Buddha and Mother Earth

Buddha and Mother Earth: A Close Relationship
Robert A. F. Thurman

After all you are familiar with the statue of the Buddha. The icon of the Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. It is so widely known, sort of the major statue and his usual position. And you are familiar with the fact that when he puts one hand here these are his legs cross legged and one hand is flat like this and that one hand is by the knee seems to be resting on the knee. And it is called, actually touching the ground in front of his knee, and it is which means the earth touching gesture. There is a story behind that, so that at the moment it is considered that the reason that is the common icon of the Buddha is that is considered that is the gesture he is making at the moment of his achieving of enlightenment, or just prior to his achievement of his final enlightenment. The story that goes with it is the story of the Buddha's conversation with the devil. During the time before the Buddha obtained enlightenment, the Devil, who is called Mara in India, is trying to distract the Buddha and block his enlightenment.

When a Buddha attains enlightenment, a lot of things go well with the world and Mara is only happy when things to go wrong. So he wants to prevent the Buddha from obtaining enlightenment. He tries aggression, he tries to stir up the Buddha's lust; but these attempts fail. Finally he tries to talk him out of it in various ways. It's very like the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus, by offering him dominion over kingdoms and other sorts of worldly power and pleasure. Mara doesn't bother to try that on the Buddha because he knows the Buddha had already thrown away his kingdom. But what he does is he tries to tempt the Buddha that, to trick him. He say's basically, who asked you to be a Buddha. What is this? What are you trying to be a Buddha for, lots of people around the world, different animals and beings are gods and things all over the place and nobody asked you to go and be Buddha and know everything and help the whole Universe. And save all living beings and transform this land of suffering in to a land of bliss and happiness. Who asked you? By what right do you ask to be a Buddha? So the Buddha said well, because the Buddha had just been in his time prior to his achieving enlightenment, he had been have some oddity or sort of contemplations where in he came to an understanding of all beings infinite past histories. In other words he became clear buoyant about the form of lives, as they would say in Buddhism, of not only himself but of all other beings. So that he clearly could see so he looked at Mara and said well, by what right are you the King of the Mara's are you the highest of the Devils. the Lord of all Devils. I can tell you its because one day when you were a young devil you were down there torturing some people in Hell and one of your fellow torturers was thirsty as you were about to go over to the water fountain in between torturing. And you noticed it and you shared your cup of water with your fellow devil. And so from that tiny moment of empathy about his state of thirst of your fellow devil, that little tiny bit of sensitivity to someone else other than yourself. By the merit slowing developed over lives from that little turning in your mind, you became the King of all the devils. In other words, relevant to other devils you became sort of top devil. So the devil actually who was a god recognizes the validity of that and said so that I am the King of the devils and you are my witness. That I have the right to be the king of devils, by my past action in previous evolution. So who is your witness? He said. You can say you have a right, but you have no witness to your right. The Buddha said well I have a witness he said, and he reason I have the right to be Buddha is because in millions of former lives from beginning less time, but specifically since the time I became a Buddha????? as they call it, a being who is beginning to move out of the self centered awareness that is the form of ignorance that seems to be the cause of the problem. From the time that I began to do that I gave my life, my blood, my property, my merit, my relatives, what ever it is that I could to what ever being who asked me I gave it. And I did it millions of times. And he was referring to what are known as the Jataka stories in Buddhist literature, the form of live stories. Which are sort of earliest that fork lyrists know in history, sort of Walt Disney type of stories. Circulating in India. You know Buddha was the bunny who made a deal with other bunnies and then they went out, and the traveler was hungry and the bunny came in and jumped into the frying pan and said here, here's is dinner, here's some bunny stew. Buddha was the Lassie who went out and saved the Chipmunk. Buddha was many different, once he was the guardinda??, a story that Rabbi Berman reminded me, once he was the guardinda?? who was engaged in a battle with the demons, he was the king of the God's just like Zeus?? in the India panthia??. And the Buddha was Zeus in a previous universe. And he was running away from the astronauts these were the anti God s. Because his own God army was temporarily routed so see. He was running through a grove and this was on the slopes of a heavenly mountain, the slopes of olympus, the indian olympus. And he saw his chariot pole was about to knock down a nest in which a bunch of small eagles were hatching, and made his charioteer pull off the chariot, and the charioteer said wait the anti Gods are coming your going to get killed, yea but those birds are not in this battle, there not in this war, so were not going to knock them off, so turn around we'll go back the other way. So then they turned the chariot and when the anti Gods saw a lone chariot coming back they thought a whole hord of Gods were on the horizon and they rabbit them all just by his thing. Its another form of life for example. I like that one because it is so incidental to the main action of the story and yet it has the merit of saving the lives of those little birds who were not involved in the war, then he went off and killed a bunch of these anti Gods, bu t that was the life that he lived in. They did fight that is what they did the Gods and the anti Gods in those myths. But he had many other of these former life stories and he did all of these things so by the right of this tremendous evolutionary experience and learning and virtuous and meritorious and wisdom producing acts, he could become a Buddha. And then he said my witness is the earth. My witness is mother earth. So he put his hand on the ground like this. And when he put his hand on the ground the goddess of earth, ??Pertive? is her name in sanskrit which is cognate with Persephone in Greek. And Pertive suddenly showed up in 16 animated forms and they stood around in the trees and they started reciting and because she is a God, when she recites its like a movie, its like a hologram, you see the whole story being acted out in three dimensional, like one of those holographic projections. So that Mara looked around and he saw that sort of all these Walt Disney movies playing around him. Of all this goo die goodie behavior on the part of the Buddha and his former lives, and he went drat and he took off. And then Buddha obtained Buddha hood. So this is a symbol I want to begin with this because I consider it a kind of symbol about the issue of the environment and the issue of what the human being in my point of view and I think from the Buddhist point of view. A symbol of what is needed on this plant to deal with this issue of the environment. In fact nothing less than this it seems to me will work, there must be some form of enlightenment, on the part of the human race as a whole. In an unprecedented achievement of that enlightenment or some degree of that enlightenment for us to turn that great juggernaut of the modern civilization or machinery away from this self destructive path that it is set upon. In the case of the Buddha he achieved it as instead of enlightenment.

