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. So thank you so much, Fu. I feel great gratitude to be able to be here at Tassajara again. And this enormous... delight, almost too much delight to be a fool. It's really, you know, because I spill over, I feel so joyful. And I feel so appreciative that this community welcomes me to kind of stir the pot a little bit and I have no idea really what I'm going to talk about other than to say. The thing I've been talking about, really for the last, you know, between these two books, there's about 18 years that separates these two books.

[01:11]

And there is a passage, I realize that there's a chapter in the first book, Being Black, that is how the seed is the kernel for the Radical Dharma book. And as I've shared before, it's sort of odd to be the same person. I thought when I did the book back 18 years ago, we would kind of whoop this race thing out. You know, it would be old news right now. But I'm grateful for the time because... Wow, I mean, I don't know what they were thinking when they let me write Being Black so early. I was quite young still then, not anymore. I was about 30. I was 28 when I actually was originally published. I approached them to write the books.

[02:13]

I was quite young. And time has its way with you, and it has its way with me in terms of what I've been thinking about how we relate to this topic. Where did it come from? How do we understand the reality of this imaginary thing called race, this construct called race? How do we understand it in relationship to this... not so new, but still growing for many of us experience of what we're calling Dharma in this country. And really the gift of the Eastern traditions of non-dualism that gives us a little bit of a window into something different than just a dichotomy of like either right or wrong, either this or that, either black or white.

[03:19]

So that's really been in my thinking over the years, that conversation that has been happening internally, as all things do, is mixing with the stuff of my practice. The experience of sitting meditation practice, my developing into a priest, teacher and all of those experiences of touching different people of different races and feeling over that time the dissipation in myself of this very hard wall of some people on one side of it and some people on the other side which I think a lot of our confusion rests in it's like either you're a racist or you're not And those are kind of the two camps.

[04:23]

One, if you're in one, you better get over to the other side. And then we recruit the dichotomy. We recruit the split. And we resist kind of the fear of being like, you know, the racist camp. And really what's happening is we're just not talking to each other. We're not talking to ourselves about the parts in us that exist, no matter what skin color we are, that are internalized, in which the construct of race and white supremacy and all of the cultures of oppression that support those things exist in all of us, that we're just swimming in the waters. And for some of us it's internalized, for some of us it's the experience of, you know, quite politically, some of us have certainly benefit from it, benefit from the history of that construct in this country.

[05:26]

And thankfully, more and more of us, even in the face of what appears to be a significant divide and maybe what feels like a rather quiet, explicit racist and white supremacist administration, within our administration, within our government, more than one of us are getting to a place where it's clear that we can't abide by it anymore. And because we can't abide by it anymore, we have to grapple with it. And this is a little bit different than our last sort of one added in the civil rights era. We were nice people. We were taught to be nice. And I can say that's especially for people that are white-identified and white-minded people. The charge then was to be good people, and that's what people would tell you. You had to be good people, and this was a bad thing to do if you were Christian or if you were spiritual, if you were a good Jew, if you were a good Christian.

[06:33]

You wouldn't want these terrible things to happen, and so we wanted to give people jobs and give them nice things and have people not live in terror. That's a good thing. But we didn't have the conversation in many ways. And that's what the seed of that whole Dharma was about. I was like, oh, we did advocacy, we did legislation, but we didn't have conversations. We didn't come and meet each other, you know, heart to heart and belly to belly and say, you know, here's what my confusion was. I don't know how to grapple with this. I don't know where this came from. I see these impulses. Well, I saw this thing happen, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I feel it kind of frozen, and I don't feel like myself when that happens, but I don't know what to do. And I feel trapped. And then I have these friends, they're people of color, and they just shout at me because I'm not doing anything.

