This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I was waiting in the hallway to come down. I noticed at the end of the hallway over here on the window, there's some cut glass on a piece of string that's rotating around. And it was shooting off rainbows onto the wall. you know, right this side of the hallway. And I just thought how upropos for Pride weekend, you know, this dancing of stars and rainbows right there. And what I found particularly interesting was that some of the rainbows were actually very still, and they weren't moving at all, just quiet. And other ones were kind of just going back and forth and just very, very active. And I thought, well, again, how upropos of our lives. Sometimes we're just very still, And here, at other times, we're just running around, parading down streets, you know, and doing some kind of action.

[01:03]

So anyhow, I had gratitude for the rainbow reminder. So I want to welcome everyone to Beginner's Mind Temple. My name is David Zimmerman, and I've been here for going on 14 years. And I want to thank Rosalie Curtis, who is the counselor here, for inviting me to speak today. I believe she is, she's usually sitting over there, so that's why I'm looking over there. She's way at Tassajara this weekend. And also I want to express gratitude to my teacher, Tia Strozer, for her ongoing encouragement as well as her patience with me. So I'm always curious how many people here today are new to Zen Center for the first time. Could you raise your hand? Great. Welcome. Welcome. And welcome to everyone on this beautiful day. So I am in honor of Pride Week celebration, as well as the historic rollings this week by the Supreme Court on the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as Proposition 8.

[02:06]

I'd like to start by reading something to you. It's by a young gay man who... publicly just came out a few weeks ago. And I think it speaks very eloquently to the courageous journey that many people who are LGBTQI have had to make and embark on in order to make known and address their depth of suffering in the face of oppression. For those of you who might not be familiar with the alphabet that I'll be giving at times, L-B-T-T-Q-I, I know I'm missing something in there, is lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex. It's a way to, if you will, include as much as possible these different refractions, the different rainbows of ourselves. sometimes considered sexual selves, but I actually think it's a much wider framework of being.

[03:10]

So 17-year-old Mitch Anderson gave the valedictorian commencement speech at his high school in Belton, Texas, in which he came out to his parents, his classmates, and... by proxy, everyone else who is now hearing this speech. It's been on YouTube as well, so from what I understand, so if you have a chance, you might want to also watch him. Mitch had never told anyone before that he was gay. So he chose this opportunity, basically, to tell everyone. And I think as a gay man, as someone who has experienced many of the same things Mitch himself talks about. And I have to say that we have a 30-year difference. I came out 30 years ago, and the fact that some of the things that he's expressing now, 30 years later, is still happening, is still resonant, says a lot. Anyhow, I found his speech very moving, and I want to share it with you to start off.

[04:18]

I have edited it just a little bit for the sake of flow. Bring in your listening ears and settle for a moment into Mitch's journey of coming out. Learning how to love and celebrate yourself is one of the most crucial and difficult aspects of life. To know who you truly are is the first step to enlightenment, to happiness. It sounds so facile, yet discovering and accepting who you are meant to be requires introspection. and a willingness to submerge yourself into darkness. And that's what makes the task so daunting, so terrifying, if approached with complete authenticity. For the longest time, I was forced to live fractured, refusing to look at who I thought I was, and then refusing to accept who I thought I might be. The journey into the soul is not for the faint of heart. Fear will naturally creep in,

[05:21]

but those who use fear to exert themselves onward will succeed. After much dread and countless hours devoted to soul-searching, for the first time, you will be able to love who you are. But the task does not end there. If you know yourself, but incessantly crave an empty approval of others, you will be forever sorrowful. This is wherein the true challenge lies. As Madonna has said, And she would know. If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed. You must be able to bear yourself to the world and then let it be. You cannot be timid. Just that one line was what Madonna said. You must be able to bear yourself to the world and then let it be. You cannot be timid. You cannot be anxious. In a situation that seems so pyric, you must evaluate what the costs and gains really are.

[06:23]

You may think that hiding yourself is worth some superficial praise by society, or you can choose to learn that being who you are is vastly more important and rid yourself of those who cannot bring themselves to allow you to be you. I myself am guilty of self-doubt, relying on others to give my life definition. But that time has passed, and I feel the moment has arrived for me to be publicly true to my personal identity. So now I can say I'm gay. It is both a significant portion of who I am and an inconsequential aspect. It's as natural and effortless to me as breathing. I couldn't change myself even if I wanted. And believe me, I have. I have been bullied a lot. I had been called unspeakable things and relegated to a place of lower class. I had been made to feel worthless, unneeded, a blight on the world.

