Not Making Practice Special

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I don't have any subject, so it's up to you. Malý český rybníček.

Pavel: Malý český rybníček.

Mike: Say again.

Pavel: Malý český rybníček.

Mike: Malý český rybníček. It's up to you. We can talk about anything. Who's going to be brave enough to risk being—

Boris: Ask the question.

Mike: Yes, to risk being thought stupid by everybody.

Boris: Exactly, yeah.

Mike: Yes. Communism went in 1993. You can free yourselves now. You can speak up, I won't tell anybody. (laughs)

Participant: They will come to arrest me.

Boris: Maybe we speak out, so everyone will know what we are saying.

Participant: I'm not sure.

Mike: Not this one. No.

Question: So, Mike, how not to feel special about what we do? Because the constant thing—

Mike: Say again? How…?

Question: Not to feel, like, special about what we do? I mean, from my experience, the constant thing is how I screw these things up: okay, I do, I sit, I sit zazen, right? And then I'm just screaming at myself, Stop sit zazen, or, you know, thinking about Buddhism, but, well... It doesn't, you know, it doesn't smell right.

Mike: Do you think about Buddhism a lot?

Question: No, but I think it prevents me from really getting it in life, when I started thinking about Buddhism, or…

Mike: Yeah, yeah, it's a problem.

Question: Thinking it's special, like Buddhism or sitting or whatever, or these kinds of people or anything. How do I avoid this?

Mike: I understand.

Participant: I don't understand. Can you clarify how special? Special in comparison to what? To whom?

Question: I mean, life sometimes feels messy and unorganised and unsatisfactory, so I get this fuzzy feeling: okay, I sit here, or I read this Buddhist book, or I met with these nice people, and, you know, it's kind of

Participant: special compared to people who…

Question: To just daily life, I don't know.

Mike: It's a problem because what's happened, certainly with Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, is that it came to the West, which is a different culture, and people started doing it as some kind of new, unusual practice, and often with different clothes, like this, you know. This is like a medieval Chinese man. But he's only a medieval Slovakian man, actually.

Boris: A great Chinese master… I forgot the name. That's the reason.

Mike: Yeah. And people think it's something special. And so they go into a group, and they do these ceremonies, and they like the ceremonies, like chanting, bowing, putting incense, all these things; you know, we chant before meals. So people get the feeling, oh, you know, it's good, it makes me feel calm. I have a friend, a colleague, Gabriele, some of you have met her, and she has a dojo in Dresden.

And she made her dojo like a little Japanese place, and people go in there, German people, who like something very ordered, with lots of rules and things. I hate it, because if you want ritual, I'll tell you what the real rituals are: getting up in the morning, making your bed, washing your face, cleaning your teeth, having breakfast, going to work. These are rituals. And if we join a group and make all the rituals inside this box, which is special, then people say, How can I make Buddhism part of my life? Well, the answer is: leave the group, throw it away, and just live. What the original Buddha taught had nothing to do with these ceremonies and these groups. He wasn't teaching about ritual. He was teaching how to live. He found through his own experience how to live, and he told other people. And people were interested because he saw things from outside society, because he lived with the yogins, and he noticed how society imprisons us, and so on. Anyway, I think it's important for me not to make something special.

The reason we chant before meals is mainly that when I came back from Japan, when we had a sesshin, it was natural to me. I'd been doing it, so I carried on doing it, and everybody else carried on doing it. But if people don't like it or want to stop, fine. It's not important in that sense. And, you know, we have little bells, and they're not really important. The most important thing is to practise balance every day. If only for ten minutes, or half an hour, if you can manage it. That's the most important thing. The rest is not important.

Even groups are not important. The big group in France was started by a Japanese monk called Deshimaru, and I think Kaisen was somehow connected, and a lot of teachers in Europe have come from there. I don't know if they say it now, but they used to say, Oh, better not to sit at home, sit at the dojo. You have to come to the group to sit, because when you sit together, it's special. It's not, it's not. When you do anything with a group of people, there's a nice atmosphere together. Whether it's going for a walk, singing, going to church, there's an atmosphere.

So, of course, when we sit together, there's a nice atmosphere. But the most important thing is to practise every day. So when they say to their students, Don't practise at home, you might have a psychotic episode or something, it's complete rubbish. So it's up to you not to make it special. I try not to make it special, because I don't feel special. And I think that, unfortunately, in the 2,000 years since Gautama Buddha's original teachings, there has been a lot of transmitting, passing on the teachings. And of course, like everything, it's been passed on in different ways.

