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Kind Speech Turns the Destiny of a Nation
AI Suggested Keywords:
The day after President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris gave their acceptance speeches the Dharma wheel is turned with joy and the spirit of getting to work.
11/08/2020, Eijun Linda Cutts, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
The talk examines the interplay between personal and societal uprightness, reflecting on the recent political changes and their impact on collective joy and moral integrity. Drawing from Zen teachings, it emphasizes the importance of kindness, compassion, and ethical speech as foundational practices to counteract societal depravity and dishonesty. The discussion highlights the interconnectedness of all beings, encouraging individuals to take refuge in the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and to embody Bodhisattva precepts to foster a harmonious and just society grounded in compassion.
- The Lotus Sutra: Referenced as a source of joy and hope, paralleling the celebratory energy felt by many with the disciples' joy in the Sutra upon realizing their potential.
- Dogen Zenji's "The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance": Cited for advocating kind speech as a transformative practice, essential for reconciling differences and healing societal rifts.
- The 16 Bodhisattva Precepts: Emphasized as moral guidelines to cultivate uprightness and responsibility, stressing the significance of not killing, lying, or intoxicating, among others.
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Quote: "Be kind whenever possible. It’s always possible." is highlighted to underscore compassion as a fundamental practice.
- Cornel West's Perspective: Mentioned to convey the idea of justice as an expression of love in the public sphere, encouraging active engagement in societal healing and responsibility.
AI Suggested Title: Compassionate Justice Through Zen Teachings
This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes? Ah... What a day to give a talk. I just had such strong feelings yesterday and last evening, and I'm going to just try to share with you some of what I've been reflecting on, how I've been feeling, and what I see as our continued practice during our lives, during this time, but through all our life.
[01:12]
So I really felt celebratory, like this was a true celebration to hear about the results of the election. And this energy and joy came up. And I realized I shared this with many, many people. And of course, not everyone bearing that in mind. But I actually danced around. I was dancing around the house. And as were thousands of people, you know, in the streets were dancing around as well. It was an energy flowing up of joy. It reminded me of the Lotus Sutra where, in a couple of places, the disciples of the Buddha dance for joy. And they dance for joy because the Buddha predicts, I think they used the word predict, predicts that they are on the Buddha's
[02:26]
And they will become Buddhas. And he, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha sees where they'll be and what their names will be. And the disciples who never dreamed that, they thought that they would be, not be Buddhas, but be Arhats, dance for joy. They're moved. Their body moves with energy and dancing for joy. So it was kind of like that. And I also took a good long walk. wanting to move with. So I've been reflecting and looking at what that was all about. And reflecting on four years ago what the story was, I was at Tassajara the day of the election, and I was the only one at Tassajara who really had access to a computer and knew what was going on.
[03:29]
Everyone else pretty much was following the schedule and just going to the Zendo. And the information that I had before going to bed and then had to impart to the community. And I was leaving Kazara that day with a number of people for a large meeting. And I wrote the results of the election, put it, for those of you who know Tassajara, posted it at both shoe racks because everyone who's coming to the Zendo removes their shoes there and could see it. And the enormous despondency and sadness and disbelief and all the rest of it that you may or may not have shared But I did share, have shared with many, many people. However, knowing it was a tragedy and actually not knowing in my naivete or my, yeah, maybe naivete, the depth to which the, and this word came up to me yesterday, depravity would,
[04:54]
would arise in our public life. The word depravity, which I don't really use, I don't know if I've ever really used it in a sentence or in conversation, but I looked it up. It comes from, depravity comes from to deprave, which is to deprive of rectitude. And rectitude is moral uprightness and straightness. I think of it as our posture, sitting upright in the midst of our life, no matter what, coming back to upright. And with the guidance of the triple treasure and the Buddha's teaching and the Dharma and our zazen practice, to return to So depravity is debased morally and corrupt and distorted and crooked.
[06:05]
And I thought that was really an accurate word for the experience that I have had and that many, many, many have had of feeling. This lack of uprightness, moral uprightness. Yeah, so this lack of rectitude or uprightness also is connected with just justice and guide. And a cluster of words etymologically are connected with a rector. This is with rectitude. Regime, correct, direct, rectify, and realm and king, are all connected with this cluster of words in the English language and other languages that have to do with leading an upright, ethical, and moral life together.