[07:27]

People have mocked me, said that I was virtually subhuman. So, for a while, I was in a very dark place. I had no concept of self-worth and frequently pondered suicide. I became so dijected. dejected that many times I thought of killing myself, not just because I saw no point to life, but because I had been convinced that doing so would actually make the world better. And so, for many years, I continued the cyclical, destructive thought patterns. This happened both before and after I thought about my sexuality. And after I had realized I was gay, I hated myself. I wish and prayed endlessly that I could just go on with life normally, that I could be like everyone else. Being different felt like a curse, an unfair sentence to the life of an outcast. There were moments when I believed I was next to nothing, but I learned that what others think of you is not nearly as meaningful as what you think of yourself.

[08:37]

You cannot owe the quality of your existence to other people. You must evaluate your life and give it purpose. You must recognize that you are an expression of the divine, a being made perfect through celebration of your perceived imperfections. Once you love yourself, you can be the best version of yourself. You will find happiness. You will find that being different is a wholly wonderful and joyous thing because it will mark you for greatness. Wish not to be one of the million, but one in a million. Find your idiosyncrasies. Find what will make you unique and run with it. You will make far fewer mistakes if you allow your inner and true feelings to guide you. And when you feel like you will be abandoned, alienated, and cast out, ignore the sources of such toxicity. Surround yourself with those who will be supportive of you and remind yourself that you are beautiful in your own way.

[09:46]

People who tear you down, who spit ritual and ire, pity them. They lash out because they have intrinsic flaws that they refuse to face. They have a sense of unresolved deficiencies within that cause them to inflict harm on others. They have no external peace because internally, there is a want of harmony. The world could use a little bit more love. Let us all not be so quick to judge. We ought to be kinder to others. Be not afraid of what you do not know, because more often than not, it's probably incredibly similar to what you know. And when you disagree with someone, hate is not a form of love. Think for a moment about what damage your words would do before speaking. I invite everyone to be more reflective, more meditative.

[10:51]

I ask everyone to give themselves a good hard look and define what they like about themselves. I ask all of you to learn what it means to love yourself if you haven't already. Please, embrace self-empowerment. You gain confidence, an unswerving belief that you matter and the ability of your existence to make indelible mark on the world. You gain compassion and empathy. You will love and be loved. Most importantly, you will finally start living the life that you were always meant to live. Wow. I'll probably end the Dharma talk right here. He has said everything that really needs to be said. And this beautiful bodhisattva in the making, I find his words so overwhelmingly beautiful.

[11:54]

The amount of courage and wisdom and vulnerability expressed in them. And I wanted to share this with you in full because I feel it's so important. to hear what our youth today are still experiencing in terms of homophobia, bullying, self-denial, self-hatred. Despite the decades of change we have already experienced, despite even this week's historic rulings, a lot of this will probably continue So there is much to grieve in Mitch's experience, and yet so much to celebrate in the fact that someone so young has the capacity to speak for himself in such a way that is so true, knowing the risk that he is taking.

[13:03]

Tomorrow he could walk into the street and be killed for who he is. Are you willing to speak your truth with that reality in front of you? I actually think Mitch speaks for all of us in some way, regardless of whether or not we identify as LGBTQI. I think we can all recognize in ourselves this innate desire to discover the truth of our lives and to live it in an authentic, genuine, open way. To live in a way in both our hearts and our minds and our actions are in harmony. And that when we live in this way, that others will equally support us in this place of harmony and expression. I think this is why the annual ceremony

[14:10]

and I'm calling it a ceremony, of gay pride is so important. Regardless of our sexual orientation and our identity, pride celebration reminds us of the importance of being in touch with our own unique expression of being. And also, at the same time, noting and honoring our commonality. what we share together. So it's important to tell our personal stories, our shared stories, to understand the narratives of difference as they are lived and breathed by each and every one of us. Our work as Zen practitioners is to recognize and embrace our unique dharma position in this moment.