Maybe some people didn't understand what he was teaching, but they liked the way he did things. And so down the years, some groups who are practising the teachings think that ritual has something sacred in it. Yes, it does. Cleaning your teeth has something sacred in it. Going to the toilet has something sacred in it. So what people think is important about ritual is present in our normal life. We just don't notice it. If you go every week to a special Japanese-style room and you do these special rituals and you think, Ah yes, you are missing the point.

What is better is to make your own life like that, to some extent. You don't have to exaggerate. You don't have to clean your teeth like this. But, you know, when you're eating, eat properly. We eat together down here and we don't talk very much. Well, actually, it's quite healthy not to talk too much when you're eating, because it helps your digestion. So all these things are there in normal life. There isn't anything special, but people have made, typically human beings make things special.

And then from that special state, they have special people, and then there are more special people, and then you have a hierarchy, and up here is the guru. You know, and he's special, super special. And then at the bottom are people who say, Oh, I'm not special. I'm just an ordinary person, but my guru is special. And that's, you know, that's the end of everything, really. If you get into that kind of situation, good luck. That's called delusion. And it happens all the time. There are all these people on the internet, on YouTube, who present themselves as great teachers. And they encourage you to think they're special.

They have a special state or a special life. Well, to me, that's not helpful, because we think, That person's special. I'm not special. I want to be like them. And I might have to pay money, but it's okay. And the special person becomes more special, like Osho, and, you know, hundreds of examples. So there's nothing special. So don't make it special. And the way not to make it special is to sit every day. Don't just sit twice a year. If you sit every day, it's not anything special. You sit when you're tired, when you're sleepy.

You sit and you have to get up to go to the toilet because you forgot to go. You sit and your children are making a noise. You do the best you can. There's no perfection anywhere. So don't let people put the teachings in a box, because that's what they want to do, and they've been very successful. So we meet together as a group, and we've got a name, Dogen Sangha, because sangha means a group, and Dogen is where our teachings came from. But Pavel said some years ago, It doesn't exist.

When we come together, Dogen Sangha exists, and we go home and it doesn't exist anymore. I like that a lot. So for me, it's better not to have an organisation. That's my personal preference. But part of that is because I want to avoid making something special.

Boris: In the first talk, you mentioned when the Buddha went to the forest, to the ascetics, to attain some special state. And then you described some ninth, eighth level of consciousness and so on.

Mike: Well, that's what I read, yeah.

Boris: Where do these theories come from? From Hinduism, or

Mike: From the yogic tradition, I think.

Boris: Okay.

Mike: I think, I don't... Maybe somebody, maybe you know.

Participant: I think so, because before the Buddha's enlightenment, there wasn't anything in India; the mainstream was Hinduism, yoga.

Boris: Maybe you could find some Buddhist books, I think. I'm not sure about these states or something like that.

Mike: Well, yeah.

Boris: But this is also rubbish. It has nothing to do with Buddhism or with the Buddha's teaching.

Mike: Well, he quit. He gave up. That's the important thing. I don't know whether he was thinking, Oh, that was a good experience. I enjoyed those eight years, but now I want to do something new. But from the story that we have, it seems like he must have thought, This is not what I'm looking for. I give up. But it's only a guess. I didn't have the opportunity to talk to him.

Boris: And all these bodhisattvas and many of these things, where do they come from? Are they Buddhist?

Mike: Yes. No, I think after the Buddha died...

Boris: Christians also have it like that: first you are a bodhisattva and afterwards you are a monk, and something like that.

Mike: Well, yeah, you can see some kind of sense, some kind of value in it. They were trying to describe what happens to people when they joined one of these groups in ancient India. For instance, there seem to be people who come to the Buddhist teachings because they've been reading and thinking, What's my life? and they're interested in religion and so on. So in their mind they've had lots of questions, and they come to the Buddhist teachings to find the answers. That's one kind of person. Another kind of person, like me, came because of something physical.

You know, in my mountaineering, I noticed a nice state or situation, and it's almost like by accident I met this little guy in Japan, but what he said matched what I experienced. But I wasn't thinking about Buddhism. I wasn't looking for the Buddhist teachings. I didn't read any Buddhist books. So there's a kind of physical way. There's a kind of intellectual way and a physical way, and then there are people who are mixed between the two. So they wanted to give names to these.

