This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I heard from Myo'i, the head of practice here, at Green Dragon Temple, that the community here has been looking at Dharma study of our racial conditioning. I don't live here. I used to live here years ago. I haven't been to the classes, but I did want to stumble into this conversation. In kind of broad terms, I want to look at the noble truth of suffering and how we practice with suffering, particularly in relation to race.

[01:10]

And the truth of suffering is a deep truth of our lives, and we work with it by going deep into our lives. For me, being white in terms of how race is held in this culture is a current of suffering that I feel running through my whole life. I grew up in a neighborhood called Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago. And Hyde Park was roughly half white and a third African American. And one of my earliest memories is from kindergarten. And my friend Mark was having a birthday party. And my dad drove me to the birthday party, and we got there.

[02:18]

And I was the only white kid there. Everyone else was African-American. And I don't really remember, like, I don't remember any conversation. I just remember, like, my dad and his mom... had a kind of tacit understanding that this was going to be a just drop off the gift and say happy birthday and then leave. Which wasn't what I was expecting. I thought I was going to play. And so we left and we're kind of driving home and nothing's being said, which I guess is typical. But in my little kindergartner mind, like... I'm kind of starting to become aware of this difference between Mark and myself. And I didn't understand it, but I knew that it meant I wasn't going to play at Mark's birthday party.

[03:19]

And so growing up, I continued to feel like we're in this kind of problem. And... What it was and how it worked was mostly unspoken and unclear. And it kind of felt like it put us all in these kind of funny-shaped boxes that we didn't really fit into, and it was kind of like misshaping us. So one way of talking about some aspects of this problem is white privilege. And I started hearing about white privilege about 20 years ago when I was living at Tassajara. And there were some people of color kind of speaking out, saying they wanted to practice in community, but it was hard to do it in a community of mostly white people who weren't aware of white privilege.

[04:27]

And the kind of unconscious racism it embodies. And so when I heard that, I wanted to learn, like, well, what is this? Because I didn't know about it. And so over the years, in conversations with Dharma friends and reading and reflecting, I've kind of struggled to kind of, like, understand what white privilege is, how it works, how it can be addressed. And... And one of the feelings I have is there isn't a simple way to address it. There's not a lot of formula for an individual or an institution. It's an uncertain path. But I feel really strongly called to engage this suffering. And I've been helped. There's some Dharma teachers who've written on this. Angel Kyodo Williams and Zenju Earthland Manuel.

[05:30]

And also... words of James Baldwin, Michael Eric Dyson, and others. And I want to focus on race, but I kind of feel that a number of the basic dynamics here apply to other forms of oppression or marginalization, you know, around gender or sexuality or class or able-bodiedness, age, mental health, and so on. And also, you know, we can be, you know, in how these intersect, we can be at once privileged and not privileged in various ways. And also my intention, or where I want to come from, is coming to this conversation in a way that's actually loving and transformative. And I feel that... I feel that...

[06:35]

We have this love and this love is calling us to be actualized in our relations. And I can feel a certain irony as a white person in this seat, which comes with some privilege and authority, talking about the problem of white privilege, which sometimes kind of involves a kind of presumption of authority about basically everything. So I offer this with kind of a question or maybe an eye open to how this talk might slip into that. And then I also feel like encouraged by Dharma friends who are working on this to talk about it.

[07:40]

People have asked me to talk about this. And it's important that, actually, that white people talk about this. It's really kind of a white people's problem. We are all suffering it, and we all have to and address the suffering of being in this together. But the karmic root of it lies with white people. And it's not easy to talk about. And you have to be willing to make mistakes. But I think it's a bigger mistake not to talk about it. And when you make a mistake of doing something, you can learn from it.

[08:47]

Whereas if you make a mistake of avoiding something, you're not going to learn anything. And I feel like we're not really to try and figure out how to get it all right, but actually how to wake up together. And I think white privilege creates a kind of shared or collective suffering, and then it also creates forms of suffering that are distinct for white people and people of color. creates forms of suffering that may be distinct for white people, people of African descent, people of Asian descent, and so on. And so to the extent that there's distinct forms of suffering associated with kind of arrays of racialized projections, there can be distinct forms of work, distinct types of suffering and healing to be addressed.

[10:00]

And so there may be points in this talk which are kind of basically, you know, as a white person, more addressing white people. And I just kind of want to acknowledge that. I don't know if there's a way around it. And just also to acknowledge and appreciate there's like a breadth of experiences in relation to race. And opening to complexity is part of the work here. We may each hold a somewhat kind of unique configuration of suffering and awareness and maturity in relation to this kind of complex cultural situation. So some of this might sound new to us.