Now in order to understand why I say that, we have to perhaps go a, we have to unpack a little bit, what is enlightenment first. Because we have usually confused ideas about enlightenment. We think that enlightenment is impossible thing that only God could achieve, or Buddha or someone else and it would never be accessible to ordinary person and it would be some kind of impossible and even dangerous ??hubras?? for any one to think they could obtain enlightenment because it is some kind of other worldly mystical thing. But nothing could be further from the truth. When the Buddha after having put his hand on the ground, and after having achieved this sense of complete knowledge, enlightenment is defined as a sense, a valid sense of the complete knowledge of the reality of the self and of the environment via person. A person who comes to a complete, a complete knowledge means a really complete knowledge, it does not mean knowing some of the theory or having that new latest research or some data, it means a direct and complete knowledge something to the equivalent of sort knowing precisely all of the sub atomic particles and exactly what they are doing, what are their strong forces, the weak forces. What is the infinite past what is the infinite future. A total direct awareness almost like being some sort of cloud like cat scanned like consciousness, sort of knows - is sort of fussed with everything and therefore knows everything. Sometimes they call it omniscience which they critique though in materialist concept of omniscience. They say its not an omniscience of sort of knowing every fish in the ocean but it is a special kind of omniscience of being ready to know whatever could be known. Just as we used the term omnivorous, when we say someone is omnivorous we don't mean they have already eaten everything in the Universe. We mean they are already to eat anything.

So omniscience in the sense of ready to know completely what ever is to be known. And in the case of the Buddha what he really felt was important to know, was knowing the causes of suffering of life of living beings and knowing the way of becoming free from suffering for living beings. This is what known as what he told him as the four noble truths. This is what the Buddha thought was worth knowing. And what he found was that in his beginningless sequence of lives. What had been haunting him and causing him to suffer all this time was the fundamental delusion. Very much like Professor McFae's sin. It is not a moral problem although it leads to moral problems, its a epistemological problem that haunts all living beings in the Buddhist analysis. Which he came to from this experience. And that is that each of us considers ourselves the center of our existence. Not only human beings, that is not correct from the Buddhist point of view that animals are not self conscious, they are. From the Buddhist point of view the Universe is very diverse, not just humans and animals inhabiting it but there are various kinds of angles and Gods. Also beings and hells. They have a very perfuse, profusely alive universe the Buddhas. They all know that they are there. Everyone knows it, just like you and I all know this. Everyone of you here knows this and its not a very abstruse thing to know. Everyone in this room, in this instance diluted a ignorant, and you can immediately see in what sense. Everyone of us here considers that we are the center of the event that is taking place here. We maybe morally don't think that is nice. We have developed ways of controlling that, we don't act necessarily very selfish. We are sort of well mannered and we are maybe generous and so forth. But sitting where we are we think that we are the main thing here. We are the center of this experience here. Each one of us. And of course no one else agrees with each one of us. Because everyone else thinks they are the central thing here. And of cou rse when we're being polite and civilized and attending a lecture, that's not really a problem we sort of were the center but we don't really impose the sense that we are the most main center here. But when of course we have difficulty when there are scarcely the resources when we are in the sinking life boat that ??????? love to go in. When we are in a state of crisis, when were into us vs. us, us vs. it, us vs. them. Then the fact that we are convinced of the absoluteness of our centrality of the reality of our heart beat visavis the reality of heartbeat of someone else who might conceivable have a heart that is beating. We don't really know. The sense of ours is being the real one that is going thump thump leads of course to sin. To all sorts of negative actions. It leads to universal and total greed. Because if I'm the main thing here then I want to expand it more and more. It leads it hatred, because the others don't agree that I am the main thing here so they want to take things from me, they don't wa nt me to expand they don't want me to give their things, they don't want to be subsumed into my program so they conflict with me. Then I am angry with them because they didn't agree on the main thing here. So then I hate them. Then I feel proud because when I am on top of things I feel proud because I am greater when someone else seems on top of things I feel jealous because I think they think they are greater, of course I know better I know that I am, so I become jealous. So these grade what they call the five poisons or hey have the seven poisons, the deadly sins so to speak, all arise from the Buddha's point of view of this fundamental miss knowledge what he called. Which is not an ignorance in the sense of something you didn't know but it has to do with the fact that we think we know that we are really here. The way buddhism is always misunderstood, is that people think the insight into the fact that I am not absolutely here is, cant amount to some sort of strange experience of being obliterated. The g reat idea that Buddha had of which all of thousands of years in Buddhism in the vast Buddha scriptures, enormous like sciences and so forth of Buddhism is all based on some guy having kind of psychotic episode where he thought for a while that he wasn't there. Not only did he think that he wasn't there, but he went around and told people we are all not here, and there were all sorts excited by that because they were Asians. And they weren't into individualism, they thought oh great, we are not all here, so they ran around and had 2500 years of Asian history. This is so silly. Selflessness doesn't mean, that a realization that you don't exist. Selflessness means the realization that you don't exist in the falsely absolute ties the way you thought you did exist. You ??ecentricly?? exist, you merely relatively exist. You exist your relative self exists empty of the hypothesized absolute rigid, fixed ???entrencicly??? established self that your addicted to thinking is there. That you exaggerate yourself into th inking its there. And from which arrives all of these negative things. So then the Buddha, the Buddha realized that really he was empty of such a driven self and his relative self was there in connection with the Universe. Interactive with mother nature, with nature. And he felt and luckily and encouraging for us upon that understanding, he smiled. That's the good part, he could have frowned. He could have said what a bummer, he could have said woe. I am only relatively here. But he didn't, he smiled, but not only did he smile because he was intellectually satisfying to know the clear and direct nature of reality.

