I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Well, I have a kind of unusual talk today, but it occurred to me that I wanted to make an announcement before, and I realized, oh yes, I go out before the announcements are made. But a week from this coming Monday, in the evening is the eve before the next scheduled execution in the state of California, San Quentin. It's the execution of a man named Steven Anderson for a murder that he doesn't contest, that he committed some years ago. Among the people who go out to the gates of San Quentin, there has been a very strong Buddhist group that's been leading meditation.

[01:06]

We just sit silently at the gates of San Quentin for the hours before the execution. We sit in the middle of the rally and the hubbub that It's very difficult, but our presence is deeply appreciated by the organizers and I also know by quite a number of the men inside. So I'd like to invite you to come out. There's a blue flyer. It'll be on the community room bulletin board and we'll probably organize some kind of carpool. It's really It's very powerful to sit out there and regardless of what your feelings are or your thoughts are, it's just kind of bearing witness to all that's going on, including what's going on within oneself. So I invite you to do that. I'll be there and I know that some people here have been going out quite regularly over these last few years.

[02:11]

So I'd like to invite you to do that. So for the last week or so, as Martin Luther King Jr. 's birthday has, the celebration or the observation has been approaching, actually his birthday was the 15th, I've been immersing myself in his life. and his actions, his writing, his sermons and thinking about it, recalling my own experience and feeling for the times in which he came to prominence and trying to think about how his teachings are so relevant for the troubled world that we live in right now. I feel that we need him, we need people like him And that his example also has a very deep meaning for those of us who are involved in Zen practice here, in any practice of faith, in any practice of nonviolence.

[03:24]

When I was talking with Mel about this and he thought this was a really good idea and I said, well, where would you start? And he said, well, anywhere, you know, anything that any words or any point of action that he had to contribute he felt would be deeply relevant. So that was encouraging. But I'll warn you that this is maybe not going to be a very zen lecture. I'm going to go through, I think, one of Martin Luther King's early and very relevant sermons and talk about how, well I'm just going to read it, a lot of it, and just a brief commentary in places where I think there are parallels to what we practice here.

[04:26]

And the talk will also be somewhat replete with words about God, about Jesus, that we don't speak of very often here, but that also flow through our consciousness and flow through our lives. So I just want to let you know that. In my own life, You know, growing up in the 60s, I was fortunate to have some remote but direct experience of Martin Luther King and of his work. In high school, we had a group of us in this privileged suburb that I lived in who were doing civil rights work around housing in our town because it was quite It was economically and racially segregated.

[05:29]

And so we were involved in that. We were also very involved in voter registration work in the 1964 election. And at that time, On Long Island, a lot of the migrant agricultural workers were black. And there was a whole circuit that came up from the South. I think many of them now are probably Latino of one kind or another. So we went out and we did voter registration work. I remember going out to this place, the Hollis Warner Duck Farm, way out on the island. These families would come up in buses from the South, and they would all work in the fields when it was harvest time. And then they would be housed in these converted duck coops. And it was really, it was shocking. I had never experienced anything like that.

[06:32]

And actually, I haven't seen much like it, except in traveling through the third world, in Asia, even now. But they were glad to see us, and we registered them for the election in 64. And sometime around that time, Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy came through this town. I grew up in Great Neck, New York, and spoke at the synagogue. at a time when there was a really still a close affinity between African-American activists and Jewish activists and it seemed a natural setting for them to speak and it was the place was packed and the energy was really high and I remember just the feeling in the room I don't remember the words but I remember the presence of King and Abernathy there and I was at the March on Washington and I also remember standing sort of kind of towards the right side of the reflecting pool, looking up sort of in that direction as Martin Luther King was giving that famous speech.

[07:51]

And knowing even then at I guess I was 15 that that this was it was a historical moment But I didn't quite know what that meant. It just felt like it was important to be there And then In 1968, when I was at college, the student uprisings that came about that spring flowed directly out of the events of Martin Luther King's assassination. They were very visceral and personal and yet political reaction, response to his murder and to the loss that we felt. So nowadays, I think that Martin Luther King has been, to some degree, turned into a safe icon. You know, a face that you see on a postage stamp.