[07:39]

And then we just didn't act, or I'm of color. And I don't want to separate from the people that I love that happen to be born into white skin. And so I'm not quite sure what to do and how to have the conversation with them about that thing that they said that's really, you know, a microaggression for two or three times four. And so we're in this interesting place in which we are both in a place of, I think, we love each other. And we're not quite sure how to get over these hurdles of something that has obstructed our freely loving each other in a way that honors the complete truth of our history, the complete truth of our failures as a nation, as a country, the complete truth of our ignorance, and even the complete truth of what

[08:46]

I'm not sure if I want to give up those privileges. I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure what's going to happen if I acknowledge that this is really happening. If I tell one that one thread, is it all going to come apart? And so we live in some place between wanting to love and also abject fear of confronting this. But the good news is that we're in this room, and once upon a time, not really too long ago, when this book was out, we would have been about a slim tenth of this, maybe. This was not the conversation for polite company, as I like to say. And so that we're in this room is something that I trust. That we are, however awkwardly, however weird we feel, whatever corner we feel like we're still kind of hugging onto, we're here. We're here in the womb and we're opening ourselves, even if it feels like constricted or tight, even if I say something that unnerves you as I'm inclined to do, we're here and I really trust that.

[09:56]

And I think if we can start from that place of just trusting the presence that sometimes our bodies and our sense of curiosity gets out in front of our actions. So we can't quite align the actions fully yet, but the curiosity is something to be trusted. That our desire to just, like, I'm not gonna make any decisions, but I wanna know what's going wrong, is a signal. And we can breathe together, we can breathe some space into, like, that's hopeful. It's not sufficient. But it's hopeful. We haven't all run out the womb yet. That's pretty hopeful. And so that's really where Pudana came from, is my sense of this hope and realization that we're really all in this together.

[11:03]

But that's not just a saying. It's not just, you know, kumbaya. We're really all in this together. There are some of us that are frozen, solid. We don't know what to do. Most of us are in some state of confusion. Well, we're here. And if we can allow ourselves a little bit of trust, a little bit of settling into, okay, this is a mess. None of us, none of us in this room made this mess, but we've got to clean it up. It is our responsibility to roll up our sleeves, get a little mucky, and figure out how we're going to make it through. Because the cost of not working it out is, first of all, passing it on yet another generation. Who needs that? But we're paying a great cost in terms of our own sense of

[12:11]

our capacity to love freely, you know, to just, and when I say love freely, I don't mean like we have romantic, oh, I can't, you know, have a sexy relationship with that person. I mean, we can't be in a room together just ordinary human beings and kind of settle in without feeling like strange and awkward. I mean, we're strange and awkward as people anyway, but just because of something as odd, as race, as the color of people's skin, that rather than just feel cleariness, they're like, oh, I wonder what they're thinking, or maybe they're thinking something, or maybe I'm thinking something of them, and we're just cut off. We can't be present. We're lost in this place, and we just want to be connected to each other. We have this world spinning around in space. And as far as we know at the moment, we can't go and violate ourselves.

[13:14]

So can we just figure out how to love each other and be with each other? And let that be the basis of our motivation for doing something. And yeah, people are dying and people are subject to inequity. But I think in some ways we get so lost in that aspect of the conversation and we forget just the basic loss of our humanity. And that is a huge cost. And that cost all of us, wherever we are on the spectrum. And that loss of humanity, that loss of our basic capacity to feel connected and to respond to our natural curiosity about each other. And if you don't have the curiosity, that's something missing too. And that's a great loss. If you haven't even been noticing other people and you don't feel curious, something is missing. Because we come with that. We come with that curiosity.

[14:17]

Remember when children, you just want to touch other people and pull their hair and brush their nose or, you know, pat them on the head or just run and hug them until one day someone says, no, no, no, no, don't hug them. Quite put it together. You know, until it happened a third time, a fourth time. Oh, when I read somebody brown that I hugged, because I didn't see colors. If you have somebody brown that I hugged, my mom gets freaked out. It's all tight. We get the message. And something of our innocence is lost. Something of our natural curiosity is dampened. And we just get smaller and smaller in ourselves and narrow our view, our possibility of love, our possibility of connection is just switched down into the tightness of our mind's moment of contraction.

