This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I was just going to introduce myself a little bit more fully. I was born in Tokyo, Japan, and I moved to the States when I was seven. And I had a... a pretty happy childhood up until the time I moved, but a lot of things changed in my life when I moved to this country and I had a pretty, my upbringing was filled with turmoil and I didn't react to it very well when I was young and I started getting involved with drinking and getting high at a pretty young age. I ended up dropping out of high school when I was 15 and for the next couple of years after that was not doing many productive things with my life. But all of that changed when I was 17. I had the blessing of a Japanese Buddhist order.

[01:04]

And I oftentimes say that at that point in my life, if I had met a military recruiter, I would have gone off to war. If I was in a community where there was a lot of gang activity, I probably would have joined a gang. I think so many young people are at a place where it's like whoever reaches their hand out first will just gravitate towards. And luckily for me, it was a group of monastics who were very dedicated to both the Dharma and of nonviolent social change. And when I met them, this group of monastics were organizing a walking pilgrimage. They were going to walk from Massachusetts down to New Orleans and then down the coast of Africa to retrace the slave group with the understanding that the racism that we face in this country today is a direct lineage of what in many ways began with the slave trade and with the Middle Passage, and before that with the genocide of Native Americans. And they believe that by walking on foot from the United States and going back to Africa, they can begin to reverse the legacy of the Middle Passage.

[02:06]

And as a 17-year-old who had never been involved in any sort of activism, I couldn't comprehend the bigness of the vision of that. But I was just so bored with where I was at in my life. And I told my mom and my friends that I would check it out for a week. And I didn't come home for a year and a half after that. And I ended up walking all the way to New Orleans with these monks and nuns. And when I got to New Orleans, one of the nuns from the order invited me to go to a temple with her in Nepal, in Kathmandu, where the Buddha was born. And so I ended up spending the next year studying in their temples all over South Asia, in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. And so for me, my introduction to both the Dharma and the work of nonviolence came at the same time. I can actually look back and point to it was May 1st of 1998 when everything changed for me. So I'm incredibly blessed to have had that experience as a youngster. And I think as we enter 2017 year, I think the need for nonviolence has never been greater.

[03:11]

My first... experience in activism where I saw mass mobilization was in the late 1990s when I was involved in the anti-globalization movement, the protests that were being organized against the WTO and the IMF World Bank. And it was the first time I had been surrounded by tens of thousands of people fighting for the same cause in the streets. And it was such an inspiring moment for me. But after that movement kind of died down a little bit, I had to wait another 10 years to feel that momentum again during the Occupy movement. But I was talking to my friend recently that since the rise and fall of the Occupy movement, we've seen the rise of Black Lives Matter, we've seen the rise of Standing Rock, and for those of you that don't know about movements like Cosecha, movements like Democracy Spring, movements like If Not Now, these are movements that my friends are organizing that I wouldn't be surprised if any of these movements turned out millions of people into the streets over the next couple of years.

[04:15]

And so it feels like the gap between these movements are shrinking. And I'm really inspired by that. And at the same time, Dr. King talked a lot about the urgency of now. That there's such an urgency that we organize and that we fight for justice for our communities in this day. And I think that urgency is even stronger now going into 2017. And I think oftentimes when we get caught up in the momentum and that urgency, we begin to enter a sense of panic and impatience. And the intention and the mindfulness through which we do the work of social change radically changes. The energy shifts. And so this past year I had the opportunity and the privilege to spend some time at Standing Rock in North Dakota. And one of the messages that I received from the elders there that they kept saying over and over again is that we need to learn to slow down. That this work is the work of generations. And even as we face the urgency of 2017, that we have to remind ourselves that this is work that we're doing not for ourselves, but for the seventh generation that's going to come after us.

[05:23]

And so I feel like that message of slowing things down, of doing things intentionally, of doing things mindfully, combined with the urgency of now, the strategies and the tactics of nonviolence, is going to be incredibly important for us to learn to merge those two teachings. And so I'm really honored to be here and excited to share a little bit about what I've learned about Dr. King and his interpretation of the Dharma, if you will, over these next few minutes. So how did I come to be sitting here this morning? I would say the pivotal incident in my youth, it was a little... later than Kazu's was in the summer before my last year at college. I had started college at Antioch, which was a very liberal school, having grown up in New York in a secular Jewish family that was not very political. I got inspired at Antioch by hearing about the anti-nuclear movement and the civil rights movement.

