This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm not sure what is the most helpful here. It's a big topic, this whole idea of justice and social justice. I think maybe I would start by just talking a little bit about, I tend to like to define terms. And when Buddhists talk about justice, it's a whole landscape to navigate that is complicated. Because justice, certain expressions of justice, have a feeling of revenge to them. You know, have a feeling of something has happened, something has been transgressed, and now we need to get the people who did the wrong.

[01:10]

And I don't think that's the spirit of justice initially in the West, but it manifests sometimes in that way. But for Buddhists, it's particularly complicated because we have this whole dependical arising thing and not othering and demonizing people. And also, and beyond that, not believing that we can isolate a cause. Not believing that there's some way to cordon off the soul cause that if it's eliminated, the problem goes away. So in that kind of situation, how do we understand justice? And this is just an... So I'll... And please jump in at any point. But I want to talk a little bit about how I've been thinking about this. Because there's an interesting thing about the word Dharma.

[02:16]

So Dharma, we use it to talk about the teachings of the Buddha. Or in some way to talk about a kind of... Well, to talk about the pentacle rising, to talk about the interconnected causality of all things and the realization of that. It has a lot of other meanings. Prior to the Buddha in the Vedic times, the notion of Dharma was you carried out rites and rituals in order to hold up the order of the cosmos. And if you got the rites and rituals wrong, you threatened the order of the cosmos. So to carry out the Dharma was to carry out these rites and rituals. And it still has that meaning in some parts of Hinduism. But it's also the word used in the courts in India. It has to do with the law. It has to do with justice. There's a reason for that. If you go back to the root of Dharma, Dir, it's an Indo-European cognate to Dike,

[03:21]

which is the root word, Greek word for justice in the Bible. So the notion of biblical justice is a direct correlation to the Dharma. So the word Dharma itself has to do, has built into it, this idea that there is a functioning of things. There's a way the world unfolds. And in the Buddhist sense of it, we get in the way of it. Our volitional habits, our karma, we act into it from separation. Now it's interesting we use the word separation, right? Because we create, we have this delusional sense of separation. We don't really cause a real separation because the law of causality, you can't interrupt it. We just change the way it flows. We put a stick in the street. And now everything has to go around what we've done.

[04:26]

So when we're thinking of justice in that way, then there is a feeling of repairing. One thing that William Barber, for those of you who know William Barber, who heads up the Poor People's Campaign, he talks about being repairs of the breach. And in a sense, it's a different meaning in our case than in his, but there's this breach that happens that requires repair. So a lot of times that breach comes from a habit of dominating, a habit of believing that there's a self here that manipulates and controls the world. And that manipulation and control, when power's involved, which it usually is, looks like domination. And we have whole habits and histories of social domination.

[05:31]

Whether we're talking about patriarchy, whether we're talking about white supremacy, whether we're talking about capitalism, whatever it is, there's built in this sense of dominating resources, dominating people, dominating Mother Earth. And this is old in us. We've been doing this a while. And we come up with lots of reasons for it. Lots of justifications. And there's a lot of talk of structural inequity and structural injustice. But as Buddhists, I think we have a particular skill set and responsibility. And I think the skill set is a whole series of techniques and practices of looking at the mind. Because what we call structural injustice, there aren't any structures out there without us.

[06:39]

You know, there's no replication point that doesn't have to do with the human mind. So where it's reproduced, how is it reproduced? And how do we understand how domination of violence is reproduced? And the thing that's interesting about, for me, that's been interesting about what's going on right now in the United States and in my own life, is that on one side we have a great deal of very nuanced and powerful critique of things like patriarchal violence. systemic white supremacy if you've not read New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander had no idea she was being Buddhist but it's the most Buddhist book in terms of the idea that regardless of the changes of the structural expression what's fueling it is an ideological commitment or a particular grasping around a way of thinking that shows up in different ways over and over again

[07:47]

