This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I've thought of a title for my talk which might give you an idea about what I'll be speaking about today. It's Peace Bell from... Conflict to Connection. And the title was inspired by a ceremony we had a couple of weeks ago at City Center. You may know that this year we're celebrating Zen Center's 50th anniversary. It's the 50th anniversary of San Francisco Zen Centers Incorporation. And the actual date... of the anniversary was August 13th, which was a Monday.

[01:01]

And that entire weekend, we had various ceremonies and talks and a party. It was quite wonderful, starting with a talk by Richard Baker, our second abbot, at City Center on Saturday. And the party was called the Zen Du at Green's. And the next day, Tenshin Roshi spoke here. And there was a reunion of people who'd lived at Green Gulch. And then on Monday, we had a procession from Sokoji, which was instilled as a temple in Japantown, where Suzuki Roshi came when he came from Japan to teach and lead primarily a Japanese-American congregation there. And then as more and more Westerners began sitting with him, the need to have a separate space arose. And out of that, San Francisco Zen Center became what it has grown to be today.

[02:10]

So as part of the ceremonies, one of the ceremonies at City Center on Monday was the awakening and blessing of a bell that was made out of bullets. It was made by a sculptor named Al Farrow, who lives in Marin. And he created it for a concert we had for our 50th anniversary in June. The concert was called Resounding Compassion and was held at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. And that concert was largely conceived by a composer who's a bass player in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. His name is Shinji Eshima, and he had the idea of asking his friend Al Faro to make a bell that could be sounded at the concert. Al Faro has made sculptures of cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues using guns and bullets.

[03:12]

I see some nods, so some of you may have seen them. There's one at the De Young Museum, cathedral, and it's very powerful to see these sculptures of his. So in the process of dedicating the peace bell, our abbess, Christina Lanehair, who led the ceremony that morning, described the bell as a contemporary version of swords into plowshares. And she said, crafted from bullets and war materials, it is reminding us that that in reflecting on our intention, we can change the world and that the power of intention allows us to see how we can do that. And then she ended with, may the sound of the bell always remind us of the capacity in each of us to be at peace and to manifest peace. I read in... David Chadwick's biography of Suzuki Roshi, Crooked Cucumber, that during World War II, Suzuki Roshi had to give the temple bell at his temple in Japan, Rinso In, to the Japanese Navy to be melted down into ship propellers.

[04:27]

And this was heartbreaking for him. And I wondered how Suzuki Roshi would have felt on the day we dedicated the peace bell to to see a bell made of bullets, find a home at Zen Center. And if he could have heard Christina's words, we invite the intention and the sound of this bell for all beings to be free and for all bullets and weapons to be laid to rest. The ceremony was particularly moving for me, and I had a very small role in it. I was able to speak about the concert and how the bell had come into being. In my role as director of City Center, I had helped to organize that concert, and it was moving to me partly because I felt two strands of, actually three strands of my life come together, working for peace, practice, and music.

[05:29]

And I been actively seeking peace, I would say, in my heart and in the world since I was in college and maybe even earlier. Before I went to Tassajara in 2000, I was working for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and had many friends who were activists. And while I was at Tassajara, I often asked myself the question about how sitting on a cushion in this valley in the middle of wilderness could have any impact or make a difference in terms of some of the suffering going on in the world. And I heard many other students at Tassajara ask the same question. So having this spell made of bullets at Zen Center in the heart of the city, in the place where I practice, reminds me of the relationship between inner peace and peace in our communities and in the world.

[06:32]

So one very well-known Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who is Vietnamese and was exiled during the war in Vietnam, talks about being peace. And so the question arose for me, what does that mean, being peace? And how does that apply to our everyday interactions with ourselves, with one another, with our communities and with the world. And there are so many ways of working for peace in the world and so many issues any one of us could devote our energy to. Working to reduce world hunger or to bring medical care to those in war zones. I have a friend who just joined Doctors Without Borders. She was a hospice nurse before that. So knowing someone who's doing that brings that experience closer.

[07:37]

Or developing nonviolent alternatives to war. But I think another way of working for peace is to foster connections between people across our differences. And perhaps this is one of the basic principles underlying all the various things we can do to work for peace in the world. So when I asked our abbot, Steve Stuckey, for his thoughts about being peace, and his understanding of being peace is not creating enemies. And I see that as building bridges, finding ways to connect with people who we may not initially feel drawn to or think we have anything in common with, but finding ways to reach out and have a conversation, understand their priorities, of view and their perspectives on life which may be different from our own. And I thought I would tell you two stories from my own life that might help you understand my journey around this issue.

