This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome, everyone. Really good to see you all. Everyone who's here in the Zendo, and I can't see those of you who are tuning in from home. Welcome to you as well. My name is Tova Green, and I'm a resident priest here at City Center. I want to thank our Tonto, Timothy Wicks, for inviting me to speak this Saturday, the weekend when we honor Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm wondering, is anyone here for the first time today? Great, special welcome to you.

[01:03]

This weekend is a very pivotal moment in our country and the world with a change in leadership in the U.S. and hopefully the beginning of a long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And these events, I'm wondering, you know, if Dr. King were alive today, or Dr. King, I'm going to call him Reverend King because I'm going to be talking about two of his sermons. What Reverend King would make of what's happening, what his message might be at this time for all of us? So in my talk today, I'm going to weave together some of the teachings of Reverend King from two of his sermons, as well as some words from our Zen Buddhist ancestor, Ehe Dogen, and some words from Hosan Alan Sinaki, who died a month ago.

[02:16]

He was the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center and one of my mentors. I'll also share a couple of stories from my own life that I'll weave in at different times. So I'll be going, making some transitions in my talk, which feels appropriate because I think we're all in a transitional times. Partly, you know, as we're reopening this building, many of us are getting used to new rooms, new offices, and just the newness of all the freshness of fresh paint. So that kind of transition is happening for those of us who practice here, as well as all the transitions in the world. So I want to start with the summer of 1963.

[03:19]

I was a college student at UC Berkeley and I participated in a voter registration project sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee in Greensboro, North Carolina. I grew up in New York City and that was the first time I was in the South and in a blatantly segregated city. While we were there, I was there for three weeks with a group of black and white college students. We stayed in the basement of a black church in Greensboro, and there were sit-ins at Woolworths. I saw signs on water fountains that were colored and white. And our team of students went door to door in black neighborhoods registering African Americans to vote.

[04:21]

And I learned a lot that in that period of time, I learned about nonviolent tactics for making change, including sit-ins and boycotts. And at the end of our three weeks in Greensboro, we got on a bus to for an overnight ride to Washington, D.C. and we were escorted by a police car because it was dangerous at that time for black and white people to ride in a bus together. And we joined the March on Washington and when we arrived there were buses, I remember still, the buses of children from freedom schools because their own schools were not available to them and singing singing spirituals and then hearing Reverend King's speech. This morning we had a service to honor Reverend King's birthday and listened to the end of the speech and it was so moving to hear his voice proclaiming, let freedom ring.

[05:39]

He had such a vision for a world in which, and a country, first of all, a country in which black and white children could grow up as friends and a world where there could be peace between nations. So I'm going to jump forward in time now And April 2023, I was invited to participate in a day-long seminar at the University of San Francisco to commemorate the new edition of Reverend King's book of sermons, Strength is Love. This book, I brought my copy just to show you. Those online might not be able to see it so clearly, but it has a book. portrait of or a photo of Dr. King on the front and it's the sermons that he wrote in the 60s it was published in 1963 and this was a 60th anniversary edition and in this seminar which included interfaith clergy that's how I was invited scholars

[07:08]

and community activists. We were invited to, we were actually assigned each, we worked in pairs and were assigned one of these sermons to read and study and then make a brief presentation in the day-long seminar. And one of the organizers, Jonathan Greenberg, who directs the University of San Francisco's Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, wrote, We come from diverse religious traditions, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. What we all share is a deep appreciation for the life, leadership, and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a desire to further Dr. King's legacy of love and nonviolence to address racism, poverty, militarism and systemic violence in our society and world today.

[08:10]

So his message is so relevant. And in preparing for my talk today, I did reread some of the sermons in Strength to Love. And I noticed the structure of them, which His sermons are different from his speeches. He usually starts with a story from the Bible and then comments on it and going often from an individual's way of working with the teaching in the story and then bringing it to include how that teaching relates to our societies and world. And I thought in some ways that these sermons were similar to some of the koans, the teaching stories that we study as Zen students.

[09:26]

which often begin with a short story and then commentary, and the commentary relating to how we practice, how we live our lives. So the first, I'm going to talk about two of the sermons, and the first one is called On Being a Good Neighbor. and begins with the story of the Good Samaritan, which I actually, I knew the phrase Good Samaritan, but I didn't know the specifics of the story. So maybe you won't mind if I share that. So this is how Reverend King describes it. Jesus told the story of a certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and, departing, left him half dead.

[10:30]

By chance, a certain priest appeared but passed him on the other side, and later a Levite also passed by. Finally, a certain Samaritan, a half-breed from a people with whom Jews had no dealings, appeared. I guess they were social strata at that time. When he saw the wounded man, he was moved with compassion, administered first aid, placed him on his beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. Dr. King goes on. Reverend King, who is my neighbor? He is anyone toward whom you are neighborly, says Jesus in essence. And Reverend King, King goes on to explore what constituted the goodness of this Good Samaritan. He talks about altruism, regard for and devotion to the interest of others.

