I vow to teach the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. This morning I'm going to give my state-of-the-world address, which I haven't done since the beginning of the war, the big war. the Iraq war. Many people in this last week or so have been talking to me and they're very alarmed about the escalation of the Israeli-Lebanese war. And So I think it's a good time to bring out what I would call causes, conditions, and excuses, reasons and excuses, and surface

[01:24]

manipulation and deeply rooted reasons and causes. You can't hear? No. Can you hear now? Can you hear now? Is that better? Okay. Um... There's an old Buddha saying, which I quote often, which you've probably heard many times, that when you shake a stick at the dog, the dog follows the stick.

[02:45]

And then you can move the dog around any way you want. But when you shake the stick at the lion, the lion goes for the person. So, when we look at what's happening in the world, most people in this country are looking at the stick. And, not just this country, but the United States. When we look at, say, a conflict like the Israeli-Lebanese-Palestinian situation, most people are looking at the stick and getting pulled around by the stick. Oh, these people are doing this, those people are doing that. When we watch this kind of conflict,

[03:49]

we have to see that the reasons for this conflict are not just on the surface. They're very, very deep, go back thousands of years. And when we try to separate out all of the causes, all of the reasons why something is happening, so complex, that it boggles the mind. But we tend to have this tendency to settle on various reasons why something is happening and become attached to those reasons. And then we take sides. Well, this side is bad and this side is good. This side is doing that, this side is doing that. And then we lay blame on one side or the other.

[04:55]

But actually, the blame, if you want to call it that, goes much, much deeper to causes and reasons that are hidden or in the background. Like if we look at war, like the Iraqi war, we all know the excuses for that war, but so many people think that the excuses are the reasons. So the difference between an excuse and a reason. But even underneath all that, there are reasons or excuses. Power, money, the balance of power is very interesting.

[06:11]

People say sometimes, the reason that we're in Iraq is for the oil. It's not to get the oil. We're not in Iraq to get the oil. We're in Iraq to stop the oil from flowing. We know almost nothing about why all these things are happening. We're just totally in the dark. Unless if you realize that the most evil reasons are the reasons, then you probably can track it to its source. So in order to, from a Buddhist perspective, how does one keep one's sanity or composure.

[07:26]

I think what's important is to not take sides, which is very hard to do. To not become attached to one side or another. So that you can actually see Clearly, when we get some perspective, we can see clearly beyond the surface of what's happening. We blame the Israelis for doing this. We blame the Palestinians for doing that. Did you ever watch a basketball game? Basketball, the ball goes here, and then the ball goes there, and then they make a basket, and then they start all over again. This whole conflict is a game of basketball. Who's going to make the most points? It's a deadly game. But who's sponsoring this game?

[08:32]

It's really beyond the two sides. It's not the two sides. It's something deeper than the two sides. It's called manipulation. Something else is manipulating. Look at Africa. The wars in Africa are totally insipid, but because of emotion and certain kinds of entities and creating differences, those emotions and feelings and thoughts are fanned, the heat of those thoughts, feelings and emotions are fanned into flames by somebody, and then they ignite, and the flames devour everything in sight. How do people in Africa, deep in the jungles or in the plains,

[09:44]

who make maybe $50 a year or less, get armaments, machine guns, to kill each other. How does that happen? Where does all that come from? When people wake up to the fact that they're being manipulated, Usually they don't see that. This is the hard part. People don't see how they're being manipulated. If you were to wake up to the fact that you're being manipulated to do these things, you'd be very angry. Not at each other. To wake up and say, hey, you know what? Somebody's doing this and making us do this. Somebody's fanning the flames to make us do this for profit, for their own profit.

[10:49]

Who is profiting from all this? These wars are not just for fun, they're for profit. Somebody is profiting and it's not the people that are making the war. The word peace is not spoken of. I've never heard our government say anything about peace. If you think about it, that word is rarely used. The word that's mostly used is war. We feel that we have a democratic government. Most people, I think, So yeah, we have a democratic government, but what does that mean? What is the actual meaning of democracy?

[11:57]

I mean, the people have a voice in the government, the people have a voice, all the people have a voice, and through representation. And then on the top there's somebody called the President and the President's Cabinet. And the Reagan administration was called the President and His Men. But in a democracy, there has to be two sides at least of representation so that there can be some opposition and some checks and balances.

[13:01]

But when one side is so dominant that the other side cannot give checks and balances, then you have a quasi-dictatorship. And the powerful become more powerful and manipulation becomes the name of the game. Manipulation is just rampant. And the poor people are dying because they're all being manipulated from places outside of their realm. Somebody is making all this happen. Peace is a dirty word, actually, at this time. Chaos is the name of the game.