[11:05]

Some of this might sound like old news. Some of this might be bewildering. Sometimes when people hear about this, they get extremely defensive, feel attacked. For some people this is a raw, tender topic. And our practice, our basic practice, is acknowledging and seeing and touching and becoming intimate with our suffering. And this is a process of liberating suffering. And so to the extent that we're suffering in relation to race, And in this world that we've created, that we impose on each other, and it's imposed on us, our practice can help us. Part of how I think Buddhism spreads is

[12:22]

It has this kind of deep psychological approach to fundamental suffering. And so it's kind of gone from India, which started 2,500 years ago, to East Asia, all across Asia. Now it's come here over thousands of years. But as it's crossed these kind of societal... very different societies, kind of sociological levels of the teachings, I think, haven't been as relevant. And so I think part of how we're going to find Buddhism here is working from this dependent arising of suffering, not just stopping at the individual, but going to a social level of oppression and suffering. including that in our vision of how do we look at the arising of suffering. looking at this usually is not comfortable.

[13:44]

But I think I want to find an inviting way to look at this uncomfortable stuff. Because we need to acknowledge it if it's going to transform and look at it deeply and carefully and honestly. So white privilege, you can find various definitions of what it is. It's usually distinguished from overt or explicit or active bias or prejudice. But it's often presented as a way for whites to hold an elevated status while obscuring racial inequality. It's a system that benefits white people, hurtful to others, but there's no conscious intention.

[14:53]

But in being unaware of it, it's maintained. And it's based on some kind of construct at some level that white people are somehow better than others. directly and indirectly, it participates in maintaining racial oppression. And it's based in our history. And it's woven deep into our society. And it has a powerful momentum. And I would also say it's immersive. It's like it's in the air. it becomes intertwined with our identity. The constructs we're given about our embodiment shape our identities.

[16:11]

And so white privilege, it can function in people that strongly oppose racism and having deep, respectful relationships with people of color. And it's a way in which overt racism has become unconscious, unintentional, widespread, and still operative. And one of the kind of questions that is sometimes brought up is, you know, there was slavery in this country for hundreds of years, and what is it that white people did in their minds and their hearts that this could happen? And you could end the institution, but what about this...

[17:21]

this dehumanization, this kind of passed on from generation to generation. How is that addressed? So as I was thinking about this talk and thinking about the life of the Buddha, and there's a passage or section in the life of the Buddha where he's growing up in a palace. And it's a palace of comfort. an indulgence. And his father, with great care, is trying to shield him from any experience of suffering, old age, sickness, and death. And at some point, the Buddha starts to venture forth from the palace and encounters these things, old age, sickness, and death. And he realizes that his life in the palace has been a total denial of his and everyone's impermanence. And he feels deeply called to address that.

[18:23]

And so he leaves the palace, renounces its comforts, and sets out to find a true way to live with old age, sickness, and death. And I thought, you know, this is like white privilege. It's kind of like living in this palace. It affords certain comforts. But it's built on injustice and involves a lot of denial and forgetting. And the injustice of white privilege tends to be invisible for the people in the palace. It's a seat of power that's unconsciously held. So people in the palace generally don't see their privilege and they do not see the experiences or lives of those who are excluded from the palace.

[19:28]

Sometimes when white people hear about this and hear about white privilege, there's a feeling like, well, maybe the thing to do is to feel really bad about being white. And I've thought that and I've tried that. And it's not a particularly useful thing to do. It's not dynamic or sustainable or transformative. So making ourselves feel bad about being white is just another way of being in the palace. And so a basic point across the board is that there's nothing wrong with the color of our skin. And there's nothing wrong with seeing difference. The problem is in how we relate to difference, and particularly in what kind of distorted valuations we're projecting onto differences. So kind of like this idea of being colorblind is a common way to kind of stay in the palace.

[20:43]

White privilege is maintained by not looking at race and racial difference. And I'd say that awakened community is not devoid of difference. It celebrates difference, fully acknowledges differences. difference actually is indispensable to the value of any human relationship. White privilege pretends that whiteness is the norm against which everything else is different. So this is a kind of problematic or hurtful way of relating to difference. Whiteness is held as normal Neutral, colorless, American, objective.

