Good morning. I'm happy to be with you this fine spring morning and I'm honored to see all of you from the BCC, my teacher, Another teacher, friends from college, friends from the international Buddhist world, family members. It's really, it's gratifying to be able to speak to you this morning. So last night was the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover, I believe. And it's a week-long festival of liberation that celebrates the Jewish people's escape from captivity in Egypt 2,500 years ago.

[01:02]

And this story is really compellingly told in the second book of the Hebrew scriptures, the book of Exodus. And with that history in mind, I want to tell you about what I have experienced in the last week. Last night I returned from an interfaith witness to Bangladesh. to the exiled Rohingya communities in the very south of Bangladesh who were driven over the nearby border from Burma by virtue of their religion and supposed ethnicity. Now I'll tell you a little about this.

[02:07]

I'll probably have to follow up with another, with a sort of report back with slides and more detail. And I'm trying to figure out sort of where to start and what to say in the short time that we have and leave some time for questions and also how to offer a talk that does what our talks are supposed to, we're supposed to do, which is to encourage practice. What is our practice here? What is our practice in the context of the reality that that Martin Luther King spoke of when he said, we are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother and sister's sister.

[03:16]

And I think that the context that I'll set, the Buddhist context that I'll set, which is also a context for our Zazen practice, First of all, the first step on the Eightfold Path, which is Right View. What Right View means to me is, in many ways, it's the ability to and flexibility to shift your vision. So in other words, to have a focus that can look very closely at, I'm looking right now, straightening out my little portfolio here so that it's in order and seeing what's right in front of me very closely.

[04:25]

And it's also recognizing that what's in front of me is the reality of all beings, the world that we live in, the fact that we are connected to the Rohingya people, we're connected to the people of Myanmar, connected to the people of Bangladesh, connected to the people of East Oakland, that all of this also needs to be within the shifting capacity of our view. And that we notice, we cultivate this capacity as we practice, as we sit. Usually we sit facing the wall. And that wall contains all realities. That wall that we face is really, it's like a mirror.

[05:30]

It appears white, blank perhaps, but it's not. It contains everything because it's our own mind that is being projected and then reflected back to us, if that makes sense. So that's one principle, the principle of right view. Another principle that, principles that I want to draw on are based on the paramitas and they're, two sequential perfections these are the bodhisattvas perfections so they are the practices of bodhisattvas of of enlightening beings and it's both the expression of their enlightenment it's also the practices that they cultivate to manifest the enlightenment that is within each of us. So those two, these two principles that I'd mentioned are patience or shanti and effort, virya.

[06:43]

And they, they are completely intertwined. And so When you go to places like the camps that I visited, you see in these suffering people the practice of patience and the practice of effort. which are human qualities. They're not Buddhist qualities as such. They just have been articulated as bodhisattva practices. But really this is like all humans do this irrespective of what they call them or what faith they follow in their lives. And it's also true that in order to be present with the suffering that I was witness to, that our group, which I'll tell you about, was bearing witness to, and now I bear that witness to you.

[07:56]

That took a certain amount of patience on my part. and a certain amount of effort. In the context of the practice, as Sojan Roshi has taught and common to all of our teachers, you could express that as, you should always know where your feet are. So when I'm off center, I return to that principle. I literally place my feet on the ground and I feel them. I feel how my weight is there, how it's distributed and so forth. And that brings me back into my body and into my awareness. And this is also at the heart of our practice. So that's all sort of the context.

[09:04]

So I was invited about two or three months ago to join an interfaith delegation representing, well, three faiths and I was going to be the fourth, representing Islam and Christianity, Judaism, and they were looking for a Buddhist, for an American delegation to these Rohingya camps. And I tried to say, I did say no, because there were other things that I felt responsible to. But I also said I would try very hard to find someone else to be able to go because to some degree, the expulsion of the Rohingyas from Myanmar is being done, there's an attempt to frame it in the name of Buddhism.

[10:15]

Whether that's actually the case or not, I would argue that it is, even though the motivations underneath that are not about Buddhism. They're about greed and they're about power. And yet there are Buddhists who willingly collaborate with this. And I think that the rest of the world sees this as a great conundrum. Even the Muslims that I met on the delegation, they said, well, Buddhism is a religion of peace. And, you know, I think that's true. If you look at Christianity, it's also a religion of peace, but the things that are done in the names of religion often bear the delusion and distortion of human beings.

