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 by people like you. And probably many other things that I don't know. Anyway, Wilson has come here to speak this evening to give us... the benefit of the great daily experiences and also to give his unique, when he was on the Zen Center board, he introduced us as board members to the quicker way, the quicker way of making decisions and coming to consensi. And then he could speak to that and many other things, the power of bringing harmony to sangha, the power of the brain, the core of practice to the the many aspects of life.

[01:01]

So thank you very much for coming. I'm very honored to have been asked to come to speak with you. My wife and I, not too distant past, spoke at Green Gulch, which we enjoyed greatly. And I had hoped that she would be able to come also tonight so that the two of us might speak together. She is now the interim executive director for Community Economic Services Corporation of Berkeley, which does energy audits of both residential and commercial property. and does an audit of what their carbon footprint is and then suggest how they might reduce their impact on global warming and actually does the work.

[02:13]

We're in the process of moving that organization from being essentially an agency of the city of Berkeley to being an independent nonprofit. The Energy Commission of Berkeley is meeting tonight, and we're submitting the budget for the agency. And we thought that we'd be able to do it fairly quickly, but this budget's a little more difficult than you might expect sometimes. So I'm sorry that she's not able to join with us tonight. Part of what we spent the time... talking about at Green Gulch was the issue of being active in the world in the social justice sense and also being able to do that in a way that you can remain balanced and

[03:26]

remain in a sense connected to all that involves and that is greater than what we see when we are involved in those activities. So I hope that we might be able to get into some of that tonight. What I'd like to do is, if this works, is just speak for a few moments and then open it up for question and response. Rather than just be a talking head, so to speak, I would like to engage in a conversation. I find that often more valuable and more interesting to me. So, one of the things that both Pat and I have been involved in is I'm covering what we would consider some Native American ancient wisdom.

[04:41]

One of the unfortunate things that has happened here in the United States is that the indigenous wisdom of this country has been pushed aside, if not submerged, and disappeared in a real sense. And from our efforts at doing that, we think that that wisdom has great value, is harmonious with a lot of the ancient wisdom around the world. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Perennial Philosophy, which was an effort to look at how some of the same principles, wisdom, teachings come up in a lot of different places in the world, in a lot of different cultures, at a lot of different times, and all have something very valuable to contribute.

[05:49]

there is a kind of global monoculture that essentially is being promulgated out of the United States that is in a sense being produced in connection with global capitalism, and a lot of the consequences of that are having a very negative impact on the world. In looking at Native American culture, and looking back at the history of the United States, There is a critical conjunction with Native American culture that I think is instructive in terms of how this whole process has moved forward.

[07:02]

Patricia is a Haudenosaunee. That's the tribe that she comes from. Haudenosaunee have been called Mohawks by a lot of folks. The Haudenosaunee are the people of the Longhouse. And when the United States was involved in writing the Declaration of Independence, we now find that the Declaration of Independence borrowed a lot from the Haudenosaunee folks, and that's not recognized. One of the examples of how Native American culture is pushed aside. The Haudenosaunee are made up of seven groups of tribes who came together in the northeastern part of the United States.

[08:16]

and being tired of fighting with one another, they sat down and formed an alliance and wrote a set of principles in terms of how they would work with one another. There is, I think, a similarity in how Native people in this country, and to some extent... African tribes conducted their business very similar to, I think, the Quaker process of finding consensus, the sense of the meeting. There's often a reference to the chief of the tribe and the so-called of the chief, and I think we misunderstand that in our culture.

[09:19]

The chief in both the African tribes and in Native American tribes was more of a servant leader than authoritarian directive leader, similar to the clerk of a Quaker meeting. whose purpose is to basically facilitate the meeting and include all of the concerns and thoughts of everyone who participates in the meeting. That's a similar way that the Haudenosaunee set down and created this pact that much that's in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights is taken from. In fact, at the convention where Ben Franklin and all the other signers were there, there were also Haudenosaunee chiefs in the room who were brought in the room in order to witness this process.

