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 by people like you. Maybe it's time to start. And to welcome everyone to this last, this is kind of the last talk of our podcast. our summer season of more informal talks, Wednesday night talks. And our kind of loose theme for the summer was something like Buddhism and social issues. And I think maybe the first speaker addressed that, and maybe one or two other people since then. So it's wonderful to have Wilson Riles and Patricia with us this evening to end up.

[01:08]

And I thought I'd say a few words of introduction. And then when I thought about what I was going to say, I was just telling them that I could only just mention a fraction, a very small fraction of their wonderful and impressive careers in public service over many, many years. They have an organization they call Seven Generations Consulting, in which they do training and consulting and helping with community organizing and advocacy and dealing with issues of racism and cross-cultural differences and social justice and other issues along that lines. And there was also some mention on your website about doing ceremonies and rituals, which intrigued me. I have no idea what you do in that regard, but that sounded quite interesting.

[02:16]

About five years ago, I think Wilson ran for mayor of the city of Oakland, and I believe my parents voted for you. Also, he led the fight for Oakland's anti-apartheid and nuclear-free zone ordinances. Maybe I'll just let you speak for yourselves. Very honored to have you join us for the evening. Thank you. Well, we are delighted to be here. We have really strong connections here. Wilson was on the board, actually, of the Zen Center for a few years. And I've been working as part of our consulting practice as one of the funders in Marin County in addition to giving cash to their grantees, gives them eight hours of consulting time a year.

[03:20]

And so I've been the consultant for Green Gold. So I feel like a really strong connection here. And so we were really honored to be asked, actually, to spend the evening with you. And we thought we would do something maybe a little bit different than what you maybe used to. We'll kind of give you a peek into our relationship. So in addition to being business partners, we're also life partners. And so we've been together for 13 years. And between us, we have six daughters and seven grandchildren. And it has been my great delight to be Wilson's partner. And I have learned a lot from him. And a lot of our conversations are... really interesting and at least to me and so what we thought we'd do is we've been playing around with some principles and some kind of notions about how to be in the world and so we thought we would just talk about them with each other for a little while and then open it up and invite you in to share in our conversation and then we'll have some question and answer time as well so

[04:38]

It's kind of an experiment for us, so we'll see how it goes. Okay. Okay. So the first principle, which is really the foundation for our work together, is the principle of seven generations. And the reason we chose that name for our consulting practice is because... I am Haudenosaunee and Quebecois, and Wilson is African American and Blackfoot. And in the Native tradition, the notion of seven generations is a really powerful and consistent one. And it reminds us that we are... We stand on the shoulders of the seven generations who came before us. So it takes away the notion of bootstrap, I did this by myself, but in fact... reminds us that we stand on a really solid foundation of all of the generations who've come before us and it might be it might be our physical lineage you know our actual biological parents and grandparents and that's one element of the seven generations but there's also the spiritual and social legacy that we stand on and so

[06:03]

There are lots of people in that seven generations. And the corollary principle is that whenever we make decisions, we do it with the view of those who are seven generations from now. And so in the same way that we live with the impact of the seven generations who came before us, they're going to live with whatever we leave them. And so if we're paying attention to that, we're going to leave them something different than if we're not. And so that's kind of the framework from which we do all of the work that we do. One of the things that I find very interesting about the concept of seven generations, particularly coming from the indigenous people of the Americas, is the impact of... colonialism, racism, and capitalism on that concept.

[07:07]

There was a book that I'm reading right now that I'm finding tremendously interesting, and even though it's that thick, I recommend folks, if they have a chance, to take a look at it. It's written from indigenous American perspective, looking at the history particularly of the founding of the United States, but colonialism. And one of the things that happened during the period of the founding of the United States was a defining of Native American culture as savage, as uncivilized, without really understanding Native American culture. And to a certain extent, to a great extent, one of the things that was lost was this concept of a perspective that looks back seven generations and looks forward seven generations.

[08:15]

And it built up to the extent where it is now, essentially where much of American culture is about a short-term perspective. It's about the next election if you're an elected official. It's about the next financial quarter if you're involved in business. And the consequences of that so-called civilized perspective, I think, has contributed greatly to the great tragedy and danger that we're in now. In terms of the destruction of the planet and this book makes all of those connections and so you know, I recommend it There I think is a number of very important things that We can learn by engaging

[09:23]

and looking at what's going on in other cultures. Well, one of the things that struck me as you were talking about how the founding fathers of the country really saw the indigenous cultures as savage is that because they were looking on a very superficial level, they didn't see the depth of culture that was under there. And they took from... The Haudenosaunee is the Six Nations, the league, the Confederacy of Six Nations that the French called Iroquois. And that's my family. And they took the framework out of which the Confederacy was designed. The Six Nations formed a Confederacy that had a state, a kind of... state federal relationship so that each nation had a separate identity and rules and laws and then they formed a confederacy that was an umbrella that was designed as a peacemaking mechanism so that the nations wouldn't war with each other so on the one hand the founders of the United States said this is a savage culture but we kind of like this

[10:46]

But because they didn't recognize the cultural principles underneath, they only saw the form of it. They didn't see what it meant to be a confederacy, that the point of the confederacy was to ensure peace among... So when they reconstructed it and said, okay, we have 13 states and a federal government, they recreated the form, but they didn't recreate the principles that were guiding the form in the indigenous culture because they couldn't recognize it. Well, I think that's a critical understanding because part of that was also not giving credit to the Six Nations for the form. But in fact, there are many people now who are looking back at that history and recognize that Much of the Constitution of the United States was borrowed from that agreement of the Six Nations.