[15:17]

The particular causes and conditions and karma that have come together and formed who we are. Formed, if you will, a rainbow of multifaceted jewels that we call me and you. We might as well Embrace our Dharma position because we sure can't escape it. Even if we really want to, it's not possible. The slightest move to avoid who we truly are, whether in the direction of desire, I want to be this or that, or in the direction of aversion, I don't want to be that. is the beginning of suffering. So when we can stand in our dignity, in our Dharma position, then we can be in harmonious and intimate relationships with all things and each other.

[16:30]

I find it helpful to think of the word pride in the context in which it means a group or family, such as a pride of lions. Ours is a pride of belonging, of belonging to the family of being, or as Thich Nhat Hanh likes to call it, interbeing. We are all subject to the same experience of reality, this reality of impermanence, in which we're living into our dying moment by moment. So acknowledging this, acknowledging our position in this and how we share this all together is the first step on the path to wisdom and compassion. The theme of this year's Pride celebration is embrace, encourage, and empower.

[17:39]

And I think Mitch's speech so beautifully elucidates the themes of this year's pride when he touches upon the aspects that relate to having a sense of self-worth and the courage necessary to stand up for oneself and be who we are. So in keeping with this theme, I'd like to explore it a little bit more from a Dharma perspective and also talk a little bit about some practices that we might take up, and also share with you a little bit of my own journey that's taken me to be here today in this particular Dharma position. While not emphasized directly in the Zen Japanese tradition, in the Chinese and Korean traditions, they posit that it takes three things. in order to practice Zen. Great questions, great courage, and great faith.

[18:45]

Together, these practices are said to show us the path, the way to live, which will bring us into more alignment with our true nature. And in doing so, help us to actually be of benefit to others. The first one, embracing our great question. Embracing who we truly are begins with questioning who we think we are at a very fundamental level. This is the stage of great question, sometimes also called great doubt. Great doubt requires that we continually ask the questions, what am I? And what is this?

[19:48]

And asking these great questions bring our meditation and our mindfulness alive. It's what gives the juice. It's where we meet ourselves in our meditation. When we ask these questions with sincerity, then we'll come to know big mind. Big mind is not a mind that's contained by the small, limited self. Not contained by the personality or identity. Suzuki Roshi described big mind as the mind that is everything. It's the mind that's indicates an awareness of reality that transcends the merely personal and wholly subjective. It's a mind that is boundless, one that's able to hold multitudes and contradictions.

[20:56]

And it's a mind that's free of discrimination. At Zen Center, we often quote the Zen master, Ehi Dogen, who is the founder of this particular school of Zen, which is Soto Zen. Dogen wrote that, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mine, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. Embracing who we truly are, what Dogen describes as our traceless, unconditioned, boundless, compassionate, true nature, begins with the deep work of sincerely turning over and examining

[22:03]

every concept, every idea, every image and story that we have about ourselves. We study the stories that we have about ourselves so that we can be cognizant of them and the authority that they have over us. And once we're cognizant of them, then we can more deliberately release them. And in doing so, we no longer give them the same authority in our lives, the same power. Instead, we can rest in big mind. But it's very scary to do this. Because we have spent a lifetime lifetimes, shoring up a fragile sense of self, one that has been constructed on ignorance, grasping, aversion, misperceptions about our true nature.

[23:21]

And most likely, we have inherited these forms of ignorance from others. who are equally confused and deluded. And oftentimes, those who we deeply love and care about. To question this limited sense of self means to no longer rely on or feed a fragile compromise. If I'm good enough, worthy enough, straight enough, whatever enough, will you love me and accept me then? As we're reminded in Mitch's coming out speech, we are so often conditioned to be someone or something else just to be acceptable for the dictates of parents

[24:31]

society, friends, the media. But consequentially, in doing so, in trying to meet these dictates, we repress ourselves and sublimate our truth. But when we take up the practice of great questioning, then the hidden truths are revealed. And what has been unspoken for so many years is finally spoken. We discover that we no longer need to silence ourselves. We no longer need to pretend to be someone else in order to fit in and be loved. Our true nature is beyond the measure of acceptable or not. And there is great ease when we can rest in a different kind of silence.

[25:34]

A silence that we touch and embody through zazen. A silence that compassionately illuminates and hears the cries of the world and our own suffering. It's a silence that's full of love. rather than hatred. It took me many years to reach a tipping point in my life in which it became more uncomfortable for me not to speak my truth and to suppress my authenticity than it was to bear the risks and the difficulties that I might encounter in order to embrace who I truly was, including as a gay man. Perhaps many of you have had a similar experience, the amount of time, the journey, the years to be who you are, to accept who you are.

