Anytime anybody wants to speak up. And as we did the last time, I think it would be great to read the poem again. If we could do so together, that would be great. Please call me by my true names. Don't say that I will depart tomorrow. Even today I am still arriving. Look deeply, every second I am arriving, to be a bud on the spring and ranch, to be a tiny bird with still fragile wings learning to sing in my nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.

[01:06]

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am the frog, swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am the grass snake that suddenly feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms of merchants, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am a 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart am not capable of seeing and loving. I am the member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands.

[02:11]

And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly and forcefully for him. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughter from once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, And so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. So, there's something about the first two lines of the poem, which seems to point to,

[03:19]

Reality is just constantly overturning itself. Every moment there's a new stimulus. And just to sort of torrent of things happening, torrent of things happening. He says, don't say that I will depart tomorrow. Even today, I'm still arriving. I haven't enough time to process all of this because I'm still arriving. I don't know what's going to happen. in the future, but I'm still arriving."

[04:21]

Then he says, look deeply. And this phrase, or this word deeply, pops up in the Heart Sutra, in the first line of the Heart Sutra. And what does this mean, deeply? doesn't mean that you have to exercise some patience to allow meaning to emerge. Maybe it involves refraining from naming anything, like a true name. It also means probably no avoidance.

[05:25]

If you're looking deeply, you're open to what appears. It's maybe easy to see and understand the needs of people or beings in the natural world. But even a The jewel hiding itself in the stone is arriving at some point.

[06:33]

Maybe it's arriving when the jewel is discovered, but it's still some change. So somehow I still arrive in order to just show up, to express myself, to follow the energy of my joy and my pain and my sorrow. And so this is, this river of stimuli is so relentless that in itself constitutes life. It's the life and passing and death of everything.

[07:41]

You wouldn't know you were alive if there wasn't for change, but this is change in everyday experience. So this is, that may be for you what constitutes sorrow and pain and joy. Change. See, I'm writing. These processes are going on relentlessly everywhere in the world. Death is the occasion of new birth. Birth is the occasion of imminent death.

[08:44]

I think we all know this in our bodies. So, the poem reads, I still arrive. Every second I am arriving to be a bud on the spring branch, to be a tiny bird, to be a caterpillar, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.

[09:54]

So that's the activity. of your life, of all life, is to show up and bring that energy, whatever it is. The poem starts out saying, this is my way of showing up in the world.

[11:11]

This is what I'm doing. And then later, after various examples of the joy and pain, my pain is like a river of tears. My joy is so vast that it makes flowers bloom everywhere. Please call me by my true names so I can hear my cries and my laughter all at once. So I can see that my joy and pain are one. How do you do that? Why do you have to? I mean, why is it? Or why is that? Are they one? Well.

[12:13]

Can everybody hear Lori? Can you hear Lori? I think I'm getting it. Yes. Yes. My seventh grade teacher told me I had a voice like a fog horn. So. Why wouldn't you want to? Hold them both at once is different from saying they're one. Holding them both, to me, it's almost like he's saying they're the same. I think that saying that they're the same is, you know. Hear them at once. Hear my cries and laughter at once. The joy and pain are one. Yeah, so they have an aspect, being two sides of something, your experience. The part I don't like and the part I like, maybe, if you will. And yet, in order to know the part you like or to know the part you don't like, you have to be able to see them and hold them and allow them to be one.

[13:31]

That is maybe, they don't have to be one, but you're making space for that. I can see holding them both and hearing them both. I'm really, I mean, I'm fine with the poem. I'm just sort of playing it like when you were reading it this time. I was like, well, why? Yeah. Why do I have to do it at once? Yeah. As long as I know that they're both real and both there, and one doesn't cancel the other out. You know, it's not like when you have pain, even when you're depressed to think, I've always felt this way, I will feel this way. Completely canceled out the joy side. That's going too far. Maybe he just wants to hear all of his cries and laughter at once. Maybe it's not an edict, maybe it's just... Can Peter speak up, please? I didn't have her second grade teacher.

