Opening Talk for a retreat that explores the relationship between personal and social transformation. There are profound parallels between our individual predicament and our collective situation, and this retreat explores their nonduality. If the self is an insecure construct haunted by a sense of lack, we gain insight into our preoccupation with attachments such as money, fame, power and romance, and how the 'three poisons' (greed, ill will and delusion) have become institutionalised.

In contemporaty terms, the self is dukkha (suffering) is because it is a psycho-social construct that can never feel secure. It is haunted by a sense of lack that we usually misunderstand.

Because we don't understand the source of our sense of lack, we tend to think that what we lack is something ourside ourselves, such as money, fame, or the partner who will complete us.

Today the three 'roots of evil' have become institutionalized: our economic system is institutionalized greed, our militarism and racism is institutionalized ill will, and the media institutionalized delusion.

There are precise and profound parallels between what Buddhism says about our individual predicament and our collective predicament today in relationship to the rest of the biosphere.