Is this too loud? Yeah. Can you just move the mic away? good morning good morning welcome to the first day of aspects of practice period where we're studying the eightfold path and our speaker today is pure spring nourishing the heart nourishing heart Jerry Oliva. And Jerry began practice in 1989 at the College Farm and has practiced at Berkeley Zen Center since 1996.

[01:12]

And since then, she has received pre-sordination and Dharma transmission from Sojin Roshi. She's a retired pediatrician with a focus on community health. So thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Karen. Let me know if it's not loud enough. So I want to welcome everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the 2020 of Aspects of Practice. As you know, or most of you know, each year we have an opportunity to participate in a four-week practice intensive led by the senior students, which has two sashins, weekly classes, bi-weekly Dharma talks. The practice supports us. The practice is meant to continue our dedication to awakening with all beings.

[02:16]

For each of us, this requires a decision-making process. A process about putting aside other activities in the room or Dharma study, making room for our daily schedule of various activities. This might include consulting with family members, roommates, getting permission from our bosses. We look at the possible impact of other people in our lives and how our practice and our activities not only affect us or benefit us, but what about the other people as well? So we have a broader mind that includes taking stock of our life at that time, taking care of everybody in our life, as well as ourselves in our practice. So what we do usually, and we encourage people to do, is to set an intention during practice period. Some intention, whether it's an intention for deepening your practice, whether it's an intention to be more consistent,

[03:27]

whether it's an intention to open your mind to different teachings that you haven't experienced before, but there is an intention. And then when we set our intention and we make our decisions, we're asked to fill out a form. That used to be a paper form and all the activities, as you know. So we get the form, we say how many morning zazens we're attending, how many afternoons, how many classes, and that becomes, kind of the action associated with this intention in our minds. We want to practice. And this is what it looks like for aspects. We have this intention. We put it on a Google doc. And in the old days, when we had a practice period with a chiseau, we'd look at everybody's, application every day and uh and notice um notice if you uh are in fact attending and if you go to tasahara for a practice period they have a they have a sheet by the zendo and they actually monitor so this is the extreme version but it's it's a way for us to get feedback or to see

[04:51]

How are we? We have to have this intention. We have a volition to act. That process is happening. And this is all, and this is part of what we're doing is making, dedicating ourselves in a way that we, with a very conscious choice. And then we get to look at our calendar and look at our behavior and look at how it's going, you know, if we can't do it. It doesn't mean that's the end of the world, right? I mean, no one is going to come and tell you, but it's not a way to judge yourself, but just to assess, to pay attention. You know, why didn't I make it to early Zaza that day? You know, why didn't I tune in online, as I said, I was going to do for certain things. So in doing this whole process of deciding to come to practice, signing up for practice period, then we usually mark our calendars, right? So we actually have a physical representation in front of us if we look at our calendars regularly.

[05:56]

This is my intention. This is what I'm about during this period. So process is actually following the Eightfold Path, which is the theme of our practice. We open our minds to what's there we think about it we may talk to others about it and then we act and then we meditate we practice mindfulness so we're actually doing the practice in the prep in the process of getting here and then each time we come we are really enacting the way and i wanted to um just reading Thich Nhat Hanh's introduction to the Eightfold Path, just to emphasize the importance of this teaching and how important it was to the Buddha.

[07:01]

So in the Heart of Buddha's Teaching, which is one of the texts we're using when he talks about the Eightfold Noble Path, when the Buddha was 80 years old and about to pass away, a young man named Sudada, came to see him, and Ananda, the Buddha's attendant, thought it would be too exalted to see anyone. But the Buddha overheard Sudhana's request and said, Ananda, please invite him in. Even as he was dying, the Buddha was willing to give an interview. Sudhana asked, world honored one, are the other religious teachers in Magadha and Kshala fully enlightened? The Buddha knew he had only a short time to live, and that answering such a question would be a waste of precious moments. When you have the opportunity to ask a teacher about the Dharma, ask a question that can change your life. The Buddha replied, Subada, it's not important whether they are fully enlightened.

