people ended a pilgrimage across the United States and stayed here for a couple of weeks. Three summaries, Phil? Four? Three. Three. Ninety-nine. Hanschen's practice And I won't say much more about his background, but I feel that he does this work, this practice, because he has to. And in the practice, as a way of finding himself, I always like to sit in these traditional Zen places and smile because often when I come to these Zen places, people are so severe looking.

[01:59]

I get this and that's always a challenge for me to help people to smile, to do something a bit different. At the age of For those of you who don't know, at the age of 17, I enlisted in the United States Army, was trained and then volunteered to go to Vietnam. For those of you who may not remember, in, I believe it was 1963, there was an incident in the South China Sea called the Gulf of Tonkin. A single incident. which generated a lot of nationalistic fervor called patriotism in this country that prompted the escalation of warlike activities in Vietnam.

[03:04]

The troop strength in Vietnam in 1963 was 26,000. There were 26,000 Americans there serving as advisors to the South Vietnamese Army. The South Vietnamese Army grew out of the creation, out of a political decision to separate Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh wanted a united Vietnam. Elections were held and it looked like it was going to go in that direction. And it was said that there were a large group of people who didn't want it that way. So there was a decision made to separate the country. The country was separated at a place along the Ben Hai River. I believe it was the 38th parallel. I went as part of that escalation troops where we went quickly from 26,000 to 500,000 troops.

[04:14]

Between 1963 and 1973, more than 58,000 Americans were killed and several hundred thousand, if not millions of Vietnamese were killed in the north and from the south. We began the withdrawal. in 1973, and in 1975, the last troops were pulled out of Vietnam. General Giap, who was the commanding general of North Vietnamese forces, the Vietnamese never won one major tactical battle in Vietnam. And yet, they were successful in winning And I'm talking from a military perspective, winning the war. Because winning the war meant our, and those who fought with us, our withdrawal. Through this time of involvement, one of the major propaganda tools that was put forth, something that I'm familiar with, is that while we were waging a military conflict, we were also attempting to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese.

[05:34]

and it's something that I hear frequently now and I must say in the last days and months I've experienced a great deal of despair a great deal of sadness a great deal of confusion and sometimes was wondering, what do I do anything? What am I doing? Why don't I just stop doing everything I do and just, I don't know, sit on the beach and ride my motorcycle? What is the point? Well, that is the point. And it's imperative that I work The work that I've been invited to do, just through the reality of my life, is working with cultures of violence and marginalized cultures.

[06:40]

And for me, marginalized cultures don't have a particular identity. I recently was invited to speak in the northeast part of Italy, an area called South Tyrol. South Tyrol, the town that I was in, is a town that is called Bozen. in German and Bolzano in Italian. This area of Italy is predominantly multicultural, though we could say tricultural. There are three languages spoken there, but predominantly there are two, Italian and German. This area of Italy belonged throughout history to Austria and to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and at the end of the first war it was given arbitrarily to Italy. The Italians moved in, moved a lot of people from South Italy into the area in an attempt to ethnically cleanse this area.

[07:47]

They forced Germans to change their names to Italian names so Schneiderelli and things like that. I'm serious. It sounds ludicrous, but in fact it's quite true. And they were not successful. They were not successful, they were largely not successful, not because the German-speaking population in this area revolted violently, but because they didn't resist in a violent way. They practiced nonviolence without even being aware of what they were doing. Nonviolence is not pacifism. Nonviolence is active. The way it exists now is that this particular area of Italy has two representatives in government, one Italian-speaking, one German-speaking. The third language

[08:47]

is an indigenous language that exists in various mountain valleys, not only in this area, but also in Italy. And what's the language? It's a kind of Romanish language. In this area they have The Italians have their own schools and their own this and their own that, and the Germans have their own schools and their own paper. Everything's in two languages. It's nearly as complicated as Switzerland or Belgium, but they seem to live quite well together. What I experience is the Germans speak Italian, German, and English, and the Italians speak Italian. They're quite, although the subsequent generations are becoming more open and more flexible. When I was invited there, there was a husband and wife who attended a talk that I did and then the wife came.