But he smiled because he felt much better. After all if you were the absolute thing, that's the real thing, and somehow the whole universe is not agreeing with you, the Universe wants you to give up this and that, it wants you to suffer pain, it makes die, other people take things from you, you loose things that you love. Once your versus and all the other thing is other, an alien to you, then your going to loose all the time. So your always going to be paranoid, your always going to be upset, your always going to be scheming, your going to be very filled with kind of uncomfortable knots of being in an impossible situation. Of you versus the Universe. Suddenly if you realize that you are there in a different more interconnected more relativistic way inter connected with the universe. And that there is no part of the Universe that is ultimately isolated from any other part, and all are totally inter connected. Then you feel at lease some relief from that. For example, everything becomes impermanence be comes tolerable. When you die it a kind of change. You realize that your all, being all inter connected with every thing there is no sort of intrinsic thing that has really died. There is kind of a process of change, in fact you die and then you take another form. What is important is the quality of the forms and relationships that you have. These relationships go on through death and birth and death and birth and have been going on. And you come to an understanding of that. You viscerally understand this notion of yourself as part of all of life and so on. The Dalai Lama once, you viscerally do, but you do that not as a material entity, you don't fall into the modern western idea of your self as just part of a gene pool or something. You don't just see that well there was a genetic, there some genetic material, an atom that sort of floated over into my cellular pattern from some dinosaur's atom. So we are sharing atoms with a dinosaur. No you remember when you were a dinosaur, much like big banana leaves i n the bottom of the ??gerasic?? period or what ever they were munching there banana leaves, giant banana leaves. You remember, you feel like what it felt like to be a dinosaur all of this is encoded in what the Buddhist call your spiritual gene. Which has been inter twining with material processes all along, life after life, with these sort of little jumps in between lives, which is the way buddhist understand it. So you feel anyway happy about that. The buddhist I was thinking in the earlier talks, when the one about poor God being blamed by, rather the bible being blamed by this fellow White and Tornbee???, as being the cause of all of this trouble. The Buddhist would not agree with that at all either. Rabbi Bermans excellent discussion of that. The Buddhist would say that the real cause of the problem of the environment right now is not a religious problem really, except in so far as all of the religions clearly are continuing to fail to really help enlighten beings, which is what they all tried to do, b ut they still haven't really done it sufficiently. A terrible thing happened 3 or 4 hundred years ago, which was materialism became extremely widespread and materialism became a dominate ideology on the planet. In ancient India, in the time of Buddhist and Hindus they had materialist who were known as ??charvakas or ??locyatas, and what they specifically meant by materialist were those who denied the existence of their soul. Those who said that the human being is just the evolution of so many material complexities, and that when they die that's the end of your individuate existence, and when you come together in a random dance of matter, that's the beginning of it. This idea, from the point of view from the ancient Buddhist and Hindu was extremely dangerous idea and they predicted that ever a society arose where the that ideology became dominant of social policies and controlled social agendas that the planet and society would be in great danger of extinction shortly there after. Because in a way everyone w ho has that theory of their own spiritual inability in fact on some level feels that there is no consequence to what they do. So then they loose control of their greed they loose control of their rage. Their willing to go to nuclear extent, their willing to go to ozone layer destruction, they'll chew up forests, anything as long as they can enjoy the next few minutes. Because they are living in a false security that the worst consequence that can happen to the very worst action that they do is simply to become in existent. And even I know I love to debate with humanist I often go to the American Humanist Society and debate with them, and they act like that is a great maturity on their part. They have woken up from the childish religious ideas about the soul in what ever religion. And they expect me to agree because they haven't heard wrongly that Buddhist don't believe in the soul. And I always disappoint them badly. Because I really go after them. Because the thing is that they think that's a big maturity. We can really see ourself and non-existing, that's a great humility and maturity of ours. And I say well do you think that the psycho who goes out and chops people up in the shower and then says the next day or I really wasn't there. You think they are mature? Do you think a person who is somehow thinking that ultimately they are not there no matter what they do and therefore they are not responsible for what they do. Do you think that they are mature. That usually quiets them down. The problem is we are a culture, our so called civilization, our mechanistic machinery industrial, which is not I think really civilization. Our industrial organization quite barbaric in its effect on not only other humans but on other species on the planet. And maybe it is having inter galactic repercussions, or inter dimensional repercussions you never know. But this machinery that we are part and parcel of, is all based on all of us thinking that somehow there is no apres moi de la deluge, there is no consequence to us. Now the Buddhist analysis of the human egoistical habit pattern is such that if the human being comes up with the ideological excuse for not being there, or thinking that they are automatically released from consequences at death, at mere death. Then that being becomes just ultimately irresponsible. Especially under pressure. Maybe not normally, materialists can be ethical and humanists without too much pressure, when there is enough wealth to go around and enough resources. But under pressure if you think you can just shoot your brain, a hole in your brain and your not there ever any more, forever its just as simple as that. Some sort of ????, pull the trigger and your gone. Then you are a very dangerous person, because you don't have a sense of being permanently involved. Now the spiritual theories that teach hell, for example, they rightfully scare people and they intend to. They want them to see that there are consequences to there action that go on and on for ever .

