Well, today is September 11th, another September 11th, the third year after the destruction of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which we don't hear about anymore. Did you never notice that since after about the first week, we hadn't heard anything about the Pentagon? It doesn't come up. I don't know why, but it doesn't. So all the emphasis is on the Twin Towers. And so, understandably, the effort goes into mourning the people who died in the Twin Towers. But there are other things to think about besides that.

[01:02]

And there's the emotional content, and then there's the investigative content or analytical content. Why did such a thing happen? So leaving aside the emotional content, well, I'll leave it aside in a moment, but when we think about the emotional content of 9-11, and that we've gone to war, invading Afghanistan and then Iraq. We invaded Afghanistan to look for Osama bin Laden, and then we went to war with Iraq to conquer a defenseless nation under the pretext of many lies.

[02:13]

And we devastated many people's lives, totally turned people's lives upside down. So, you know, we should also be mourning all those people's lives who we destroyed, not just killed, but whose lives we interrupted. When we think about our security, if we're sick, we go to the hospital, right? If we have an automobile accident, we're quickly rushed to the hospital with an ambulance. But in a country where all of your services are destroyed, people can't get their pills, they can't get their water, they can't get their electricity, the sewage doesn't work, When you find yourself in that kind of situation, it's unthinkable.

[03:21]

It's unthinkable to imagine what that would be like here. The only way we can think about it is in terms of an earthquake, where we'll be in that situation at some point. It's just coming. But anyway, we've caused so much. We've compounded. our revenge way over what it deserves. But it's more than that. So if we have a memorial service, we can have a memorial service for the people in the Twin Towers. We can also have a memorial service for all the people whose lives we destroyed in Afghanistan and Iraq. All those people had mothers. They all had families. They all had history.

[04:24]

You know, when we look at Star Wars. You see all these people, all these guys in white suits running with their guns, you know, and then somebody mows them all down. And we don't think anything of it. You know, they're just guys that got mowed down. But each one had a mother. Each one had a history. Is this the destiny of their lives? To end like that? We don't think about that. When we enter a country and start shooting, just get out of the way. Because nobody cares about you. Nobody investigates to see what your name is. Or who you're related to. Or what your life is about. Or how you're feeling.

[05:29]

They call you a terrorist by defending your own country. So there's lots to mourn. You know, The event of 9-11 became a wonderful opportunity to actually rape our own country. Do you remember a movie called Goldfinger?

[06:33]

James Bond movie. And in the James Bond movie, Goldfinger, Goldfinger is this guy that really has a lot of, you know, a creative mind, has all of the modern, most advanced technology, and has a band of crooks who are going to take all the gold out of Fort Knox, where all the gold bullion is stored. And so they have this plan, an elaborate plan, and they actually put it into motion. James Bond, all by himself, of course, disrupts their plan. But the plan is to take all the gold out of Fort Knox. And that's no different than what's happening now. It's just a different plan. And Goldfinger is Halliburton.

[07:36]

One billion dollars a month. And nothing's, it's not spent on anything. It's not spent on anything. It's a little token here and there. Oh, we're building their schools, you know, and stuff like that. It's just draining the money out of Fort Knox to bankrupt the government. You're bankrupting the government. That's the plan, because the government is to be disbanded. Privatization, you know, means you sell off the government, bit by bit, and then there's no more government. It's all run by corporations who have agreements with each other. you know, the plan is becoming more and more obvious to people. But it won't be obvious to most people until they find themselves caught in it.

[08:45]

So, you know, we have these mixed feelings, you know. We hate the people who damaged us, but we have to understand what the reasons are. It's called karma, the result of karma, that our actions produce opposite and equal reaction. It's the law of physics, actually. Karma is the law of physics in a certain way. Every action produces an opposite equal reaction. That's as much as I know about physics. But it's karma. Somebody got pissed off at us. Well, they don't like us because we have freedom. They don't like us because we have individualism.

[09:59]

They don't like us because we threaten them with destruction and domination. I went to China, a number of us went to China about a week after 9-11. You know, we thought, well, we had planned this. And then we thought, well, should we go or not? And I thought, yes, let's go. And then we decided that we would go. And some of the guides that we had were talking to me and they asked me about 9-11. why Americans thought that 9-11 happened. And I said, I don't know why Americans thought 9-11 happened, but it's obvious that people were angry at what we had been doing in the world, especially in the year or two before.