[14:09]

If you keep enough chaos going, then you can do whatever you want. under the cover of chaos. For instance, you can funnel all billions of dollars from the treasury to construction companies who don't do anything except pocket the money. So this is the state of our world, I'm afraid. It worries everybody. The conflict in Israel and Lebanon and the Palestinians, we tend to, our tendency is, because of our great compassion, compassionate nature, is to favor the underdog.

[15:11]

We do that in baseball games football games. Our heart goes out to the underdog. One side is more powerful than the other side. So we like to see the weak side, the less powerful side, come across. But actually, we have to be very careful not to take sides, because this conflict is not about the good and the bad, and who's right and who's wrong. It's about manipulation. How do we reconcile all this? That's the big question. My ideal thought is that the Israelis and the Muslims should attend each other's religious services.

[16:17]

Religion is, I sometimes say it's a necessary evil. It's absolutely necessary, otherwise it wouldn't be. Religion is our vehicle for finding our place in the universe. and it also brings people together in certain ways, but it's so divisive and so easily manipulated. When I think about Buddhism, I tend to think, well, Buddhism is very liberal, and people come here, you don't have to be a Buddhist to come here, you can be a Christian or an atheist or whatever, but when I think about melding with some other religious practice, then I have a little, you know, aversion.

[17:21]

But at the same time, I have this feeling that we should do that. So where, you know, it's very tricky because as soon as you identify with a certain religion or spiritual practice, you become attached. Very hard not to be attached. And then you become attached to your way. Even in one Zen center, if you're used to practicing in one Zen center, you go to another Zen center and you think, well, they're doing everything a little bit off. So we become so easily attached to our certain style of practice, a certain way of relating. I mean, just think of how great that difference is between other religions. And religions that are close to each other, actually, Islam and Judaism are basically not that different.

[18:28]

But it's the details that, where the devil is. But, how to interact and acknowledge and respect without losing your integrity. Some years ago we had an interfaith dialogue here. It wasn't a dialogue, it was an interfaith monologue. We invited six or seven people from different practices, Christians and so on, to express themselves, say something about their practice. So it wasn't a dialogue, it was a nice monologue, and everyone was received very well.

[19:33]

Dialogue is not necessarily the best way. Monologue is pretty good because one listens while the other speaks. And being able to receive and just listen and try to understand is the most important. I think it would be good to do that more. Someone expressed to me, they said, The thing I can't stand about religion is because they're also divisive, and it's true. Religions are divisive, egotistical. Religion expresses everything about us humans. Everything is expressed there, our egos, our desires, our spirituality, our intrigue, our whatever, it's all there. So naturally, it's wonderful and revolting at the same time.

[20:41]

But that's the nature of religion. It expresses everything about us and we try to keep it on the high side. But our governments manipulate religions because religions want something from government. And as soon as you want something from government, then government controls you, or can control you. In China, early China, the Buddhists made a deal with the government that the Buddhists could be independent and not part of the government. and the government would let them do their practice without interference. This was a long time ago. Of course, then, later, the government and the Buddhists, the Taoists, and the Confucianists all were vying for favor with the government, and then they were all easily manipulated.

[21:51]

In America, we have this wonderful freedom right now, because we don't have anything to do with the government. And we have freedom to practice our practice without interference, although they're probably spies, you know, from time to time. But it could change. So we're free from that. Buddhists usually use the word peace more often, and so that makes us suspect, but it's okay. I'm serious. If you use the word peace, you become suspect. There was a guy wearing a shirt that said something like peace, and he was thrown in jail somewhere in the Midwest. So I think in the face of all this, it's important, I think, to use the word peace and to work for peace in any way possible without getting caught by

[23:31]

one-sidedness and without being caught by the stick, being pulled around thinking so that you're only on the surface and not at the source. Because when we see all this tragedy, what comes up is strong emotion. I mean, you know, when I was walking down the street, I was walking my dog at night, and some guy with a big SUV parks on the sidewalk. You know, the front of his car is touching the garage, and the back is in the street. And I'm walking down the sidewalk. And I think, what is this guy doing? He doesn't know the street. So I'm thinking, I want to smash his window. Maybe I should just walk all over his hood, you know, just keep walking.