[09:52]

I did two days of retreat and the wife came half day each day and then I was invited to meet with them. Their family name is Von Tottenberg? Yeah, Von Tottenberg. And she carries the title of Baroness. When I was invited to the house for dinner, Kenshin came with me, walked in and Kenshin, we walked into the sitting room, Kenshin went, oh. It was like walking into, I mean, I've never been in a place like that except you had to pay admission. these museum kind of places with these big paintings. It was really the house of a baroness. And what I discovered is that they were intensely isolated, intensely lonely, and very sad. They are, in many ways, more marginalized and suffer more deeply than the people I have sat with on the street, people living homeless.

[11:00]

The people living homeless, many of the people living homeless have a certain measure of joy. I've also discovered that those who have the least are the most generous. Those who have the most hold most tightly to what they have because that is their identity. They have nothing beyond that. And so it was such a pleasure to meet with these people, and to talk with these people, and to share a meal with these people, and to go the next day and fix their computer. Yeah. The guy was shocked that a monk could fix his computer. Not even this computer person could fix it. I was a little surprised, too. But you just unplug it here, and you plug it in there, and it worked. So, and I, trust me, I took absolute credit. Yeah. I said, yeah, of course, I know it. I make this point just to really demonstrate that marginalized cultures, people who have a tendency to view marginalized cultures as people who don't have.

[12:11]

and that those who also have a great deal are also marginalized. And so I don't work just with those who don't have, but also with those who have. I work increasingly, I work a lot in prisons and I'm making efforts to go more into prisons. I work a lot on the street. I spend time on the street. I spend it, Alan's talked about pilgrimages. Since 94, I've walked in excess of 12,000 miles. Kenshin's walked in excess of 7,000 of those miles with me. The last pilgrimage I did was in Switzerland. It was on the Swiss-Italian border in an area called the Tizine. And the reason I did this pilgrimage there was this is a place where during the Second War, Large numbers of Jews attempted to cross the border illegally into Switzerland and some were successful, some weren't.

[13:18]

It's also a place that during the war in the Balkans, a lot of people from that area attempted to cross illegally into Switzerland. The military presence there is quite strong, police and military, and people are randomly and very aggressively turned away. I walked there with 25 people. And it's a very rugged countryside. And I just, I cried a lot because I just couldn't imagine what it must have been like to come there with a wife, a husband, a wife, and three or four little kids and attempt to walk across this border.

[14:20]

I was prepared and it was difficult walking. Conditions are severe and the weather is unpredictable. It's not that the mountains are... I've walked higher than that. When I walked west, we crossed the mountains at over 11,000 feet. These mountains at their highest point are maybe four or five thousand feet, but still they're like this. So I could imagine just walking in ordinary clothes, carrying suitcases with little children. So when I go to these places and walk, it's largely for this reason and also to bring attention. to bring attention to what's happening. Because of my military experience and because of the war after the war, war does not begin with a declaration and end with an armistice.

[15:27]

When any government tells its people that be prepared for a long siege and that we will eradicate evil. People want to hear that because they want to think that there's a beginning and an end. They want to think there's a fixed point where we can find safety. War does not begin with a declaration and end with an armistice. 58,000 American lives were lost in Vietnam. They were killed. People were killed. At the conclusion of the war, after the end of the war, more than 100,000 have died of suicide. And this number comes from a former director of the Veterans Administration whose name is Max Cleveland, who himself is a triple amputee, stepped on a landmine. So for me, there was the war before the war, which was the violence in the family situation I grew up with, and the way in which I was conditioned by society and culture.

[16:37]

There was the war, which was for me Vietnam. There was the war after the war, which continues to be the nature of my life. When I hear the plane, the visions that come up in me are still quite vivid. I can hear often the gunfire, I can see tree lines going up in Napalm. I can hear the screams of the wounded. I keep waiting for that plane to crash. It's very present in me and I don't make any effort to chase it away. For me, the very nature of practice, for me the very nature of living the awakened reality of my life is to live in harmony with all that is. I haven't slept more than two hours consecutively in any night since 1967. And in the beginning of those years, it was very difficult for me.

[17:41]

and because I believed I ought to be different than how I am, and I kept attempting to change the reality of who I was. And the more effort I made to change that, the more difficult it became, the more suffering there was. It wasn't an... I was washing dishes one day and I just started to laugh, because I just had this awareness, well, you don't sleep, so now what? It was just so simple. It was just an acceptance. This is like this. Because that was like that, now what do I do? I experience so often people attempting to impose their idea, either on their own life or on the lives of others, of how life should be or is supposed to be, rather than me living my life as it is. Now, that doesn't mean that... I mean, I lived two years homeless. And after the war, my dependence on intoxicants began to increase.