[08:54]

They have a stamp for him. It's incredible to me they have a stamp, a Malcolm X stamp. I mean these were intensely radical people with intensely radical vision of our society. And somehow when you put them on a stamp, on the one hand it honors them and on the other hand I feel that it It sort of steals away some of the meaning of their work and the meaning of their challenge. But we could talk about that. My friend Tygan Leighton, Zen priest wrote a book called Bodhisattva Archetypes and he sees Martin Luther King as an exemplary of the archetype of Samantabhadra, which is this figure here on the altar, the shining practice Bodhisattva riding on an elephant of wisdom.

[10:03]

The Bodhisattva who acts with courage and concern and resolve and a vision of the pure land, which is certainly something that King had. But I think that also Martin Luther King represents an archetype that we don't have so much of in Buddhist practice, that he was a prophet, which is a real Old Testament archetype, and that is also embedded deeply in our consciousness, those kind of archetypes. A few days before he died, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who is the author of this classic study of the prophets, introduced him to an assembly of rabbis. This is April 4th, I think. No, it was just at the end of March, about 10 days before he died. And Rabbi Heschel said, where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel?

[11:12]

Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us. His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred. His leadership of supreme importance to every one of us. He is a vision, a voice, and a way. a call upon each of us to hearken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way. The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King. But he was a prophet who was deeply moved, whose whole practice of faith and religion was turned around by his contact with Gandhi, with the very strong non-dual teaching of love and non-violence that he saw in the work of Gandhi. And he studied it very closely. He was a really first-class scholar as well as a first-class speaker and religious leader.

[12:17]

He studied at Crozer for his ministerial degree and then He studied comparative religions at Boston University and got his PhD at the age of 25. So he was a quick study and he absorbed all of the ferment of religious dialogue that was going on in those days. So I think that the implications for us are in our practice, in the way we carry faith, in the practice of patience, which is the willingness to endure insult and injury, in his way of seeing things as they are, and of being open to all people.

[13:19]

And finally, in his at least implicit, if not explicit, understanding of karma and that the actions that he felt obligated to take would have a negative outcome for his own, at least his own longevity. He saw that he was going to die and he saw that very early on. So I'd like to draw some rough parallels with our practice. You may agree or disagree with what is spoken here today. And what I read from what he said in Montgomery, Alabama, 45 years ago. My intention is just to raise these questions about what we think and what we do and how we practice. So this sermon is entitled Loving Your Enemies and it was delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery where he was a minister

[14:33]

And this was given in November of 1957, not so long after the successful conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott, the famous boycott where Rosa Parks just decided she had enough one day and sat down in the front of the bus instead of in the back of the bus where black people were supposed to sit for a year. there was a boycott where the black community boycotted the public transportation system. They found great strength in their own numbers, in their own community, built allies in other parts of the country, but had to bear the brunt of violence and hatred and finally won. And King was the minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church then. So I've edited this talk, this sermon, and I apologize for doing that, but it's too long and it's probably too long as it is, but I will read parts of it and then also interject a few comments and hopefully we'll have some time at the end.

[15:53]

So again, this is 17th of November, 1957. I want to turn your attention to this subject, loving your enemies. It's so basic to me because it is part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation. In the fifth chapter of the Gospel as recorded by St. Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord. Ye have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. He then outlines three kinds of love using sort of the Greek model. He talks about eros, which Plato talks about as the soul yearning for the realm of the gods.

[16:53]

We often see this as romantic, as romantic love or aesthetic love. And he talks about philia, which is the intimate affection between close friends. It's kind of reciprocal warmth and communication, the sense of community that we have. And then he talks about Agape, which is the love that seeks nothing in return. It's really very close to the Buddhist notion of Maitri, which is one of the four perfections or the four abodes. It's really more like loving kindness or a kindness that is free from attachment. So King says, now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command. He wasn't playing. He realized that it's hard to love your enemies. He realized that it's difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you.