[11:23]

And this is to sort of cut to the chase in terms of my view of this situation and situations around the world, wherever you have the entanglement of religion and the state, there ain't nothing good gonna happen there. And frankly, you can look at Israel, you can look at places in the Middle East, And frankly, you can look at the United States. So much has been done here with the mantle of Christianity placed on the shoulders of the government. We're no better. We don't have any moral authority that is greater than any other nation. So I said no.

[12:26]

And then about two weeks ago, the invitation came again from the organizers who didn't realize they were asking the same person. And I had failed to find somebody else, and I said, I had to ask people. So I asked Lori and I was also supposed to be teaching. I was teaching at Upaya Zen Center's chaplaincy program. And so I asked Roshi Joan Halifax, you know, because I was going to leave early. And they said, go. They said, you are the person to go. So I decided to go. Although it was crazy trip. So I left, I landed in Bangladesh on the 25th.

[13:28]

And I left Bangladesh on the 29th. And of those like four or five days, I totaled it up 48 hours of that was in the air. And I would say another third of it was stuck in traffic jams in Bangladesh. But still, we had very powerful and unsettling opportunities to visit the camps south of Cox's Bazaar and also to Basically, listen to people. Just listen to them. Because these people needed to tell their stories. They needed to be witnessed. And the world needs to hear. This is, I was looking it up, this is a modern exodus.

[14:31]

So I was looking it up on, of course, the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, today, and it's estimated that when the Jews left Egypt, it was like 635,000 of them who left. Well, 700,000 Rohingyas have left Myanmar, crossed over the Naf river that divides Myanmar and Bangladesh. 700,000 since August 25th, 2017. That's a lot of people. And they join another 300,000 who were already residing in camps on the border in Bangladesh after expulsions in 1978 and 1991-92.

[15:34]

So this is a modern exodus and the seas did not part and the Rohingyas did not arrive at the promised land. If this is the promised land, and things have really gone downhill. And so these 700,000, they fled. And what they were seeing was the destruction, systematic destruction of their villages, which had been documented by all kinds of photographs and aerial mapping. murder on a scale that's very hard to imagine, rape as an ordinary daily occurrence in the repression by the military, and rape as a form, not so much of sexuality, but as terror and violence.

[16:50]

So the pressing question that people have been asking me for several years is like, how could Buddhists do this? How is this Buddhism? Which is, it's a very useful question to ask ourselves if we are putting ourselves in the position, if we carry any idealizations about what Buddhism might be. How it's possible in the simplest way is because so-called Buddhism is practiced by humans who are certainly potentially deluded and frighteningly harboring our own reservoirs of violence within us and no one, if I see this and I see what's going on in Myanmar, I realize I'm not an exception to this and I need to look at where those well springs are within me.

[18:14]

But it's also that the Buddhists in Myanmar are, I have a very complex analysis which I checked with both with Buddhists and with other people that I respect. I've been checking it for the last couple of years and I checked it most recently on this trip. And the Buddhists are subject In that part of Myanmar, people are subject to fear, to 60 years of fear in the face of the repressive military, to manipulation on the basis of national and religious identity. And that fear is being stoked by the Burmese military who really pull the strings and control the government, and it's manifested for the sake of their own greed, and greed for social control, but more directly for natural resources, for access to land, for access to ports, and so forth.

[19:45]

and I would say from what I've seen this is maybe a a painful thing to say that there are certain countries in which the Buddhist authorities and religious figures have embraced the kind of arrogance about their their wisdom and their vision And they really wholeheartedly, they embrace it and they believe it. So these are, these are some of the conditions. They are no excuse for what we heard happening there. There's no, there is no, not, there could never be an excuse for the disproportionate violence that we saw for the burning of villages. for the murdering of families in front of each other, for the slaughtering of children by shooting, hacking, beating, drowning, burning babies.

[21:02]

There's no excuse. It's not human, but it's human. It's unfortunately and inevitably human. And then the question, of course, is what will we do about it? How will we look at those tendencies within ourselves? And how we help ourselves and others to awaken to them. So this was a delegation, it was an interesting delegation, it was. mostly Muslim, all from the United States, although some were born in Islamic countries or had settled here, mostly Muslim. There was a very prominent evangelical Christian minister who has a network of churches within the United States, very interesting guy, Bob Roberts, who

[22:14]

has, he's progressive, he's a progressive evangelical, even though he's also, this is the conundrum, he's also a conservative Republican, you know, but he doesn't believe in Christian violence and Christian supremacy. And he's been, he's been organizing retreats for bringing together rabbis, evangelical ministers, and imams. And now he's thinking that they didn't quite, it really took time for people even to ask me anything about Buddhism. It's like they can't get their head around something where there's not a God. So then you'd be sitting at the table and nobody would ask you anything. It's like you're asking all these questions. It's like I'm sure that you've had this experience many times.

