Good morning, everyone. Good morning, old friends. Good morning. I was supposed to start this by saying good morning, bodhisattvas, which is part of the focus of the talk. Good morning to newer friends who I don't know as well, and a special welcome to people who are here for the first time. Is there anyone who fits that description? We really... count on the curiosity and open-mindedness of our newer members. So welcome. And to all of you out in the Zoom Zendo there, welcome. So I want to give a particular thanks to Abbott Linda for the opportunity to give this talk. Abbott Linda called me up at home and she when she made the request for me to take this date, offer this date to me, she said something like, I want to hear, I'd like to hear you speak about your dharma.

[01:12]

And I thought, what a beautiful gift that is to give someone, to ask you to reflect on your practice of 30 plus years and say how, you know, what you have come to understand about the Dharma and to say it in your own words. So this is, I'm very grateful. I started in practice thinking about the bodhisattva vow long before I knew what practice was actually and I hadn't heard of bodhisattvas. But I knew that my particular form of suffering was making it difficult for me. to provide good care for people. I was a new health care provider, and I knew that my suffering was getting in the way, and that's what set me on this path. This talk is inspired by the experiences of Bodhisattva Val in action that I've had recently, and I give this talk in really humble appreciation for those experiences.

[02:19]

There's a lot of serendipity in this talk, and one of it is that it happens to be on June 20th, which is the date after Juneteenth, which I kind of only put together the other day, 1920. So it's particularly one of those magical things about the way the world works when you open up to it that is happening today. When I first started this talk, I didn't expect it to begin in Alabama. For many years, I've wanted to do a pilgrimage to the civil rights sites, to the South, in part because that history has been so inspirational to me and I think opened doors to the second wave of the feminist movement and to the gay rights movement and to other other kinds of actions. I was a health care provider in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

[03:22]

So all of that has led a deep feeling and connection with the Civil Rights Movement history. I wanted to be where people had been, walk where they walked, where they dreamt, where they were courageous and brave, and just absorb some of that. Maybe be inspired and see a way forward through these times, which I've experienced as being difficult. We made this trip. We went with a good Dharma sister. We made this trip about six weeks ago, which was right after the Supreme Court overturned most of Section 2 of the Civil Rights Voting Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965. That wasn't planned. They just so happened to be that way. And when we arrived in our first site, which was Atlanta, it was then that we found out that there was going to be a rally and a march in Selma and Montgomery just a couple of days later when it so happened that we were going to be there.

[04:31]

It seemed that those events were last-minute affairs, only kind of reaching mainstream media outlets if they ever actually did. do that a few days before they were scheduled. But it was really evident that there had been watchful planning and a bank of knowledge of effective organizing that was always accruing interest and skill over all the decades since the Civil Rights Movement. Those who had been hip high and chest high in the early 60s were now the leaders of what was happening, or maybe their children were. I knew some of their names, but their presence was very soft, very humble, at the same time that their effect was very forceful. The first event was a prayer meeting in Selma at the Tabernacle Baptist Church, and that powerful elocutionary style of Southern Baptist preaching called forth the stories and the memories of those who were in the 50s and the 60s,

[05:44]

bringing those ancestors into the room and all of the ancestors from the very first to be abducted from his home in West Africa 400 years earlier. They spoke with a clear moral vision based on dignity, fairness, respect, and inclusion, and with a certitude that this vision is blameless and upright. Refreshingly, there was absolutely no time given away to finger-pointing or othering opposing forces. The situation at hand was familiar. Hatred was not in the room. Resolve and purpose was in the room. And the focus was on response. That clarity was breathtaking. It was about something bigger than the circumstances. and better than the usual worldly ways it was spiritual work holy work not political though to manifest the dreams and aspirations it usually takes some kind of legislative or collective action but that really wasn't the purpose there that day it was to gather us into the the heart of the purpose

[07:08]

The root, the deep work of the root was spiritual. Spiritual work by definition does not divide. It brings everyone along because everything is connected. Nothing can be left behind. No one can be left behind. This is basic Buddhism. And so we all walked, there were several hundred of us, walked in silence. down Broad Street, the main street of Selma, across the historic, modest Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the final push of the Voting Rights Act passage began 50, 60 years before. What I found finally after many years is that although Shaka Muni's search was to come to... to terms with life's big problems, old age, sickness, and death, where he landed was on interconnectedness.