[17:57]

But he wasn't playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole. Elsewhere he talks of Jesus as not a Westerner in our in our way of seeing things, but as a Middle Eastern man, as a Palestinian Jew, which in those days would be seen as Oriental in the broadest sense. We have the moral responsibility to discover the meaning of these words and discover how we can live out this command and why we should live by this command to love thine enemies. Now first let us deal with the practical question. How do you go about loving your enemies? I guess the first thing is, in order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. Does this sound familiar? I'm sure that seems strange to you, that I started out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self.

[19:02]

As we've heard over and over again as Sojan lectures about Dogen, there's a famous passage in Dogen from Genjo Koan which says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly. I think he's talking about this no trace. And he says, now I'm aware of the fact that some people will not like you, not because of something you have done to them, but they just won't like you. Some people aren't going to like the way you talk. Some people aren't going to like the way you walk. Some people aren't going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs.

[20:09]

Some people aren't going to like you because other people like you. Some people aren't going to like you because your hair is a little shorter than theirs, or your hair is a little longer than theirs. Some people aren't going to like you because your skin is a little darker than theirs. They're going to dislike you because your skin is a little brighter than theirs. They're going to dislike you, not because of something that you've done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are so prevalent in human nature. But after looking at these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something we've done deep down in the past. some personality attribute that we possess. So here, he's talking in Buddhist terms about karma and vipaka, the result of karma, that these things are actions which may not be completely known to us and often are not known to us, have an effect on others and on ourselves.

[21:23]

He's putting it into his terms and into his understanding. So he says, something that we've done deep, we've done deep and we've forgotten about it, but it was something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in another individual. And now he takes it from this personal dimension into a quite radical international dimension. So this is true in our international struggle. We look at the struggle between America and Russia, which was at its high point, I think in 57, isn't that when they launched Sputnik? So, now, certainly we can never give our allegiance to the Russian way of life, to the communistic way of life, because communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept.

[22:29]

But in spite of all the weaknesses and evils inherent in communism, we must at the same time see the weaknesses and evils within democracy. Democracy is the greatest form of government, to my mind, that man has ever conceived. But the weakness is we have never practiced it. Isn't it true that we have taken necessities, that we've often taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes? Isn't it true that we have often in our democracy trampled over individuals and races with the iron feet of oppression? Isn't it true that through our Western powers we have perpetuated colonialism and imperialism? And all of these things must be taken under consideration as we look at Russia. And we must face the fact that the rhythmic beat of the deep rumblings of discontent from Asia and Africa is at bottom a revolt against the imperialism and colonialism perpetuated by Western civilization all these many years.

[23:35]

The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system. And this is what Jesus means when he says, how is it that you can see the moat in your brother's eye and not see the beam in your own eye? These are very strong words for 1957. Not the kind of words that they usually put you on a postage stamp for saying. The kind of words which, if spoken today, Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press spokesman, would tell you to shut up about. But they were the truth as he saw it. A second thing that an individual must do in loving his enemy is to discover an element of good in his enemy.

[24:37]

And every time you begin to hate that person, realize that there is some good there. And look at those good points, which will overbalance the bad points. There is a recalcitrance south of our soul, revolting against the north of our soul. There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato, that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, there is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue. Even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls the image of God, you begin to love him. And there is an element of goodness that he can never slough off.

[25:44]

Discover the element of good in your enemy and as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude. Again, he shifts the ground in this next section. Another way that you love your enemy is this, when the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time in many instances when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job. It might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That is the time you must do it.

[26:47]

In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It is not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system. So there's a kind of structural analysis of harm and evil, that there are systems that develop a life that is apart from the individuals that who co-create those systems.