[14:35]

Can you hear her now? Is that better? Sue? Yes. Yes. So what I said was maybe he just wants to be called by all of those names at once so that he can hear all of his cries and laughter at once. see them as one. That's how I read it, not so much, this is how you should do it, or this is how it is, but please do this for me. Why he wants it that way. I like what you said about there being two sides of the same coin. I'm just wondering what the coin is. Can you know what the coin is without holding them as if they were one? No. True. I've heard other, these are just two sides of one coin.

[15:37]

Right. To me, it seems really obvious. Yeah, that seems obvious, but it's maybe too easy. Maybe too easy. Yeah, this one's a little harder to grasp. Joel has his hand up, Peter, if you have time. Oh, okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, Peter. Thank you. I was just noticing, please call me by my true name so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once so I can see that my joy and pain are one. It's like, you know, it's one sentence. He's hoping. He's imploring whoever or whatever or the universe that this would be possible for him. It's not an assertion that they are all one, that my joy and pain are one.

[16:40]

But it's a hope, a call that the universe allows him to come to the place where for him at that moment, joy and pain are one. And it's so radical that that place, I mean, I don't, I don't know that that place has a name. Um, like if you put a name to that place, it's not right. Oh, okay. I was just going to say that, um, in response of what you were saying earlier, that, um, um, You can't, you have to allow for the difference. Yeah. Difference has to be present as well as they're just one.

[17:40]

Yeah. The plea is acknowledging the difference and not denying the, the difference. Please let me experience that. I mean, he's coming from the place that they are different. He's giving us plenty of examples of that. Yes, he is. Absolutely. The whole poem is giving us examples of that. I really landed on these two last stanzas when we read it this time. I think the first time I read it, I was so taken by each of the examples. the two sides. This time when I get to the end it's like I am the whole universe. I am everything. I am the good, the bad, the pirate, the girl. It's all here. Allow me to see clearly so that my heart can see clearly.

[18:48]

To me it's more about Allow me, so the door of my heart, like if I can't see clearly, my heart is closed. I'm blinding myself and I'm blinding my heart. If I can really see clearly, my heart can see clearly also. And then the next moment, can you respond? There's the door of compassion. Yeah. Yeah. Did you want to say something about compassion? Can people hear me? I don't know that I had anything to say about compassion. I was reflecting. I guess I wanted to hear how people experience.

[19:51]

All these moves in the poem are coming towards this end of if we do this, please call me by my true names so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. So there's some process by which relaxing or letting go of my sense that I'm this thing but I'm not that thing. open something in us that you could call compassion and i was just really curious how people experience and coming to this end you know in a way what the how you got here with him after tracking through all these changes just wondered what that was like responding to that and everything else but originally I was thinking about what Laurie said and I think for me I'm feeling it right now as if to take one of the most difficult couplets of the girl and the pirate I'm imagining that like us his heart went out to the girl and

[21:26]

initially and not to the pirate. And he's asking perhaps the question we've all asked of how do we bear these terrible things, these unjust, unfair things that are. And I like what people have said about, you know, this is what he's asking for, rather than telling us. Yeah. He's making a request. Yeah. Which is, in order for it to be a request, you have to be able to say no. And just to connect it, I was having a conversation with some folks from the Sangha last night about activism in this moment and someone said, I don't know if she'd be okay with me sharing who she is, I want to give her credit, but someone said that the reason why she wanted to really be rooted in the Sangha in this moment around these questions

[22:50]

is because she wants to be able to take action through practice and not cultivating hate. And to me, she has the same question of how do I respond, you know, really effectively respond and take a stand and also not cultivate hate. And I think in his terms, be joyful and have compassion for the pirate, the number of the fall burrow, the snake, all these beings. One clue is a word that appears in here. It says in the stanza about the pirate and the 12 year old girl.

[23:54]

And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable. He's leaving that door open. It's a narrow door. Yes, go ahead. We've been talking about this I that begins the poem as he, as Thich Nhat Hanh, as a narrator. But we read the poem, and so we are the narrator. And really, I think through the process of reading the poem, hopefully we come to the realization that we're asking to be called by archery names. And that archery names include the fruit and the snake and the flower. And the good things and the bad things, we're all made up of all those things. So just as a piece of literature, I like the way the poem takes us on a journey to kind of divert that and see ourselves in the other and the other ourselves.

