 As we start, I'm going to ring this beautiful gong of Mary Melanies. Listen, listen, listen. This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home. My true home being the present moment here and now. We'll start out hearing from David Lloyd and then we'll have some time for question and answer with David and then we'll pull our chairs into a circle and have some time just for our discussion about, you know, what this all means to us locally. This event is sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Action Vermont group. We were formerly the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Vermont chapter, but Buddhist Peace Fellowship stopped having chapters, so we became Buddhist Peace Action Vermont. We sponsor a number of things regularly, this forum in the spring and on Hiroshima Day August 6th, a peace walk in Montpelier, which we will have publicity about and hope you can join for that. It's a very moving ceremony ending with sending off candle boats down the river. There is a list on the table for you to sign up if you're interested in being notified of our events, our meetings we meet regularly to consider action in the light of Buddhist teachings and Buddhist teachings in the light of action that we might take. This event this evening is cosponsored, this is a wonderful combination where it's sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Action Vermont and the Vermont Bicycle Shop in Berry. Now that's a really great ecological combination. And Ginger here who will be handing the microphone around later is she and her husband run this bicycle shop in Berry and they have been very generous to the Buddhist Peace Action group. Their mission of the bicycle shop is happiness and health through cycling, through bicycles and cycling. Now let me tell you a little something about David Lloyd before we begin. There are many Buddhists who are concerned with individual enlightenment. Come on in, take a seat. But few Buddhists who are concerned with an enlightened society. David Lloyd may be the most outspoken of these. Greed, ill will and delusion are the three poisons Buddhists identify as causing individual suffering. These poisons also operate on a social scale through economic systems, war and the media. The opposites of these poisons are generosity, love and wisdom. We are angry or depressed or frustrated because our society today is so far from embodying generosity, love and wisdom. How can we act in accord with these values? Do we need anger to motivate and energize us to repel, rebel and resist? David will help us reflect on these and other questions related to social activism. The title of his talk is Love and Anger in Activism, a Buddhist Perspective. He has studied, practiced and taught in many countries and he has written many wonderful books. I just, my mind gets ignited when I'm reading his books. He's such a wonderful social critic. There are several of his books, my treasured copies out there on the table if you would like to take a look. There's Eco Dharma, Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis, Money, Sex, War, Karma, Notes for a Buddhist Revolution, The World is Made of Stories and Other Books. David Loy is a social critic and a social activist. In 2014, his alma mater Carlton College awarded him an honorary degree. In 2016, he returned his honorary degree to protest the board's refusal to divest from fossil fuel companies. He is a co-founder of a retreat center in the mountains of Colorado which offers workshops and retreats for activists using the healing power of meditation in nature to ground and transform activism into a spiritual path of service to the community and to the earth. So you didn't come here to hear me talk about David Loy because David Loy is right there on the screen. So it's all yours, David. Well, well, first of all, thank you, Glenda, for that very warm introduction and also, well, to Neville for making the initial contact and setting this up and also to Rob, who I think is in charge of the digital logistics. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity. Can everyone hear me and see me okay? No issues there. Great. Let me start with one of my favorite Zen stories, which is very short and simple. A student asked the master, what's the constant activity of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas? In other words, what is it that awakened people are doing all the time? And the reply was very simple. The master said, responding appropriately. That's what the awakened people are doing, moment by moment, responding appropriately to the situation they're in. Which brings me to my first point. Responding appropriately isn't so difficult to do when you're living in a Buddhist monastery, right? With bell rings at a certain time. You know, to put your robes on and go to the Dharma hall to meditate. But what about when you step out the front gates of the monastery, when you get out into the world? A world that I think probably all of us here are well aware is having some great challenges at the moment, some real problems. Economically, politically, and perhaps the largest of all, ecologically. How do we respond appropriately to that situation that we find ourselves in? And actually, I'm not going to try to answer that big question right now, but I want to narrow it down a little bit and talk about some aspects of it. Which is to say, what's the role of love and anger in the kind of social and logical engagement that seems to be necessary? What does Buddhism have to say about love and anger and their relationship? I mean, as we know, so often social activism is activated by anger, which is understandable because becoming socially active is a hassle. It's usually pretty inconvenient and it's often the anger that ends up motivating us. But question, can we have an activism that's grounded in love? And if so, is there still a role for anger? In other words, is anger always inappropriate, or is it sometimes an appropriate response to social injustice or to what we're doing to the earth? So let's start with that larger context, the context of love. What's the role of love and activism? I think as soon as we ask that question, there's a problem because the English word love is one of those that means too much and therefore too little in the sense that we need to get a handle on exactly what's being referred to here. For example, in Greek, Greek distinguishes in a way that English doesn't between arrows, sort of sexual, romantic love and agape, the more impersonal love like God's love for us. And Sanskrit, you know, the classical Indian language is said to have 96 words for love. So I think we need to get a rather bit more specific about what kind of love that we're talking about. So let me begin with my favorite quotation on love, which curiously is not by a Buddhist, but it's by a Neil Vedantan teacher called Nisargadatta in Indian. And I think the fact that he's not Buddhist is important, and that reminds us what we're talking about today isn't simply characteristic of Buddhist teachings, but I think it's something more general. Buddhism offers us one version, one way of articulating something important here. Anyway, the quotation I have in mind goes something like this. There's a couple of different versions. When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that's wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that's love. Between these two, my light flows. So he's identifying what are actually the two pillars of the Buddhist path, right? Wisdom and love, or usually we say wisdom and compassion. And what I especially like about that quotation is that it sort of points to the relationship between wisdom and love, right? Wisdom is overcoming the delusion of separation, dualism. Wisdom is realizing that there's no separate self. There's no be inside, sort of maybe behind the eye somewhere, looking out at a world outside that I'm separate from. Rather, wisdom in the process of seeing through that separation is about experiencing my interconnectedness with all of you and everyone