The Buddhist have hells but they have no permanent ones. And no body is put in them by a particular God who dominates there situation, because the Buddhist don't believe in such a being. But they do have one can create a infinitely worse situation for ones self. And one can enjoy it for quite a long period of time. It will not be infinite and one will get out of it, but it will be really long. Like who wants to be even ten years in the hot hell, or the cold hell, or crushing hell, or a dismembering hell or all of the lured and frightful hells that the Buddhist have imagined over their history. The one that always got me, use to get me was the, probably because I am a very verbal person, but the hell for liars. The people who live a lie, a verbal lie. It's a hell where you are reborn as sort of a giant brain attached to a massive tongue, that is about the size of a football field a hundred football fields. And this tongue, its just one tongue flapping there in the Universe, is laid on a red hot iron gr ound, a kind of griddle, and merry little devils run up and down the tongue with red hot iron plow shears pulled by buffalos with red hot iron hoofs. For about one hundred million years or so. So when people imagine that sort of thing it kind of scares them and they feel that maybe they shouldn't tell lies. And usefully so in a certain way, perhaps usefully so because of the entrenchedness of this egotistical habit pattern. As I said it was a simple thing this form of enlightenment. But it is not that it doesn't mean that people learning to over come it is a simple thing. Even if we understand that on the intellectual level which we can do fairly easily. To translate that understanding on the intellectual level to a visceral experience of it. Is a very, very elaborate program involved with it. It is not just a matter of adopting a religious belief, oh that myself is only relative for example. That wouldn't do at all, belief won't help. It might help to orient a training or educational, or developmental revo lutionary process. But only to orient it. And this is where meditation and that sort of thing becomes very important in Buddhism. Because once you have the understanding of the reality through reason, if you then meditate on that understanding it will permeate your being deeper where it will become visceral. But meditation without being aimed by an understanding is of course a loose cannon. Meditation just on any old thing or without thinking about anything or without thinking at all will only reinforce the unconscious egotism that people have. Which is why people in various meditative groups in this country, recently in westerners who have experimented with that have noticed sometimes the leaders of their meditative communities after 20, 30 years they have this eureka experience, which is Hey I am the greatest. They are meditating all along without having dislodged the sense of the centrality of the self, and then they have a big insight a mystical insight that the self is central a the end of that time. O nce they have it combined with a meditative concentration they get what is known as cosmic inflation, and they become very hard to control by their community. They usually want rolls royces and they get to be a pain in the neck actually. Which is confusing for the other people because they are thinking that well meditation is going to make this good. The point is in the Buddhist tradition without some learning and aiming of the mind and its focus state. It is just like a cannon it can be pointed anywhere. It can either reach a target or it can miss a target. Coming back to the environment with that preamble we have, I applied the four noble truths to the environment. Which the four noble truths remember that the buddha taught are what he called the holy truths of suffering, the holy truth of the causes of suffering, the holy truth of freedom from suffering, and the holy truth of the path to the freedom of suffering. This was sort of a summary of his truth of his teaching, although they are called truths the y are basically more like a medical diagnosis then sort of a dogmatic proclamation of something. Because they don't ask for belief. They ask for specific responses, the first one for example, the holy truth or even fact of suffering is, it asks for recognition. That is to recognize that the egocentricity diluted life style is always inherently frustrating. That is the You versus the Universe. There is a way of recognizing that deeply which fills one the resolve to try to over come that egocentric error of delusion. Second one, the causes, the response that is asked for is abandon the causes. The causes are said to be delusion and addiction to various negative emotions, negative ideas, greed hatred and this sort of thing. The third one, the holy truth of freedom from suffering it is said that the response that is asked for is to realize that freedom. To achieve that freedom to gain the freedom, not just to think about or believe in it but actually gain it. The Buddha was an educator who found that an educati onal movement that went all over Asia based on the fact that his considering that people were capable of becoming free of suffering and actually doing something about their internally not at a state and unraveling those internal knots and actually coming into a proper atonement with their environment and there by realizing that the Universe is a blissful place, rather than a miserable place. It is only miserable if you are unenlightened or diluted about your condition in it and its reality. And fourth, the path, response that is asked for again is not belief, but the path, to walk the path, to practice the path. Now with the relation to the problem facing the planet, the problem is that the way things are going with in the planet we are basically headed for doom and since Senator Gore is in town, I don't need to resummarize what he has summarized and probably many of you are familiar with it, his wonderful book "Earth in the Balance" as you know global warming, ozone layer depletion, destruction of other sp ecies, expansion of human population, wide spread pollution resource, etc., etc. And the only thing that I would say here is that it seems to me reasonable that if these things are not changed, if business as usual continues I don't see centuries, I also don't see the earth as just shrugging it off that easily. I see very quick, very fast destruction. And only comfortably sitting here in a conference room by this lake would any body on this planet today think that its not something of eminent, look at Somalia, how about the children there. How about people in all these countries where the impact is actually taking place. The apocalypse is definitely happening. It's not going to happen some other time. And all of them relating to these trends. So I don't think I need to harp on that. This is an environmental conference, no sense preaching to the converted. The Buddhist contribution is investigating the causes of the problem perhaps. And here the Dalai Lama for example, he likes to at the conference in Middle bury, where Professor Nasr and I were the Dalai Lama was singularly didn't want to bring Buddhism into it. He wanted to say that the messing up of the planet was a practical problem by the people on the planet and it has to be cleaned up and he turns to the scientist to do it. We have to study thing and figure out what is going wrong and fix it and so forth. That's his way of being polite I think. I have to disagree with him a little bit, although he is my teacher and I am probably going to be regret it in the future and some day tease me about it. I feel that the scientist are very much responsible for the problem, not just because of that tinkering that they did or do, but because of the fundamental error of the materialistic world view. This is what has caused this problem. No religious society, we can scwable and say well the dominator model of theism was the trouble like of ????? over the earth, like this Thornbee?? and White person said. And some of the scholars might say. And they say well this is id ea of a God who made it out of nothing and if you mess it up you can make another one.

