since has gone on to create his own floating sangha, the Zen Forest Sangha that floats around the East Bay, if you can imagine a floating forest. He can tell you that. And we're glad to have you here today. Thanks. Thank you, Alan. Good morning. It's nice to see some familiar faces and a lot of new faces. I find it daunting to give a talk from this seat. And I know some of you who've done that do also. But I've had some really good help in this way from my and our old friend, Dolly Gutosi, who was a student here for a very long time.

[01:32]

She visited me last night, and we were at some kind of a gathering, a seminar or a workshop of some kind, perhaps about end-of-life care, something like that. And Dolly, what she was going to do is show people the wound that she had from her surgery. And And she did so. It was very matter of fact in this dream. Somehow it was all very straightforward. And I was a little surprised to see Dolly, but happy. And that was it. She showed her wound and walked away from the front of the place, and that was it. So I told this story to my wife this morning.

[02:36]

And she said, David, when you give your talk this morning, are you going to show your wound? Well, I hope I'll be able to say something truthful today and that you'll probably see some wounds. I won't flaunt them. Today, I'd like to talk about politics and war and Buddhist practice. What I have to say about this is my own opinion or views. They don't necessarily represent the views of the Berkeley Zen Center board or its members or its teacher.

[03:42]

And ordinarily we don't talk about issues that are controversial in a worldly way in a public talk like this. But this is what I've been thinking about lately, so I'm moved to do so. I don't know why, but for the past couple of years, I've been thinking a lot about the Second World War. my war. I was born right in the middle of the Second World War, so of course I don't remember any of the events except as they were reported to me later by my parents or friends. Nevertheless, the Second World War

[04:49]

created much of the backdrop for the experience of my whole life. And my relationship to politics, I think, flows from, begins from that place and was conditioned by many events which you know of since then. But for some reason I've been focusing on this, what was for me a starting place of some kind. The understandings I had as a kid growing up in the 50s about the Second World War and how it manifested great issues of right and wrong and courage and sacrifice. The picture I had of the war and all the events around it was a very clear picture to me as a boy in the 50s.

[06:03]

The enemy had been defeated, and there seemed to be the possibility of peace and kind of flourishing. What happened subsequently, you know the kinds of things that happened subsequently. The 50s, the McCarthy hearings. Korea, amazingly fast on the heels of the Second World War. and then Vietnam. Well, what had been really clear to me about good and evil and individual courage and cooperative undertakings from the Second World War really became cloudy and murky.

[07:21]

Vietnam was like the opening of a wound that was much under our culture and our beliefs and our participation in the world, which was very disturbing to a whole generation of people who were, some of whom were the right age to participate in that war, and many people since. It's not the scale of the war. Of course. I found myself looking up statistics about wars a couple weeks ago. And I read, in fact, I brought some of the statistics about the Second World War.

[08:36]

There were 133 million Americans during the Second World War, give or take. And there were 16 million Americans enrolled in the armed services. 12% of the population was in uniform. The only other war that comes anywhere near that is the Civil War. Since then, the numbers have been much, much lower. The United States, our armed services experienced something like a million casualties including people who were wounded, people who died indirectly from the war, as well as people who died in combat.

[10:05]

So a million people. The casualties, well actually, just the number of people killed in uniform in China was two million. Just the people who were killed, who were in uniform, two million. The Soviet Union lost an estimated Nearly 14 million soldiers died in the Second World War. I remember sitting in a classroom in New York, Columbia, during a hot summer, and I was studying Soviet history.

[11:08]

history and economics, and the teacher had an uncanny skill in describing situations that occurred during the Second World War in very particular terms, particular communities, things that happened. So he would zoom in like that, and then he would zoom back and give us aggregate numbers. I'll never forget that. He said the most conservative estimate of the number of people in the Soviet Union who died during the Second World War, soldiers and civilians, was 30 million. 30 million people. He said, actually, those are the numbers that are easy to come up with. Probably it was 40 or 50 million.

[12:10]

The number of, conservatively, the number of people who died in the whole world during the Second World War is 50 million, but probably much more than that. So these are huge, unimaginable numbers. I think they have a meaning to me because they, well, it's like, you know, getting punched right in the nose or something. It really clears your head. It pushes everything else out of the picture for a moment. So anyway, the Second World War seemed very clear. And then there was a kind of corruption that happened.