[11:48]

There were actually Iroquois representatives in the room at the Constitutional Convention. And there are many references from Ben Franklin and other signers of the Constitution to the Iroquois and a lot of what they put together. But we don't know that. It's this constitution, and there's no credit given to where a lot of it was borrowed from. There is a kind of... Because of the Enlightenment and what was going on in Europe in terms of dealing with the Enlightenment and the struggles between the various monarchies and the church, the Protestant... there was a tremendous amount of defining of culture and self that got transferred over into the United States and that actually became an aspect of a manifest destiny chosen people

[13:05]

You know, we can do no wrong, which basically also was involved in the breakaway from Britain. Britain had drawn a line for the colonies along the Appalachians and didn't want the colonies to move past the Appalachians. And Britain had a kind of British monarch. had a kind of a recognition of the sovereignty of the Native American people in a sense that harmonized with the British king's sense of his own sovereignty. So he was more willing then to actually trade and set up agreements with Native Americans and Native American coalitions than the colonizers were. And they refused to accept that line and insisted that they needed to expand beyond that line and move forward with the understanding of the superiority of their particular culture, economic system, including property rights and so forth.

[14:16]

And that, I think, gets us to what I think is another very important principle that we've been talking about. And that is the question about... the relationship between biodiversity and cultural plurality. The United States is largely a monocultural juggernaut that not only has swept across the United States, but now is sweeping this monoculture around the world. And at the same time, it's carried with it a lot of... technology that is destructive of diversity. Definitely within the agricultural area and in regards to species, you know, it has been very destructive of biodiversity. Well, we're very clear now and we know that that is absolutely the wrong thing for us to be doing on this planet.

[15:21]

That the survival of the planet depends on the maintaining of biodiversity. And what I think goes along with that is also cultural plurality. That the gifts that are in the various multitude of cultures in this world, just as talk of the thousands of languages that have been lost. And the special meanings that are in those languages is just one aspect of what we're losing through this monocultural juggernaut that is sweeping the world. And so if we're going to recover from that, part of it, I think, is also supporting of cultural plurality. And I think one of the ways that we have a challenge with that is because we've developed a real keen capacity for thinking always in terms of either or.

[16:25]

And so we either have to have progress or an environmental, you know, we either have to have good or evil. So all our way of thinking is very often kind of broken down into these dualities. And we're trying harder, we're trying hard to think more and more in terms of both and. So it demands an increased capacity to hold more complexity at the same time. And I think if you think about what Wilson was saying about the way that the United States moves around the world, it's really we can do that because we don't grapple with the complexities of what we're engaging. And so, you know, the either or is pretty simple. You know, you're with us or you're with them. You're good or you're not. You're hot or you're cold. But if we're talking about complexity, then we have to look at nuances and say, you know, we look in the room here and we say, oh, this is, we make a judgment based on what we see.

[17:38]

So this is a white crowd. You could walk in the room and say, this is a white crowd. So it's not... a diverse crowd that's kind of the simplistic dualistic it's white therefore it's not diverse but if we started to tell our stories we would find a complexity in who we are as people that would show the richness that when you look on the surface and say we're all white or we're not white or we're this or that we don't see the depth and the wealth that's underneath and so when our kids were little I was homeschooling them and we had a big sign over the table where we studied and it said different is different it's just different because our cultural pressure is to compare you know it's better or it's worse it's up or it's down and so we're trying to hold

[18:42]

whether we're talking about questions of cultural plurality or biodiversity or any of those things, or how we see each other as human beings or how we engage, how we look at the earth. All of those things, when we can go deeper than the surface, we actually are enriched by what we see in a way that when we look at the surface, the either-or thinking or the superficial glance, We don't get the richness of what we're actually looking at. And so that's how you can have slavery. Because when slave owners looked at slaves, they saw one thing. They saw a product. That's why we can have all of the divisions that we have in our society. Because when we look on the surface, we see, oh, that's a separate person from me. That's not me. When Wilson was running for mayor, there was a debate.

[19:43]

He and Jerry Brown were in a debate. And they were talking about the teenagers. And Wilson said, our kids. He said something about we as adults need to take responsibility for our kids. And a guy in the back of the room stood up and said, those are not my kids. And I thought, that's where the problem is. When we don't see the connections that we have with each other, we can distance ourselves, we can dehumanize. Why can we go and invade Iraq? Because they're not us. When you look at all of the things that create tension and conflict, underneath is this notion that I'm separate from that. So it's not my concern or I don't have to deal with it. So one of the things we're trying to invite in our grandkids and in our life is this notion that it's a big bowl and we can hold it all.

[20:52]

We can hold the fact that you're tired and hungry and we don't have time to stop right now. Whatever it is, the circumstances we can hold much more than we tend to think we can, and more than what is modeled for us, I think, in the leadership and in the governance as it's experienced in our culture. There is, though, clearly, we're all human beings, and... affected by both our genetics and our culture and some of the same things I think come out no matter what culture that you're involved in one of the things that I'm now finding to be very interesting is the effect of the trickster spirit on what's going on in the world I mean now they say that I'm A huge number of people in the United States get their news, not from the regular news report, but from John Stewart.

