Happy Saturday. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center Beginner's Mind Temple. This weekend we're celebrating Pride. And I'm so happy to have Dr. Grace Damond here to speak with us. She was a resident at Green Gold's Farm for many years. And I really look forward to seeing what we have to experience in the Dharma together. Let's start with the opening chant. The text for which you can find in the chat, if you'd like. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[01:03]

Hello, everybody. My name is Grace Stammen. My name is Grace Stammen. I was a resident at Green Gulch Farm. for about 27 years. And now I live at the Redwoods, which is a senior living facility in Mill Valley, California. I'm very grateful to Mary Stair, the head of practice, who invited me to speak long ago. Who would have ever known that today being Gay Pride Day is unlike anything other Gay Pride Day. That's why I put the flag behind me. Anyway, there's no parade, but we're going to have a parade, okay? I no longer have the light, airy feeling which I had when I began working on this talk. That light feeling was filled by fond memories, political certainty, and that's always dangerous.

[02:19]

Certainty, certainty. I awoke yesterday feeling fear. My fear is for you who live and work. at Zen Center, and for all the people who live and work at the Redwoods. My fear is having to give solicited advice on the COVID crisis. So I come to you not so confident, but unknowing. And isn't that the way we always should be? Always are and always should be. I'll begin with the political reality, which gives me hope at this point. I'll then move to my Buddhist practices, which are much more elusive and complex. And they've been helped way a lot by my connection with people I love and who have fed me on this topic. And I'm nurtured by transmission beyond words, beyond picking and choosing, beyond providing answers, but letting me find it.

[03:25]

my own questions, forcing me to find my own answers. Isn't that what's being asked of all of us today? In any case, I hope to share some of my process to provide openings for all of you. That is my hope. Many years ago, I spent this day on the back of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. It was 1,000cc, and it had a great, great... beautiful picture of a feather painted on the otherwise austere silver gas tank. My lover also had the same feather tattooed on her foot. She was always part of the Dykes on Bikes flortilla, and it was so much fun. Gay men and lesbians were walking hand in hand, barely clad. It was hot as Hades, as I remember. It was before HIV had hit. And life was very good for those of us who were coming out.

[04:29]

It was a real sense of relief to be among those like ourselves and a real sense of being and coming home. After college, years before, I had been in the East Coast working on Mayor Lindsey's re-election campaign. And I was living in the Westfield. It was 1969. And I just happened to live three doors down from Stonewall. So on that day, which is actually tomorrow, June 28th, 1969, began the gay rights movement formally in the United States. I didn't exactly participate, but I certainly watched from near up, see what was going on, a little history. Stonewall was not exactly a bar, more it was a gay club.

[05:30]

They didn't have a license to sell liquor. So what they would do is they would stuff an envelope full of money each week. Police would come and collect it because of course they were serving liquor without a license. It was called Gayola. They also, because it was owned by the mafia, the mafia decided quickly on that might be worth blackmailing some of the gay, wealthy men from Wall Street who frequented that facility. Up to that night, 1969, they'd always had ample opportunity to know the police raids were happening, meaning the police would always tell them, look, there's going to be a raid early in the evening. We'll just take your liquor. We'll put it in one of the squad cars. Another squad will come and take off a few citizens, but it'll all be back to normal within half an hour.

[06:32]

Anyway, on that particular night, somebody messed up. Either they forgot to pay them off or whatever. The mafia got irritated because they weren't making any money, so they refused to pay the police off. They were making a lot of money, blackmailing, gay, white. So they came to Stonewall about 2 a.m. And by that point, it being a hot night, a big crowd had gathered outside once they emptied out Stonewall. And somebody began singing We Shall Overcome. It was very peaceful initially. I remember Bob Dylan was there. Dave Van Wonk was there. He was a big time in the West Village. Norman Mailer was there. et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, one day turned to three days of very fierce fight.

[07:34]

So that's why we celebrate Gay Pride Day at the end of June every year, because the first Gay Pride celebration was in 1970 in San Francisco, New York. Hence, it's the 50th Gay Pride Day today. It all got rather confusing when the lesbian said very loudly that she was being carried to police car. You guys, get up and do something. And then everybody did something. So the fighting continued. But thinking back on that time, that was the mid-70s. The first LGBTQ, not Q then. was developed in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Mike Douglas went on television saying American people thought that homosexuality was the biggest underminer of public good, way above adultery, abortion, or prostitution.