[06:32]

And then I transferred to UC Berkeley and just before my senior year, I signed up for a three-week voter registration project in Greensboro, North Carolina, that was sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. It was the summer of 1963. And at the end, we all got on. So we were students from black and white colleges. We stayed in the basement of a black church in Greensboro. And there were sit-ins at Woolworths. in Greensboro as well as some other cities. And it was my first exposure to segregation and to some of the blatant injustices that I wasn't so aware of having grown up in New York. And then we went to the March on Washington where Dr. King made his very famous speech, I Have a Dream. And I think some of the... The teachings wasn't just from his speech, but being part of that huge gathering of people who cared so deeply about justice and equality really made an impact on me, and somehow it's never left me.

[07:45]

It's kind of part of, I think, what I value, who I am, but probably why I came to Zen Center, finding like-minded people who are wanting to find an expression of the bodhisattva vow to live and be lived for all beings. So just a few things that after that experience in 1963 I went to social work school after college and really was grateful for the orientation to a way of thinking that our lives our individual lives are greatly influenced by our families, by the society in which we live, by social movements. And in the 70s, I joined a feminist therapy collective and became involved in the feminist movement, went to Washington again for an Equal Rights Amendment march.

[08:49]

And then in the 80s, I had come out as a lesbian earlier in my life, when most people were closeted, and it was very challenging. And then in the 80s, during the gay pride movement and the first marches after Stonewall, I was living in Boston then, and there was a women's bookstore and women's music concerts, women's softball teams, and I was able to come out and join with others to celebrate being who I was instead of feeling I had to be ashamed of it or hide it. And then in 1982, I took part in a workshop with Joanna Macy. Some of you may be familiar with her work. At that time, Joanna Macy is a Buddhist scholar and activist and writer. She now lives in Berkeley, but at that time she was living on the East Coast.

[09:52]

And she was beginning to do workshops all around the world. called Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. And I went to a weekend workshop which totally rekindled my activism. And I formed a support group with some friends and then joined a women's nonviolent civil disobedience group. And our first action was at Seneca Falls where there was a women's peace encampment and where there were weapons being stockpiled to be sent, nuclear weapons that were going to be sent to England and Germany. Some of you may have heard of Greenham Common, which is where there was a similar gathering and peace encampment surrounding a base that was receiving some of those weapons. So I got arrested for the first time and that women's affinity group was very active and we protested at places where they were having nuclear arms sales.

[10:57]

You know, people were coming together to buy and sell weapons. And also got involved in supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Some of the people in my group went to Nicaragua. And then in the 90s, so I moved to San Francisco in 1990 and got... very involved with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which had its office in Berkeley, and is still active. And at that time, I also became involved in Zen practice. I'd been going to meditation retreats on the East Coast, mostly Vipassana retreats, and when I moved here, I was living in the East Bay, so I would go to Green Gulch on Sundays and sit at Berkeley Zen Center, during the week. And gradually, my involvement in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship led to my being on the board and then on the staff. And when I was on the staff, I moved into City Center.

[11:58]

That was 99. And I've been a resident ever since. And just finding my way through Zen Center and my activities here to support inclusivity here in our Sangha and to find ways of addressing what are some of the real injustices and concerns for peace in the world through my practice. And I feel today, since the election, I think the question is very present for each of us. What is an appropriate response to violence and hatred in the US and around the world? and how can we meet this, particularly how can we meet this as an organization, as Zen Center, how can we meet this as Buddhist practitioners? And I was very inspired this week by hearing President Obama's farewell speech, and he said, change happens when ordinary people are engaged.

[13:12]

We have to believe in our ability to bring about change. So I think that's a question for me now. What is the appropriate response and how can I find that with my sangha here at Zen Center? Back to you. So we wanted to use what's referred to as the six principles of Kingian nonviolence as a framework to have this discussion. The six principles we typically teach in a two-day workshop. And within the two-day workshop, we probably spend about four hours, five hours, exploring these six sentences. We've got 20 minutes. So I'm going to talk really fast. No, I guess I'll try to slow down. And we'll see how far we can get. But I oftentimes say that... Nonviolence is much like a martial art in that it's something that takes time.