[24:58]

And the last paragraph is, please call me by my true names. We're asking to be called by our true names so that we can wake up. So we want to help others wake up, but we're also trying to wake up as well through this practice. So please wake me up. Yes, please wake me up. What are my critics? All of them. And I think that's, for me, in this very difficult time, and I know it's on a lot of people's minds, the key to maintaining our composure, I think, and finding ways to deal with this very difficult time that's built with hate and fear and confusion and chaos, Yes, Peter? Thanks, James. I think what he's also asking is, please see my shadow.

[25:59]

Oh, OK. And that's how I internalize the poem is I'm asking to be seen for all of who I am, not just one thing or one other thing. Some people might see me as just a jerk. Some people might see me as, oh, what an amazing existence. I'm none of those and all of those. But for me, it's my shadow. I remember, I think my first experience of Thich Nhat Hanh, some of you might remember this, when Rodney King was beaten. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an editorial to the LA Times. He wrote an op-ed piece. Basically the title of it was, I am the police. This was not in the 70s or in my 80s. This was pretty unusual. He was saying basically, let's not forget all of us have that common side of us.

[27:06]

We are all that person as well as the person who was beaten. I was really struck by that piece. That was my first experience of, oh, yeah, I've got a guy like that inside of me somewhere. It doesn't mean I'm going to act on it, but I can't deny that it's there. And so please see me by my true means. It's like, see all of me. Thank you. There's a website. I think it's, I can't remember which one. where these poems appear. And there also appears a recording of Thich Nhat Hanh reading this poem. So I suggest you, if I had been smarter and more clever, I might have made that possible.

[28:09]

But it's interesting to sort of see. You know, you familiarize yourself with something and then you hear some other voice bringing meaning to it. Yes, Laura. I can really relate, I mean, I can, my heart opens to, the door of my heart can be left open because basically it opens for the girl and closes for the pirate. You know what I mean? And that's kind of what he's saying. Oh, that's very interesting. That's where I get to think about it at once. Not at once, that doesn't do anything for me, but this thing where it's just left open. It's changing the world because it's left open. It's left open because the girl comes along and it's open for her and then the pirate comes along and it's open for them. That's pretty intense to think of.

[29:12]

It is. I don't quite know how he does it. I think it might be through these very extreme examples that he brings us to this place where we can accept everything, everything as it is. and open our minds and our heart and it lightens my heart so that when I see the places in my own self my own in me where my shadow shows up

[30:14]

I can be open to it. I can show compassion in this very light way. And that's not the way that I usually address myself. Like if I see my own shortcomings, my first instinct is not to be open and to show compassion, it is to be like, oh, Ken, you're doing it again, or why did you, like, there's a really condemning voice, and to be brought to this place where I can open up my heart and leave it open to the door of compassion to all the true natures of my soul is very powerful. Helen? What Ken said, I think, crystallized something in me just now, which is I think on some level I already know about those dark sites, those painful sites that can hurt, and probably want to, on some level, distance myself from them.

[31:38]

And this is putting it out in the open and saying that you can look at those parts and really include those parts and still that doesn't preclude the fact that makes the compassion more available. So yeah, I think just from hearing Ken reminded me that it's, yeah, on some level I already knew it was there. Maybe it's that Leaving the door open means freedom to respond. So when you close the door for whatever reason, because you can't handle it, then you are not free to respond as you would like to be. And so leaving the door open gives you choice.

[32:45]

gives you agency. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. What I realize now, another way of saying what I was trying to express is that our compassion is not based upon some sense of our own inherent goodness. To what? Some sense of our own inherent goodness. I don't deserve it because I'm one side of things. Yeah. I mean, there's no deserving anyway, but it's just, yeah, there's a resilience there and a stability there. that doesn't rely upon, you know, compassions for those who don't hurt other people.