[11:19]

And they said the Chinese people really think that it happened because of the way the administration had been dominating the world and withdrawing from the Kyoto Peace or Environmental Accord and withdrawing from all of the treaties and making, people knew what was happening in China, but they were afraid that people here didn't understand what was happening. People all over the world understand what's happening. So, you know, it's like, The idea is to create perpetual war.

[12:22]

There's this idea you can't negotiate with these people. Well, that's cutting off and separating right there. You can't negotiate means you don't want to negotiate. Why would you want to negotiate? when you have all the firepower in the world, most of the money in the world, and you can just conquer people. Why negotiate? What's there to negotiate? Negotiation is counterproductive because the idea is perpetual war. Right now there's a private army because there's no draft, private army. There is a kind of draft, but it's reserves. Volunteer Army.

[13:25]

So it's worked up to now, but it's not gonna continue to work. And when the fires get spread around and we can't afford to spread our troops around, there's gonna be a draft. It's inevitable there'd be a draft in order to create perpetual war. So the British Empire, the Roman Empire, all those empires, you know, we are just following in the footsteps. Now it's our turn. So we're back in the medieval context. where you have a castle, big castle or a walled city, and you put all your resources into defending it against all these people that are coming at you with their arrows.

[14:31]

It's just, we're becoming a walled fortress, even though it's totally porous, totally porous. You know, we talk about homeland security. Are you scared? Of what? Somebody gonna bomb you? I don't think so. Security, you know, is not in building up your defenses. That's not security. There's no security. You can't do that. The only security is to take away the problem, deal with the problem. The problem is nobody trusts us.

[15:37]

Nobody believes us. Everybody feels, the whole world feels threatened. When we take away the threat, then we don't have to worry about a threat. It's called diplomacy. Through diplomacy, you disarm people so they don't feel threatened by you. So a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Gandhi or somebody said, if we keep going on, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, pretty soon there won't be any eyes or teeth left. When we see the Israelis and the Palestinians, That's unbelievable that that can continue like that. It's just been going on and on and on. Blow for blow, blow for blow. What good is that? What can possibly be accomplished by that? The world's a crazy place.

[16:43]

People are driven by emotion. Big problem. And it's real easy to drive people through emotions. We keep inflaming emotions, and that's how we control people. So, it's a very difficult situation.

[17:47]

Maybe you have something you'd like to say about it. Or maybe you think I'm not, I'm barking up the wrong tree. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm thinking, you know, what can we do? So I agree, the cause and effect in just a continual way that just carries on until you try to change direction. It's bound and it plays itself out. But I think that it's who we put up there, who we elect, is the problem with the fact that less than 30% of Americans voted in the last election, I think, correct my number if somebody knows better, but anyway, there is an appallingly low turnout. And it gets lower and lower, and I think that it's, I think, I don't, maybe people are so comfortable I don't know what it is that makes people not vote, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but what I would suggest is that people try to direct their energies to where a change can be made.

[19:27]

You know, they have all put the move on, call a state that's a swing state. Try to put that knowledge or energy out in a place where it can make a difference. And although Kerry and Bush really are pretty similar in a lot of ways, they're different in a lot of ways too. And we can only take the next step. So, you know, action, election reform, and responsible journalism, and free press. Those are my comments. And Vulture with your absentee ballot. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about your ideas about the laws of karma, and really what you said earlier, not necessarily so specifically in terms of political process. But karma itself, yeah. Well, you know, karma, strictly speaking, means a volitional action.

[20:28]

And strictly speaking, it's one person's volitional action. And so an action has a consequence. And so there's a cause and an effect. So the karmic or volitional act is the cause. And then that cause has certain conditions that condition the cause and create an effect. So everything we do volitionally has an effect. And then when we talk about, this is personal karma, and karma's not transferable, it's just your own. So in other words, we create our own lives. We're self-creating beings. And what we do now determines what will happen. to us and determines our path of our life.

[21:38]

So that's kind of the law of karma. It's very complex. And Buddha says that the law of karma is the most difficult to understand how it actually works. So we have immediate results, then we have results down the line, and then we have results further down the line. So when we have an immediate result, it's obvious what our actions bring to us. But sometimes we don't understand why something happened. Because the result matures further down the line. Talking about karma can often be... Not fate. ...raise confusion. So I'll just point out a couple of things that you could clarify. One of them is that when you talk about it as a law of physics, it suggests something... It seems to be not to correspond with talking about it as volitional.