[27:49]

And this is a large discussion, as I'm sure many of you have had or thought about, because the systems are also made up of individuals. And yet, the extent to which we distance ourselves from the systems that we participate in, from which we give over our authority and power to those systems, and don't see ourselves as the same as them, we allow things We allow the spread of poverty, the spread of racism. We allow wars to be done in our names. We allow men to be executed in our names. So, he comes back to talk about the three kinds of love that I mentioned earlier. And he says, and this is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, love your enemy. It's significant that he does not say, like your enemy. Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something.

[28:53]

There are a lot of people I find it difficult to like. I don't like what they do to me. I don't like what they say about me and other people. I don't like their attitudes. I don't like some of the things they're doing. But love is greater than that. Love is understanding redemptive goodwill for all men so that you love everybody because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual because you have agape or maitri in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. And if the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it. In Gandhian terms, I think Gandhi refrained from, in fact, using the word enemy, would use opponent, which is less charged and also underscores

[30:07]

the relationship between you and the person that you are perhaps seeing yourself in opposition to. Now, for the few minutes left, let us move from the practical how to the theoretical why. It's necessary to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies is this, that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see that it goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere, somebody must have a little sense. This is a kind of down to earth quality. It's just common sense. You don't do that. Ah, somewhere, somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil, or the chain of birth and death, the cycle of interdependent origination.

[31:19]

And that is the tragedy of hate. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love. It's really powerful to me that he's saying that each person has influence in the universe to inject within the very structure of universe that strong and elemental power of love. There's another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individuals hated, or the individual hated, or the groups hated, but it's even more tragic. It is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things.

[32:22]

You can't see straight when you hate. You can't stand upright. You can't sit upright. It bows us down. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater. The way to be integrated with yourself is to be sure that you meet every situation of life with an abounding love. Here, I was also reading in his letter from a Birmingham jail, which came in 1963. So he talked about integration. The way to be integrated with yourself is to be sure that you meet every situation of life with abounding love.

[33:24]

In this letter, he talks about segregation. So you have integration and segregation. This is quotation from Kane again. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an I-it relationship for I-thou relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence, segregation is not only politically, economically, and socially unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. is not segregation an existential oppression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness. So I think this The watchword for me in this last period is something that Mel said a couple of months ago. I think he's been saying it the whole time I've been practicing here, but I think I only heard it a couple of months ago.

[34:31]

In response to a question, he said, don't treat anything or don't treat anyone like an object. So the I-It relationship is where our practice goes wrong. The I-Thou, the connected relationship, is the one that we're trying to practice here. We may not call it love. I know that when Sojin, from time to time, someone says, well, we never talk about love. And he gets really pissed off. Because his feeling is, we're talking about love all the time. But he's kind of low-key about it. And he doesn't talk about it in the terms that Martin Luther King and Christians say would be really upfront about it. But he's talking about non-separation, which is integration, and of non-objectification.

[35:43]

So there's a final reason, I think, that Jesus says, love your enemies. It is this, that love has within it a redemptive power, and there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That's why Jesus says, love your enemies, because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them even though they're mistreating you. Here is a person who is a neighbor and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don't do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them and they can't stand it too long. It's really great. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they're mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period.

[36:50]

But just keep loving them, and by the power of your love, they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It's redemptive. And this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up. and is creative. There's something about hate that tears down and is destructive. And I also want to extend this, is this a point he doesn't make, but it's the Buddhist perspective coming from Shantideva, from the Bodhisattva's, guide to the Bodhisattva's way of life, in the chapter on patience. Patients, which King was a master of practicing. There are a lot of wonderful teachings and there's this dialogue. Someone asks, but surely my enemy is not to be venerated for he intends to cause me harm.

[37:53]

And then the answer is, but how could patients be practiced if like doctors people always strove to do me good? Thus, since patient acceptance is produced in dependence upon one with a very hateful mind, that person should be worthy of veneration just like the sacred dharma because he is a cause of patience. So that's a Buddhist extension. This is another reason, another argument that King could have given. So that's it. There is a power in love that our world has not discovered yet. Jesus discovered it centuries ago. Mahatma Gandhi of India discovered it a few years ago, but most men and most women never discover it. For they believe in hitting for hitting, they believe in an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. And oh, this morning as I think of the fact that our world is in transition now, our whole world is facing a revolution.