[08:51]

In 1978, Harvey Milt was elected as the first openly elected gay supervisor, and he was inaugurated in January of 1978. A deep political issue was dividing America at that time because locally, gays had won a lot of concessions. But Anita Bryant was the representative of the rollback effort. That rollback effort in San Francisco took the form of Prop 6 or the Briggs Initiative, which would have made it illegal for any openly gay, lesbian, gay teacher, teacher's aide, counselor, administrator, or people supporting gay rights to teach in public school. We all thought it was going to pass. So that's how radically conservative we were at that point, 1978.

[09:54]

In any case, Harvey Milk was a big proponent of the anti-Brig initiative. He spoke throughout the country. The Briggs initiative was defeated in November of 1978. Three weeks later, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by another member of the Board of Supervisors, Dan White. I can remember that night in 1978, 30,000 people walked by candlelight silently from the Castro down Market Street to City Hall. It was wonderful. It was like no other event I'd ever experienced except maybe because I was a teenager then, Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech in Washington, D.C. In any case, the worst riot ever in the gay movement happened several days later, several months later, when Harvey Milk's, no, when Dan White's verdict was announced.

[11:06]

1981 saw the first publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the Bible to those of us doctors, which said it named a disease that many gay men, both Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, I think. It was called Acquired Immunodocus Syndrome, and thus it birthed the name AIDS. Ryan White, a child himself, became the poster child for the AIDS epidemic in 1984. He'd gotten AIDS through faulty transfusion. So by the mid-1980s, AIDS was running ramped through San Francisco and was particularly powerful and left many of us with no idea as to what to expect, what caused it, what has happened, whether it would ever end, what we were supposed to do, what we could do in providing something that would help them.

[12:16]

Does this sound familiar to people? So that's where we are today. I'm struck personally by how little my gay identity matters or feels relevant at this point. I have a female partner and had one for about 45 years. And yet, and yet it feels very odd to consider myself gay. I went through all the torture, turmoil, coming out, losing advantages, being discriminated against precisely because I was gay. And I'm going to add, I suffered not at all, very little. But at 73, my penchant for self-definition is way down on the totem pole of my favorite activities. But the history of the gay movement and what it's been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time is absolutely phenomenal.

[13:18]

When you consider it, who had ever thought 10 years ago? that LGBTQ people would have job protection, whoever thought 20 years ago that gay people would be able and encouraged to marry one another, whoever thought Anderson Cooper would be on the cover of People magazine saying he was so happy because he never thought he could adopt or have a gay child. I read a koan recently, which may or may not have much to do with the topic at hand, but it certainly has grabbed me. It's called Grindstone Lu. Zen koans, I'm sure you all know, are considered teaching devices in which a student and a teacher engage in some kind of combat about some facet of reality, which is either understood or not understood by either one or both of them.

[14:29]

They're very relational. That's what I can say. They're very relational. And it requires at least two people together exploring the nature of reality. So this is the case. Case 60. Iron grinder Luke went to Guishan and said, Guishan said, old cow, you come. The iron grinder said, tomorrow I'm Tayshawn. There's a big, decent gathering. Are you going to teach it? Guishan lay down, sprawled out. The iron grinder immediately left. What does that mean? It helps to understand the grindstone, the iron grinder of Lu. It's one of the few women mentioned specifically in the Book of Serenity. She's never described as a woman with breasts and or children. There are few defining marks that accompany her. She was a student of Guishan, who himself had 50 to 60 transmitted disciples.

[15:37]

So he was a big teacher. She apparently was head of the lot. She also was a powerful teacher in her own right, had a reputation being a fierce Dharma combatant. She would chew moments up and spit them out. Hence, iron grinder. She lived close to her teacher. So what's really going on here? Also, I might add that this feast that she asked her teacher, are you going to, was 600 miles away. And this is the year 843 AD. So how in the hell was he possibly going to get there? In other words, is this just a simple question? What does it mean? She asks a question. He sprawls out. She leaves. There's a dance going on here. A wordless dance. Familiar and oh so intimate.