[33:58]

Yeah. Yeah, there's something about Thich Nhat Hanh is famous or should be famous for changing the words we use. And I'm sort of thinking about the word that appears, the last word of the poem is compassion. And that's one of the terms that he would normally, in a Buddhist context, would substitute with something else. Maybe he likes that one, I don't know. He's telling us what that means in some sense. Yeah, it was kind of going there too. to Dave's question of how we hold the last, the idea of compassion or experience. And when I first read through the poem, I got to that last line and kind of took it like, oh, it's very, it became syrupy in the sort of like kindness, right?

[35:07]

Up to that point, there was this wonderful, Oh, calling me by my true names, that means like what's actually happening. Yeah. Like what's difficult and problematic and awful. And that the door, an open door is allowing that to come in, coming down. So when I just now I was thinking how compassion is up. It's compassion, suffering together is the root of the word. In that sense, it makes more of a connection to me. Peter? Yes. I wanted to say something because regarding that sea pirate, the little girl being raped by the sea pirate, and I'm the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

[36:12]

But it isn't just that he's not capable of seeing and loving, but to me, there's a sense also that the sea pirate has a great deal of suffering. There's a lot of suffering in him that drives him to do such an act of lack of compassion for another person. And I think that... what he is doing. I mean, from what I understand in psychology, we often do things that we have gone through, you know. Some people who are very cruel, they've experienced this in themselves, and they're kind of locked into that, you know. So, I mean, you know, we look at the frog... being eaten by the bird or whatever.

[37:14]

And we go like, well, that's the way it is. The bird is hungry and the frog is there. But when it comes to something like this, we think we have a tendency to judge that the person is insensitive or whatever. But I wonder if we can look... deeply into the person's heart and experience to see how much suffering there is in there. That suffering that isn't making him capable of seeing the suffering in another. I'm just wondering. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think there is a... If you ask yourself a few questions about how you might feel Were you the pirate? It's pretty hard to imagine. But a lot of pain would be part of it.

[38:21]

I think there was somebody else in Zoom land. Peter, I have a couple of things. One is sort of housekeeping. I want to let the people in the Zendo know that the speaker who just spoke was Maria Teresa to announce that. And so thank you, Maria Teresa. If you want to mute if you're done, that would be great. And the housekeeping moment is if you haven't paid for this class, you get to do that on the website or by check. You're free to do that. Feel free to do that. Yeah, there's a little bit. The generosity tab is what we say. And then just personally, so I've just gotten so much out of listening to people share tonight, and I'm stuck with this poem because I value my separation very much.

[39:30]

And I notice that. It's like... You know, I think deeply perceiving, deeply observing, seeing deeply, that doesn't mean it's my name. I can see deeply, but it's not my name. So I'm working with the being... you know, all those names. And I think back to, you know, being in nature and there's the frog eating the fly or the mushroom or, you know, the bud. And I observe that. And I'm learning to observe people and compassionate and non-compassionate. And it's very...

[40:34]

helpful, what I've heard tonight, to hold myself in opening a viewpoint, seeing more deeply what that is, but it's not necessarily to call myself by all those names. So I'm not there yet. I just wanted to share that. Yes, Dave. I say this is really helpful. I actually really appreciate hearing, hearing everyone. And two things. One is, yeah, the thing about the door of compassion being open, that really helped me. And part of it is, is I was just thinking that compassion looks very different for the little girl in the seat. So compassion gets very differentiated again. And that Compassion for the Sea Pirate.

[41:37]

Actually, it reminded me of this story, and I should ask her, because I'm going to get it wrong, but my wife, Devin, many years ago had this experience. She was in India, and she's being followed. This man started following her, and this Tibetan nun jumped out at some point and yelled at him, and what she said was, you don't want to do this. You don't want the karma. And he like ran away. And it's an amazing story. I don't know what was going to happen. But she was scared. But on some level, what the nun did wasn't framed as compassion for Devin. Right? It was framed as compassion for him. Like you don't want... You don't want the karma of this.