[38:56]

Our nation is facing a revolution. One of the things that concerns me most is that in the midst of this revolution of the world, in the midst of this revolution of this nation, that we will discover the meaning of the words, love your enemies. History, unfortunately, leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors. And there are three ways that individuals who are oppressed can deal with their oppression. One of them is to rise up against their oppressors with physical violence and corroding hatred. For the danger and the weakness of this method is its futility. Violence creates many more social problems than it solves. And I've said in so many instances that as the Negro in particular, and colored people all over the world struggle for freedom, if they succumb to the temptation of using violence in their struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. Violence isn't the way.

[39:59]

Another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to oppression. Some people do that. They discover the difficulties of the wilderness moving into the promised land, and they would rather go back to the despots of Egypt, because it's difficult to get to the promised land. So they resign themselves to the fate of oppression. They somehow acquiesce to this thing. But that too isn't the way, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. But there is another way, and that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way. And that's what he tried to do until his last day. As our eyes look to the future, as we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love.

[41:03]

And when we discover that, we will make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way. And our civilization must discover that. Individuals must discover that as they deal with other individuals. There is a little tree planted on a little hill, and on that tree hangs the most influential character that ever came in this world. But never feel that that tree is a meaningless drama that took place on the stages of history. Oh no, it is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth into time. It is an eternal reminder to a power-drunk generation that love is the only way. It is an eternal reminder to a generation depending on nuclear and atomic energy, a generation depending upon physical violence,

[42:04]

that love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe. So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, I love you. I would rather die than hate you. And I'm foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. Then we will be in God's kingdom. We will be able to matriculate into the university of eternal life because we had the power to love our enemies, to bless those persons who cursed us, to even decide to be good to those persons who hated us, and we even prayed for those persons who despitefully used us. This talk reaches out in so many directions that I will not comment further.

[43:30]

But I'd like to take at least five minutes to see if there are any questions or thoughts that people have. You know, the Buddha, according to us, I've been reading the Dhammapada lately and it's aphoristic and has a kind of prophetic tone to it. You've got to go back and look at the Pali because some of the translations were done by Christians so it's not so surprising, but even the Pali has just that very clear cutting tone. Ann?

[44:36]

I want to thank you very much for your talk. That was really quite wonderful. It wasn't my talk. I stole those words. It was easy. You brought the message to us today in your talk. And it makes me so sad to think back to those times. And when we were living through those times, it seemed Like, in a way, we almost had more hope, because we didn't know how badly the next 35 years were going to turn out, and how much the world would lose, so well we can look at the possibly, you can conceive of it as the peaceful, demise of communism, we're still in a world where an eye for an eye seems to be even more, in some ways, prevalent than it was then.

[45:46]

And again, all we can do is hope that somehow, through the actions of individuals, things will improve. But it makes me so sad for the lost promise that was there in those years. You know, it's not ethical. Well, I think it's our responsibility to see that the promise isn't lost. I don't think it's lost. I think one of the things about the prophetic tradition, which is extremely painful, is that very frequently the prophets are failures. They suffer the fate of death, and yet we remember their words. The example of Gandhi, the example of King, you know, who whose lives ended in violence and, you know, we're experiencing continuation of violence today.

[46:50]

Those words are also eternal in some way. And we look at even among our Buddhist leaders and it's interesting because in 67 Martin Luther King nominated a Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh, for the Nobel Peace Prize. And, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh is so far, in a sense, you could call him a failure. There is no real religious freedom in the country of his origin. It's still quite an oppressive society. The Dalai Lama is a failure. You know, he hasn't He doesn't seem on the verge of liberating Tibet. And yet, in those failures, each of these people manages to present an example in action that inspires us and keeps us moving forward.

[47:55]

So, it's our, the responsibility is passed on to us. Maybe one more?

[48:04]

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