Good morning, everyone. MY NAME IS TOVA GREEN. I'M THE ACTING HEAD OF PRACTICE CURRENTLY AND IT'S MY DELIGHT TO WELCOME OUR SPEAKER TODAY, RHONDA MAGGIE. JUST A BRIEF INTRODUCTION. RHONDA IS A PROFESSOR OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO WHERE SHE HAS BEEN ON FACULTY FULL TIME SINCE 1998. She's a leading mindfulness teacher and practice innovator with a focus on applying mindfulness to the hardest challenges of our times.

[09:11]

She is also an internationally recognized teacher, guide and mentor focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law and social change work. Rhonda has studied mindfulness and it's. underlying origins in Buddhism for 20 years. She's also studied Zen Buddhism with Norman Fisher and more recently with Roshi Joan Halifax and received the precepts from Joan Halifax in 2020 and recognition of teaching ability in 2022. She's already been a teacher, but she's also a Zen teacher. And her Dharma name is Mio Zen, Complete Illumination. Rhonda has written a wonderful book, which I highly recommend. I've read it several times. It's The Inner Work of Racial Justice, a very helpful book, and it's available in our bookstore.

[10:19]

So without further words, I just say welcome back, Rhonda. Thank you, thank you. Well, good. Good morning. I don't know if everyone, I feel like the mic might not be quite. Can you hear it? Yes, everyone? Yes? Yeah, well enough. Is there a button that should be? Oh, it's on. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, if anyone has any difficulty hearing me, just kind of let me know. Give me a raise back from the corners of the room. little bit of difficulty yeah sure the way we can turn it up maybe just a little i don't know if um now?

[11:30]

A little bit more? No? Technology. Yeah. Oh, wait. Is that it? Is it on? A little bit better? We will proceed with the support of the universe and with all of you beautiful beings. And yeah, you can hear me. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. IT REALLY IS A RARE HONOR TO BE ABLE TO JOIN YOU HERE AT THE SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER HERE AT A MOMENT WHERE WE AS A KIND OF A NATIONAL COMMUNITY ARE TURNING TOWARD REMEMBRANCE OF Martin Luther King Jr.

[12:31]

's life and the various associations we have with his life and legacy. So it's an honor to be here with you in support of our collective reflections around the theme of what is it that continues to speak to us from the teachings and practices, the life work, the commitments of Martin Luther King Jr. So I have some reflections and some thoughts, not to say like a written out talk, right? I have things in writing, but I would rather than sort of just reading this, anything that preset, I really would like us to open up the space. together, I will be leading with these reflections, but as I speak, as I share some of what's on my heart and mind, when I ponder Martin Luther King's invitation, the inspiration that he represents for me, I really hope that each of us in our own way will

[13:57]

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

[15:27]

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

[16:33]

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

[17:39]

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

[18:55]

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

[20:10]

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

[21:13]

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

[22:20]

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

[23:46]

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

[24:49]

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

[26:04]

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

[27:07]

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

[28:07]

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

[29:09]

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

[30:21]

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

[31:26]

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

[32:40]

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

[33:47]

And he was keen to bring this idea of mindfulness and social justice into conversation in South Africa. and around his university in Johannesburg. And he started sending out invitations and the invitations, of course, were mostly going to Western teachers, often who were not of color. And I happened to get one of those invitations, however, and I and others started to kind of amplify the concerns we were having about just for who, right? for whose benefit this conference on mindfulness in the South African context and mindfulness and social justice, who were the beneficiaries intended for that? And I'm surprised to say without going into great detail, what ended up happening was an opening up to all of the deep wisdom teachings that were available right there in the indigenous communities around us in Johannesburg, in South Africa more broadly, on the continent more broadly.

[34:53]

And it ended up being a wonderful engagement sort of infused all the way through with the teachings of an African spiritual teacher who really inspired us to remember our main job for bringing mindfulness to social justice is to help to help heal the separations, all the kinds of separations, and to remember that we are not the first generation by any means who have struggled to bring kind of a healing heart to this invitation to see more clearly all that we're up against, to see those who are particularly vulnerable more clearly and with more respect than love. but really just to connect those who are particularly vulnerable with everybody so that we start to, again, stitch together the world.

[35:59]

And so when I think of this invitation that I feel is being presented to us, this call for us to infuse the concept of beloved community with our own commitments, I think of this image that I hold in my head from that time in South Africa. where we were met at a particular location for the conference and for the retreat and all of that, but there was a museum kind of, what would you call it, like a display that was meant to represent the long human historical march toward freedom and to represent that there were people from all walks of life and all over the planet who in different ways have helped that journey. And so when I talk about these particular spiritual teachers, it really is meant to open up our hearts, our minds to the teachers who inspire us from our own cultures, from our own histories, to see what they may have had in common with the aspirations of those whose words I am amplifying today.