[08:07]

The question is whether you want to liberate yourself. If you do, practice the Noble Eightfold Path. Wherever the Noble Path is practiced, joy and peace and insight are there. The Buddha offered the Eightfold Path in his first Dharma talk. He continued to teach the Eightfold Path for 45 years, and in his last Dharma talk, spoken to Sadama, he offered the Eightfold Noble Path. So this is not... We may not think about it a lot, but this is... a very primary, basic way to live. Not a study to live. Study too, but mostly to live. So I'm inspired today, or maybe by way of transparency, to talk about my own journey in being here today. It's been a rocky journey.

[09:10]

I had signed up or agreed to be part of this and agreed to lead this machine months ago, maybe three months ago or so. And then a number of life, life events. Life events, right? Real life. Not just my hypothetical liking of wanting to do this. Life. So the first thing that happened was I... was coming down the Sanaki stairs about eight weeks ago after meeting, and I shared the computer screen with Lori, and my knee went out. I had a bad knee for many years, having done many foolish adventures with my knee. But it just went out, and I tried to grab something, and there was nothing to grab, and I twisted my knee badly. And I just got an MRI that told me I'd actually micro fractures in my tibia, which I didn't know before.

[10:15]

So I've been kind of rehabbing my knee without knowing I'd actually had fractures, but that's another story. But you'll notice that I had to be very careful. Some of you who are close up could see. I mean, I always was proud of this person, right, who didn't use her hands. you know, who had strong legs and could do these nine bows. And what about, you know, I'm really cool. I don't know. Maybe I thought that. I don't know if I really thought that, but I felt good about it, right? I was really doing the prostrations you're supposed to be doing. And I'm old and I did it. And I kept on doing it. Great. You know, delusion, delusion, delusion. So here I am wondering if I'm going to be able to walk even. right so that happened and then the second thing um was that another delusional event um was that um my husband paul and i decided to go to carmel bach festival this year and this is something that we used to go to every year with mel and liz it was really kind of in honor of mel's funeral you know after mel's funeral this was just like a way of somehow going back and

[11:32]

partially living that we were going to do it you know i was limping with a cane and we were going anyway and um all kinds of diluted things oh it's really better i'll walk down to the ocean anyway um so i was into i was deluding myself um and then we tried to be We tried to be very careful. We deluded ourselves about the fact that the Omicron variant was everywhere. And lo and behold, the last night of the concert, my husband suddenly said, I don't think I can get up and walk. So from the place where we were listening to music, we had to get back to our car to get back to where we were staying. And he had to put his arm on me pretty soon. couldn't, I mean, I was supporting most of his body weight. And by the next day, I also was feeling really ill and nauseous and starting to cough.

[12:39]

So we got COVID. So we got COVID and it was six weeks before. And I said, well, I'm not even gonna think about practice period because it was kind of like, I was actually, I was actually just at that point, what this whole was get my attention, really get my attention. I had to pay attention to every moment. My husband was bedridden. We didn't have any, I was, I was trying to get in-home support. I couldn't get to the agencies or they didn't take our insurance. And I am limping. and i am carrying trays up and down the stairs of food three times a day or cooking or whatever and um this was the reality and there was no room in that reality for me to think about anything two weeks four weeks away it was actually this experience of really almost moment to moment where he would be dazed

[13:56]

fall out of bed. I'd have to call the EMTs. And this was dramatic, right? This was dramatic. There was no room for me to worry about, oh, able to be doshi for sushi. That was like so far away from what I was thinking about. It was like, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do so that I might be able to sit and rest or what's going on with my knee or what's going on with anything. It was more a matter of that living. that living moment to moment, no thoughts of the future. At one point, a thought came to my mind, am I just numb from trauma? Is this PTSD from other experiences with my mother when she was sick and whatever? Maybe at the beginning, but what it was is that it totally got my attention. There was no way that I could actually survive this time without being fully present all the time.

[15:00]

I was there because I had to do things. I was there because my compassion was needed. I was there because whatever was in front of me had to happen, had to be done. So there's, there was no, there was no going on about what should I do or how or am I doing it? Not even am I doing it well or not? It was like, I don't have that. I can't I can't waste that time. So, I. Then, as weeks passed, someone, someone. During this thing on a phone call. a couple of weeks after I was into COVID, and someone said to me, well, when do you think you'll be able to get back to practice? And I kind of, you know, to myself, laugh because I'm thinking, this is practice.