[26:44]

What I'd like to do for a moment is give you what I'll call a mini way-seeking mind talk, how my mind of practice came here and brought me here. But you might actually, I'm gonna kind of focus on the gay part, so it's gonna be a gay-seeking mind talk, you know? I intrinsically knew that I was attracted to others of the same sex around the time that I was four years old. However, I didn't actually come to accept and acknowledge this until I was around 18 years old. And I remember in high school, even though I was aware of it, even though I wanted to connect from this place, I still denied it. And even when I was called gay, I would refute it and say that I wasn't. It wasn't until my first year in college, when I had started meeting a number of gay men,

[27:48]

and also had started to participate in a student LBTQ group on campus, that I finally became more willing to actually reveal myself. But there was a particular watershed moment for me that happened about a month and a half into my first semester of college. One day I walked into my dorm, into the hallway, and the guy who lived across the hallway passed by me. And as he passed by, he said, faggot. So normally, given who I am, I would just kind of ignore him. I would just say, whatever. And I would just continue on, not wanting to confront in any way. But this day, something had turned for me. And so I responded. And I said, so? And he said, so you're a faggot. And I said, so what's it to you?

[28:49]

And then I walked away. But that moment triggered this period of harassment and humiliation that was perpetrated by him and a number of other men on the dorm floor. It basically became this campaign of, I don't know what to call it, terror almost, in which I would be submitted to homophobic slurs and catcalls as I walked down the dorm hallway. Sometimes I'd have to walk through a gauntlet of guys who, as I walked by, would spit at me or knock into me. And then there would be knocks on my door in the middle of the night, And when I would open the door, there would be no one there. Or phone calls in which someone would yell into the phone, die, faggot, die.

[29:51]

I would find Vaseline on my doorknob. There would be mini posters put up in the men's bathroom that had made up stories about my latest sexual escapades. which were a lot more interesting than what I was actually having. And there would be jeers and curses and threats left on the message board on my door. And this harassment continued for several weeks until finally a number of the other residents in the building. And the floors were men, then women, then men, then women. Some of the women from one of the other floors, and a couple men, I believe, actually confronted the corporates and said, if you don't stop this, we're going to go to the housing authority. So as quickly as it began, it did end. But it was a very pivotal point in my life, being able to walk through that fire of harassment and know that I could come out on the other side.

[31:03]

And then speeding ahead a few more months, during my spring semester of my freshman year, I had been dropping hints to my family about my sexual orientation, just trying to test the waters, you know, see what the reaction might be. I think finally my stepmother kind of like, you know, like, I need to check something out here, and she wrote me a letter asking me, are you gay? So I wrote back saying yes, and I've known I've had this inclination for so long. So she wrote back to me, a letter in saying which she and my father could no longer associate with me because my lifestyle was a sin, that being gay was a sin, and as God-fearing Christians, they could not associate with me. And I also think at the time, AIDS was just coming to the forefront of the public's mind in the media. This was in the early 80s. And I think in part, if you were gay, you automatically were assumed to have AIDS.

[32:10]

And I think between that and the fact that I had a baby brother, they had just had a child several months earlier, that they were afraid just my being with them would infect everyone with this particular disease. So I had this experience of being shunned by my family, and I come from a Mennonite background. And there is shunning also in the Mennonite and Amish traditions where you are ostracized from your community for, in some way, not living up to the standards or the expectations of the community. My grandfather, who also was raised Mennonite and was still an active Mennonite, actually disowned me. He wrote me out of his will. And the thing is, he wrote me on his will not because I was gay, but because my parents had actually told him that I was not a Christian anymore. And I asked my stepmother, why didn't you tell him I was gay?

[33:15]

And he said, well, he wouldn't have even understood. It was easier to tell him you weren't a Christian. Okay. Anyhow, I decided then that I didn't need them. I didn't need my family in order to be happier on a deeper level. And I wasn't about to change. I wasn't about to give up my integrity. I was willing to bear this ostracism in order to finally live that truth, be the person that I knew myself to be, even though it was going to be so difficult. And I didn't talk to my family for over three years until my father finally got cancer. And then, only then, did they open the door of communication once more. And even so, we never talked about it. We never talked about my being gay, and we never talked actually about that period.