[07:20]
as the reality of our life together, the true way to live together. True is also upright, a board piece of wood that is true. You say, oh, that's true. It means it's straight. So feeling the possibilities of coming back into uprightness and also feeling the sadness of the effects on so many people's lives of the consequences of not being upright and being not subject, seemingly not taking up or observing some basic, basic ways of life, ways of living.
[08:22]
For those of you who might have seen the speeches last night, projected on the side of the platform were these words, unity, truth, decency, healing, empathy, hope, which is a word I don't often use. So a science, you know, that was another one of these words that was projected before the president-elect and the vice president-elect came out. These are just simple words, you know, that seem to have been hard to find and kind of lost in so many instances of our public life. So this joy that I think I was feeling and this energy, I think had to do with coming back into alignment with a way of living based on our interconnectedness and the truth of our life together.
[09:40]
I think the energy was coming from that, not so much from defeating a particular person or that another particular person. is coming into this central part of the mandala. I think it was more than that. It was deeper than that. And it spoke to me in my deepest core, really. And realizing the ability to exhale, exhale and breathe and feel my shoulders drop from... from a kind of continuous number of years and months of bracing, bracing for the newest example of misalignment and non uprightness. So I do feel, you know, and I think it's been said that this healing, this time for healing,
[10:50]
This is not going to be easy. There is work. There is much work to be done, and it is our responsibility. There was an article in the New York Times basically saying that it was touch and go. Whether or not this democracy, which is impermanent, you know, the teachings of the Buddha, there is, you know, the... The Dharma seals of our life are impermanence, that there is the noble truth of suffering, the truth of suffering. And then there is, you know, the fact that there's no abiding self or that we are so interconnected that you can't really pull our lives apart from one another. And then the peace of realizing that together, those Dharma seals. But this impermanence to realize, to feel how close, something that I realize now I took for granted and thought it was just in place, which flies in the face of history and other situations that have come and gone and great civilizations that have been destroyed.
[12:16]
this article about that when democracies begin to, when the integrity of the democracy begins to fail or become not upright, one in five is able to get past that and right itself. Many other democracies become these failed democracies and are not able to find upright again and become autocratic situations. And the sense that it is up to everyone to take this seriously and to respond with seriousness because it is not a given. And when I use the word depravity, you know, I do feel naive that, you know, the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion and the power of those afflictions.
[13:32]
And when power and the three poisons are put together, the untold misery and suffering and causes of suffering... that flow from that are, you know, immeasurable. So this sense that it is not a given, it is not taken for, we cannot take it for granted. It depends on our taking up our responsibility. The... Right now, as far as I know, one of the rituals that I've always felt is a beautiful ritual of the concession speech, the congratulations to the person who's won. And, you know, this in terms of my education and maybe many of your education, this was taught very early, you know.
[14:42]
games that you play, and there's a winner and a loser, contests of all kinds, both for intellectual prowess and, you know, athletic and beauty, you know, homecoming queen, all these things. There's these chances there were in my growing up in education in many, many different ways. Chances to accept and to practice sympathetic joy, really, which is one of the four Brahma Viharas, one of the four immeasurable abodes. One of them is sympathetic joy, where the joy of someone or a team, I'm thinking of Little League, you know, another team winning or whatever. That joy doesn't belong to that team or to anyone. You can feel it too.
[15:44]
You can rejoice in the good fortune of others. This is a practice that brings joy. You know, the sympathetic joy is not, oh, I'm feeling joy over there, but they're really feeling it. We can feel it too. We can feel the joy for someone else's good fortune. And this... at least up until a little while ago, the fact there is not, there's a lack of this particular ceremony, this ritual that is noble. You know, I've always felt it as it ennobles the person. And, you know, the word concede or concession and concede come from the word that means concession. To acknowledge as true, just, and proper. So it again, it echoes this uprightness.
[16:47]
True as upright and just and proper. And it means to yield or grant. That means to concede. And it's connected with withdrawal. withdrawing and ceasing. And it's also concede is cognate or in a cluster of words like proceed, reseed, intercede. So the concede as a noble, upright, ethical, and moral action. And it's hard to do. I think it's hard. However, there's a I feel a kind of shared understanding. It's not shared, actually. Let me correct myself. An understanding that I've always had myself of this part of the ritual.