[16:04]

You know, this is bringing zazen moment to moment in my life. This is really a practice in an intensity that I have. It's as intense as any sashimi I've ever been to. So it was kind of interesting. And then I started looking at myself and I did get this thought about just the basic teaching of I think, of just Suzuki's basic teaching of, well, was I studying? You know, was I studying myself? Was I monitoring my thoughts?

[17:06]

And on some level, that started to happen. I started to watch my mind. I started to notice if, say I was irritable or felt put upon or whatever but I was there to see it you know because I was so there to watch this whole show of all of the you know unwholesome little unwholesome scenes that popped up you know oh I always have to do everything I'm always the one who has to take care you know whatever these old patterns they came but they didn't matter you know I saw them and they didn't matter and for some reason I was thinking So I just thought about Suzuki Roshi's chapter in my beginner's mind of studying yourself. And he said, study the self to have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point. We just do what we do, like eating supper and this is Buddhism.

[18:07]

And I thought, yeah, like falling down and getting up and getting food and getting and preparing food. This is Buddhism, right? Being without that for the moment. He quotes Dogen to study that we all know and I've heard before. To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves. When you become attached to the temporal expression of your true nature, it is necessary to talk about Buddhism or else you will think the temporal expression. But this particular expression of it is not it, and yet at the same time it is. For a while it is, for the smallest particle of time, this is it. But it is not always so. The very next instant, it is not so. Thus, this is not it.

[19:12]

so that you will realize the fact it is necessary to study Buddhism, but the purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of existence or reality itself. When we realize this fact, there's no problem whatsoever in the world, and we can enjoy our life without feeling any difficulties. The purpose of our practice is to be aware of this fact. So, I really did feel that when I was doing these things, I was kind of watching my behavior and then going and then always being ready and always being ready for something else to happen to whatever happened. Sometimes Suzuki talks about, I think, in Not Always So, about sitting like a frog.

[20:17]

I was sitting like a frog. I was walking like a frog. I was alert. I had to be able to respond. So I really got to watch myself in a way that I had not. And the ground was unsteady. It was unsteady. It was nothing to rely on. And I remembered another chapter of Suzuki Roshi's, I think from Not Always. So it was stand up by the ground. And he says, it can be a stick sometimes or it can be a stone. It can even be water. The ground means everything, not just ground. It means practice our way without having to repeat the same experience.

[21:19]

In fact, we can never repeat the same experience. All we can do is to live moment by moment and see whatever happens as just this. Suzuki Roshi says, right now it is hot, but it's not always hot. Sometimes it'll be cold. So our expectations are often diluted and we make many mistakes. If you think you can always stand up by the ground and you don't mind falling on the ground, you'll fall quite easily. You may have the idea that it is alright to fall to the ground. I can easily stand up on the ground. But if you become complacent, you can always stand up by the ground. You've forgotten that the ground, it can be a water or a stick. The ground is really empty. So, and that's You know, that's as basic as it gets. The ground is always empty. There's no solid ground ever that lasts more than a second or two.

[22:21]

And that it's just deluded of us to think so. And so I basically, I got to, I mean, all I can say is it was kind of like balancing on some unsteady platform in the water, you know, not knowing if a wave was coming, not knowing what a current would drive me away, not knowing what happened, just being fully present. And as time passed, something kind of interesting happened, which was I started to, when I ever started to think, feel sorry, or get what I would consider, you know, an wholesome self-referential thing come up, I started doing kind of an exercise of what about all these other people? You know, what about all these other people who have COVID right now?

[23:23]

What about all these people who have polio right now, or monkeypox right now, or who are sick, wherever they are, who don't have food, who don't have water, who don't have the help that I, could have from some friends. And what happened then was that I actually felt my mind expand. I felt like relieved. There was this feeling of being with millions of other people who were all facing sickness, old age and death with me. We were all going through this and I realize that I live so often in this other deluded reality of, but I can make it better, or it's not going to be that way for me, or what other way I defend myself against recognizing that I'm always part of this. I'm always part of this vast world of suffering and joy.