[15:24]

We bring it up over and over again. And we can no longer see People become just white people rather than like this person being a person. You just become someone that's a threat or someone that may be ready to treat me in a certain way and I've got to constrict. When I say it like this, it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Who came up with this? This is rather absurd. Because we're good and kind-hearted people, and we have this natural impulse to want to connect, to want to be curious, to say, oh, that great hair you have. And then somebody goes, my progression. I was just curious about your hair. So that's what this conversation is about.

[16:27]

How do we allow ourselves to enter into the discomfort and the awkwardness of this business of deconstructing race and what it has done to our capacity for love and liberation. you'd like to have some questions? No, I'd like you to say something. I get lots of chances to have your beard distributed there. Please, she has so much to say and I know some of the folks who are in that group have seepots or questions and any of the rest of you who are here, please feel welcome. All those hands. Don't be shy. Yeah, thank you. Okay, I work with two black women, and they've been to my house.

[17:32]

And, you know, so you have a good time. Their kids have been to my house. I have kids and grandkids, and occasionally, not all the time, but have a big kind of a summer festive party. But it's been a while since they've come, and I have not felt comfortable, like you said, actually staying. Has something happened? We get along fine at work, it's all that, you know, but like I say, it's only once a year that I kind of do this thing usually, and I did miss a year, so it's not all that, you know, but I realized when you're saying it, that yeah, I never actually asked them what happened or if something happened. If they were white, we could ask them. Probably. Here you go. Yes. Probably I could have. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you no matter what.

[18:34]

I think you're right. Thank you. Thank you. I'll stand. Thank you. You can hear me. Blooming of the Sim is rare. in the African-American community in this country. I was curious to know what reaction you might have had from other than the African-American community to your Buddhist religion. That's one of the reactions I had. I didn't ever behave myself in so many ways. I didn't conform. It was, you know, they'd kind of given up on me by that time. But I will tell you, when I was twirling with being black, I went to a Bible Belt in Atlanta.

[19:36]

And they were just as hostile as anybody could be. And I come to understand, because the church, had given, you know, really salvation, like the liberation of theology of, you know, from a slave era, save black people's lives, giving hope. And so breaking with the, this possible, you know, salvation and having a community that is already in many ways fragmented by the ways in which systemic racism destinates communities, it doesn't, destinates the connections to long enough. The connections are not just lost in the outside, they're lost in the community as well. To bias each other, you know, it gets people's back up.

[20:38]

Oh, it's like you're lullaby, you're lullaby, like are you really one of them? And so I go and... It's so hard in here. Because, you know, they're Christian and I'm Buddhist. We're still black. So you have this vernacular and this way of like talking to each other. Hey, what's up? Look at that. You know, you went and got that highfalutin education. And now you want to bring this Buddhism into our communities. Education. Yeah, you know, y'all go to college and, you know, go and get these like It was foreign things, and you'd bring them back. And I wasn't attending this, but I was confused by this line of thinking. I was like, well, I went to one year of college. And she paused, and she said, excuse me? I said, I went to one year of college, and I didn't get Buddhism from college. And somehow, this notion that she had of...

[21:47]

that I may have perceived myself if I'd gone to college, got an education, which is always accessible for people, and brought some foreign thing back to lord over other black people, and it just fell away. It was like, oh, you just got that on your own? Yeah. Why? Because I was in pain, and it spoke to me. I can understand that. That's how I found Jesus. I can understand that. Okay, let's go deep into it. Oh, let's eat first. So we talk to each other. And that is one of the peculiar things that happens between communities of color and white folks. We don't understand quite the reluctance to talk. That seems to exist in white communities.

