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. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, good morning, good morning. It really is a rare honor. to be able to join you here at the San Francisco Zen Center, here at a moment where we as a kind of a national community are turning toward remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. 's life and the various associations we have with his life and legacy. So it's an honor to be here with you in support of our collective reflections around the theme of what is it that continues to speak to us from the teachings and practices, the life work, the commitments of Martin Luther King Jr.

[01:27]

So I have some reflections and some thoughts, not to say like a written out talk, right? I have things in writing, but I would rather than sort of just reading this, anything that preset, I really would like us to open up the space together. I will be leading with these reflections, but as I speak, As I share some of what's on my heart and mind, when I ponder Martin Luther King's invitation, the inspiration that he represents for me, I really hope that each of us in our own way will take and be benefited by or supported by whatever resonates, but also open your own aperture and invite this kind of reflection with me.

[02:32]

What is it that continues to speak to us when we think about Martin Luther King Jr. 's way, teachings, and life? I'm going to be focusing in particular on the idea of the beloved community because for me, if I think of one concept amongst So much of what he wrote that touches on what I aspire to support in my life journey. I think it is this idea of beloved community. And yet, you know, I am coming to you right here, right now in San Francisco, alive and present to all the ways that... concepts like beloved community can seem arid, abstract, disconnected from the everyday challenges that each of us face in our own lives, to feel seen, to feel safe enough, supported enough in these times.

[03:51]

And so I'm mindful of the ever-present call to begin right where we are. And to begin with, rather than going directly to the abstraction of what is this beloved community idea, to really invite us to take a moment to connect to the sense of beloved belonging, if you will. that ideally each of us is able to access as a ground for our work. So pausing and reconnecting and feeling the sense of preciousness of our lives, the rarity, the fact that we are here. We made it through all the different kinds of challenges. Any one of us in this room, I don't know all your, obviously your stories and the particular challenges, but I know enough as a human being to know that each of us has walked a particular kind of journey to get here.

[04:55]

So to pause at the outset of this period of reflection and really allow an appreciation for each of us in our particular embodiments, that we have survived, that we have made it, so to speak. Thank you. And that... The teachings of the Buddha that support us in our efforts to make the most of this life inspire us to be mindful of not only, again, the preciousness and rarity, but the fact that we do have agency and this opportunity presented by our lives to begin again in each moment. And to act with intention, to act in ways that perhaps might alleviate not only our suffering, but the suffering of others.

[06:00]

So from this place of just kind of pausing, appreciating our own journey here, bringing a little bit of meta, a little bit of loving kindness to whatever places and spaces inside us might need a little bit of extra love. From that place, it seems to me, this is a place, if any, to begin thinking about what might a beloved community look like or how does it look to each of us in our own experience right now? What does that idea or ideal represent to us? And so I'll say a few words about some of the research and some of what I have been learning about what it has meant to others who've used that term. Really, the question is, what does it mean to us? What does it mean to you in your own life, your own relationships, your own sangha, this sangha, the world sangha, unified by our aspirations to live with some honor and support by the Dharma?

[07:16]

So beloved community is this concept that was in a way made famous by Martin Luther King Jr. He certainly spoke about it in his life and certainly inspired reflection on the beloved community as what might result from a way of being that would be committed to nonviolence. And although Martin Luther King is often one of the first people whose name will come up when we think about this idea, it is interesting to note that he didn't develop this term in the sense that there were others who had used it before him, including Dr. Josiah Royce, professor of philosophy at Harvard, who... in the early days of the 20th century leading up to World War I, actually having been born out in California, in Grass Valley, California, born in a small, unassuming family, but became Dr. Royce, became a professor of philosophy at Harvard.

[08:31]

He wrote a book called The Problem of Christianity, right? He was a scholar of Christianity, but he was somehow struck by the need or something, the sense of there's something missing. about the dominant expressions of Christianity at the time. Again, we're talking about the early 1900s. And he argued for this concept, this idea of a beloved community as an antidote to what seemed to be missing in Christianity at the time, actually. And in his mind, beloved community meant this sort of inclusive, all-embracing community. based on love, yes, but also based on a kind of loyalty. I should say Dr. Royce was not so much a proponent necessarily of, well, certainly not a kind of nonviolence that meant he was necessarily anti-war, right? So just to say that people have inhabited this idea of the love community in different ways, but certainly emphasizing this idea that we owe each other a kind of

[09:44]

commitment to enacting inclusive, embracing, loving community and a kind of loyalty to one another so that we could travel with each other through challenges. So this idea of beloved community then was picked up on by in the middle, the 1930s, 40s, moving toward the middle of the 20th century by the African-American theologian Howard Thurman. And some of you may know Howard Thurman. How many of you know Howard Thurman? Yeah, some good. Some of you may know his Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, which was founded here in San Francisco, still in existence here, over, I guess, in Russian Hill, Larkin Street, near the Broadway, I guess, tunnel. And Reverend Thurman, picked up on this idea of beloved community.

