Hozan Alan Senauke: Changing Culture and the Fire This Time

Our world is on fire and Sensei Alan Senauke reminds us that it is nothing new. 2,500 years ago, the Buddha said that everything is burning with the fires of greed, hatred, delusion. And now in the midst of our climate catastrophe the fires are both figurative and literal. In the grip of greed, hatred, and delusion, we are destroying our world. During this week in August we remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the immediate blasts more than 130,000 people were incinerated. Many more died in the next few weeks and hundreds of thousands in the years to come. We still live with battles being fought over nuclear plants in the Ukraine and conflict between the US and China over Taiwan. And we live with the ongoing fires of racism and the pernicious habit of othering. In the midst of these fires caused by our greed, hatred, and delusion, Sensei Alan insists that we must ask ourselves the question: How do we truly be ourselves? It will involve internal transformation, which will demand a very close investigation of ourselves. And that is what we do when we sit zazen. Every time we sit down we face ourselves. And this is the internal cultural change we have to take on in order to change the culture at large.