[10:34]

Part of what shaped our understanding of Native peoples comes out of some conflict that was in Western culture at the time, particularly European culture. There was the split in European culture between the so-called scientific method versus the religious organizations at the time, mostly the Catholic but also the Protestant religion developed at that time. In the process of engaging with the scientific method, there was an effort to also look as they were encountering

[11:39]

other people in the world to look in a so-called scientific way at what was going on within those communities. And as happens in science sometimes, science brings its own point of view to what it's looking at. There is an assumption of a neutrality in the scientific method. and the scientific approach. But there has been recognized now, even among scientists, even among physicists, that there is a subjective reality within the world that in some real sense influences what is seen and what is recognized.

[12:41]

One of the discoveries within physics was that how you look at the photon passing through a slit and the results of that is influenced by the experimenter. So that if the experimenter looks at that photon passing through a slit, with one particular approach, it looks like a wave. If they look at that photon with another approach, it looks like a particle. So there is a real subjective nature to reality and scientists bring a particular point of view to what they see in terms of the surface materialism. And that perspective was brought to the scientific view of so-called scientific view of the indigenous people that was met as Western culture moved around the world and moved here into the United States.

[13:52]

There was an assumed Because of the conflict going on in Europe, there was an assumed superiority that was being accepted as part of this scientific approach to reality. And therefore, those groups that were looked at were considered to be less than civilized. In fact, if you read the Declaration of Independence, it says very clearly in our Declaration of Independence that the Native people are savage and cannot be civilized. When you look back and recognize the great... civil accomplishment, peaceful accomplishment of bringing seven warring groups together in forming a peace treaty, that's something in a civilized manner that we have hardly approached at this point in terms of where we are.

[15:22]

Part of that understanding in order to begin to move us further in terms of what Pat and I are discovering and how we're moving forward is a understanding of the impacts both in terms of a physical view of the world as well as a cultural view of the world, the impacts of monoculturalism. If we look at the impacts of capitalism and what's happening in terms of the globalization, part of what's being pushed is a monocultural perspective of how human beings relate to one another, and a diminishment and subversion of other cultural understandings of how human beings relate to one another.

[16:39]

In terms of industries like agriculture, we have discovered very clearly that monocultural agriculture is destructive to what's happening in the world in a very similar way. So economic, industrial approaches to what's going on in the world that does not recognize the value of what other cultures have to bring and attempt to push a monoculturalism is destructive in all of those different spheres. So I think there is an important way of looking at what's going on that recognizes not only the value in each of the cultures, but the value in each individual. And I think that's at the basis of what goes on in terms of the sense of the meeting process.

[17:47]

where each individual there is recognized in terms of what they bring to that process, as well as these larger concerns. So that is something which is a part of native culture that has been subverted. I think there is another Western cultural habit that that is also harmful to our being able to move in the world in a harmonious way and to reduce suffering. And that is a perspective that comes from the Western cultural conflict that tends to push concepts into an either-or paradigm.

[18:56]

Either this is right or that is right, but both things cannot be real and right. So we misunderstand and misread what's happening in the reality because we bring that paradigm when we look at these human conflicts. For example, we tend to put individuals' political their political perspectives on a linear continuum where people are either far right or far left or somewhere along that linear continuum between far left and far right.

[20:07]

But if we look at really what goes on with people, we find that on some subjects, people may be in one place on the continuum. On other subjects, they may be on a total different place on the continuum. So that someone could hold a very so-called right-to-willing view. on economics and at the same time have a more liberal view about other issues that are in the world. So that there is not just this linear perspective, but... You know, there is a much more holistic and diverse perspective that people have and that they bring into their relations with other people. There's a Rockridge Institute.

[21:11]

There is a professor who's unfortunately his name. I'm, you know, old age. I'm forgetting the name, who talks a lot about framing and how issues are framed. And he's now helping people to understand that folks aren't just far right or far left or somewhere in the middle in terms of all their perspectives and points of view about the issues that are before them. but people are much more varied and diverse in terms of where things are. That understanding is much more helpful in how you relate and deal with people, I find. If we allow ourselves to remain in... a paradigm where someone is either far left or far right, we tend to not to want to talk to folks who are on the other side of the political spectrum from where we are or to find difficulty in talking with that person rather than finding all of those issues where we have some similarities.