and indeed everything. That's the wisdom. Then the love in this context, as he says or implies, love is integrating that insight, that realization into how we actually live in the world. And the really important thing about it, I think, is that as Nisargadatta implies, this kind of love, it's not a feeling. It's a way of being. It's more fundamental than a feeling. It's a way of being in the world and a way of being that we can and should cultivate, right? That it's something we practice. The most important Buddhist teaching on love is, I think, found early in what are called the Four Brahma Viharas. Four Brahma Viharas, which literally translate heavenly abodes or divine abodes, divine homes. In addition to the five precepts that all Buddhists are encouraged to follow, Tomah the Buddha recommended these four Brahma Viharas, also known, another word for them, the four sublime states, right? Metta, Karuna, Mudita, and Upeka. Don't worry, I'll translate them. Whereas the five precepts, the five basic precepts are all expressed as negative things that we should avoid, right? They're framed from killing, stealing, false speech, improper sex, drugs that cloud the mind. The divine abodes are positive character traits for us to develop. And although traditionally the focus has been on individual transformation, the divine abodes also have, I think, pretty major consequences or implications for our social and ecological engagement. When we take them together, the precepts, the don'ts, the divine abodes, the gurus, what they really end up doing is providing a stable and, I think, positive foundation for the kind of spiritual activism that is needed today. And all of them are rooted in realizing and cultivating a more deep experience of our non-duality, of our non-separation from each other, which is what Nisargadatta points to. And indeed, I think that's the fundamental ground of all of this. The love comes from the realization of our non-separation. And the anger, if there's a role for anger, is that it's got to have a place or serve a function within that larger context. Okay, just a few words about each of those Brahmadaharas. A very common one is called metta, and it derives from the Sanskrit roots that originally meant something like friendly, affectionate, benevolent with goodwill. It's usually translated more often today as loving kindness, but in fact, I do think it works better to call it something like basic friendliness or goodwill, which better describes the predisposition or the kind of baseline attitude with which we're encouraged to encounter people in the world, right? I think this already has really important implications for activism, you know, rather than dualistically encountering those who resist us when we're socially engaged, right? Rather than thinking of ourselves as the good people and the other people resisting what we think should be done as the bad people. What metta is encouraging us to do is to enter into situations open to possibilities that aren't foreclosed by that kind of dualistic labeling. A good example there, I think, is the way that Gandhi related to the British authorities when he was working for Indian independence. He didn't reject them. He studied in England. He knew what Britain was like. He treated them respectfully. He negotiated. And I think this also follows from the basic Buddhist issue that, you know, unlike the Abrahamic religions, the fundamental issue isn't good versus evil people or good versus evil tendencies within us. But Buddhism emphasizes this duality, this actually more of a continuum between delusion and wisdom or ignorance and awakening, the point being that we're all somewhere on this continuum. And I think that's what's implied in the idea that this basic friendliness is something that we should become a basic sort of predisposition of how we tend to approach all situations, which doesn't deny, of course, the fact that sometimes we actually do need to defend ourselves physically or psychologically in certain types of activist encounters. The second Brahmavihara is maybe the best known Karuna, literally usually translated as compassion, which is one of the most important virtues or character traits in all Buddhist traditions, comparable only to Prajna, the higher wisdom that is enlightenment. My root teacher Yamada Kotan in Japan said that compassion is something that rises spontaneously whenever we have even a taste of awakening, right? It has an interesting etymology, compassion, literally meaning suffering with, suffering in the sense of the passion of Christ, right? It seems to be the essential trait to be developed in our practice and expressed in our lives. We are not to be indifferent to what others are feeling because we're not separate from them. And what if we do feel separate from them? I was once told the story of a student who asked the Tibetan master. He said, you know, I know I should be compassionate, but I just feel it. So what should I do? And the master chuckled. He said, well, that's easy to it anyway. That's what we should do. The third divine abode, Mudita, is usually translated as something like sympathetic joy, which I think is maybe not such a good translation because it's not really sympathy in the usual sense. It's more empathic joy, empathetic joy and to say that we participate in the well-being of others. So instead of the suffering with of compassion, you enjoy with like a mother delighting in the joy of her child or watching children playing happily in a park. This is an important compliment to Karuna, which can otherwise overwhelm our ability to empathize. The more we wake up, the more we feel non separate to the world to other people and what's going on in the world. You know, the more we can become aware of a huge amount of suffering, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also be joyful in our lives. In fact, if our relationship with the world is also a source of happiness, it's certainly going to interfere with our ability to address that suffering. So these are the fundamental three things, three types of love to be developed. Meta, basic friendliness, Karuna, compassion, you know, feeling the suffering of other people, suffering with them. Mudita, the empathetic joy where we also participate in what others are feeling. The fourth divine abode, Upeka, is equanimity or even the mindedness. I don't know if we can think about that as a form of love, but it really basically what it's referring to is something foundational there. The ability to see and participate in these others without being caught by them or without being attached to what's being seen. It's kind of like a condition. It's often described as the capacity not to be stuck when we experience the eight vicissitudes of life, pain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain, pain and disrepute. Okay. Does this make sense? Does this communicate so far? These are the four basic Brahma vaharas, but I just want to refer to one other. I think it's a Brahma vahara that needs to be added. Maybe it's implicit in the others, especially the empathetic joy, but I think we really need to recognize it. I guess what I'm saying is I really feel that this too is a very important aspect of love and I'm referring here to gratitude. And what Ciro said is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of all the others. Gratitude is I think an essential character trait. For those of you familiar with Joanna Macy's work, the work that we connects, you know, she has this four part spiral that starts with coming from gratitude. It's only once you feel your gratitude to the earth, for example, that that enables you to honor our pain for what's going on, leading to seeing with new eyes and then going forth into active engagement. She sees that gratitude as a really important foundation because otherwise it's so easy to get blown away by, you know, once we really look closely at what's actually happening. How easy it is to become depressed, despair, if we're not grounded in gratitude for what's happening, for what the earth gives