The Crescent Heart, 26th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): To be clear, and to set the record straight with regard to yesterday's misappropriation of the "nation will prosper" koan, "to kick up dust" - also translated "to raise dust" and "to hold up a single atom" - in Zen means to engage in a single thought. "The nation" is not a sovereign country, but the whole world, nay, the entire universe. As soon as we engage in thought, our mental models (samskara) arise, and the world in nothing other than what we perceive it to be. In the state of meditation, however, when our mind is still and quiet and we're not engaged in thought, that perceived world disappears ("the nation perishes"). 

Zen Master Dogen often described the state of realization found in meditation as "body and mind dropping away." When there's no thinker, not only is there no perceived world but there's no more thinker. That's why Fengxue says, "if you understand this, there is nothing more and everything is your teacher."       

The world is as we perceive it, and many of the problems we encounter in life result from the conflicts of different perceptions. Our samskara determines our attitudes toward the world, and we often fail to see that the differences of opinion we have with others is a result of differing schema.

Writing in The Guardian today, Oliver Milman points out that Trump’s personal schemata have shaped his environmental priorities as US president. Withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement and declaring an “energy emergency” were among Trump’s executive orders on his first day in office, but his list of priorities also included measures regarding efficiency of shower heads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers. 

Trump has long complained about poor water pressure in home appliances. He claimed in 2019 that “people are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once” because of a lack of water pressure. “You know, I have this gorgeous head of hair," he said in 2023. "When you go into these new homes with showers, the water drips down slowly, slowly.” 

"When I take a shower, I want water to pour down on me,” he said. 

Andrew deLaski, executive director of something called the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, said there's "no doubt some people don’t like their shower heads and there is a nostalgia for old things." He acknowledged that there were initial performance problems with some newer, energy-efficient products, "but that was back in the 1990s. Consumers generally like their efficient products now." 

"The president may be operating on some out-of-date information," he concluded. 

A separate executive order titled Putting People Over Fish instructs federal agencies to divert more water from northern California to the southern part of the state, which has been ravaged by drought and wildfire. The order blames the “catastrophic halt” of water due to protections for the delta smelt, a small endangered creature that Trump called an “essentially worthless fish.” The smelt has been pushed to the brink of extinction by water diversions, pollution and development in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river-delta ecosystem.

“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it,” Trump said on Tuesday. “All they have to do is turn the valve.” During the campaign, he fantasized about some giant, imaginary valve. "It takes one day to turn it," he claimed, "and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific, and if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.” 

No such valve exists.

His statements may mistake a more complex situation in California, where water resources, under pressure from rising global temperatures, are being closely managed by a network of dams and reservoirs for big users such as agriculture and, to a lesser extent, cities.  Very little of that water is appropriated to support the delta smelt. Reservoirs in California were full of water when the wildfires erupted and no “valve” could have released more water from the north.

Trump is basically exploiting the tragic Los Angeles wildfires to condemn an endangered fish that has nothing to do with the fires. It's a blatant and brazen effort to bolster developers, Big Ag, and fossil-fuel interests that are cashing in on destroying the environment. Trump's orders, from Putting People Over Fish to the  "energy emergency" order, are based on his own schemata, personal fixations, and outright lies, and will not only weaken endangered-species protections but degrade the environment, well-being, and health of Americans.