[08:15]

And actually, that was his greatest insight on the night of his awakening. I didn't say, the title of this talk is, The First Noble Truth is There is Connection. And when we understand this, our response is naturally to want to care for others and the world as if they were our own eyes and our own hands. Exactly how we do that depends on our proclivities and the circumstances of our life. But it's what's felt in the heart. The spirit of what we do comes from this same deep root. And I heard echoes of that place in Selma and Montgomery. You could say Buddhist was an activist of sorts, or rather perhaps it was through his seven years of a steer, hard practice and the study of his own mind that he saw through its flimsy and self-referential constructs and knew that what was true for himself was true for everyone.

[09:24]

And so he could extrapolate to the workings of families and communities, societies, Deeply observed, he saw the sameness within the difference between people, beyond caste, clan, and eventually with a little help from Ananda gender, and that differences exist within undeniable connection. One of my favorite stories about Buddha's teachings is when the clan that he was from, from the shakya clan that he was from, was in a time of great adversarial relationship with the Kosala clan. Sometimes they got along and sometimes they didn't get along so well. This was a really difficult time. It was a time when the Shakyatlan was weaker. So they were at risk for being decimated badly. And so what did the Buddha do?

[10:27]

Even though he's an enlightened being who... cares for everyone, he still has a heartfelt connection to his bloodline, to his relatives. And so he goes to the river, the contested river, and he sits down under an old withered tree. No shade. It's a hot, hot day in India. And he's sitting meditation there when King Kosala and his troops marched by, and of course... King Khosla recognizes him and stops, stops his horse and says, they had horses. He stops and he says, Lord Buddha, Lord Buddha, what are you doing sitting under this, where you are? Why don't you go under a shady tree? And he says, and he said, the breeze is cool under the tree of my family home. King Khosla understood that immediately.

[11:32]

They understood that they shared that love of their family way and their family clan together, and he turned around, at least at this point in the story. I felt, as I was thinking about this story, it came to me that he may have been drawing upon his experience under the rose apple tree when he was a little boy, You know, a little toddler, he was taken out with his father, who was on the plowing festival on the Great Lands. And he was placed down under this beautiful, blooming spring rose apple tree with the vanilla rose-colored of the petals that are drifting down. And it's just kind of a perfectly calm and peaceful day. And feeling the safety and ease of that tree. without a worry or a thought of himself and his needs, he experienced a deep peace of being, of the rightness of being, part of, not apart from.

[12:37]

I believe that that's something that all of us have experienced at some point in time, often as young children, before this separation from this truth of our being. becomes our usual way of experiencing things. This place is our birthright, the place that we are in this journey on our way back to, a recognition of our interconnection and our right place in the world. Buddha was a good physician, though. He knew that you couldn't tell people that. In fact, we all know that he sat for a long time and thought, can I let people know what I have understood? And so he started where we all live or where we all have experience, just like that's where he started. He started with suffering because he knows that we all know some truth of ourselves that life can be really difficult.

[13:39]

He knows that he knew. We know that that suffering... that disquietude, whether we experience it in our own lives or we experience it in the world outside of us, around us, maybe we don't feel it so much ourself, but maybe we look and we see it in others or in the world around us, that that suffering is an open door to understanding more deeply how we see the world and understanding more deeply how others experience the world. It's a way in to really finding our humanity. It also lets us know that these problems that we have inside in our lives around us are necessary problems. They're not things to be done away with lightly or to think that they'll go away completely. They're always the fodder for understanding what it is to be a human being. And it's always, in my experience, it's always an opportunity to look more deeply into the workings of my mind and how I construct my reality to see what else is there, how much more freedom is possible.

[14:58]

So the Buddha named the second noble truth of the cause of this kind of clarity. And actually, I believe the original teaching was... was much more direct than the way that it's usually handed down as greed, hate, and delusion. And that is that there's ignorance and grasping. I really love this teaching. Ignorance points to the way in which our mind can fool us. Our mind can create kind of obstacles before us. And there are, at least in the Yogacara teachings, in one form of these teachings, there are four main ways in which that happens. We create a sense of a separate self, a self that does not need anyone else. Well, a self that does not experience connection. Ouch. We create a sense of self that is permanent, unchanging.