[14:13]

It's not something that you can just take a two-day workshop or even a week-long workshop and understand in any way. If you practice Kung Fu, you never become Kung Fu. And similarly with nonviolence, nonviolence is something we never become. But it's something that we're in the art of... of improving and trying to live out these principles and be better at living out these principles day by day. Similar to the five precepts, it's not something that we're ever going to be able to practice perfectly, but it's like that North Star that continues to guide us and that we continue to try to get closer and closer to every day. And so the first principle of nonviolence is that nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. And there's two parts to this principle that I want to talk about. The first part is that it's for courageous people and that there's a misconception oftentimes that nonviolence is something that is easy and something that is passive. And I think the biggest misunderstanding that exists about the concept of nonviolence is that it's about not being violent.

[15:15]

That as long as I'm not violent, that I'm practicing nonviolence. And I think that misunderstanding and that misinterpretation is what gives nonviolence its bad name oftentimes. Because it's easy for you to witness violence and it's easy for us to witness injustice in our lives and throughout society and say that's none of my business and not to find ways to intervene. And if you just walk away from injustice saying that's none of my business, that would be you being not violent. You wouldn't be contributing to the perpetuation of violence in any direct way. You would be not violent. But when we talk about nonviolence, when Dr. King talked about nonviolence, he wasn't talking about what not to do. And when Gandhi talked about nonviolence, he wasn't talking about what not to do. Nonviolence is much more about what you're going to do in the face of violence, how you're going to work to transform situations of violence and injustice. And that takes great courage to intervene, to really put yourself in the midst of a conflict and to try to do something about it.

[16:23]

And I think it's oftentimes a misconception about meditation practice also, that it's just about sitting and not doing anything. But anyone with a practice knows that it takes a lot of work to sit silently for hours and hours, all the mental focus that it takes. Dr. King said that nonviolence may be passive physically, but mentally and spiritually, it's an incredibly active force. And also the idea that nonviolence is a way of life. That it's not a switch that you turn on when you go to a protest, but it's not something that you think about when you're in the meetings organizing the protest. Or it's not something we try to practice in our home lives, in our own communities. Because oftentimes we talk about the demand for nonviolence out there, and that we'll be nonviolent during these certain hours when we're at this rally. But it's not something that we're trying to practice in our day-to-day. And this is another message that I really received strongly from my time at Standing Rock.

[17:27]

Melissa and Sierra were there with me, and they were saying that everything they do there and everything we do when we're on that land is ceremony. That when you go to a protest, that's ritual. When you're washing dishes, that's ceremony. And to really try to hold that intention in everything that we do. And that teaching is also, I mean, there's certain universal truths that show up in all these different cultural and religious faith traditions. And one of the places that I love spending time is at Deer Park Monastery right outside of San Diego, which is a monastery under Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition. And they're very intentional that when you wash dishes, do so mindfully. When you take off your shoes, do it mindfully. Many of you may know Musham, who's a dear friend and a Dharma teacher. She always says that every time you get in the car, turn the keys to your ignition mindfully. So what does it mean to bring that practice of mindfulness, not just for the time that we're sitting, but in everything we do in our lives?

[18:33]

And what does it mean to incorporate and integrate nonviolence, not just as a strategy and a tactic, but in every interaction that we have? and really make it a way of life. Every moment of our being, we're trying to be intentional and mindful about these principles, about these precepts. In terms of fearlessness and meeting each moment fully, there's a phrase that I heard a lot in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, not turning away, and it's both we do that in our meditation practice, we don't turn away from painful emotions or physical sensations, we explore them, but not turning away from people we meet who are suffering, not turning away from things we read in the newspaper, letting in some of the challenging things that are happening in the world, and then finding a way to respond.

[19:35]

And I wanted to talk just briefly about the bodhisattva, the way of the bodhisattva. I don't know how many of you are unfamiliar with the word bodhisattva. It means awakening being. And there are in Buddhism some figures who embody various, you could say, ideals or ways of being that we aspire to. One of those bodhisattvas, Kuan Yin, is an embodiment of compassion and that includes fierce compassion, not only kindness but being able to respond. Kuan Yin is said to have a thousand hands and eyes and responds to the cries of the world actively and also sometimes is depicted with many heads, one of which is a fierce, angry head.