[17:48]
This is part of the ritual. And it brings peace. And it brings refreshment and quietness and healing. And we are lacking that right now, which I just noted. I don't know what else to say, you know. So looking at our shared life, and even though we have so many differences and we celebrate those differences, There are places where our lives overlap in meaningful ways. And the kind of bedrock for me are the practices of the precepts and then how those come forth into our public and cultural and shared life.
[18:54]
And the kind of maybe you could say overarching precept. We have 16 precepts. bodhisattva precepts, and maybe the overarching one precept is the precept of compassion or kindness. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, I have one religion, the religion of kindness. Recently I saw just parenthetically on a website this necklace with three little, you could get it in gold or silver, these little kind of tags with words written on them, which was a quote from the Dalai Lama. And the quote is, where is it? Be kind on one of these little kind of tags. Whenever possible, that's the second one. And the third is, it's always possible.
[19:57]
This is a quote from His Holiness. Be kind whenever possible. It's always possible. And I think kindness in this case is just like compassion. It's not about being nice or friendly. It's about the deep love for one another where we invest our energy and our life's energy in order to... respond appropriately to beings, to our planet, to life. It's that kind of kind. The word kind comes from kin. It comes from family. And that's the origin of it. It's usually friendly, warm-hearted, generous, helpful, showing sympathy and understanding, these kinds of words.
[21:03]
But the origin of it comes from kin and kindred, which to me points to our shared life, you know, with all the differences, our shared life, the harmony of difference and equality. When Suzuki Roshi's wife, before she came to the United States to be at Zen Center with Suzuki Roshi, when she met him, she was a kindergarten teacher. She was a kindergarten teacher. And she was asked one time, what is the most important thing, the most important teaching that you teach your kindergartners? And she said the most important teaching was gashô. And gashô, gashô is, the Japanese word means palms pressed together, you know.
[22:11]
However, the word itself and the action of gashô, the teaching of palms pressed together, that action to little kids, is teaching please. It's teaching thank you. It's teaching I'm so sorry. It's teaching I'm glad to see you. It's please help. It's how happy I am. It's teaching all this. And also I heard from my colleagues Japanese calligraphy teacher, Sanai Nakajima, who is no longer alive, she told me also, she taught school, that little children in the schools that she taught wore these smocks, these little smocks that buttoned up the back. And so you couldn't put your smock on by yourself.
[23:14]
You couldn't reach your buttons. So part of what they did every day was button each other up. That was part of the daily life of the classroom, of the kindergarten, the nursery school. I don't know when they stopped wearing smocks in those schools she was talking about, but that's another kind of teaching that we need one another. We help one another. That is our shared life together. And that is a cultural teaching. That is maybe not shared. I think I was thinking about this, the difference between buttoning each other's smocks up the back and needing to and having to in comparison to, you know, Velcro shoes, you do it yourself. You don't need any help. That's kind of your key to growing up is I don't need any help.
[24:16]
Sadly, that might feel like the case in many situations. Or asking for help. I know a lot of people asking for help equals weakness in their stories, in their template of karmic formations. Those get laminated together, weakness and asking for help. Instead of our life together includes giving and receiving, responding, giving help, asking for help. Because we all need help. We all need support. And we are being supported imperceptibly or perceptibly. We are being helped at this very moment in a never-ending way. imperceptible mutual assistance. That is our life of interconnectedness. So kindness, responding to one another as, you know, the bedrock, bedrock of our practice life.
[25:34]
There's a, fascicle from Dogen Zenji, our 13th century ancestor from Japan, called the Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance. And these are taught very frequently. I've taught them several times. They're wonderful in that there's these four very distinct practices that he brings up. It's not a very long fascicle. And he's pulling this. Dogen Zenji didn't create this by himself. This is in earlier sutras. This is in the Avatamsaka Sutra, these four methods of guidance. And some of you may know these and have studied them or have given talks on them yourselves. But the first one is giving And the second one, which I wanted to talk about and read to you a little bit, is called kind speech.
[26:41]
And kind speech is one of these four methods of the Bodhisattva. And many of our precepts are about speech, not only kind speech, but, you know, speech that is true and upright. So this is a few things Token says about kind speech. And in terms of the election, I feel like this just rings so true. Kind speech means that when you see sentient beings, you arouse the heart of compassion and offer words of loving care. It is contrary to cruel things. or violent speech. In the secular world, there's a custom of asking after someone's health. In the Buddha way, there's a phrase, please treasure yourself.