[37:15]

And to invite us again to think about what's our original medicine for this time? What's the piece that we're meant to add? Martin Luther King Jr. again, bringing in this idea of fierce love that will confront injustice in this time. And then amplifying that to the degree that Thich Nhat Hanh from where he practiced Buddhism in Vietnam and in his efforts. heard and was inspired by Martin Luther King, as many of you all know this story. And there's a book called Brothers in the Beloved Community, which really reflects some of you may be familiar with this, but reflects this journey of connection between Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh and the way that they both were seeking to amplify this idea of beloved community after King was assassinated. Thich Nhat Hanh reportedly made a promise to himself that he would continue Dr. King's efforts to amplify and to inspire and to cultivate some notion of beloved community.

[38:26]

And in 2014, Thich Nhat Hanh reportedly said and shared that he believed in his life he had managed to continue Dr. King's work. What was he pointing to in particular? Well, that he'd helped share the teachings of the Buddha in ways that spread them through what's called mindfulness, opening up the capacity for these practices to touch and heal, and being courageous about creating places and spaces where people of color could practice, really inviting engagement with that which might make it hard for everyone to hear the teachings and to be inspired by them. So when we think of the many different, let's say there are different lineages that come together, you might say, to infuse this concept of beloved community. Then, of course, the question is, how does it land in our own hearts?

[39:31]

Where do we find ourselves struggling to imagine something called beloved community in a time where it seems like there's not enough love in the world? I don't know if I'm the only one that sometimes looks around and kind of wonders if we can do much to really meet and transform what seem to be habits and patterns deep within our own culture, our own communities, perhaps in our own hearts that run fear, that run the kind of practices and policies of separation, hierarchy, and dehumanization that run the notions that we are somehow fundamentally separate from the planet and therefore owe no responsibility to making adjustments to how we live that might support us in thriving together on a planet where absolutely everything is connected.

[40:44]

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

[41:51]

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

[42:59]

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

[44:09]

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

[45:21]

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

[46:28]

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

[47:30]

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

[48:33]

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

[49:40]

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

[50:50]

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

[51:59]

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

[53:10]

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

[54:12]

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

[55:25]

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

[56:44]

EVERYONE. WELCOME ONCE AGAIN TO THE SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER. MY NAME IS KAY. I'M THE ENO, HEAD OF THE MEDITATION HALL. AND I JUST WANT TO WELCOME YOU. ALSO WANT TO SHARE A FEW ANNOUNCEMENTS. AS ALWAYS, IF YOU APPRECIATE TODAY'S PROGRAM AND ANY OF THE PROGRAMS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE A DONATION TO SUPPORT US. THERE'S A DONATION BOX IN THE HALLWAY. I ALSO WANT TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO COME AND SIT WITH US. WE SIT MOST EVERY MORNING AND EVENING OF THE WEEK. ALSO A PERIOD OF MEDITATION THAT MAYBE NOT EVERYBODY KNOWS ABOUT. RIGHT BEFORE THE DHARMATALK, EVERY SATURDAY AT 925, THERE'S A PERIOD OF MEDITATION IN THE ZENDO. IT'S OPEN TO EVERYONE. YOU'RE ALL WELCOME TO COME EARLY AND JOIN IN THAT. I WANT TO ANNOUNCE OUR UPCOMING WINTER PRACTICE PERIOD.

[59:35]

THIS IS AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF PRACTICE. IT WILL START ON JANUARY 24TH AND RUN UNTIL THE FIRST OF APRIL. IT WILL BE GUIDED BY OUR SENIOR DHARMATEACHER PAUL HELLER. AND THE THEME OF THE PRACTICE PERIOD IS TO STUDY THE BUDDHA WAY IS TO STUDY THE SELF. YOU CAN JOIN EITHER IN PERSON OR ONLINE AS WELL. SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR DETAILS ABOUT THAT. WE HAVE AN UPCOMING ONE DAY SITTING, ALSO LED BY PAUL HALLER ON THE 28TH. THIS IS ALSO EITHER IN PERSON OR ONLINE. IF YOU ARE NEWER TO MEDITATION AND WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE ZAZEN INSTRUCTION, ACTUALLY NEXT WEEKEND, NEXT SATURDAY, MORNING. WE HAVE KIND OF A ZAZEN INSTRUCTION HAPPENING AT THAT TIME.