[20:41]

So it can include the kind of engagement that you're talking about, Kazu. And another bodhisattva that is less well-known is Samanta Bhadra, a bodhisattva of engaged activity. There's a book by Taigen Leighton called Faces of Compassion in which he talks about the bodhisattvas, the traditional ones, and contemporary people who embody some of the qualities of the traditional bodhisattvas. And he referred to Dr. Martin Luther King as an embodiment of Samanta Bhadra's engaged activity. I'll just say just a few words about what he says. Dr. King... with his concern, courage, and resolve of Sumantabhadra has most fully come to symbolize and embody in the national consciousness the struggles for social justice of that movement.

[21:47]

And in talking about a promised land of justice and equality, Dr. King held out the possibility of living in a world and a society in a world in which everybody is included, everybody's well-being is important. And so as an embodiment of Samantabhadra, just to plant that idea that we are also embodiments of these bodhisattvas and the qualities we appreciate in them, we can develop in ourselves. I think the idea that everybody's well-being is important is a great segue for our second principle, which says that the beloved community is the framework of the future. And the beloved community is the world that we're trying to build, right? And it's a world where all people can receive peace and justice and where all people can achieve their fullest potential as human beings.

[22:49]

And oftentimes, I know my experience with activist circles, when we talk about we're organizing and fighting for justice for all people, we don't actually mean all people. We mean all of our people, and oftentimes justice for our people comes at the expense of those people. And in nonviolence, there is nobody outside of beloved community. And actually, my friend Chris is here also who's going to be helping facilitate the workshop tomorrow. A lot of his work is about expanding the idea of beloved community, not just to human beings, but to all sentient life, right? Animals, and I've been geeking out recently on these documentaries that speaks about the sentience of plant life and how forests have these vast networks that they use to communicate with each other and to take care of each other. But I also, I wanted to share two quotes really quick on this. from two important teachers. The first one is, it really boils down to this, that all life is interrelated.

[23:51]

We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific Islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen and drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And then maybe you want tea. That's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having a cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured.

[24:54]

This is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all of reality. And the second quote... Yes, thank you. The second quote, interbeing. If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in the sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without rain, the trees cannot grow. And without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheets of paper cannot be either. And both of those quotes may sound like they come from Buddhist teachers. And indeed, the second one does about the cloud in the sheet of paper. That's a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh. But the first quote about interrelatedness of all nature comes from Dr. Martin Luther King, who is a Southern Baptist minister. And I think all religious teachers, when you really get to the core of their teachings, speaks to us about beloved community.

[26:02]

That if I'm organizing for justice and liberation for myself... That's not a separate thing from organizing for justice and liberation for all of you in this room and for all of humanity, for all life on this earth. Most of the work that I do is actually in the prison system. And every Tuesday I'm in San Quentin working with a group of men who are there for having committed the most gravest harm of having taken at least one life and in some cases more. And There's a saying in the world of restorative justice that hurt people hurt people. That when we're carrying around pain and unprocessed trauma, that we take it out and hurt others, or oftentimes ourselves. And I see that in their stories every single day, that they are so hurt, and they didn't know what else to do but to take it out on somebody else. But I think there's a flip side to the idea that hurt people hurt people. And that's that hurting people hurts. that you can't cause harm on another being without that also impacting you in some way.

[27:08]

And I see that in their stories every day, that oftentimes because of the messages that they've received, it takes years for them to acknowledge and to access that pain, but they carry around so much pain and guilt and shame for having harmed other people. And there's also a flip side to that. Oftentimes the flip side to hurt people hurt people is that people talk about healed people heal people. And if that's true, then if hurting people hurts people, then healing people heals people. And I found that my role to be in that space and to hold space for some of these men to go through a process of healing from their own wounds has been some of the most healing times in my life. just to be in that space. And so their healing is not separate from my healing, that working for beloved community is both working for yourself and working for all life. And that, you know, I was, there's an Aboriginal quote, Aboriginal from Australia that I love that says, if you've come here to save me, then you're wasting my time or you're wasting your time.

[28:21]

But if you have come here because your liberation is bound with my liberation, then we can walk together. And so I think as we organize for peace, as we organize for justice, we have to remind ourselves that we are all part of this interconnected web of reality, this beloved community, and that if we want justice and liberation for ourselves, that is not a separate thing to working for justice and liberation for all life on earth. That's beautiful. to the second one. It's attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil. And recently I've been talking about this principle and everyone's like, but Donald Trump's the exception, right? He's exempt from this principle, right? And that's the challenge, because he's not. Neither is anyone that voted for him, anyone that supported him, anyone that raised him to become the person that he is.