[22:36]

and equal understandings and move together from that point of view. So in addition to the diversity of culture and diversity of perspective, I think it's also helpful to understand that we all come from and whole diverse points of view. I think there are also some similarities in terms of our psychologies and the nature of our intellect and our psyches that also are very similar to that. One other thing that I would want to speak to in terms of this paradigm and discussion is that I want to talk with you about. There is an issue which has risen to the forefront in the current presidential debate that I think is an issue that unfortunately

[23:59]

those of us in this country have not been able to engage in a way that has the prospect of actually being able to resolve. And that's the issue of race. Some of you might have heard in the last... couple of weeks, the conflict that came up between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton around the issues of race. This issue is going to, despite the debate that they had in Nevada the day before yesterday, where they made nice to one another, The issue is going to continue to rise in this campaign, the issue of race.

[25:05]

If you accept the scientific understanding of race, geneticists are very clear that The concept of race as we use it does not exist. There's no such thing as racial differences. The genetic package of two individuals that might be considered of the Caucasian race the differences between those genetic packages is greater than the average genetic package that we assign to African Americans in comparison to the average genetic package that we assign to Caucasians.

[26:14]

So that those are not real differences in that sense. We are still all one species, one race. But the Western cultural expansion around the world tied to both this analysis that other folks were savages and the economics of that expansion, driven essentially by capitalization with its need to, its acquisitive need to join land and to control labor, the concept of race went beyond what the reality is.

[27:18]

is in terms of race. History is what it is in terms of that. It's the paradigm that was brought that has, through history, developed this concept to where it is what it is. There is clearly some consequences of that development. There is a sense that we can start from zero and move forward once we understand that there is no such thing as true racial differences. And in this presidential race, political race that's going on, there is a great excitement about the candidacy in Barack Obama because there are many who feel that if he is elected president of the United States,

[28:45]

then that's a statement that we've overcome racial differences in this country. I am finding it difficult. I'm finding his candidacy very difficult because I feel that his election will make it much more difficult for us to overcome the consequences of our history and the impacts of that on people here in this country and to a certain extent around the world. There is... I think no question, I would guess that no one would question that the reason why African Americans are at the low end of almost every positive measure that you make for groups of people in this country is

[30:12]

even if you start from zero and move forward from this point, is not erased. African Americans, I mean, I don't need to go through that history in terms of the impact on families, the impact on... access to education and the kind of support that really assists someone to be able to fully function within this society. They're not there in a lot of communities now, African-American communities. Neither are they there in low-income white communities. If you look at what some might consider the purest Caucasian groups in this country, those Caucasians who are in Appalachia, their family destructiveness, dysfunction, their addiction to drugs, all of the problems that they have are very similar.

[31:31]

to what's going on within the African-American community. So that destructiveness cannot be assigned to their genetics, but it can be assigned to their history. So if Barack Obama is elected as president of the United States, to then have so many people believe that we solve the race problem would mean that addressing the impacts of those problems become even more difficult. There is a debate going on in the African American community currently that was caused by Bill Cosby, who basically has been speaking out at a number of places

[32:32]

saying that poor African Americans have failed the civil rights struggle because they're still calling their children so-called funny names and are not stepping up to take advantage of the situation in this country the way that it is in an equal way. I don't deny that. I don't deny the fact that we all have some personal responsibility to what's going on. But the reasons why largely too many people within the African-American community are still involved in dysfunctional families and situations has a history to it that is also beyond them.

[33:35]

And there needs to be some repair for the damage that has been done. Rather than, as I would consider it, blaming the victim, we need to understand how people come into the situations they are in, give them credit, for doing the best that they can within those situations and then providing them the pathways and the alternatives in order to move forward. And I'm afraid, unfortunately, that if Barack Obama is elected, and I'm not against him being elected, but if he is elected president, then I think there will be more people similar to Bill Cosby who will say, pick yourself up, that you can do it on your own and that no additional help and support needs to be given. So I'm very anxious about this election, even though I think that it will be historic and something special if either a woman is elected president or if an African-American is elected.