[16:38]

She is a female. He's a male. She is a student. He is a teacher. She is a teacher. He is a student. I find this kind of intimacy and dance so appealing in this particular time. This koan. took several of my self-clinging identities, student, woman, man, teacher, and moved them to the side. I'll explain later exactly what did that. I believe that these times are so important, and identities such as these are exactly what we all have to work with. And I do believe that Buddhism has so much to offer right now, and it's been so helpful in keeping my hope alive. that things really can't do change, and that we really are capable of change. Mary Stairs recently conducted a practice period, which I participated in from afar, based on the Lojong training, the 59 Minds slogan.

[17:48]

They are a very specific way and a clear path, train the mind. The end result is to develop Bodhicitta. Or love and compassion. Mind taming. Taming is a Hinayana discipline. Which is involved in taming the mind. And it comes from sitting Zazen. Comes from practice as we know it. Once the mind is tamed. We can move on to the Mahaya. On a practice of actual mind training. Lojong is one of those training systems. The first slogan in mind training is train in the preliminaries. For me, the preliminaries include and are founded on the Four Noble Truths. So let's revisit them. I'm going to read them to you because I love this particular version, which is done by the Dalila and Vicky Bodhi.

[18:50]

The first noble truth is that of suffering. Birth is true suffering. Aging is suffering. Illness is suffering. Death is suffering. Union with what is displeasing is suffering. Separation from what is pleasing is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering. The second noble truth, the origin or cause of suffering, is this. It is this craving thirst for sense pleasures, passionate greed, and wanting to extinguish what we dislike. The third noble truth. which is called the cessation of suffering, is this. It is the complete cessation of that very craving, relinquishing, liberating, and attaching oneself from it. And the fourth noble truth is the path of cessation of suffering is the eightfold path and nothing else. Namely, right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort.

[19:58]

like mindfulness and concentration. The methodology of training the mind is what drew me to Buddhism and has become my medicine for treating my self-cleaning that leads to unhappiness, racism, violence, and climate change, to name a few. These are the issues that we are all being asked to deal with at this particular time. How can we train the mind? Lozhong training with 59 slogans is one means. Within Zen Center, we practice an additional means. We sit in the middle of the flame and we vow to save all sensitive beings. Can we use our minds to train ourselves out of these dilemmas? I believe we can in many ways. How you answer this question is going to fuel you with either hope or deep sorrow and regret.

[21:03]

I do feel that change is possible, that by looking deeply inward, I and we are going to be able to affect that kind of change which can lead to a different world. The components of that change, as Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and Tibetan Buddhist, said are number one awareness. Number two, connection. Number three, insight into our repeat stories. We construct about ourselves. Number four, sense of purpose. I can't help this. I'm fascinated by brain biochemistry for my many years as a physician. But as Davidson points out, the brain is very plastic. And the data is in. The literature is there. And change. It is possible. It does take place. And it doesn't take much time. It certainly takes the belief and faith that change is possible, which for we as Buddhists shouldn't be difficult because change is inevitable.

[22:11]

And isn't it radical and permanent that we're seeing everywhere we look these days? And most of all, it takes practice, which means doing it day after day after day. And what is it? Good question. For me, it is living by that vow with awareness and the intention to save all sentient beings. We all exhibit and participate in two levels of reality, sometimes simultaneously, often without awareness. At the level of conventional reality, for example, I am a woman, a doctor. disabled person, mother, gay Buddhist. I am also white privileged and have raised a biracial child and been grandmother to several biracial children and have caused harm in those important relationships by not investigating fully race.

[23:18]

I did take my lesbian identity seriously at one point. And what happened to change that? First of all, we had the AIDS epidemic, which decimated most of San Francisco. I was a young doctor in training at that time, and I remember running the beta breakers. I had no business doing it. I had not put my running shoes on for two years. I was 35. I'd been up all night. But nonetheless, I did it because I thought I was invincible. And, of course, I wasn't. So at Heartbreak Hill, which is almost at the beginning of the race, I started crying. And I thought, there's no way I can do this. There's no way I can finish. And I noticed a young man running beside me. He said, you can do it. I'll pace you. Just I'll pace you. Breathe. Breathe. I'll pace you. And he did and I did.