We might have noticed this in our own lives with our own behavior. I thought I did away with that, I stopped doing that and then it pops up over here and here it is again and I have to deal with that same kind of core ideological commitment. So, this, on one side we have these kind of analyses but no way of dealing with it. What was always interesting for me was, okay, people would talk to me about patriarchy, great, now what do I do? I have a bunch of internalized patriarchal commitments, I don't know what to do with those, except maybe hate myself, I don't know what to do. Or I'm starting to really recognize how white supremacy is intractable, what do I do with that? But in the other side, we have this amazing set of practices for looking at the self, for understanding what it is like to be wrapped up in karmic commitments, karmic habits that are causing us suffering and pain.

[09:00]

But in that world, there historically hasn't been a whole lot of discussion about the social constructions of self. There's some talk of gender in Buddhism, but it's largely untouched. And what I mean by that is, here we have an entire history of talking about the conditioned nature of self, but gender is pretty hardened and intact. And the persecution of women, pretty solid. And what I mean by that is, power leans heavily toward the monastics, the male monastics over the women monastics traditionally. So what's going on? Why isn't the same analysis relevant to the way the self is constructed socially? Why is that off limits? Why do we stop there? Why when we talk about looking at self, is it fine until we talk about white supremacy, then everybody goes, race is empty.

[10:09]

We don't need to deal with that. The self is empty, and that's our whole project. So that's not an excuse. Race is empty, gender is empty. These are not excuses. It's all empty, and we're still working on it. So why are those off limits? And they're off limits for a very clear reason, because we start entering into power and power differentials. And power differentials are scary, intimate, I have to stop being good. I have to start taking responsibility for my location in the world. And just the privilege that location has, that I get to talk in certain ways, I get to walk through my day not really thinking about my dignity being challenged. That is not true for many, many people.

[11:14]

They can't walk 10 minutes without their dignity being challenged or being overrun. So that is where I think we have an interesting, powerful, important opportunity and role as Buddhists who might be interested in social justice. And you're starting to see this happen. Ruth King, I just read about half of Ruth King's book. What's it called? Mindful of Race. Really good. And she's bringing together in a very powerful way these practices with looking at race and racialization. But if we don't look at that, if we don't look at the injustice, that has been conditioned into our own system. Because as a man, it doesn't matter, as a man who's been conditioned by patriarchy, the only way that works, the only way you can actually be an administrator of patriarchy from that side is if you are taught to kill off about 75% of yourself.

[12:29]

Anything vulnerable, anything sensitive, you know, I'll give you something to cry about. attitude. So this way that, you know, we've all been, and if you've never heard that, good for you. But for those of us who grew up in families with fathers who said, I'll give you something to cry about, you know what that means. So it's, everybody suffers from it. It's a different, we suffer at very different levels and in very different ways. And I don't feel like we cannot get into the habit of saying, oh, we all suffer and then that's enough. The differential is massive. But these systems of domination, they are harming us all. There is no question about it. Even those of us who are profoundly privileged, we have to cut off huge parts of ourself to unconsciously hold up that privilege.

[13:35]

We have to ignore whole parts of society in order to pretend they are not there. I just got back from Senegal. I was there last week, and I was at the House of Slaves on the gory coast. And at the bottom were the cells of all the slaves packed in in mass. And in the floor above is where the colonizers lived. slaveholders lived, parties hanging out, view the ocean. And the first thing that I thought, I mean, on the bottom, I was deeply beyond sad. I mean, there isn't a word for the feeling of walking through those rooms. And when I went to the top, I was pissed. Anger came up like I couldn't believe it. I was like, what is going on that we can do this? And how are we still doing it?