[60:38]

ALSO TO MENTION, THIS AFTERNOON, OUR QUEER DHARMA GROUP IS MEETING AT 1 PM ONLINE, ACTUALLY TO CELEBRATE THEIR 13TH ANNIVERSARY AS A QUEER DHARMA GROUP. THE LINK IS ON OUR WEBSITE. WE HAVE A DARMA TALK COMING UP ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT BY OUR OWN MICHAEL MCCORD AND NEXT SATURDAY'S TALK AT THE SAME TIME WILL BE GIVEN BY OUR FORMER HEAD OF PRACTICE NANCY PETRIN. AS ALWAYS, PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR DETAILS. WE'LL NOW TAKE A VERY SHORT FIVE MINUTE BREAK AND THEN ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO COME BACK TO ENGAGE RHONDA WITH SOME QUESTIONS IS WELCOME TO DO SO. SO THANK YOU. Thank you.

[70:21]

I have a question and more, but first a fun fact I want to tell you. USF is my alma mater. I considered going to law school there, but I didn't go, but I did help organize the first demonstration against the Bakke decision back in the 70s. Thank you. Thank you for that activism back then. It all built. You know, it's all, we're just picking up the baton. Many points that you share make complete sense to me. from the moment I became a political activist back in USF days, is also the moment I discovered liberation theology, way before I discovered Buddhism. And also since then, I continue to, of course, learn to cultivate my love and my heart so I could act with love and peace. And keeping the aggravations and angers...

[71:29]

At bay as much as I can. Yes. But I also learned that in order really for it to change, to deal with the white supremacists and all the isms, our individual love cannot really break the silos. Alienation that is constantly being perpetuated by capitalism and materialism and individual competitions created under the... world, right? Because it's highly structured. We don't even know we're doing it. We don't even know what we're doing. So yes, it's great to have a beloved sangha. How can we help beloved sanghas like this one and also my beloved sangha to me is the global world. How can we help each other understand breakthrough the false propagandas, the false educations in and out of school to really see the reality of what is really being continuously perpetuated systematically by all people, not just white people.

[72:38]

How can we do that? How can we help each other as brothers and sisters to truly see the truth and act together collectively to combat the systematic oppressions that we're living in moment to moment. Huge and important question. How can we do this? And I thank you so much for, again, your own clear, long journey of engagement, because it all matters. There's no small act, I think, in the direction of SEEKING TO DO WHAT YOUR QUESTION IS ASKING ABOUT. AND I THINK MY ANSWER MAY NOT BE 100% SATISFYING BECAUSE I THINK WITH THAT KIND OF A QUESTION, IT'S A BIG ENOUGH QUESTION THAT FOR ME THE ANSWER IS GOING TO LIE SOMEWHERE IN OUR FIRST OF ALL, STAYING CONNECTED WITH OTHERS WHO ARE

[73:47]

seeking, you know, trying to do the same thing. Like, let's not get isolated, right? Let's make sure we, you know, we do what we can. There will be times when we actually are alone, but sometimes we feel more alone than we are. And if we can, especially in the time, these times where we can connect using technology, et cetera, find ways to connect, cross miles, geography, et cetera, discourses, make the connections, heal the separations. First and foremost, I think what we always have to do. But I also think that it's about taking the steps that we can, and first of all, recognizing the steps that we're already taking, recognizing that the fact that we're doing this work doesn't mean that there's not going to be suffering. Doesn't mean, I mean, if you think about all of the teachers over the millennia, over the recorded human history, who have been trying to do their part during their time. It can be a little humbling to realize, okay, yeah, they've tried and at a certain point they had to pass it on to the next generation, I'm going to be doing the same.

[74:56]

So I think recognizing what we are doing is really important. And just amplifying what you know, what we find to be working in our own spaces and places. There are, you know, 10,000 different ways that we can do what you're describing, but it'll be different for each of us. And so, of course, as Rilke said, when we have a big question like this, where there's no one answer, we take the steps that we can, and if we're lucky, we will live, our lives will manifest. I think our being here is kind of a manifestation, isn't it, right? Not a huge overturning, but we're here in this room together. Talking about breaking through the sort of mental constructs that keep us deluded and keep us being co-opted into systems that depend for our complicity on the sort of maintenance of suffering.