[27:46]
And the respectful address to seniors, may I ask how you are? And it is kind speech to speak to sentient beings as you would to a baby. This is with the sweetness and care and loving quality in the prosody, in the quality of the voice that we bring when we talk to a child or a baby. You can hear the voice softens and raises up. So that kind of care is what he's talking about, not condescending to someone as if they couldn't understand you as a baby, but with the quality, the actual tone, as well as words. And then he goes on, praise those with virtue, pity those without it.
[28:51]
If kind speech is offered, little by little, Kind speech expands. This is powerful, this part. Thus, even kind speech that is not ordinarily known or seen comes into being. This power of kind speech, when we practice it, even in places where it may not have been heard before or used that much, There is a power in hearing kindness that affects people and changes lives. Be willing to practice it for this entire present life. Do not give up world after world, life after life. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. I really felt
[29:55]
just commenting on last night's speeches, the lack of vitriol, the lack of one-upmanship, I told you so, were number one, and the kindness and the healing and the, you know, let's do this. Let's come back together in uprightness. I heard that. I heard that and responded to it. And I know how I respond when I hear, Violent, cruel, harsh, mockery. You know, I know how I respond in my body, mind, in my stomach, in my throat. So Dogen, you know, is saying it's this kind of speech is the basis for reconciling enemies, whether it's on the national scale. Within. our work situation, our friends, family.
[30:55]
There's conflict. There's things that happen. Kind speech can reconcile, can bring reconciliation. Those who hear kind speech from you have a delighted expression and a joyful mind. Those who hear of your kind speech, so those who hear you speaking kindly, They're delighted and their countenance is refreshed and made happy. That's when you're talking with somebody. However, he goes on, those who hear of your kind speech, they just heard tell of it. They heard someone report. Those who hear of your kind speech will be deeply touched. They will always remember it. And I feel I know this, hearing of a story where someone offered a kind word, was compassionate, expressed compassion through words and actions.
[32:08]
We never forget that. Either when it's said to us or we hear about it later. And this is the last part. Know that kind speech arises. From kind heart. And kind heart. From the sea of compassionate heart. Ponder the fact that kind speech. Is not just praising the merits of others. It has the power. To turn. The destiny. Of the nation. So. I. These words from. whenever Dogen wrote this 1,240-something, it rings so true. I can feel myself being affected by it and resonating with those words and wanting to take them up in my life.
[33:13]
I want to be careful how I speak about people for whom I feel they have harmed others. And in terms of precepts, if we reflect on the precepts, the 16 bodhisattva precepts, you know, they begin with taking refuge. The first three precepts are taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And that first turning to want it, to have it arise in our mind stream that we want to stop really taking refuge in things that do not truly alleviate suffering, do not bring wisdom and compassion, do not assuage our sadness and loneliness and disappointments. And we've tried, you know, I think we've tried many times.
[34:18]
If you look back, I can see, maybe you can see other things you tried to take refuge in are great intelligence or getting good grades or having stuff, you know, beautiful objects or clothes or lots of books or money or position or all those things, fame and gain, you know. I think those pretty soon, not too long after, you get something that one maybe thought, well, now I'm going to be happy. Now I'll be happy forever. Remember, this is a story from my childhood, getting a toy, and I think I was about four. It was a wooden toy. It was a duck on a string, and when you pulled it, the wings would go clickety-clack, clickety-clack, and it would make noise.
[35:22]
And I remember thinking, I will never be bored again. This is like the end-all and the be-all of toys. But it didn't take long, you know, a couple days when it was like, you know, it's impermanent, right? There is nothing that is lasting, everlasting like that. This happened to me many times as a child, where I thought that that would be the answer, and it was not the answer. So we learn that, and the unsatisfactoriness, and the samsara, this is a samsara, maybe next time. If only, if only I try harder, or if only I get the next best thing, or the next bigger thing, then... And at a certain point, I think we actually wake up to the falseness of what that's holding out for us, this samsaric, if only I had this.
[36:32]
And we turn around, actually. We make a turn away from... We sometimes say worldly affairs doesn't mean that we take all our possessions and sink them into a lake the way some teachers have done in our lineage or in our teaching stories, or that we go to live in a hermitage or in the mountains or anything. It means that we understand impermanence and that those things go away. They are not reliable. They do not. relief, suffering, although, of course, having food and shelter and clothing and good friends and our health and all these things that support our life, those are all important and necessary for health and safety and dignity.