[16:03]

This is, again, one of Buddha's great insights undermining the vidaic teachings of fatalism, like it's just already planned out, there's nothing you can do about the world or yourself. How can we possibly change? All we have to do is look and we see none of us is who we were five years ago, 20 years ago. None of us is the same person in physical form, in ideas, in capacities. all of it ever-changing, and it's also how we allow other people to change. And in that, anything is possible. One of the other kind of distorted views is thinking that we always have the right view, that our view is the view. Other people may have other ideas, but, you know, actually I really know what's going on here.

[17:09]

And the final is that we are the center of activity, that everything is referential to our experience. And on, you know, why did that person cut me off on the freeway? Didn't he know I was going to be late? That kind of like subtle thinking that we, or not so subtle thinking that we do, that we think everyone has either wants to be our friend or has it out to us on some subtle level. the kind of turning here is that permanent self and a separate self and suffering are the marks of existence. Those are the kind of foundational teachings. But actually when you really open up suffering you find that its other side is nirvana. It's a teaching in the Mahayana that seeing suffering all the way through

[18:11]

you see that there's actually relief, complete freedom. The great distortion that we have that keeps us from ourself is not seeing our own true nature. One of the most important Mahayana sutras is the Lotus Sutra, a favorite of some people here in this room. It foretells that everyone, everyone in this room will be a Buddha someday. There is no exception. Now, that can be really hard to believe. Most people have some doubts about themselves. And, you know, those of us who've been practicing for a while have a pretty good sense of what we're made of, and so we have some reason that we might have to doubt. We know our foibles pretty well. And we certainly can think of one person or maybe even a few people where we go, uh-uh. Not them.

[19:12]

Not after all that. There's no way. Too many points against to become a Buddha. But yet the Lotus Sutra says of everyone, never despise, for that person too has the capacity to awaken. And so when this sutra was first preached, the 500 of the realized beings that were there of the Arhats got up and walked out. because they just couldn't believe that could possibly be true. And sometimes that's how we might feel too. Uh-uh, can't be true. I'm out of here. This teaching is too much for me. Well, strap yourself in. One of the reasons I love the early Mahayana Sutras is that they are so... for some people, annoyingly baroque. They have all kinds of imagery that just doesn't make any sense at all.

[20:17]

There are these lands that are made of seven precious jewels, emeralds, and rupees, and blah, blah, blah. Lapis Lazuli, and there are innumerable bodhisattvas that have these long, complicated names that point to supernatural powers you can't even imagine happening, all the while the undabar flowers are raining down. It's like, what is happening in this place? I absolutely love that, although it took quite a while to understand that this is meant to shatter... the small dimensions with which we normally imagine our world, to let us know that actually, according to Buddha's teachings, and we're ready for it, this is true. How could that be? In the Mahayana, there is this promise of Buddha being manifest in every moment.

[21:18]

I don't know that I've read that anywhere before, but I'm sure lots of people have talked about Buddha being, just like time being, or a Dharma position. Any moment, moment after moment, it is possible to manifest Buddha. In fact, actually, playing in the background, always present, is Buddha nature. It's not that we work hard, to polish a tile into a Buddha, or clear the dust off a mirror, or to rid ourselves of delusions. Buddha nature is not something outside of us that we acquire by sitting lots of sushins and doing lots of good works, and eventually we'll have that breakthrough and be Buddha. It's not something that we've been carrying around in our pocket and just finally have to reach down there and realize that it's there.

[22:21]

It's that we are always Buddha nature manifest. How can this be? Because we are Buddha nature. All sentient beings, all insentient beings are the phenomenological expression of Buddha nature. What I mean by that is these five skandhas, whoops, these five skandhas of form, feeling, perceptions, formations, all of that in this moment after moment is an expression of Buddha nature. And it's true for every single one of us. It's true for the wood planks on the floor and the song sparrows singing outside. There they are on cue. It's true for everything. Why? Because Buddha nature is the inherent quality of reality. Sometimes we call this true reality.

[23:22]

We call it Dharma with a capital D, suchness, just this, things as it is. In more formal language, true reality is called the Dharmakaya, one of the three bodies of Buddha. It's the Dharma that we take refuge in. And, even more astoundingly, don't walk out. This is true whether this activity of that being is wholesome or ignorant. Buddha nature is always active. Deluded Buddha, enlightened Buddha. Lousy Buddha, perfect Buddha. It's expressing Buddha nature in the moment. That applies to everyone, whether their actions create harm or harmony. Why? The Dharmakaya has no moral valence.