[75:57]

So if we can come together, even in places like this, I don't believe that there are accidents. I believe every step matters. And if we can do things like this and recognize that this too has changed. This will help somebody else. This will inspire somebody else. And then having that humility to say, and then I just rest when I need to rest. I smile and dance when I need to dance. I eat when I need to eat. I rest. I get up and do the best I can the next day. I think that to me is... what these teachings helped me to work on, that sort of countervailing to the way I was trained at the University of Virginia and in law to be always seeking the big grand sign that I've done it. But actually, you know, these teachings are about having the capacity to be able to feel a little gentle movement of the heart, which is a sign that something important is being done as well. So we don't want to miss those gentle movements of the heart that may be the best

[77:00]

evidence in our lives that change is actually happening. So thank you. Thank you. It's very encouraging. Thank you, my dear. You are encouraging to me today. Any other questions? There's a hand here. Thank you. So my partner is a lawyer and she very recently, she had a case, she was in front of the judge, she's trying her hardest to fight for justice and then justice doesn't meet her in that moment. And I think the pain of believing that you kind of have to do to really present the case and then I think the pain that you experience when you really try to fight for the case and it's not kind of met by the world, there's despair in kind of the moments after that.

[78:13]

And I guess I'm looking for guidance for her or guidance for me to kind of engage with that. In handling the difficulty of the disappointment, the pain that can come when we try to make a difference and we in a certain sense, fail. Yeah. And how do you take care of that? How do you take care? Well, thank you for this question. And also, if I may, just send appreciations to you, to your partner for, you know, taking that laboring oar, right? And doing what we can in the moments that we have, what she could. Deep gratitude to all those. who take whatever steps we can in the moments that we can, who bring the senseless kindness, right? By which I mean to say kindness unjustified, effort for justice unmet. I keep trying. I mean, so gratitude and appreciation for every single one of us for the moments that we've done that, even though we may feel like we need to do more.

[79:19]

You know, when I hear your story, I think of the... MY OWN AND OTHER EXPERIENCES, SO MANY EXPERIENCES OF FOLKS WHO ARE ADVOCATES FOR JUSTICE WHO HAVE BEEN THERE. AND THERE IS ACTUALLY A VIDEO TAPED DESCRIPTION OF KIND OF A WAY OF BEING WITH THAT KIND OF DISAPPOINTMENT THAT YOU CAN FIND ONLINE. IT'S BY ONE OF MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES IN THE WORK, TYRIAN STEINBACK. I'M HAPPY TO PROVIDE a note to this so it can be posted with our talk. But in this video, she talks about being a lawyer representing a woman who's about to be evicted unjustly. You know, a woman and a single mom in Oakland, African American woman, tearing herself as an African American female lawyer. And here she is trying to represent this woman who's never been to jail, never had any problem, but is fighting for her home.

[80:24]

and who is, you know, charged and arrested in the course of that. And that feeling that, you know, I've done everything I can to keep this woman from going to jail, you know, left her feeling such despair. She, you know, she describes, and I've experienced this too, we lean into our practices of, first of all, this is why we practice, because we know we're going to have these disappointing moments. Again, I find inspiration in recognizing that all of the people who inspire me through history failed in a certain sense or else we wouldn't be here. I mean, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, right? They tried and the struggle continues. So I do think that for me, cultivating the capacity to have that humility of I do the best I can. I rest when I need to rest. I begin again.

[81:25]

And I find, for me, I find joy and uplift in the process, not so much the result necessarily. The result is often outside of my hands. But if I know I've done my best, if I know along the way I've... been respectful of the human beings that I've met, whether they're my adversaries or my client or my colleague, if I've been living in the moments of this life that could end at any time in ways that manifest my highest and best, that in and of itself, I personally believe that's justice too. That's living justice. So I think part of what we get hung up on again as lawyers and academics and the like, we get hung up on the big signs that we've succeeded and the big wins.

[82:26]

And our challenge and invitation through these practices is to not forget the tiniest, subtlest wins that when you combine them mean so much. So I hope in some ways that might help in this challenge. Thank you. Thank you. I think love is a win wherever it exists. So if we're bringing love in, even if we're losing that big battle, we're winning. Thank you for your inspiring words and life. I have two questions. One is, I recently heard about a book that I'm reading now from my Zen teacher, Linda Cutts. It's called Rest is Resistance by Tricia, and I don't remember her last name.

[83:32]

And talking about, especially for BIPOC, but I think it's relevant to everyone, to see rest as essential and as a way of dealing with white supremacist culture, and she calls it the grind. And I'm sad to say, I mean, I think that culture permeates everywhere, including our Zen Center. And it's just hard to address it. You know, we all work really hard at being bodhisattvas to the best that we can, and yet sometimes I think we don't take the time to really listen to each other. And I think some people do feel marginalized when they come here, try as we might to change things. So just wondering if you have any words about how we can, I mean, how can we keep working?