[22:51]

We're like, what's up? Don't say it. You know, if there was a problem, just ask me. I can hear, I don't even know that, but I can even say, girl, why don't you just ask me? I can hear that. I can hear that. Now that you say it, I can tell it for you. I'm wondering, I read most of the book Radical Drama. I'm wondering what the impetus was for you to get involved in that project, right, to go to your collaborators and how all that figured out. Well, this seemed to not have worked. I hadn't solved race yet, and I was like, damn it, I'm going to solve race. You know, I feel quite strongly. So Eric Garner, right? go back to Eric Garner, 2014. We are actually heading into 2015.

[23:53]

There was a decision that the police officer wouldn't be indicted. And by this time, I was just like, this is a thing. And I realized when there was no indictment that I drank the Kool-Aid I thought I was safe. And somehow that decision said, you're not as safe as you think you are. And I was shocked with my own, you know, self-indulgence at some idea that, like, you know, we had gotten by that. It was not that about racism happening, but that kind of, like, overt, like, just kill a brother in the street. I was like, And I have these years of practice under my belt. And I'm trying to figure out what is happening?

[24:54]

And what are we missing? And Mama Rod Owens and I were brought together to have a conversation because we represented this sort of very demanding pool of people. black teachers that are Buddhist. And he's very strange, because he is a black queer man that is a mama in a Tibetan tradition. So this is a sting joke. This makes it work for Lily. So we had this conversation, Buddha Dharma, actually, this is a lot of conversation. So we had this conversation and some had endured and started talking about this notion of conversation. It was like, we haven't had the conversation. And when I read each other really well, we read each other a little bit. When we were struck by the theory is, we understood what we had come through and started about this in our life, through the day speaking, what's wrong with the rest of you all?

[26:05]

I was like, big, what's wrong? And so we were like, This community, the Buddhist community, with large, dynamic communities, I personally don't know and not see it enough in Christianity. I grew up in Christianity for some time in my life, but I sort of ran food and cooked early. But I knew that these teachings had the kind of container that could invite people into the interrogation of what we'd make up. about stuff but we weren't using it and and so i really wanted to understand that we really wanted to hear from people and just to be in this conversation what's happening not conversation like light and you know just the deep the kind of conversation you've been having a little last few days is sort of like let's get into it and let's get into it in a way that We honor the seat of our practice in it.

[27:10]

And so we decided to invite people into conversation. There's a book by Bell Hooks and Cornel West called Breaking Bread. And it's a conversation book. It's a book of conversation between Cornel and Bell. And for those of you that don't know Bell Hooks and Cornel West, they're both black intellectuals. which at the time was the strangest combination, as strange as both Black Buddhist teachers. And so we were like, ooh, that, we're that, we're like that, right? A male and a female, like strange, like Black folks that occupy a strange location. And so that was the basis for the book. We were like, oh, we're going to do that, that. So we invite people to conversations through four different cities. And we just thought, yeah, we'll just do that, we'll edit it, be done. It wasn't quite that easy. But we took that and then we realized things like, oh, people are going to wonder how we got to Buddhism.

[28:15]

And so we started, we added a few essays. I want to say that the really key piece of it is that I felt like Ravi would probably say he felt like he had tussled over this. That what has gone awry is that privilege has so seduced people. They forgot to turn the lens of the Dharma on their privilege. Here at privilege, through that lens, So we accept the language, we accept the teachings just outside of the line of our privilege so that we're not looking at you and saying, oh, let's examine this too. Let's not take anything for granted. And that's where the book got this title from. Can our dharma be radical? Can it be complete? Can we look into the whole truth of our experience and not say, my truth is going to begin afterwards?

[29:21]

After the line of my whiteness, after the line of my privilege, after the line of my male-ness, after the line of my heterosexuality, after the line of whatever dominant position I have that lets me get away with me not having to look at myself. Can I move through dharma and have it turn around and look at that too? Can I let the dharma unseat me whatever it is that I've narrowed my truth down to and let it be radical. Take all the whole thing. Thank you. I think there was a hand over this time. Is that right? Yeah. Are we thinking it? Yeah. It's so interesting. Even just wanting to question, bring it up. I wonder if it's okay or not. It's totally okay.