[08:44]

So the first one happened when I was in junior high school. I have a younger sister whose name is Helen and my sister And I went to different schools. We grew up in New York City. And she wanted to go out with a boy in her class who had invited her out on a date, whose name was Juan. And he was Puerto Rican. And my mother would not allow her to go out with Juan. And when she told me about it, I thought this was really unfair. And I took her side. We both went to talk with my mother, who got very upset, just wouldn't discuss it, and said, well, we'll talk with your father about this. So when my father spoke with my sister and I, all he really said was, don't upset your mother.

[09:46]

And that was the end of it. So I continued to feel that that was unfair. And... Later on in college, in 1963, I volunteered to take part in a voter registration project in Greensboro, North Carolina, that was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. I had gone to Antioch College and met many Quakers there and learned about the work of the American Friends Service Committee. This was the first time I participated in anything of that nature with other people. We were a group of black and white college students who gathered in the basement of a church in Greensboro and went out every day to register African Americans to vote. And I learned there about the sit-ins at the Woolworth's lunch counter and the many forms segregation took in the South.

[10:49]

Having grown up in New York, I was really shocked and I think inspired to do something whatever I could to my small part to change the way things were. And at the end of our time registering people to vote, all of us got on a bus and we left at night under police escort because we were an integrated group. And we went to the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech. And I think that hearing that, not just hearing that talk, but being there with people of all ages. There were young people from freedom schools and older people from labor unions and church groups, black and white people walking together. It was an unforgettable experience.

[11:51]

So I think that these two stories are connected. And the civil rights movement of the 60s, with its emphasis on nonviolent ways to foster what Martin Luther King Jr. called beloved community, combined with the legislative and structural changes that followed had a very deep impact on white Americans as well as black. And it brought to light the extent of white power and privilege in our country. But it really didn't put an end to racism. And I think the work of healing racism continues and will probably continue forever. So I felt a commitment to addressing racism, including my own racism, since the 60s. And it may be also that my own struggles in coming out as a lesbian in the 60s, when very few people were openly out, and then later on feeling the support of the gay liberation movement in my own journey, has sensitized me to some of the issues of prejudice, discrimination, power, and privilege.

[13:17]

I think the question of power and privilege is very complex, as we may have power and privilege in one area of our lives and not in another. So, for example, as women or as people who've been children, we may have experienced, I think everyone in this room would have experienced at some time in our lives, a time when we had less power and privilege. And then in other parts of our lives, we had more. So if we try to work with that, if we can tune into the times when we have felt discriminated against or somehow not understood because of some part of our identity, it enables us to have more understanding for people now who are people of color or people who are LGBTIQ.

[14:19]

When I was coming out, we just talked about gay liberation, but now there are many more gradations that have been added. So there's one group that meets at the East Bay Meditation Center that just calls itself the Alphabet Sangha. That's easier. So when I moved to the Bay Area in 1990, and I became involved in Zen practice at that time, I had been practicing on the East Coast, mostly at the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie. And so I wasn't really exposed to Zen practice until I came back. here and started coming to Green Gulch on Sundays. And then because I lived in the East Bay, I also practiced at Berkley's End Center. And I became involved with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which was based in the East Bay.

[15:22]

And not long after I moved here, in the mid-90s, a group formed to address racism in our sanghas. And we had a day long and then worked together on compiling a booklet that had writings by people of color and also white allies called Healing Racism in our Sanghas. And then later on, when I joined the board of Zen Center, we had a newly reformed committee called the Diversity and Multiculturalism Committee, which I also joined. And in that committee, we were looking at how to create a community at Zen Center that could be more inclusive. And our understanding developed that being inclusive goes beyond welcoming people who may be having difficulty coming here for the first time, and particularly people from groups that have historically been

[16:34]

marginalized, have had less power and privilege. But how can people be encouraged to stay and become leaders in the community? And so I think it's been 10 or 12 years since this committee was restarted. I think there was a committee like that in the past. And we've been working with many different issues around inclusion. But I thought I would share with you the vision statement of the committee because I think it captures what we're trying to do. The Diversity and Multiculturalism Committee is committed to working at every level of San Francisco Zen Center's organization to uproot all forms of oppression, subtle and gross, especially towards people who have been traditionally marginalized, so that our differences can be celebrated and enjoyed in harmony. Crucial to our efforts is recording, acknowledging, and building upon the diversity and multiculturalism work that has been done at Zen Center by those who have come before us.

[17:43]

In keeping with the central vow of the Soto Zen tradition and the way of practice established by Shunryu Suzuki, the Diversity and Multiculturalism Committee is dedicated to each and all of us realizing our true nature. May people of every race, nationality, class, gender, we've added class, relationship to class and economic status, because those can be different, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical ability be warmly welcomed and truly supported to join, realize, and embody this way of life. So although the committee consists of about 10 people, including people from Green Gulch, Tassajara, and City Center, and the wider Sangha, many others at Zen Center, including the Abbotts, are working with us in support of this vision. In the last year, we've actually changed the name of the committee to the Cultural Awareness and Inclusivity Committee.