[21:55]

And color is different. And in some way, on some level, less than or inferior. And so these messages are out there and we receive them often without noticing them and we internalize them. So in this, whiteness belongs, and everyone else is in question. And white privilege kind of says to people who don't belong, you know, you don't really belong here. You can be here if you live with the rules, if you live with the denial and the ideology of the palace. And this is oppressive and complex. potentially crazy making. And it's hurtful without acknowledging that it's hurtful. When I was about eight years old, nine years old or so, I remember my dad was working on our car in our driveway.

[23:11]

And a white guy came by. And he asked him, like, oh, you know, what are you doing? I guess this is like if you're working on your car in the driveway, sort of an invitation. So my dad, they had a brief conversation. The guy went on. A little bit later, an African-American man came by and asked, oh, what are you doing? And they had basically the same conversation. And my dad responded basically in the same unguarded way to both of them. And at the time, I found this striking... And I thought, oh, I'd like to be able to do that. And looking back, I can see, like, I'd already totally internalized basically a racist idea that, you know, that solely based on the color of skin, someone was more threatening than someone else. So this...

[24:16]

conditioning, you know, it goes in young and you know, I lived in an anti-racist household. We can learn to see white privilege and become more sensitive to how it works and what it does. And we can acknowledge it and acknowledge, white people can acknowledge that we are white. And because it lives in denial, just to start acknowledging it already changes it. So one way I've been kind of practicing with this is to attend carefully to how I make someone other.

[25:30]

So who do we other? What does that feel like? And what is happening to us when we see someone else's other, as different from us? And how do we get in touch with the situation here in our whole being? How do we acknowledge it, feel it, and become intimate with it? So this is like when we put someone over there. We make someone different from us as opposed to we are different. So how does it feel in our hearts? We might notice some fear, some agitation, some disinterest, some projection of disinterest.

[26:35]

And the way we work with this kind of stuff in our practice is we acknowledge it and we feel our way to being close to it. We want a deeper sense of what it is and how it works. And we trust this intimate presence. And it's a gentle and can become an inquisitive approach. And we don't try to fix it. Sounds like we're looking out for something. Oh, there's a problem. Fix it! if we try to fix it before we see it completely, that just adds to its armor. So we want to work our way down to the most tender place to see it and feel it closely.

[27:42]

And sometimes questions help us. And when we're thorough, When we thoroughly feel it, it releases. When we feel our way down to our deepest grasping, it releases. And when we release deep grasping, there's space. And that space has new possibility and new agency. So we acknowledge white privilege so we can see it more clearly. We see it more clearly so we can acknowledge it more deeply. And we do this so that we can release it, dismantle it, so it doesn't function anymore. And this is also about our conditioning.

[28:48]

So there isn't like a locus of white privilege that we can just find and take care of, dig up. And it's woven into all sorts of formations, all sorts of ways that we respond, what we see, perceive, judge, react to. It's woven into all sorts of different responses to various situations. So working with this is a process. It's a long process. It needs to be kind of a day-to-day, moment-to-moment practice of wholeheartedly being this person, engaging with our suffering and our pain and our tender places and our greed, hate, and delusion around all of this. And it also needs to be kind of dynamic because the way that delusion and denial and defensive postures work is kind of fluid.

[29:53]

It's fluid and flexible, so we need to be able to be fluid and flexible to kind of actually be close to it. And I think it's also vital to realize that this palace is a prison. It is samsara. It's suffering. It's a small place to live. In dehumanizing others, none is more dehumanized than ourselves. Or in reducing others, none is more reduced than ourself. Whatever contradicts the total humanity of one person in us contradicts the humanity of everyone. So I think part of this is also seeing how, as white people, we have dehumanized ourselves, how we've impaired our capacity for love and freedom.

[31:08]

And this denial of this life in the palace, it can leave us with a shallow existence. caught up in a superficial vision of happiness. And this is actually a key part of what brought me to practice, that there must be some deeper happiness, deeper way to live than just this idea of just getting and consuming and denying and ignoring. are particularly intense in this culture. And I think this is important because I think sometimes when white people hear about this, they think they'll do it for the sake of others.

[32:15]

Which is kind of just more white privilege. So we're doing this because we're seeing how small it is to live in white privilege. So we don't do it out of pity for the unfortunate others. We do it because it's a collective undertaking. It's for all of us to actually live in our mutual humanity, to enjoy real community. So it's not something we do because we're supposed to. And we do it because we start to feel how we don't want to live here. So white privilege, it's a palace prison, which it imprisons those within and oppresses those without. And our liberation is mutual.