[24:29]

But definitely in this case, I was I was really feeling that I was participating in this great, this great with millions of other people in some, something that was. So for me, it was mind expanding. It changed my, my view. And it changed my view of the inclusiveness of having all this, of being with all these other people and how it, how I could, how it could be there. So. Then I had a humbling thought, which was, okay, I'm really not feeling well. This is really not going so well, this recovery. I have intractable cough and nausea even weeks after and so forth. And then I said, well, you know, if I can't do it, another priest can do it. That's all.

[25:30]

What's the worst thing that can happen? I can't do it. Another priest does it, you know? What about if I am a little cloudy, which I get, you know? How about the talk? Well, you know, if all my, I practiced for so many years, if I can't say something helpful, you know, that's all I need to do. And if I can't do the talk, there'll be somebody else who can do the talk. So I kind of left that anxiety about this And then in the last couple of weeks, my husband got up and started walking around and walking downstairs and I started feeling well and the reality changed and it became, oh, looks like I can follow. So it was kind of a miracle actually, but here I was.

[26:33]

When you see me sitting in a chair, it's very hard for me to adjust to being a person who's sitting in a chair. It's very hard for me to be a person who can't quite bow because my knee is still. But that's how it is. And that's the mind of the right view of the Eightfold Path. The mind that understands that all of this is just all of this. So I wanted to share some stuff from early stuff from Bhikkhu Bodhi's book called The Social and Communal Harmony, Buddhist Teachings from the Pali Canon on the right view. Because I think it's helpful to me There's some funny error message here.

[27:37]

You've been signed out because your account is signed in from another device, and then you know about that. For me, I like to go back to the polycanon version of things where it all began and then skip back to our more contemporary look. Because I always learn something. You know, it always gives me another perspective, so I thought I'd share it. So he titles this, Right View Comes First. And what is right view? There is nothing given, nothing sacrificed, nothing offered. There is no fruit or result of fruit in bad actions. There is no this world, no other world, no father. There are no beings spontaneously reborn. There are in a world no ascetics and Brahmins of right conduct and right practice who, having realized this world and the world for themselves by direct knowledge, make them known to others.

[28:42]

This is wrong view. So he says, well, what is right view? And he makes a distinction between the right view of, or include, he wants to include both, The view of, our view of the world, our view as, and all of the inputs, he calls it influxes, all of the influxes, all the inputs to our consciousness that are external. So he says here, what is right view is what is subject to the influxes, particularly in acquisitions. There is what is given, sacrificed, and offered. There is fruit and result of good and bad actions. There is the world, this world, and the other world. That's love from coffee. There are the world ascetics and Brahmins of right conduct and right practice who have the world and the other world for themselves by direct knowledge make them known to us.

[29:51]

So right view is our taking in of all the inputs, all the perceptions, formations, consciousness, all of the stuff we input from our minds, input from our conditioning as children, all of this is part of right view, sort of. In other words, we have to have that in our right view. We have to look hard at what our conditioning is and see it. Not that we own it or like it, but that inflexes and understanding them That's part of right view. So not putting away the old baggage or the bad stuff. The bad stuff is there. The good stuff is there. Our parents are there for better or for worse. And then he said, and there's this other right view. And what is right view that is noble and free of influxes?

[30:55]

super mundane a factor of the path the wisdom the faculty of wisdom the power of wisdom the investigation enlightenment factor the path factor of right view and one whose mind is noble whose mind is without influxes who possesses the noble path and is developing the noble path this is right view that is noble free of influxes mundane and a factor of the path so Then he kind of takes apart these paragraphs and he includes, so he's including understanding wholesome and unwholesome roots. So we have looking at ourselves, studying ourselves, part of our right view so that we don't go to thinking and action and speaking with wrong view is seeing the unwholesome roots.

[31:58]

He kind of puts an emphasis on the ten precepts. Or maybe I don't like following them. I don't know. I think when I was doing some ceremony, I couldn't remember some of the precepts that I was supposed to be reciting. Consciously, who knows? I don't like to talk about them. Anyway, that's one part of right view, he says. And then he says that another part of right view is understanding karma. So most of us know that karma is action. And we are aware of our actions and we are aware of the effects of our actions. and we are aware that these actions have, when they have these effects, we look at them and we see if they're not beneficial effects.