[37:36]
So, What I'm saying is that the grasping after certain things that do not meet our innermost heart do not satisfy. And when we realize that, we take refuge. Refuge means to fly back, to refugite, to fly back again, come back home. To the Buddha, I go for refuge. To the Dharma, I go for refuge. To the Sangha, I go for refuge. Those are the first three. And you can test for yourself. And the Buddha did say, test, try this out. Do your experiments and see for yourself. Are you met? Is there joy in your life that... does not depend on reputation or health or praise or blame or profit or loss or any of those things.
[38:48]
Those are the eight wins that throw us around that we don't need to depend, that we break through that delusion, that those are the things that we need to depend on and get, and we let go of it. that kind of grasping. So the triple treasure, you know, there's three ways to look at the triple treasure. And the 16 Bodhisattva precepts start with the triple treasure and end. The last of the 10 grave precepts is do not, a disciple of Buddha does not disparage the triple treasure, does not put down, make a mockery of, denigrate these three truly treasures that have the ability and the power to turn our life around. The triple treasure, there's the Buddha who appeared in this world out of his vow and he manifested in this world.
[40:03]
These are the manifested Triple Treasure, the Buddha appeared and practiced and coming from a lineage of teachers in past lives is what he said. And then he realized things and taught those. That was the Dharma. He taught the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. And the people who heard were the Sangha. They were there with him. And Shravakas, that means to hear. So that was called the manifested triple treasure, the Buddha and the teaching that he taught and those who were there. But that's not, what did the Buddha wake up to? What did the Buddha teach? What did he realize? And that's what we call the one body triple treasure. So the Buddha, the Buddha of the one body triple treasure is the Unsurpassed, complete, and perfect enlightenment.
[41:06]
The oneness of all beings. That's the one body Buddha. This teaching of the oneness and the equality of all things. And the Dharma also has in the one body triple treasure. The Dharma is all the different myriad things. that that one body, that partake of this one body, all the differences, countless, unrepeatable, all the differences together in that one body. And the sangha, the one body sangha, is the harmony between and the interfusion of the complete oneness of all things. And equality of all things and all the differences, the harmony and interfusion between that is the one body sangha. But the Buddha died 2,500 years ago.
[42:10]
How can we talk about the Buddha now in terms of triple treasure? And that's called the maintained triple treasure. So in the maintained triple treasure, the Buddha are all the Buddhas and ancestors, all the teachers. all the way down to this time in past, present, and future. Those are the maintained. They wake up to the same thing the Buddha woke up to, and then they teach what the Buddha taught. So the Dharma of the maintained triple treasure are the books, you know, the scrolls, and the Buddha of the maintained is not only all the teachers, But the temples, the practice places, the home altars, the Buddha figures that we have, that we care for, the practice figures, that's all the maintained Buddha, which, you know, for those of us who have had the great good fortune to go to temples, to be with...
[43:18]
Sangha and the maintained Sangha are all the practitioners who sit together, who practice precepts together, who receive precepts and wear Buddha's robe, who care for the places. All those beings and the wider beings of the Great Earth, that's the maintained Sangha. And I think during this COVID and pandemic practice time, we have the maintained Sangha. We've done it with technology. We've created this new, never-before-seen, maintained triple treasure. But I think we miss the support of coming together face-to-face, body-to-body, true nature-to-true-nature, practicing together. But we're doing our best, I think, in helping one another in many ways. So those are the triple treasure. And wanting to take refuge, saying the words, I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, when this comes in your stream of consciousness and you want to do that, the inner heart of what it is that supports you to say that, your own devotion and wanting to turn your life around,
[44:42]
and live upright, upright and sincere in this world of impermanence and great suffering and no separate self. That is the heart of the triple treasure. And that is accessible to everyone. After receiving the triple treasure, there's the... what we call the three pure precepts that are translated in different ways, but it's basically embracing and sustaining those actions of body and mind that gather and support our own freedom and liberation and compassion and wisdom. Sometimes we say right conduct, sometimes we say forms and ceremonies, but it has to do with what we need to understand Embrace and sustain over time for our liberation and the liberation of others and to complete our ongoing everlasting vows.
[45:54]
And the second one is embracing and sustaining all good and embracing and sustaining all beings. And then the ten, the last, and just reflecting on these precepts, the ten grave precepts, the simplicity of them and how they've come down to us from a mass of guidelines and precepts that the Buddha offered after a time, after the Sangha had been practicing for a while together. There were no precepts at the beginning. The Buddha just said, Shakyamuni Buddha just said, come monk, come, come practice with me. So it was small enough face-to-face daily contact for the monks and nuns, often daily contact with practitioners that you learned from watching, from doing, from trying to emulate.