[33:24]

Part of how othering works often is to devalue others on the basis of some aspect of their embodiment and to involve some projection between superior or inferior, normal and different, acceptable, unacceptable, beautiful, ugly, intelligent, dumb. hardworking or lazy, good or bad, safe, dangerous, harmless, violent, and many others. So I would say when we do this unconsciously or consciously, we lose a sense of our mutuality. And in doing that, we lose our actual humanity.

[34:41]

We reduce ourselves and others, and we don't meet a true nature, or, you know, how we are the emptiness of this person, or you could say our Buddha nature. is that we happen together in relationship completely. It's not like a little tiny bit of us that doesn't happen together in relationship with everything. So our true nature is total, all-inclusive mutuality. And if we put someone over there, we cannot appreciate this actuality of our mutuality, of how we happen in relationship. And so, you know, this racial constructs, I think we can look at them as a way in which this kind of fundamental delusion of separateness is solidified and enacted.

[35:59]

It's part of how the root delusion is given shape and how it functions. Othering keeps us separate and isolated. We devalue difference. And we cannot really see or fully acknowledge or fully meet difference. And when someone comes into that, it's not welcoming. And that it's felt. This is not a safe place, actually. So we can start to open to how our differences are totally mutual.

[37:13]

And that we can have intimate meetings which acknowledge our differences without reducing each other to how we're different. And part of how we do that, though, is again tuning into how do we see someone as other. How do we distance each other? What is happening in our heart? Is there some sensation, some pain or some tightness? And we investigate and examine any kind of internalized devaluations we may hold. We closely question them. And when we're close to our pain, we make ourselves more vulnerable to deep questioning and more vulnerable to insight and transformation.

[38:22]

The deeper we touch our suffering, the deeper the heart opens. The more or obscured or denied or unconscious the suffering is, the greater the clarity when we bring light to it. We are kind of looking for a direct relationship with our process of suffering. In the moment. And just telling ourselves that everyone is equal, I don't think will open into deep transformation. We need a kind of embodied approach.

[39:37]

How we are equal is actually this mutuality, and it's ungraspable. But it is our true life, and we can appreciate it fully. The Buddha gave up his comfortable life in the palace, because he felt compelled to address the truth of suffering. He saw old age sickness and death and realized he was living in denial. And when he saw what he's denying, he became so uncomfortable with the comforts of the palace that he left to seek

[40:57]

liberation. So letting go of white privilege can involve some sacrifice, giving up some kind of comfort. But we're opening to a kind of transformation of a prison, transformation of a cramped suffering of enacting dehumanization, not living in the fullness of our collective humanity. There was the attack in Charlottesville about eight days ago, which has kind of brought racism into the spotlight. And in response, many have wanted to express opposition to this kind of racist protest, and also in particular this act.

[42:09]

And so apparently on Twitter, there's this use of a hashtag, this is not us. Perhaps to say, this is not us. We are not racist. This is not our America. And a number of people have noticed that this is noted. This is kind of a distancing. This hashtag, this is not us, seems like it actually enacts white privilege. It kind of denies any connection. Some people said, it's just not true. This attack is our America. It's grounded in our history. and it's of a piece with white privilege. And until we acknowledge that, we're obstructing real change. So in the context of our practice in this talk, I've mostly been talking about our individual work.

[43:21]

But I think we need an approach that encompasses both our personal and social transformation, very individual and collective dismantling, which I think have to go hand in hand. If we just think, you know, personal change is sufficient, this can easily kind of maintain the status quo. ignore just how deeply this is a social problem. How it's woven into our culture. And that actually our love is not just a personal, private thing. It's something that needs to come out and be actualized together. And likewise, if we just think

[44:26]

social change will be sufficient without inner work, this can also maintain the status quo. Because it can miss how deeply this stuff is working, how deeply and unconsciously this stuff can work and be operative. And it can kind of assume a mindset of like, well, if we change society, it will change people's hearts. So we need both, I think. And our intimate study of suffering around race also can open into and be supported by other kinds of work and active participation. but study, education, looking anew at the history of this nation, developing our awareness, becoming attuned to this, attentive to this, and talking to each other about it, speaking up and speaking out.

[45:49]

And as with the kind of inner work, being moved by love, towards actualizing love in the concrete realities of how everyone is held in our communities. I recently heard a little saying, it's not enough to see Buddha nature. We need to do what Buddha nature does. There is great suffering here and there's great potential. Great challenge and great promise. And it calls for courage and perseverance and resilience and enthusiasm. And it can seem daunting, but being hopeless

[46:57]

maintains the suffering. Being hopeless leaves us with nothing to do. So we may need to remind each other we have the capacities to face this fully and address it and transform it collectively. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:52]

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