Thank you, thank you, thank you dear Vassana. And thank you, thank you, thank you to each of all of you who have so lovingly welcomed me to join you on this day and a little bit more broadly speaking on this journey of deepening our embrace of that say the challenges and opportunities presented by living in these bodies in a world we didn't create, and supported, of course, by the Dharma, the principles and practices of the Dharma, and by including, of course, our Sangha. So I am really quite honored to join you.

[01:07]

And before really saying too much more, I wonder if you'll join me in just a few moments of sitting together. Selling in. As we prepare to transition out of these few moments of touching deeply in this present moment, in this very life, I offer the following few phrases inspired by a traditional meditation practice of loving-kindness.

[03:17]

The invitation would be for you to follow along in my recitation and inwardly recite these phrases to the degree that you feel comfortable, maybe selecting the words that resonate deeply in your own heartstrings, or perhaps simply feeling the quality of metta implied by these words, deep within your own being, perhaps represented by the sun in our hearts as Thich Nhat Hanh so beautifully expressed. May you be filled with loving kindness. May you, may we each and all,

[04:20]

and well in body and in mind. May you, may we, each and all, may all beings be safe from inner and outer dangers. May all beings be truly joyful peaceful and free. Thank you. So I just, you know, I feel it's a sort of a very precious opportunity to be with you all at this time.

[05:34]

October 2022, there's so much going on in the world. And to be, Part of communities of practice grounded in real world circumstances and yet aspiring to bring forth the depth and richness of the insight, the wisdom, the compassion of the Dharma. It's not easy, at least in my humble experience. It's not easy to both be very humbly engaged in everyday life, taking up the work that we do in the particular places that we do it, in these bodies, in a world we live, create, right?

[06:50]

and gifted with this life, these lives. I smile when I think of that. Despite the challenges that we experience, my own effort very clearly grounded in a deep appreciation for the gift presented by being alive together. And that awareness and that openness to being more aware of what all that means. To me is embraced in and through this body, and so cisgender, female body, and therefore being met in a world the very many different trainings and challenges about where a body like this belongs, including intersecting that with being racialized African-American, meaning growing up in America, born in 1967, in North Carolina, right, being particular about some of these details because it gives us a bit of a window into the kinds of

[08:18]

trainings, conditionings that have been a part of what I've experienced. And so this sort of dance between this relative experience of identity in the world and opening awareness, opening to awareness of the absolute. Two sides, I think, are the same, not separate. Form not different from emptiness, so to speak. So just different doorways in, the 10,000 doorways in, to insight, to compassion, to wisdom. This is my doorway. And probably because of this doorway, and all that I'm pointing toward when I say this doorway, right? Born in North Carolina, granddaughter of Nanny Suggs, who was born in, also in North Carolina, but in 1906, in the,

[09:19]

period of the redemption and restoration of white supremacy following the reconstruction. So my grandmother's life was very much comprised by this sort of engagement with the legacies of oppression that formed North Carolina in 1906 in the 20th century. So when I come along in 1967, my grandmother was there. Fortunately for me, as a kind of guide and my first teacher, I saw her get up every morning before dawn, before she had to, and engage in a centering practice. For her, it was Christian, kind of prophetic Christian prayer-based practice. But it was a disciplined commitment of just reconnecting with her own being, her deepest values, and for her religious aspirations, and a sense of purpose to bring into her engagements into the world.

[10:28]

And her engagements, of course, well, I shouldn't say of course, Nanny Sugg's engagements were very humble. The work she did was, at that time, not that different from the kind of work she would have done had she been born a century earlier. She cleaned houses. In fact, she cleaned one house for one family. I've written about this, but they were sort of, you know, kind of interestingly named the outlaw family. So she would leave our house every day across town to spend the day cleaning and really attending to the needs. of the outlaws, taking care of their young sons, the outlaw boys whose pictures we would see in her bedroom. Because my grandmother understood that despite all these external kind of, you might say, rituals of deference and who belongs and who doesn't in the Southern context, one family, really.