[14:37]

We're here, and we have the largest prison system in the world. And that seems to be okay with us. I mean, it does. It seems to be okay. If it weren't okay, we would be in the streets. But it seems to be okay. So it's... And so I have to look at myself and say, you know, what are the ways I'm on the top? I'm on the top floor of that house. And I'm okay with what's happening. And what are the ways I'm not? And what are the ways I'm looking at the breach and I'm understanding the breach? And just to say something about social justice, that's hopefully clarifying. You know, if people are hungry and we open a soup kitchen, we might consider that social service.

[15:40]

And that's important to do. But social justice is when we ask what the causes of the hunger that require the soup kitchen are. And we look at the causes, and we address the causes, which I think is what the Buddha asked us to do. I think the Buddha asked us to look at the causes. In fact, I think that's exactly the central teaching to do that. But I would encourage, I'll just wrap up, because there's a lot of things to talk about. How do we respond and how do we think about this? And I want to hear your thoughts and questions. I think the first thing that I would love to see all Dharma practitioners in the U.S. do is look at the whole of the self. Not just parts of it.

[16:45]

Not just the parts that are, you know, childhood important. You know, our childhood psychological stuff, it's important and we need to look at that. And we need to look at our habit patterns, but we also need to move into the areas that are really terrifying which are what happens if I give up my social identity completely who am I who am I if I don't and and we have to make a distinction between our social location and our investment in our social identity our social location is not going to change that's a function of social power until we're all liberated and we're going to have power in accord with our location. And we have to take responsibility for that. So I am racialized as white, gendered as male and straight, etc. So I have a particular kind of power just by that placement that has nothing to do with me at all.

[17:49]

And yet, I have tons of privilege and power as a result of it and that I have to take responsibility for. That's location. But then there's the part that's like, like what we talk about in the practice, which is our own internal investment in that location as who we are. And if we're invested in that location as who we are, we'll defend it with bared fangs. The minute somebody critiques it, we'll start coming up with like, yeah, but I do this and I do that and I have all the reasons we're doing good stuff. Or we'll get angry or we don't want to hear about it. whatever our responses are. But if we're not invested in it, then we can take responsibility for it within the overall structure of what's going on. And we can be freed up to do social justice in a way where we're not bound by that investment into a social location that we inherited.

[18:56]

Literally, it was just dumped on us. So that's some of the things we're doing. That's why we have these Undoing Whiteness and Undoing Patriarchy groups at Zen Center. That's the part that's looking at this. And then there's aspects. I'll just say shortly. There's aspects of things that we've done in the community, anti-gun violence work in our community. And we partnered with labor and a few activists for the Fight for 15. Occupy downtown Brooklyn with meditators and launch that movement so there was there's stuff in the community and there's stuff in labor activism and various things that happened to but I think and I think those kinds of things it's good to partner with people Dharma communities don't have to invent that stuff Because we're not that good at it So the people who are really good at it let them do it and then we can show up and be the bodies that

[20:00]

sit on the ground and occupy it and give a particular kind of spiritual and moral gravitas that the movement actually needs and I think is really a smart thing to do. You know, it's a different thing when you show up to an event and there are a lot of people shouting or you show up to an event and there are 400 meditators perfectly still that are saying, we're not here because we want to confront you, we're here because we want violence to end. We're here because starving people is violent. We're here because racism is violent. We're here because the way women and trans people are being treated is violent. And to come back to that domination with a feeling of force and domination, there was a woman in... again in Senegal, she stood up and she was an African woman, she was Senegalese, and she was crying, I can still feel it in my heart, she was crying and saying, I have talked about justice for years and I have watched us just take over country over country and reinstate the same injustice.

[21:15]

How do we not be as confused as the people before us and do the same thing? Just reinstate domination under a different name. And I think this is the way. This is the way. Zazen is the deepest form of justice. There is no way to go out into the world and do this without really knowing the way you harm and dominate yourself. Without knowing the way you've internalized all these violences and used them on you. And as long as you use them on you, you will unconsciously use them on everyone else. And so we really have to know how we use them on us. And then we can begin to show up to things that are violent and bring something that isn't that. So I'll stop there. Thoughts?