[13:18]

Toward the middle and end of the Vietnam War, I went to Washington, D.C. to work in the poverty program, still with some shred of idealism. And it was the Johnson administration. And of course, the Johnson administration, the war and poverty was quickly overtaken by the war in Vietnam. So I was blocks from the White House, middle of the city, reading about events halfway around the world and pondering what was I doing in this town. than Nixon and Ford, and I left. Now, I mean, this isn't just a story about me, of course. It's a story of disillusionment that many, many, many people, roughly my age and other ages, experienced during this time.

[14:35]

Politics as we understood it in conventional terms didn't seem to make much sense in view of these events. What seemed fundamentally corrupt in our nation and our culture was not just a matter of choosing one party or another. It was much, much deeper than that. So I came to the West Coast looking for a teacher. I'd read Richard Goodwin's book, The American Condition, very murky but wonderful book, in which he said, you know, where we went wrong was back there at the time of Descartes. our understanding of how things are, and how we should relate to one another, and how our culture should, could flourish, it all went off the track a long, long time ago.

[16:05]

And we're reaping the consequences of that very deep misunderstanding. So I, like many others, decided to leave the world of lobbying and policy analysis and war on poverty and so on, and to go to work on myself, to try to understand how I understood things and how I should relate to people from a much deeper than a conventional political level. And I eschewed politics for a long time. And what's kind of remarkable to me is a shift that's occurred that I feel in myself, and I hear from friends of mine who have similar histories, there's actually kind of turning back to the notion of conventional politics.

[17:10]

And I don't know that I understand it fully. I understand part of it. I understand that, once again, the choices seem really quite clear. That is, the work that needs to be done deep down still needs to be done. It needs to be continued. And it will be in places like this and elsewhere. But now we have a what seems to me and to many others to be pretty clear choice. So I'm feeling quite partisan again. Not like the stewing politics, you know, sending $100 chunks to move on and signing up for bus rides to Nevada to register voters. just so you know where I'm coming from.

[18:13]

You know, you read in the press, sometimes some statement just clicks. It's like it's just right. Again, these are my views reflected in what I'm quoting, but I can't help this. This is David Remnick in The New Yorker, most recent issue. He says, George W. Bush is the worst president the country has endured since Richard Nixon. If you don't agree with these views, I apologize, and I don't mean to anyone harm. But I do mean to speak directly about how I feel as best I can. This is an article in which he's actually making a kind of argument for John Kerry. George W. Bush is the worst president the country has endured since Richard Nixon, and even mediocrity would be an improvement.

[19:28]

Indeed, if one regards the Bush administration's sins of governance, its distortion of intelligence in a time of crisis, its grotesque indulgence of the rich at the expense of the rest, its arrogant dissolution of American prestige and influence abroad, its heedless squandering of the world's resources, you go. If you regard those as worse than a third-rate burglary and a second-rate cover-up, then Bush joins the company of Harding, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, seemed to leave out McKinley. I actually don't agree with that part. I think what happened in the Nixon administration was a lot more important and destructive than a third-rate burglary. Maybe this is tongue-in-cheek, I don't know. But, you know, I feel clear again.

[20:33]

I wanted to be clear about Johnson, you know? Same issue. Bear with me. This is Louis Menand, an art critic. He's reviewing Fahrenheit 9-11. And he's actually making the argument, he's making a kind of wider argument that documentaries are not somehow objective statements of some truth, some balanced view of the truth. What they really do is they reveal things we haven't seen. And in effect, it's up to us to figure out what it all means. He says movies are a powerful means of expression, but watching one is not the equivalent of being hit in the head with a brick. You can still think. If you don't, it's not the filmmaker's fault.

[21:40]

You can withhold your assent to a lot of what Michael Moore implies about George Bush and his brutish, arrogant, reactionary administration and still take pleasure in the way he makes them look bad. You can even think that the reason they look bad is that they are bad. It's just a movie. Well, the other day I got the latest issue of, what is it, folks? Huh? Tricycle. Tricycle. Three beautiful articles in there about politics. one by Katie Butler, a woman I knew many years ago at San Francisco Zen Center, who speaks very feelingfully about her own alienation from politics and about her turning toward politics as a legitimate expression, not only of her political feeling or views, but of her practice.