[34:54]

Ronald, I think that is all that I wanted to say to kind of stimulate some things, and then I would invite questions. I actually would really like to hear more about the process of bigger meetings, and specifically around, you know, how space is held, how it I will do that. I should say there are a couple of Quakers here, and I hope that they would feel free to correct me if I'm not doing it accurately. I'm not a Quaker. I did work for the American Friends Service Committee. And it was one of the best jobs I ever had, and I really enjoyed it.

[35:59]

And the Quaker approach, I think, is a powerful, spiritually powerful approach. There are some differences to the way that meeting for worship, which is the... decision-making process within a Quaker church or a meeting house and the way that the consensus process is done within the Mountain Front Service Committee. But the idea is that within each person who is involved in that decision-making process, There is a belief that each person has something of value to bring to the discussion.

[37:02]

And the process is set up to invite that, to facilitate that, to assist that to happen. So one of the primary responsibilities of the clerk of the meeting, is to put the necessary pieces together in order to facilitate that. There's also an aspect of that that it took me a while to learn in terms of the Marine Defense Service Committee, because I came from being an elected official. And the politics of decision-making within the city council and in other democratic institutions that we have is more of a competitive, more of a so-called political process where you bring your ideas and your concepts or your ideas

[38:17]

that you want to move the decision to the meeting, and then you struggle through debate or otherwise in order to have the decision come out the way that you're bringing to the meeting. There is a space for compromise within that process, but the point is to essentially come from your perspective and to get as much as you can out of the compromise process. What I've had to learn in terms of dealing with the American Friendly Services Committee consensus process is, yes, if I feel that I've got something to contribute to the decision that's made, I want to put that out. But then I want to let it go and allow the process to work its way to come up with the most acceptable or real decision that's of benefit to all.

[39:34]

Out of that understanding that each one has something valuable to bring, the process then shapes that. And the decision springs out of that, and often the decision that springs out of that, no one brought to the meeting. Because in the process working its way, you often sometimes can come up with something totally new. Just to trot back a little bit to... what I was saying earlier. There is also within physics a concept of not transcendence exactly, but where there is a point where what

[40:42]

comes forward is more than the sum of the parts that went into it. Let's see if I can give you a little bit of example of that. If you look at a water molecule, H2O, or even just a few water molecules, There's no such thing as wetness when you're looking at just a few water molecules. You have to put a certain number of water molecules together before you get to this phenomenon of wetness. It's not part of an individual water molecule. There's a similar, I think, concept.

[41:44]

So that's adding numbers in order to essentially arrive at a phenomenon that's not part of the things that go to make it up. There's a similar thing around water with temperature. So that water, which at a certain temperature, is liquid. by just going over one particular fractional point above a certain temperature level, then all of a sudden the water becomes gas. So there are these transition points that happen within the physical world that I think also have something similar that happens when human beings get together and add their their thoughts together, something can arise that no one brought into the situation.

[42:47]

There is an analysis that some folks have been working on about these cultural concepts that come into our senses and our structures that they refer to them as means. So, within genetics, they're discovering that they can't just... look at each one of the genes and be able to read what is going to be the attributes that a particular living thing has, because the genes are also in relationship not only to each other, but they're in relationship to the environment, so that there are things that can appear that go beyond what is just in those collections of genes. With memes, which are individual cultural concepts, when you put memes together, they in a sense, according to this particular analysis and point of view, also can react to the situation at the time and phenomena will arise.

[44:09]

concepts will arise, actions will arise, which go beyond what the individual means that are brought into that. So the consensus process guided by the clerk is a process in order to invite and facilitate each one of those individuals who are part of the process to put what's on their heart or what God might be speaking to them to contribute to the process. In doing that, I think there are a lot of other kinds of mechanisms which are important in the process. In listening to what is going on in terms of the discussion. The clerk is also asked to at some point in terms of the art of clerking to attempt to articulate what kind of a consensus

[45:27]

are in agreement that the group is reaching towards or it looks like they are able to achieve. So the clerk will essentially put that out there and articulate that and then essentially attempt to So listen from each one of the members of the group whether they accept that as having incorporated the concepts that they've heard and whether or not they agree that this is where the group is going. And each member of the group has a responsibility than to indicate to the clerk a number of assessments of that articulation.

