Good morning. Happy New Year. It's nice to see you all again. Can you hear me? Well, this morning, I'm going to read from I'm going to read or talk from my new book, some of you know this has come out it's called the Bodhisattva's Embrace Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism's Front Lines and it came out in October something I've been working on for a while I was talking with a number of the different Buddhist publishers and I could see that there wasn't maybe it would come out and maybe it wouldn't you know, in maybe a year or three or four. And it's like, I don't really have the time or I don't know me.

[01:05]

I hope I have the time. But there are also other things that I wanted to publish, not just on my own. So I started in imprint. And nowadays, there's a lot of things to do with the technology. in the way of print-on-demand, and so this came out in October, and I've been selling it online and via Amazon, but I haven't had a chance to use it in the Zendo. So I'm going to talk from it today, and I'm going to give a very specific talk, and I'm kind of undercutting, I'm sure I'm undercutting myself, There's going to be sort of a book reading and signing event next Friday where I'll read short pieces that are kind of more descriptive and also be able to talk with you. That'll be 730 in the Zendo next Friday evening.

[02:09]

Community room or something? Community, I'm sorry, community room. Thank you. It'll be more, it'll be a comfortable environment. And I will be signing books today as well. But that's not the point of this. I've been thinking, first of all, we're about a week away from Martin Luther King's birthday, right? And often over the years I have talked about what I call the Dharma of Martin Luther King. And from time to time here, we talk about diversity and race. And that's going to be my topic, given the coming King holiday, but also given a whole other thing that's unfolding in my life and some of our lives.

[03:11]

I've spoken before and other people have spoken about our friend on San Quentin's Death Row, Jarvis Masters, who's a wonderful writer. He's a Buddhist practitioner. He's innocent, as best I could tell, and that's part of what's really coming clear this week. After knowing him for 15 years, His evidentiary hearings are finally happening in Marin County Court. And so actually there's a couple people in this room who have been going to the hearings aside from myself. It's quite powerful and both encouraging and disturbing to be in that environment. Yeah. Could you explain a little what the evidentiary Yeah. So let's see how do I do this briefly.

[04:21]

He's attorneys have been working for a long time on an appeal. They filed. You can correct me Stan if I get this not technically right. They filed a petition of habeas corpus which basically is investigating the evidentiary basis of the original conviction. about a trial or stuff that was misrepresented in different ways or hidden. And this was submitted to the state Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court looked at this appeal, looked at the response from the state's attorney and had some very serious questions about the original evidence, the evidence in the original trial. And so they called for a judge kind of referee, in a sense. And so there's three weeks of hearings in which what we're hearing are from, we heard from the original prosecuting attorney, we heard from police investigators, prison investigators, we hear from prison officials, and other prisoners who have, who are implicated in one way or another.

[05:45]

So that's, that's the short That's the short story of it. But the striking thing, and this pertains to the talk, is that, you know, there's only one African-American person. Actually, there have only been, most days, two African-American people in that courtroom. Jarvis Masters and actually one of the corrections officers. All the police investigators, white, All the lawyers, white. And mostly these are white men. With, you know, no, not making a judgment about that. I'm just looking at the alignment of race in society. And I think that, I suspect that the parade of the prisoners who are going to come in as witnesses, I suspect they will all be African American. I don't want to talk about this case right now, but I just wanted to give this because it's what's been on my mind.

[06:52]

I will say if you're interested, you know, some people start out the new year with a bang. I started out the new year with a blog. I created a blog which you can get to at clearviewblog.org and I'm going to the hearings every day and writing about them. So you can read the first three days accounts. Okay, change subject, or continue from that subject. What I'm going to read from today is an essay, and this book is a book of essays, and the essay is called On Race in Buddhism. And I think it was originally a talk, I can't even quite remember, And the talk was in the mid to late 90s. And then this piece was published in Adbusters magazine.