[24:21]

And I finished the race. I never should have. And lo and behold, he was admitted to my service in the emergency room two weeks later. From there, he went to the ICU and he died several weeks after that. He had AIDS undiagnosed and he died of complications of AIDS. That kind of thing would not happen today. It was up close in person and therefore became For me, universal. When we started the AIDS unit at Laguna Honda in 1990 for persons infected with HIV in San Francisco, we would admit people about 30 a month and about a third of them would die. We never knew who. So we signed over a thousand deaths certificate in three years. That doesn't happen today. We're almost at zero new cases. In San Francisco, I think for the year 2019, there were 197 new cases.

[25:30]

But at the height of the epidemic, by the end of 2004, there were 940,000 cases. And there were 529,000 deaths. That's a big change. Yes, it happens in Black America. Yes, it happens in South Africa. Yes, it happens. And it does not happen in San Francisco. And that's all about racial inequality, inequality of access to health care. So things have changed. We are weathering this earlier epidemic. We are learning to manage it as a chronic disease, at least here. I have a daughter who was born with it. She's now 27 years old. Life expectancy was about two months when she was born. She's 27 and 25. And as a gay woman, I lived at the beginning of the gay identify movements within San Francisco.

[26:36]

Prop 6, Harvey Milk's election and death, the beginning of the aid foundation, the beginning of the women's movement, the beginning of the women's foundation, beginning of domestic violence program. We lived through the era of the quilt movement, which, like today, involved saying people's names directly. I saw a sign last week at the corner that said, say his name, say her name. We all have said George Floyd, George Floyd. At the beginning of the struggle against the Defense of Marriage Act in 2005, it seemed it would be impossible for gays to ever form legitimate family structures. Of course, we were already doing it, but to have societal and cultural support, I never thought that was going to be possible.

[27:36]

And on the one hand, Boo and I never could have adopted and raised Sabrina had the tenor of the time not changed. If you want to see a history... of this, ABC did a very good series presented about two years ago called When We Rise. It has a lot of local heroes and heroines. It gives a very good sense of this period in history in San Francisco. In any event, the Supreme Court struck down the dome in 2015, and then ever since, in the United States, life has been very different. for gay families, and it will be different forevermore. And it happened relatively quickly, all things considered. Why was that true? Why could we fight effectively for marriage equality and still haven't been able to pass the ERA, much less acknowledge and deal effectively with institution and systemic racism?

[28:43]

Another question, is it because white men We're so active in the gay movement. Who knows? What we do need to know is that change is possible. Even when we don't understand all of the why, I certainly believe that change is possible. I had the great fortune to meet His Holiness, the Dalila, on several occasions. And my visceral experience of him is that he's a very ordinary human being. just like you and me. But what he, and he has truly suffered, but what he has managed to do is to deal with and practice with the contents of his mind, thoughts, and deeds so that he doesn't create as many problems as most of us do. This is mind practice and training. So how does this mind training happen? That is a very simple and complex question.

[29:45]

At the same time, first it involves the intention or commitment to change. We chant at the end of this talk, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. By repetition, that becomes embedded in our brain. It's like the Lojong slogans in Mary's teaching about them. Repetition helps. I learned as a young mother, that to get my child to eat broccoli, theoretically I was supposed to introduce it 15 times. The book said 15 trials was the magic number to get the brain to encode the change from dislike to like. If you try to get kids to eat vegetable by the 15th time, it may happen. In Sabrina's case, it didn't. But she did come to love Brussels sprouts. salad, and wasabi peas, all of which are green.

[30:46]

Repetition of this behavior helps strengthen the connections between various neurons. And what we say in medicine is neurons that wire together, wire together, which means every time one of those neurons is challenged, it goes down the same pathway, thus strengthening that particular pathway. This is in part why we sit. Each time we hit the wall of pain and survive it, either by moving or not, we learn something else. We learn that everything really does change. Hell one moment becomes bliss the next. And the Lojong slogans which Mary introduced us to are a very specific way to train the mind. The end result is to develop more compassion. So what exactly is compassion? Good question.