[18:50]

And... Recently, we've been focusing on how Zen Center can be more inclusive of people who identify as transgender and on people with disabilities, particularly those who are in the deaf community. There's a student at City Center who gradually has lost his hearing and is now totally deaf, and we've been learning about how we could support him and other people to practice at City Center. A number of things have happened very recently at SEND Center that have re-energized me and others in the committee, and particularly to look again at issues of white privilege in our community. So a couple of months ago, there was a one-day sitting for people of color at City Center. And although there have been one-day sittings here at Green Gulch for people of color and for people of color and allies, so if you're not a person of color and you want to support people of color, you can, we use the term ally, someone like me who has white skin privilege who wants to be supportive of people of color and to learn how to do that and also to support one another as partners.

[20:15]

people who have white privilege to be proactive, you could say, at least to broaden our understanding. So this was the first one day sitting for people of color at City Center, at least in recent years. And people who attended that sitting expressed an interest in establishing an ongoing people of color sitting group at Zen Center. And There had been such a group at City Center, but the group left after several moments experienced incidents of discrimination at City Center. So we realized that we had to do some work in order for a group to thrive there now. And we've begun to plan some trainings on white privilege and how to understand the recognition the relationship of white privilege to the ways we might need to take some action to make Zen Center more supportive and not just welcoming, but supportive and encouraging for people of color to practice there.

[21:37]

And also recognizing the need for not just... individual change, but institutional change. And in the past few years, a number of new groups have started at City Center. There's a monthly Queer Dharma group, a weekly Dharma en Español, a weekly Young Urban Zen group. And these groups have really opened doors. I think of them as Dharma gates, so that people who may not feel so comfortable at Zen Center find a way to enter and then become part of the community. So one of the things that happened around our 50th anniversary celebrations, which I think were really very healing and joyous, all those days of ceremonies. A few days after the ceremonies, a friend sent

[22:43]

a number of us, me and our Abbots and some other people at Senate Center, a blog that had been written by an African-American woman who came to Richard Baker's talk on Saturday and then to the Zen Do on Saturday night. Her name is Breeze Harper, and it was a very respectful blog, and it talked about a few things that she had experienced that day that made her uncomfortable and that she wanted us... Well, the blog was not addressed to Zen Center. She has her own blog, and it was sent out by someone who's a member of the Buddhists of Color email group and then forwarded to some of us at Zen Center. And initially, when I read the blog, I felt... a little deflated. I thought, oh my gosh, we're trying so hard and we have so much more work to do. And then I became to appreciate the timing of it because this is a time when we are really looking at white privilege at Zen Center.

[23:54]

So I'll just read a few words from her blog. She said, overall, I really enjoyed The event last night, which was the party, great celebration and memories of the Zen Center's past 50 years. Green Gulch Zen Center is beautiful, and I have developed amazing relationships there, so I thank the co-founders for making these sites possible. I deeply appreciate what I have learned from Zen Buddhism and the practice's impact on how I constantly try to be mindful and compassionate. including how I try to teach largely white racialized subjects about systemic whiteness and structural racism. And in talking about how, as an institution, Zen Center could be more aware of what it's like for people who come to an event or a series of events in which people

[25:03]

people are predominantly white. And she said she hoped she could come and talk with people. I'm hoping that I can approach the San Francisco Zen Center rather soon about my observations and hope that they consider what my feelings may mean. And there were a number of specific things she mentioned that were difficult for her. And so we talked about her blog. We being, some of us on the committee that has formed to find some trainers to work with us on white privilege, including Abbott Stephen, Abbott Christina, Abbess Christina. And we thought the best way to respond was to have a face-to-face meeting with Breeze and to dialogue with her. And really, so I think that's in the process of happening. And soon after that, actually the next week, we had a Dharma talk at City Center by Mushim Ikeda, who is a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland.

[26:18]

And Mushim's talk was called Highlighting the Hidden Streams, Why Our Stories Matter. And in the talk, she used the term cultural humility. which is a term that's taking the place of another term that has been used called cultural competence. And I think cultural humility is a much more useful way of helping us to learn about how to interact with people of different cultures and life experiences. And in her talk, Mushim quoted the African-American writer and activist Bell Hooks, who said, Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference, but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.

[27:21]

And I find that really helpful in acknowledging that when we are able to fully claim our identities and be who we are, we can create communities that are more harmonious. And there's sometimes a reluctance to do that in our Buddhist practice because we... We also have an understanding of how we're all interconnected. And I've heard a number of people say, well, why are we having these separate groups? Aren't we all one? And it's like both are true. We are all one and we're also different. So how can we hold both realities? And so I want to talk just a little bit about cultural humility. And I think there are three things that can help us develop.