We love giving names to things. So somebody who's kind of mixed and in daily life, we'll call them a bodhisattva, and somebody who's coming just from the intellectual, we'll call them a shravaka, and so on. And so all these words build up, and then people believe the words.

We love to make models, and when we make the model, we believe the model and we forget the reality. In science, in religion, in everything, our brains are so powerful. So slowly, and 2,000 years is a long time, slowly, slowly, all this built up around teachings which were realistic and straightforward. And, you know, people did their best. So, you know, last week I went to that peak with that guy from the north of India, and he was talking about reality and practising dhyāna.

I can't remember what he said, but I write it down, and then he writes it down and passes it on to somebody else, and somebody else, and slowly it changes. And so we have the huge invention of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and the other ones, whose names I've forgotten. Theravada Buddhism, the other one?

Participant: Yogacara.

Mike: Yogacara Buddhism.

Participant: Madhyamaka.

Mike: Yeah. Dogen, who's the guy I know most about, said there's only one. So he was very generous. He said that all these are the same. Actually, he didn't mean that everything that people are doing is the same. He meant that because there's only one teaching, they must all be making their effort to teach the same thing, because it came from the same person. But in fact, what the teachings have turned out to be sometimes sounds very different. But there must be something in common. So that's what Dogen said in the 13th century. But of course—

Boris: Where is it? In Shobogenzo?

Mike: In Shobogenzo, yeah.

Boris: Dogen said that every teaching of Buddhism has something...

Mike: No, no, he said there's only one Buddhism. So if you say there's only... So he describes... Of course he lived in Japan, so he didn't know about all the Indian or South Asian teachings. But he said there are many sects, Zen sects in Japan, the Obaku sect, the Rinzai, blah blah blah blah. But he said there's only one Buddhism. So from that, you have to understand what he was trying to say. He wasn't saying, There's only what I'm saying. He was saying there's only one teaching, but it has come into different places.

Participant: It's interesting. Dhammadipa says there is only one Buddhism.

Mike: Yeah. Well, as long as it's not only his, I agree. I only talked to him for half an hour, and I felt that he thinks it's only his, because he talked to me about faith. He said faith is very important.

Boris: Faith?

Mike: Faith. Faith. Belief. And I said to him, What about doubt? And then he gave me a lecture about Zen doubt. So I thought, okay, so the truth comes from Dhammadipa.

Boris: Zen doubt? But what is this?

Mike: Zen doubt. Doubt in Zen. I don't know. You have to ask Dhammadipa.

Boris: I doubt it.

Pavel: Well, I think it's quite an interesting question, faith and doubt in Zen.

Mike: It is. Yes.

Boris: Can you explain?

Pavel: Well, you should create it for yourself, for example. But anyway, you have to have faith, because otherwise you wouldn't sit on your buttocks.

Boris: No, please, can you tell me your experience with doubt in Zen?

Pavel: That's what I'm talking about now. Sorry. You have to have quite strong faith to go to the meditation room and sit on your buttocks for five hours a day, in zazen or in the method or in the teaching.

Boris: Faith?

Pavel: Faith, víra.

Boris: I don't have faith in this.

Pavel: You do, otherwise you wouldn't be here.

Boris: No, it's not faith.

Pavel: What is it?

Boris: Experience.

Mike: Okay. So maybe usually we use faith to mean some mental belief. But Pavel's meaning is something which is not only mental. So in our body, through our experience, we rely on something.

Pavel: Trust, trust, trust is the right…

Boris: Okay, trust is better.

Mike: Trust. Okay, trust, yeah.

Pavel: But it's a synonym. Faith, trust is a synonym in this.

Boris: For me, trust is something completely different from faith, but okay.

Participant: It's a radical difference. Definitely.

Participant: That's good.

Participant: Yeah, it is.

Pavel: But I would also say doubt may be a misleading word. So, for example, when I think about it, instead of doubt I usually use a kind of curiosity, constant curiosity about things.

Boris: Curiosity. Okay.

Pavel: Curiosity.

Boris: ‘Zvídavost’, in Czech.

Robert: ‘Zvídavost’, that's good.

