout. But I want to talk about karma in relation to the result of dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945.

[01:01]

I don't want to call it anniversary, but it's been 58 years. a long time. I was 15 years, 16 years old when they dropped a bomb and ended the war. So it had its good and bad effects. I think a lot of people, I'm always surprised at how young everybody is. and how few people there are now who have experienced something like that Second World War and the result or the occurrence of those bombs that were dropped, those atom bombs.

[02:16]

You know, during the Second World War, if you were living here, there was gas rationing. Everything was rationed. Almost everything was rationed. Sugar was rationed, coffee was rationed, all the foods were rationed, and people had rationed coupons. And everyone had a sticker in their car, A, B, and C. If you had an A sticker, you could get a certain amount of gasoline because of your needs. And then there was the B sticker and the C sticker. The C sticker was for low transportation needs. You maybe get two gallons of gas a week or something like that. And so the whole nation was geared toward the war effort. I remember when the war started, 1941, and everybody had to put blackout curtains in their houses.

[03:28]

And at night you closed the curtains because you weren't supposed to show, there weren't supposed to be any lights in the city at all. You weren't, if you were caught lighting a cigarette outside, you know, you were reprimanded. But they had searchlights going all the time looking for airplanes. The airplanes that never came. But there was that kind of preparedness and there was a good reason for it. But experiencing that whole era And the culmination of it, with those bombs, really stays with the person. And then after the war, there was a period of détente, in which the Russians also had the bomb, or had nuclear capabilities.

[04:40]

And we had nuclear capabilities. So it was the Iron Curtain, and detente, and the Russians and the Americans never spoke to each other. One half of the world didn't speak to the other half. And nobody ever went to Russia, and no Russian ever came to America. And each side kept building up more and more warheads, more and more. missiles and keep developing more atomic problems and at the same time building atomic energy plants. So atomic energy was really in the air and there was a lot of energy and money and interest going into creating atomic facilities of one kind or another, and at the same time, building these massive number of warheads.

[05:44]

And that wasn't so long ago. It didn't seem like it was so long ago. But we were all building so many warheads that it became very ludicrous, because all you needed was one or two. and we had hundreds and [...] there was no end to building them. So this is like the karma that came out of the atom bomb. Even the inventors, most of the inventors of the atom bomb saw it as the worst thing they could have done, but they had to do it because it unleashed this whole firestorm that threatens the world.

[06:47]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it looked like that era was over. When the Soviet Union collapsed, everybody breathed a kind of sigh of relief because it was no longer an enemy that was threatening us in the same way, or that we felt was threatening us. The whole threat, of course, was a made-up story, as it is today. But it's real in the sense that The powers that be use this kind of power to intimidate and to dominate. And there was a non-proliferation treaty.

[08:02]

It looked like things were really getting to a point where the bombs would be put away. I remember the president always had a little black box with a button. And at the critical moment, he could press that button and set off the bombs. and someone always followed him around with his thing. And everybody was living on the edge in some way. But that kind of eased off, and people forgot about the atomic bomb. There were all these other things that were taking the place of people's interest. And now, suddenly, the whole thing is being revived. in the form of little bombs that won't hurt everybody, they just hurt some people.

[09:12]

They'd just be local bombs, except that they're just as powerful as the Nagasaki bomb. Probably this is just used as a way to keep everybody in their place. Because atomic bombs have always been used to keep people in their place. It's like, we got the big bomb, so you guys better behave the way we want you to. And that's probably still so, except that this revival and threat of use is very dangerous. During that whole period after the war, all the information about how to build a bomb was put on the internet.

[10:18]

And anybody can have access to it. I remember people coming up with plans for bombs because they were so simple to build. If you had the information, all you had to do was get the material, which was not so easy to get. But all the information was just published. I thought, what? How could people do that? But if something is created, people will use it. People will proliferate it and people will use it. It doesn't matter what it is. Everything gets around eventually. So now that we've opened up Pandora's box again, all the smaller nations are dealing with each other to see how they can create an opposition with their own bombs. It's totally ignited the world.