[11:42]

She understood that. And notwithstanding all the kinds of deprivations and disregard that came with that hierarchy, there was some way in which she understood that there was always much more to who she was. And so as I come to you, in an effort to really just offer a hand of support, Frankly, you know, humbly to join with you in the work that you have already been doing to bring forth these, this way. Wow. And to more deeply embrace the call of liberation for all as a part of this way. I am grateful that as I come and offer a hand of support, I lean into the insight, wisdom, compassion that I know to have arrived at my doorstep through the humble being of my grandmother and Annie and countless beings like her.

[13:10]

not known in the broader world as teachers, but a teacher, of course, nevertheless. So I am aware that as a part of the process by which you all are being invited to really explore, you know, just how your sangha, how our sangha is, how the one sangha, if you will, Many Communities, One Sangha, being the name of a course that I co-created with Patricia Ikeda and Crystal Johnson. You all know this is a course that you all have been given an opportunity to share and explore together. We created that course last year, 2021, and it's still ongoing. pandemic. We met for many hours.

[14:15]

Really, I think all of us in our different ways feel called to offer whatever we might. Again, in some ways we might, knowing that we're all works in progress. We're all maybe in different places. along a journey, but here perhaps to help each other as best we can. So in this course offering, each of us sought to draw deeply on the dharmas, practices, principles, allied, and the practices and all the allied disciplines of study, being together in community to help really turn us toward looking at what gets in the way of deeper inclusion and access, what gets in the way of more courageously seeing the barriers to compassion, which include bias and the sense of like certain people belong, certain people don't, certain ways of being resonate more with us, these implicit biases.

[15:38]

in particular, drove us toward really offering this course. And I say the implicit biases because I think in our communities, so many of us are already committed in the kind of, as much as we can, explicitly to being the Dharma and to being non-biased, open to caring and supporting and being you know, not racist. And the invitation, of course, is to really look at how a deeper commitment to not just not being racist, not being biased, but really exploring what a vision of true liberation. Anti-racism is a term that you know we'll use. And we'll be using other terms that sometimes are hard to hear as we do this work, really exploring how the rituals of white supremacy often implicit show up, align with some of our practices and ways of being.

[16:57]

So what does it mean to be in right relationship to all of of these sort of aspects of our experience in the world? What does it mean to really look at equity? What are the values, intentions, and commitments that can really support us in this work? And how can this Sangha offer greater safety, dignity, and belonging to all those who enter? So these are the sorts of questions that drove us in our effort. And for me, grounding in our deep values and aspirations, our deep commitments. But also, again, that humility, knowing that it's lifelong work that we're about and nothing changes overnight.

[18:02]

And as we do engage in this work, There will be challenges that we will constantly face. There are certain challenges that we might predict already. I am new-ish to your community. I'm practically living in San Francisco just across the bay. I used to live in Oakland a long time ago, but I've been living in San Francisco for a very long time. But you know, I'm aware that even in this community, violence, racial tension, is here. You know, all the challenges that come with economic inequality, you know, it's here. And so I am really, really grateful to sort of be, again, a co-journeyer with you when we think about, in particular, the Eightfold Path as a support.

[19:04]

I know that you all have beautifully articulated a way of leaning into the Eightfold Path to support the changes that you seek to bring forth. And there's so much we could say about how the path supports us. So much beautifully has been articulated. Right view, for example, aiming to turn the light inward to observe the ways in which conditioning preserved in our storehouse consciousness, manifest in the rising of strong judgments, emotional reactions, hidden bias assumptions. In other words, expressing this intention to see things more clearly around race and racism. I've used the term color insight as a touchstone for what the past principles and practices might deliver us to. in terms of a deeper insight about how race and racism and other forms of bias and isms and schisms show up in our world.