[22:00]

So that's how they learn about what's going on in the world. And John Stewart is very much, I think, an example of the power of the trickster spirit. Do people know what we mean by the trickster spirit? Yes. The trickster energy? Do you want to say it? And who John Stewart? Oh, okay. We only have television here. Of course, of course. Well, John Stewart has a show called The Daily Show. And it is a spoof on news shows. And a lot of people tune in and watch it. And he basically is cracking a lot of jokes. about the war, about the president, about various people in the world, and is able to unmask a lot of what's going on through humor.

[23:06]

So folks who may not be able to listen to someone just straight up criticizing the president can look at the irony and the humor that Jon Stewart and began to open up, to some extent, to the criticism. In the European courts, the kings often had what they called court jesters. They particularly brought in, and they supported. And the court jester was making fun of the king, and making fun of the royalty. That was what the purpose of the court jester was. And it it helped to cut through a lot of the kind of blindness that we have sometimes in terms of how we deal with one another and deal with cultural circumstances. The court jester was the one to be able to point out that the king had no clothes, as one kind of analogy.

[24:10]

For many African tribes, There are wisdom stories that are also very humorous and have this kind of wisdom that it brings out by telling stories about Br'er Rabbit or certain animals and actually the African-American slaves actually brought some of those stories and incorporated them into African-American culture. In Native American culture, there is the raven, which in a lot of the Northeastern cultures is the same kind of figure. You probably know more about some of those figures. Well, in the Southwest, it's the coyote is the trickster. And they laugh at, you know, they make, they take a really difficult situation and they wrap it in humor. And then in the Northwest, the raven has the same role in the cultural mix.

[25:18]

So it's a way of disarming people so that they can actually see things differently. And again, I think a lot of what keeps coming up for us is this notion of... I was watching something the other day, and some old woman was like, Yeah, yeah, we just see what we want to see. That's what it is. And so what the trickster spirit does is it jostles that and helps us to see something that maybe we wouldn't see if we were looking with the eyes that we generally look at. The other thing that the trickster pushes us toward is authenticity. It's hard to be a fake when somebody's laughing at you. And so one of the things that we've been talking about lately is this idea of perfection as a life goal and authenticity as a life goal.

[26:21]

And so much of what drives our social fabric is perfection. And yet, you know, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that I'll never achieve that. But I think I could drive much more closely toward authenticity. And so what's the difference in the pathway if where I'm heading is toward trying to be perfect and where I'm going is trying to be authentic? And so I've been thinking about all these public figures who get in trouble and then lie. because they're trying to protect this notion that they are perfect or that they should be perfect. And so you have, you know, Michael Vick saying, no, no, I didn't mess with those dogs. And then it comes out, well, yeah, I did mess with those dogs. But if the goal were authenticity, he would be able to say right away, ooh.

[27:28]

This was really nice. You know, it would be a different process. And the same with the congressman who pled guilty and then wanted to unplead and, you know, he's not gay, but he's having sex with men in the bathroom. You know, like, if that guy really, if his life, if his pathway were heading toward authenticity, how different would that have played out? You know? So anyway, I think that's the most recent thing that we've been really engaging around is imagining. So how would we parent? Our kids are grown. They're 34 to 25, the range. But we've got grandkids. So how does it impact the way that we're nurturing and supporting our grandkids if what we're inviting them toward is authenticity instead of perfection? How do we engage with each other as partners if that's where we're looking instead?

[28:35]

So it's been a really interesting... So one of our grandkids is seven. He's in the superhero stage. And of course, you know, superheroes have powers which make them better than us, right? And so he's... always ask, what's your power today? What's your power today? Your power, and he'll assign you power. Your power today is you're invisible. Your power today is this. So the other day, he said to Wilson, tell me my power. What's my power today? And Wilson said, your power is patience. And he was like, ooh, everybody could be patient. And so he said, so Wilson's response, do you want to? Well, my response was... If your power is strength, everybody also can be strong. So there are different degrees of strength as there are different abilities to be patient.

[29:36]

And he had to stop and think about that for a second. And then he accepted that patience could be a power. And so we've been playing this game around the power of patience and when you can use it. And so now he finds sometimes when he's playing with his little sister, some of his other friends, that patience can be a valuable thing to have. And so he begins to try to use that. I think we're probably getting pretty close to the point to invite other folks. Sure. Let me just say one thing about just some very recent thoughts that I've had about the question about authenticity versus perfection. And I'm just going to try this out on you all and see what your response might be.

[30:38]

I tend to think that perfection is about measuring yourself. against some outside yardstick, outside of yourself. That there is some culturally defined model, and you measure yourself against that model in an attempt to achieve perfection, which if anybody thought about it long enough, they would realize it's impossible to really become perfect measuring against that kind of a static model. But authenticity is an inward looking in order to really find who you truly are and to be who you truly are. And so that's one of the ways I began to look at this question about authenticity and perfection.

[31:40]

I don't know what you all... Actually, I had a reaction to that. And then we'll open it. And that is that... So, if you think about a spiritual practice, I'm not as sure about... I think Buddhism is more internally... It's more of an internal compass, but most... Like Christianity, which is the water we live in as a country, and I think other traditions tend to see the... You know, it's like the out there-ness of God or the out there-ness of spiritual enlightenment. And so it's a way of pursuing something out there. And the image, as you were talking about authenticity, it's more of a kind of... There are things that cover us.