us. Gratitude, she says, helps build a context of trust and psychological buoyancy that supports us to face difficult realities. For Macy, our gratitude to the earth and for the earth isn't overwhelmed when compassion not only feels the earth's pain but remains the foundation, the whole empowerment process. According to the Dalai Lama too, the roots of all goodness lie in appreciating gratitude, but I guess the reason I emphasize it so much is that it took me quite a while to appreciate the importance of that appreciation. Of course it's good to be grateful. So what's the point of emphasizing something so obvious? Well, eventually what I realized is that something that hadn't been obvious at least to me, that like the other Ramba Baharas, gratitude isn't something that we just feel or not. But again, it's something that we can and should practice. It's a transformative practice. It's part of our personal practice that when we engage in it, it transforms us. There's a lovely quotation from an Orthodox Christian teacher, Oma Mikhail Ivanov, who said, quote, The day I acquired the habit of consciously pronouncing the words, thank you, I felt I'd gained possession of a magic wand capable of transforming everything. Gratitude is a magic wand that transforms everything, including especially ourselves. In the metasutra, the Buddha recommends metapractice, which is to say, sort of generating the wish that may all beings be safe and happy, right? Sort of in all directions, starting with yourself, right? So what this involves is, first of all, you think to yourself, you generate this feeling, may I be secure and happy? And then you extend the focus to family and close friends, follow their acquaintances, then people we don't like. And finally, to all beings in the universe, the importance of this practice being that it purifies our motivations and therefore, you know, our way of relating to other people. Something similar happens with gratitude practice. Some of you may be familiar with James Baraz, a Buddhist teacher who teaches courses on awakening joy. He cites psychological studies showing that people who are depressed improve when they end each day by writing down five things that they're grateful for that happened that day. There's a lovely story about what happened to his own mother when he encouraged her to practice how much it cut through her own depression. I think this practice is all the more important for us today because, frankly, we live in a culture that doesn't encourage us to be grateful. In fact, it seems to me we're often encouraged or conditioned not to be grateful. That's the whole point of consumerism. It can be dissatisfied because if we're happy with what we've got, then we're going to be less concerned about getting more. Interesting thing about consumerism, it wants us to be happy for a moment, but it certainly doesn't want us to stay there. The idea is that we'll be happy for a little while when we get something we really want, but then our dissatisfaction seeks something else. But here's the question. Why is more and more always better if it can never be enough? That's the fundamental problem with consumerism. And of course, this is where Buddhism ties in very tightly because Buddhism emphasizes the problem with desire or craving that the solution to the problem of our lives isn't about getting all the things that we want because once we start to play that game, we can never get them all. As Frank Clark said, if a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get. So it seems to me that to be grateful for our lives, to be grateful to others, and to be grateful to the earth is a radical act. It's a transforming act, and it's a really important part of our practice to cultivate that. Our English word gratitude comes from the Latin gratis, which means literally for thanks in the sense of just for thanks for not asking anything else in return. And of course, we still use the term in that way, meaning something is gratis, something is free of charge. When we're thankful, we participate in a gift economy rather than an exchange economy, right, when exchange we pay something for what we receive. In that sense, you could say exchange emphasized as our separateness. Once the transaction is concluded, we go our separate ways. Whereas gratitude seems to reinforce our connectedness or our interdependence. Appreciation binds us together. So summarizing this little bit of what Buddhism classically has to say about love. I think we can see four types or expressions of love that it's really important for us to cultivate in our practice, basic friendliness, compassion, empathetic joy, and gratitude and all of them are rooted in this realization of our non duality or our non separation from others and from the earth. And again, I think it's, it's, it's pretty obvious that these are not types of love that cultivating simply apply to our own lives our own individual situations, but they have enormous implications for what can motivate us to become socially and ecologically engaged. But let me go ahead and say a little bit about anger. If we take what I've just said about love as kind of the broad context for our personal lives and activism, the kind of traits or predispositions that we cultivate. Where does anger fit in. Is it basically a problem. Something wrong something bad or can it sometimes positive is there might there actually be a role for it. I think to really answer that. The big questions are number one what causes are anger. And number two, what do we do with it, or rather, what does it do with us. I mean, psychologically, as psychologists have emphasized anger is often what's considered a secondary. In the sense that it's a response to something even more basic which is to say fear, which means, or in which case the question becomes fear of what, what are we afraid of is a fear of something that the individual sense of ego is invested in fear of losing one of my possessions, my partner, for example, or can it be an appropriate response to what's happening, say, with immigrant children at the Mexican border. What we're doing to the bias fear. It's important to realize that for 9899% of our history. We humans have lived in small clans or tribes, numbering less usually far less than 150 people, and that was when our basic psychology evolved, including our tendencies to become angry. And here's the interesting thing in small groups and can actually be efficient. I think that it not only sort of captures our attention, but encourages people, especially people who have to live and work together to work it out. Studies have consistently shown that even everyday anger. Things like snappy remarks over the dinner table can usually have positive results. Studies back in the 1970s, when an American researcher James Avril found that nonviolent expressions of anger generally helped people understand each other better, and to cooperate more successfully. Interesting. In other words, again, anger, if it's in the right context and can be quite beneficial. But again, the context is the way it used to be small groups of people, immediate family, close friends. But what about anger, not just in those types of groups, but with problematical institutions. Right. For example, I'm really unhappy with what Monsanto has done with its round up pesticide. The way it's poisoning a lot of the earth, what do I do about that, or with my anger, my dissatisfaction with exon mobile. What kind of anger, or what the US government is doing, say in the Middle East. How can it be that our political or eco activism might channel that. It becomes a lot more complicated, doesn't it more because the problem is much more impersonal that's dealing with institutions, it's harder to address more directly. I think one can understand them how anger can become this tendency to become violent and even engage in kind of self destructive revenge. How that kind of anger, which doesn't have as simple a way to direct itself and to resolve itself. That can more easily harden into hatred and the desire for revenge, which