[46:33]

Whether they're not comfortable with that articulation as being a full articulation, a complete articulation of the idea, and they can be uncomfortable to the extent that they're not willing to have the group go forward with that decision. So they essentially stand in the way of the decision because they feel very deeply that this is not where the group ought to be going. I'm feeling very deeply this is not where the group ought to be going. or they can disagree that not show strongly enough about it that they would stand in the way. So they can stand aside and allow the group to move forward with that understanding, or whether they agree with what the clerk has articulated, and then you've, at that point, if all of the participants in the group...

[47:41]

feel like they can either stand aside or that they agree, then it's considered that the decision has been made and the group then moves forward with that decision. But each member of the group essentially is heard and the group works with that hearing to come up with. with the decision to move forward. I don't know if that's helpful. Yes? So my question is related to what you mentioned in the beginning about this combination between spirituality and activism, or engaged in the world, or also spiritual beings, and of course the greatest spiritual activist American spirituality, this was Dr. King. And not only was he misunderstood in the sense that he wasn't just a dreamer, but that he was anti-war and anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, but I think even more misunderstood, along with Gandhi, was his positions on love.

[49:02]

And he continuously, relentlessly talked about love for the enemies as a valid political force. And he really embodied love, forgiveness, generosity, and care. A lot of these values that I think in activist circles, like we aspire to and we see them as very idealistic and different in our future, but yet it's very difficult, I think, like embrace that understanding of love for your enemies. And so when I work in the anti-war movement tonight, work in these various groups, when I come forth with position of George Bush as my brother, I don't get met. And I think it's just a misunderstanding at a deeper level because I think at heart they're with me.

[50:06]

But there are a lot of people who have a lot of hatred and a lot of anger, yet at the same time, would invoke a king or a Gandhi without understanding that the heart of their message was really love. And I think the greatest duty of a spiritual activist is that generation of love, love for oneself, for the others, for the world, and for the enemies. And so I guess the question is, In your understanding, what is a spiritual activist? And how can you infuse love at a time when it seems to love someone like George Bush or Dick Cheney is so, you know, impossible? But yet at the same time, people who, you know, follow those movements of King and Gandhi, you know, understand that there's an organic kind of purifying power, you know, in that. incoming in that place. So just comments on peace movement, social activism, and how to embody those principles when it's the most difficult.

[51:16]

Yeah. Again, I think that in some sense there is a meme on what love is. And I think that there is, particularly in this, well, I shouldn't say that probably. There is misunderstanding pretty generally about what love is, I think. I think my, I trace that misunderstanding to, I don't know, maybe I'm hung up on it, but Western cultural history and philosophy, if you look at the development of philosophies within Europe, there was a point in time where love was a very highly...

[52:29]

phenomenon, particularly, I guess, the love of a man to a woman. And dogs would go all over Europe and, you know, sing songs and pledge their love and men would, I guess, in some way give up their life for a particular woman that they pledged their love to. So it was a dying to love. I mean, in a certain sense. And that particular historical period, I think, had a lot of influence on this meaning that comes down to us today in terms of our understanding of what love is. And it is a understanding of love that where love has no conflict in it.

[53:31]

Where it's an understanding of a kind of love that is conflict-free and, you know, no disagreements, no tension, no dynamics in it. And I think this contributes to what's going on in the movement and in the struggles around When you talk about loving George Bush, some people are assuming that if you love George Bush, then somehow you can't then push against him or struggle with him and try to move him. You think that he's right and perfect because the one you love is right and perfect. So, you know, people find it hard to do that because they think love is free of struggle.

[54:38]

There's kind of an overlay around when you talk about nonviolence in the same way. There is assumption that the struggle around nonviolence, and David probably knows this better than any of us, that nonviolence means that you don't struggle and confront to change the perpetrators of violence, that you avoid and walk away from them or allow them to do whatever they want to do. And that's what the nature of nonviolent struggle is. Not at all what Dr. King was about or Mahatma Gandhi. They were about confronting those who were bringing down injustice, challenging them, speaking truth to power, so to speak. And that's love also, to engage it and to, in a sense, to struggle with it.