[20:12]

So right view, of course, is about maybe turning toward and being willing to see from the ground of our practices, I'm pointing to in my book because part one starts from grounding in the practices as best we can and then the values and then the foundational orientations in loving kindness and compassion and being willing to touch into a beginner's mind, all of those sorts of things as a ground. But then seeing, part two of the book is about just seeing. And therein, the connection to right view is implicit, I think. And there's so much we can say about that view. So not only turning toward the ways that bias manifests, but always remembering that beneath all of these trainings, conditionings, temptations to size each other up, or awareness that maybe bias is coming our way, the schemas that we hold in our mind, the cognitive categories are sort of being demonstrated in our lives where we're feeling the sense of that

[21:29]

Being more open to be, to sort of explore, and what is that really all like? How is race and racism constantly being recreated, retrained in us? Being willing to see that more clearly, but never forgetting that in an instant we can at the same time drop into the sense of our being. I don't even know, I don't have the words for that part. But you get what I'm sensing, what I'm trying to say, that there are, that the invitation is to not be afraid, to be courageously willing to more deeply explore at a personal, interpersonal, systemic, structural level. what there is to see about how bias, how identity-based assumptions and norms might be getting in the way of our deeper engagement, while at the same time never forgetting the depth of our pain.

[22:51]

So right, to me that's about right view. It's about seeing all the dimensions a little more clearly. being willing to have the conversations we need to have about race and identity and also being willing to turn together toward the moon, the sun, the sense of the ground beneath us as a support, without in any way bypassing the challenges, to see that it's all always here. Sometimes I struggle with the right words, but I hope you're getting us some flavor of what it is I'm trying to bring together here. Like, yes, we're going to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we're also never going to forget. Right? We're not going to forget that we are on this planet where absolutely everything is connected in all this mystery called life.

[23:53]

right here, right now in the heavens, right here, right now, blessed with this moment and we don't know beyond this. So may we energize our efforts with like that desire to just make the most of this opportunity. And that includes opening that aperture. So right view, right thinking, of course, right speech and action. So we're being mindful to the language and being willing to open up to teachings and learnings about new words and new ways of being around language because we've heard and willing to hear the pain that some of the ways we speak might land in someone else's experience and create a barrier for being, feeling held and invited in. And yet, at the same time, we're developing that capacity to open spaciousness around our own tender reactivity so that Yes, when a word is used that lands in a way that may feel unskillful or harmful, we also open up that aperture on here we are as human beings, works in progress, all struggling in ways that are not obvious, no matter what levels of privilege and disadvantage we all occupy, we're all suffering in these bodies at this time.

[25:20]

So having that ability to give each other the room to grow. Really, really important, right? As we do this work. With love. So I see that as a part of what it means to examine right speech and the conditions for that. The ability to offer a little bit more safety and to receive that. And right action in the same way. explore what right action might be calling us to do differently. And also to explore how we meet each other, you know, in that field of exploration, of inquiry, of beginning again with humility and with love. So I'm going to pause right there. Pausing to invite these simple words that I've offered to settle.

[26:34]

And as we breathe in and out together in this one moment that we know we have, I want to open it up to any reflections or questions. That may be coming up. Thank you. First, I want to say thank you for talking about being from the South. I grew up in the South, and I certainly wasn't the associate economic of the outlaw family. But I grew up. witnessing things that I never understood. They really felt something was wrong, but I didn't start learning what that was until I was in my 20s. But I've been reading, I've been very excited about this book I've been reading.

[27:40]

It's by Will Smith, no, it's Will Thomas' pen name. He planned in 1947 to move his black family from Los Angeles to are you familiar with this book to um haiti because he wanted his family to be in that environment he changed his mind because he decided he didn't want to leave america so he moved himself his wife and his three children to vermont he chose vermont because their constitution from the beginning said we will not allow slavery if 1770 maybe They also gave rights to black men to vote. So he moved them there, and I want to read a little bit. He wrote an essay, and he's reading it.

[28:40]

And I've listened to it, but I've also been reading his book. And he said, unless one seeks sincerely for whatever it is he most wants, he surely will not find it. and that what I really had been seeking most of my life was not what I wanted, but instead was justification for the resentments I felt. This is not to say there was not cause for those resentments, but rather that I had so concentrated upon them, I could not see that the picture was not all bad, that in fact there was considerable good in it. I had condemned my country and my religion because I viewed only what seemed wrong in both. But when I was able to remove the blinds of my own justice or my own prejudice, it became clear that these failures, these flaws in church and state were human failures, human flaws, and not mere self-willed bigotry and that within each there were and there always had been many who had worked and fought for what was right.