[10:45]

He infused it, though, with a call toward racial justice and reconciliation. So whereas Dr. Voice, again, was emphasizing a kind of almost aspiration for a universal kind of appreciation, which would not necessarily be hostile to the idea of racial reconciliation, certainly as a white scholar at the time, at a time when white supremacy was still quite a dominant feature, we certainly can't assume that his particular conception was all about racial equity and equality, but Howard Thurman certainly was. So this idea then of reflecting on... a notion of beloved community that really would not only include all of us, but would have a kind of a robust, courageous capacity to turn toward and, you know, meet, not be sort of blind to the suffering, what we sometimes in the social justice field will call surplus suffering.

[12:03]

that can result from these social practices and ways of being. And so we know how much pain, suffering, violence, terror, humiliation, degradation, all of that sort of part of what it meant to, what it means still to live in a world in which white supremacy is being embraced, enacted. And so I'm really mindful of this idea that we can have these concepts and we still struggle with this, I think, today. The challenge to infuse abstract principles and ideas with a kind of ability to touch the ground and actually challenge ourselves to turn toward the difficulty, to have the uncomfortable insight, to engage courageously with that which is present, but makes people uncomfortable to acknowledge, let alone to try and transform.

[13:22]

And so this was the kind of person Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman was, who some of you may know he was, also the first Black civil rights scholar, activist, preacher, teacher to visit Gandhi. And so it was from his travels to India, his conversations with students there, with the practitioners there, with Gandhiji, that he, Dr. Thurman, was deeply inspired by the sort of transformative potential, the spiritually transformative potential, of this idea of beloved community as a means of capturing how we see our efforts toward racial justice and racial equity as spiritual work, as potentially transformative for all of us, knowing that we're all harmed by these policies and practices.

[14:26]

No one escapes, right, without being wounded. by practices of oppression, even if the specific targets are supposedly not us. So whether we're talking about the practices of oppression that run along the discourse of homophobia, of transphobia, of white supremacy, of misogyny, we're all wounded. In a certain sense, they all inter-are. And so the deep question for all of us as we think about how working toward justice might manifest as spiritually transformative for us, no matter what our background. The question really is, what is the particular work for us? Because each of us will have very different work to do and each of us will be...

[15:26]

working with different kinds of wounds. This is not to say that our wounds are in any ways the same or necessarily equivalent, but it is to say we all might see our practices as capable of helping us heal the particular ways that we, our loved ones, our families, our communities, our world have been torn asunder, have been degraded, have suffered as a result of oppression. Gandhi coined the term satyagraha, this idea to capture the notion of the spiritually transformative power of social change. And this idea, this satyagraha, was something that Howard Thurman was also very moved by.

[16:29]

And so it was from that experience and, of course, his own experience growing up in Florida in the early 20th century, highly segregated, again, infused with that kind of brutal white supremacy that made a black man like Howard Thurman vulnerable, just as it can make any of us who go against the stretches of white supremacy, especially those of us who... present as black, but really anyone who goes against the strictures can be targeted for violence. We know this. And so Howard Thurman was coming up in a time where he had lived everyday experience with what it meant to suffer as a result of racial injustice. And he was on this deep path of his own personal spiritual transformation and his own efforts to create transformative spiritual and religious communities for others. And so bringing forth this idea of the beloved community and engaging it and infusing it with a commitment to racial reconciliation, a robustness around that, was a gift of Howard Thurman.

[17:42]

And again, I think it's an underappreciated gift to this city in particular because the church he founded literally is right across town. I've spent some time at that church. I often think it would be wonderful if there were more. of the actual appreciation of and spirit of what Dr. Thurman sought to enact really running through our culture. I think it's here. It's sort of part of what makes San Francisco, San Francisco, but it's not always known. It's not even really always appreciated. So, and then of course, Martin Luther King Jr., who was a student of Howard Thurman. He was reportedly known to travel always with the, with copies of Howard Thurman's books with him, including his one book, Jesus and the Disinherited. Martin Luther King was also inspired, of course, by all of these various conceptualizations of this idea of the love community.

