Wildfires, Unrighteous Rulers
The worst fire ever in California history in terms of death toll (the "Camp Fire") just burned down the entire town of Paradise, outside of Chico. And the president, as usual, said unfactual, unhelpful, unkind things (like that if people had just raked leaves more, like they do in Finland, this wouldn't have happened). Wow. In so many ways.
So it seemed a good week to bring in a classic text about how badly things go when the leaders are unrighteous, or unprincipled, including that the weather is disrupted! I read a short text from the Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN 4.70) that describes exactly this. And we did a meditation on compassion, which seemed called for.