[31:49]

I would say that compassion is quite different from goodness alone. It functions freely without any sense of separation between the doer and the thing that is done. If someone falls, you pick them up. It's the same intimacy which there is no knowing. There's no separation. It comes out of wisdom. Wisdom is the realization of no separation. Compassion is the activity that comes out of this realization. So it's different from doing good in that it's free. I am hopeful perhaps because I'm of a different era. I am 73 years old and what I'm searching for is a way to to live and understand being myself at 73. Perhaps that's why Grindstone Lou is so appealing. She takes on separateness and identity with such a lack of separateness and identity.

[32:55]

She doesn't expect her teacher to save her. She has been there. She has traveled. She has come and gone. There's obviously a very playful, compassionate relationship between these two. When he lies down on the ground, she walks away. There really isn't anything more for her to do. She's not walking away in disgust or distress. She just walks away. He calls her old cow. Interesting. Which becomes a term of endearment and not something special. Relationships are about coming and going. Aren't they about mirroring one another completely and not getting lost in words? It's a transmission beyond transmission. So as I give this talk today, I think whatever way we can be beacons to people, let's do it.

[33:56]

It's really important to keep questioning, keep asking, who are we? What is our deepest intention? Especially what is being asked of us? But ask yourself and answer yourself. That's what Zazen is all about. Be the master of yourself. The answer is within the questions themselves. The answer is within you, not in some abstraction or some doctrine, but in this very life itself. I'm remembering back to those days, on the back of the early bigots and dykes on bikes, that felt very much that way. Then there were the frightening times with Harvey Milk and AIDS epidemic. And finally, there was the time of recognition based on speaking people's names, i.e. sewing them on quilt square and the shared recognition that virtually everyone came to that someone in their family was represented on that quilt.

[35:03]

That same kind of familial recognition led to Many straight people acknowledging that love should win and love did win. And same-sex couples were given the same opportunity to create family within social and cultural support. My family of origin has a Friday night Zoom meeting and has done that totally during this pandemic. All of the siblings, all of our children, co-parents of those siblings, have met for an hour every Friday night, sometimes to play a game, sometimes to complain, sometimes it's boring, but I can't remember a time when we've been as connected. Who sent out a YouTube link that featured Ibram Kendi, who wrote the book, How to Be an Antiracist. And last week, my brother-in-law raised the question to the group,

[36:08]

How are you dealing with your racist feeling? How are you dealing with institutional racism? And, you know, beside the fact that I have a niece who's living in Minneapolis, to a person, my siblings were totally astounding. My brother is a blues musician who's played with African-Americans for his whole life, said, I feel so sad. I haven't gotten it. I never got it. I thought I got it. I'm just beginning to realize that I haven't gotten it. Maybe I'm just beginning to get it. Maybe not. But I'm so sorry. I haven't gotten it. To a person, sorrow was so palpable in our family. And it wasn't sorrow for how we treated blacks or people of color. It was mostly sorrow for ourselves and sorrow for the whole world, that this was the situation we're all going to deal with for the rest of our lives.

[37:15]

And that kind of compassion, that kind of sorrow, can I believe, lead to compassion, which is taking up the Bodhisattva. I firmly believe that love once again can win. I'm grateful that I have that belief and faith in the power of change. I've watched his holiness and felt keenly a love permanates everything and everyone in his around. Being with him is like being on the receiving end, constant Tonglong practice. For me, the vow that we take at the end of this lecture is the center point of my life. Beings are numberless. I've got to save them. A big order. But, and I feel so grateful. that I have this order gives me a sense of purpose and a roadmap how to travel in these very uncertain times. As we navigate these seemingly impossible waters of hatred, institutional racism, and deadly disease in climate change, I would hope that all of us would see the transmission without words.

[38:33]

which gives us hope. There was some way that running the beta breaker, because it was so intensely and profoundly personal, changed the way I dealt with the AIDS epidemic from that point forward. There is some way in which my having been patient for over a year has really changed the way I practice medicine. There is some way in which everybody saying I thought I got it But I'm only now beginning to see that is a transmission. It may change the way we behave. And then there's something about that transmission that occurred in that nine-minute tape that the brave young woman made holding her iPhone, directing it right at the officer's face. It transmitted his behavior in a way that's not erasable. It's beyond words.