[33:07]

And that's how we practice with our acting and our speaking. If we step in it by speaking instead of using hurtful words or whatever, that comes back to us. That's understanding karma. It's understanding where the words came from, recognizing the words as they leave our mouths and recognizing the effects. So that's part of right view is seeing that sequence. And then he says, then he talks about in karma, something I kind of alluded to when I first talked about this. He talks about the role of volition. In other words, When we decide that we want to practice in a certain way, we have free will. We make a choice to act. It's not something that happens. So the point that he talks about, it is volition monks that I call karma.

[34:09]

For having willed, one acts by body, speech, and mind. And what is the diversity of karma? There is karma to be experienced in hell, karma to be experienced in the animal realm, Karma to be experienced in the realm of the afflicted spirits. Karma to be expected in the human world. Karma to be expected in the diva world. This is called the karma of diversity. So karma's not one place, right? And what is the result of karma? The result of karma, I say, is threefold. The next life, or in rebirth, where we... We won't get into that, but this is called the diversity of karma. And what is the cessation of karma? The Noble Eightfold Path is the way leading to the cessation of karma, right view and right concentration. And the last, then and then he also adds the essential role of studying the self, which is what

[35:18]

been talking about and he has a section called when you know for yourselves and the point he makes is that the Buddha said when the Buddha said the Buddha often said what do you think what do you think that our mind That there's this studying of the self, this perception of our right view, of our big mind, involves our processing, our ingesting, our penetrating, karma and both ourselves. That it's essential for us. And he says a couple of things here.

[36:22]

Do not go by oral tradition, but when you know for yourselves. These things are unwholesome. These things are blameworthy. These things are centered by the wise. These things have undertaken and practiced lead harm and suffering. You should abandon them. Of this that was said. What do you think, Kalamas, when a person is without greed and delusion, hate and delusion? Is it for the welfare or for his harm? For his welfare, Bhante. Kalamas is a person not overcoming hatred and delusion, whose mind is not obsessed by them, does not destroy life and does not take what is not given, transgression with another's wife, or speak falsehood. Does he encourage others to do likewise? Will this lead to the welfare and happiness in the long run?

[37:24]

So he's going back on his students or on the members of his community. What do you think? All you have to do is take this stuff in and look at it and you know. You know. It doesn't, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be that you have to hear an enlightened teacher necessarily. That What you can see with your eyes, if you open your eyes and if you actually open to what's in front of you, you can see if you say something, an expression on someone's face changes, for example, if you hit a wrong nerve. You can see the results of your greed in one way or another. It takes that kind of internalization to actually have right view. It takes your own embodying of the teaching in that way. That's what he's saying. So let me see where we are here in my time. So as I began here, after ingesting this, to go back into the world in the last couple of weeks, just to reenter and go from the place of

[38:44]

great awareness and expansiveness I went immediately back to um habitual mind and in some you know and found myself you know I because it wasn't like oh great this is going to be life-changing and now I'm perfect or I'm gonna I'm really gonna know now I'm really not gonna I'm really not gonna be I'm not gonna be my I'm not gonna see my usual my usual stuff That is, of course, another great delusion. So I have to share this because it was so funny. I went to lunch with a friend for the first time. I mean, you know, because I had a long positive COVID test. But I decided to go to Le Chalet for lunch with a friend, another very hairy person. And I am looking over the shoulder. my friend, and I see eyelashes about that long coming out of the eyes of a woman with very bright colored golden hair.

[39:56]

And I'm just amazed, you know, it was like, what is it, you know, I haven't seen this. And I said some very unskillful things to my friend about, you know, why in the world would anybody put this horrible stuff on their face? What's going on with women now? I think she had a very tight, revealing shirt, and she had some tattoos all over her arms or whatever. My mother came out of me. My mother's voice came out of my mouth. I was so embarrassed. And luckily, my friend who's listening said, you're very retro. And I looked at that. And there were, of course, everyone was younger than me, and there were all these kind of hip young women at different tables, maybe some of them on lunch dates and whatever. They were black, white, yellow, whatever they were.