[22:20]

Thank you. I'll take you later. Just speaking of location, I just talked about the logistics of Tassajara as far as our other community goes down here in this valley. And I feel like we're in this book club and we have the cultural awareness inclusivity committee and the book club is about awakening together, this book that Larry Yang wrote. And it's just sometimes frustrating for me when I see people of color, finally make it down to the valley, and then they leave. And I feel like what you're saying about the replication, I feel that we continue to replicate ourselves, our worldview, and our worldview is obviously based on all these unfathomable causes and conditions. And yet there's a way where it's like we're in this loop of, I think we're supposed to want to have a more diverse community in many ways. and at the same time, how do we have a diverse community, when there's no diversity and like there's no other, there's diversity of course, we're all from different parts of the country, we all have different socioeconomic strata with, but when it comes to quote-unquote race, yeah, we keep, we have a white either-Saxon's part of state worldview here, like my experience, and so people of color often feel not met, not seen,

[23:57]

And they leave. And so how do we address that in a way where it takes diversity in some ways to create diversity and to have that as a mission? And so we're logistically far away, too. I mean, there's a real barrier here and perceived barriers and real barriers for people to even get down here. And when they get down here, it's even more intense, I think, depending on their own conditioning as a person of color, which, of course, that's... So I feel like I'm tired of us speaking for myself, replicating our same worldview over and over here at Tafahar. I think you've named a lot of good things. First thing is, I would worry less about having a diverse community and worry more about having a just community. Diverse community doesn't mean anything if it's not just. It's just setting people up for feeling more oppression. So just diverse communities are what progressives like.

[25:01]

I'm going to be really, like, frank. Progressives like to feel like good white people, so they want a diverse community. I'm among the progressives. It's a thing that is a thing. It's a thing. Maybe if our community was already just, then the diversity would be naturally organically. Just is not the same thing as wanting to have the right faces in the room. Absolutely. And just happens with actually all white people too who are from different backgrounds and recognizing that we have our own micro-racializations between us as ethnicities as well. You may know something about that. Yeah. And so paying attention to that everywhere, that's one thing. And then in terms of the different, the WASP question, there is the there is an unconscious best white culture you know and it's wasp culture and it's and it's particular and those of us who didn't grow up in that learned how to become it and so it's um there's a middle class white anglo-saxon way of being

[26:21]

And if you grew up and you're comfortable in that, then good. And if you didn't, then you spend a great deal of energy trying to adapt, whether you're actually called white or you're not. Can I say something about that? Yeah. Because one of the things we do in the Undoing Whiteness Group is we start to talk about our ethnicity. And... For me, being second generation Italian Irish woman, that is my sister, I begin to recognize how whiteness has been traumatizing for me. So that there's certain, and class too, working class. And so there were certain aspects that I've kind of crushed under this view of what whiteness looks like. And it's a little hard to name, but you can feel it. And so as I begin to reconnect to my ethnicity, I start to feel like what the kind of traumatizing impact of lightness has been on me.

[27:27]

And in our Undoing Whiteness group, we're kind of going and looking at this, but to me, the most important thing is we're not looking at it intellectually. I think we absolutely need to understand that history and the history the history of how race came to be and the particular experiences of racism throughout our history. But so much of the work that we're doing is around shame and around trauma. Because I think as we're racialized as white people, we're actually traumatized. There's tremendous amount of internalized oppression that happens in order to cut off our hearts and be able to hold this particular position. And then we know that, and it's painful for us, so then we want to get away from it, and we want to avoid it. And a lot of this, I think, is very procedural. It's like, it's underground. And that's why I think sometimes, like, just the lens of Zazen is not specific enough to look at some of the ways and just, you know, so that the undone groups, if they can be supported in really digging into that material and stuff,