[22:47]

Law of physics sounds like something that just happens outside of your responsibility. That's one thing. And one other thing is, when you say that your personal karma isn't transferable and matures down the line, it leaves us with the question of when a bomb falls on an eight-year-old's head. How do you interpret that? Yeah, okay. You said a lot of things there. You said it was complicated. When I said the law of physics, I'm simply talking about action and reaction. That's all. not incompatible with volition and responsibility? No, it's just whether, you know, whether we have a responsible action or, if we have a responsible action, then there's a responsible result. Or an irresponsible action, you know, whatever. And as far as the child walking down the street, that's not karma, that's just causing, that's just something happening. Nothing is random, exactly.

[23:51]

So, you know, the little girl's walking down the street and something falls on her head, right? She didn't cause that to happen. So it's not a volitional action. It's not a volitional result. There are results that are not, that come to us, or actions or events that come to us that are not caused by our volition. So it's not karma, strictly speaking. It's simply something happened. So it's not really in the realm of karma. The realm of karma is that you have actions that create results, mostly emotional, physical, and mental. And you can change your karma by changing your activity, your direction, how you do things.

[24:56]

So that's mainly what the law of karma's about. It's not really about if you're walking down the street and the brake hits you on the top of the head, is that karma? Not really, it's just a brick fell down on your head. while you happen to be walking down the street. I mean, you can pick split hairs about whether it's karma or not, but it's not what we mean by karma, really. But as long as we live in this country? As long as what? As long as we're living in the U.S., we participate in a group dynamic. Yes. There's such a thing called group karma. like the karma of a nation or the karma of a group of people, which means that people together create a cause for a result.

[25:58]

That's used, it's kind of used in a loose way. The term karma can be group karma, but it's strictly speaking not karma, but it's cause and effect. It is cause and effect, and sometimes it's called group karma. So, you know, a group of people decide they're gonna do something, and then they take the consequences for it. But not everybody gets the same consequences. So, strictly speaking, karma is individual. Well, I think, number one, we have to realize that America is probably the greatest evil in the world today. We have to love our country. as an army site.

[27:08]

All of old Babylon is falling into the ground as we are landing helicopters. We are knee-jerking supplying Israel with money, hand over fist so they can build this wall. The great Berlin wall around Israel so that Palestine can't have a state. We are around the world supplying materialism. If we stop buying American cars, if we stop paying our taxes, stopped just buying American goods, stopped paying our taxes. We might start making this state fall. No? No? We might. We might. I don't know if we would, but we might. Theoretically, it's a good theory, but it probably won't happen. Yeah. I just want to, well, a couple of things. One is I want to really appreciate you for all the times that you've

[28:09]

because you feel so passionate and you care so much. And I just want to honor that. And then as far as leading off from what you were saying a while ago, I always wait to the end and never get to raise my hand. So I don't want to curtail that today. I just want to say that one of the things that a group of friends and I have done is we really We're concerned about the media not representing what's going on, and so we created a set of facts that were in question and answer form covering many areas of our interests. Economy, jobs, work, U.S. defense, civil liberties, the environment, education, poverty. put it on a website. Yesterday we had 2,264 hits on our website. And I want to tell you what it is in case you're talking to anybody in Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, anywhere you go if you're going anywhere. I just wanted to tell you if you're doing that. I'm sorry about the public announcement. votewiththefacts.org, and it goes directly to the facts from there.

[29:17]

And I just want to really support you if you need any other information or want any other support, let me know. So it's a way, it's question and answers with references on all those topics. Yeah, thank you. Stan, Dewey, and Melody are my child. I thought Stan was here. Oh, Stan, there you are. Maybe you can say something about what you're doing in Oregon. There's a group of us in this socially engaged Dharma group here. Ed Herzog is here too, there he is up there. And several other people have organized, we're calling it an election. from October 17th until November 2nd. There's a core of us of about six people that are going to be there the whole time, but we're asking, there's a bunch of other people that are coming up for at least three days at a time.

[30:21]

We're going to be getting out the vote for Kerry, and also for this Congresswoman up there whose name is Darlene Cooley, who is in a swing district that's actually under attack by the Republicans. Cheney came to her district a couple weeks against her. So we're working with her campaign and also possibly the SEIU union campaign up there to get out the vote. Oregon has votes only by mail. They don't even have any polling places. So for the two plus weeks that we'll be up there, we'll actually be getting people to vote actually then. And we're not going to just be going around randomly. We'll be going out to people who already have expressed a preference. So we're getting out the Democratic vote, basically.