[41:00]

This whole sea of Oakland was all around me. And all this, you know, red braids and long eyelashes and tight shirts and tattoos, and I'm saying, oh my God, Jerry, you know, I had this, here you go, you thought you were, you know, you had this, here you go, you are acting like an old lady. You're acting like, you know, you're an old lady. I always thought of myself as somebody who kept up with the times, you know, fought the styles or whatever. I never got to tattoos, because I didn't like the pain of it. But here I was, and I realized, this is how it is now and you have been sleeping and now you see that this is what it is right now this is the style this is what people are doing they enjoy it they're having fun they feel like they look cool you know what business is it is it of yours you know you don't have you it's not my it's not

[42:10]

It's not my business, first of all, right? Why should I even bother, waste my time having judgment about other people? You know, when it's not my business and it makes me, I feel like a fool. So it was a very humbling experience. You know, very deep experience of going through the COVID. I go back and there's the worst of me that I could imagine coming out. I thought, oh, well, so much for that. But it did, it did. bring to mind something else that I wanted to mention before I, as we think about going forward in the Eightfold Path. And that is change and change and adapting to change and being compassionate about change. So, because exactly that, like who am I to look at these and have any opinion whatsoever about them They're not hurting anybody. There's no harm happening.

[43:12]

So that feeling of change and that whole theme of change, which I think, I can get my glasses on again, to think about change in the Sangha. We've had such a challenging three or four years with Sojin's illness, Sojin's death, a new abbot, New ways of practicing, practicing online, practicing every week. And that along with all the societal factors that have changed over time. They've all impacted us and going one from another, we don't get a chance to recover. from this onslaught of change. So I started to think back though, you know, when I thought about, oh gee, all this change is happening, it's unsettling sometimes.

[44:19]

And then I started to think back at my experience at BCC. So I've been here for almost 30 years. And when I first came to BCC, I looked around the room and there were white men, young white men. And most of them were sitting, The Lotus. Most of them had really straight backs. Most of them did the forms in very formal ways. But I didn't care much. I mean, I looked around, I saw that. I didn't see very many women. And I saw that the people leading things were all men. The only priests were men at that time here. Maybe mainly part of the time, but not much. There were, you know, people who were the board president or whatever. I just saw men. But at that time, I had so much going on in my own life that I just didn't, all I wanted to do was come and sit anyway. And it didn't matter to me.

[45:20]

I didn't feel, I just, I just sat quietly for about five or six days. But then I noticed, and a lot of people, there's a lot of people there that were here then, had a lot of experience with sitting at Green Gulch for long time. periods of time or going to Ta-Sahara for long periods of time. So a lot of people have that view of practice, that looking view of practice. And we're kind of wanting to practice that way. But over time, things, you know, things started to change in lots of different ways. One of the ways it changed was that some people that came were disabled. So those people couldn't sit cross-legged. They had to sit in chairs. And some of them sat and had to sit in benches. And then the Americans for Disabilities Act was passed and we woke up to the fact that we had no ramps.

[46:24]

And that there were people who wanted to come that were in wheelchairs and they couldn't because we didn't have ramps. So we built ramps. Then we had some people who had some hearing issues. And so instead of everybody sitting in their seats, we had chairs closer to the front, hearing issues. And we even had, we had one person of everybody, you know, Clay Taylor, for one, couldn't sit up, he had to lie down. And then we had, as we know, somebody sitting in a recliner doing zazen. So we changed our picture of the sangha, it was different, it wasn't. Now we have people very comfortable in chairs, right? We don't even think about it. We have people able to come in and whatever. And we have a disabilities group that started as well during that period of time. And at some point, the women started acting up and questioning what was going on, what was coming from the front seat, for example.

[47:29]

And people objected. There were emails. There were discussions. And women started saying, let's talk about this. So different groups of women got together. One group solidified into a women's dharma group. And then we decided that we were going to have women's sashims twice a year. And pretty soon, more women came. More women began to show up. active or verbal, and pretty soon we had women priests. In fact, we have more women priests now, right, than men. And some people didn't like the women sashims, even some women, saying, well, they're really not sashims because you do some talking during them, and it doesn't feel like you're following the real model of sashim.