maybe gives us some perspective on why people sometimes become. When you're so angry that nothing else in your life matters. When you can't find a more healthy way to express your frustration. I think that many of the sense that anger is getting worse in the sense that more people are more angry and survey support that recently there was a Gallup poll. And it was last year when 22% of respondents around the world said that they felt people were becoming more angry, which is a record high. Interesting question why you know your speculation here is probably as good as mine, but obviously, one of the things that happens is the population the size of groups have grown so much. People have become so much more important in our lives. And we find ourselves dealing with lots of people in kind of anonymous situations like suppose you're driving down the road and there's somebody who zooms past you and cuts you off very dangerously. Okay, I'm not going to have any other relationship with this guy. So with the anger that rises then should I accelerate and try to chase him down and just aggravate the danger of the situation, or something like social media. Okay, all those people that flame on social media we don't have any personal relationship. They're not part of our clan, right. The anonymity there encourages a kind of anger that is easy to express because it feels like there's no other personal responsibility for. And I think those are certainly issues but I also wonder if there's other reasons, fears to, if maybe what we're experiencing now in America is more people worrying about being left behind. But, you know, growing gap between rich and poor. I mean for many the American dream has become the American nightmare as tick not on but it. You know, think of the incredible high cost of medical care college, and so forth, and maybe even more generally, I think a kind of increase in anxiety about the future. Right, I mean we used to have. I mean, that was a really important part of our society is the idea that of progress things are going to get better. Frankly, I think a lot of us are losing faith in that, in which case there's anxiety and I think anxiety easily leads to fear and anger. Anyway, just a few random thoughts on that but here's the important question what does Buddhism have to say about all of this. Interestingly, I think that Buddhism, the Buddhist tradition and maybe I shouldn't even call it the Buddhist tradition. It's really a cluster traditions right and they don't always agree with everything and I think there's a kind of ambivalence a little bit of attention within the Buddhist traditions about anger. But for the most part, the view is that anger disturbs equanimity so it shouldn't arise and if it does, let it go as quickly as possible so that we can return to our equanimity, because of course it so often leads to violence aggression and revenge. So, for example, Shanti David who wrote the classic book on the Bodhisattva path said quote anger is the greatest evil. Patient forbearance is the greatest austerity. And the Dalai Lama said much the same quote violence is old fashioned anger doesn't get you anywhere if you calm your mind and be patient, you will be a wonderful example to those around you. I mean, in that sense anger definitely gets a bad press and Buddhist teachings but I think we also need to point out anger and violence are not always always they're not necessarily connected. You know that I think the nature of violence, sorry the nature of anger and what to do when it arises is something more complicated. Note to begin with that anger isn't one of those three poisons that Buddhism talks about Glenda mentioned them in her introduction, right. Buddhism doesn't talk about evil but it talks about the fundamental problem as the three poisons or the three fires or the three roots of evil, usually translated greed ill will or delusion. The middle one divesa or dosha ill will is the one I like translation I like but you also get aversion hatred, but again that's very different from anger. I mean, hatred could be understood as coagulated anger as an anger that's become kind of fixated. But as in sort of Buddhist Tantra and some forms of Mahayana. Can we understand anger as most fundamentally the form of energy. The really important question then is what happens to that energy. What causes it to arise and how it gets expressed whether we experience it in a dualistic ego way or we experience it and in a more non dual way because it's a response to something happening in the world. As I said earlier I think the really important question here is then what causes anger to arise and how does it get expressed. What do we do with it, or what does it do with us. And of course that really hinges on what you might call our spiritual maturity. The test in daily life is observing how our anger wants to come out is it doesn't want to come out vengefully doesn't motivate us doesn't energize us to act in ways that can actually make the world better. I'm not saying it's easy to transform that energy. I mean anger is dangerous. It can be playing with fire but I think it has that potential. I remember talking to my son when he was very young and he would do something maybe very dangerous. When I got angry. Interesting the two sides were there on the one hand my anger, it got his attention. Now it's also dangerous because my anger may may may want me to do something like spank him or something like that. Point is the anger could get his attention and the point that I was trying to make would be made. It could be made very very strongly and made me sort of get more deeply into. He can realize more clearly what I'm pointing at rather than if I had expressed it in a more looser kind of way, non emotive sort of way. To end what I have to say, I think what it really comes down to is the role of love and anger in our larger spiritual practice. Is our anger an expression of love because it's motivated by our concern to protect defend something that's threatened. This is interesting parallel between anger and love. I mean, again, is my love basically a love of self of what serves my ego love of what's giving me the pleasures that I want. Or is my love grounded in the sort of thing that needs are good ought to talk about a deeper realization of non separation of my non duality with. Likewise is my anger grounded in something is my anger grounded in something more selfish something more egotistical something is being taken away that I want the selfish way. Or is my anger grounded is our anger grounded in something deeper something more wholesome our love for others, our love for social justice our love for the earth. For others, but built into this of course is the realization that we're not separate from them. Okay, that's what I have to say I hope there's something here that's beneficial to people and something here that provides us a kind of context or basis for some discussion. Let me leave it at that and. David, a lot of great talking points for us to be thinking about what are anyone have any questions or things they'd like to vacation around, or just thoughts that they're having that would be a nice time to reflect. