This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you for the invitation to come. Mic okay? So I suggested a topic, and some people here said, that's great. And it's called Nonviolence in a Chaotic World. I did that to myself. So I was at lunch with a friend last week, and she was saying, well, what are you going to tell them about that? And I thought, well, gee, I don't know. It's a challenging topic, isn't it? Times like these.

[01:00]

I said, well, this is to my friend in Atlanta, I said, well, I have lived through two instances when people protested by carrying signs and placards that stated the obvious. For example, in the 60s, Black men carried signs saying, I am a man. In Birmingham, Alabama, where I'm from, and in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was helping the sanitation workers, they carried signs stating the obvious, I am a man, because they had been called boy all their lives, no matter how old they were. Hey, boy. So signs stating the obvious. And then that was in the 60s. So then I said to her, and now I've lived through another instance in our history when people once again carry signs stating the obvious.

[02:05]

2013 and again in 2020, black lives matter. So what can I tell them? I can show them, I guess. I can be a witness. that you can go through those stages of history and survive it. And I'm here. You know, if you keep living, you'll be around too. And let's hope we can make some positive change in the meantime. Then I thought, well, that's kind of a downer. I survived. Though there was real positive change. As a teenager, I marched with King in Birmingham. And the next year, the Civil Rights Act passed. And the next year after that, the Voting Rights Act passed. But of course, for every step forward, there's two back.

[03:07]

And unfortunately, the backward steps seem to be led by our governmental administrations. Well, I said, that's kind of sad, even when I think of it. I lived long enough to see these two instances of people carrying signs that stated the obvious. I said, I can't see any real difference between my saying that and the line in one of Lucille Clifton's poems that says, come celebrate with me. that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed. Do you know that poem? It's quite wonderful. It serves as the epigraph in one of Joshua Bennett's performances.

[04:11]

Joshua Bennett is a young black performance artist. poet and professor at Dartmouth College. And one of his great poems is called Say It, Sing It. So he begins with these lines from Lucille Clifton. But then it goes on because the poem is really joyous and talks about resilience. Want to hear another few lines from that? So after he says, come celebrate, you know... after Lucille Clifton come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed. He goes on to write, and school kids in black schools learn this so proudly they shout it. The poem is called Say It, Sing It. He says, We praise always. We elegant everywhere. We die too soon.

[05:13]

We joyous, anyhow. That every single day is a toast to living, an ode to the way we make resilience and art. My classroom is a self-love anthem in nine parts. Together, we unlearn shame. We dream silly. We sing what we cannot say. So yes, We do start every day like this, like poetry gives us a new grammar for our bodies. Say it. I exist in excess of my anguish. I want to talk to you today about something very simple. Respect. What was wrong? What was the magical alchemy of marching with King in the 60s was that you meet eye to eye someone you formerly referred to as an enemy.

[06:36]

And you don't hate them. And that transforms them And it transforms you. This is nonviolence really in action. And it's really, I think, a deep kind of respect. Nonviolence is a deep kind of respect for all life. And every being who's alive gets that. If you mean it genuinely. Sounds a little like what he said was. Of course, you have to mean it. And that's the hard part. So your invitation has given me a chance to think about teachers that I admire so much and mentors. There's, of course, the Buddha. There's Shantideva, the 8th century poet. And then I did some research on Dogen Senji.

[07:41]

So that was fun. So I thank you for that. as well. So I was saying that nonviolence seeks to win one's so-called enemy over and to transform them while we ourselves are simultaneously transformed. That is the marvelous alchemy of practicing genuine. So I marched with King and some things were done and we were young so we were just exuberant and happy. We sang all the time. We took those gospel songs and made them freedom songs and we were happy because we were doing something. People don't, if they're not from the South, they don't know that children were under attack all the time. That Emmett Till was killed within a year of the

[08:46]

Brown v. Board of Education Act, that these things were not coincidental, that children were attacked all the time, that we'd put on our Sunday clothes and go for a ride in that big old car. And I'd have to say to my mother, why do we have to keep the windows rolled up? And she'd say, because mean old men like to throw acid at black children. And they did. And we grew up in environments where We knew that the Klan lived right there alongside us, and we'd better not get too far out of line. There was that threat looming over us. And the one thing you didn't want to be, even if you were really small in the South, it's conspicuous. So I got scholarships to college, and that brought the Klan out full force in my little mining camp. I got scholarships to college. How dare I think I was going north to college, let alone to some Ivy League places, which they didn't even know about.

[09:54]

How dare I? Well, I don't want to do that. I just want to say that that was a powerful time. And when the Klan amassed outside our house, there's this little bit off script here, that my father was away at work, graveyard ship. My father was one of a few Willis's, there were three families of us, in that mining camp that was designed to go with the Docena, the 12th coal mine in the area, and all the men, the mine closed when I was two, so all the men were without jobs. except for my father, my grandfather, and my uncle. And so then I got the scholarship. But what I noticed, as my mother stood at the door with a little pearl-handled .22 caliber pistol, because in those days they were throwing bombs, and we waited for that to happen, we heard everybody gets awakened on the black side of the camp.