[30:23]

It's okay. I overthink sometimes. So, some, maybe a year ago, so I was doing a training, and I was, I think I was the only white male that identified as white in the room, and it was for a victim-offender education group training. And... I was also, there were mostly women. So I was a minority in my gender, in my race. So it was black women or Latino women? Yeah, black women, Asian women. So one of the trainers at one point was talking about how as an African American woman, People would go up and not just... People would have asked me about hair.

[31:25]

She had curiosity. And she was saying how people would go up and just start touching her hair. I do. That's why I still do that. So you know that I know what you're going to say. That's how common it is. So I took my kids to New York City last week specifically so they could have an intercultural relationship. Because it's so... And I wanted them to just ride the submarines. You know, a few people. So my daughter was six. She doesn't have, she's become very comfortable with people. And I try not to hold them back so much. I try to let other people establish their boundaries. Instead of me trying to do sort of what you were talking about, don't do this, don't do that. And she would ask her.

[32:30]

I don't know what she said. She, you know, it was great watching this little bit of a friend to everybody, maybe to everybody. And I talked to them out of like, you know, she's next to a young black animal boy who was on his phone. He had all these tattoos that for me reminded me of the static public who's been in prison. So I kind of like connected with there and she's got something. It's that kind of tattoo. I'm not really doing that, though. And she's just saying, oh, you've got your phone. I see your glasses. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah. And they just say, don't look true. But at some point, she wanted to ask. I don't remember what she said, but she was asking a woman about her hair. All around a bus from Oregon. And this black woman had beautiful hair and trusses. and she didn't see that before. So she's lying, she's just like involved and wants to ask him. So part of my question is that, I don't know, I didn't say, I didn't try to create these separations.

[33:35]

But I wonder if it feels her passing to the woman if you have people look at her. Because she's different from my child's perspective. Even if my child is just beautiful. Is it harassing? You know what? So what it comes up is, I think this is part of conditioning, is we're not told not to stare. Right. Right. And so she's staring. And she's looking off. And she's specifically looking at people who don't look like us. Right. And I'm not telling her not to stare. or I'm wondering how to negotiate that. I have some curious child, this is brought it up, right? She's just curious. She's kind of jealous about it. I'm curious, but you're... We have children, too. We have children, too.

[34:36]

And they look at white children. They were like... You know, we know when they're children. It's a problem when they're adults. That's one thing. It's also a problem to not, when white folks don't understand, we do have culturally different sensibilities, right? And so it's not, I mean, less and less often can you have these kind of generalizations, but you know there's a history that if a white child looks at a black person, that's okay. But if a black child was a white person, the black person's whole family can go up in flames. So we have these embedded fears and differences, and kind of angered about it, right? So black folks might get angry, and they don't even know why. We just pass it on. We just pass it on. Why are they doing it? Why am I with their kids blowing muck? And we forget that this is where it comes from.

[35:39]

We're not even told. This is the problem with not only in our history, We're not knowing our history. So you can't be sensitive to something that you're not learning and not understanding. So we all need to do our history, but get some understanding of where some of the angst and tension between us comes from. And when you have these kinds of conversations with ideally good black families, you get to have the... you get to have the kind of, I'll tell you, we all come up with a special trait, you know how to sniff out white folks at all, right? We do. Like, we come with that. We do a thing, we check it out, we're like, oh, okay. And so his kid is okay, right? It's not meant to diminish, right? It's curiosity. And it comes from

[36:41]

like feeling you as you're different, but you're connected. And that only comes from your relationship and how you hold that relationship. But if you look like you're, you're so tight about the whole interaction, then she's going to get tight too. And then it feels like it's a whole other thing happening. Then it's not just a little girl that's curious about someone. that has hair, and that sister probably worked hard to have hair that nobody's gonna see. It's exactly appreciative. But it changes because you're weird. And this is the problem when we just can't be okay with each other. This is the problem when we don't build relationships across lines of difference. And we would know, right? And we make this effort. One of the peculiar things is, We know that there's cultural differences, you know, if the woman was Japanese. And you know, you might have to be sensitive and kind of pay attention to, like, well, she's Japanese, and, like, maybe that's okay, and maybe their folks don't like that.