[42:39]

That's very interesting. Thank you. Yes. I think where we stumble sometimes is confusing justice for compassion. So when we take this example of the pirate and the little girl, we focus on what we think justice is. And we align with her suffering. And that's a completely different issue, I think, than compassion. Because justice for the young woman would be a very different kind of justice than would be justice for the pirate. You might have to command and so on. It would be very different. And I think we sometimes use those in our culture as almost the same thing. And so I think it's, for me at least, instructive not to get hung up on that and to keep them somewhat separate. I remember some years ago I went to a workshop.

[43:42]

It was about that word we characterized justice as it's supposed to be really healthy. Restorative. Restorative justice. Sorry. I was fishing there. And the guy who was running it was really interesting, but that's another story. He started off by saying, well, what does justice mean? And he said, just is. Just, just is. You know, we might say just uprightness. You might say what? Just a brightness. Yes. We usually take a break when someone brings it up.

[44:49]

I was just going to say related to what Dave and James were saying. Can we hear that a little better, baby, please? I'll give it a try. How's that? um sounds good um i don't think compassion and accountability are incompatible and i think that's what part of what your story is speaking to and it can definitely be a kindness to hold someone accountable and hopefully bring them back to their true self but i'm not sure that's what the poem is Yeah. Well, no, that's an interesting thought. So shall we take five? And then we'll come back and try again.

[45:52]

Five minutes? Yeah, five minutes. I'm sorry that the Zendo is still muted.

[55:29]

I will try and get Peter's attention. Thank you so much, Sue. My bad. Yes. Do you want to say something, Sue? No, I guess I just wanted to say thank you for unmuting. Oh. What did we miss? The key. The break. Why don't you say it again, Kim? There were a couple of comments. I can't repeat them all. Just that warmth does make flowers bloom. There's no effort or will involved. It is the natural unfolding of warmth for flowers to bloom. And by tears, My pain leads to my tears if I don't try to control that.

[56:30]

That's just what happens. It's like allowing me to wake up so the door of my heart can be open. Let's not get in our own ways. Let's let the warmth heal our lives. Let's express our pain in our tears. Yeah. They're both like healing. Yeah, exactly. It's beautiful. That stanza brings me right back to the Those two words at the beginning, look deeply. Like maybe he's saying if we look deeply, we'll realize that our pain would fill all the oceans and our joy would get flowers spring all around the world.

[57:34]

That those are universal realities to live in this world. How could you not have that much pain and that much joy? But we have to look deeply. in order to recognize that, to realize it. And I don't think it implies that we then get overwhelmed by one or the other. That's the essence of, to see that they're one. So in a way they do balance each other out. And if I look deeply enough, I can see the world as a horrible, beautiful place and contain all of that. I think the look deeply is the key. He uses that word all the time. Yeah, he does. It's his work. Does anyone else know when this was written?

[58:35]

I asked myself that question as I was paging through the internet. Let me think. I think it was like in the mid to late 70s. It was right after the war. Wow. Which is known as the American War over in those parts. Yeah, he writes a little bit about, I think on the, again, if you Google the the name of the poem. You'll see some sites that have his story about the poem. Laurie, do you remember anything about him at Tassajara? Yeah, I mean, I was pretty sure that the poem

[59:39]

He either said it there or it was already around by then. I think he said it. I think he gave it to us then. Yeah, I remember. I have a very visceral sense of him because he spoke to us in the dining room. I have a very visceral sense of him, but I can't think of any specific memory. Do you? Just seeing him walk around and being in the room with him, with other people, it was very striking how much he was in the room. I was just thinking, I think it's from Sister Shang Kong's autobiography, and maybe it's some other writing that I read about Thich Nhat Hanh and the beginnings of his crew, his sangha, and I don't know that much about this, but it seemed like in this terrible, terrible civil war, and I was thinking about that context of a civil war where people are turned against each other

[61:05]

by causes they very much believe in, but they're also brothers, sisters, and how he was, not welcomed back in Vietnam, was exiled for decades because he refused to take a side. And I'm just, thinking about that in the context of this poem. Yes, Peter. Your comment just brought me back to not taking sides.