[18:42]

But also, for King, he wanted to infuse it even more with the ideal of unconditional brotherly love. known in Greek philosophy as agape, or known by the term agape. So for King, there was this appreciation of this idea as having transformative potential as a fierce support for the hard work of confronting white supremacy and confronting segregation. And Now, mind you, there are many ways that we could say, you know, Dr. King gets too much attention, and there are many ways he, there are things we can point out that weren't a part of his project as much as we would like, equality for women, LGBTQ, et cetera, right? So this is not to say that these were perfect inspirations or articulations of that ideal, and that's where we come in.

[19:49]

This is where we come in. How do we take some of these concepts, these concepts that have infused others, have inspired others, have been a part of the legacy that we've inherited in our time, and then make them our own, expand them, and amplify them at a time when we know there's so much need for greater healing. across all of the lines of real and perceived difference that break our hearts today, across all of the ways that we see unnecessary suffering, poverty, impoverishment, vulnerability to the ravages of climate change that are around us, but disproportionately impacting those who are poor and marginalized by race and culture and language. those who move through the world with disability, the elderly, there are so many different ways that suffering continues unnecessarily and our hearts are broken.

[21:02]

And so how can we, in some sense, pick up the baton, right? Recognize that those who have gone before are part of this broad community of teachers, of advocates, of activists who offered as best they could, but really have left the work of this time for us to do. And I think of that, I think of a couple of years ago, I had the privilege of being invited to South Africa. participate in a conference that was originally meant to be about mindfulness in an African context. You know, one of those beautiful ideas that can come from, you know, westernized sort of educational context. There was a white South African doctor who had studied mindfulness-based stress reduction, and he was keen to bring this idea of mindfulness and social justice into conversation in South Africa.

[22:16]

around his university in Johannesburg. And he started sending out invitations. And the invitations, of course, were mostly going to Western teachers, often who were not of color. And I happened to get one of those invitations, however. And I and others started to kind of amplify the concerns we were having about just for who, right, for whose benefit this conference on mindfulness in the South African context and mindfulness and social justice, who were the beneficiaries intended for that? And suffice to say, without going into great detail, what ended up happening was an opening up to all of the deep wisdom teachings that were available right there in the indigenous communities around us in Johannesburg, in South Africa more broadly, on the continent more broadly. And it ended up being a wonderful engagement, sort of infused all the way through with the teachings of an African spiritual teacher who really inspired us to remember our main job for bringing mindfulness to social justice is to tell people

[23:44]

to help heal the separations, all the kinds of separations, and to remember that we are not the first generation by any means who have struggled to bring kind of a healing heart to this invitation to see more clearly all that we're up against, to see those who are particularly vulnerable more clearly and with more respect than love, but really just to connect those who are particularly vulnerable with everybody so that we start to, again, stitch together the world. And so when I think of this invitation that I feel is being presented to us, this call for us to infuse the concept of beloved community with our own commitments, I think of this image that I hold in my head from that time in South Africa. where we were met at a particular location for the conference and for the retreat and all of that.

[24:45]

But there was a museum kind of, what would we call it, like a display that was meant to represent the long human historical march toward freedom and to represent that there were people from all walks of life and all over the planet who in different ways have helped seed that journey. And so when I talk about these particular spiritual teachers, it really is meant to open up our hearts, our minds to the teachers who inspire us from our own cultures, from our own histories, to see what they may have had in common with the aspirations of those whose words I am amplifying today. And to invite us, again, to think about what's our original medicine for this time. What's the piece that we're meant to add? You know, Martin Luther King Jr., again, bringing in this idea of fierce love that would confront injustice in this time.

[25:54]

And then amplifying that to the degree that Thich Nhat Hanh, from where he practiced Buddhism in Vietnam and in his efforts, heard and was inspired by Martin Luther King, as many of you all know this story, and there's a book called Brothers in the Beloved Community, which really reflects, some of you may be familiar with this, but reflects this journey of connection between Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh, and the way that they both were seeking to amplify this idea of beloved community after King was assassinated. Thich Nhat Hanh reportedly made a promise to himself that he would continue Dr. King's efforts to amplify and to inspire and to cultivate some notion of beloved community. And in 2014, Thich Nhat Hanh reportedly said and shared that he believed in his life he had managed to continue Dr. King's work.

[26:59]

What was he pointing to in particular? Well, that he'd helped... Share the teachings of the Buddha in ways that spread them through what's called mindfulness. Opening up the capacity for these practices to touch and heal. And being courageous about creating places and spaces where people of color could practice. Really inviting engagement with that which might make it hard for everyone to hear the teachings and to be inspired by them. So when we think of the many different, let's say there are different lineages that come together, you might say, to infuse this concept of beloved community. Then, of course, the question is, how does it land in our own hearts? Where do we find ourselves struggling to imagine something called beloved community in a time where it seems like there's not enough love in the world?