[29:45]

I think the core of my earlier bitterness had been the conviction that I had been denied my birthright of human dignity. But I now know that is something which cannot be given or taken away by man. So I was really caught by him talking about his own prejudice. And reading the book, I mean, first half is about being in Los Angeles. Second half is about being in Vermont. And I don't... see or read in modern things, this talk about how there's sort of two sides and how we all sort of have to work together to deal with this. And I guess I want to know what you think about what he said.

[30:46]

I know I'm putting you on the spot here. Not really. So thank you. Yeah, I think that as you all know, I've suggested my book as a support. I'd be curious what your question would be after reading my book. Because indeed, yeah, there's much that I find resonant in that. And actually, in my experience, there are many who in contemporary times are writing in several ways. So I do think it is a question often of opening the aperture to see more fully what is available and recognizing that we are often being manipulated.

[31:56]

I think a challenge of our time is to reclaim our attention because many people are seeking to tell us what to think. And these, I call them little jokers sometimes, they're so wonderful in so many ways. But they are all part of what I'm struggling with, right? They're kind of reinforcing, oh, you read that article. Here's another one. I'll tell you more if it's sort of the same. But if we stand back and reclaim our attention, we will see there's so many different sources and resources to support us in this journey. And so, you know, I didn't hear anything in what you read, admittedly, just this is my first time hearing it. but I didn't hear anything in what you read that was surprising or different in any fundamental way from my own perspective. In fact, you know, I've written a lot about human dignity as a kind of a foundational font of inspiration.

[32:59]

You know, I've written a lot of different, you know, I've written about humanity consciousness and race and humanity consciousness needing to be inter, they enter our new way. The question is how aware are we of the way in which whatever is invited to us as universal humanity sometimes is normed around only kind of a tilt in terms of what kinds of human beings are invited into experience of universal humanity. But that call toward feeling our own rich inheritance as being alive. And, you know, I was reading a particular anthropologist who was talking about what distinguishes human beings is that ability, that ability that arose in our shared human history eons and eons ago to, you know, like all mammals, we suffer, we get ill, we die.

[34:07]

But at a certain point, human beings started to stop and attend to each other when they suffer. They started to figure out how to help another one tend to a broken arm and therefore heal and therefore thrive. Whereas, you know, so many of our other beautiful non-human beings have not had that ability to sort of evolve that ability to see each other's suffering and to assist. We do have that gift. And so, yeah, here we are finding our opening up the aperture on all the different ways that we can together deepen our humanity, but certainly seeing the willingness to listen to each other's experiences today. And even the painful ones. Even those who are saying, yes, I'm going to talk about how racism is negatively affecting me, but not holding them responsible to speak about it in the way that we feel comfortable before we're willing to hear their particular view on this.

[35:25]

These are the invitations that I think this work is going to present. So I thank you. Thank you for that. Yes, my dear, thank you. Thank you for this talk and this interaction. It was very sweet. I have a question about law school. I'm sorry, about what? Law school. Law professor here, okay. So, do you have like that elevator comment to make about how you bring this to your professoring? Well, I don't know if it's exactly an elevator comment, but I'll be as pitty as possible. I bring it in every way I possibly can, stealth and explicit now. I teach courses on mindfulness and law called Contemplative Lawyering that I've been teaching since 2009 at the University of San Francisco and at Berkeley for a semester in different places.

[36:34]

I bring it in orientations to law students at USF, at Hastings, at different law schools around the country now. So that I am often now the first law professor that law students get in the Bay Area and in this orientation around, I don't wear these robes, but in this orientation around how to see one's identity as a lawyer through a lens that is humbly calling forth an inner developmental path as they do the cognitive the seek to do the knowledge skills and values training but that they also realize that this is about being in right relationship with the challenges and opportunities that being a counselor will present And that's a lifelong personal journey that I want to inspire them to infuse with a certain humble commitment that walks the path of law for them.