[39:34]

It's inescapable and beyond the confusion that words can impose. I have hope because so much has changed that day since I rode with dykes on bikes 48 years ago. I never would have expected the change. It was the dependent co-arising of compassion fueled by many people, many agendas, and no particular commander. It did not happen without great cost. And the same thing is happening now and can happen now. I trust the upwelling from the bottom, from the young people. I believe in Buddhism. I believe in the power of change through my Buddhist practice. It has worked for me. Love change demands more compassion. that most of us can muster in a day, much less in a lifetime.

[40:36]

Real change starts right here with us. Thank heavens there are role models in my life, and there are examples in my life. The Dalai Lama gives me hope in this practice. The arc of history toward moral justice gives me hope in the political realm. And Grindstone Liu, with her light touch and complete sureness, makes it almost seem fun. This is not a time that any of us can afford to be complacent. We have to dedicate ourselves to engagement, both with ourselves and the community at large. That engagement must be founded on looking deeply within our own minds and body and weeding out the weeds, thoughts, words, and action. We can do it. And hopefully we will do it. We may not see them, but hopefully our children will see the fruits of our efforts.

[41:39]

As Suzuki Roshi said, if you are patient enough, if you are strong enough to accept your problems, then you can sit calmly and peacefully trusting Buddha and trusting your own being. So the only way is to trust Buddha and to trust your own being. That is what we call Zen. This is part of the reason why I'm so grateful to Zen Center. Thank you all very much. Thank you so much, Grace. We have just over 20 minutes for further discussion. First, we can do the closing chant, the text for which should... appear here in just a moment and then we can start talking. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[42:52]

Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. It's just about 20 minutes available. If you would like to ask a question or offer a comment, you can open the participants pane and find the raise hand button. And our host can unmute you. Miguel. Good morning, Grace. Thank you very, very much for your talk. I really appreciate what you said, and it puts the gay, at least for me, the gay rights movement and the current Black Lives Matter movement on parallel tracks, kind of showing me where the struggles are.

[44:11]

It's been very difficult to feel hopeful. these last couple of months only because I keep seeing what I think is just constantly sliding back, a very strong push back from, I can't even describe from what, but it just feels suffocating. I watch a lot of my friends, ironically is watching my friends in the LGBTQ community who are people of color struggle twice as hard to be accepted in mainstream society as well as LGBTQ culture. And at the same time, too, I'm seeing, again, within my family, a lot of clash between the much older generation and the much younger generation. Like my generation in the middle pretty much shrugging their shoulders and trying to figure out what we're going to do next. Oh, yeah. I guess what I want to ask is how do you perceive this hope that comes from mind training?

[45:31]

I know that it's not the standard Hallmark card hope that I can get at the street corner, but what does this feel like just on the off chance that I'm probably feeling it right now and just not knowing it? Good question. Great question. Thank you. It comes from history, from your own history. Look and see what advantage there is of being hopeless. Look and see what advantage there is from feeling hopeful. Look at various points in your life in which you didn't know, but you thought you knew what was happening. I think most of us think that we know all the time exactly what's happening. We don't. That was why I was saying about the gay movement. Who would have thought 10 years ago that gay, that LBGQT people would be protected in their work. I didn't think that two weeks ago.

[46:33]

Thank you very much. Yeah. That's happened. Yeah. It's just like very, very recently watching my friends struggle with the stud closed here in San Francisco, which is one of the. And part of me feels that just, I guess, real estate ennui. I grew up in Los Angeles where like the oldest building is maybe 10 years old now, where institutions are just kind of like flushed and then everything's repaved and then flushed and repaved over and over again. But then I also see the hard wound that this community is feeling. And I want to give them something. And sometimes I think that, like, sometimes I think it's best if I just, you know, be very, very quiet and just sit there and let's talk. Miguel, can you give them your practice?

[47:36]

Yes. Yes, I can. Great. Thank you, Miguel. Terry. Yeah, I'm on mute. Okay. I had lived through all the same San Francisco history you lived through as an out lesbian, but your stories around the Stonewall Uprising were all news to me, and I was very grateful for them. Excuse me, my poodles. You've got to get out of here, guys. Stop it. I'm very sorry.