[11:10]

There's one street that divides black and white. And we hear these horns honking. You know, there's trucks and there's cars and it's the middle of the night. And who are they after? None of us know. But they start to come to a stop in front of our house. So then it's us. Father's not there. Mom's at the door. She's telling my sister and I, get down, get down. But I'm looking out the window because I can hardly believe it. You know, I'm scared to death, but I'm gobsmacked too because... I see men, women, and children in robes. In robes. Children. And they light a cross, and they say some stuff. And while my mother was saying, and we were all praying, I'm sure, I was saying, wait, you guys, you got it wrong. We are a family in here, just like you.

[12:12]

That's what I could see, and that's what I wanted to tell them. We are a family just like you. I see you moms, dads, children. What are you doing? We're just like you. This is what I wanted to say. This is what I wanted to teach. So then I go away to college. And I learned about Buddhism. And this verse in Dhammapada 183 just stood out to me. And it says, very simply, gives a summary of the Buddhist teaching. 183, Dhammapada says, do no harm. Practice what is good. Discipline the mind. This is the teaching of all the Buddhas.

[13:16]

So simple. So I said, what? Here it is. The Buddha taught nonviolence too. The Buddha taught deep love and respect. The Buddha taught a reverence for life. And the Buddha knew that it takes discipline to do that. So I was tickled. And I said, hmmm. What is talking about nonviolence too? And that's the first principle. Do no harm. And note that he says, do it. Do no harm. It's an action. Hey girl, what you doing over there? Oh, I'm just hanging out over here doing no harm. That's, you know, it's relational activity. It's not something we do by ourselves. You know what I'm saying? That nonviolent thing, that was cool today I did to myself, you know.

[14:19]

And all these are actions. Do no harm. Do what is good. Same way. Hey, what you doing? You're over here chilling and doing good. They're relational activities. They're how we relate to other sentient beings. And one has to do that wholesomely. One has to discipline the mind. And I found in Buddhist texts methods. My teacher who, a Tibetan teacher who would pronounce T-H as aspirated T, said methods. There are these methods in Buddhism for learning how to see the world that way so that you can act that way. And part of the secret of acting that way, not pretending, is to see beings as equal to oneself.

[15:40]

Oh, we say, oh, I can do that. You think? You can see everyone else as equal to yourself? I mean, why do you think that I, that conceit of I is so heavy in Buddhism? That's a difficult challenge. You know, I'm going to be good to poor so-and-so. I'm going to be good even though that's a troublesome so-and-so. We form judgments. Nobody's ever equal to us. We're better than everyone. Don't we think that? Really? Isn't that what the I does? We wake up, and from the moment our eyes open, we see the world as we see it, from our point of view, with attachment. I, [...] mine.

[16:43]

It belongs to me. Oh, God. Shantideva, who wrote The Way of the Bodhisattva, Bodhicharya Avatara, in 918 verses, discusses all the six paramitas so beautifully. I was saying to Roshi last night that in Tibetan practice, monks and nuns run through the fields singing Bodhichari avatar at the top of their voices. Because there's a verse there that says, hearing these ideas, even the gnats and grubs will attain enlightenment. So Tibetans just run about shouting it. So the gnats and grubs can hear it. Oh.

[17:44]

So... In the course of this Bodhicary Avatar, Shantideva says, he talks about viewing beings equally. And he says, and this I think is a candidogan, but in a minute. Shantideva says, so we step on a thorn and we reach down and pull it out. The hand doesn't say to the foot, oh, stupid. I forewarned you about that. And here you are. Here you go, stepping on something. I told you not to. The hand sort of just goes for it, right? Pull it out. Both are in distress. That foot is in distress. The hand doesn't think about it. Pull it out. Why? Because it's all part of the same organism.

[18:49]

This is what Shantideva wants to impress on us. See each other as all being in the same boat. One part of you is suffering. Do something about it. Instinctually. Not putting it down. Not saying, oh, you forgot what I told you. Not saying, oh, poor, poor foot. There you go again. Not saying any of that. Just... Because you were in pain. Just instinctively. Part and parcel. Same organism. I found this again in Dogen. My brief researches. And I could be wrong. I found that Dogen talks, well he talks about a lot of things and he's a master at succinctly describing experience.

[19:54]

He could describe it in a few words. So we all know this, this well-rehearsed verse from Dogen that says, to study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. And to be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between oneself and others. So says this translation, is to remove the barriers between self and others. We're all in the same boat. Let's pull the rope together to get out of suffering. Let's do it together.

[20:55]

Every one of us has specific talents. Oh, beloved community. Every one of us has something to contribute. To contribute. Every one of us should be, therefore, respected. In this deep sense. you're not only equal, you're of value. Let's see you with love. Let's greet you with it. Let's say, I see you. So Dogen has these four activities for guiding, four methods for guiding. Alan Sinauka says what? four methods for embracing, four descriptions of the Bodhisattva's embrace.