[32:42]

You know, we get... see this is not well formed obviously but it's this idea of lifting veils so that the fullness of who we are is already there it's not something that we have to go find somewhere else we are fully formed but because of the way that we're socialized and the way that the world works around us we get masked that gets covered by injustice and pain and suffering and all of those things. And so the spiritual journey is about kind of taking off the veils to find what was there already in the first place. And that's a really different... So that for me is, as we're thinking about authenticity and perfection, that that's another way to frame it that helps me think about it as part of a spiritual practice. So let's open it up.

[33:42]

Any thoughts? Comments? Well, I think these are really interesting issues for us as a community, or me personally. I'm very responsive to what you're saying, and I notice that in myself I'm often asked what brought me to Zen practice. And I have kind of a rote story, which doesn't actually feel all that authentic anymore, because I've said it so many times. But included in it was, like, I had some value of authenticity, and that was part of what brought me to practice. And also the kind of trickster spirit. I really love these stories of these iconoclastic Zen masters who are, you know, the person of no rank who is, you know, always showing people up. And, but... But I feel like my experience of our practice actually also has this perfectionist strain in it. There's this book by Robert Akin, The Path of Perfection, and the virtues are called The Six Perfections. So I feel it as kind of a tension in our community life together.

[34:50]

How much do we value authenticity versus perfection? And also even the... the metaphor you talked about of lifting the veils, I mean, Buddhism definitely has that, the jewel that's hidden in the robe, you had it all along, you just need to realize it's there, and at the same time, you know, we put on these robes, and we put on these things, and sometimes they can also start to feel like layers that we're putting on, even though they're sort of in the spirit of revealing, I think sometimes we can put them on in a way that they're covering, so I just kind of, I never, you know, anyway, I just kind of feel like they're really great questions for us, and kind of want to... open it up like that. I just kind of had a question. You both speak so well, and I wonder if you were at home and speaking, if you would come into conflict at all, and how you would resolve those conflicts, or maybe... I don't know. That's my question, I guess. Yeah. Well, we certainly don't always agree, but I think that the way that we...

[35:54]

that we have kind of committed to be with each other is to be open and to recognize. So if you think about spirituality as a circle, the portal for me that gets me in is ritual, ceremony, that kind of stuff, you know, so sweat lodge and baby naming ceremony. The portal for Wilson is science. He's got a book called What Number Is God? Like, I would never have that book on my library shelf in a million years. I couldn't even imagine having that on my shelf. But because of the way we engage with each other, I have a totally different appreciation for that as an authentic and legitimate pathway. So I would say that when we disagree, one, we laugh at each other.

[36:59]

Laughter really punctures, you know, like he's not a yeller. I'm a screamer and he's kind of the, you know, this is his posture and mine is like. But when I'm like this, the best thing is for him to do a trickster thing, you know. And sometimes he takes himself way too seriously. And so, you know, one of our early conversations, he was like, I'm really worried I have a Messiah complex. And I was like, he could use the help. Don't worry about it. So kind of laughing with each other and kind of puncturing some of that. Because really tension and conflict comes when we take ourselves too seriously, in my experience. And so we use humor a lot to kind of break through that. I grew up in a family where at the dinner table we sat around and discussed political things. And me and my younger brothers spent a lot of time with popular science and all that kind of stuff.

[38:07]

And education was the whole thing. I mean, my father was an educator. My mother was an educator. It was a huge issue. So being in the head was kind of... my place to be it was kind of my center of gravity being in the head and I am just so grateful to Pat for awakening me to the whole self which includes the heart and the emotions and that that is a source of understanding that is invaluable, I mean, that you have to have. There's this, you know, I'm sure you all know the whole dichotomy between scientific materialism and spirituality, and it's a false dichotomy.

[39:14]

that there are so many ways many ways for us to understand what is the nature of reality and through science they're now getting to the point where they have to admit that there are things that are not knowable through science quantum mechanics has now gotten to the point where it's accepted the fact that You cannot know certain things through science. But there are other ways of knowing the truth. And they are now in conversations with Buddhism and other sciences about some of the really deep concepts about the nature of reality that can't be known through the numbers and through science. It comes back to the both end. You know, that there's a role for science and there's a role for spirituality, and that when you can embrace them both and hold them both at the same time, even when there's tension, that that's a richer conversation and a richer experience than when you have to have only one or the other.

[40:31]

Part of my moving in this relationship is just... knowing and accepting the fact that there's unity. Even though on the surface there may be some differences, the more time that we spend together and work at it, the closer we get to that unity and that harmony. So let's just do it. And we like each other. I think that your insights into the kind of complementary nature of humor and authenticity are really accurate in certain situations. But I also feel like, particularly in our society today, humor is used as a defense mechanism that actually creates a barrier to authenticity and kind of wholeness in relationships. And I was wondering if you could speak on behalf of that. Do you have an example?

[41:34]

Yeah, I mean, just as a... someone my age, and I think about my relationships amongst my friends, I think that because humor then often gets turned into sarcasm, which can at times become more caustic, it maintains kind of a surface level of relationships when really both parties may desire greater depth from what they get received from each other. But the humor kind of stalls at a more superficial level. I think of humor as a spice for life. So, you know, you wouldn't want to eat a bowl of basil. But basil on your food really enhances it so I think that when humor becomes the primary vehicle for relating to each other then it can be either it can be exhausting or it can be cutting and really stop you from engaging at a deeper level you know which is true of everything you could take love which is a really wonderful powerful thing and really

[42:57]

use it in a way that it ends up being really hurtful and manipulative. So I think that humor is one, when it is used in a healthy way, can enrich a relationship. But if it's all there is, then it can become caustic and painful and stop you from getting any deeper. But I think, too, that we... Go ahead, you. Well, there is... I don't think that there is anything that we can say and do to describe the real reality. I don't think it can be put into words. I think in the Christian... Sometimes they say that words kill. They kill the spirit.