[55:43]

So when I, I used to be also a principal of a, junior high school with a lot of young men who kind of lived in a sea of violence in some sense. And they had a very difficult time understanding this concept about how do you struggle within a nonviolent way in order to move things, in order to make them better. So I think we have to find those of us who are nonviolent activists have to find more ways to demonstrate and to show the power of this kind of nonviolent love and struggle. That it's not about just avoiding issues, but it's about confronting them, and that is also love.

[56:46]

So love is not all smooth and there's no problems. I have been reading this book called Smallest Beautiful Economics as in People Matter by Schumacher. And it kind of points out, well, this is like published back in 1973, and kind of covers that whole, like, globalization of just how the system machine is just sort of infiltrated. When you look at parts of the world, like China, where you've got, you know, sweatshops in India and whatnot, and seeing, like, this sort of, like, control. It's almost as if, especially with media and, you know, like, cable news and all these, there's all this sort of like, like, in theory, and it's like, what's the terror alert level today? And it's like, it's a way of, like, mass control, you know, I think on some level.

[57:47]

I think there's sort of, like, people are starting to wake up to that reality. It's like, you know, hey, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News is full of it, you know. And it's just sort of, I'm beginning to have a sense that there's something happening in part just with, you know, even this Democratic nomination deal. Because there's, I think there's some good possibility that they may win, um, But do you think if we had either Clinton or Obama regardless, if we won the Democratic nomination, do you think there may be that possibility that they can still maybe like say, okay, you can be my vice president sort of thing? Didn't expect you to go there. No. No. I think of their assessment, and I'm just kind of putting myself into their heads as a political think.

[58:54]

I would guess that their assessment would be that that would be too much change for the United States at this time, and they would essentially lose the election. so that their choice would not be one or the other, or each other, but would be someone else. Yes, sir. George Lakoff. George Lakoff, that's right. Thank you so much for your work with Mayor. I think I agree with you. There's a lot of things on the reservation that are far worse than what's happening in our cities. One thing that I've noticed in the last 20 years is that there's been a move towards pro-cultural advocacy and why that in a way would be between many separate groups. And it's for maybe the best reasons.

[59:58]

And so it's constant of separation, not that, you know, what you might feel that in American culture today? What tracks it in terms of what's coming today? I think this is part of the pushback to what's going on. We take a lot of pride in our Americanism. Some feel very strongly that America would lose something if there are too many or too strong of other cultures that are also kind of happening. Some of this is part of this English-only phenomenon, too, where folks are rising up and saying that

[60:59]

We ought not to put signs on our streets that are in Chinese or in Spanish, because even though that might facilitate somebody to be able to get around, it also encourages people not to learn English, supposedly. So I think that's part of the pushback. In a lot of ways, I think we end up being uncomfortable around people who are speaking another language because we don't understand what they're saying. We might be talking about us. We don't know. So there is, I think, a lot of effort to try to move people into what is essentially a monocultural society. and move more and more people in the world to that monocultural understanding out of some sense that that's going to make things run smoother and make more everyone comfortable.

[62:08]

I don't think that that is... the most successful way for us to move forward as human beings. Just to take the language example. Linguists understand that languages develop again around particular paradigms and perspectives that develop out of the histories of those individual cultural or land places where those languages develop. And there are things that are found in some languages that aren't found in other languages. There is an Eskimo tribe, for example, that has, I think, something in the nature of seven or eight different words for snow.

[63:19]

So when they see snow, because they have these different words for snow, they actually see those differences quickly and recognize them, and it's important to what's going on in their particular environment. There are lots of words in other languages. French and Spanish about relationships between human beings and people that we don't have or have not had in English. And so we've adopted a lot of those words when we understand those concepts. So actually English is probably the most mongrel language that there is because we've come in the English people have come into contact with all of these other peoples and to some extent learned some of their languages and found these words are valuable in helping them to deal with the world and understand the world, so they've incorporated some of those words into the English language.