[23:16]

And there was a rabbi. And there were also interesting people, because I would say about half of them were Republicans. And there were a number of people who had worked in the Bush White House, and fortunately a couple in the Obama White House, and some in the Trump White House. And it's like, not my usual crowd, you know. And they also, they believed in something that I don't believe in. And you may not be happy hearing this. I don't believe in any kind of American moral superiority. They really did, almost all of them. It's like, this is what we have to offer to the world, and I just don't buy it.

[24:23]

But I was fortunate, I had a really good friend, one good friend on this delegation who I didn't find out until the end was going to be there, a man named Richard Riak, who was formerly the president of Shambhala, the Shambhala Religious Organization. And he also worked for Amnesty International for many years. He worked in Sri Lanka a lot. And we've been working together for about for a long time, and we hardly ever get to spend time together, but it was like, oh, we had pals. So that felt good. About 15, 15, one five, it was small. Yes, yes. I would say it's about a third women, Islamic women and one woman who was the spokesperson for the delegation who was a Fox News commentator.

[25:27]

You know, it's like this, as I said, this is not my, this is not my crowd, you know, but actually most of them were really good and interesting people, which is great to know. I mean, I do know that, but sometimes one can lose one's perspective. However, let me read you what I wrote. We had a press conference. I think I'm just going to get to scratch the surface here today, but let me read you what I wrote. What we have seen in, we went to a camp called Balukali. And I just want, well, before I read it, it's like, these camps are immense. In the 90s, I spent quite a bit of time in Burmese refugee camps with Burmese ethnic refugees who have been driven over the border from Burma into Thailand.

[26:30]

And so I've seen camps. I thought I had seen camps. There's nothing like this. Yes. Is that okay? The camps were enormous. They were sprawled over, spilling over the hillsides, and they were in this area that had been a very rich, green, biodiverse area. All the trees were gone. All the cover was gone. It was just bare dirt in terraces. and it made you wonder what's going to happen next week when the monsoon arises and all this turns to mud. How are people going to get around? It's just, I can't imagine. Enormous expanse everywhere that you could see of people, of these makeshift tent structures

[27:35]

with basically an open sewer running through the center of the camp by the passageway with an incredible stench. You know, what's going to happen when the rains come? So this is Balukali camp. So what we saw, this is from the press release. What we have seen in the Balukali camps makes my heart weep. In our time in the camps, speaking with Rohingya refugees, we had an opportunity to bear witness to victims of the worst of human violence and cruelty. Their experience is unimaginable and yet real, undeniable. To my understanding and that of Buddhists around the world, The murder and dislocation in Myanmar have nothing to do with the Buddha's teachings.

[28:38]

These teachings say, just as a mother watches over and protects her child, so with a boundless mind should one infuse love over the entire world. This is from the Metta Sutta, the ancient teaching of loving kindness, which Burmese monks chanted as they faced the guns and bayonets of the Burmese military during 2007's Saffron Revolution. This prayer conveys the Buddha's great love of life and acceptance of all people and beings. The very thing that many Buddhists in Myanmar brutally deny the Rohingya people. And then I say one of the things that we've done, thanks to the generosity of many of you and others, so I raised about $12,000 in the week before I left. I carried some of that with me and did not distribute it because I couldn't figure out a way to distribute it, but it's all going to go in the next week or so.

[29:49]

And I've started a website, and I have some press releases with the information on the website. They're in blue, and I'll leave them out on the bulletin board table, bulletin board shelf. We started a website called BuddhistHumanitarianProject.org which will detail, it's a letter which each of you can sign and we will send copies of this letter or you can write your own letters to the authorities in Myanmar. Whether this will work or not, I don't know. It's something we have to do, and you can also make a donation either directly to organizations that we provide links for or to Clearview Project in a tax-deductible way, and we will distribute it. So Buddhists in the U.S.