[23:04]

And she points out how her practice informs her participation. An equally wonderful article by Sue Moon gives you some real concrete guidelines about how to participate, how to be political, and how to watch yourself. similar kind of helpfulness in a third article by Diana Winston. Well, that was so encouraging to me. I can't tell you, I guess maybe I'm just jaded, but I don't usually expect to find things that come in magazine form to be encouraging. But I did find those articles to be just wonderful. You know, right, right. Now as to our practice.

[24:15]

these articles that I just cited, I don't need to say anything more about what they say, except that they do make quite clear that our practice has enormous relevance to conventional political behavior. Sometimes we think in spiritual practice places that that kind of worldly behavior dualistic behavior is somehow not quite seemly. And indeed, some of us came to such places to drop out of that kind of public intercourse and to drop into something that is in fact deeper. But it isn't the case that our ancient teachers did not teach in ways that inform us about how to be political. They did. And I want to mention, maybe I'll read a little bit from it, an essay by Dogen.

[25:25]

our founder in Japan. In some ways, on the surface, a very simple essay called something like, The Four Elements of a Bodhisattva's Sociability, or The Four Elements of Social Relations. for a bodhisattva. Now, of course, the world Dogen was talking about was quite different from ours. It didn't feature politics in the same sense that we understand politics. There was an emperor, kings, and so on, and subjects. Not a lot of participation from the last group, at least not on the surface. But Dogen nevertheless addresses social relations and what there was of politics at the time in ways that are really illuminating.

[26:31]

And in a way, what he's doing is illuminating what were at the time completely traditional Buddhist ideas, nothing new about the Buddhist ideas he was raising in this essay. But he does so in a way that's, of course, very congenial for Zen practitioners. I'll try to make that case, actually reading Dogen will make the case itself. So in this essay, Dogen stresses giving, dana, dana paramita, the perfection of giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and what's sometimes translated as cooperation or identity action.

[27:38]

Now, all of these are, on the surface, dualistic activities. When you give, in the ordinary sense, you or I, the subject, give an object to somebody. But Dogen, as he almost always does, quickly binds up this dualistic understanding with one that penetrates right to the bottom. Giving means non-greed. He says, non-greed means not to covet. Not to covet means not to curry favor. Even if you govern the four continents, you should always convey the correct teaching with non-greed. So now he's talking about offering Buddhadharma without greed.

[28:48]

It is to give away unneeded belongings to someone you don't know. To offer flowers blooming on a distant mountain to the Tathagata, Buddha. Or again, to offer treasures you had in your former life to sentient beings. Whether it is of teaching or of material, each gift has its value and is worth giving. Even if the gift is not your own, there's no reason to keep from giving. The question is not whether the gift is valuable, but whether there is merit. He goes on to say, when you leave the way, the Buddhist path to the Buddhist path, that is you don't add, subtract, in some way rework it for egotistical purposes, you attain the way. At the time of attaining the way, the way is always left to the way.

[29:54]

This is recognizable Dogon-esque language. When treasure is left just as treasure, treasure becomes giving. If you leave things alone, that becomes giving. We're already dropped down two or three levels. You give yourself to yourself and others to others. The power of the causal relations of giving reaches to celestial beings, humans, and even enlightened sages. when giving becomes actual, such causal relations are immediately formed. So he's suggesting that giving, just ordinary giving, in fact, sometimes hardly noticeable giving, emanates throughout the universe. It's perceivable or it affects beings and perhaps objects and worlds that we have no knowledge of.

[31:02]

He quotes Buddha. He says, Buddha said, when a person who practices giving goes to an assembly, people take notice. That's wonderful, isn't it? He's talking about an assembly, a group of people. And people who give, you sense that. You're immediately affected when you're in the assembly and someone enters. who practices giving. Somewhere in here he says, to be who you are today, to be here, in our case, sitting in this room, is a consequence of giving, the practice of giving in prior lives, prior lifetimes.

[32:15]

So he's citing this old notion from Buddhism, prior lifetimes. The only reason you could be here and have the body and mind that you have is the practice of giving in the past. Mind is beyond measure. Things given are beyond measure. Moreover, in giving, mind transforms the gift, and the gift transforms mind. The second method or element of sociability is kind speech. Kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the mind of compassion and offer words of loving care. It is contrary to cruel or violent speech. If kind speech is offered, little by little virtue will grow.