[29:24]

Another really important lesson that I received from my work in the prisons is that I'm not that different from any of those men. I think oftentimes we like to think of ourselves as like, oh, those are the bad people, but we're the good people. And even as volunteers to go into the prison, it's like, we're the good people going in to try to save the bad people. But I know that Had things gone a little bit differently in my life, I could have easily ended up in their shoes. There's nothing special about me or about anybody in this room that prevents us from causing great harm. Or that prevents us from becoming a bodhisattva. That there's nothing special about any human beings that makes us exempt from any of these principles. That we're all deserving of love and compassion and compassion. to attack people as if they're the problem is part of the problem, right? There's greater things at play than the choices that we make as individuals.

[30:31]

And it's the culture of violence. It's the idea that we can use fear and intimidation and violence to try to get what we want that we're trying to change. Dr. King was very adamant that People are never the enemy. Injustice is the enemy. Racist people aren't the enemy. Racism is the enemy. That we're all capable of having racist attitudes, myself included. No matter how much work we do, we are the product of a society that is grounded in racism. And so how do we build powerful movements that attack the forces of injustice and... understand that all the people that play a role in that injustice are still part of that beloved community. It's a hard principle to practice because the person is right in front of you. You can grab, strangle the person. How do you attack a force of evil? It takes a lot more practice. It takes a lot more strategy.

[31:32]

It takes a lot more intention. It takes a lot more time. But ultimately, it's the injustice that we're trying to change. and the people that we're trying to hold in community. So in tune with the teaching that each of us has Buddha nature and that it goes along with how interconnected we are, but if we can see the Buddha nature in someone, it is a way of connecting us rather than separating us. And one thing, again, quoting President Obama, start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens is as worthy as we are. And I think he really modeled inclusivity in so many different ways. And it's something for those of us who treasure that, value that, that we can find many ways of expressing that vision and value.

[32:33]

in our lives today more so than ever. Principle four, I'm just going to touch on briefly, is accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. It's the wordiest one. Mushum and I were laughing about this on the phone yesterday that oftentimes The idea of living in monastery is romanticized. And that my experience, every time I talk about my daily schedule, the year that I spent in monastery, it sounds like I'm describing life in a prison labor camp. And Mushim said that her experience is something akin to going to the military and being in prison. But we do this work because we know that in that pain, in that struggle is redemption, that our spirit can grow from voluntary suffering.

[33:34]

And I think both the teachings of Buddhism that teaches us that we need to have an intimate relationship with the nature of our own suffering, as well as the teachings of nonviolence, that by articulating our suffering rather than our anger... we can reach the moral conscience of the people around us and use that as a way to turn them around. And I think this is a teaching that is at the heart of a lot of the work of nonviolence as well as of the Buddhist Dharma. And this principle is also deeply connected to the fifth principle, which is avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence. It's oftentimes hard to have such an intimate relationship with our own suffering and not have that turn into resentment or anger or desperation. And one of the things that really hooked me onto Kingian nonviolence when I first started discovering it is a quote by Dr. King who said that nonviolence isn't just a refusal to shoot your opponent, but it's a refusal to hate them also.

[34:39]

And there's a great quote from the 12 Steps tradition that says... that hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And for Gandhi, this principle, which he described as self-purification, the act of self-purification, was 80% of the work of nonviolence. And oftentimes in our work for nonviolence and social change, it's like those people over there need to change. But for Gandhi, he understood that if we can come from a place of genuine peace when we step out into the world, then that makes everything so much easier. That the salt march that the Gandhi led, him and his 78 followers lived in ashram together and meditated together for 15 years before they embarked on that salt march. And for them, it was the 15 years of spiritual practice of self-purification that allowed that march to be as successful as it was, more than the march itself. So the work of nonviolence isn't just about refusing to punch people or shoot people, but it's about being mindful of all of the violence that we carry.