[11:40]

And then he expands this understanding. The Samaritan... had the capacity for universal altruism. He had a piercing insight into that which is beyond the eternal accidents of race, religion, and nationality. One of the great tragedies of man's long trek along the highway of history has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class, or nation. Which is... something we grapple with today. He gives examples, including the universal, and this is Dr. King, he talks about the universalism at the center of the Declaration of Independence has been shamefully negated by America's appalling tendency to substitute some for all. Numerous people in the North and South still believe that the affirmation all men are created equal means all white men are created equal.

[12:50]

What are the devastating consequences of this narrow, group-centered attitude? It means that one does not really mind what happens to the people outside his group. If an American is concerned only about this nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? So again, these words seem to just ring so strongly. And near the end of the sermon, Reverend King says, I must not ignore the wounded man on life's Jericho Road because he is a part of me and I am a part of him. So everyone is our neighbor in that sense.

[13:57]

And those words... just resonate with so many Buddhist teachings, particularly the teaching of how we are interconnected with all beings, which I'll return to later. But I thought before going on to the next sermon I would share another episode from my life that's relevant. So in 1982, almost 20 years after I participated in the March on Washington. I attended a weekend workshop with Joanna Macy, who's a Buddhist scholar and teacher, also has been a mentor for me. She's now in her 90s and lives in the East Bay. In 1982, she was living on the East Coast, as was I, and I went to a workshop, a weekend workshop, called

[14:59]

Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age. One of Joanna Macy's early books was titled Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age. And now her work is called The Work That Reconnects. And the workshop ended with envisioning the world we would like to see and then committing to one small thing we could do, in the next months to perhaps move in that direction, something we could do that would express our vision of how the world could be. And I decided to train in civil disobedience with a group of women who lived in Cambridge, where I was living, Cambridge, Massachusetts. And we protested. at a site in upstate New York, near Seneca Falls, where there was a women's peace encampment.

[16:05]

And that place was chosen because there was an area where nuclear weapons were stored before being sent to Europe. And that was my first experience of civil disobedience. And I wrote a poem about it, which I'm going to share with you. The poem refers to a writer and activist I admired named Grace Paley. Some of you might remember her. She was a poet as well as a novelist and very outspoken about peace and justice. So this poem is called Dear Grace Paley. When we climb the metal fence at Seneca and drop down on the inside, where nuclear weapons were stored. I was with my affinity group from Cambridge, you with women from Vermont.

[17:07]

It was 1982 and I was 42. You didn't know me. I knew you through your poems and stories. You didn't know you gave me courage. I was defying the law for the first time. As we climbed, my group sang, When I rise, let me rise up like a bird gracefully. As we drop down to the ground inside, when I fall, let me fall down like a leaf without regret joyfully. Police were waiting to arrest us. What a joy it was to be arrested with you, Grace Paley. because we wanted a world without nuclear weapons, because we wanted peace. So now I'm going to go on to the second sermon, which is called The Man Who Was a Fool.

[18:16]

And this sermon focuses on another story. Dr. King, or Reverend King says, about a man who by all modern standards would be considered eminently successful, yet Jesus called him a fool. The central character in the drama is a certain rich man, unnamed, whose farm yielded such heavy crops that he decided to build new and larger barns, saying, There I will stow all my fruits and my goods, and I will eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. And it was so. At the height of his prosperity he died. So Reverend King commented, in today's world, this man would be one of the privileged few in the economic power structure.

[19:22]

And yet a Galilean peasant, Jesus, had the audacity to call him a fool. Jesus did so not merely because he possessed wealth, rather he condemned the misuse of wealth. And Dr. King also said that Money is amoral and can be used for either good or evil. Why then was he a fool? And he gave several reasons. I'm going to focus on one of the reasons he mentioned, which again I think really connects with our Buddhist teachings. The rich man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on others. He failed to realize that wealth always comes as a result of commonwealth. When an individual or a nation overlooks this interdependence, we find a tragic foolishness.

[20:28]

We can clearly see the meaning of this parable for the present world crisis. And he was writing this, you know, in the 60s. In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. This is a very well-known quote from Dr. King, and this is the sermon from which it comes. I'll repeat that. All men are men, and... I think this is a sign of his times. He said, men rather than people, but all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, what you are to be.

[21:34]

And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of humanity. Then he goes on to say that certain rich man, could it be possible that certain rich man is Western civilization? It's kind of a metaphor for Western civilization. civilization. Rich in goods and material resources, our standards of success are almost inextricably bound to the lust for acquisition." Dr. King, Reverend King in his later years especially, was very concerned about inequality of income and poverty in the U.S. and elsewhere. I'll just continue with a few more words from this sermon.

[22:42]

We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man or misguided humans. And sadly, I think that's still true. We have so many weapons and sometimes we use them misguidedly. maybe always. And this sermon, I think, you know, connects with the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen teacher, about interbeing.

[23:54]

He uses the term interbeing. We inter are. And the image of Indra's net which is a very early Buddhist image in which there's a network of strands and a mirror at all of the intersections of these strands on the network reflecting all the other mirrors and it's a way of thinking about how each of us is connected to every other being and reflected back in these many, many mirrors of interconnection. And another expression of this comes from our ancestor Eihei Dogen. Dogen was a Japanese monk who lived from 1200 to 1253.