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, sorry, George. You very much appreciate you're talking about love and anger. But for me, I kind of moved beyond that. You know, we're facing the sixth grade extinction may include the human species and love and anger isn't doing me any good. What I'm now doing is grieving. And every day I agree. I pray for all the suffering you didn't say a word about reach. Well, let's say right now. I mean, I think that grief is important, but I also would see grief as a manifestation of our love for the world. I mean, we don't grieve for things we don't care about. I know what you what you're saying about grief is exactly right. I think one of the fundamental problems we have now generally in our society is that we're resisting that grief. You know, so many of us feel in some sense that things are really, really bad, but we're repressing it because we don't know how to deal with it because we're because we're afraid. And so we have this kind of cognitive dissonance where on the one hand, it's sort of pushed in a corner and the rest of our lives were pretending that sort of worlds. We know it is going to go on in the way that it has been more, you know, our, our children, their jobs, college, da, da, da. I think you're exactly right. And if I'd known that people wanted me to explore this, I would have said a bit more about it. I think the one who talks best about this, of course, is Joanna Macy. I mean, in this regard, she's the one who talks about what she gives us specific. I mean, it's not enough to say, yeah, we should grieve, but she actually gives us ways within her teachings, her workshops to actually get in touch with our grief. We're repressing it and to be motivated by it. But for me, then I guess summarizing grief is an expression of love. And you're exactly right that that is, if we don't grieve, we're not going to liberate love in the way that we need to do in order to. And that's inside. I think I would be very lucky to be completely convinced with what you're saying. Thank you. Thank you. Any other thoughts? Hi, David. So just a reflection. As I look at my own motivation, entering into some kind of a, could be a political action, or how do I know? How is it I know where it is I'm coming from? And I can very easily swerve into direction of righteous indignation, selfish attention seeking, or just looking up for my own good. Or I can be acting from a real love and a wish to protect. And I guess for me, that needs a real attention to just what each of those experiences feels like in the body. Seems like they have a particular energetic signature. And so that's really something that I'm doing my best to pay attention to. Thank you. Right. Are we acting from love for the earth or self righteousness? Or can it be both? I mean, I think one of the interesting things about motivations is that they can be very complex. And that it's not a matter of one or the other. In fact, I think that's usually the way it is, isn't it? One of the things that helps us, I think, is our practice. That is to say, if we're grounded in meditation practice, then that, I mean, one of the things that does is make us more sensitive, more aware of the thoughts, the feelings, the different things going on in our own minds, which can help us parse them in that way. The other side to it, though, is I think most of us, frankly, we learn the hard way. You know, we are engaged in an action. And often it's only as we're doing it or afterwards that we can see how this cluster of motivations was acting there. So at one point I was talking about this continuum of wisdom and delusion in our lives and the fact that we're all somewhere along that. And I think this is part of that continuum, that it's not an easy thing to do our practice. When we understand our engagement in the world, you know, social engagement and ecological activism, when we understand that as part of our practice, then we don't assume that we're going to be perfect. We're going to see that we act in ways and out of those actions than we, most of us, if we're being aware of what's going on and the consequences of that, then that'll help us be able to distinguish and sort of learn from what happens. I mean, I think your point is exactly right. I don't know that any of us is pure with that regard. Rather, we see that we see a growing maturity in the ability to move from one motivation to the other is as part of our long term practice. Does that make any sense? Very much, yeah. Hello, and I also want to thank you for your wisdom. I was also thinking about the continuum and appreciated that reminder that wisdom is finding our way in that continuum. And I think that another continuum is the being overwhelmed by passion and caring deeply and being either terrified or angry or overwhelmingly sad and grieving. The depth of those emotions to know that and to experience that depth is really important, but also to negotiate between the two shores of overwhelm and equanimity. I mean, only in equanimity, my personal take on that, and I don't know if it's okay within a Buddhist framework, but my personal take is that that can easily become a distancing and to disconnected, but I can't also lose it. So there's always dynamic between acknowledging the depth of my anger or fear or sorrow or joy and joy and the importance of equanimity. I'm feeling it deeply. How is it affecting what I do? Can I feel deeply and be quantum is my choices of action and be compassionate when I've lost them? Thank you. Those thoughts triggered. I appreciate it. Wonderful comment. I mean, another way of saying that I think is that's why we need all for Brahma to horrors, right? Without the equanimity, it's, you know, we're going to get blown away by our strong feelings, but likewise the danger is simply dwelling only in the equanimity in which case we lose the different forms of love, right? Especially the compassion and the mudita, the empathetic joy and therefore how important it is to have all four together. You know, one thing that concerns me just following up from what you said about the danger of indifference is, I mean, I'm struck by how sometimes we can use Buddhist practice as a way to disengage as a way of our own solution to the ecological crisis, right? I mean, we can, we can read something about what's happening and get very depressed and anxious about it. But hey, we're Buddhist practitioners, right? So we know what to do when we're anxious and depressed. We meditate for an hour facing the wall and then, hey, we feel better. That's gone for the time being, right? I mean, clearly there's a role for equanimity, but that's not the role, at least not by itself. It's a me, it's the importance of cultivating all four of them. The other thing that I would go back to, of course, is what Joanna Macy says about gratitude, that when we make a point of feeling our gratitude, and maybe, you know, that's a part of the empathetic joy, but when we really ground ourselves in the gratitude, say when I go up to our new Ecoderma Center and I go out and I take a walk in the woods and I just feel so connected, so grateful to the trees and to the stream there. But not just to them, I feel so grateful to the earth. That empowers me, you know, that empowers me, okay, sometimes I get depressed, but that empowers me not to get blown away by that depression, but rather to sort of, okay, hey, you know, I'm being called upon by this earth. We're all being called upon by this earth to become bodhisattvas, to become ecosattvas, and that means we don't get stuck in that depression, right? We don't get stuck into simply, you know, what am I trying to say here? To be an ecosattva is to get beyond our egos and if we really do that, then we open up to something greater than ourselves that's activated through us. I think it was Vandana Shiva who said something like, it's good to remember that we're not carrying the earth. The earth is carrying us, you know, we're not, what is it, Ajax carrying the earth in our shoulder. No, we're, with our practice, we're opening up and we're allowing ourselves to, when we do this, I think we are activated, we are energized by something greater than ourselves. And that's something that our other meditation practice can help us open up to. But the other thing we've got to cultivate, and maybe I should have talked about this in the talk as well, is the particular, I think the most powerful thing about the bodhisattva path is that because we cultivate this equanimity, we are able to act without attachment to the results of our actions, you know. And that's really hard to do unless you have some of that groundedness. Otherwise, you know, we're clinging, we expect a certain kind of result. Well, we don't know what's possible. We don't know there's something mysterious here, but through our practice, we're able to do the best we can, not knowing if anything we do makes any difference whatsoever. I think that's