[84:38]

I mean, there's no choice. We have to keep working to change the culture. But any thoughts about that? Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that book. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm aware of it. And I hear you're pointing toward the challenge of, you know, taking these insights, seeing more of what there is to see, and yet coming up against culture and counterculture, justifications for the way things are. It is not easy. changing institutions. I mean, I have been a law professor for 20, what is it, 23, four years now? A lot of years. And that's my particular place where I work with these same kinds of invitations, opportunities, disappointments, challenges. And all I can say is if we can, again,

[85:45]

I think the challenge is to not lose hope that we can make a difference, that change can happen, because it can. I think it's also, for me, an ongoing practice around... I actually had a conversation with a colleague about this, a friend, a mentor about this yesterday. but about learning from the yeses and the nos in our experience. Learning, discerning, having that practice of discernment and being present to what the, you know, the lesson of this. I've tried this. It hasn't worked. How do I respond? What story am I telling that may be self-defeating, that may make it hard for me to try another way? So it's all practice. And if we can just keep bringing love to ourselves and other human beings with whom we're struggling.

[86:50]

And then also there may be times when we realize, you know, there's a call for us to try something different. And, you know, not necessarily pausing for a second. Just a little prayer that... May all be well. May all beings be safe. But I think just, you know, just hopefully, you know, there are times when we can just work with and take it to pause, take a breath, begin again. But there are times when what we're learning is actually I need to try a whole different way. I need to maybe, you know, go on a different path altogether. Maybe I'm, you know, kind of going against a particular stream where I've traveled as far down this particular path as I can. So there's so many points at which it's really just about lovingly meeting ourselves and each other right where we are.

[87:57]

And that, to me, is the humble message of our practice. So thank you for just continuing the journey. That's all we can really, really, really do with love. Keep at it with love. AND KEEP FINDING PLACES AND SPACES LIKE THIS, RIGHT, WHERE WE CAN, BECAUSE THIS DOESN'T FEEL LIKE WE'RE DOING ANYTHING, BUT IN A WAY, RIGHT, THAT WE'RE HAVING A SPACE WHERE WE CAN SAY, GOSH, SOMETIMES I GET FRUSTRATED. GOSH, SOMETIMES I TRY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND I FIND THAT IT'S REALLY MUCH HARDER THAN TALKING ABOUT IT. HAVING THESE SPACES IS ALSO PART OF THE WAY. SO THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE. I JUST, NO ONE ELSE, Question is, I saw somewhere that you were doing a one-year training. Yes. And has it started already? And I can't remember where I saw it. The Barry Center for Buddhist Studies. I'm doing a one-year training, community, cultivating community around bringing soulfulness and mindfulness into engaged Buddhism.

[89:10]

So really looking at this quality of something called soulfulness. We know that the notion of the soul is anathema to traditional Buddhist thought, right? So it's not about an unchanging soul. It is about, though, a little bit of what I was speaking about, which is in my talk, which is recognizing that each of our heritages, cultures, our lineages, our grand... You know, we look at... the places and the people from whom we've emerged, right? We wouldn't be here if we hadn't won many different genetic lotteries. We just wouldn't be here. We've all been gifted. This is not to say we won all the lotteries, but to live is a gift, right? And so we've inherited much about how to be human just by virtue of the fact we're here and we miss this often. And so what I want to do with this one-year engagement with the course is create a space for exploring What is that each of us in our group that we'll create has learned about how to stay in the hard places and keep coming back and how to discern and how to keep our hearts from getting hard even when we get disappointed?

[90:24]

What songs? What dances? What poems? Really giving ourselves an opportunity to kind of really be uplifted and strengthened, rooted in, see as part of the foundations of mindfulness, the establishment of the Eightfold Path, the beautiful, poignant, bittersweet particularity of our own journeys. So we'll be telling stories, we'll be doing all these things, looking at our biographies and hearing from each other. And I hope this will probably end up in another kind of manifestation of either a book or other courses. So, yeah, that course we've already filled. We haven't, we'll start, but we've done the process of gathering the participants. But there will be an opportunity to continue on that part of the journey with me. So thank you for asking about it. I KNOW WE MUST BE CLOSE TO TIME OR OUT OF TIME, ARE WE?

[91:34]

YEAH, I WAS JUST GOING TO SAY WE ARE AT TIME. BUT I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU, RHONDA, SO MUCH FOR COMING AND SHARING YOUR PRESENCE AND YOUR WISDOM WITH US. AND THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY FOR BEING HERE TODAY. YEAH, THANKS, EVERYONE.

[91:50]

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