That's the problem, so that made people alienated you can say that. I think actually some of the polluters tend to in a casual unreligious way refer to that. There is that famous story of that secretary of the environment of the interior, who said lets use up the national forests because armageddon is coming next week or when the democrats come back. The armageddon will come and that way we won't need the forest God put them there to be used up by us during the Republican administration, remember that.

So that attitude can be used but its not the fault of the religious traditions. When the world is under some, when people egotism were under some kind of control of the various religious traditions including the nature religious traditions, the tribal religious traditions, the oral religious traditions what ever we want to call them. As well as all of the literate ones that lasted. No body started demanding nuclear bombs. Nobody started poisoning the rivers with pop plastic, no body started like producing, like so many people, and uncontrollably, and like having population explosions. No body tried to concur the whole planet. They didn't bother, they sort of would fight at a neighboring town. But nobody tried to conquer the whole planet. The Chinese invented some of these things, they didn't use it to conquer the planet. Only when the religion really lost control of the European mind, which some Europeans are falsely attributed as a great glory of the Juda/Christian religion tradition, rather it would rather be seen as Juda Christians haven't succeeded in really helping people tame their complete overweening desire to tamper with everything. But the European mind went out of control. And they decided that instead of an occasional ship going and getting some spices for the East, lets build factories, guns, cannons and go and actually conquer the East. Lets get away from the lousy British climate and go and settle in Calcutta and have a more jolly time in the tropics. This it the cause of this therefore from the British point of view is this materialism which therefore you cannot, you have to get this to be acknowledged as part of the cause in order for the scientist use of technology to be reoriented. That is to say they also have to obtain enlightenment, they also have to recognize the consequentially of all things. And if they blow up the whole planet then they will be reborn on a blown up planet. And they will have to deal with that sort of a horrible life style. This different sense of embeddedness it isn't really the particular mythological picture of this life or that. Everyone thinks its so naive reincarnation because how is somebody going to be, like a white male in bermuda shorts on Alpha Centory, that's so silly. You are not necessarily the same kind of being, you don't necessarily have to be the same human being. You're a male could be female, a female could be male, you could be a different species, there are other species that are not even planetary species that one might live a life as. Some weird being like they have on Star Trek that sort of goes around like a rock with no limbs and kind of eats an oil slick once every million years or something. That might be your existence, but the point is that the sense of embeddedness and relatively that is going to be permanent therefore the consequence of every tiny act that you do is going to be part of your existence for ever. The feed back of you and environment goes on. So therefore when you really, Buddhist have therefore have tended history altho ugh by no means perfect. They have tended towards a certain gentleness in their society, they have tended to be militarily eatable rather than good successfully predatory. They have tended to be non violent, tended to be, not completely, tended toward vegetarianism and the reason is because they feel connected to everything in such a way that they cannot get out of any negative actions that they do. They still try to do it somewhat and then they run quickly and try to meditate and expiate it. But they just don't feel that there is any way out. They even feel that certain ??? theories that preach a rigid fixed unchanging soul can be somewhat at fault where it can allow a person to go out and ravage and pillage and loot and crusade and slaughter and if they say the right prayer have the right indulgence then the little platinum dog tag of the soul can be plucked out of the corrupt mass of flesh that its held with all the killing and sin and sort of installed in heaven because it had the right slogans on their lips.