Pavel: I think it's very important, when I read a word in the translation or the Shobogenzo or whatever, to find the meaning of this word or concept or whatever in your own experience, in your own life. So you may read faith and doubt, but what does it actually mean for me, in my life, in my experience? For me it's trust and curiosity. It resonates much more with me, for example. But Dogen is writing about this faith and doubt.

Mike: Yes, yes, but I can't tell you where. My memory is not good enough.

Participant: Yeah, but it's definitely true that Dogen mentions arhats. There is a chapter called Arhat. So he must have known about Theravada practice, and, as far as I understand the chapter, he shows respect for the people who practise, and he calls them Buddhists, not that they are wrong. So I think he showed respect for that practice even in a different style. But he says it's Buddhism. And another thing is, he says Zen is nonsense. Zen is some kind of invention and it's nonsense. So he didn't respect the category Zen. He says in Bendowa, I think, there is no Zen.

Mike: Yeah, go on.

Participant: So he always tries to explain what the Buddhist teaching is, what Buddhist practice is, no matter whether you're in India or Mongolia: what is Buddhist?

Mike: One thing I think is quite helpful, it's very helpful to me. It came from my study of the Shobogenzo with Nishijima, but I can't tell you how it came. It's an emergent property. People can only teach what they know. So if somebody's teaching something, and I think, hmm, I think to myself, that's what they can teach because that's what they know. For instance, if somebody's teaching that zazen is some special state, it's because they don't know what zazen is.

If you don't know what it is, you can't teach what it is. So, you know, everybody does their best. They teach as they understand, and we can't teach more than we understand.

Pavel: Maybe also the problem is that there is an old Indian proverb regarding the teachings. It says: It's so simple, you wouldn't believe it. It's so close, you can't see it. So it's so vague, or fine, subtle.

Mike: Subtle.

Pavel: You have to experience it, and if you experience it, then it's very difficult to put it into concepts and talk about it, actually.

Mike: Yes, yes.

Pavel: So that's why people are quite often misled, and they think that, for example, rituals, clothes, or whatever is the teaching.

Mike: Yeah. But if they had a teacher who knew that they weren't, then they could understand that they weren't. So Dogen says, Look for a good teacher. If you can't find a good teacher, better to have none.

Participant: It's still, you know, the Life of Brian, the comedy.

Mike: Life of Brian.

Participant: Yeah, yeah. He shouted, You have to think for yourselves, and everybody says, We have to think.

Mike: You know, it's very subtle. I had an email just yesterday from somebody who wants to meet me, and they wrote, I am looking for myself stroke God stroke it, right? I don't know who this person is. I haven't met them yet, but, I'm looking for myself. I thought, I'm looking for myself? Well, you're living with yourself. You're always with yourself. You're looking for another self, which is different to the self you are. That's what we do. Because the self we are is always with us. We know ourselves, we just sometimes don't like ourselves. We want a better self.

But it's interesting what you say about subtle. I was weeding in the garden this morning, and I was looking for nettles. And weirdly, there are all these flowers and green, and there's a nettle here. And then I'm looking around, and I can't see any more nettles. Then I go and I come back, oh, there's one there. I missed it. How did I not see that? So I spent the whole of the samu looking for nettles, and it's as if they could hide themselves from me.

They were right in front of me, but they were hiding themselves from me. And I had to keep looking backwards and forwards until I could say, Ah, there's another one there. Looking for yourself.

Participant: Anyway, you are talking about our experience. My experience is with Kaisen, the Kaisen group: he taught me, he showed me zazen for the first time. And for me it's still precious, because I met him with zazen.

Mike: Precious, precious.

Participant: Precious. And that's all. Afterwards I didn't look at these comedies, didn't play, maybe not so good, but anyway.

Mike: You got something, something valuable.

Participant: For a long time it was sitting in the group, or not making… except the big gossip. It was a very nice time, coming to retreats, and he was my teacher, you know, still.

Mike: Okay.

In the Shobogenzo, Dogen's writings in the 13th century, which I helped to translate and publish, you can see, if you read it — of course there's no Czech version, so it's quite a difficult task to read it, the way I can read it in English. But if you read through, slowly you can see Dogen is always taking the traditional understanding in Buddhism, taking it apart and reinterpreting it in a very different way. That's what he does throughout the Shobogenzo. But he never says, That understanding is wrong; this is the correct understanding. He does it in a different way.