[43:58]

Words are imperfect. Words are static. And that's not the nature of reality. So in these words and in these behaviors that we get involved in with culture, they're never the total answer. They're never complete. I mean, I think in that sense... I mean, I think they can point at some things, but they are never the thing itself. So we use these words, we use these cultural behaviors in various ways as we interact with our present circumstances and within the context and matrix that we are in. but they're never complete in that sense. In African American culture, particularly among young people, there's this thing called playing the dozens, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but basically young people become skilled at basically derisive comments about people's mothers.

[45:19]

You know, your mama. And some folks are, you know, get really, you know, really, they pick up a lot of, you know, real skills at being able to do that. And someone who is not playing the game, so to speak, is not part of that. And someone does that to them, it can be... You know, it's a real conflict. It can't be a real source of violence. But if you are, you know, part of the culture and are into it, it's a fun, it's a game, and people can get into it. And in some ways, I mean, I think if you kind of step back and look at a lot of the things that are being said and what is going on there, and except as I do some of the Freudian analysis, by looking at what people are saying and doing in that game, you actually can learn a lot about somebody and about their values and about their concerns.

[46:36]

So the issue, I think, is, yeah, some people can use comedy and humor as a defense. to kind of push people away. But if you just be with that and listen to what they're saying, there are probably some insights there that you may not be able to get through any other source. I just got really excited when you were talking about the Six Nations and the Constitution because I'm reading this great book that maybe you've read the Indian Givers. Oh, yeah. I was so excited. reading, and I thought it was interesting because what I took from it was that the reason we got these forms of the Six Nations into the Constitution was actually because there were people, founding fathers, like Benjamin Franklin, who actually did get what they were doing.

[47:37]

That they actually, some of them were actually elected to the councils. They became so integrated in the workings of the the native peoples and their councils, that they really understood what they were trying to do, and then they tried to set it up for our country, but then it's not like other people didn't really appreciate that, you know? But I... Anyway, I just appreciated that there were some people that really got the insight, and that's how we got even those surface things. And then how he goes on to talk about how the notions of freedom real freedom that the native peoples had in the Americas were what actually undermined the monarchy in Europe, that actually the ideas from this country were what the enlightenment in Europe was founded on was only by hearing what was happening here, even, you know, misunderstood, even though it wasn't translated correctly, that really got people thinking in a new way.

[48:43]

And actually that reminds me of another interesting principle that I do a lot of work, we do a lot of work on cross-cultural effectiveness, how to engage people cross-culturally in a way that feels healthy to everybody involved. And one of the principles for us is this idea of intimacy, that if you get to know somebody really well, then it's really hard to be racist toward them. So even if you think about sometimes when you're having the conversation, and still today, even here in the Bay Area and even in 2007, we're having a conversation and somebody says, well, my best friend is black. I'm not a racist because my best friend is black. But there is something... There's something to this notion of intimacy.

[49:46]

And my favorite story about that is my sister's been in a wheelchair for about 30 years from a motorcycle accident. And so when Brianna, one of our kids, was about six, she said, I really wonder what that's like. And my sister, who's just magnificent around this stuff, said, well, why don't you check it out? So she gave her her extra chair. And they wheeled around together for 24 hours. So Brianna had to sit in a wheelchair. She had to transfer from, you know, learn how to take the seat and transfer. And we went out to eat and this was in New Hampshire and the restaurant bathroom was not accessible. So Brianna had to wheel around the neighborhood with Debbie looking for a bathroom where she could actually fit her chair in with her. And so she has a level of compassion and affinity with people who have disabilities that is of a different quality because she made that commitment to intimacy with somebody who was different from her.

[51:00]

And I think that the people who got it didn't get it from reading about it. They got it from sitting in the councils and from actually being there without judgment, just saying, what's going on here? I'm curious to know. That's a very different experience than when you come in and say, I've got you all figured out. And that's what most of the European settlers, that was their experience. I've got you figured out. And then when they brought Africans over, it was like, we've got you figured out. And we don't have to pay attention. And so the intimacy was missing in all of those relationships. That doesn't mean proximity was missing. There's a difference between proximity and intimacy. So you can be having sex with somebody and not be intimate with them if you're not knowing who they are in their deepest self. And that's why you had slavery kind of laid out the way it was.

[52:04]

I wonder if the court gestures that were kind of brought in by the royalty to make fun of the royalty, I wonder if that's... Well, I kind of wonder why that would be done, you know, from the perspective of the royalty. But then that also relates to something I've thought about Jon Stewart for a while and things like that. Because I am rolling on the floor in tears when I watch Jon Stewart, and I feel kind of relief because these things that I'm troubled by and feel like people largely don't care about, in this case, there's a whole lot of people who are at least paying attention to them. But I feel like, kind of like Ken's question about humor, and related to wondering why the royalty would have court jesters, I sometimes wonder if Jon Stewart and such these kinds of things are kind of numbing, you know, in a certain sense, or at least, you know, it's a release like that.