[18:51]

And so the precepts invite me not to take intoxicants. And it doesn't say, don't take intoxicants except for a glass of wine at dinner. says, don't take intoxicants. So although intoxicants were a part of my life, it didn't mean that I just go, oh, well, okay, that's a part of my life. Now, how do I live with this? I needed to stop so that I could live my life. I could experience my life because as long as I was engaged in the practice of taking intoxicants, I was not able to experience life directly. I was not able to understand who and what is my nature. I just didn't have a chance. Now, what do I do with all of this? Well, I sit here. I sit on the cushion, the same cushion that you're sitting on.

[19:54]

And I breathe in and out knowing that I'm breathing in and out. I walk just to walk. I eat just to eat. And I've made a commitment in my life. The commitment that I've made is to bring attention to the realities of suffering in the ways in which I am uniquely equipped because of the reality of my life. I do things that I'm able to do things or do do things that other people don't do. It doesn't mean that what other people do isn't valuable. Sometimes I think because of how committed and how important it is To me, to do what I do, I have the unconscious effect of minimizing what other people do, and it's certainly not my intention. So it's very important for me to say, I appreciate most of the time that what other people do is as valuable as what I do, although sometimes I don't think that.

[21:04]

It doesn't take away the value of what someone else does. It only gives me access to my suffering, which is why I sit on the cushion and why I do what I do. I can't heal anyone. I can't stop wars, yet I have a commitment in this life to end all wars. I have a commitment through vows to end all suffering in my lifetime. And it is absolutely possible. Because all wars and all suffering begin and end here. In 1938, say August of 1938, there was an individual event. A man whose last name was Greenspan killed the German ambassador to France. The Germans used that particular event to justify Kristallnacht, which happened in September of 1938, where almost all of the Jewish synagogues in Germany were burned to the ground.

[22:18]

They used a particular event to generate this to generate or to justify their attacks on another people. Be cautious. I need to be cautious of what's presented to me. I need to be cautious about the conclusions I draw from the information that's presented to me. And that's where this practice becomes so important to me. I'm now in the process of building the infrastructure and making the travel arrangements to go to Tajikistan. I hope to go in January or February and I hope to enter into northern Afghanistan. I hope to really see what the refugee situation is like and see what conditions are like there. Again, I lived in Iran for four and a half years so I was forced to learn the language.

[23:22]

Well, forced if I wanted to survive. Nobody forced me. If you want to get drugs, you got to learn how to speak the language, and that's why I was there. Let's not be... I'll be candid about it. It was a 74 to 78, and I was still picking and choosing. This practice helps me to stop picking and choosing. But to live, to just live, just to live. To sit, just to sit. To eat, just to eat. To walk, just to walk. And see what rises out of that. To see how sitting on the cushion expands itself into activity. That's not to say that sitting on the cushion is not active. Because some will say that sitting on the cushion is like sitting on a bomb. And if you have some questions about that, keep sitting. Perhaps you'll one day go, oh yeah.

[24:29]

I just came from Santa Cruz, where I spent time with the Zen community in Santa Cruz, and I was interviewed by two radio stations there, and the first one that asked me, they said, the guy said, well, you've lived a pretty remarkable life. And I said, really? I don't see it that way. What I see is that I simply can't do enough. I wish there was some way that I could just stop all this madness. because it is just madness. I haven't read the right sutra yet or haven't figured it out, you know. So I do what I'm able to do. This practice simply makes the most sense to me in that process. The first precept, don't kill.

[25:30]

Don't let others kill. And don't condone any act of killing in the world or in my life. To really live that as fully and completely as I can. Because before I turned 18, I had already been directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred people. This finger took life. This hand took life. I saw them die. I saw how they were shredded in pieces by the bullets from my machine gun. And believe me, I was convinced. I really believed that I was doing the right thing. I simply was only able to see one side of the truth at a time. If I stay stuck in the relative existence of life, there are 10,000 versions of the truth, and all of them are correct. I really understand that our government believes it's doing the correct thing, whatever its motives are.

[26:42]

They really believe that. They're simply not awake. I had a dream the other night. It was a very interesting dream that suddenly in the middle of this dream, I looked around and I was sitting at a cabinet meeting. And there was 43 and there was Colin Powell and all these people. And I looked around and I said, what in the world? How did I get here? And then I said, well, you're here, then do what you do. And I started to talk just like I'm talking now. And then I woke up. Pity. Yeah. The most powerful thing that I can do is to end the war here.