[64:30]

But there are also hundreds of human languages that are disappearing every year around the world. In the same way that there are species that are disappearing around the world because of monocultural agriculture and because of monocultural development, the way that we're moving forward, we're also losing languages and losing human cultures. That at some point we have something very valuable to contribute to all of us. as human beings. One of the ways that things work on the genetic level is with genetic diversity is that it is a survival aspect of our living and our being. They're now starting to, the federal government, the FDA,

[65:38]

has decided to allow cloned animals to be marketed to us. You know, and to a certain extent, I think folks are correct in that you're not talking about an animal that is drastically different or dangerous for us. But what you, I think... will find, because this has happened in other circumstances, is all those cloned animals with the same genetics are vulnerable and subject to diseases and other kinds of impacts because they don't have the genetic diversity in order to be able to resist and to adapt to what's going on in the environment. So in a sense, moving towards and pushing a kind of monocultural aspect here in the United States or around the world, we are actually making ourselves more vulnerable and missing some of the assets that other cultures bring to us.

[66:56]

So that happens on the language and it happens on the cultural side too. So one of the things I think that we have got to do in a certain sense in terms of moving back to the Native American wisdom is recognizing that that wisdom speaks to us harmonizing with others and the nature, that it's not about dominating or taking advantage of, but Native wisdom was about finding ways to harmonize with nature. So you do not do the kinds of things that are destroying what's there in nature. You find better and better ways of living with that diversity that's within nature and the diversity that's within human beings. When Native Americans confronted Europeans, they welcomed them.

[68:01]

It was not their first response to try to push them back or to eliminate them, but to welcome them into the environment. So I think that it's important for us to get to the point of recognizing that diversity. So immigration, which is a huge issue now in where we are currently politically we seem to have lost the understanding of the contribution that immigrants make to this country. And that contribution, I think, is held by those immigrants that also, in learning how to... live within the American society also hold on to some of their cultural perspectives and mechanisms that they bring here.

[69:10]

I wish that African Americans were able to hold on to some of their African wisdom also. I I wish that I had a deeper understanding of those African cultural things that I could pass on to my children and utilize within my own relations. We celebrate Kwanzaa. So in our household, we don't celebrate Christmas. Kwanzaa was put together by a professor out of Southern California by borrowing from mostly East African tribes to put together a ceremony which recognized what were the values in African culture, about unity, about cooperation, about working together with others.

[70:22]

in a cooperative fashion. So we have to, in a sense, recreate what was lost. That doesn't take away from the need to find ways to work. with one another. And I think we'll always be able to do that. Whenever groups of people have come together, they have created a lingua franca, a working language in order to be able to communicate and to do the things that they needed to do. And I think, again, that is one opportunity where when we bring languages and culture together... Things will arise out of that which will lift the consciousness of all of us in the world. But by not doing that, we may be missing an opportunity. I'm interested in the ways in which social justice communities intersect and the ways in which, in some respects, I think that we often...

[71:31]

view social justice as a zero sum equation and that sometimes we create adversaries where we don't necessarily need to in the pursuit of whatever goal it is that we're seeking. And could you maybe talk a little bit about how those intersections might work a little bit better, thinking specifically along the lines of queer communities and and communities of color and the ways that my friends who are queer and of color sort of have to live in both worlds and don't feel like they can live with one. They intersect the ways that as a white guy I can support them, but also the ways as a queer guy I can feel supported. Well, I think some of that is derived from a particular perspective about the availability of resources of benefit.

[72:52]

I think that there is a perspective that... There is a limit to the justice that's available. There's a scarcity. And therefore, you know, it's in a sense for you to pick aside in order for you to get yours, in order to get some of those benefits. So we're often in some sense dragged and pushed. into trying to pick one side or another. And we often miss the generosity of the world in a sense, the generosity of the community in a sense in terms of picking sides. And a lot of our institutions are set up to force us to pick sides.