[53:16]

But does that mean, you know, how we can all stay tuned in at 8 o'clock on Saturday or whenever it shows and laugh our faces off about it and, oh well, and move on. And you presented it as a way for people who normally couldn't access it at all to at least start to open up to it. But where is the point where something is done by an individual, or an action is taken, or a decision is made, or a change of heart is made? And does that happen? And the court gesture. Did everybody just laugh and for a moment they don't have to take the royalty as seriously? They know that they don't have any clothes? But that way it doesn't build up. It's just kind of like, okay, well, and back to the grind. I think that's an excellent question. I don't know whether I have a complete answer for you because I have not really studied evolution and good gestures and how they came back.

[54:20]

But I think you might have hit on... what I think is a very possible and possible reason for them to invite the court jesters in. Because you have, as I understand those court situations, tremendous amount of intense emotions and concerns and so forth, and a lot of infighting and all kinds of things going on in the royal courts. And I would guess that, you know, One of the only ways that you can keep some of those same people in the room to even play the roles that they play is that you would provide that little bit of relief that the court jester can provide sometimes in order to have things going on. I think that would be very important. Let me just make one other comment about how change comes about. because I think that we're all trying to find the mechanisms in order to be able to bring about what we might consider to be a just kind of change, but we're all kind of swept up in the political, community, family kind of context in which we exist.

[55:44]

And there is a concept, I think, that... I think, has something to do with this that we might want to look at called memes. We know that physically we're made up of genes, and genes structure our body and what we're able to do with our body through all of those kind of chemical processes. Well, there's a concept that some folks are looking at that culture also has... these bits of essentially information that also repeat themselves and get duplicated in various ways within the culture. And those are called memes. Some of them are bad and some of them are good. The bad ones, in a sense, get eliminated if they kill the carrier of the meme in the same way that genes don't go on if they are doing something that causes the carrier to die without being able to translate it on.

[56:52]

Cultures also can change and adapt if the particular memes that are driving it are driving it into some destructive aspects. So that's where we get down to and values and wisdom stories and other kinds of things that carry these memes. And I think change comes about by essentially moving towards the positive, sustaining kinds of memes within our society. Capitalism is in crisis at this point around the world, particularly global rapacious capitalism. capitalism, because it's killing people and it's destroying the world. So people are now at a point... Tell us how you really feel. I thought it was obvious. Is there a question about that?

[57:56]

So people are struggling to try to find, you know, things to adjust and adapt and... and to deal with it. So there's a lot of big debate going on in society, and clearly it's going to change because of that. And the best example for me of a meme is, and a meme kind of transferred and how you watch it move through a society and then how it gets crushed and shifted, is this notion of the relationship between Iraq and 9-11. Mm-hmm. So when that meme was put out there as an idea, as a social construct, people got it and were like, oh, yeah, most people were like, yes, yes, yes, 70%, 75% of people were like, yes, there's a relationship between 9-11 and Iraq. And then over time, that meme started to unravel. And so, but there are some people who are still holding on to it because people,

[59:00]

it has significant meaning for them. But as a meme, it's dying away because more and more people are saying, hmm, not so much. There was not so much relationship. So I think that that's kind of a pathway that helps me understand this notion of memes. But there's a book called The Virus of the Mind that kind of lays out this whole idea of memes. Yeah, well, I was going to say, I had a... perhaps more positive or optimistic, perhaps naive idea about the court jester, which is that perhaps the court jester's there because he's the only one who can tell the truth to the king. You know, that everyone else is under the power of the king and might be afraid to say, well, I think, you know, your highness, you've got that wrong because of the consequences. But the court jester's job is essentially to have the freedom to be able to say that. So again, in the spirit of the memes, it might be a useful mechanism for the king to actually have someone who can tell him the truth to perhaps change his mind about something if everyone else is afraid to ever disagree.

[60:05]

And I think that's a point of wisdom for leadership, that a good leader makes sure that there's somebody in their inner circle whose lens on things tends to be different from their own lens. You know, if you surround yourself with people who think the way you do, who see things the way you do, who share your perspectives, then where's the imaginative engagement? So I think that's a good way to look at it. I just wonder... you said that thing about rapacious global capitalism and probably everyone in this room agrees with you and I just wonder have you ever spoken somewhere where actually like people really didn't feel good about that or I mean did there's like people didn't agree with that well actually it was at Tassajara laughter laughter laughter

[61:09]

I was asked what to speak at Tassajara about. I don't know exactly what the exact subject was. It was about economics. It was about economics, and there was a person who was there. Were you there? I was there, yeah. I got a little tense. Who was defending the... the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and all those mechanisms that are used to promote global capitalism as really positive things. So we have a little debate. And of course, not having studied economics or having a degree in it or anything, I had to be supported by someone else in the room who did have the that agreed with the concept. So yeah, there was some tension there. That's the only time that I've actually spoken. Clearly, the other idea is out there, very strongly. Margaret Thatcher is known for a concept that is now titled timing, which is there is no alternative.

[62:21]

And so... Tina. Tina. What is it? Tina? Yeah. Okay. So basically saying that there's no alternative to global capitalism. That's the standard argument. Right. But there are countries clearly now that are exploring other alternatives, particularly in... Well, Europe has, in a sense, hedged on the kind of global capitalism that we're talking about for a long, long period of time. And there are a lot of economists following Von Hayek, who is considered to be the economist who has pushed this concept the most, who criticized the European model because it has so much social benefit programs. It spends so much public money and has so many regulations to... basically curb capitalism to a much greater extent than we do in the United States.