really, really important, you know, we don't know if what we do is important, but we do know that it's important for us to do it to do the best we can. And I think that's an essential part of it. Maybe I should have incorporated that into the, into the talk itself, but that's the real two-sidedness of the bodhisattva path because we continue our own individual practice. We cultivate that, that equanimity, that serenity or what, what in Buddhism, what in Zen, we talk about, right, our emptiness. But we know that, that emptiness, that place of serenity is not a place just to dwell, to cling to, but it's something that empowers us when we go out into the world and engage socially and ecologically. And I think that's our challenge. I think that's what the earth is calling all of us to do right now. And I think, frankly, that might be the most important thing that Buddhism has to offer today when we look at our situation and we look at what these wonderful teachings have to offer. Does that, does that make any sense? Yeah. I am, those poisons that you mentioned, they're incredibly important. The reason why is because then you can see the direct opposite, how wonderful it could be, then sort of balance in the center. And do you think that the poisons and mindfulness of those poisons and the good, I hate the duality talk, you know, or whatever it is, is a good place to be, is to be mindful of those poisons but become unattached to them? Is that a good way of thinking of things, do you think? Trying to progress to the greater good without falling to that dark side where there's cookies and peanuts and all the horrible things that make us fat and horrible. I'm sorry, that was, you know, I do too. But there's like, it was a bad joke. It was Star Wars nerd, there's beer and peanuts on the dark side come to the dark side. But you know what I mean. You know, I think the poisons are good, or not good, but they're, as long as you're mindful of them, they show you what the positive things could be. And so long as you're not attached to one side or the other, then you walk in the center. But it's so hard, isn't it? It's so hard with what Neville talked about the physical issues. You know, the angry stomach, the hot head, the cut reaction, the anger. So I mean, do you think that, how would you suggest not being attached to those things besides meditation? Yeah, I don't think of them so much in terms of attached or unattached. The distinction that I would make is that the three poisons tend to be dualistic, right? They're kind of rooted in a sense of separation, right? But somehow the idea of greed is sort of, if I can just get enough of something outside myself, as opposed to generosity, which is more this openness, this, this, as I said, it's a more like gift economy in the sense of sharing, because we don't feel separate from other people, yeah? And I think the same thing is with ill will, you know, hatred, aversion versus loving kindness or the other kinds of love that we talked about. When anger, for example, coagulates into hatred, whoa, I mean that's pretty dualistic, right? Whereas the kinds of love that I was trying to describe are all kind of rooted in and involve cultivation of feelings of non-duality, of non-separation. And likewise delusion, the fundamental delusion, the fundamental ignorance for Buddhism is this sense of separation, isn't it? And this delusion that there's a me inside and the rest of you and the rest of the world is outside. And I mean, you know, Buddhism talks, it all starts with dukkha. The Buddha said all they had to teach was dukkha and how to end it. And the Four Noble Truths are all about dukkha, cause of dukkha, end of dukkha, how to end dukkha and all that. There's different types of dukkha and I think it's really important for us to realize it's not just physical mental pain, but that there's a fundamental dukkha built into the sense of separation, built into the sense of duality such as Nisargadatta was deconstructing. And so that delusion, the opposite of that third poison is this wisdom of realizing our interconnectedness. And the gratitude that goes along with that, motivating thereby the kind of natural concern to do what we can to work for the well-being of others. I mean, as long as we have the sense of separation, you know, my well-being is separate from your well-being, ultimately, right? Right? I mean, as well, but I'm saying that that's the understanding we have, right? If I feel separate from you in this individualized culture, right? I can cultivate my well-being maybe at the cost of yours, but I'm separate from yours, but I'm separate from you. So ultimately, you know, tough, who cares? Whereas the whole point of Buddhism cultivating our sense of interconnectedness is realizing that my own personal well-being can't be separated from the well-being of other people, and indeed the well-being of the earth. The ecological crisis fundamentally comes down to the fact that we felt that our well-being is separate, you know, as a species or as a civilization is separate from the well-being of the earth. And we're learning the hard way, the fast way that that simply isn't true. So again, I see the differences. The three poisons are dualistic. The opposites are not. That's the distinction that I would make. But go ahead, if you want to follow up. What just occurred to me while I was trying to think and listen at the same time, which doesn't always work very clearly, is there's a paradox. And, you know, that's good that paradoxes are things that prick us and keep us trying to figure it out. But the paradox of noting my particular emotion and reminding myself that sorrow will rise and sorrow will pass away. That is, in many ways, very individual and personal. And the paradox is to have that experience keep me open to awareness of my interconnectedness with all that is, even as I'm going through my arising and passing, and not to get lost in, stuck in my own process. Or to blame the externals for my process. Yeah, let me go back briefly to that first question or comment about grief. I mean, I think this is this is a interesting way to clarify the tension that I think exists in Buddhism. On the one hand, there are certain types of Buddhism that emphasize all negative emotions and grief would be one of them are things that we should sort of keep our mind free from. Like, we keep the equanimity. And if there are thoughts of grief, we, because we are experienced in cultivating our equanimity we're able not to go into the grief, right. I mean, and that's one, not so uncommon Buddhist response, but there's another way of understanding it to which is to say, trusting the nature of our minds and the maturity of our practice, right. And feeling the grief when the grief arises, perhaps personally, maybe someone dear to us dies. We're sad, we grieve whether something natural about that it's not something to be resistant. It's something to feel, but also, because of our practice, it's the ability to sort of go into it to be transformed by it without getting stuck in it, you see. It's like the grief has a kind of a cycle, and it's not simply all of, you know, all or nothing, it's, you know, you know, there's going to be a lot of things that are going to happen. But it's not that the grief is bad, the problem occurs when we get stuck into it when grief becomes, you know, long term depression or despair. And so this other way I think is probably more healthy in terms of what we're called upon to experience and how we're called upon to experience it now. I mean, I think that's what I love so much about Joanna Macy's work, you know, the spiral that starts with feeling our gratitude and then only then that provides a spaciousness for us to feel the grief, not running away from the grief, but, you know, the wonderful thing about grief too, it cuts through a lot of the bull. It's like our grief for what's going on with the earth when we really feel that holy completely is what I mean. I mean, a lot of the other things that we normally get distracted by or addicted to, it can cut