[62:19]

For whatever reason, that's my natural impulse. There is a conflict. My impulse is to not see one or the other as right or wrong, but to try and see something in each and what's happening. right now politically in this country, it's really scary for me to even admit to myself that I can see somebody on both sides of this current conflict, because all my friends and most everybody I know wants to kill the bastard, or ship him out, and sees everything he's doing is wrong, and everything he's doing is hurtful and harmful, and I don't. Mostly I do, yes. There's a part of me that's like, yeah, but I don't know. I just try to see maybe there's some good there. Maybe there's some value in there. Maybe there's a reason for this.

[63:24]

You know, one of our Buddhist teachings is everything for a reason. Nothing lasts forever. Maybe that's a mantra for this moment in our political world. But, you know, I've been messing with this internally. You know, I listen to NPR and I hear all these horrible things that he's doing, and partly wants to just get really angry and take a side. But he has part of me that's like, you know, just see it all. Just see it as it is. Don't take a side. And somehow I feel like I can be of more value if I don't take a side than if I do. But everyone around me is taken aside. And I don't judge that. I don't have nothing against it. I'll probably end up on a march or end up on a protest at some point because that's standing up for what I believe in. And at the same time, I try really hard not to take aside because I think it keeps me more balanced and me more open to seeing the reality of what's going on.

[64:32]

And maybe I can actually be helpful if I'm not taken aside. So it's a challenge, I don't know, it's hard for me because a part of me says, oh, you're just a chicken. You don't want to get your hands wet, your elbows in. A part of me is like, no, I've done that, and I'd rather not. So anyway, just to throw that out. Thank you. Your comments remind me of something I read today that gave you pause. I don't remember exactly who I was reading. And they were opining about why the Democrats and the left in this country seem to be just flummoxed right now, unable to respond to what's happening. And the writer of this piece that I read suspects that it's because the left is so sure of its ethical and moral superiority that it hasn't taken the other side seriously, it hasn't really looked at them.

[65:35]

And so I wonder, as you speak, if there's something to that. That we do need to really look deeply in order to be able to respond. I know pretty much where I align on most of the issues that are troubling everyone I know, no matter where they are in our political spectrum right now. I'm not sure that I can respond to all of them, or that I want to respond to all of them, but I think that it does help to kind of not have fixed views, as we say, you know. Great, who hasn't said anything yet? Well, I'm still against genocide. I'll say that.

[66:37]

So, sure. Let's hold up all sides. Fine. Let's have the big, broad view. That's good. And I'm not okay with people suffering and dying needlessly. Or, worse yet, suffering and dying because Somebody wants them to. Out of outright cruelty. You know, the Holocaust happened. That's a fact. It's like, there's people who would like to deny that it happened. But it happened. And people did that. So, yeah, I'm not okay with that. So, I'm responding inside by, uh, saying that I have my own beliefs and conclusions about how I can contribute to the situation we live in, in a way that it benefits everyone.

[67:51]

And I also recognize that People do things and believe things for their own good reasons. And yet, I need to trust in my own sense of what the best way forward is. And that might be, I might sharply disagree with somebody, but I don't think it's worthwhile to rub their nose in their own mud.

[69:01]

Yeah, I agree. When bones are being crushed and lives are being destroyed, that's not a conflict of ideas. Thank you for your fierceness. I'm thinking of the Thai nun. Also fierce. Also free. also not holding the fixed views we can be surprising in this moment we can be free to act our truth in this moment not holding the fixed views means the normal rules of what we think we can, should

[70:06]

how this world works are not necessarily the rules that we are living by right now. And we can do something different. Here, Joel has his hand up. Or Linda. Here's Linda. I was thinking of something. Do you have something? I do, but it's for you. Go ahead. We both get a chance. What occurred to me is I think this thing of self-reflection of those of us on the left is a very good thing. And I've been known to find myself saying the reason the left loses elections is lack of compassion. And I think there's truth in that, in that there are people, there are poor, poor white people in many places, like the rural South, the mountains of the South.