[28:42]

to look at the pain that comes up and working with the shame that comes up. Because as soon as we start hitting those trauma points, we're gonna wanna jump out into finding our own place where we feel a victim or cleaning it up really well. And that takes, because I think a lot of when people don't feel safe, it's not overt things, nobody's being overtly racist. but there's little hiccups in the response. There's subtle, very subtle things that don't feel so subtle to people of color, but I think they come unconsciously out of our bias that we don't even know about, so we don't even know we're communicating that. And so just as we do when we're looking and starting to feel in the valley, when I come into this valley, I just start to feel and start to see my conditioning even more clearly, which is both disconcerting and... And helpful. It's like a particular lens of looking at those particular ways that are the visceralness of the way that whiteness operates.

[29:48]

And patriarchy, I would say. And class. Go ahead. I saw you. One is that it's curious to me that our legal system is built on... There's an act. I stole something or I murdered someone. And then your life becomes completely defied in a criminal court by this act forever you receive. Once a thief, always a thief. Forever you're going to order it. And so there's a thing to me about how our legal system is built on diminishing people by labeling them in such way or even creating in our own misperception of someone's behavior. And then the other has to do with the karmic emotion.

[31:00]

and how we embody those in such unexpected ways. And so the story I have is that when I was very, very young, I became pregnant, and nobody knew when I'd actually gotten pregnant, so I had to keep going for ultrasounds again and again. And at that time, I was... In college, I was studying at the undergraduate and the origin itself. It was like this sort of utopian world that I was living in where there was a possibility for a sort of fluidity of gender and something that was beyond the heteronormative family in terms of child-rearing and what was possible for their psyche. And so I kept saying, I don't want to know if it's a boy or a girl.

[32:04]

I was being very diligent about that. And then by the time for ultrasound, nearing the point where we thought this child would appear, just spontaneously in a nanosecond, I said, yes, I want to know. And I discovered that I was going to have a boy. And what happened was that all of a sudden I thought, I was able to just fall in love with this human being that I was carrying. There was a connection emotionally to my pregnancy that I didn't have until it was made as either male or female. And it was shocking how karmically conditioned I was at that time to feel that in my body, this blood of emotion for this kind of child that I hadn't been experiencing until that moment. I'm just giving that as an example of how, particularly in a politically active world, I mean, I was, you know, a radical running around in the streets with my radical ideas about how the world should be.

[33:15]

And I was so out of touch with my own capacity to love was built on my condition and how real and physical. I think that's a really important point, too, because it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not about pretending we don't have or getting rid of the way we're karmically conditioned around these things, but just asking the question of whether it causes harm or not. Is the way that I'm conditioned around gender, does it cause harm? Because there isn't some greater truth. We're not going to... We're not arriving at a greater truth by adding six genders or 12 or 47. There's not more truth in doing that. There's more freedom in doing that.

[34:17]

And that's no small thing. But... But if we start doing it in terms of there being more truth, we're going to get into the same trouble with 12 genders as we get in with two. So I think that it's good to really see that we are conditioned. We understand the world through these ways. And as far as your diminishment in the justice system, yeah. I think, you know, I feel it's a strong statement, but I feel American society is primarily... grounded in domination as a way of doing things. And it's very hard to say that, and people have a response, but when people aren't productive, no matter what, whether they're old, whether they have disabilities, whatever it is, we cordon them off into institutions. I'm seeing it as, in my example, a prosthetic device for a long night.

[35:18]

We're thinking of the word dharma. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. So you said that forget about the diversity that's being just. So I was wondering if you could elaborate in that statement because I feel I understand but not completely. Yeah. Can you speak to what it is? I'll respond to, but I'm curious what it is that you can give words to?

[36:20]

If you're comfortable doing it. Do you mean an example? Or just what it feels like. Either examples or what it feels like. What's that thing? It changes a lot. I came to the States about eight years ago. At first it was funny, because it was a souvenir of the book that was exotic, but the other book was flattering and exciting. And novels were, this is not true, and it's not you, and I wish Yeah, I wish that you would get, you know, not testing, but boxing, that happens automatically, or it doesn't even happen, it's there.