through them so purely and cleanly and just clarify what it is we want to do in response to what's happening. I mean, you know, I think it all goes back to this, this Buddhist point about dukkha, you know, suffering in the broadest possible sense of the word. Dukkha isn't something in Buddhism that we evade. The dukkha, the suffering is something that we not only acknowledge but we face it and we are transformed by feeling it almost tactically and then seeing where that takes us. Sorry, that's a long comment. Did it actually speak to your concerns there? Just having a reflection therapist in the community of mental health therapist and something that I am continually doing with myself and then also with patients is really looking at that separation that's happened between the mind and the body and how we really live this dualistic internal self pretty much consistently throughout our culture. And just wondering thoughts or reflections or it might even just be my own understanding around the level of dualism I see within people with the thoughts of separateness. It almost appears to correlate with the level of dualistic nature they live their life as in a mind in a body separate from itself or dissociated from self and just curious about thoughts or what you might think about a concept like that. That's a really good question and I'm just reflecting now, have I noticed that maybe not being a therapist and being too much of an intellectual, maybe I haven't. And I think partly it's a reflection of a problem I think with most types of Buddhism to be quite honest like the Zen training that I did say in Japan, there was no attempt to integrate mind and body. There were no body practices like yoga, which I think would have helped our retreats a lot. I mean, I think there are certain types of Buddhism, especially in like Tantra certain types of Tibetan Buddhism that encourage us more to sort of connect with those physical energies. For the most part I think that Buddhism, this is a place where Buddhism has to grow, that there's a lot more sensitivity to that I think in more sort of shamanistic traditions that are sort of more body based. But my sense is that Buddhism doesn't have a really good record in this sense of emphasizing reconnecting the body and mind. There are exceptions for sure, but for the most part. I mean, what what you say feels intuitively right to me I don't what I'm saying is I don't know that I have anything very interesting to say to back it up. I just, I want to thank you for offering the teaching of gratitude because quite frankly. I think we live in a world where there's all too little of it. And I personally see gratitude as an antidote to grief. And if you look at grief in the framework of the Four Noble Truths, grief is the first that they're suffering. The Buddha taught relentlessly for the transformation of suffering the end of suffering. It's not enough to be to be in grief. It's not enough to be sad. It's not enough to hate. There are four truths and the there is a way out and I personally think that gratitude is might be considered, you know, maybe the ninth of on the Eightfold Path. But I just for me, I think in the world we live in we have so much that we are breathing clean air. The plants that I'm looking at outside my window are very healthy and green and alive. There's so much it the world is very rich. And I guess again if we again I'm going to I'm a Catholic and I can get a little preachy but if we have the courage to follow the path of the Buddha. I think we have to have a great determination to go not not to get stuck on the First Noble Truth, but to go, go to, yeah, see it all through. But I just want to thank you I've really enjoyed the limited reading I've done of your yours and I just want to thank you so much. I would say it's very rich and very deep. Thank you. This is just one of the many reasons I appreciate Joanna Macy so much. I mean she has this fundamental insight, you know, we really need to ground ourselves in gratitude. And if we don't, we're going to get blown away by our grief and by the magnitude of the challenges we face. But, you know, if it's grounded in gratitude gratitude to the earth gratitude to so many people for what they've done for them, then there's something extraordinarily empowering there that I think is really essential to to to motivate us to activate us to do what really needs to be done. I'm just repeating what you said thank you. This is another angle, perhaps on anger. I think it's important to recognize that it's not just this negative emotion that we have to deal with it gets imposed upon us somehow. But I think it's also an emotion that we cultivate to the extent that we use it as a motivator anger generally and anger toward ourselves self hatred things like that. I think there's a subtle cultivation of it alongside the feeling of being plagued by it. And I think part of the cultivation of it is a fear that we will never know how to love well enough. There's something about anger that we enjoy isn't there you know it's it's very self justifying. And it does sort of. I mean it's interesting I was talking about cultivating various types of love and so forth and, of course, instead of doing that we can and often do cultivate our anger. There are ways that reinforce ego, because again there's something you know, in a funny way anger makes us feel more alive, but in it but in a kind of egoistic way which I think is is is so much of the danger of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just I'm just thinking through what you're saying and that and that sounds exactly right to me. Yeah. Part of the problem is defining exactly what we mean by anger. I mean, in a way maybe the kind of transmutation that I'm talking about energizing us maybe what we should call that isn't really anger anymore maybe it's it may be in the process it becomes something that doesn't deserve that term. I mean I'm not sure, but I guess what I'm trying to come back to there is there there's there's an energy there and the danger is that if we misunderstand the practice the energy is something that will repress you know, we'll sort of deny that it's oh I shouldn't feel anger anger is bad and and that become very dualistic it's like I'm not the kind of person, you know my practice means that I should never feel anger. And I think that that's the kind of danger that I'm trying to point at, whereas I you know what I tried to say in the talk is sometimes anger is appropriate it's part of that appropriate response my God, how can they do that, you know, it doesn't I'm motivated to go out and shoot somebody, but the fact that I get upset about that isn't always a bad thing. The question is what do I do with that upset. I find anger very as well as energizing very clarifying very focusing. And therefore it's leads more easily to action to protest, but part of the clarification is becomes dualistic, and I'm good, and they're bad. That's how it can be so clear, because if there, if there wasn't a dualism, then it would get kind of money, you know, and I wouldn't be able to just. I'm reminded of one of my favorite journalists Sam Smith, who he said, the, the solution to despair is activism, or action that is the solution to despair is action, which sounds very nice but it's kind of leaving out something it's like okay when you're despairing, you know what what's going to motivate you what what's going to, and so is it is it some kind of anger is it gratitude. Is it love, you know how how do all those things mixed together can can it be all of them in some way. But yeah, the danger of anger is is the dualizing like like you said. So, yeah, maybe that's the key point is that the problematic anger is, you know, that's how we can tell it's problematic it's dualizing. And maybe that's inevitable at the at the moment it arises but is it transmuted into something more non dual in the sense of we feel energized activated to actually go out and do something rather than simply kind of sit back and, and in the belief that there's nothing we can do nothing