[63:27]

And so those economists were saying, well, these countries are not going to do well, they're going to fail, and they're not going to be competitive with the United States and other countries. There's now, within the last few months, been a realization that those countries are still doing all of that kind of public service, and they're more competitive than the United States. They've surpassed the United States in terms of the euro. And also in Latin America, you've got Chavez and a number of new leaders who've come to power. The first time that indigenous people have come to power since colonialization, who are now also pushing alternative concepts as to how the economies could be organized that are more harmonious with their own cultures. So there are some alternatives that are being recorded. Just to add, or to inquire, when you said to try and hold, yes or no, and the two extremes,

[64:36]

How could you see capitalism included with socialism? Are you saying that was what they were doing in Europe? That those countries were providing social services, but also able to have capitalism, but tone down capitalism instead of Yes. I mean, if you look at the history of the United States, it's been actually a place where this kind of capitalism has had its greatest growth. It's been democracy in the United States, which has periodically knocked down capitalism when it's gone too far. They've knocked down monopolies. They've done other kinds of things to kind of control what was going on. And, you know, it's gotten to the point where, I don't know if I want to go, this may be a long discussion, but, you know, the U.S.

[65:46]

has gotten to the point where basically a lot of the democratic structures that have been put in place to essentially, you know, give us some ability to control those kind of forces have now been taken over by the capitalists. because of the control of the elections, the presidency, and the Congress, and so forth. So capitalism has gotten out of hand. And on the global level, there is no effective mechanism to do that with global capitalism yet. The UN, I think, at some point was considered a possible way to do that. But the UN, because of the power of a lot of U.S. corporations, separated the mechanisms to deal with capitalism from the body of the UN and the various departments that were in the UN. So you have a separate global trade agreements and various world mechanisms that in themselves are done behind closed doors that are totally undemocratic and that basically support the growth of capitalism.

[66:59]

But as these other countries begin to grow and have some strength, there is some effort to move those mechanisms back under the aegis of the UN and under a democratic process. So that's one level of it. The other level of it is that capitalism in its beginnings was about how you ran your household. I mean, if you look at the... The Greek meaning of the word, it was about arrangements within the household in order for your household to function and move forward, you know, in a just way for all the members of the household. So at a very basic level, we're not going to be able to get away from those kinds of trade and exchanges that people have in terms of their work and their products.

[68:00]

So the question is not that there won't be any capitalism or that capitalism is all bad. It's that the means that have generated it, some have deteriorated and others have grown. And so there's this evolution going on. And we just need to pay attention to it. So I think it comes around to the both-and kind of thinking. So if the project is eliminate capitalism, then you have to come up with some other system that is also not going to be perfect. So how do we hold what is good about capitalism, the capacity to generate your own... to make things and to share them and to exchange them, those kinds of things, while also recognizing that fundamentally there's a tremendous potential for injustice.

[69:04]

So if you overlay justice and the principles of equity on top of some of the principles of capitalism, you get a hybrid something that is not... And it's not, you know, so it's not one thing or another, but it's a way of engaging that's community-based or, you know, whatever the language is. And I think this comes back to the issue about cultural plurality, because the economic systems are subsystems of culture, right? And if you have a monoculture that's carrying capitalism as an element of it, you're destroying all of these other bartering and other kinds of economic systems and relationships that people have. And they keep springing up, you know, despite that in various ways. I mean, we have cooperative housing. We have cooperative stores.

[70:04]

We have employee-owned organizations. We have a lot of things that keep bubbling up, you know, all the time. Craigslist. Oh, there's a whole on the Internet, yeah, in terms of how the people, you know, deal with things on the Internet. It's a whole new challenge to, you know, the capitalist system. If we were celebrating cultural diversity with also its economic elements in it, then I think that we can begin to alleviate some of the monocultural aspects that get carried with American culture. I'm just curious how you see China as an example of an economic system that's coming into all of our awareness as a very large and powerful and... I don't know if they think of themselves as capitalists, but I sort of like it. Like with one corporate headquarters, it seems to have a lot of control over this big machine.

[71:09]

I actually have a picture that I want to draw over here that came to mind both when Wilson was talking and... Can everybody see this? So... This is kind of the, when you have a monoculture, something that is the centerpiece that sees itself as the norm. So if you think about in the United States, this is the point of privilege. So it's the dominant group. So if it's capitalism, then all of the other ways of economic exchange rotate around that. And they have to go through the center to get to each other. So there's no direct... So when we have a dominant view that imposes itself on all the other views, then the dynamic becomes really unhealthy.

[72:16]

So if you look at culture, for example, and say, in the United States, kind of patriarchy... whatever, white supremacy is in the middle here. And so then you've got all these other cultural groups that rotate around that, but all of the conversation happens and is brokered through the lens of white male historical perspective. And I think what we're getting at is that for a long time the discussion has been, we want in. How do we get in here? How do we become part of this? And what we're saying is now the conversation is, how do you get out of the way? How do you recognize that in truth, you are one of us? So if the lens is capitalism, and there are all these other ways of developing economic systems, if capitalism were to step out of the center and be one of many, then the value that it brings to the circle is positive and not

[73:25]

overwhelming. And so if you think about it, the easier picture I think is if, so I did some tobacco policy work with the tribes in Montana. There are eight tribes in Montana. And the message that they wanted to communicate was keep tobacco sacred. But in that middle space was the Heart Association, Lung Association, the Cancer Society. because they had the infrastructure to collect all the dollars from Robert Wood Johnson as the big tobacco funder. So Robert Wood Johnson has a 10-year, $50 million initiative to reduce smoking. And so at the end of nine years, they look at the numbers and they find white, middle-class, people's smoking has dramatically reduced, been reduced. But the rates of smoking in all of the other ethnic communities in the United States is either the same or has gone up.