[24:37]

All these kinds of thoughts come up. It's very easy to get excited, to get emotionally carried away. But then I walked around, you know, and so I'm thinking about justice. It's not, I should call the cop. If I call the cop, he would give the guy a ticket. But then that's relying on somebody else to see stuff. So I walked, and then on the way back, I walked around it. I'm still walking. I'm okay. This guy has done this. That's who he is. It's not really hurting anything. So I can kind of reason it out through time. But that feeling comes up right away. And that happens a lot, getting angry at something and taking sides. My side is right, his side is wrong. But if I allow myself to go a little bit deeper, I can let go of that need to feel that

[25:56]

kind of heat and get back into my settled self, not worried about it. I just thought about the time in this country when certain people could not walk on a sidewalk. Yeah. And if you, when you said go deeper, even though you're still walking, it feels Somebody taking privilege. Right, and then the reasoning, is that necessarily a good thing? Because we can justify or rationalize why things persist, but it's kind of a pernicious thing that can get out of hand. It's a pernicious, yeah, it's a pernicious thing, and what it, to me, what it, it feels, it feels like a part of, or a aspect of the permissive feeling that we feel in our country to do what we want.

[27:02]

No matter, you know, and flaunt it in front of everybody. I feel that. I do feel that. But you said earlier that you get mad at the stick and not at the person. So, who was manipulating you so that you got angry at that moment? Where is the manipulation? Well, the manipulation is not always there, but given our attachments, then we easily become subject to manipulation. So, when somebody is ... nobody was fueling me, or fooling me, when we see that there's opposition between two sides, then someone supplies both sides with armaments and fans the flames so that they start fighting each other.

[28:12]

That's the manipulation I'm talking about. We were just given Israel. We're just beginning now to send them more armaments and airplanes and stuff like that, tanks. so they can continue to do this stuff. So it's pretty obvious where the manipulation's coming from. I mean, it's obvious anyway, but many people don't want to believe that. I was being manipulated by my own mind. Charlie? Thanks very much for this line of speaking. I wondered your thoughts about what seems to be occurring in history where older men declare war and young men die.

[29:17]

Yes. There are a few exceptions. But generally I think that's true. Yes. That the old started as a young life. Oh, that's... And the poor. And the poor. Yes. Well, that's called manipulation, callousness, greed for power. In a nutshell, it's called evil. Sometimes people think, well there's no such thing as evil, or maybe in Buddhism the word evil is not there, but it is. That's what I think of as evil, purposely putting people in that position for your own gain.

[30:18]

And then, well sure, so who's susceptible to this? I mean, young men are driven by valor and courage and energy. And so you sound the trumpet and you make everything look really enticing. And then you entice them into this. I was listening to a program on public radio inside a burn center where these soldiers who had bodies that were 98% burned, how they deal with, how the nurses and doctors deal with this. We don't hear much about that.

[31:24]

Everything's so quiet. Don't show the caskets, don't show the wounded. Or if you do show the wounded, show how wonderfully they're getting along with their prosthetics. That's the only thing we hear. How wonderfully they're getting along with it. And these new prosthetics, the war is engendering so much new medical progress. That's what we hear. Governments make agreements or they don't make agreements, but given the accumulation of pain and suffering over the years, particularly on the Arab side, how is it possible for forgiveness? For what? That's a good point. Well, you know, when the manipulated governments come to their senses, then they have to forgive each other, which is impossible, but it has to be done.

[32:42]

They have to bear the unbearable and do the impossible. So, but we have to believe that the impossible is possible. I can see governments doing that, but what about the ordinary human being who's lost so many, you know? Well, you find actually that, strangely enough, in many, many cases where someone is, somebody's relative has been killed or their child has been killed in some way, you know, the urge for revenge, revenge is gone. And they, you know, in many cases that happens. And they forgive. But what forgiveness does is release us from our attachment to our grievance. So it's really necessary.

[33:49]

It doesn't mean that the other person is necessarily absolved or doesn't have to bear their burden, but you are relieved from your attachment to your vendetta. about vengeance. I know. You have vengeance for Allah. Yes, right. So here's the problem. When so many people are sacrificing themselves and it makes you obligated to avenge them, which is a one-way street to disaster. that's got to stop somewhere.

[34:51]

So this has to be a cut-off point, boom, like that, and then, phew. Otherwise, as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye means pretty soon nobody has any eyes. So there has to be a stop somewhere. Somebody has to, so, It's the basketball game. You lob one over here and then you lob one over there. Who's at fault? I mean, the reasonings have all been, you know, no longer hold. It's just the ping pong game. It just goes on by itself. It's just self-perpetuating. Somebody in the back. Yeah. There are a number of groups that are making that effort.