[34:15]

What was unspoken remained unspoken. So I can... Imagine that most of us recognize that we all suffer from some sense of ostracism, some sense of separateness or distance from others, from the world around us, and also from ourselves. Our particular sense of separation or distance shapes who we are. It's the root of our unhappiness and discontent, and you'll be the source of finding joy. But as the teachings of the Buddha remind us, this separateness is a delusion of our own making, because fundamentally, we are not separate.

[35:24]

even sometimes we really wish we were. The Dharma teachings of dependent core rising illuminate us, illuminate for us how intricately connected we are, how already intimate we are beyond knowing and comprehension. Our task then as practitioners is to make the effort to free our minds oppressed by the delusion of separateness. However, to do this, we need to be able to go into the dark places, to go into the corners of our anguish and sorrow, to see what they consist of, to bring the light of awareness and compassion to them so that they no longer have power over us.

[36:36]

Courage to be who we are requires courage to see who we are. And then from this place of clearly seeing, we can develop a capacity to fully meet each other as we really are, rather than being fooled by the superficial appearances and labels and identities that we carry around so often. Suzuki Roshi said in Zen mind, beginner's mind, when you are you, Zen is Zen. When you are you, you see things as they are, or another way of saying this is things as it is, and you become one with your surroundings. There is your true self. The basis for the word courage comes from the old French cur, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, which means heart.

[37:50]

It takes a strong, flexible heart to be honest, to be different, to be willing to risk being wounded in life without letting fear get the best of us. And when we can stay true to our wisdom hearts, one informed by our deepest intention, then we can find the strength and ability to live in trust. And this, in turn, encourages others. And great courage is the second of the three Zen practices. And courage also happens to be the second of the pride theme.

[38:56]

Being authentic is a gift. One paid with the currency of courage. It's a gift to yourself and a gift to others. It's essentially a gift of fearlessness. Because when you are you, then you can let others also be who they are. When you are you and embody, embody fearlessness, this embodied fearlessness encourages others to embody their own capacity for fearlessness. And then this ripples out into the world, adding to its richness and beauty. the whole world in this way becomes our shared true body and authentic self.

[40:05]

However, great courage also means to accept there are no answers. The minute we think we know something is the moment that we lose an authentic connection with it, whether it's an object, a feeling, or another person. Therefore, we need to continually cultivate beginner's mind and allow a deep understanding and response to grow from this place, what we call in Zen, don't know mind. And this can be scary. and disorienting to live from this place in our life, a place where we don't have the answers. But if we have courage and persevere, we can let go of the delusions that we cling to as a way of protecting us from life's risks and uncertainties.

[41:20]

In our Zen practice, we need to actually push through wanting to be comfortable. We need to be willing to be uncomfortable. We often experience this in a sashin or a long retreat, a meditation retreat of some sort. We may be sitting there for a period of time in pain, with the physical or emotional. But if we're able to observe our desire for the pain to end, as well as the anger and the fear that comes up, without losing ourselves in it, then we have the capacity not to act out from a place of reactivity, but rather respond from a place of equanimity. And sometimes there's pain that comes from grief, particularly grief of something that we need to let go of.

[42:24]

And this includes letting go of what we're not doing. as well as letting go of what others are not. For example, if you're short, you might have to let go of the fact that you're not tall and all the benefits that you would wish you had by being tall. And if you're a male, you might have to grieve or let go of the fact that you are physically unable to give birth. And if you are a white person, you might grieve because you recognize that you are privileged and indebted to a culture and history of racism. And if you are straight, you might grieve because some of the same rights and social expressions that you openly enjoy are not available to your lesbian sister and her partner. The truth of our interdependency is that we cannot avoid having impact when we are who we are.

[43:37]

We will probably hurt others, maybe intentionally or not. We'll say the wrong thing, move the wrong way, perceive the wrong meaning. How we acknowledge this and vow to refrain from future harm is what makes the difference. And then there's the reality that we can't necessarily save others. We cannot save them from the unfortunate consequences of their particular behavior, choices, and karma. And I'm keeping in mind at the moment the conservative Supreme Court justices, those who have chose to vote in ways that I find deeply, deeply hurtful. Grieving these difficult truths are some of the dark places that we need to enter.