[48:40]

My poodles started wrestling with each other. I was disturbed that your lesbian identity is not important to you anymore because this is a time when we are threatened with the loss of that identity. It's become... really obscured and looked down on and, you know, dissolved into the broader queer thing, which many of us lesbians don't want. So I'd like to ask if you could speak more about that, why being a lesbian is not important to you anymore. Thank you, Terry, for that question. I think it's because being anything particular, It's not so important to me these days. I've been a mother, a gay person, a Buddhist, a doctor, all of those things.

[49:46]

I was able-bodied at one point. They've all gone. And I'm left with who I'm left with. And somehow having an identity like that is not so meaningful for me. That's only my answer to your question. I'm much more interested in how I can... What can I do to help? And I'm not sure that taking on any one of those identities for me is particularly useful in terms of my helping. But I'm not saying that you're wrong to do it. Well, I think it would help lesbians for you to take on a lesbian. To just own it. Just own it because it has been your life. I'm disturbed. at this moment in history that you turn your back on that identity? Well, I don't necessarily, but it's just not that important, like I said.

[50:48]

And I think there was a movie made about our family. I mean, I probably had more notoriety as a lesbian than probably anybody in this chat room today. So I don't feel like... That's something that I've turned my back on. I'm just saying that for me, it's not so important. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Hi. Hi, Grace. Good morning. Thank you for your talk. Thank you for being here. I would like to talk to you about the rainbow. I would like to ask you about this very important symbol in gay LGBTQI community, especially in the context of the tearing down of statues and memorials happening around the country.

[51:49]

We've all heard a million jokes about the rainbow. For me, one of them is that, you know, the rainbow... the purple stripe belongs to the lesbians and the rest of it belongs to our gay brothers. And I've certainly heard, and I'm sure you've heard, people of color in the gay and lesbian community who feel like not necessarily held by the rainbow symbol. And I'm wondering, you know, if this could be a really cool time for our community to adopt the... expanded rainbow, the one that has more stripes, the one that includes or makes like a symbolic statement of inclusion. And I'm sure, and I'm curious about what you think about that, what you feel about that, whether or not you could, whether or not maybe you agree with me that this would be a way for us to stand together to make our rainbow a little bit bigger.

[52:56]

and to start using that symbol. Thank you. I had no idea, and I have no idea about the history, even of the pride flag. I just put it up there because we weren't getting to March today. And I think every point that you brought up is great. And if you would educate me about the flag, I would be ever so grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Grace. I am grateful to you for showing this really meaningful symbol to us as the background of your talk. And I am hopeful. I'm hopeful because there is a symbol that is the pride flag that includes black and brown stripes that is being displayed in some communities around the country. I've seen it here in San Francisco. Um, at some of our bar, you know, it's a Julie, like Jolians, they've got that up, you know? Um, and, uh, yeah.

[53:56]

And I, I guess I just, I guess it just becomes more of a comment that like, um, I, I think that we as like a San Francisco, LGBTQI Buddhist community, um, can, can participate in, um, this movement nationwide to transform symbols and memorials, um, to, to, um, obliterate any kind of lingering white supremacist ideology and to demand that we stand with symbols that are anti-racist. So, yeah, I guess that's it. Thank you so much for that comment. Thank you. Thank you, Tapido. I saw Carla's hand up a moment ago. I don't see it now. Maybe lost connection. I'll keep an eye out. Other questions and comments now?

[55:02]

Grace, I just, as a comrade in arms through all of that, I just want to appreciate you so much. Your wonderful humor, your wisdom, your kindness, your... Forever, you've been one of the kindest people I've ever known, and your devotion to caring for others. So as your family, extended family, all of us, thank you so much for teaching today. Really grateful. Thank you, Fu. I love you, too. Thank you, Fu. Nancy. Thank you for your talk, Grace. Something that's coming up for me has been coming up the last few days is this idea of allyship to be allies with. And something that kind of has been coming up for me in your talk is when you say, I am all these things,

[56:12]

And yet I'm not all these things. I'm not identifying with any one particular thing. I just want to see actually where I can be of help. So, you know, and then you also talked about, you know, in Ironstone Lou, like that ultimately she just stood on her own, you know? And so I think there's something about how each of us is challenged, as you said, to find our own questions, to answer our own questions, to speak from that place, to be brave enough to be ourself. And I think many of us are challenged with that right now, like not feeling like ourself is enough, like we know enough to be able to speak. I should speak for myself. So I'm just wondering if you could say something about this, this whole idea of like being an ally and how you understand that. Thanks, my dear Nancy.