[37:49]

I wish I... I didn't believe it and I was, you know, I bought into it a lot and now I'm realizing this is not really like this, why am I responding to this kind of sense of out there that's very subtle and it can be nice at times, you know, but it's, and it's difficult, I don't know, I feel like, you know, whatever. It makes perfect sense. It's great. I mean, it's not great, but you've articulated it beautifully. Would you say your whole humanity is being recognized? Well, I resonated with the dignity. Yeah, the dignity piece. And you're saying, you know, my dignity is when we were involved, it was a challenge every 10 minutes.

[38:52]

And I've I said, oh, wow, that must be nice. Exactly. It must be nice. It must be nice. It's not true for women. Yeah. Exactly. Ever. Yeah. So. And the thing that I believe that, you know, I also, sometimes I notice, I ask a question, a certain question, and I ask, I think you articulated it better than I can, so I'll just restate what you said. When you meet somebody and you reduce them to your projection, you are committing a violent injustice every single time.

[39:58]

And if you haven't trained your mind to catch itself when you do that and back off and allow that person to come forward in their wholeness, then you will be committing an unjust act. Dogen says, to carry the self forward into the myriad things is delusion. To allow the myriad things to manifest as themselves, basically. It's enlightenment. We are to let people manifest as who they are. To give the space and time for that to happen. Without coming to them with the idea of who we think they are based on a bunch of social structures that have told us But we should, how we should box them. Yeah, the box is violent. Any box is violent. And then I have to look in this direction.

[41:05]

You've had a lot of experience with isolated master practice at Asahara, urban practice, and living in the world. And I'm curious about those different placements and this topic. So when is it appropriate to leave the isolated monitor? Well, I haven't had, I won't say I have had a lot of experience in isolated. Most of my residential was in Dharma centers in urban environments. But I don't have a clear answer to that. I don't have an answer to that question. I think you have to come to that. I don't know when the best time is. I guess another way of restating that is I think sometimes I have fear around hiding in places like this. And I wish that that was talked about more as a... You can hide anywhere. At least you think you can.

[42:06]

Yeah. I mean, you can hide here or you can go to New York and, like, go to parties all night long and hide. Hiding is, if you're going to hide, you're going to hide. You can hide at Zuccotti Park. You can hide at Zuccotti Park. You can hide anywhere. You can hide in the social justice world. You have to be honest about your hiding. That's it. So instead of worrying about whether you're hiding, I wouldn't worry about whether you're hiding. I would be honest about whether you're hiding. And then what is the thing that's causing the hiding? What's conditioning the hiding? The worry is extra. You don't need it. Is that okay? Over here. Yes. I was talking with the central people yesterday and I was telling them Jews that had been brought up here at our last meeting.

[43:11]

One of the founding members, I think, she... She's great broadly, but she said, the same list from 1998. Same list? Yeah. Yeah, and that was a little heartbreaking, and it feels like it's not isolated from this situation, and what... is a great approach. Is it just to keep on, keeping on, or to focus in a different way, or to approach leadership in a different way? The same subject are people brought up, and it doesn't feel like they're breaking down. And some of those subjects are, there are not teachers of color? They're not teachers of color.

[44:14]

There's not teachers of color. people of color or maybe students who have been through this transitional period to even talk about their conversation with, some kind of correspondence. There's no diversity training for people that are in positions to have their song or practice discussion, or even just smaller work leaders, people that are in control of smaller groups, especially with diversity. training it in place. And there's some of the aspects that were brought up. But also, yeah, one of the big ones is this transitional period where if it's extremely hard for someone who is not sincere than self and minority peer, if that's already hard, it's gotta be 10-fold, 50-fold for someone who feels like a minority peer.