[48:34]

But then we persisted, and then she persisted, right? And then we started to have talks. And we studied in a practice period a few years ago. We studied the hidden lamp, all of us together for a practice period. So pretty soon, women's issues were okay, and women were around, and women became more comfortable. And then it became more openly there were women that to the women's issue, got involved with some of the women's issues that were gay. And pretty soon they were more comfortable, but they were not always more comfortable. There was talk with the Abbott, and again, we had discussions. And then we adjusted, we studied, we talked to each other, and we adjusted. And we had the same, and we're all here. And that was another change that happened. And then we started to become more aware of differences and that we weren't reflective of the community around us.

[49:50]

And some of us began to get involved in some things outside of here. About five or six years ago, we decided to change Martin Luther King Day from a holiday on Martin Luther King. And we would invite people and people could have reading and discussions of Martin Luther King, do some work in the community. We sat out in front, had a table and people made little tokens for the tree, for people who had died by violence, like a Jesus. So all of a sudden then we're opening ourselves, we're changing, we're saying, we're not gonna have a holiday, we're gonna have something, it's not a sashim, But that's a day honoring Martin Luther King. And during this time also, you know, we had many, this is, you know, like, it feels like there was another world because of what's happened with COVID. You know, when there was a Women's March or a March for Black Lives or wherever, we would call people and let people know we're going.

[50:56]

If you want to meet at BCC, we can carpool. We can go to the Gay Pride, there's a parade. Yes, we can all go together. That still happens. practice. Part of our practice is saving all beings, whoever they are, wherever they are, however, doing whatever it takes. And it means changing how we think about things. And a couple of years ago, or maybe Sandeep told me, I was coordinator, and Sandeep came to me and said, I really am called to start a BIPOC group. And brought to the you know to the practice committee and the practice committee was very supportive and there's been a bipop group so just like as we had a women's group as we had we have we've expanded our consciousness to say a bipop group is part of our practice here at bcc and as we learn more as we expand more as we take in more well it's always going to be changing and we even have to think about the future we want to be here

[52:04]

want to save all beings even the people even the people with long eyelashes they're important maybe some of us should wear long eyelashes so they feel comfortable i don't know but that but it's still the idea that we we're where our right view is growing and expanding to to take in as much as we can because only then can we truly be an inclusive place and a welcoming place. And so that's part of what, you know, kind of prompted us to start the, what was first called an anti-racist and started then turned into being called a culture change, was to, was to just look more, to open our minds more, to know, to get humbled by the things we heard, some of the things from the BIPOC, the feedback we got of how people hurt or harmed by speech that they heard here or by actions.

[53:10]

We don't want to do that. We want to be inclusive and helpful. And just as we have changed through the years in other groups and with other input and with other movements, we change and we grow and we expand ourselves. And one of the things that we decided to do in looking at the Dharma lens of The Dharma lens of practice and making sure that we kept focused on the Dharma lens of practice. I'm done in one minute. Awesome. Was to use the Eightfold Path as a way to look at what we were doing so that we made sure that whatever we do is keeping in mind the Eightfold Path, keeping in mind for our expanding our view, looking at our conditioning. Thinking. Look at our thinking and how our thinking goes to these unwholesome places really quickly and where that might have come from.

[54:13]

Being very careful, not being correct when we speak, but just being aware of our speech and its impact on other people. More aware. Being careful about how we greet people or how we are with people. This is part of our practice regardless, right? It's not special. It's just a continuum of that. And so that's kind of how I see the kind of evolution here. And that we've always been resistant to things. It wasn't easy to start women's groups and women's machines. It wasn't easy to kind of bring in different people. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard either. It was just how it was. It was opening our minds and then opening our hearts and then opening our arms. And then people get it. They get that we're different. You know, there has to be some feeling change. There's a change that we don't always know, aren't always aware of.

[55:22]

We can't change when we have more input, when we have more understanding of other people's reality. So when I go back to, you know, my understanding of my COVID experience, I really felt the other reality of people. And I think the same thing goes for, I just finished reading slavery in Jamaica. And, you know, I exposed myself to something that was incredibly painful, but in exposing myself to it and toughing through it, I felt again that i had to open open again to more even if it's painful i have to open again to more because that's that's the only way that i can be helpful to actually get that kind of suffering get in my body in my mind so on that

[56:23]

Any questions? I'm sorry, I went over, but I felt like I had to say what I had to say. Yeah.

[57:07]

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