[27:44]

To wake up to the nature of suffering in self and begin to allow that suffering to become transformed. That when I come up against those places, those walls of suffering, those difficult places, to not turn away, but to step directly into the unknown and see what manifests itself from that act. What do you think was the general, I mean, there may not be a general cause, but what do you think caused 100,000 Vietnam vets to commit suicide? I can't tell you from their experience, because I wasn't in their head. However, I have sat with a number of them. In fact, in my house, I have 44 Magnum shell casings that I took out of a gun from another Vietnam veteran who had that gun in his own head and on his family.

[28:53]

And I can tell you from my own life, when I came back from Vietnam, this society and culture attempted to wash their hands of their responsibility and we were the hands so they pushed us and marginalized us no one wanted to talk to us no one wanted to hear really what the experience was there not really because they wanted to see us as the problem and they wanted to believe that they weren't connected to that we need to look and see It's not a question of are we responsible or are we not responsible, but how we are responsible and what we can do about that. As a result, there was no possibility for me to talk authentically. And I was afraid to talk authentically because I had been spit on, because I had been beaten by police, because I had been jailed, because I had been hospitalized, and because I had been denied any opportunity to support myself and my family at the time.

[30:08]

And I really believe that those who died in Vietnam, they were the lucky ones, because they didn't have to live with this. A lot of people, and also, I just couldn't see the point. In a sort of regular lifestyle, I just couldn't see the point. I just couldn't understand, like, what do you want to have insurance for? What's the point? You know, what's the point of having a regular, what's the point in working for General Electric? What's the point? I just couldn't make any sense out of it and I still can't. However, by not dying and by being able to first stop taking intoxicants, which allowed me to begin to experience the spiritual reality of life.

[31:10]

I was brought to the home, to the cushion. And from here, what to do became clear. It just began to open itself and reveal itself. And so I can't stop another Vietnam veteran from killing themselves. But I can talk with them differently. And I can say to them what the Vietnamese community said to me, come and sit with me. Let me help you. I can help you. And it's true. I know the truth of it. And it's just about really being present in their lives. and being willing to listen. I do this all over the world to all sorts of soldiers from all sorts of wars and all sorts of survivors of all sorts of wars. This profound sense of pointlessness.

[32:16]

I just thank him for his speech. And I just said, hello, how are you and are you well? Thank you. I noticed that you were in Iran during the revolution. During the revolution, 1974 to 1978. It was exactly the revolution happening. I left two months before the serious fighting started to happen. Did you see in your... I am Iranian. You are Iranian. And Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. So I speak Turkish also. So did you see that movement of people are taking responsibilities for that revolution? that time? Actually, reflecting back, what I see is history simply repeating itself.

[33:35]

What I understand about the history of that area, not just Iran but the larger area, is that governments have come to power through the repression of others or through violent means. And whenever they've gotten to power, they've maintained power by repressing their opposition. And that eventually what happened to those who are oppressed get tired of being oppressed, build a force, and then repeat the cycle again. And in reflection, what I believe took place was just a repetition of what has always taken place there. I haven't been able to get into the country since the revolution, although I'm making efforts now to get back into the country because there are also large refugee populations on the eastern border of Iran and the western border of Afghanistan.

[34:40]

because I have some history there. I'm also making efforts. I don't know if I'll be successful. So what I believe it was just this continuing, repeating cycles of suffering. And I hope it can be done differently. Here. I can't hear you. Thank you for your talk and your work and your life and your truth. I think last time you spoke, I got a sense of where and how you were doing your banking. Could you talk about that now? Well, actually, Alan will talk about that. So he'll talk about that after I leave. And I'll also say, I'm I'm living the life of a mendicant in the 21st century, so it manifests itself differently than it did 2,500 years ago, but only in the way it expresses itself.

[35:54]

That does not mean I'm writing grants. Actually, I was invited at one point to do that and I did that and I said, �No, this isn't it,' and I've never done it again. It's not the way I want to live my life. I'm not attempting to build a huge monastery where I have a lot of people studying with me, although there is a place that people have supported me to get where once a year people can come and practice with me. train people in the craft of maintaining a monastery and that they can live there and that this place can then become, can serve the community it's in. It exists in Northwest Florida. So it's a place of, it's a diverse community of quite fundamental beliefs. And so it's very important that it's there.