[31:23]

But anyway, we're doing that, and we're going to sit in the morning together, have a service, go out, and then come back in the evening and sit sauce and eat together. at night and then we'll sleep together and we'll be camping. It's on this organic farm that we can camp on and also there's other places for people to sleep. So there's a lot of information that I, if you're interested, talk to me, talk to Ed, Ed Lunch, raise your hand over there, and we can tell you some more about it and send you email information and so on. But we're doing it, Well, partly for... Speaking of doing something for yourselves, for those people that are unable to go out of state and would like to do something, I'm organizing a fundraiser for moveon.org, which involves swing dancing.

[32:59]

Anybody else? I want to throw in one more physics thing. I'm glad it was brought up, but, you know, one other big physics theory, and so far truth, is energy can't be created or destroyed. Pretty much everything's here, and it's just changing forms. And so, you know, when you do something, or whatever, everything that is in the universe is just flowing around. And the song is always the same. So nothing ever gets lost, even though Hawking tried to say that things could get lost in a black hole. But about two months ago, they finally got the math worked out. It was very complicated. Nobody was up to the task of working the math out. So still, everything's here.

[34:20]

Just a matter of how you use it, right? So it's yours to use. Please use it. Well, I think that the two Buddhist concepts that are really helpful to us here are equanimity and engagement. equanimity from practice, then that enables us to engage in the world. I think people who don't know a lot about Buddhism can sometimes think that Buddhism induces people to be passive, which is not, I think, a correct understanding at all. And what the government is really relying on is that people will be passive. And so, really, passivity is something that we have to, in all kinds of ways, fight back against.

[35:27]

The internet has made it so easy to do all kinds of action, whether it's complaining to media outlets, you know, they've all got email now and other places, or to join petitions, to contribute money, Engagement is kind of not a problem. It's not as hard as it used to be. And I think it's important to do the equanimity side to have some sense of what appropriate action is. But it's also a mistake to think that you have to be absolutely sure and right before you can take any action. I think sometimes people don't vote because they think, well, I have some doubts about this, that, or the other thing. I mean, you can't look at it that way. Nothing's perfect.

[36:27]

You have to take action on the basis of what information you have. And so if we practice both of these things in alternation, Well, I wouldn't say alternation, I would say both at the same time. Yes, because equanimity is the basis, or settledness is the basis out of which activity arises. So, that shouldn't be lost in the midst of activity. Thank you for today's speech. It effects my life, totally. Women for Cultural Wisdom is an association we have put together, women of here and also from the Middle East.

[37:31]

And we have a delegate right now in the United Nations, right this moment. And we have raised the question, why the United Nations doesn't have a 24 hours of TV station? That is right now we are working on it. And then we are working on proposal, and if we have the MTVs going, then I guess we can filter our leaders. And then the leaders right now, everywhere the leaders are selected has to be selected through all over the world. Because we're affected by all of this action of the leaders. Yes, one of the big problems is that people don't know what's really going on. They don't know what's going on. Most people don't really know what's going on. And the media is so, you know, doesn't really give people the right information.

[38:32]

And so you have to search for the information, you know, you have to go on the internet and the right programs and so forth to find the information, not just out there. And the propaganda machine is so strong that people just, you know, people are busy with their lives. They don't think about, you know, what's going on in the world. or at home or anything. They don't. So the education is the most important thing for people. When people actually get it, you know, then things will change. But so many people just don't get it. I don't know. They refuse to believe. It's hard to believe. I was brought up having so much trust in the government. When I'd see a person in uniform, I'd think, God, that's the United States eagle. We killed off the eagle. Isn't that interesting? That we killed off our national symbol. And what took its place was the turkey. It's a symbol of gluttony.

[39:36]

I'm not sure this announcement was going to be made later, but today on Camellia and 6th Street, I think, somewhere around there, somewhere around Picante, there's going to be an art or gathering and there'll be taiko drumming there and jazz and all sorts of things going on. Anyway, I just wanted to let people know that that's happening. I think it starts around noon until, I'm not sure what time. Well, thank you. Sorry to, you know, have to deal with this subject, but I think we all appreciate dealing with it because it affects everybody's life in the world.

[40:47]

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