Buddhist are very critical of this type of ratification of religion. So the fundamental cause of the human species potentially overwhelming attack on its environment is ignorance therefore from the Buddhist point of view. Which is not only a pass at failure to know everything about the consequences of human actions, but is an active miss knowing or miss perceiving or misunderstanding of the human reality and the reality of nature. All human beings innately and instinctively think they are ultimately a part from nature. Not only human also animals do to from the Buddhist analysis. There is a sense of like there is something that is absolutely me that is just separate and inviolate that is completely me that is kind of anidentity an unchanging or intrinsic identity that is very instinctively engraved?? in all ????. And this is the source of all the suffering of beings according to Buddhist view. That self is one thing and other is another and there is an absolute gulp between them.

This feeling is normally controlled by cultures with myths, ideologies, religions, rituals, ethic system of education and so on. That celebrate an ultimate unigy?? beyond the instinctive sense of alienation. But most often those cultures cannot completely control the damage arising from alienation which result in greed, hatred, jealousy, pride and competitiveness. All sorts of negative motivation that have marked human history have the constant struggle of human against human, human against nature, human against even him or herself, that you might add that to, me versus me one of the really bad ones which we all get involved in. In recent centuries, human ingenuity has become so clever at expanding its powers through technological inventions. It has built up a vast machinery that operates upon the foundation of this tiny individual instinctual alienation, taking it beyond the control of the ancient religions, cultures, and ethics that so long held it in check. Our entire "civilization" in a sense repr esent an effort to remove the individual from connection with nature and others. It enacts the program of alienation, the attempts to find security plenty and happiness in other isolation from any other which might impede them. Thus civilization seeks peace through weapon, products of hatred, plenty through hording, product of greed, and happiness through insulation, anaesthetic drugs, air conditioning, medical prosthetics, guarded residences, manipulative relationships. All products of ignorant alienation.

But since reality is nothing but relativity of the Buddha discovered, when his touchingof the ground. Interconnectedness, interdependence, is the original teacher perhaps of interdependence in this way, on a sort of literary stage. Surely not the original one to know, but the original teacher of interconnectedness, total interconnectedness. All these efforts are doom to failure. Haterd and weapons produce destruction, first of other and finally of self. Greed and selfishness produce scarcedy, finally forself.

Isolation and misknowledge finally produces not happiness but death. Which from our point of view is no final solution from the Buddist point of view is no final solution but the beginning of worst problems when the death follows upon a badly lived life. Meaning badly lived, meaning harmful to other beings and to oneself. In the process this human misunderstanding, greed and haterd over stress the environment.

Weapons that reach the stage where a single all out war would make the entire planet uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years. Greed and hording, I don't think the planet would shrug off a mega tonage of all the nuclear misles if the Russians say, if we didn't help fund the Russian democrates and if they are nasty people get back in power and start shooting those things then the crazy people who again think they can do everything because they are not going to be there to witness the consequence. And we shoot back I think the planet will be in serious shape, I think God will move to greener pastures. We will all reincarnade perhaps in a slightly greener pasture probably with a weapon button right in our hand. In summary, the causes of the problem have always lain in the human psyche, ignorant alientation, greed, haterd and so on. And technologies of civilization have only magnified them to produce unbearable consequences for all life. So niether advancing technologies, or abandoning technologie s will solve this problem. The root problem which is spiritual and psycological must be solved first. Then technologies can be adapted to solve the emergency some abandoned some probably advanced. All of them no doubt restrained by common sense. The part three, which is the parallel in the noble truth to the truth of the freedom of suffering. It is called the solution of the problem. Things have become so bad it is a major difficulty for many people to convince themselves that there is in reality any solution at all. And here I think if we really confront ourselves we might find ourselves. I am now a days going around in a selection asking people when you here cynicism so much from people. What does it matter, there all the same, nothing can be done. You hear this all the time. I am sure you catch yourself thinking that, I catch myself thinking that. Its hopeless, no way to change this. So in fact it a certain achievement to image in fact a solution to the problem of this out of control civilization which t hat we are party to. We need good reasons therefore, since it is an achievement we need reasons to prove that one there is such a thing as a sustainable life on earth.