[07:55]

For some reason, they picked it up. But I'm going to read you a somewhat edited version, and hopefully there'll be some time for discussion. I feel I have some liberty to, where I might not edit, Suzuki Roshi, or any of the revered Zen masters, if I was working from a chair, since this is me, someone who I don't particularly revere, I feel free to edit. So, it begins with a quotation. This is called On Race in Buddhism. So Zen Master Dogen wrote, Gourd with its tendrils is entwined with gourd. Gourd with its tendrils is entwined with gourd. This is from a fascicle called Twining Vines. This means we are all intimately wound up, bound up, wound up with each other.

[09:00]

Truly inseparable. It means that we take refuge in each other, in all beings. It's intertwining. Taking refuge means committing your life to waking up, to taking on the problems of suffering and ending suffering for all beings and for ourselves. To me, this is what Zazen is about. Sitting upright in stillness means to see oneself in complete interdependence with all beings. With the rocks and trees and ocean and sky. The emptiness, we often talk about emptiness and that emptiness is not like some negative space or void.

[10:05]

Emptiness is total interdependence. So gourd with its tendrils entwined with gourd. True reality is empty of any one thing, empty of self, because all things, all people, co-create and are intertwined with each other. Seeing through and beyond our dualistic views, is the direct experience of zazen. I'm not so sure actually about this word experience but the fact is if we're caught up by our ideas or by our wishes we slip back into this realm of duality. All of us have these experiences from time to time. A moment of merging with someone or something that we love.

[11:08]

A moment of doing something so completely that we lose ourselves or sinking so deeply into meditation. At times in zazen we settle fully into the realm of non-duality and we have a kind of formless awareness that this is our true mind, our true state of being. And all the great spiritual traditions have some way of expressing this kind of reality. They do it in their own language. By habit, though, we often see the world dualistically. We're driven by our doubt and our fear, by a lack of trust in our true mind, We see things as self and objects. We see this separation.

[12:10]

We see it as us and them. As other. There's a Tibetan teaching which is hard for us to quite grasp. There's something really appealing about it. This teaching is that every being was at one time my mother. my father, my sister. I would say that the root of racism is denial of this truth. It is about seeing people as other in a systemic way. Seeing people as objects is such an entrenched habit that we're usually not aware of it. I want to emphasize the word systemic because ideas are kind of like a virus in society.

[13:13]

Ideas and words have a power that goes beyond our individual like or dislike or even in a way our individual understanding. So just to be clear the way I'm defining this racism is a system of domination that is economic and political as well as personal. It runs deep in the oppressor and oppressed alike, but the damage caused in those two groups of people is not identical. Even though I have the privilege of being of a good education, of a middle class male upbringing in white skin, I have in myself some deeply ingrained survival responses as someone who was born Jewish.

[14:16]

A long time ago, 20 years ago, the first time I went to Thailand for a meeting of the International Network of Engaged Buddhism, There were not very many Westerners. There were about 20 Westerners and mostly Asians. And by the end of the first evening, I had figured out who the Jews were in that group. And by the end of the next morning, every one of those had somehow signified to each other that we recognized each other. I had never quite gotten that before, but it was a really, really powerful experience. I think this is a pattern that goes back through centuries of ghetto life, you know, of being seen as other by a dominant culture.

[15:19]

It's not really a genetic thing. Because I also remember, maybe seventh grade, my mother sitting me down and telling me how to watch out for myself in school. How to understand certain things that were going on. Primarily, this was a primarily upper middle class Protestant private school. And she was explaining some dynamics that she understood were going on there and that I hadn't a clue about. She explained that some people would exclude or be threatened by me just because I was Jewish. It's so deep that sometimes I often find myself, okay, I'm sort of editing as I go along. It's so deep that sometimes I actually find myself looking around the Zendo and counting the Jews.

[16:23]

I would imagine that some of you have done something similar. And I know that people of color do this, although actually they have a kind of easier time counting. But let's remember where this Buddhism that we practice comes from. Our ancestors come from India, China and Japan. I remember when I first went to Rinzowin, Suzuki Roshi's temple, in Japan, where I've been a number of times, I walked through the graveyard. Soto Roshi was talking about this the other day. In the back of the temple is a graveyard where the old priests of the temple are buried. realizing that they were my ancestors also.