[24:26]

It is through our societal values and the situation of the moment that that action can be experienced as good or bad. Judgment isn't the business of true reality. Reality is a manifestation of causes and conditions expressed through the volitional action of the participants of the moment. If they have ill will, ill things happen. If they're enacting bodhisattva vow, that's what happens. Reality is in harmony with causes and conditions. It's just like water that flows through sand. It follows the path of least resistance, and it carves its own pathway. Because reality is non-manevolent, it doesn't have ill will. I say it could be experienced as beneficent.

[25:30]

That is my experience, and I've grappled with that term. You know, beneficent sounds like it has a good will. But I mean it in the same way that we experience the natural world. Things that are alive are made to express aliveness. They also are made to express dying. That's what happens. Things that appear inert can still respond to causes and conditions. They're all, we're all, at any moment, actualizing the fundamental point, sometimes very freely, Sometimes not so much. Grass grows through cracks in the sidewalks. Hawks kill pigeons in midair, feed their young and themselves. People do kind things and people do stupid things. Once again, reality makes no judgment. It just is. As such, it doesn't obstruct anything.

[26:36]

It doesn't have a self-centered view. It doesn't obstruct anything. I can't remember the situations. I'd probably be embarrassed if I, even more so if I did. But, you know, many years ago, I went into Sojin's office and I had a burr under the saddle, so to speak, about something. And I went to him to complain about something that I wanted to do that I wasn't doing. And I said to him something about, you know, you're in the, wow, why is this? And he said, I don't get in your way. You get in your way. I don't get in your way. You get in your way. The universe isn't obstructing you.

[27:38]

You're obstructing yourself. Oh, that was good medicine. It was hard for me to believe how that actually could be for a very long time. No one is really trying to get in my way or your way either. People are just all doing their thing. Almost all. Probably 99 points. 9% of the time. And my job is to do mine, understanding the circumstances of the moment. All of this activity happens within the field of emptiness, if you will, within the absolute. Our individual lives, our kind of phenomenological lives happens within the realm of this total dynamic working of things also another way of saying Buddha nature emptiness though that translation as many people have said can kind of leave us cold and isolated feeling it feels kind of nihilistic when really the Buddha Dharma is about radical interconnection and radical possibility in the analogy of Indra's net adapted from Hinduism we are all

[29:03]

little jewels of light or a little gem of some type connected by infinite numbers of strands across time and space. If you ever wonder about serendipity, across time and space. And each point, each being, each plank of wood and song sparrow is absolutely necessary for the integrity of the whole. each supported and each supporting the entire network. When I first came to practice, it's actually the first time I came to sit in the zendo. I walked down the east town about where Mira is sitting, and I bowed to my cushion, and the two people on either side bowed back, and I burst into tears. I think it is as if I felt all of Indra's net

[30:04]

shiver and hold me. This is another story some of you have heard, but it fits, so here we go. Kushin Meili Scott was a beloved teacher here. Some of us were lucky enough to practice with, 80s and 90s. She was a person of great poise and physical stature. She had cool, gray-blue eyes that I felt could see into the heart of anyone. I came to her early in my practice life with my most intimate and personal question. I'm sure there was a lot of emotion in my voice when I said, this bone-crushing loneliness, I don't know how to live with it. and I can't seem to transform it. I knew that I was asking, I knew that I wanted a response.

[31:12]

I was hoping that she would have something that she would say that would help me unknot this knot I had been working on for years, or at least give me some reassurance that I was going to be okay. And she, with her broad and confident smile, looked at me without any excessive kindness and said, please don't think that anything is ever out of place. Please don't think that anything is ever out of place. And that was it. Of course, I was pretty stunned by that response, what felt like in the moment, kind of unsympathetic to what I thought I was bringing her. But I felt like she had given me that 500-pound iron ball, and that it was mine to carry it. And I trusted her, and I trusted her confidence in me, even though it was kind of strange.

[32:21]

So several months later, I was on a 30-day silent meditation retreat, Vipassana retreat in England. And those retreats, I sat in my room for hours on end, really concentrated and deep, not with any particular thought, like when you sit, you don't actually think of anything, but something's going on somehow. And as I was getting ready to walk for the noon meal, I got up and I walked through the hallways of this old nunnery where this retreat took place. I walked into a corridor that had windows on either side, so light was streaming in, and it appeared to me. This was during the Afghanistan war, and I saw the bombs falling on Kabul. I saw buildings falling and dust flying. I heard the calls, and I felt some sense of the suffering there, and I understood.