[11:21]

I keep thinking about the, what is it called? The National Ignition Facility. What a name. Ignition means ignite. It means to start a fire, to blow things up. This is a facility dedicated to blowing things up. That's a great name. No bones about it, a name. So this is part of the fallout, and we're creating more and more karma. You know, in Buddhism, Buddha Dharma, we talk about the six worlds, right? The six realms. The heavenly realm, the hell realm, the fighting demon realm, the animal realm, the human realm, the hungry ghost realm. And the animal realm is the realm where those who don't have any compassion or feeling or understanding about how other people feel or totally disregard compassionate action.

[12:47]

This is called animal behavior because it's true. Animals attack each other and eat each other, but they really have little compassion for the animals in the animal kingdom. It's rare. And humans descend to this realm, where you can kill civilians, and it's called collateral damage. You know, we don't take body counts of people that we kill in a war. We don't care. Doesn't matter. They're not considered people other than that they happen to be there in a way. So this is animal behavior in its lowest form.

[13:52]

and it goes together with the fighting demon realm. You know, diplomacy, we wonder about diplomacy. Diplomacy is only, the highest kind of diplomacy is making an effort to create peaceful solutions. But we're not interested in peaceful solutions. Otherwise, we would have diplomacy. We're only interested in creating conflagrations because they're more profitable. Profit rules. And the karma, maybe I shouldn't call it karma, just the result of cause and effect. The result of the effect of

[14:58]

These actions, which are causes, is tremendous for everyone. So this is the opposite of the Bodhisattva's way of life. Bodhisattva's way of life is to create a peaceful abode for humans and animals and nature. So how does the bodhisattva act in the animal realm?

[16:04]

How does the bodhisattva act in the fighting demon realm? This anniversary of Nagasaki bombing There will be a demonstration I think tomorrow at Livermore. I have been to countless demonstrations at Livermore over the last 30 years or so and I highly recommend it. It's a great experience. I have a previous engagement so otherwise I wouldn't be there myself. So today I want to talk about it. I think there has to be some response to this. There has to be a response to this nuclear proliferation.

[17:10]

One side is the weapons, the other side is simply nuclear power. Chernobyl, should have been the great wake-up call. And it was. And nuclear power waned. The building of nuclear power plants waned in the America. But now there's this intention to bring nuclear power back. But, you know, Nuclear, people say, well, this is clean energy. Nuclear power is the dirtiest energy. It's clean because it's not polluting the air, the atmosphere. It only pollutes the ground. It also pollutes the atmosphere.

[18:14]

It only has a half-life of 10,000 years or something. Plutonium, uranium, Well, we'll put it, there's no place to put the waste. There's no place, no safe place to put the waste and we keep grinding it out. Well, we'll put it in a big hole in the ground surrounded by salt for 10,000 years and somebody will take care of it. For how long? Nations come and go. Civilizations come and go. 10,000 years. Well, who cares? Who's going to guard the facility or take care of the facility for the next 50 years? Anything could happen in the next five years to completely turn the world around. To where people are running around in clothes made out of leaves, if there are any leaves.

[19:25]

It's a kind of insanity that passes for sanity. How we destroy the world through greed. We destroy civilizations through greed in the guise of creating them. Chernobyl, the disaster in Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.

[20:39]

Three Mile Island, fortunately, was not the same level, but Chernobyl, the whole countryside around is totally contaminated forever. Thousands and thousands of people dying from cancer big sarcophagus put over the plant. But who knows how long that's gonna last. It's already in danger of collapse. It's already, yeah. Yeah, it's already burning itself through. So there's really no way to contain it. So this is very important stuff. And how does it get stopped?

[21:42]

It's a big question. So maybe you have some questions. I'm working for an environmental organization And we get a lot of publications from different environmental organizations. And one that is really encouraging to me is First Island Institute. And there's an article in there on Europe. It hasn't really caught on here in the United States, but there is a lot of eco-consciousness in the world and awareness of this problem. The tide hasn't changed yet, but oil is going to run out soon. It's like a pivot point right now.