[37:50]

And we would hold it differently. You know what I'm saying? We have an awareness, but if we do something, white America does something with black people when we don't really mind-regard it in that way. We don't recognize, like, we're different culturally. We're so-called, but we're different culturally. And so we don't hold a kind of respect. So what colored folks feel like, and that's often regarded Latinos as well, they don't recognize like, we're not going to buy you. And so you should regard the fact that we're different and we're entitled to be communicated about what is okay for us. If you walked into a Japanese person, I'm like, should I take off my shoes? How should I be? You'd look around and you'd wonder, how should I be? Or someone that was Chinese or someone that in your mind was far indifferent, right? Even if there were people who had been here for a hundred years, you might be. Even if there were people who had been here for a hundred years and they're actual Americans in their nationality.

[38:59]

But we don't do that with black folks. and sometimes Latino folks. And that is, again, because we have a proprietary relationship. White America has a proprietary relationship. That is a relationship of ownership, for those of you that are wondering, over black people. That is just in our bodies. So we go and touch them. We don't think about it. That's okay. They're a grown person. Don't reach out and touch their hair. A little kid, that's okay. But those people do it all the time. All the time. I go to spaces. I'm a teacher. I go to spaces. I'm a teacher, and people will reach towards me. And so my attendee is like, hey. Right? And so learn some of your history, all of us, and then we'll begin to unpack, like, oh, we have to be curious about each other, and we have to not have assumptions. Right? And we have to always Oh, the fact that our country has a history that has sought to nourish people in different ways at different times.

[40:10]

And so we're all in a mess. And can we just be curious? Can we be curious? Can we ask? I have no idea how to have this conversation, but I have so many questions. Can we have a conversation? You'll find that most people are very worried. I'm very curious about your thoughts on our country. I feel like I'm now Californian. I'm raising my family up here. I've been on the West Coast for Quite a long time, but I grew up in South. And I grew up in a place where I had a very large African-American community that supported me, and that was close to me, and now I'm not here all over time, so I think that can be things better.

[41:14]

And I don't feel camaraderie with the people that I have in my childhood, because I used to. It's different. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on I think it was in Business Week or something. It was a fascinating study that some of them had done of the origins. There's actually nine countries. America's nine different countries. in terms of who settled their thirst, what kind of system they brought in, like the South was basically feudalistic, the North was Yankee, and the South was Latino. So there's like these non-distinct cultural entities that make total sense when I was looking at their course. They explain some of the voting patterns and explain some of the answers to your question, and it's like, that's a different country.

[42:19]

And there's positive and negative characteristics for each of those nine entities. So I think you could Google it really easily. And I found that to be really edifying is a way of thinking about America as not this one blob, you know. So I've heard that quite often. California is a lot more segregated, emotional. You know, we talk nice. But people don't go to each other's houses, they don't have social relationships, and we're kind of famous for that. And I think that's part of the conversation that needs to be challenged. Was that helpful? Yes. Did you get to the conversation? That was helpful, yes. I think I would be curious, though, how you could go across different We used to different countries of America, too. Yeah, two different countries. I got to the Bay Area and I was like, oh, these folks talk nice.

[43:25]

They smile. But they don't... Folks don't come over to the house. If you don't go to anybody's house, you don't know anybody. Like, not college people. College folks, if you don't go to the house, you don't really know each other. That's how it works, indigenous folks too. And so those will, that's real cultural differences. You're saying to me, that people have been covered without them. Yeah, you see, I think you're strange. Right, and so we have this sort of like coding, coding as CODIG. of different ways that we relate. And, yeah, we all have this, like, little decoders, like, congrats, and we're like, oh, that's what those type of, yeah. And I think in the South, it was really clear, like, we had a very different thing that happened in the South, which was like, you just know, like, those people, not your friends, not okay, it's actually dangerous, right?