[37:50]

Thank you for that question. We're bringing it into law in so many different ways these days. There's a Mindfulness and Law Society that I helped hold space for. It's a national community of practice for lawyers. This week happens to be mental health for law students week. So I hope you put an extra effort to the law students to join us for meditation because I offer meditation weekly drop in at my law school as well. So we're just, we're doing every little thing that we can and we know that we hope that these little things can make some difference. Thank you. It is not easy. And in fact, I'll say, you know, so I've been teaching law for more than 20 years.

[38:57]

And last year I took a leave of absence and unpaid leave of absence so that I could have some more space to discern what might be called for in the next phase of this life. And if it be that I stay in law, how better to keep doing this work, you know, faithful to all the different things that we have to do. I mean, I'm a law professor, you know. And yet, higher education generally, neoliberal, you know, kind of values, all the things that we're up against in the world are showing up right in academia. and showing a right in law, as we know. So it's been increasingly challenging to keep going against the stream in law, because that is, of course, the worst for me.

[40:00]

But sometimes you just answer the call. So I'm back at law school, not 100% full-time, I'm now at the moment 80%, but it's because of this commitment to making a way out of no way, as my grandmother and nanny would say. You make a way out of no way, and we're trying to make change where we are. But it is not easy. You know, and I see that as, again, it's like there's so many different ways we can think about our work, the work we're called to do, out in the world, in our sanghas. You know, I have a friend who is Bajodo Shintu. Buddhist practitioner, living in Oakland, raising children in Oakland, multigenerational Asian-American cisgender woman. And, you know, I'm aware of how her and how Asian-American heritage so richly infusing our communities in the Bay Area.

[41:14]

is also kind of, it feels like an elephant in the room of our Zendo sometimes. You know, the way that the racism, frankly, that many of our Asian American friends and community members, Sangha members, that racism that was experienced and has been experienced here in the Bay Area against Asian Americans is part of the deep legacy of what feels like a divide sometimes between various sects and ways of practicing Buddhism. And so there's so many ways that the work that you all may be, you know, sort of deepening over the next many months and beyond, just may open up new conversations and opportunities, but that isn't, you know, that may move us against our own strengths.

[42:24]

So I'm saying, when I think about saying, yes, I'm staying in law and do what I can, you know, each of us has an analog to that. And the work that you'll be doing in your song will have an analog to that. Like, yes, there are these traditions. I'm there to help students pass a bar. I'm not there to come in change absolutely everything and the changes that I make are maybe subtle. So similarly, our sanghas are often formed in certain ways. We're not going to change them overnight. And so it's like, how do we be in a wise relationship with what we're called to bring forth at this time? Not easy. That's what we're doing together. And I honor all that is within you that you made into on this journey. Maybe we have time for one or two more reflections or questions. I guess they would speak up if there were anybody.

[43:28]

I don't see any, yeah, if there's anyone in the online Zindo who has a question, I don't see a hand raised as of now. It's hard for me to actually reach and open it up, but if anybody has a question, Oh, yes, thank you, my dear, here in the presence of them. I'll offer a reflection. I was just noticing at some point, can you hear me? I can. Thank you. At some point, I heard you say something about how we're going to, in this program, talk about racism and anti-racism and at the same time holding togetherness and all that. And what I noticed something in my body of when you said, we're going to do this, the first part, racism, anti-racism, like, it was palpable. And then when you said the other, and we're also doing this, I just kind of went, just this sense of ease and relaxation.

[44:37]

And then I thought about that. And how do we not just stay over there? Because that moment when you just crystallized it, there was this like, oh, agitation here. I just wanted to offer just this, yeah, sure that experience with you and everyone. And the question that prompted. Thank you so much. I'm bowing to it. your experience into this good question. Good question. Thank you. And I want to just open up the aperture and invite, I mean, reflection again. This is why we have these moments of question and answers for all of us. Was there anything resonant of what was just shared? When I and A, we're going to look at racism, anti-racism, all the isms and schisms, what's coming up in our bodies? Are we feeling a little bit of tension?