[57:13]

You're a great ally. Well, I look at, I'm always watching for my marching orders, what I call my marching orders, which have to do, which has to do with which group am I supposed to be an ally to. For example, I'm a doctor, but I'm not working right now. I'm furloughed because I'm old too old. I'm at risk. Am I being an ally to the younger doctors? No. Am I being an ally to the institution? I'm trying. Or being an ally to Zen Center at this point. Or being an ally as a disabled person. I mean, on any given day, I can have various requests or self-movement internally that says, this is what I need to do. I need to be a disabled doctor. Because... There are so few disabled doctors. But, you know, something else comes up that calls for another set of activities.

[58:18]

And I think what I'm limited by in being an ally, which I'm sure is what everybody here is limited by, is where do you put your energy? We've got finite energy. Those of us who are getting older really know that we have finite energy. Where should it go? What is the hierarchy? for us that works well. That's what we all have to find out. That's part of our medicine that makes us effective people. Well, Grace, as you're speaking, what I realize is we all have very limited time. We're being called in many directions. And what I'm hearing you say is step forward where you can. And then I'm kind of, as I saw, like in your shoe ceremony, like you, you kind of oriented each person the way you could, and then you were onto the next one. You know, so I'm appreciating that in you, the way you step forward fully and then you step back. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Nancy. Karlyn.

[59:20]

Oh, can you hear me? Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for your talk. I really appreciated it. And I really resonate with the idea that, you know, we really didn't. know the depth of the pain and suffering for certain African-Americans in this country. I have two things I'd like to offer. One is that I used to be a professor and I used to teach consumer behavior. And there used to be this idea that you could choose your identity and it's manifested by what you buy. And there's this whole concept that everybody can decide whether they're going to be young, old, white, Asian, or what have you. But I think for some of us, especially like people who are of a certain body structure, you don't get to choose.

[60:30]

It's sort of overlaid on you. And I think that's a very important thing for people to remember. I've traveled all over the world and, you know, my body gives certain markers no matter where I am. And it isn't until people start talking to me that they understand, oh, those body marking images don't necessarily apply in this case. The second thing I would like to offer is the breathing practice that I've been working with since I've taken Mary Stair's class. And that idea of breathing in and breathing out. And maybe, if you wouldn't mind, if you're able or if you're willing, to maybe talk about how that aspect of practice, for those of us who are looking for ways to help make change possible, what you might advise some people in that aspect. I'm happy to do that.

[61:36]

but I'm wondering if that's something that we should end on. Is there one more question before that? Kodo? Okay. I don't see a hand up yet, but... Okay. I think, Carla, what you're referring to is lozhong, so let's all do a lozhong practice right now, which is ground yourself Find a sitting position that you're comfortable in. Get your feet on the floor if you can. I'm in a wheelchair, so I can't do that. But anyway, ground and center. Breathe in, breathe out. And Tong Lin is about breathing in the suffering of the world, taking it, redistributing it inside, and then breathing out peace, security, hopefulness. So let's do that.

[62:38]

And people often are afraid that if they breathe in pain and suffering, they'll get overwhelmed. Trust me, the body's a wonderful healing instrument on its own. I'm so amazed by what the body can do. And this is part of the thing it can do is purify. So let's breathe in. Take three deep breaths. Keep your back erect. Your hands can be in the cosmic mudra. And breathe in pain and suffering, which is all around us, confusion. And breathe that in. And as you breathe that in, let it sit. You breathe in on the count of three.

[63:38]

Hold it for one, two, and then breathe out for the count of four, love and compassion. You're trying to transmute the negative to the positive. Let's put hope in it for Diego or for Miguel. Thank you all very much.

[65:38]

Carla, was that enough? Yes, it was enough, but we have to keep doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Carla. Thank you, Grace. We appreciate everyone being here for the Dharma Talk this morning. Grace, I'm overjoyed. Thank you. If you'd like, you should now be able to unmute yourself if you'd like to say goodbye on our way out. It could be something nice to do together. Please take care of yourselves. I'm unmuted. Thank you, Grace. Thank you, guys. Have a great Pride weekend. Great to see all of you.

[66:29]

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