[44:37]

But then every week, You know, you knew who you could be really friends with and really have congenital relationships. And you also talked about it. And you talked about it. That's true. And you could be casual about it. Imagine being on my track team where I was working for only white people's yoga. And I'm hearing that happening because it's like OWG. Whenever I would run, my whole team would buy a child yoga. Only white purple. And I don't think so. That's right. I thought that was funny. That's right. And they thought that was funny too. And if I did that out here, I'd get my head off. And you look down upon it and it was a friendship that was around those things. Yeah. Yeah, the East is definitely more conversant. Way more conversant. You know, across the board. In the South, being conversant was necessary because your life depended.

[45:38]

And so really, really important. And so it is these regional differences. And in general, we're not going to survive if we don't talk to general. We're just going to stay walled off in these places of fear. And whatever that energy, I mean, we need to focus on people. Whatever that energy is that seeks to keep us divided, we'll wait. We have an option to say, we're going to break through this. We're going to choose to be here with each other and make mistakes and step on each other's toes and get it wrong and have our kid do something that I shouldn't have done. And we'll be okay. And we have, you know, those of us that are practitioners, we have a practice that's what we're supposed to be doing. That's [...] what we're supposed to be doing. you know, soft belly purse of being an alien and allowing for all of the flaws and, you know, the boxing and bruises to just be there and say, yeah, this is it, this is who I am.

[46:52]

Going back to an earlier thing you were talking about, one thing I struggle with on Curse for the Apostle is balancing in Buddhism, this idea of acceptance and humility, and particularly if an early student or isn't, and if someone's not enlightened or received a practitioner versus wanting to, having pride in your identity, racial identity, culturally, maybe something to let go of, not be too attached to it, and also wanting to correct sometimes or point out something. as an Indian American who is involved in spiritual communities, it's oddly rare that I find people, it's oddly rare to find Indian Americans involved in communities that end me. There's many ways to market for other culture. I struggle often with this pursuit of, oh, I should accept this version.

[48:02]

I can lay there. It could be any yoga class where I don't know the instructor. I literally have, for the last few minutes, I'll go through this conflict in my head of whether or not the Sadie Mustade or not. And, oh, this is my guru. I should, oh, as it sounds good. Or, what I should, am I selling out? Again, I struggle. And now we're in a mess. It's a mess. It's a mess. It's a mess. I take care of it, too. And I'm like, I'm going to send it from white people. I'm going to send it from white people. This is what we are. You know, we're just in a smash-up. And I was saying in our group, it was like, we can't take it back. You know, when Eminem was like, you know, I was kind of arguing through my friends. I was like, please do it. I said, hey, Papa, this is white. I'm like, please do.

[49:03]

Right? And so, is your picture good? I mean, you know, you just have to work with it. It is, you know, we're not in Kansas anymore. And there's appropriation, and it's a mess, and some people are ridiculous, and But you can't put the yogi back in the bottle. We have to make the best of it and honor the path that we're on to the best of our ability and be heartfelt, be curious, be genuine. Know that you're not going to know everything. And if the teachers that you are putting in your heart... connection with our genuine, then that they weren't birthed in the lineage of your motherland is not really what's important.

[50:13]

Is it time? Oh dear, so I need to make an announcement. So, you know, We really had a lovely time with nine people in our group. And I was kind of wanting to come over here and go, come on, let's make a big circle. Because I would love all of you to have an opportunity to have this conversation with us here at Tassajara. So if any of you were thinking, you might come back next summer. Consider joining Angel and myself, and we'll just sing over to you. to have this conversation. The circle needs to keep getting wider and wider. And we would be so grateful for your support and being able to continue to offer this here and other places. So please check the catalog. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for indulging me. Namaste.

[51:24]

Namaste. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[51:48]

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