[45:42]

Each one of us, of course, is a world of experience and trainings and personalities, right? So deep bow to all of us for having the courage to even say we're going to try to do this together because in my experience, you know, if I'm just honest about what it's like for me to look at my own experience and try to clarify my own mind, I'm gonna sometimes find values in conflict and stories in conflict and painful memories and stories and images. So I just imagine when I sometimes, you know, the words that we use to describe the kinds of things that we're looking at do trigger in a certain sense those bodily sensations that remind us that we have had experiences around these things that we have seen what happens in the world when we try to bring up these topics, right?

[46:47]

So as you helped us just to sort of bring this explicitly into the room, I'm just saying that each of us probably have some way of really resonating with what you're saying. And that piece of like, ah, we also think that we're going to be doing this by leaning into our practice. opening up to the sense of our inherent belonging i always think of it as like you know life selected for all of us there's really no accidents we're here you know and to me there's like a gratitude and you see the smile that automatically comes on my face and i realize that and yet it can be very challenging to sort of bring those two together like the fierce willingness to see more clearly the inequities and the personal, interpersonal, and the systemic structural ways that they are hard to undo and they keep coming back, to have that courage to look at those, but also be able then to ground ourselves in, let's call it the Dharma, and the practices and principles and disciplines of these.

[48:08]

of what we call the Dharma. That invites this question, are we able to continue that both and, if you will, that multiple perspective on reality that we're inviting in? And I say yes. I say absolutely. I say like, if we can't do it, if the Dharma isn't helping us with this ability to, you know, more skillfully speak to the multi-dimensions of what it means to be alive i mean i you know i'm here because i believe that these practices support may support us i'll say may support us right if we if we lean into them for this they may support us in ways that other modalities in my experience don't as well but it is never easy So it does, I think the question of how do we keep, you know, not bypassing, not going into spiritual bypass of like, isn't it nice to just stay in the old one place and, you know, don't harsh my mellow about bringing up racism again, right?

[49:20]

Or are we done with that? I thought we had that conversation about racism. Can't we just sit again? So it's, I think the part of how do we keep, you know, being in that, you know, seeing, for me, it's, This is equanimity. You know, one of the four noble abodes, the Brahmadiharas, compassion and sympathetic joy, right? And empathy and love and kindness. And yes, equanimity. The flow. And that is something we need to keep uplifting. That's what we're pressing. Yes. Now, as you're speaking, I'm getting the thought that it's the second part that gives me the energy and the inspiration that all of us choose. Yes. Yes. That's to me love, I'm going to say, also. When I think of the four Brambiharas, like the shorthand word for me is just going to be love.

[50:24]

Like, you know, whenever, again, I am a lawyer and a law professor and a Dharma person. So whenever I use words, I'm always thinking, the image in my mind is like that finger pointing to the moon. I know that any word I use might be interpreted in this and that kind of way. And if we get too cognitive, we get into some big argument. So I hesitate sometimes to use the L word straight up. But love is my shorthand for what this is about. You know, when I think about, being aware that we have this moment and we don't know, we hope and pray we have, you know, as my grandma would say, we hope and pray we have a long life and we plan and we do all, but we have this moment. And then that question, how do we want to live? How do we want to be with each other? How do we want to be in relationship to all that is from that insight that this could be the last?

[51:30]

And personally, that's where the juice and the inspiration to keep showing up. If there's one word that defines what I'm hoping to lean into as a support for the work, it is love. It is that sense of that loving embrace of the possibility and potential of this moment to be new and better and more healing and more capable of... a sense of spacious holding of everything, right? Then the last moment, or then our ancestors were able to access. We have the possibility. And so for me, love is the word that I use to the shorthand for that equanimous, that sort of leaning into the possibility. But it is a courageous kind of love because it says, if I need to hear someone explain to me how they've been hurt,

[52:33]

I'm here for that. I'm right here for how we need to make things better for all of us to thrive. And that to me is what love can look like, that listening as love, that making an effort to change a policy as love, that effort to change the law as love. Cornel West said justice is what love looks like in public. Martin Luther King had a very similar view of Love and justice is being intertwined. So my dear ones, we've come to that time where I think I need to invite us into the pause, right? Because in a certain way, you know, it's all one. But yet we have to finish in a formal sense this talk. So I, again, thank you all. Thank you all, thank you.

[53:26]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_83.2