[73:55]

This election, for example, is forcing people to pick sides. And that's not necessary. I mean, we can go into that. I think that there is a way of campaigning where it's not about trying to put somebody else down because what you're looking for is the best fit. So if you're looking for the best fit for you as an elector, it's like trying on clothes. the sweaters that you're putting on aren't in competition with each other. You're trying to find the one that's the best fit for what you want to wear it for and what you want to do with it. So the sweaters don't need to act like they're in competition with each other. They don't have to do things to say that sweater is threadbare or get holes in it or something. But unfortunately, our politics is such that

[74:59]

We work on the basis of, you know, if I'm not picked, it's because I'm lesser. It's not that I'm just another sweater, a different one, but in some ways that I'm lesser. So I think that's part of what, in my understanding, feeds into what you're saying in terms of the competition that goes on in terms of the justice movement. there is a certain amount of, you know, who's the greatest victim? So who's in the greatest, you know, problems? Therefore, you know, what your problems are, we'll just put that aside for now because we're hurting more than you are. So therefore, everybody needs to rally around, you know, our concerns and your concerns will come later.

[75:59]

I think where I've come to is we're not going to advance justice for any of us until we advance justice for all of us. I come at that to a certain degree out of a certain amount of looking at the African-American struggle here in the United States and finding that there are justice advances that have been made, but a lot of the benefit from those justice don't end up adhering to the African American community. And largely, to some extent, that's because other than the civil rights struggle, the political tools, the political power that's available to certain communities is very limited, more often than not, because they're low income.

[77:21]

But You know, I understand that if you are, that what the African American community is suffering from, the African American community is not the only community suffering from that. I don't know if any of you remember Lani Guineer. She was... person who was being considered by Clinton to be appointed to the Justice Department and then Clinton backed down from actually appointing her. But she wrote a book with a guy by the name of Gerald Torres which she titled The Miner's Canary. The Miner's Canary, the miners take canaries down into the mine because canaries have weak lungs relatively speaking and if there's poison in the mine then the canary will suffer first and then that's a signal to the miner that there's something poisonous in the air and they better do something about it they better get out or find some way to deal with that miners that poison

[78:44]

So when we talk about the suffering of the African-American community and in other communities, a lot of the same economic, social, and other impacts are visited on other communities, but they might not be as visible in those other communities. For example, the African-American community is tremendously impacted by our culture of violence. Violence is seen as a way of dealing with what you've been confronted with, so you respond in a violent way. But it's not just the African-American community that's impacted by violence. The whole community is impacted by violence. When you see relatively affluent middle-class people Caucasian kids who will walk into a school and shoot up a lot of the students and the teachers, that's an impact of the violence that's in our culture.

[79:55]

In the same way that African-American young boys and girls would feel like they need to carry a gun and to deal with people in their community with a gun. Because of some of the insecurity or other kinds of things that young white boys are feeling sometimes in the suburban communities, they feel like their only response is that and they see all the violence. that is there. So I think it's important to recognize that what we are feeling and what's going on in terms of how we are dealt with and the lack of justice that's there is reflected maybe in less visible ways, maybe in slightly different ways in other groups. So as movement people, I think it's very necessary for us all to take on that struggle and push back against that injustice but to do it in such a way that recognizes that a lot of that is systemic and is also impacting others and we can be in solidarity with others.

[81:10]

But it's Not helpful, I don't think, to dismiss the impacts within your own family and in your own community and to dedicate your... struggle to just join with others, either in this country or in other parts of the world. Because if the struggle is not taking place everywhere, we're not going to be able to advance injustice sufficiently around that. So I want to be in solidarity with those of the female gender who are faced with the oppression that are visited upon them within this culture. But my struggle is to deal with that within the African-American community where it exists and to deal with the injustice that's there.

[82:15]

So when we talk about the queer community, my understanding of some of the conflict that happens between people of color who are queer and Caucasians who are queer is this kind of... of conflict that goes on. And from some of the people of color who are queer that I know, they are saying that they're not seeing within the Caucasian queer community a pushback around the injustices that are actually being carried by them in some sense oppressing. the people of color who are queer along the race question. So, you know, I would hope that that's helpful in terms of looking at that.

[83:16]

We've got to push back everywhere, I think. And we can't just assume that there are, you know, that George Bush is the, you know, is the devil and if we can deal with George Bush, we're going to solve all our problems. That can happen. I understand. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to say, even though you didn't reference Reverend Martin Luther King so much, or even his principles, you embody them. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[84:16]

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 sfcc.org. and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[84:35]

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