[28:24]

cultural humility that come right out of our practice. One definition that Mushom offered for cultural humility is an attitude of respect when approaching people of different cultures, which entails engagement in a process of self-reflection and self-critique, requiring an ability to move beyond one's own biases. So I think the three attributes or practices that contribute, that can help us develop our own cultural humility, is first of all having personal humility, and then the practice of kind speech and the practice of deep listening. I think personal humility may develop when we become aware that our views are limited by our own experience. And I realize that despite all the work I've done over the years, I'm still sometimes quite very unaware of my white privilege. And I need the support and help of other white people who are grappling with this issue.

[29:28]

Luckily, there are very many people who can help. And I think about, there's a passage in the Genjo Koan that was written by Eihei Dogen, our founder of Soto Zen, who lived 800 years ago. And it's a passage about when you ride out in a boat to the midst of the ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions. The ocean looks circular, and it says it does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. And he goes on to talk about how different it is for fish who are swimming in the ocean. For them, the ocean may seem like a palace or like a jewel. So if we can become aware that our experience is conditioned by where we've grown up and what books we've read and what friends we've had and all of our experience really shapes what we see and understand,

[30:45]

And so that may help us be more open to listening to other people's experience and to not have fixed views or stereotypes of other people. And we tend to sometimes have an idea of how things are and think that our view is right. So I'd like to share a poem. This is a poem by an Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, called The Place Where We Are Right. From the place where we are right, Flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow, and a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood. So I'll read that again. Sometimes it helps. to hear a poem twice.

[31:46]

The place where we are right. From the place where we are right, flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow. And a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood. I puzzled about those last three lines. a place where the ruined house once stood. And the closest I could come to that was thinking about stories I've heard from Palestinians whose houses were demolished. And I think perhaps that is what Yehuda Amichai was referring to. But the phrase, when doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, sometimes what helps us to understand that we have this feeling of we're right about something, is to connect with someone who is different from us, who we can come to love and find out that the idea we had about someone's life, maybe just fabrication, it's just our idea.

[33:06]

And I think connecting with people as friends, as colleagues, at work can really make a difference in opening up our ideas about the world as we've known it. And it reminds me, I just heard a piece on the radio played by an orchestra that was composed of Israeli and Palestinian musicians, and through playing music together, they did a lot of healing their beliefs about who the others were. So moving on from cultivating personal humility to practicing with kind speech, there's another fascicle that Dogen wrote called The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance, where he talked about kind speech and how we can cultivate speech that...

[34:10]

enables us to connect with others. And he said, kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the mind of compassion and offer words of loving care. In Buddhism, there is the phrase, please treasure yourself. So I take that to mean we can learn to speak kindly to ourselves, to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes, and also to speak kindly to others. And he says it is kind speech to speak to sentient beings as you would to a baby. And I don't think he means speaking to other people with baba wawa, which is a phrase we chant. But, you know, the kindness, if you talk to a baby, wanting to just treasure that baby that you're holding, your tone of voice changes. You know, there's a sweetness that I experience when I hold a baby and talk to a baby, and I'm sure all of you can relate to that, that if we can have that feeling when we talk with others, I think we can embody kind speech.

[35:30]

And I'll talk briefly about the last... aspect of cultural humility, which I think is very helpful, which is deep listening. Really trying to create opportunities to have conversations with people who are different from ourselves in a way that we can spend some time with them and have an opportunity to listen that may lead to deeper understanding. So I want to just mention one. I'm aware of the time, and I want to finish soon so that we'll all have a chance to have some tea and maybe continue this discussion over question and answer. But there was another blog that was written after our 50th anniversary by the current co-director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship,

[36:36]

whose name is Dawn, who she came to hear Musha Makeda's talk at City Center and then wrote a blog about her experience, not just of City Center, but thinking about work she's done over the years with nonprofit organizations about white privilege. And she said, when an organization takes on diversity work, they should expect more critique rather than less. And And she said, I have hope that mostly white U.S. Buddhist organizations can engage deeply in unraveling racism. Is this not the same work of practicing with egolessness, of letting what we cling to unravel? I think of my Zen friends in particular as skilled at this practice of dropping the ego. May the 50 years of strong community practice at San Francisco Zen Center allow folks to bring their most gracious and open selves to the work of unraveling racism.

[37:48]

So as Yehuda Amichai says in his poem, doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, like a plow. And from this, flowers grow in the spring. So if we return to the image of the peace bell and of the resounding compassion, and I think of Kuan Yin, the awakened being who embodies compassion and the many faces of Kuan Yin, I would just like to express my hope that with an open heart and mind and awareness of our privilege, we can approach cultural difference with humility and kindness. Thank you very much for your attention.

[39:02]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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