[45:17]

And But yeah, just hearing that news, that festival, and I'm just not sure, like, do they keep approaching it the same way, just to get pushed back again, or do they look at it in a new light? I'd be curious what, I mean, the first thing that I'd be curious is what the which I don't know what is happening. You know, sometimes the lack of response is the inability to finance these things or whatever. So I don't know what, I don't know that part. So I don't know. Start doing the work among yourselves. Don't wait. Don't wait for mom and dad. Mom and dad may not come around.

[46:21]

I think the issue is more like being heard. Yeah, but you may not be. It's just that, I mean, that's not great news, but you may not be heard. And I don't think we can hang our hopes on being heard. Because If we were going to be heard, we probably wouldn't have to shout in the first place. So I think you have to start doing the work. And you have to ask the questions. If you have a question, and I'm sorry what I'm about to do to the teachers in this community, but if you have a question around race and things like that, ask them. Because we as teachers have to do the work.

[47:24]

And we have to be able to respond to those questions. My Sangha pushes me. You know, and good. You know, it's not, it shouldn't be comfortable. You know, I don't think teaching positions should be comfortable. I think they should be very uncomfortable. Because if the person who is in leadership is going to expand to the Sangha, and they're always going to be, I have the other side of this too, so I'll talk on this side first. If a person in leadership is going to be able to respond to a Sangha, then they have to be able to grow to the needs of that Sangha to the best of their ability. And if you're just quiet, You know, make it a part of the everyday language. That's why I actually think it's important to be able to talk, to understand how dharma and social justice come together so you can talk about them as the same language.

[48:35]

I don't see these as two things. I cannot separate them out. I do not see, I can't find a mind that is personal. I cannot find a mind that isn't conditioned by everything else. Any way that you articulate who you are, you inherited, which means any way you articulate who you are is socially constructed, which means it has to do with power and society and everything else. So if you're not looking at all of that, you're not really fully engaging the self. You're only engaging the parts that are... you want to. So that, I don't see this in any way separate. So if you're going to bring the whole thing in, bring the whole thing in. Shift the discourse. It doesn't only have to be a letter. It's a change in a way of life, a change in the way we do the Dharma.

[49:40]

And so I would say start doing the work yourself and bring it into the discourse and Keep putting letters there. I don't necessarily think that having teachers of color is really important. There just are not enough teachers of color. And I know a lot of them, maybe most, maybe even all, and they're all really busy right now. Because all communities are saying this. And they don't. So something's going to have to happen that isn't about asking people of color to do more labor. Because there's only so much labor. So what's the labor we can do right now that starts to do that in an authentic way? Okay, there was somebody... Okay, we'll go here. I can't track everybody, but I'll try my best.

[50:44]

So when you say, like, doing the work ourselves, I'm thinking, at least partially to me, like, doing internal work at an individual level. And also, do you mean things like doing, like, a... I mean, if you could be a little more concrete about, like, what that looks like... I think it's important to look at the way we construct our identities, how we construct who we think we are, and how we grasp them. It's the same work you do in any part of any aspect of looking at the self, right? We're just using a particular lens. Instead of greed, hatred, and delusion in this very kind of broad way, we're starting to narrow in. on particular expressions of greed, hatred, and delusion that have very powerful societal implications. Being together, yeah. You know, we do things that we do it in practice too.

[51:46]

So somebody will sit in a group and somebody may ask a very simple phrase or say a very simple phrase, I am white. And then you see what that feels like. And then we're sitting together and somebody says, I am not white. And you see what that feels like. And then you start to see the way the mind moves toward or away from certain things and the way we really do have an investment in these identities. And there is something at stake. It's not just intellectual. And when we start doing that work, we have to start doing that work and start seeing the way, like, we're invested in this system. And so how do we, if we weren't, it would fall apart. There are no such things as broken systems or institutions.