[33:24]

Thus, even kind speech, which is not ordinarily known or seen, comes into being. So again, it's a very subtle process that he's pointing toward, not just the exchange of a few kind words, but the ways in which kind speech reverberates. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. Beneficial action, compassionate action, or skillful means, we could say. Foolish people think that if they help others first, their own benefit will be lost, but this is not so. Beneficial action is an act of oneness, benefiting self and others together.

[34:29]

Thus you should benefit friend and enemy equally. It's a hard standard to meet. you should benefit self and others alike. If you have this mind, even the beneficial action, even beneficial action for the sake of grasses, trees, wind, water, is spontaneous and unremitting." So in this particular translation, he's saying even beneficial action toward things, trees and water and rocks and tiles and walls and pebbles. It is spontaneous and unremitting. In another translation, two others actually, it suggested that what Dogen wanted to say here also was that grasses, water, trees, and so on, actually produce the beneficial action themselves.

[35:54]

That is, They not only reflect it, but it emanates from them if you have this mind. Talking about cooperation or identity action, he says, Action means concrete behavior, a dignified attitude, and a real situation. Kind of refreshing, isn't it? Nothing unclear about that. Action means concrete behavior, a dignified attitude, and a real situation. The Guansi, he's citing an old Taoist text, says, the ocean does not exclude water.

[37:03]

That is why it is large. Mountain does not exclude earth. That is why it is high. A wise lord does not exclude people. That is why he has many subjects. That the ocean does not exclude water is cooperation. Water does not exclude the ocean either. This being so, water comes together to form the ocean. My understanding, Dogen's understanding, is that because the ocean itself does not exclude the ocean, it is the ocean and it is large. Well, I don't know how you hear these words of Dogen.

[38:09]

To me, they speak exactly to how a person like me or you could remain true to our practice and to practice politics. Kind speech. sense of giving. Going to register people in a swing state like Nevada is giving. You're giving something. You may be giving your views as well as the opportunity to register so that someone else, so that someone can vote. But it's gift giving. If we understand political activity in this kind of way, the field is quite open to us. We should use kind speech.

[39:13]

We should practice kind speech as we practice politics and persuasion and so on. All of this is cooperation. I would like to hear what you have to say, Alan. in our society, it's really important that we create the entities, we create, we're responsible. Yes, people form a nation and seek a wise Lord, but as they do not completely as they do not know completely the reason why a lord is wise.

[40:14]

They only hope to be supported by the wise lord. So this is sort of a portrayal of the, you know, the citizen, the regular Joe who says, I hope the king is nice to me. I hope the country takes care of me. I hope there's something in the social security fund when I retire. They do not notice that they are the ones who support the wise lord. In this way, the principle of identity action is applied to both the wise Lord and all the people. This being so, identity action is a vow of Bodhisattvas. He wrote this in 1243, 700 years before I was born. Thank you very much for your talk.

[41:15]

That was very good. I think it's very, very important for people who have some kind of spiritual understanding to become involved in political action because as Dogen was saying in the reading that you just spoke we create the communities that we live in. And I think that you're quite right, that there has been a sort of stepping away from politics for many years by people who at one time were active and then stepped away from it. And of course, the vacuum was filled by people who have quite a different agenda. And just as the old saying that war is too important to leave to the generals, the fashioning of a political society is way, way, way too important to leave to politicians.

[42:20]

And if people who are in it for ideals aren't there, the only people who will be in it are people who want something out of it, who manipulate the system in order to increase their own wealth, which is what's happened in the last three and a half years. If you read any of what's recently been written, it's unbelievable the degree to which the regulation of capitalism has been undone and the transfer to the wealthy of money is unprecedented, really, at least in such a short period of time. But this is what happens when people with other ideas aren't there. And when progressive economic ideas are basically removed from the political arena

[43:33]

If we don't like the way things went, then there's an obligation to get in, and from a proper perspective, to try to make a different world. Because if we don't, somebody else will. Thank you. I think it's time to end, is that right? Okay, thanks. News are numberless.

[44:06]

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