[33:28]

that nothing was out of place, that the centuries of history that had gone on before and the years and years of political thought and work and strategies were all in what was happening. It's not to say that what was happening was good or was not to be worked to change. But it was only to say that in the Buddha Dharma, in the natural unfolding things, this is how it was. I'm forever grateful that she trusted me enough to offer me that strongest medicine, to accept things as it is. I didn't say it beginning, but grasping, you know, Buddha taught ignorance and grasping. Grasping is either wanting something or not wanting something. Grasping basically is what he was pointing at with that, our distorted views and our reluctance to accept what's been served, what's been put in our bowl of the moment.

[34:39]

A bodhisattva can only take the next step by seeing and accepting things as it is. Gary has time. Thanks. So I want to go back to the South. I want to conclude by a few more comments about that trip. It was profoundly affecting. It was not just or even so much the factual content of the exhibits, museums, or monuments. Most of that was in some ways pretty well known to me. But it was the immersive experience. of the soundscape of being in the hull of a ship across the ocean, being reminded of the 12 million lives that were forced to make that journey and the 2 million lives that did not make it to the other shore.

[35:46]

It was walking through the room thereafter along the bottom of the ocean floor and experiencing those lost lives, hopes, aspirations, and terror, hopelessness, all there. It was the words and stories of people who lived and died in slave lives and those who used and profited from their suffering. At each point, through the terrorism of Jim Crow, of segregation and the intentional, persistent impoverishment of mass incarceration, we were invited to bear witness. We were invited to open our humanity to those whose lives we were experiencing. All of the equal justice initiative and civil rights sites that we saw were psychologically attuned and artistically so sophisticated, they were conceived to open our hearts and our minds.

[37:01]

There was no blame or shame. There was no negative storytelling of the other side, but an invitation to touch into our humanity, to see a different perspective, to touch reality from a point of view that many had not before. And even beyond that, what was really also I can't say most, but it was profoundly affecting how completely this gift was offered to people who were there, was that the docents all seemed to be watching us to see our reactions, only to be available. They seemed empathetic to the experiences of attendees. Can you imagine a job where you're watching scores or hundreds of people every day walk through? Many of them are seeing this information as new or profoundly upsetting.

[38:04]

Oh, I could tell you so much about what was in that museum, the legacy museum. But it seemed that they saw their work a part to care for their viewers' hearts, to be a part of the conditions to allow them to open. I believe this is what Rhonda McGee and her last talk meant when she spoke about the possibility of divine mercy. Forgiveness that doesn't ask for anything in return. Just the gift of forgiveness and the possibility of moving forward without ignoring the past. So I'd like to close by sharing one last experience with a particular bodhisattva. This is at the Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta. It's also a really special place to go.

[39:07]

Don't miss it if you go to Atlanta. And also immersive recordings of the Freedom Riders talking about their experience and on and on. There's one part of the museum where there's not much happening, kind of a walkway through, except on the left-hand side as you're walking through, there's a simulated lunch counter. kind of like you would have gone to at Woolworths or S.G. Cress if you were from the South at a certain time. And there's some seats. Occasional people would sit down. Behind the counter was a tall and not at all imposing man who was, you know, in a role there. dressed as a soda jerk. That's what we were called in that day because they're called counter-attendants now, but soda jerk is more evocative of what the uniform and the kind of scene was there. And across the way from this lunch counter, there wasn't much up on the wall.

[40:15]

Across the way was a room, nothing on the walls either, kind of soft lights, neutral colors. individual, comfortable chairs. I sat down. He came up to me. And then I noticed that he had headphones in his hands and he was offering them to me. And he said, this is a simulation of what it was like at the sit-ins. Are you okay listening to it? The headphones on. He said, put your hands here. On the counter there were painted handprints. So I put my hands there. The recording stops. He steps away. And the voices start. First there's accusations and then there's a lot of vile... name-calling and threats that crescendo, the pitch of the voice crescendos.

[41:20]

Then there are crashes and thuds that happen. It becomes very loud and dramatic and frightening. And I found what I needed to do as I listened to this was to put my head down on the counter. The only way I could be there was to surrender to it. to totally accept that this is where I was and this is what was happening. And the astounding thing was at the very bottom of that release was love. The recording was over. He came back up to me. I handed him the headsets. He was so empathetic and kind. This is his job. He was so empathetic and kind. I'm sure he had to be a divinity student. And we had this sweet exchange really with great appreciation for the experience.