Two we can's say they lived nicely three thousand years ago, because there was one myth. What does it figure if a hundred present, if all of the people who ever lived in history were to be on the planet. It would only mean adding 5 or 10% more people. That is to say that all of the people who have ever live according to the western myth, a common story about human beings, which Buddist don't exactly believe. They believe there are many more human beings, there are many other cycles there are other planets where there are human beings. They have a sort of different view than the materialistically somewhat oriented common story. But any way given the common story, if all the humans were alive, only 5% more would join us. So 90%, something uper of 90% of us are alive now are dealing with this problem. That means we have about 19 histories to enact out of 20 posible histories 19 are up for grabs right now.

Only five provide examples that are valid from the past. So we can't say because there was this state of Hawaii, ???? or ??? or where ever it was that we could have it now. Because there are so many people now. And there increasing at this expedential rate. So we need reasons to prove that there is such a thing. Two that there is a way to restore the balance of nature without sacrificing human civilization. Three that we can and will take this way depending on each individuals initiative and the institutional and governmental responses to these initiatives. Convicing people that there is a viable future is normally the work of religions. The thousands of them that have emerged where ever people have been and what ever society tribal, rural, urban or global. I believe that all religions are there, by following so is the Dali lama in believing that all religions are there to help people especially with the central inter problem of people, of living beings most magnified in people the problem the instinc t of alienation, of self centerness, of self absolutization. All of them not only identify that problem, all religions identify that problem in some way. They also provide remedies for it. To restrain negative impulses arising from it and to restore unity in society and harmony with nature. They have worked at this melanium by malanium over the entire planet.

And they have given peoples lives meaning they have helped them obtain peace of mine content with an even enlightenment. They have reinforced their wisdom to overcome ignorance, their love to overcome haterd, their out risen and generosity to overcome greed. Even the great systems of secularism and science in recent centuries have emerged from religious impulses to gain knowledge of reality to promote justice and equality to provide abudance and security and to feel love and find happiness. So it clear that many human societies have for many of thousands of years lived on earth in a sustainable way without destroying their environment in any fundamental way.

But what has happen in recent time is that these positive intensions have been overwhelmed by the shear power of human of ingenuity and its inventions. The religions and secular idealisms have not suceeded accept in acceptional cases in iradicating the root instictional distortion. By impowering the individual the alienated and ignorant individual they have allowed this distortion in individuals to turn technologies towards distructive end. We have been guilty of this, we are responsible.

Many religions have dismissed live on earth as hopeless. Saying that it is fundamentaly warped or many I would say false appropriators of different religions have dismissed live on Earth as hopeless saying it is fundamental warped and therefore will inevitably lead to self destruction. There are great epochalimtic myths, there are people I must say who apropriate Buddism in this way. There are many, not only modern western people who are interested in it, but in Asia there were people who apropriated Buddism in different eras and times. And even in the best eras and times there were individuals to mean that well ??nervana?? means getting out of the world, ???somsara?? is always a mess, so the world will never be decent, so I will just try to make more of a mess while I am in the World and then later I will get into ??Nervana?? which is kind of obliverate myself out of the world. There was a dualistic life negating and life destructive misinterpetation infact of Buddism certainly. So when ??Buck Mr. Fu ller?? levels the charge as he use to do at all religions of inculcating in human beings an infuriority complex about the viability of life on earth to a theorys of suffering or sin or ignorance or what ever. Buddist are also guilty of that Buddist institutions have been misused that way, doctorans have been misused that way. And it would be important if religions are to try to take a new role now and to renew their real role to recognize that they have been misused all of them. Secular idealism have also largely abandoned hope for the future their holders resigning themselves to trying to enjoy the moment. Leading future consequences unattended. Sometimes I think that some of the simplest religions those of the small and peaceful communities of people who live closer to nature are better in not allowing major magnifications of the central human confusion. They have much wisdom about nature, human reality, and kinship with other species. They have not lost the realization that all reality is alive. A commun ion of subjects not a collection of objects, as my friend Father Thomas Barry says, or like the ???????????????????? says a collective mind field, the universe is its final analaysis. A collective mind field of living beings. Field of the inter inter collective minds including Gods and humans and sub human beings, all of them. Its there inter collective mind field that shapes the energy and matter of a universe not some sort of dead alert?? material process their view. I take heart in trying to reconnect this with the common story by the fact that since scientists still talk to about two of the major forces in the adam with angelo saxon words (tape ran out) so I have to finish one little thing. This is human societies have obtained enlightened ways of sustainable living by the long term application of religions, spiritual education and common sense to the problems of their environment. The Tibetans can point with pride to their accomplishment over the thousand years from 640 of the common era to 1640 of the common era. During that time they changed from a nation of cruel and fierce warriors, conquering their neighbors and looting and pillaging their fields and cities and so on. To a nation of pias and relatively gentle Buddist, spending their deepest energies in the pursuit of enlightenment, demilitarizing totally in the 17th century, I might add, and leaving their neihbors in peace, spreading non violently to them their ways of wisdom and compassion. Building a balance self sufficient simple but abundent economy and life style in harmony with their delicate and difficult high altitude environment. They enjoyed the fruits of that achievement of peace and harmony for over three centuries until the modern world invaded them with Chinese communist armies and modern infrastructure technologies, oppressively and exploitably, even genicidely used. So though their way of life has been deeply endangered and they are facing extinction as a nation and a people, they did achieve a creative and enlightened balance with na ture and unity among themselves for many centuries. What they did on a small scale can be a lesson for the rest of the world an inspiration and a proof that it is possible to create a sustainable life on this earth with our own human enlightenment, energetic compassion, common sense and hard work. So that finally I have to say, the third part and I really will be quick, is that you cannot prove that we can surpass this planetary crisis to anybody. Finally no one can be proved, proof that be proven. But people can kind of make a kind of pascals wager about it. That is to say, if they are destroyed then the fact that they were optimistic about trying to make it work right up to the end will improve the quality of their further life. That they don't allow cynicism and selfishness to cynicism to anger selfishness and to prevent them from unleashing their fullest efforts to see to it that they themselves and everyone else and all of the societies and all of their leaders and rulers should change their behavior t o a sensitive and empathetic and non selfish way of living even if it fails that they did that from the Buddist point of view will not be lost because the sole force of that generosity and idealism will go even if their is physical death. Now the four the fifth, and this is now one minute, the path to the solution finally from the Buddist point of view the path lies in education. The Tibetan, why Tibet succeeded in a thousand years of transforming itself is that 85% of the Tibetan national budget since the 17th century was spent in support of education.