[74:31]

And LGBTQ, up. Young people, up. So after year nine of a 10-year initiative, Robert Wood Johnson's like, hmm, something's wrong with this picture. And so they said, okay, who's getting all the money? It's the... white middle class organization, you know, the kind of dominant group. So they said, okay, you have to now diversify. So what happened in Montana is the tribes had been trying for nine years to get into that money, to get into that space that heart, lung, and cancer were in. And so in year nine, they got a grant to bring a facilitator to say, you know, this nine years is still not working. What could we do differently? So what we did was we had them form a coalition. And then they went to the center and they went to Heart, Lung, and Cancer and said, if you don't, what we need you to do is step into the circle.

[75:33]

You need to understand. So Heart, Lung, and Cancer said, we don't do any sacred use funding. So nothing that, no messaging. What we will do is we'll change the faces of the people on the don't smoke posters. So they're Indians instead of white people. But that's it. That's our cultural competency. And so the tribes got together and said, no, what you need to do is recognize that your message is one message. It's not the message. And it's not applicable to everybody. So when in Montana, it's called M-Tup. When they were able to move out of the circle, and they had to because the tribe said, You don't deal with us individually anymore. You deal with us as a coalition. And if you don't deal with us, you're going to lose all your funding because Robert Wood Johnson is not going to fund you if there's no Indians at the table because that's who's in Montana, is white people and Indians. And so they were able to get them to move out of the center and acknowledge the whole array of messages around tobacco.

[76:39]

And they funded a conference where they invited elders to come in and pray with the youth using tobacco. And they invited the county tobacco coordinators who had Indian kids in the urban centers so that they could actually understand what the message was as well. So that story is kind of a microcosm of, I think, what we're talking about when you say capitalism. It isn't capitalism. It's like... Different is different. Capitalism isn't by nature evil. It's what we've done with it and how we practice it and how we impose it around the world that gives it the value that it has. But if it were able to step aside and say, so there's capitalism, there's socialism, there's communism, there's whatever else, the other ways of being in relationship economically, then what you can put in the center

[77:43]

our core values, you know, equity, justice. You can put that in the middle instead of one way of looking at things. And so that's kind of a takeaway for you. You can have the picture. Any other questions or comments, thoughts? The same thing happens when you put justice in the center. Who's justice? Which justice? Yeah, that's true. How do we get capitalism to step out of the middle? well I think to some extent it is happening but those of us here in the United States have a huge responsibility around what's going on because a lot of it originates from here one of the things that you know that we can do is look into our own communities and those around us in terms of how we're influenced and affected by capitalism and find ways to push back.

[78:55]

There's another concept that I would want to introduce, I think, here. But first of all, let me say that in Oakland, you know, we have been continuing struggling and have had some bit of success in kind of reorienting the power that the top business people essentially have in deciding what happens in Oakland, that there's some movement towards making it more of a community kind of decision. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, they have divided up the city's budget, and there's 50,000 people that participate in deciding what the budget is. expenditures are the city through a continuous long-term process so there are some examples of how to do that and that's making a difference but there's a concept here I think that I think is also important about the miners canary so there are some folks in this country in fact probably the majority of people in this country

[80:05]

that don't think that they are negatively impacted by capitalism and all these other kinds of things that are happening, all these bad means that are running through our system. And they are treating the problem essentially in a weird way. If you see the problem, one of the things that miners do is they take a canary down in the mine with them. A canary has a very, has a relatively weaker lung system than human beings do in a lot of other animals. So that when there's poison in the mine, the canary is affected first, and that's a signal that there is a problem that is eventually going to affect everybody you need to get out of the mine or correct the problem. Our response here to those kind of problems is to put a gas mask on the canary and to go on. And then when our young boys, you know, who get pushed out for various reasons out of their own social systems and pick up guns and walk into their schools and start killing everybody, we don't make the same association as what happens in...

[81:15]

poor urban areas that are also affected by those same means and the same cultures. And we want to try to do something about what's going on in those urban areas and don't recognize that all throughout the whole country and our families and our communities, we are tremendously impacted by the system. So we treat one another as products. We treat one another as means to an end, rather than as ends unto itself, which is one of the aspects of this kind of capitalist means. And so we are destroying ourselves with it, but a great percentage of people in this country don't see it as a problem. Lonnie Guineer wrote a book called The Miner's Canary, and one of the things that she points out in there is that because we've racialized everything, we think of particularly the African-American community as the canary.

[82:15]

But she points out that the policies that we put in place to keep the canary out of the way actually impacts a lot more people mostly poor white people are impacted by the policies that are established. And so because we've identified the canary as African Americans, we don't see this idea that the whole mine is poisoned and that everybody, all of the vulnerable people are going to get hit at the same time as the canaries. And so we end up with kind of this hierarchy of oppression where, you know, some people are more needy or more... And so I think the idea of looking at the mine instead of the canary is a really critical piece.

[83:16]

We've probably taken too much advice. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue the practice of giving by offering your financial help. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May all beings be happy.

[83:42]

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