[17:29]

You know, how amazing it is for Zen to leap oceans and cultures and to be so generously offered to us. I think we need to accept it with humility and recognize the prices that were paid by our ancestors and our teachers who came to plant the Dharma seed here. So I think we owe it to our teachers and ourselves to share this practice with the same generosity and open-mindedness. It's also important to keep in mind that most Buddhists, even in America, don't look like me. They are Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and so on. I and most of us I think in this room came to Buddhism not by birth but by virtue of some awareness of our suffering.

[18:38]

We don't, nobody owns the Dharma. We're just partaking in something, entering in something that is already there completely. How does it feel to come to practice as a person of color? Such people come to this endo. People are here. I'm not so comfortable with this term, people of color. And not all so-called people of color are comfortable with this term, people of color. But that's another discussion. I have a friend at San Francisco Zen Center, Sala Steinbeck, and at one point she said, if it's about liberation, people of color will be interested. And they are.

[19:41]

The Dalai Lama draws stadiums full of people in Mexico. In South America, there are Zen and Tibetan teachers with very strong lay sanghas. I've met teachers from Africa who were practicing and teaching in Africa. But I do ask Asian, Latino, and African-American friends about how it feels when they come here to Berkeley Zen Center or to San Francisco Zen Center or to Spirit Rock And I ask myself what feelings come up for me when I see some of these friends walk through the door. It's hard for them to walk in here for various reasons. But I have to look at myself and see to what extent I'm helping or participating in the system. Dogen suggests

[20:45]

that we take the backwards step to turn our light inward and illuminate ourself. What I see in myself when I look inward that way is exactly what then I'm reflecting back into the world. So the answer to how it feels to someone coming here largely depends on two interrelated questions. First, does that person coming in feel safe? And do they feel seen in this community? Are the conditions of one's life acknowledged, welcomed, and explored in the Sangha? I think the answer is sometimes yes, and it's too often no. sometimes an offhand comment is made about how we are all white and middle class here in this endo.

[21:59]

We're not. And when we make comments like that, we're making those who don't fit that particular category, we're rendering them invisible. So there's a lens of race, a lens of class, a lens of gender, these various ways that we use to separate us and them, separate self and other. And when we unnormally see through this lens, people tend to feel invisible and uncounted. So one of these lenses is what, just to use a blunt term, is called white supremacy. This is the cornerstone of racism and it's created by a blindness to one's own, my own privilege.

[23:04]

My privilege as a white man is, actually, my friend Wes Newspaper would say, a person of pallor. So if one wants to see white supremacy, the practice of turning our light inward needs to be combined with dialogue with friends and sangha members who don't carry this particular privilege. And I want to say this is not just about race. The same kinds of painful things separation, invisibility you can experience this if you are homosexual or by reason of injury or birth you know, you can't get up the steps of the temple all kinds of invisible wounds that people carry so blindness to oppression hurts and turns people away

[24:15]

That's what it might feel like from one side. On the other side, the Buddha's understanding is all beings have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments, they do not realize it. This understanding is so precious that we are really obligated to share it. I don't mean proselytizing. But the fact is that the Buddha himself never stopped preaching the Dharma everywhere he went. Now we have, particularly here in California, we have centers and institutions for Dharma. And to make it really, to make Zen and the Dharma really available, we need to tell people they are welcome and make them feel welcome and safe and open our doors. Already we are taking our practice to jails and hospitals, to people who might not come to the meditation hall.

[25:29]

But I think it's also important that we take ourselves to experience other kinds of practice and to experience what it feels like to be different. to experience what it feels like to encounter the joy and depth of spirit of another religious tradition. So, we shouldn't just wait for people to come here. We need to go and experience what it's like in mosques and churches and synagogues, where we can also meet with parishioners, ministers, other teachers, My experience is if we make ourselves known there, we will be welcome. I've always experienced feeling welcome in these settings. And people will appreciate that we've reached across various lines to witness their own practice and tradition.