[24:55]

And he went as a young man to China and brought back many teachings from Chan monasteries, from monastic practice in China, which he then developed further in monasteries that he founded in Japan. And one of his teachings is called the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance. And this is a teaching that Hosan Alan Sanaki, who I mentioned at the very beginning of my talk, also taught. And he translated the title instead of the Bodhisattvas for Methods of Guidance. He called it the Bodhisattvas for Embracing Dharmas. And a Bodhisattva... if that term is new to you, is bodhi means awakened, and sattva is being.

[26:00]

And bodhisattvas appear in the world with the commitment to help others awaken, and often awaken before they themselves awaken. And the key word in Alan and Halzan's translation is, embracing. And I just wonder when you hear the word embracing, what comes to your mind? Hossan says, to embrace is to encircle. I wrap my arms around you. You put your arms around me. To embrace is to unify, to make one out of two, an act of love. In embrace, the limits of body, skin, feelings, and thoughts are transcended. And in this text, the bodhisattvas for embracing dharmas, the text was written at a time of a lot of strife within the Buddhist religion.

[27:19]

communities in Japan. It was written in 1243, a few years after Dogen established a monastery called Koshoji near Kyoto, where he found a setting where he could practice, teach, write, and develop a monastic community devoted to zazen. his zazen-centered approach to Zen. But I'm quoting now from an essay that Hoseon Sanaki wrote about this teaching of dogens. And he said, he put it in this context that it was written in a time in Japan which saw the full flowering of new and popular forms of Buddhism, including Zen, Shin, and Nichiren schools, but was also marked by feudalism, political tensions, and civil strife, which played out among the Buddhist sects.

[28:33]

And soon after Dogen wrote this, he was forced to leave Kyoto, and he established another monastery. relatively more in the wilderness than in the city of Kyoto. In the Echizen province, which he called, he named Eheiji, Temple of Eternal Peace. Dogen's full name was Ehe Dogen, so Eternal Peace. And he stayed there for the remaining 10 years of his life. So I'm just going to check the time. I have time to talk a little more about this. So these four embracing practices are giving or generosity, kind or loving speech, beneficial action,

[29:42]

and what Dogen called identity action or cooperation. And these were already ancient practices going back to Pali texts that were written closer to the time of the Buddha. And each of these practices, giving kind speech, beneficial action, and identity action, is a method for connecting a way to manifest the truth that we are not separate from each other. And Dogen explored each of them from both the personal and political perspectives. There's a quote from the part of his essay that describes kind speech that I

[30:43]

always go back to he wrote kind speech arises from kind mind and kind mind from the seed of compassionate mind kind speech is not just praising the merit of others it has the power to turn the destiny of the nation and I think of that especially now where we hear a lot of speech that is not kind but can we come back to our own practice and practice kind of speech. And the practice of identity action is one I want to talk a little more about because it's really about the idea that we're interconnected and that what one person does deeply affects another person's experience. The practice of identity action involves being able to see ourselves in others and to see others as ourselves, very much like what Reverend King was talking about in the first sermon I talked about, the man who was our neighbor.

[32:02]

Using identity action, we... can develop the skillful means meeting each person as they need to be met. And Hozan also noted that to embrace is not simply merging. It's not a mushy and meaningless oneness. When an embrace ends, when the dance is over, we return to our individuality, but something is changed. So I just want to briefly talk about how we can practice with these teachings. I think one of the core ways, of course, is when we sit zazen, meditation especially, if we can do that with others. There's this coming back to this ability to

[33:12]

feel the support of one another as we sit quietly and sometimes are able to just feel a connection deeply with ourselves and all beings. And I feel that it's a great gift to have a space where we can do that together. It's also a great gift to be able to do that wherever you are. And I think as we reopen this building, a 300-page street, and we'll be able to have more public programs, meetings, and of all kinds to embrace, the spirit of welcoming, welcoming all of our neighbors is another way of practicing with these teachings.

[34:23]

And another is engaging with others around social issues we care about. This weekend, there are many marches taking place in San Francisco and Oakland and other parts of the country. On Monday, every Monday, every year on this weekend, on Monday, for a while. I don't know when it started. There's an interfaith march from the Caltrain station to Yerba Buena Park with a rally in the park and speakers. I started going to that march. I think it was 2017 in January, and I've gone many times, and often a group from San Francisco Zen Center has gone together. Another way we can practice with these teachings is to use our bodies to vote, sometimes march, protest.

[35:26]

And an important one that we're offering here is volunteering, participating in outreach activities. So there are many ways to experience our interconnectedness and create the kind of environment where people are cherished and everyone is recognized for who they are. So in closing, I just want to offer these words. It's a kind of a hope, a prayer, I'm not sure, and aspiration. May we embrace ourselves, one another, our communities, country, and the planet with kindness, wisdom, and compassion. That is the bodhisattvas' embrace. So thank you, bodhisattvas, for your attention.

[36:31]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:56]

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