[71:31]

There are poor white men. dying of black lung disease. And I think a lot of that is caused by greed and the owners of coal mines. But I think that whatever we might feel about them, they have not felt compassion from those on the left about their suffering. And they it hasn't reached them. And I think there haven't been all that many efforts to express that or to reach them. And it's understandable to me that they would feel a lot of rage and resentment. And so I think that's something important to look at for the success

[72:34]

of our efforts. I know there's, I think it's Reverend Barber, I forget his first name, who led the moral majority movement in North Carolina. And one of his big teachings is that the importance of bringing together poor white people and poor people in general together with racial minorities and other minorities that we rightly care so much about. And he's had considerable success. I think last election. I don't know. I'm making this up that there was some decisive success in North Carolina that the one of the houses of the legislature became Democrat. because and led by his efforts in that direction.

[73:37]

So that's what I wanted to say. Linda. I'm on a different page but I think I said last week that I had studied with Thich Nhat Hanh a few conferences probably 20, 25 years ago and the first one I can remember, and he would talk. He would talk for maybe two or three hours and then ask for questions. And one man asked him about his anger, said he could not get beyond his anger. And Thich Nhat Hanh challenged him very strongly about that. And I don't even remember what the anger was about, but His response, as I remember it, was that it was hurting this man who would not let himself move out of his anger.

[74:40]

And how could he convince him, how could Thich Nhat Hanh convince him that this was an injustice and a lack of compassion to himself that he was so embroiled? and this anger. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I have a couple of thoughts. One thing to return to the question of sides. I feel like this is an important poem for us in our world. right now not just us but broadly in that actually I too hate the sides of national politics and the sense that it's almost like sports teams and who wins and who loses and you have to be recruited and like it just I don't love it and

[75:54]

Also, I'm seeing through my work what's actually happening and the cruelty that's being experienced. And I think that's a very different thing. I think responding to this moment and someone was sharing last night about she works at a school and the parents are organizing to take in each other's children if they are deported. And they're organizing to have food pantries because people are working less or can't find jobs and et cetera. And so part of me is like, it's so important to respond. And that doesn't mean I need to quote-unquote pick a side.

[76:58]

I'd like to think that that is irrelevant. But on the other hand, I think sides are being very much deployed. I have a lovely, wonderful, caring cousin who only watches Fox News. And I know where she stands politically. and how she sees the world. And she's been recruited to a side in Michigan. Very important place. And I don't know how to meet that almost demand for picking a side. I know what side I'm on. And I wanted to find it for myself and for people that I, and with people I'm in solidarity with. And it's not just about parties at all.

[78:05]

So I wish I had, I mean, I'd love to hear more from Thich Nhat Hanh if I'm trying to bring it back to the poem, but I'm not sure how, so. Peter, we have three minutes left, two minutes left. I understand. It's getting close to the time. I'm going to say, not to sum up or end prematurely, but just to say that I really really really appreciated everyone's response to looking at this poem these issues that are front and center for us in our lives today and front and center for everyone practically in the nation whether they know it or not

[79:12]

It seems like this should lead to something else, but I don't know what. I think it's really important that we're gathering here and trying to speak directly to each other about these issues. And that's about as much as I can say right now without really veering all into la-la land. That's good. It was really good. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Grateful to all of you. Thank you. Yes, that's a wonderful idea. Please call me by my true names.

[80:33]

Don't say that I still are tomorrow. Even today I am still arriving. Look deeply at every second I am arriving to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with still fragile wings, running to sing my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower. I give you a jewel like myself, a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird that moves down to swallow the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond, and I am the grass snake that silently feeds itself on the wrong.

[81:39]

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones. My face is thin as my new sticks, and I am the arms and the chants, and I am the weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, through the frowns you stopped in the ocean. I am the sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the fallen girl, with the glory of power in my hand. And I am the man who has to take his death of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm that these flowers bloom all over the earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills with four oceans.

[82:42]

Please call me by my true pains, so I can hear all my cries from my heart at once, so I can see my joy and pain. Please call me by my true pains, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Thank you so much, Peter. It was so wonderful. Thanks, you all, for coming. Bye-bye. Good night, everyone. I'm going to end here.

[83:51]

I'm going to just...

[83:58]

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