[26:41]

More than that, we can learn from other peoples and other traditions. And this enriches our own Zen practice and makes us more truly human. To go back to the Dharma, the wonderful thing about what the Buddha taught and what we can experience in Zazen we can go beyond duality. It can't be done just by reason and talk. We have to uncover the reality of the world, which lives deep in our bones and then bring it back out into the world. We must be willing to make a lot of mistakes. Make our mistakes, learn the lessons, go back to it again.

[27:45]

The African-American scholar, practitioner, Bell Hooks, writes about this in Buddhist Women on the Edge. It's an excellent book. She writes, in a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimhood and identity is inevitable. I once believed that progressive people could analyze the dualities and dissolve them through a process of dialectical critical exchange. Yet globally the resurgence of notions of ethnic purity, white supremacy, have led marginalized groups to cling to dualism as a means of resistance. The willingness to surrender to attachment to duality is present in such thinking. It merely inverts the dualistic thinking that supports and maintains domination. Did that make sense? Globally, the resurgence of notions of ethnic purity and white supremacy have led marginalized groups to cling to dualism as a means of resisting, as a means of resistance.

[29:08]

In other words, building some identity out of one's oppression, right? The willingness to surrender to attachment to duality is present in such thinking. It merely inverts the dualistic thinking that supports and maintains domination. Dualities serve their own interests. What's alarming to me is to see so many Americans, this is still bell hooks, what's alarming to me is to see so many Americans returning to those simplistic choices. People of all persuasions are feeling if they don't have dualism, they don't have anything to hold on to. In other words, this is my identity, this is my truth, and I'm really afraid of the groundless reality of interdependence. So then she, to conclude, but she says, if we're concerned with dissolving these apparent dualities, we have to identify anchors to hold on to in the midst of fragmentation, in the midst of the loss of grounding.

[30:21]

And she says, my anchor is love. Then I say, I like to think that love and compassion are anchors of my practice, but they depend on mindfulness. Zazen is rooted in mindfulness, breath after breath, thought after thought. And this kind of training carries over into life outside the zendo. I try to uncover my own thought patterns. And this is sometimes really painful and embarrassing. That's the essence of saving myself and all sentient beings. It's amazing to see how the stories one can make up about other people and how these stories are conditioned by race, class, and privilege. Please check this out for yourself. When you meet someone you consider different from yourself, whatever different means, do you think you know something about them?

[31:28]

Do you think you might know some of the same things? I'm sorry, do you think you might know the same kinds of things about another white person or another person like you? This is a mindfulness practice, watching your thoughts about race or any kind of difference, race, gender, sexual orientation. I suggest this is for our own sake and not for the sake of political correctness. This kind of mindfulness is a very personal practice. Then we can go further into our extended communities. Ask your friends of color how they experience the practice and the community. This is entering the realm of not knowing. It's risky, but it's completely necessary. In the wider Buddhist community, it might mean making excursions and visits to Asian Buddhist temples.

[32:34]

They are friendly places. I'm often kind of astonished, you know, how few people have actually, that I know of anyway, have been down the block to the Thai temple. Right here, same block. The same Dharma resides there, though it takes some different forms. It's interesting that we don't think twice about going to restaurants featuring Asian cuisines of different kinds. We're a little more wary of going to those temples. There is a brunch too. The brunch on Sunday is very well attended. Many of you will be to that. When you go, chat with the monks. Just meet them. They really like to interact. When we have closely examined ourselves and begun to look around and share our thoughts with others, then we have started to create the conditions for change.

[33:43]

If our whole society could take the step, it would be the start of a wonderful, hopeful era. Could there be racial peace for the first time in history? This is not a pipe dream. This is the bodhisattva vow. It's the working of our way-seeking mind. If each of us in the sangha and sanghas we cherish could nurture this process of mindfulness, the change might come more quickly. Compassion and peace could blossom in very surprising ways. In our life of zazen, would be a golden wind blowing across a meadow of wildflowers. So, I probably should have edited a little shorter, but I'll take a few minutes for questions or comments.