[44:46]

I often think about this when I think of my older brother. He's 10 months older than I. and many of the challenges that he's had in his life, some that he's inherited, but many that are a result of his unwillingness to actually take responsibility for the choices that he's made in his life. And I grieve for our difficult childhood and the ways in which it's affected his ability to meet life's challenges and to be at peace. I also grieve the ways in which I can't seem to help him, regardless how much I try. I want to tell you another little mini gay-seeking mind talk aspect. I recognized my photoshopper path at a very young age, when I was 9 and 10. And I used to play superheroes with my brother. Usually after a Saturday morning cartoon program or a late...

[45:54]

school day TV program, we would end up playing out our fantasy worlds around superheroes. And my brother would always choose to be some kind of masculine damaged heroes like the hawk or some alien creature mutation like Godzilla, something from outer space. I, on the other hand, wanted to be Wonder Woman. I wanted to be the feminine embodiment in my child's mind of goodness, strength, and beauty. And to manifest these heroine qualities, I would dress up. I didn't have a one foot outfit, so I had made my own. I would dress up in a white sheet, and I would take a towel and wrap it over my head for long hair. And then I would take some of my deceased grandmother's costume jewelry. these little chunky earrings, including a little tiara at times that I would wear, and I would manifest as Wonder Woman.

[46:57]

Of course, I looked nothing like Wonder Woman. I looked more like, from my dog perspective, like a John Belushi in Animal House, a little miniature version of him with earrings of some sort. But all the same, I did my best. And while my brother would be intent on destroying the whole world, causing as much suffering as possible, burning toy soldiers, blowing up matchbox cars, just causing as much evil and destruction. I, on the other hand, was trying to counter his evil with whatever power I could, a magic wand, a mantra of some sort. I would spin around and try as best I could to save the world. But there I was, a child in drag, a bodhisattva in training, trying to save the world, trying to save my family, trying to save my brother, and also trying to save myself.

[48:05]

I often reflect that seven years ago when I became a Zen priest, I actually traded in my white Wonder Woman bed sheet for an acasa. and are fulfilling the same vow of being of service and saving all beings with this particular outfit. The final of the three primary Zen practices is great faith. And this is what leads us back to ourselves. It's our ability to recognize the truth and completeness of our own experience and then rely on its authenticity. And authenticity is the path to healing. We don't have to try to be someone other than we're not or force someone to be other than Nirna are. With a mind of great faith, we trust that we are each already Buddha.

[49:13]

Whether or not we're able to see this, great faith returns us to our original, non-dual, non-separate Buddha nature. When we take up the vow, the Bodhisattva vow, to save all beings from suffering, it's not actually so much us that's doing the saving, but rather the power of the Dharma that saves others. And this is the final component of the gay pride theme, empowerment. When we empower someone, we support the conditions for them to have a voice, authority, and responsibility for their own welfare and the decisions that affect the quality of their life. A bodhisattva's empowerment is the gift of their

[50:17]

of their sincere and dedicated practice of awakening. And this sincere practice enables others to focus on their own practice, their own true nature, and discover where they're caught. And therefore, how to wake up to things as it is and release themselves of the grip of fear, self-clinging, and societal oppression. It's through the inconceivable power of our compassionate words, actions, and intentions that we create the nurturing ground for others to be free. But the immediate work of saving oneself is essentially one's own responsibility. You must want to be saved in some way.

[51:19]

This is having the mind of bodhicitta, the way-seeking mind. You must want to wake up and be free of suffering at the deepest level of your being. Your waking up to this truth frees others to wake up. We all have this power. We can all be superhero bodhisattvas, Wonder Woman or otherwise. We can all make the world a better and safe place for each and every one of us to be our true selves. A world where young people like Mitch Anderson can discover and celebrate their true selves without fear of retaliation or hatred. And this takes superhuman efforts. and yet we are mere humans, mere mortals.

[52:25]

Nevertheless, we don't need to give our power away. Don't deny that in you which is strong, fearless, resilient, and indestructible. Embracing our Buddha nature, we return to love. This is what it means to experience genuine pride To be at ease are an inherent dignity as whole, intimate, and inconnected beings. So happy pride, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma, For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[53:28]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[53:31]

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