I can do that will make a difference. Sorry, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. I arrived late so I didn't hear most of the talk but I wanted to say that as I was driving here I was thinking about the vocabulary we associated with anger, and realize that when I think about my own anger. I am imagining myself being thrown out of balance that my needs are in conflict with the situation I'm surprised that my needs aren't being met I'm disturbed in some fashion and I usually associate it with being out of balance with the most extreme form of being rage where I would as would and would say I've totally lost it. And in that case lost ones balance and lost ones place in the world and lost ones perspective of whatever panoramic perspective one could have. But there is a word that comes forward very favorably also associated with anger that I've run into a great deal in the Tibetan traditions which is wrath. Anger is in particular associated with protector beings meaning on our side and stepping forward to chastise those who neglect their practice and fending away delusion and being basically the cutting through of whatever one's self congratulation might be and giving one a jolt so to speak and that jolt could also be applied to the greater world so I thought perhaps the vocabulary of wrath is a bit more uniformly positive because even teachers I've seen displayed wrath well just turn around and smile somebody next you know because they've they've been disappointed that someone said something so self interested or whatever you know they use wrath as a way of basically plunging a dagger into the middle of that bubble. That's great thank you yeah that's the word that I think I was looking for without realizing it. And I think that's a better way to to ask the kind of questions I mean in in response to some of the horrible social injustices and eco destruction that's happening. Isn't it appropriate to feel wrathful to express our wrath. I remember also something that my teacher you might have Cohen said once that he was very placid most of the time but once in a while, he could get very angry, or what seemed like angry but then he told me in an aside once that even when he was really angry inside he was smiling all the time. So, you know, the wrath doesn't mean that it can capture you in the kind of problematic negative way but thank you. Wrath that sounds exactly it. I think that's what that that's the positive form of the energy that so often gets understood and experienced and expressed in negative more dualistic ways. I love the idea that the wrath is is the protector deity, and goodness knows that's what the earth needs these days. So thank you for that. Well, in along the lines of wrath, an example that came to mind was just the very that protector energy that you see in parents for for a child that's that maybe someone is endangering. It's, it's a cutting through it's, it's, it's born of great love. And so, if I can locate something like that in myself when I am wanting to confront something in a culture. And that tells me I might be on the right track. Hi David, it's me again. I didn't mention before but I follow what the gentleman is talking about. I believe it's called Vajrayana Buddhism. And interconnectedness dependent origination you mentioned it earlier. I feel that is possibly the most important thing that we have to look at that. I'm finding very few people do. That wall connected no matter where we come from, you know, something in common. There's always a common color. When you look at a wall, there's 50 billion colors, but it's all the same wall, you know. So, I guess what I'm getting at is, I think it's all really there gratitude is something to do with it. But I really think it's already there. The comment I'm commenting on is basically he said, well, that protector spirit that mother spirit that mother. Yeah, it's it's there. It's always there. It's there when you wake up in the morning. It's there when you go to sleep. We're all interconnected. So that means it starts and finishes with you. And it goes towards everyone else. Now I don't want to say that because I don't really know I'm not a master. But I'd assume that that's to me. Do you feel that that is a very important point to make that we're all interconnected so don't kick yourself in the testicles 50 times. It doesn't make sense. Well, if you have them. You wouldn't break your back intentionally, unless. That's another story, but you know what I mean. I do. Yeah, yeah, I think you're so why on earth. Are we breaking everyone's back or hurting other people. So, that's where I'm talking about how I just, it's more of a statement. You know, but anyhow, I mean, would you agree with that. I mean, I think you're, you're pointing out exactly the right thing is, I mean, we can understand the fundamental problem as sense of separation. Right. And especially in our individualistic culture, which encourages that versus the realization of our non separation. Sometimes I say interconnectedness. When someone talks about interbeing. Sometimes I'll say non duality, but you know going back again to that quotation from these are Gadatta. You know, looking inside I realize I'm nothing looking outside I realize I'm everything while the looking realizing I'm everything is that interconnectedness. So Neville made the point about the, the wrathfulness of a mother whose child is endangered. What's going on there well clearly the the wrathfulness is connected to the connectedness right the mother feels the child is part of her she feels a sense of responsibility and love for the child. Well, isn't that what we all need to wake up to today, for example, maybe realizing that the earth isn't just a place where we happen to live something that we can exploit in various ways but that the earth is our mother. In fact, we never really cut the umbilical cord. If you think about, you know, we need to breathe we need to drink water we need to eat. Maybe the kind of love we need is the love of a child for its mother that we want to cherish and take care of the mother. But I think that's really what it comes down to is for Buddhism. The fundamental issue isn't good versus evil it's delusion versus wisdom and the fundamental delusion is the delusion of separation. The delusion that there's a me here inside somewhere behind the eyes inside the ears that separate from all of you from other people from the rest of the world outside. And, you know, the great insight, you know, the great opening is, is letting go, as Dogen said right forgetting yourself letting go of yourself so you're not feeling this separateness but you're you're sort of plunging into the world. This way of understanding the Buddhist path isn't about sort of transcending or escaping this world, but rather letting go of ourselves and feeling more non dual with it that we are a part of it. And therefore, my well being isn't separate from the well being of everyone and everything. So that's I think the fundamental challenge and that's also the origin of, you know, concern for social justice and ecological health from the Buddhist perspective. I mean, it fundamentally comes down to this realization that we're part of the earth. Our species is one of the experiments of the earth, one of the ways that the earth is manifesting, and that our well being or the meaning of our species cannot be to simply exploit the earth for some private selfish reasons but to take care of our mother so anyway, I'm just elaborating on what you said but I think that's that's the fundamental point. It's a wonderful place to conclude because we do have to clear out of the library so they can close. And so thank you so much David for your generosity with your time this evening we started out asking for a half hour or 20 minutes. And you've given us an hour and a half of wonderful things to think about in our hearts as well as our minds. So thank you again for this evening, and we will close with a bell. May all winds be peaceful. May all winds be free from fear. May all winds be free from fear.