[30:50]

today have launched a website to raise up the Rohingyas' cry for justice, safety, and citizenship in their Burmese homeland. We in the West, along with many friends in Asia and around the world, will do our unceasing best to press the government and Buddhist leadership in Myanmar for Rohingya rights. We will raise resources for humanitarian assistance. And we give thanks to the government of Bangladesh for welcoming and making a place for a million refugees in their sorrow and need. So that's what I read. I just want to open to some discussion, but the question I think it's worth asking is, what do the Rohingyas want? I'm sparing you the more graphic details of their oppression. We heard this and we saw people who are resilient,

[31:56]

We saw people who were broken. We saw a woman burned over her entire body and scarred. We saw children with wounds on them. We didn't see the victims who were gone because they were gone. What they want, what they're asking for are three principal requests or demands. One is safety. And that would be safety, whether they're in Bangladesh, safety from the circumstances of their really difficult life in these camps, safety from disease, safety by virtue of education, and safety most centrally in the context of any return to Myanmar, which is what they would like.

[32:57]

They live there for many hundreds of years. They want justice, which means bringing the perpetrators of these murders and this systematic violence to accountability before the international court in the Hague. and they want citizenship, something that they had been denied when they were classified as non-citizens in 1962 by the Burmese Revolution then. All of their rights were taken away. They are seen as non-citizens. So they want. And in fact, one of the things that was really powerful. So we. The first day we visited the. The proximate cause of the the flight in August was a slaughter.

[34:05]

A massacre in two villages along the border to let totally is what it is called and. What the government had tried to do, and they tried systematically almost everywhere, is get people to sign a document and they would give them a card when they signed it saying, I am not originally from Myanmar. And my background is Bengali from Bangladesh. And then we get them basically to sign this under threat of death, renouncing their whole history and local existence. So they want citizenship. It's just, I have to show, do you have that poster?

[35:14]

It's here. So I'll leave this outside. This is a poster we were given the last night. I don't know if you can see it. It's a very striking photograph and said, when Buddha looks away. And what I would say is that Buddha didn't look away. Buddha doesn't look away. people who call themselves Buddhists are looking away. But this does not constitute Buddhism to me. We could argue about what is or what is not a Buddhist, but the Buddha doesn't look away and neither should we. So I'm going to stop there. There's so much that I could say. I'm very glad that I could go. I'm writing more about this. I suggest you check out the website and I'll have some of these press releases out which has the website address and we'll have an opportunity to talk more but we have little time for questions.

[36:29]

Yeah. Well, okay, so I will. Thank you. Yeah, oh, sorry. In part, yes. Yeah. Would you like me to explain that? So, this is not a new struggle. As I said, the attempt to drive out the Rohingyas has been going on certainly since the beginning of a country called Myanmar, or an independent country called Myanmar, or Burma.

[37:33]

Part of it was a migration that was encouraged by British colonialism. But in the context of the expulsion, there's been an understandable resistance on the part of some groupings within Myanmar. So the direct provocation for the Tulatoli massacre was a an attack on police stations within Rakhine State by Rohingya militants. And that's true. And there is a Rohingya, there's various factions and liberation groupings that have emerged within the last 30 years. And they've all, they've arisen to my mind

[38:42]

in reaction to the oppression that's been levied on them. And I don't excuse that or justify it. I don't excuse the murder of Rakhine, Burmese people. But the question of proportion is so mind-boggling to I think there were 11 police officers and military who were killed in these attacks, and that resulted in 10 to 20,000 Rohingyas killed and all of them expelled. So, it's not that there's no provocation. It's just, to me, a self-fulfilling prophecy, what the Burmese government is doing is creating the basis for a more massive and also internationalized Islamic

[39:53]

response, terror. And this is what I have to say, the Muslims in this delegation were really good. They completely opposed to any kind of systematic violence in the name of Islam. And they were very clear about that. So it's that. That's, yeah, that's in this immediate, it was the spark that led to this immediate flight. Yeah, there had been a flood, there had been expulsions and people going, but this was just, this unleashed a flood. Yeah, yeah, it really did. That's a really good question.

[41:09]

From what we understood, and I think we were there too short a time to really understand, but from what people from various sources were saying is, no, there's very little, that they have very little... what we would call civil society and that they didn't have that in Myanmar either. They were just sort of going about their lives without any political power or sort of self-organization. So yeah, it's lacking and that makes it very difficult. Yes. No, no, no, you can't do that for a million people. It's not small, it's beautiful. UNHCR has designated a billion dollars for Rohingya relief.