He says, well, for instance, there are the three poisons, there are the four this, there are the sixteen that. But if you sit in zazen, you're there already. So in another way, he's saying that the Hinayana Buddhist analysis of all the different stages is not necessary. But he doesn't actually say that. He's kinder than that. He's more generous. He's not so generous to people if he knows of a teacher whose teachings are not... He doesn't think they're very good. He says so in very strong terms.

Participant: Wasn't Dogen also promoting, you know, this monastic life, this living together, like in some monastery, practising together, the ango, this, you know, like... This is one thing I'm not doing, right?

Mike: Well, times are different. He said that we need to leave family life. Well, in the 13th century, if you wanted to practise zazen and pursue the truth, you couldn't do it at home. There was no time. You were in the field growing food. So in his time, it was necessary to leave physically. But we don't need to do that. If we wish, we can go and live alone.

I think the Jewish tradition has also got these people, usually men in the community, who want to study the Jewish teachings and are supported by all the other members of the community, and they can become special, rabbis. So it's practical. It's been a practical development. But the time is different now. We can actually take four days away from our jobs, because our jobs are not growing food so that we can eat it. Our jobs are making computer programs or doing accounts or inventing cars or something. But in the 13th century, people's work was to support their life in a very immediate way.

So we're fortunate. But, you know, if you want to leave and join a community away from life, then it's possible.

Participant: As far as I remember, Dogen also mentioned and praised some…

Participant: Lay people, ministers who practised zazen.

Mike: Yes.

Participant: He mentions a minister who practised diligently and was a buddha, so he had lots of respect for lay people.

Mike: Yes.

Participant: Yeah, yeah, in Bendowa he praises… everybody.

Participant: And I'm not sure whether the chapters in Shobogenzo were maybe written for lay people.

Mike: Some of them, yes. At least one was written for a specific person.

Participant: And some lay people visited him regularly, or he visited them, so he was their teacher.

Mike: You know, it's a long time ago, the 13th century. But, as Pavel said, when we hear concepts, we need to investigate: what does that really mean for me? If you don't investigate what it really means for me, for me, then it's just an idea, so you're getting knowledge. So Dogen always writes, Study in experience. Go away and study this in experience. Find out what it means for you in your life. It's not just knowledge I'm talking about. It's something real. So go and make it real. Yeah, that's very important. Otherwise we're just trying to understand something theoretical.

Question: I just want to ask: you were talking about balance, the balance when you sit in the room. So does it manifest outside the sitting as well, you know, after many years? Is there a reference?

Participant: Because it's a kind of skill or habit that you develop, isn't it?

Mike: Yes, as it's a habit, but also it changes your physiology. So, for instance, when we go home this afternoon, the fact that you've sat for three and a half days means your body will have adjusted itself. So the endocrine levels and the nervous system's functioning will all be more balanced. Not undisturbed. Normally our nervous system is going from one side to the other, more aggressive, more passive. We eat and feel sleepy and sit down and read a book, and then we go out to work and get stressed. So, you know, our nervous system is going up and down.

But after three and a half days of sitting, your body has stabilised, and it will continue in a stable state until life pulls us back into society. So slowly we lose that, but it stays with us. My teacher used to say that if you practise every day, it's like ringing a bell. Dong, dong.

So it's a physical change. It's a physical balance which stays with us. And if we practise for many years, we make very subtle decisions about what we're doing and where we're living and who we're with, which we probably don't notice. But over many years, that steers, directs our life. So after 20, 30, 40 years, there is some effect.

For instance, if you practise zazen every day, you might like going to the pub and drinking lots of beer, and then you practise zazen every day, and still you drink beer, and you practise zazen every day, and still you drink beer. But after two or three years, you think, Maybe I won't go for a drink. I won't drink today. And so very slowly, very slowly, your drinking goes down like this. And it changes your life, but you can't even notice it. So, you know, why am I here in the Czech Republic giving talks on Dogen? How did I get here?

Participant: I have the idea you came to the pub and you woke up in this strange country.

Mike: Well, you know, since I was 30 years old in Japan and met this little guy, and he told me to sit, and I sat every day, and I think, without me knowing it, my life changed. Without me knowing it. I didn't think, Okay, now I want to do that, now I want to do that. Without planning it consciously, it has taken me where I am. So, to me, that may be due to zazen. I can't say scientifically that the hypothesis is true, but it may be.

Participant: Because you don't know how your life would have unfolded if you didn't...