[37:06]

It also sits right in the middle of three major military installations. And so it's a very important place to be, although I'm rarely ever there. Just a moment. Yes, please. There is, again, another repetition of these cycles of violence that you have been discussing. What, in your feeling, in a Buddhist way, should the response of an enlightened United States government have been to what happened in New York and in Washington on September 11? I'm not going to pretend to know the answer. From my perspective, the most powerful thing they could have done would have been nothing. And then from that place of first not reacting, a more enlightened form of action could have revealed itself.

[38:17]

But one of the things that I've discovered against, because I've had people with guns in my face, the most powerful thing that I can do is nothing. Because what it does is it takes the energy away from that aggression to not feed it. I'm not saying, no, to be passive and not do anything, but to be still until really a nonviolent response a nonviolent action could take place. We're the strongest country in the world. We can do things differently. Help people raise their standard of living. Meet them where they are within their cultural reality, not impose our ideas on them. Help them raise their standard of living, their education, their healthcare, help them develop their infrastructure in ways in which we can. If they're not interested in our help, then perhaps we can find other ways to support them.

[39:21]

Maybe they don't want to talk to us directly, but perhaps they can talk to somebody that we can talk to, and we can support them. I don't know what works, but I know that this doesn't work. So my thoughts go in that direction. Last question. Yes, please. You spoke a lot about violence, and I guess in terms of my practice, I have a hard time, when I want to respond, violently remaining open, which is what I learned. So I guess I just want to have some of your experience of how to remain open with your own violence that's in your heart. abandon any concept of openness and just really be as present as I make an effort to be as present as I can in that given situation. Now there are times when I act in ways in which I would rather not have acted, that in that moment it's a teaching experience for me.

[40:28]

I understand and learn from those experiences. It's a constant learning cycle for me. One thing I know is that if somebody comes up in my face with their finger or screaming or yelling or with a gun, that I am not going to respond in kind. I may not do it as smoothly as I would like initially, but I learn from that. I know that to react in the ways in which I'm trained and conditioned, is not the answer, that I need to do things differently. I don't always have the answer, but being in dialogue with people like Ellen, who's been a great friend and support to me, because often I feel very isolated and lonely in the work that I do, I do have the opportunity and there I get information that I'm able to process to learn. Alan can't give me the answers. You can't give me the answers. Like I can't give you the answers. But I can tell you if you have any concept of what it means to be open, you will never understand what openness is.

[41:34]

So it's about really sitting with the intention of abandoning concepts. I go into war zones and I go with people who call themselves peace workers who see the soldiers as the enemy and they don't get it. The soldiers are not the enemy. Their concepts are the enemy. They perceive themselves as separate from anything that exists. My practice is rooted in the Buddha's teaching and basic to the Buddha's teaching, the Four Noble Truths. basic to the Four Noble Truths. The foundation of the Four Noble Truths is the First Noble Truth. They're suffering and the causes of suffering. Selfish desire and craving, backed by ignorance. If I don't understand intimately and completely these Four Noble Truths, then all this other stuff is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless.

[42:35]

People say to me, oh, what about happiness and joy? I want to be happy. I said, well, that's suffering. abandon wanting. And I can't tell you how that is, but I know that concepts are concepts of the enemy. So how to work with that? And the answer comes through just through bearing witness, which is the practice of meditation, observing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of thoughts and feelings. and healing and transformation results from that. If you find yourself walking and somebody's heckling you and you start trying to prove the rightness of your position, understand that that's suffering. Because the moment I step into an ideological argument with somebody, I've already lost. I can't change someone's mind.

[43:39]

I can only live my life differently. And through that act, I watched transformation take place. I did a talk at Oregon State Correctional Institute last year. It was some work to get a monk in there. I was fortunate enough to be the one who came in. I did this talk to the general population. I was invited back this year. They started a Buddhist studies group. They now have 30 members. came just from that, from showing up. I had no intention to do that. This is what's just most important, to just do what's right in front of me and abandon concepts. I'm trying to figure out what openness is. I'll end here. I'll hang out for a while. That's a Buddhist language, I'm hanging out.

[44:41]

Yeah, I'll hang out and have a cup of tea, and I'm quite willing to continue dialogue with people. And thank you. Thank you immensely for the gift that you've given to me in this moment.

[44:59]

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