[22:46]

There's a lot of energy and thought going into this. I think it's possible to actually turn it around. And I'd just like to encourage people to come out tomorrow. There's going to be a large Buddhist contingent at hands around the lab. We're going to try to encircle the lab. But what you were saying about this man with the black box, there was a piece in, I think, the bulletin of atomic scientists, journal of atomic scientists, that was suggesting that this guy still exists. He's a naval officer.

[23:47]

that actually that button be implanted in that operator's heart. So that if the president wanted to use that button, he would have to take a knife, stab this guy in the heart, reach down into his guts, and push the button. And I think the response is, oh, he could never do that. But in fact, If we're talking about karma result, maybe that's a good idea. Maybe that would be a good technique, because then he'd realize what he was actually doing when he pushed that button. He would have to take responsibility for someone's death right there, not in the next city or the next country. It's very shocking, if you think about it. It's somewhat different asking someone else to do something and doing it yourself.

[24:53]

Nevertheless, you have to find someone with a heart. Thank you so much for bringing this up today. It's really great and meaningful for us to think about it. I thought a lot about the effect on everyone my age and younger of growing up under the shadow, the whole idea that the whole world could be blown up. On my job, I had occasion, actually for years and years, to work with the survivors of the People's Temple, the Jonestown disaster in Guyana, and I interviewed so many hundreds of them. trying to understand, you know, how could people be in a suicide pact with a leader and then actually kill themselves and murder their other comrades and so on, their children and everything?

[25:57]

914 people died in Jonestown, in Guyana, and as I looked into this deeply, talking with them for years, I realized all of us are in a suicide pact with our leaders, saying, wait, with the bomb, you know, And we're so inured to it, we're just so used to it, that we've given that power to end the world to them. And in our mind, I think in myself too, there's a place that's just afraid. Somehow fear has been very built into us because we knew that as children. I'm old enough, I went and did those duck and cover drills. Yeah, that's right. At my desk in New York City when I was a kid. And now we've entered this sort of endless war, and all of that is based on fear, I believe, too, that we're easily frightened because we're used to it. You know how you sort of find yourself repeating the family patterns of your childhood?

[27:00]

And we're just doing that, you know, keeping going with that these people could push the button, and we have nothing to say about it. We need to kind of stand up, you know, and I'm definitely going to be at the lab with my husband, daughter, and granddaughter tomorrow. We'll be eight hands around the lab. It's just a small thing, but I think it's important for us personally to look into how we are passive and frightened. Right. There's a lot of manipulation. And people just get drawn into that manipulation, don't even realize how they're being manipulated. Yeah. Thanks for your thumbnail sketch of that history. I'd just like to add one thing, which sort of is just a slight shift in focus.

[28:07]

All of that history was justified on the basis of national defense. But we now have a new national foreign policy that is overtly and clearly bent on world domination. This is actually the stated policy of the people who run our country. So all of these previous horrible weapons that were at one time justified out of a kind of primitive fear are now generalized into an absolute imperial thirst. We have to look at the rest of the world as how frightened other people must be. Whereas in the past there was a kind of standoff, now we are in a very aggressive position Sure.

[29:13]

Well, this is kind of a question. First of all, every morning, you know, in meditation, you wish that every sentient being get what they need that day. Get what they... What they need that day. But the real question is how that Buddhist stance and the belief that one's compassionate intention helps the world. That isn't enough. There are people who say, My power isn't in politics. My power is in a kind of prayer or a kind of intention, a wish for the good of everyone.

[30:23]

And that's been kind of a good stance, but it seems like it's become a passive stance, that you actually have to do something. And I guess my question is, or my confusion is, is how you hold those two parts of, you know, I've got to go out and do something, and at the same time I have to wish everyone well. I guess it's a paradox? Yeah, where you stand on the first one and act on the second one. The first one is the base, and out of that comes the action. That's basic Buddhism. The base is totally still, and the act is movement. You have to have both.