[35:48]

Because it's easy for people to say, well, I'm not a violent person because I haven't punched anybody. But we all carry trauma. We all carry pain. We all carry violence at times in our hearts. And to be aware and to be mindful of that and to have the practices in our lives where we can dissipate and deal with that harm. of not harboring resentment. I mean, many of us experience anger. It's inevitable and it can be useful if we can channel it in positive ways. But I think what you're saying and what I've experienced also is that action that comes from love and caring and connection is much more sustainable than action that comes from anger. because you could just burn out, and that's not good for us or for anyone else. So if we want to sustain our engagement, really learning how to process our anger and to come from that place of deep caring will allow us to continue year after year.

[37:00]

And the final principle is that the universe is on the side of justice. which some people read as something to have deep and blind faith in. As a Baptist minister, Dr. King was an incredibly faithful person, and he knew that if we kept doing this work, that ultimately we will be rewarded. And at the same time, I think there's a more secular approach to this principle, even finding evidence of this principle in the world, If you do a Google image search for the word justice, the thing that pops up most frequently is the scale. And the scale represents balance. And Dr. King once said that the idea of justice isn't something that we should understand as what is good and what is right, because there's judgment in that. But the idea of justice should be understood as balance. And if we understand it as the concept of balance, then...

[38:04]

It is justice every time a young man is killed in the streets of Oakland. Because look at all of the investments that we make into systems of violence in our society. We invest in war. We invest in violence in the media. We invest in guns. We invest in drugs. And then somehow when the universe gives us those returns, we're like, why is there so much violence? Something is wrong with the universe. But the universe gives us what we put into it. And I was having a conversation with my friend Li Chen yesterday. And she was saying that sometimes in the West she feels that the concept of cultivating merit and the concept of karma is slightly misunderstood. Because in the West we live in such an individualistic society. that people believe that if I'm doing good things, then I'm racking up good merit points for myself, and I should be able to collect on those good merit points, that I should receive good karma. But the way I understand it is that we, I, am one of seven billion people on this planet that exists in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets, that exists in a universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies,

[39:21]

And because I don't receive justice, the universe is unjust. And that is almost an arrogant perspective. And I think the work of the Dharma and the work of nonviolence is oftentimes to have the humility to understand our own insignificance. And that when we cultivate merit, when we work towards nonviolence, we're not doing it for ourselves. But we're doing it for all of humankind. We're doing it for the seven generations that we haven't even envisioned yet. And I think it's having that humility that also lifts the burden that we have of we need to stop every single war and every single instance of injustice today. Because having that... It is so much pressure for us to think that it's up to us. But if we can let go of that arrogance... and understand that we can't do it on our own without relying on the seven generations that came before us and without relying on the seven generations that will come after us, that this isn't work that we do for ourselves, that it's work that we do for humans who haven't even arrived on this earth yet.

[40:36]

And so I think the invitation that I'd like to leave you all with is that as we cultivate... as we cultivate loving kindness, as we work towards justice, which is something we so desperately need more of in today's world, to know that we're not doing it for our own personal reward. That there's a much bigger reality that we're working towards. And to try to do it for the sake of all life on earth and for life that hasn't even arrived on this earth yet. And I think we'll be able to dream bigger if we do that. And we'll also be able to take a little bit of pressure off of ourselves and to really slow down, knowing that we have 500 years into the future to map this out. Thank you for putting it in that much bigger context, Kazu. And I'll offer my closing words and then just invite you to come and join us for the question and answer so we can explore some of these concepts and practices more fully.

[41:39]

So I'd like to share... a quote from Teigen Leighton's book, The Faces of Compassion. Bodhisattvas are not merely archetypes. Bodhisattvas are great cosmic beings helping us all to become bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. They are simply ordinary beings making their way back to Buddha. Bodhisattvas appear in the nooks and crannies of your life Soon you may start seeing them more clearly. Bodhisattvas are just around the corner. Bodhisattvas are living in your neighborhood, waiting to say good morning to you. Bodhisattvas are just like you and me. Bodhisattvas are kind and gentle. Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. Bodhisattvas are tough and indefatigable. Bodhisattvas are not limited to a handful of amazing figures or famous people.

[42:45]

Bodhisattvas are not limited by what we say they are or are not. We are all bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas are not who we think they are. We cannot understand how wonderful bodhisattvas are. We are all bodhisattvas. And I think it's about how we live our lives every day, how we enact our values, practice with our ethical precepts, how we speak and listen to each other, how we appreciate and support one another, trusting that what we do and say makes a difference. Thank you very much for your presence and attention this morning. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[43:48]

For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:58]

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