Mike: Yes. Yes. Even sometimes when it feels like it's going in the wrong direction. If I look back at my life, at times when I thought it was going in the wrong direction, well, was it wrong? Well, I'm here. So if it was wrong, how did I get here? So it's not necessary to evaluate. Just follow where you're going. Follow your life. Don't follow your mind, because your life is living you, whether you like it or not. Yesterday I talked about affirming, affirmation. So we can affirm everything we do.

If we practise balance, we can affirm that: okay, I don't know where my life is going. It seems to be a bit disturbed at the moment, but, you know, it may be okay. So this is where I'm going. I'm going there. So to affirm what you're doing is helpful. I mean, there's no point in criticising: Oh, I did that wrong. I'm a Buddhist and I gave a talk and it was horrible.

You know, I should have prepared before I gave the talk, and Ladislav's recorded it, and, you know, it's pointless. But I did my best. That's it. So affirm what you do. And then, when you're lying in bed at night, you can regret everything; it's kind of a hobby to lie in bed in the middle of the night. (laughs)

Boris: Like a hobby.

Mike: Yeah. And then we wake up in the morning, we get up, and then, oh, okay, I'm here again.

Participant: That is one subtle thing. I once worked with a colleague, and I was like a professional, but he was, in my opinion, like a borderline psychopath. And he was very sure about everything he did, and he was very powerful in what he was doing. He was able to steer the whole group and the people around. I definitely don't want to be like him somehow. But he was in some way affirming everything he did. He did it with all his...

Mike: Yeah, but I'm talking about you. I'm not talking about the psychopath that you met in the past. I'm talking about you. So if you affirm your life, it's not the same as him affirming his life at all. It's just that he was sure of what he was doing. I don't mean to be sure. It's not being sure I'm never wrong, but just saying, okay, that's the best. I did my best.

Boris: Our prime minister before, Matovič, was like that.

Participant: Yes, like the psychopath. Yes, yes.

Boris: Nobody tells him. Okay, somebody maybe tells him, but he's still going.

Mike: Okay, he's gone. Has he gone?

Boris: Gone? No, now he's finance minister.

Participant: Finance minister. It's the same.

Boris: Nobody tells him, ‘You should go,’ but ‘don't go.’ They only change.

Mike: Yeah, that's politics. Politics is a kind of sport. Competition, power, winning, winning.

Boris: Exactly. He's a psychopath, but he was a psychopath before also. I don't know why people voted for him.

Mike: Yeah, because in democracy, the most important rule of democracy is: don't ask all the people.

Participant: Okay. You know, when he says affirming, it rings something, but sometimes, as Pavel said, it's this thing which is so hard to really grasp. When you say it, in my mind it's, ‘Oh, this is this nice happy idea, like from the master,’ but it's so hard to grasp. I just feel there is some line between... I don't know. It's just hard to grasp. It's not like...

Mike: Well, don't grasp it. It's okay. You know, it's only a tool.

Participant: I just really don't want to be a prick, you know, a dick, like being the...

Mike: You're not a dick.

Participant: It's like this mystery between, you know, being selfish, but sometimes you have to be selfish, and I can't put it in nice words, but there is some mystery or something. Well, I guess I need to sit on it.

Mike: Well, we never know when we're selfish and when we're selfless. So don't worry about it. Just be honest and practise balance, and then just do what you do, whether it's selfish or selfless. We can never know. The idea in normal society is that you shouldn't be selfish, you should be altruistic, which is the English word for the opposite, selfless. So you should help other people and not care about yourself. That's stupid. How can you help other people if you don't care about yourself? How can you love others if you don't love yourself? So again, it's a balance. If you balance yourself, then you don't need to worry.

You've done the balance bit, and you can do what you have to do and not worry if it's selfish or selfless. It's okay. It's only what society has exaggerated. You know, we've invented this way of living together and all these beliefs and concepts, some of which are a bit crazy when we look at them. You shouldn't do anything for yourself. You should only do things for other people.

You know, die for your country, and that's the ultimate. And then when soldiers go and die, get killed, or kill other soldiers and then get killed, people say, He was a wonderful person. He died for his country. That's a wonderful sacrifice. What he did was go and kill some other people and get killed himself. This is a great sacrifice and blah, blah, blah. It's not true, really, is it? It's time to stop.

Pavel: Yeah.

Mike: So thank you very much for listening to me.

Pavel: Thank you.