[46:59]
what you saw as best you could. But eventually, we needed precepts, or the Buddha felt we needed precepts. And there were many, many precepts. And what's come down to us through various ways are these 16. And the 10 at the end, reflecting on them and reflecting on these last four years really struck me. A disciple of Buddha does not kill. And in the widest sense, killing others, killing hopes and dreams of yourself and others, killing creativity, killing opportunities, as well as killing actual doing actions that create conditions where people die, where people are, where their life force is killed. That's the first one.
[48:00]
A disciple of Buddha does not kill. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. Does not take what is not given. A disciple of Buddha does not lie. I'm just saying these without commentary. I'm letting each of you meet hearing these and commenting yourself about our life. public life together, our cultural life, our inner life, our life as human beings together. A disciple of Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self. Oh, excuse me, the third one. A disciple of Buddha does not misuse sexuality. What does that mean for our life? for our shared life, for our own life.
[49:01]
Disciple of Buddha, then the fourth is lie. The fifth, disciple of Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others. Intoxication, both substances, but also ideas and stories and... Fantasies, intoxicating people with all sorts of untruths, you know, can be intoxications as well as uses of power, you know, intoxicating with power. Sell for others. A disciple of Buddha does not slander people. Slander is speaking ill of someone, speaking in a way that the reputation or the respect or the feelings about someone are lowered in people's estimations.
[50:12]
Doing actions of speech, so many of these are about speech, and fly in the face of the teaching of kind speech. Slander is violent speech, harsh speech. often meant to make factions and divide people and split people rather than unify and help people come together and work on their differences and reconcile and see the differences. So that's slander. That's the sixth, the seventh, the disciple of Buddha does not praise self at the expense of others. That's a precept. That's one of the Bodhisattva precepts. Praising self at the expense of others. There may be a time we have to fill out a job application. We have to talk about our good qualities. That's fine. We're talking about praising self at the expense of others in order to put somebody else down and gather and grasp our things for ourselves.
[51:24]
At the expense of another. A disciple of Buddha does not harbor, is not possessive of anything. So this also speaks to the grasping and not letting go of stuff and ideas and our point of view and fixed ideas. Being possessive, which It also includes a kind of stiffness and tight, you know, just like a grasping fist. And that particular precept is not possessive of anything, not even the Dharma. So this is also when you are asked to teach or speak or comment or... Let people know your sense of things based on leading an upright life and wanting to practice Buddha's way, to not withhold that, to find a way, not just people who are honored enough to be invited to speak publicly, but with your Dharma friends, with your family, to not be possessive of anything, not even the Dharma, to find a way to share that.
[52:50]
And the ninth, a disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will. Harboring ill will makes for an unhappy being. It makes for a person who is angry, angry, hateful. Ready to strike out. Resentful. Always turning resentments. Resentful has to do with like smoking meat. I think that analogy where it's just a slow burn all the time. Harboring. Making a space for that ship of ill will to come in and drop anchor right there in the harbor. And... And that colors one's view, that colors one's heart. Yeah.
[53:55]
You know, it's holding a grudge forever, harboring ill will. And then the last, the tenth disciple of Buddha does not disparage the triple treasure. So I... I did do some commentary, but my sense in just going over these last night and this morning, looking at how it is that this joy arose in me so strongly in this energy. And I think it was partially about, as I said, coming into alignment, feeling some alignment happening. And the beauty of that and also the sadness, you know, feeling enormous sadness with the suffering that's been created and the harm that's been done.
[55:00]
So the work has just begun. You know, our time to respond is today. How are we going to respond? And what is our responsibility to each other, to this planet, to the great earth, to those of us who do not share? Nobody completely shares our life. Nobody shares our life. There's little overlaps here and there. But we... We experience our life the way we do and to open and listen and respond. Respond comes from the word that means to promise and to be responsible. I think it was Cornel West who said, never forget that love, that never forget that justice is love in the public sphere, in the public sphere.
[56:09]
Justice is love. That's how love looks in the public sphere. It looks like justice. That is our responsibility. That is how we respond. And we have been asked to respond over and over again. And are we listening? Are we able to? So thank you very much for your attention. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.
[57:04]
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