[28:03]

I don't know if I'm the only one that sometimes looks around and kind of wonders if we can do much to really meet and transform what seem to be habits and patterns deep within our own culture, our own communities, perhaps in our own hearts, that run fear, that run the kind of practices and policies of separation, hierarchy, and dehumanization that run the notions that, you know, we are somehow fundamentally separate from the planet and therefore owe no responsibility to making adjustments to how we live that might support us in thriving together on a planet where absolutely everything is connected.

[29:05]

So for me, when I think about when I'm having my dark moments and feeling that challenge, I think of the teachings along the lines that I've already noted. I think of people like, oh, Bryan Stevenson. How many of you are familiar with Bryan Stevenson, right? He wrote a book called Just Mercy and the movie was made of his work, but he is a death penalty lawyer. And I, as a law professor in my day job, have spent some time with studying Brian's example. I also happen to have had a chance to meet Brian when I was in law school a million years ago, when Brian himself was a very young advocate against the death penalty lawyer. He came to my university, University of Virginia. He was invited by a friend of mine who was a member of Brian's church.

[30:12]

So they knew each other well. And so I've been a student of Brian and sort of a fellow traveler in this effort to transform justice for really for decades, I would say. But I happened to be present for his speech. at the University of San Francisco in December of this year, where he was being given an award for his efforts to amplify a version of what's called, you know, Kingian nonviolence, right? So this nonviolent tradition, this beloved community tradition. So many people see Bryan Stevenson as, right, in this, on this path of the lineage carriers of what beloved community might look like today and that might inspire us. Brian has been just this tremendous human being really going to the hard place of defending condemned people on death row, fighting to enact whatever kinds of justice.

[31:21]

And he has succeeded in overturning the convictions, the death convictions of more than 100 people. Decades of commitment to just one case at a time, fighting injustice that could lead to the taking of a life unjust. And so, you know, when he speaks about what he's learned, I tend to want to listen. And so he talks about four guidelines. And I see these as guidelines that I want to ponder when I think about how to be... engaged in doing my part to keep this lineage alive. The first is to stay proximate to those who are suffering the most, by which he means stay close to, not be an abstraction, but to actually be with people who are suffering and to be open to suffering right where we are, not just necessarily have this idea that it's out there somewhere, I got to go there, but is it here as well?

[32:30]

And how can we be the kind of people, how can we move through the world in ways that allow us to be a space where truth about suffering, unnecessary suffering, injustice can be spoken? Can we be that space? Can we be proximate to our own suffering? Not deny when we too need help. The second... Suggested by Bryan Stevenson, be aware of and be willing to change the grand narratives, the stories that we have inherited and that we tell each other that reinforce separation. So what are the stories that we've inherited that normalize or make it okay? That, for example, we don't know very much about Howard Thurman's church on the other side of town or. That. that the effort to upend democracy, right, is happening in real ways and impacting us already, impacting Black communities already.

[33:42]

How do we notice the stories that normalize these things, that normalize what's happening in Florida around this sort of... slow and not always slow march toward greater fascism or authoritarianism or, again, the vulnerability against those who are most vulnerable, whether they be because they are sex orientation, minoritized folks or otherwise. So we have to figure out the ways that we ourselves have imbibed stories that make it okay. to separate ourselves between us and the so-called other. Whether it's an immigrant or a person who doesn't look like us, what are those stories and how do we change them? How do we change them? How do we meet each other in ways that allow us to change them? So the third suggestion by Brian is despite the challenge sometimes of being proximate to the suffering and really meeting the stories that would normalize separation,

[34:50]

which can be hard to do. These things can be hard to do. He nevertheless counsels us to remain hopeful. We have to cultivate hope. And that's where, you know, sort of leaning into joy, leaning into loving kindness, practicing equanimity and compassion, the Brahma Viharas. We, you know, we cannot miss an opportunity. To be inspired by the teachings of metta, of loving kindness as an antidote to all that I'm talking about here. So I think of practicing with the Brahma Viharas as one of the ways that I cultivate hope and keep my heart from feeling the temptation of despair. But what is it like for you? What are some of the things that we do? can do to remain hopeful?

[35:51]

How can we meet each other in ways that help us remain hopeful? And how can we help cultivate, again, practices that help us find hope on dark days? This kind of ability is something that African Americans have had to do. women of all different stripes and backgrounds have had to do. All of us as human beings, our cultures in some way, know something about cultivating hope in dark times. And so I think when I hear Brian speak of it, it really invites me back to this sort of very humble invitation to look closely at my own experience, the experience of what I so-called my people growing up in the South in North Carolina. There's a lot of Christian, spiritual songs, rhythm blues songs, you know, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, right?