[31:27]

If you only act without the base, then you don't have any foundation. And if you only have the base without acting, you're still sitting on top of the 100-foot pole. I guess it's a question about karma and I'm not very clear, but initially the bone was developed because people were afraid that Hitler was going to develop the bone. And it seemed perfectly justified. Maybe. It's hard to say. Truman decided to drop the bomb, and that's completely unjustified by me. The thing I've learned is that it could very well, some of those threats of lengthening the war, or what they could have. So these people in power, they never think it seems further than 10 years, maybe. Because once you have used it once, you allow later anybody to use it, to make it, to use it.

[32:32]

And I was wondering what would have happened if Truman had not use the bomb at that time? It might have changed a lot. Well, I don't know. Of course, things would be different. But it took a long time to develop that bomb. And while that was being developed, it wasn't as clear that some other way could have been done, which later Probably by the time they used the bomb, they could have done something else. But it took a long time to develop that, so they had to use it. Well, you know, when you have people killing you, you do whatever you can to stop them. If you've ever seen pictures of the Battle of the Pacific, you would do anything to stop them. So I can't say that I justify the bomb or not justify the bomb.

[33:36]

The bomb was a result of what happened. The Japanese invented the atom bomb. Just like we invented bin Laden. I'm sorry. Tragic, totally tragic. But that's their karma. That's the result of what they did. They shouldn't have done it. It was a really tough lesson. Really hard lesson in what happens to you when you're an aggressor. If you'd lived through, well, you've lived through that war. But it was a horrendous war. That was a horrendous war. And we were not in an easy position to win it.

[34:38]

So, you know, it's mind-boggling, the whole thing. To say, well, it was justified, not justified. In a sense, it's justified, and in a sense, it's not justified. And in a sense it was the right thing to do, and in another sense it was the wrong thing to do. All of that is true. So, you have to be careful what you do as an aggressor. And we have to be very careful of what we're doing as an aggressor. This is what really worries me. because there is retribution for our acts bound to happen. Way in the back.

[35:50]

Yeah. I have to speak way up. The body count issue is really, the reason they call it collateral damage is they do not want Americans to know what the body count is for a number of reasons. One, they don't want to show how ineffective their weapons really are. And two, that there really is a great deal of distress that would develop if Americans really knew what the body count is. Although sometimes I think there's still this distance. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is sort of getting back to the idea of retribution.

[36:58]

I mean, when you think about something like, you know, the problem of nuclear power plants and how it's going to screw things up, I mean, what is justified? What is not justified? I mean, in my younger days, I used to do, you know, sit-ins and shut-downs, lock-downs. Then there were these people who were just convicted of sabotaging a nuclear plant. Oh, yes. The nuns. But then how far do you go? This is a very hard one, you know, because it's long to travel a year with liberation. Right, so in every action, social action, some people are very aggressive, some people are a little reticent, and then there's the middle, which is where everybody's supposed to behave themselves. aggressive social action, there's sometimes consequences for those people. But those people often make a big impact.

[38:01]

Sometimes it's justified and sometimes it's not. But it's fairly much of an individual. It's not, you know, we try to do things on a peaceful basis. But people get frustrated. Some of those people though, and actually there's a meditation group at the Women's Federal Prison in Dublin, and there are three people from the School of America watch there. It's actually not an individual thing, it's actually a collective At least their immediate karmic result, they're prepared to go to jail.

[39:12]

And they do their time. And what's inspiring is that when you meet them, when they do their time, it's not easy time. wrote a series, students, activists, spiritual people, Christians, who wrote a series of leaflets against the Nazis. And as they were delivering, they're agitating among students to, in very clear language, about how evil and illegitimate this regime was. And they knew what the price was going a spiritual place or a principle place, whether they're Buddhists or not, they can act in such a way as to understand that their opposition, their non-consent, is going to have karmic fruit for them.

[40:38]

And it will also have other karmic fruits that are maybe positive for other people. They're willing to pay the price. Please.

[40:53]

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