[42:30]

For the experience to understand something of what it was to live with the moral courage to enact your bodhisattva vow. So thank you very much for sitting through this long talk. Thank you for allowing me to offer these experiences to you. I feel like it's so important to pay it forward. May you be well. May you be inspired. May you find great comfort in your connection with each other. Is there any time for... Oh my goodness, I still have ten minutes. Great. This is much faster than the seven times I practiced this at home. Okay. I wonder if anyone has a response, a reaction, a shared experience, a question.

[43:40]

I threw out some pretty complicated Buddhist... At least it took me a long time. Mira, please. Thank you for your wonderful talk. Is it on? Yep. Yep. So thank you for your wonderful talk. I liked how you weave together the civil rights movement and the bodhisattva path. You said one thing early on, that the first noble truth was interconnection, right? I heard that. That's the title of the talk, and that's how I was working this, yes. Okay, I've always heard that the first noble truth was suffering. So can you explain how you get to interconnection from suffering? Yeah, yeah. So the first noble truth, as the Buddha taught it,

[44:41]

is suffering and I wouldn't take that away you know he was a good physician he understood that people couldn't get directly to connection although that was I think one of his really great insights was the way in which if you will causes and conditions manifest and are all connect us all so it was really my it was it's my working it's an expression of my understanding of Dharma but I wouldn't I'm not suggesting that we rewrite 2,500 years of teachings. That doesn't connect for you. But you have some understanding of that noble truth of suffering that you're rephrasing it as interconnection. So what's the connection there for you? So... Freer from my constructs of the world and my distortions, kind of the ways in which I create suffering for myself and others.

[45:54]

I have an experience, we have an experience of the ways in which our lives are supported by everything. And we are a part of the workings of all life. And that is freedom for me. That is nirvana. That's the other side of suffering. Suffering doesn't exist without this other truth, and this other truth doesn't exist without our suffering. We couldn't understand it. We wouldn't have access to it if we did not have to break out of the ways in which having a human body and a human mind pull us apart from each other. I think I've heard that through our suffering, we can feel interconnected with all people. Like if I've suffered, then I can understand other people's suffering.

[46:55]

Yes, that's an important part of it. That's where my mind went. But anyway, thank you for your sharing and always. Thank you, Mira. I see EJI is online. If we can go there and then Sue, you're next. Thank you so much for your Dhammatite. My life would be very, very different if the ministers and the priests and a few teachers We're here with you.

[48:05]

Okay. That's okay. Sorry. I'll just talk. I don't think I'm going to do this. We can come back to you. I just want to say my life is so different.

[49:13]

If ministers and teachers and professors, if someone could show the depth of understanding and compassion and the feelings that people have, rather than ignoring our history of enslavement and conflict releasing, And this Jim Crow is just not understood. And it's so hard for people like myself who this is so important. That's all I want to say. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Thank you for your talk. The impact, it's really hard. And I wonder if someone could pass that Kleenex box.

[50:24]

I can pass it around the room if you need to. you face into things with such courage. I don't know how you do that, but thank you. I think of you as one of the great foot soldiers for the well-being of people. So we all do this in the way that we best know how to do it. Thank you for your teaching and your life and your practice.

[51:24]

And yours, yeah, dear friend. my question was about your conversation with Maylee Scott so loneliness is what had been served to you in your bowl and you didn't want it do you think that in the end you did eat what had been served to you or did something else happen I think I ate it and it tasted really differently than I thought it did. You captured the mic in this corner. Uh-oh. That was the best talk ever.

[52:27]

I just wanted to clarify a point or ask you to. about what Sojin said to you, that only you get in your own way. So I was thinking that when the enslaved people tried to escape, these white people with guns and dogs got in their way. And when black people tried to vote, Ku Klux Klan and the lynching people got in their way. So it sounds like somebody besides yourself can get in your way. Yeah, thank you very much for raising that really important point. Sojin was talking about how my constructs of how the world worked was what was in the way, of my seeing my part of it. That's really different than structural violence.

[53:28]

That's really different than the crimes persecuted. perpetrated on other people. That's the distinction. And thank you for calling it out, Linda. Are we out of time, Gary? Thank you all very much for your attention.

[53:49]

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