[36:54]

And there's this sort of deep cultural manifestation of this sort of ability to, as my grandmother would say, make a way out of no way. Find the hope, even in what appears to be hopeless. And do it with joy. and with dance, and with love. So these are the things that I think about when I think about how do we cultivate the capacity to remain hopeful. What comes up for you? And then fourth, how can we be willing to cultivate capacity to actually do things that are inconvenient, uncomfortable, and may not win us friends at the moment, right? Or may make some of our close associates uncomfortable. How can we cultivate that ability to keep doing those things that disrupt in service of, as Martin Luther King would say when speaking about what justice was, justice is love, correcting that which stands against love.

[38:01]

So how can we then cultivate the willingness to do the inconvenient things that make love real, that challenge unloving behavior and practices in our midst? So those are what I think of, again, all of those teachers and, of course, the Buddhist teachings reminding us that all of his teachings. were meant to disrupt us from patterns and habits around who matters and who didn't. Disrupting notions of caste privilege associated with being a Brahmin of birth, right? The Buddha. Ask not of birth, but ask of conduct, right? Fire is indeed produced from any wood. A resolute sage, though from low family, is a thoroughbred restrained by a sense of shame, by a sense of ability to begin again and do better. So ask not of birth, but ask of conduct. This is very similar to King's aspiration to be judged by content of character, not color of skin.

[39:11]

So again, there's so many inspirations, I would say, to each of us. And the question is, what is the seed of the thread that might inspire your own more courageous engagement? around enacting beloved community. As I bring these remarks to a close, I just want to say that one of the things that I've been asked to do at the University of San Francisco right now is help cultivate a space where we can bring a contemplative approach to law and ethics more to the fore. And of course, that means that I'm engaged in this very traditional discipline of law. which has these very abstract notions of justice and of ethics and a little code over here and a low floor, a low bar, right? Lawyers can do all kinds of different things without worrying a whole lot necessarily about running afoul of these ideas of ethics. And so how to bring forth this quality of this loving care that I'm talking about here in a space like law is like what I'm working on in my own life right now.

[40:20]

And again, not easy. against the stream in that space, trying to do that. So we practice, we practice the ability to stay hopeful, to do what we can, to take the steps that we can right where we are and to connect with others when we're feeling alone and separated and needing a bit more like a boost up, right? We find those who might understand a little bit about what we're trying to do and encourage us along the way. I do think whatever we call ethics, whatever we mean by this idea of meeting suffering, with this ability to have love correct, which stands against love. It requires that we be able to see more of what we are trained not to see, that we hold space for complexity more effectively. So we see both this story and that story and help find a bridge between the two. It requires that we try to... disrupt abstract notions of what justice looks like and bring people down to the ground with a commitment to acting, as one scholar said, with senseless kindness.

[41:31]

In other words, without having to justify in the moment, but to know that we're responsible to each other, to try to alleviate each other's suffering and to be kind in the moments, to have that infinite ability to say, how can I help? This is the sort of much more sort of simple, humble way of thinking about what ethics might look like that I am trying to cultivate at this space and place where I work at the University of San Francisco School of Law. How can we bring kindness into the work that we do as lawyers, as law students, as members of community, as colleagues? And to me, mindfulness and this sort of engaged mindfulness that I've been alluding to, that is the legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh's work that I see in Martin Luther King's work, in Gandhi's, etc. This helps facilitate developing that capacity to disrupt what might get in the way for me of bringing a kind of a love in action right where I happen to find myself.

[42:42]

So thank you all for taking the time today to reflect with me in this sort of free-flowing way on this idea or ideal of beloved community and to inquire what might be our own particular kind of call, calling. What curriculum do each of us, might each of us engage? to be better able to do our part to bring about beloved community. And I'm going to close by quoting Gian Susan Postel, someone whose teachings I did not know, but I came across this phrase in a recent article written by Barbara O'Brien, in which this teacher suggested, that we go forth with infinite kindness to the past, infinite kindness.

[43:48]

And to me, that means any moment that we're here, if we can bring the kindness in relationship to how we think about the past, let's try to do that. Even though that's very difficult when we think about a past that infuse this oppression at every turn. Can we bring kindness to our holding of it as best we can? Can we bring infinite service to the present? We do have responsibility. We have inherited this life, this precious life. Can we bring infinite service? And can we bring infinite responsibility, again, to go to that word, to the future? So with this hope and wish that these words in some way may be a benefit, whether seen or unseen, I thank you all for that. being here with me in this reflection today. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[44:49]

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.

[45:09]

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