[42:17]

There is a constant flow of NGO. There's a vast NGO, a non-governmental organization. Their presence in the camp is really, in the camps are palpable and the one narrow road is clogged with their vehicles. We went to Médecins Sans Frontières. headquarters and hospital. It's enormous. The scale is just enormous. And I think there's some degree of coordination, but it's also really weird because the needs are so great, but also these organizations have their own needs, if you understand. It's like, oh, we can grow by you know, getting in there. It's it's a weird culture. You know, it's just those kinds of camps are very they're a weird culture.

[43:24]

And, you know, you see the UNHCR and UNICEF. It's like you have this terrible poverty and they're driving in these brand new, huge white white vans. And, you know, it's it's weird. Yeah. Yes. Oh, absolutely. They really are thinking about it. And the government is thinking about it too, but the government has a completely wacky plan also. They are going to, they're building a refugee center as housing for 100,000 refugees on an island called Thangar Char, which is in the Bay of Bengal. The whole island's about four feet above water level, above sea level.

[44:26]

It floods every year. There is nothing around it. It's completely surrounded by water. It's like they're planning to do this. This is a horrible, horrible idea. anyway yeah linda or yeah linda and i just wanted to say that there's a scholar Who is it? Yeah. Of course.

[45:55]

Yeah, I mean Joanna could probably quote you from the Mahavamsa in Sri Lanka, which is a completely self-fulfilling Buddhist triumphalist text going back 2,000 years. Yeah, considered canonical, right, yeah. Maybe one or two more. The international allies functionally are China and Russia, I would say. Wouldn't you say, Greg? Russia also has been aligned with them in the Security Council. what they gain, so you have to think geographically about Burma, and again, this goes into great detail.

[47:04]

The Burman majority, Burman ethnic majority is about 60%, and it's in the center of the country. The wealth of the country is in the ethnic areas that encircle the Burman majority. The wealth consists of timber, minerals, natural gas and petroleum, and also in Rakhine State, where they're being driven out of, access to the Indian Ocean as a geopolitical resource. So China wants ports on the Indian Ocean. The Russians would like it. So there's geopolitical basis for this. Second question? Did you have two questions? OK. Yes. Yeah, they are.

[48:09]

They are. They're on the ground. And also, I have to say, Bangladeshi Buddhists are on the ground. Risho Kosakai from Japan. The Buddhist response has been pretty strong. And it's also really encouraging, as I met a number of people from Buddhist organizations within Bangladesh who are really throwing themselves into this. Yeah, maybe one, someone who hasn't asked a question. Yeah, is that, again, is that Jake? Fake news. Fake news, yes. It's a great meme, fake news.

[49:13]

Basically, she's denying that these things are real. approach has been to Stonewall. She was in Australia, I think, last week or the week before, a couple weeks ago, and she had public meetings, made public statements and took no press questions. The thing is, when I started going to Myanmar or to Burma, I started going to the camps in so-called liberated areas in 1991 or 1992. The attitude of the rebel groups that we met with even then was they didn't trust her. They thought that she was aligned with the military, and I was highly skeptical of that, and I just thought, well, this is this kind of ethnic mistrust that's pervasive, which it is, but she does not hold an elected position.

[50:30]

She serves in this creative position, state counselor, with the permission of the military, a permission that can be revoked at any time. And I do not presume to have any idea what she so-called really thinks, but I tend to look at what people do. So I have some sympathy for her personally, But as an enactor of policy and as an enabler of the military regime, I'm deeply skeptical. And it's painful to say so. And also, we know that it's a whole lot easier to be an icon than to be a political figure, you know, but you know, the world is responding. I don't want to revile her. But I also don't, you know, I want to figure out what would encourage her to speak the truth.

[51:41]

So I think we need to end. We'll have a little time outside. Thank you for listening. And I wanted to say one other thing. You know, I want to acknowledge that for years now, I've been juggling responsibilities between the responsibilities I have here as Vice Abbot and responsibilities I feel to the expression of Buddhadharma in the wider world. particularly to those experiencing oppression as Buddhists, and those who are being oppressed by Buddhists. So it's hard for me to keep these balls.

[52:45]

in the air and I apologize, sometimes one slips and I drop one. But I really appreciate, I appreciate your support. And even though, you know, people here at BCCA may, some people may understandably ask sort of where my heart lies, My heart might be just one more of these things that I juggle, one of the balls in the air or not, but because of the practice that I've cultivated here with you for nearly four decades, my belly, my aura, and my mind are, they're always with you here.

[53:59]

And even if I'm halfway around the world, they're never, you are never apart from my thoughts, and for better or worse, my emails. So, thank you.

[54:17]

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