[36:17]

And sometimes people think, well, it's not doing a lot of good, but actually it does make its difference. I believe that that makes a difference. There's some, I read about a group of people who just, Israelis and Palestinians, just walk through the town without saying anything, but just show a kind of solidarity for peace. Yeah, well if you look at, right, if you look at that come up, this is like a hot air balloon, you know, if you think of your container as a balloon and that the

[37:34]

the incident is like raising the flame under the balloon and the balloon starts to get really big and gets out of control and you don't know what to do. So if you can allow the flame, turn down the flame and just let the balloon come down just reasonably full so that you don't forget but also you're not carried away the balloon is moored, so to speak. I'm making this up. But it's like getting into your breath. Just breathe, get into your breathing. This is the place of refuge. You always go here. When there's no place, nothing else, no place that you can go, nothing you can do, you go to here. and you breathe into your hara and let go of everything and then come to a place of equanimity because this flame, this heat is not helping you.

[38:50]

It's not helping anything. What will help is to find a reasonable place, a place where you can come to reason and rest, and then you can act out of that. You can act in a cool way out of that. It doesn't mean that that's gone, it means that it's under control. And it's not manipulating you, you're using it for appropriate action. That's the only thing I can say. Sort of on that line, I think that if you understand that, say, a certain kind of feeling of anger is not accomplishing anything, whereas another kind of anger is, where you can make that distinction, then the various things

[40:00]

There's just a ton of things that come up that potentially would cause me to be really mad. But through some experience, I realized that certain kinds of these being really mad doesn't really accomplish anything. Whereas if I do something about it, then the anger or whatever other emotions Sort of like you were saying it's kind of more dramatic then You can deal with it. So just sort of schematically you might have a hundred Bad things going out there and you sort of become aware. Yes, this is really bad It's really bad, but I am not now in a position to do anything about these ones over here but just let that go, and here's one over here that I can do something about.

[41:06]

Maybe specifically, or maybe it's just to do something about it in the sense of write a letter to the editor or something, but it's something that you're gonna do something about. Then, you can draw on that anger, without denying it, and proceed to react appropriately in that one thing, and not, you know there's those other things there, you're not repressing them, concentrating on what you can do. And what you can do may vary from person to person or situation to situation. But as long as you concentrate there, then your reaction is more in key with what's going on and it's more graspable. And then when you've done that, then you can look around maybe and here's another one you can deal with that you temporarily put on the shelf. Yes, small successes are very important. You just make that distinction. Because when people get just really upset about everything, then they don't know what they're going to do, and they go off into some completely unrealistic thing.

[42:17]

Either they do nothing, or they try to do everything, and it's a complete flop. So you have to make that distinction. Just like we do in a session or something, there may be various things, we deal with what's, you know, we pick out something and we deal with that. It may be that we're cooking, so we deal with that, whatever. And just by doing that, some of this other kind of fades a little bit. Yeah, thank you. That's right. To channel, be able to channel into a something. Susan? Well, I'm thinking of Joanna Macy, who's a wonderful elder. engaged in Buddhism, and she says much what you said about the breathing too, about reading the newspapers specifically, she suggests just doing what she calls breathing through, just breathe, let all that knowledge come through you and just keep breathing.

[43:19]

And she speaks, she's speaking of what she calls the great turning, meaning that this is a time of everything falling apart and all this war and violence that we can try to bring forward an attitude of being grateful for the opportunity to be alive at this time, and not just think it's nothing but annihilation, but that there's also the chance to be part of this journey. I think also, you know, to return to the positive side of our nature has an effect in the world. What does Manjushri have to say? Manjushri is Bodhisattva of Wisdom. So he would say, see everything in its proper perspective without getting caught by any one thing.

[44:44]

Monjushri is the Bodhisattva of non-duality. Don't get split, but see everything in its proper perspective. to see what's going on. And the problem I have, and maybe you have some advices about how to, if you don't take sides, then often you end up not doing anything, and there may be things to be done. The F-15s come from our government, give them to Israel.

[45:49]

The precision bombs, which now Israel is putting a new order in for, come from the United States and are going to go and be used on Lebanon. Knowing, however, that the Iranians and the 10,000 So the hard part is getting down to the base where you see the connection with all those things. You know, the problem with favoritism is we fall into us and them.

[46:59]

So this is the big problem, us and them. And to get down to the basis where everything is connected, it's all is us. There's no them. Yeah. Kusinich, I introduce. Kusinich? That's true. But then, you know, there's something deeper than that, that is hard to get to, that really controls things. I agree with you. We should, you know, vote erode your conscience, and all this, you know. But even so, congresspeople have their hands tied as well, because the corporations are the government.

[48:01]

Sorry. We do have to stop. Thank you.

[48:06]

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