[21:59]

And the four methods are kindness, kind speech. First is giving, then kind speech, then beneficial action, and then something that I've seen too many times translated into English as identity action. And I go, what the heck? Identity action. could he mean? Identity action. And then I decided it's a poor translation. That it means acting together, recognizing you're in the same boat. You're all going to help each other because that's what you do. Because you've erased those barriers between self and others. You are the same as they are. They are the same as you are. You work together. Identity action. We're all here working together.

[23:01]

I do this. This was a timer. But I didn't start it. Oh, sorry. Okay, didn't start it, so we'll just keep going. So I thought about Dogen's four activities, what he started by activities. And I could see giving, you know, these are karmitas as well, giving and kind speech and, you know, those are all Actions, as I mentioned before, these are not sitting on the cushion activities. This is like Thich Nhat Hanh saying, we tried to sit in my monastery while the bombs fell and we heard screams, but then we couldn't remain on the cushion. We had to act. And I can see how those first three of the Dogen four are not so very different than those as described as paramitas by Shantideva and others.

[24:30]

Of course, they have, each has a selfless component. Like the Dalai Lama says, We want to develop the skill, the discipline, of giving something without expecting anything in return. Because if we add that extra of expecting something in return, then that's just a business transaction, which we know about, unfortunately. Under this administration, just going to see it. But that's not giving. Oh. But you can think of those three activities, and you can think of doing it selflessly, and that's what makes them transcendent.

[25:34]

Non-self. So the action happens without expectation, not clinging to a self, not clinging to an object, not clinging to a person. Selflessness there. It's just giving happens. And I think it's also giving with deep respect. It's seeing the other person. Hmm. But that identity action, I think, is just plain and simple, and I may have misunderstood Doug Indy. But I think it was the translation. And I think he says, we recognize in whatever activity we're engaged in, we recognize no separation from the person involved. No separation. This was what was transformative about marching with Cain.

[26:38]

We took pledges every day, pledges that said, I promise to remember the teachings of Jesus Christ. I promise to be courteous in all my transactions. I promise not to lift my hand against anyone. I promise not to protect myself. We took vows like that. We signed pledges like that every day. So, I think Dogen's meaning of identity crisis, sorry, identity action, there is identity crisis. Identity action is that we recognize no separation between ourselves and others as we are trying to act to bring about what is good. Nonviolence is called by two authors, in particular, who have written a book with the same title.

[27:53]

Nonviolence is a force more powerful. Jack Duval and Peter Ackerman have written a book, Chronicles All of the 20th Century, says, just about the end here, says, we usually discuss our histories, national histories, in terms of war. The American Revolution, right? The Civil War, the war to end all wars, World War II, Korean War. That's how we learn history. And yet if we actually thought about it, all of the movements that have moved human beings forward have been nonviolent. They've been nonviolent. Oh, I think I left this out. None of the people I know who ever

[28:54]

claims to have marched, lifted a placard, whatever, in nonviolent struggles, ever thinks that that just means you become powerless. Nonviolence is always paired with, when I was growing up, with the word resistance. It is a force that is used against other forces. So it's It's got a power of its own. And if we think about our history, really, whether it's South Africa or it's India or it's the civil rights movements here, these are the movements that have actually made advances for all human beings, for their rights as well. Those kinds of actions. So I believe nonviolence is a force more powerful than violence. Maybe I should have said that first. But anyway. And I think going along with nonviolence, there's a deep wisdom, compassion.

[30:02]

Compassion is genuine when it recognizes the other person and you are exactly the same. Otherwise, we're pitying some, but we're looking down. We're superior. Oh, and Shantideva, last thing, Shantideva says, he gives two methods. In his meditation chapter, he says, practice these two methods. Practice these two methods. Says it over and over again, you know, in verse. One is called the exchange of self and others. And one is called, the other is called the equality of self and others. And that, the sameness, you might be surprised, but his examples are, I want to be happy and to avoid suffering. You want to be happy and avoid suffering.

[31:05]

In this way, we are exactly the same. His only installment always uses this example. In this regard, we are exactly the same. Now, the other method, which you might say, oh, that's the equal one, hmm, The equal one is where Shantideva talks about the hand and the foot. So it's similar to Dogen's. It's more like we're all in this together, that equality. Look at it that way, with love and respect and wisdom and compassion. Compassion really has, I guess that's my message for today, has this element of deep, deep respect, a reverence, a respect for all life. So even as you face an enemy, you've got to, as King says, you've got to love them. You don't have to like them, he said, thankfully. He says, but you've got to love them. And with discipline, one can learn to do that.

[32:09]

Last thing, there's a greeting. Some of you may know this. There's a greeting in South Africa, Zulu, Natal, that says... I see you. Don't say, hey, how you doing? Says, uh, um, says, uh, so boner, so boner. And that means I see you. This way I'm trying to been talking about. And that, in fact, so boner means we see you. I and all the ancestors see you. That's the greeting. And more than see you, we value you. That's a greeting, you know. And then another person says in return, hey, I see you too. And when you see me, I exist. I say, far out.

[33:16]

It's Aretha Frankel saying, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Yeah. I don't know what time it is, but I think I'll stop now because fortunately there's Q&A. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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