[52:47]

When people say things like, the prison system is broken. No, it's not. The prison system is doing exactly what the prison system is meant to do, and it's doing it beautifully. It's creating a criminal underclass that's racialized and controllable with no power. That can basically be an exploited labor group that costs us nothing within this country and has no political power at all. That's exactly what it's doing and what it's meant to do. So being invested, looking at the ways that we're invested in those, and that being okay. I just want to add, there's a lot of, there's an organization called White Awake. Yeah, they have a lot. And they have an incredible, they're so generous. They came together with a lot of experiential teachers of all sorts, you know, and has a curriculum online that they just offer free.

[53:50]

So that there's ways to kind of And we've been making stuff up. You know, one time when we first started, we went around and we tried to remember the first time that we realized we were white and how we were kind of racialized to think of ourselves as white and other. And that was an incredibly powerful experience that brought up for me because I was violently racialized. My father was extremely racist. So how... that conditioning began to happen. So just evoking those kind of questions, holding them in the space in a way you know how to do so beautifully here, but really getting to that deeper material. So Wide Awake has a lot of beautiful stuff there. You don't have to reinvent it. Yeah, Wide Awake is good. And one thing I want to say, we're going to keep talking about race because race is the hot button issue right now, but patriarchy should not take a second burner to this. We need to be looking, that's the original, well, the original one is probably the domination of the earth herself.

[54:57]

But patriarchy is where white supremacy learned everything. So. So sometimes, barely, I'll be able to. Around the recipient issues where everyone goes, like it's like a San Francisco that is under like waiting for everyone. Yeah. And then most of what is going on now is volunteering. I see pros and cons of each. So with this sort of group, would you recommend starting it as volunteering? Yeah. I think you can start as voluntary. I mean, it's a different thing when you start talking about people who are hired into the institution or priests. Then I have slightly different opinions about whether it should be voluntary or not. But I do, I think it's probably best to let people who are ready to do it. Because it's hard and terrifying.

[55:58]

And the other thing too, because this is real and we don't talk about this enough, you'll be exiled. Just be clear. If you start, if you take on white supremacy as a white person, white people will bear their fangs. And it is not, and that's why I believe people don't do it. Because we know, we know deep down what happens if we take this on. And so just Be ready for that. Like, if it's something that is a passion for you and it is in your heart, I say go for it, but it is not without its pain. It's lonesome. It's lonesome, and that's why we need each other. In your opinion, do you think that exile could happen in an organization such as this? It can happen anywhere. It can happen anywhere.

[57:00]

It sure can happen here. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially where a particular culture is dominant and nobody sees it as a culture. I find that heartbreaking in this one in a teaching that I don't even know how to say this skillfully. I just find that heartbreaking that something like that could happen in in a monastic environment? You know, two things. One, 2,600 years of Buddhism hasn't done a thing, really, about the treatment of women. So that seems to be able to survive all of the brilliance of our teachings. So that's heartbreaking. And the other thing, for some reason, exile has become a primary strategy of whiteness.

[58:03]

I don't know if it's a northern European thing. I don't know what it is. But there's probably lots of scholars who have... But exile is a very big strategy. Yeah, and we'll cut. We have to end time there. But yeah, I do think it can happen, and I believe it will. Not because people are sitting around a cauldron making plans, but because it's just an unconscious impulse. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to... You're the one who's bringing up something I don't want to look at. So the question is, are we willing to stick with it anyway? Not their bad. Are we willing to stick with it anyway because it has to be done? Because domination has to end. Because if we don't end domination and that impulse in human beings, we're going to die. Because we are dominating the earth right now in a way that is going to strip it of all her resources and kill us all.

[59:08]

And that's coming from the same impulse toward domination as white supremacy and patriarchy and everything else. And if we don't start turning this around, if there aren't people courageous enough to survive the exile and do the work, we're finished. And I cannot say that too emphatically. Sorry to end on such a dour note, but... Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[59:58]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_90.93