[34:46]

Yes, Judy. Every now and then, and just recently in something you said, I can't quote it exactly, I feel uncomfortable because although you said people shouldn't say we're all white, it seems to me you're speaking as if we are. And you're saying, as I'm hearing it, among other things that we should, we, that is to say white people, should kind of go up to people of color and kind of how they experience. And I just remember some instance years ago where some African-American woman said, I am so sick of having people ask me to explain to them what it's like to be African-American. And I know that's not what you're telling us to do, but I hear that, and I think

[35:53]

I feel uncomfortable with it. It's not exactly what I'm saying and I think my response would be very wrong. I'm going to have to live with my discomfort at your discomfort and that's partly what I'm talking about. It's very hard to have a dialogue in this in this large setting, but, you know, I'm open to that. I'm not defending myself. I think that part of what you're saying, you're picking up on something correct. I mean, and basically, this is primarily directed to the Euro-American Zen community. Yeah, Dean. I think sort of along the lines of what Judy has felt some discomfort about, I have too. In the beginning, you were talking about the trial thing, and you said they were all white, and only two blacks in there.

[37:01]

And it's almost like there was an implication. And you said, well, I'm not judging. But it's almost like that there was an implication that by that being the case, there is inevitably going to be unjust outcomes. On the other hand, I look around here, and most of us are light-skinned, and does that, you know, it's sort of like, oh well, they're all white. And I think that sometimes, like in the women's movement, sometimes what happens is that especially white people, it becomes very easy to be on one side. And that's sort of what This has felt a little like going down and saying hi to the Tibetans, because we don't do that. Maybe it's because a white person, their interest just doesn't lie there. Just like, someone come in here. Maybe it just doesn't lie there, regardless of whether it's white people or not. And sometimes it's so easy for the power group to get caught in almost putting down that group.

[38:09]

I don't know what it feels like to me. Well, what I was getting at in terms of the court was not that it was going to be unjust, actually. What I was getting at is I'm asking you to look at the alignment of power and authority in this society. And that's the all, because those lawyers on jobless side are working their butts off. for like next to nothing and have been doing this for 15 years. So that's not about skin color, that's about the question is how can one be an ally to anyone? To be an ally means to put yourself in the place where you're actually going to be at risk for taking consequences that might otherwise accrue to an oppressed group. This is complex. I mean, we could spend weeks, we could spend days, certainly, you know, in workshop talking about these dynamics. We have to be careful when we divide it.

[39:10]

I think so. Divide what? Well, say, okay, these are all these white people. And you know what, when there's a handful of those white people that are, like you said, are working their butts off, and I think that I don't know. Is there something that just feels like it's sort of like this whole almost guilt about feeling light that I'm getting a sense of that is... What you're talking about is, you know, we've sort of immediately gotten to the core issue that comes up in any workshop that I've been to, not led, but been part of, around unlearning oppression. That's the very, what you're articulating is the very difficult dynamic. It's the place that you enter. It's the place that we have to begin by acknowledging it's easy to make that error that you're talking about.

[40:17]

What do we do about that? How do we be truly human? What is it about our Zen practice that leads us in the truly human direction and that's why you know I really thought long about giving whether to do this or not and again as Suzuki said this is making a mistake on purpose and it's you know it's hopefully opening up some discussion I don't want to make people feel guilty you know but I'm going to take one more and then we have to go somewhere here yeah I think this is like... that maybe he's going to get robbed.

[41:35]

And I think we all kind of have that stuff on some level that is there, you know, just by virtue of growing up in a culture that has like a history of racism and oppression. But then we all feel really guilty and that maybe you have this, like, programming, and trying to not feed into it by giving it more fuel, I guess, including, you know, guilt. Well, I think... I hope I was pointing towards some way of doing that that comes from within our practice. That's what I was trying to do. And I know it's incomplete, and I know it's incomplete, the process is incomplete in me. and we can continue outside and we can continue because this is a core issue in our society.

[42:48]

Did you want to say anything? No. I heard you play in your throat. I think it's a two-way street, but I think it's a thousand-way street. That's all. I see the last word, too.

[43:26]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