Everywhere their were schools they were monastically oriented because thats the culture was. It was a pre modern culture before that and it was not education in the secular sense that we understand, although it had psychology and cosmology, other kinds of sciences and medicine as well. But it was the idea was that the purpose of the human being in that society was to educate themselves that was their lives purpose. Can you image in America if America was to change itself so that every individual was told that it was part of our culture, that the highest thing you could do with your life was to be in school life long. Can you image, do you remember, Mr. Bennet goes out and begrudges us a scholarship, or a new sports stadium, what ever it is. Your school is a little bit you get a few years of liberal education then you go out and do something productive and utilitarian in our culture. You know school is die of tolerance, preparing for the real purpose of life which is to produce, irregardless of the fac t that we over produced everything so much that we are practically sinking in a sea of over production. But image if instead what it would take to change this society to the idea that we are here on earth and our purpose on earth is to unfold our understanding to conquere ourself centeredness. That is what the purpose of our life is. Our evolutionary purpose. If a human being is self conscience in a certain unique way then there is another step to that humans are recentered in a kind of centrallity to use my colleagues terminology, and the recentering from the Buddist point of view is that the human life form is built out of compassion, wisdom and generosity compared to other life forms but is this close still imprisoned by instictual selfishness and unfortunately conscience selfishness often but is this close to realizing its own reality and becoming enlightened. So the human life form is the life form closest to self emptying in a certain way which makes it ironically crucial and a person who has it is no t given it arbitrarily they have earned it from billions of life times of former effort. So if they have it and they through it away making machine parts in a factory or fighting a war and getting killed, or doing something just using the body like a mechanism instead of pushing that evolution of selflessness another step to where they fully can benefit all beings and they have really rooted out all traces of this selfish egotism and self centered misknowledge then they have really drastically wasted their life and they will be reborn driven by blind instincts and compulsions and they have no guarntee of being reborn in the decent world. And they may be million of lives before they come back up to the human life where they get have another chance the Buddist view this way and so therefore the Buddist consider that the purpose of life is education. If this planet is to survive the environmental crisis there seems to be I feel, now just stepping aside from Buddism as I have been reading about it for twenty ye ars, thirty years that finally it comes down to people becoming more enlightened. People individually gaining a greater insight into their own nature, the impact of their own habits the consequences of their actions and really therefore acting on that new insight. And what way of producing in a mass of people and not just in our society in many societies what way of producing in a mass of people such a change of insight. We can tell them it is imoral to spoil and be greedy and do this and that, as long as we want. If your just told that you are bad that doesn't help you necessarily understand how not to be, when you have these other drives. In addition to telling that it is bad, we have to produce the kind of strategy and the educational facility and offer the educational discipline that will enable us an omass, unprescidented excelerated eduation so to speak on the education of the heart. We have to extend that in a way on the planet that it has never before been extended by any religion. This to me is the challenge, why came to this conference. Although I am over busy and I am jet lagged, and I am horribly the Chairman of my department and also I am talking to long. But why I came here is because I feel that the environmental movement without the input of the religion cannot not succeed because it will be one kind of materialism versus another and the religions must give an input.

But if the religions just try to reassert, that well we use to have it good and just go back to the way we were that will not sufice. So the religions have to try to think of some way of marketing, developing and technologizing possibly their ways not of just propegating belief but their ways of producing understanding and insight in a way that will match the machinery of destruction. A machinery of education and a machinery of construction and positive attitude that will hope to match the overwhelming machinery of destruction.

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