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 night. Last week. Is this on? It is on. Lastly, when Greg was talking, he mentioned a test called the Harvard Implicit Bias. Is that what it was called, Greg? Or Implicit Association Test. Implicit Association. And yesterday I was talking to, I co-teach with others, a chaplaincy course.

[01:04]

And the teachers of that course, we were discussing what we'll do next year. And that came up. Someone said, well, you know, there's this thing. We'd all heard of it. We'd all taken it. And then one of the faculty said, you know, I have to say, yeah. And I don't mean to cause offense, but I have to say, this is a very white way of thinking. Yeah. background is she's half Mexican and half Native American Indian. And she said, in particular, if I told my Native American Indian family about this, they'd laugh. And it set me thinking

[02:05]

on how inevitable it is that we reference the world according to our own experience, our own history, that which has been formative for us, that which has been relevant. And we talk about it, each of us, in our own language. We might use the same word and then you have your reference to that word and I have my reference to that word. Sometimes I think it's a wonder that we can actually communicate. Sometimes it seems like we're not doing a very good job at it either. I was thinking of the word, what came up to mind was the word poverty.

[03:10]

No. I remember once, I grew up in a country that had high unemployment, so we went to the country next door. I grew up in Ireland. We went to England to look for work. And I was in England looking for work. hadn't eaten for several days, standing in line outside a building site, hoping to get hired. But I don't think of that as poverty. That was just a temporary setback to what I was about at that time. What I think of as poverty is... An image I have when I was about eight years old. And my mother and I were sitting in our living room.

[04:14]

And my mother was being interviewed by a charitable organization to see if she was really impoverished enough to be given a grant so that she could go and buy food. at a store. And even at eight, I could feel the embarrassment. Essentially, this woman was saying, are you really poor? Are you really broke? And even at eight, I was thinking, no, we just put this on for a show. No, it's not. resentment. What this woman was putting my mother through in order to give her kind of not very significant amount of money.

[05:26]

That's what I think of as poverty. The system that sets That kind of situation for people. Being embedded in that system and feeling like there's no way out. A kind of discouragement, hopelessness. So that was the word that came up thinking, hmm, what if each of us went around the room and said, what does the word poverty mean? Naomi, she had a nice husband, Michael.

[06:32]

He's an artist, a videographer. But he does these kind of projects. And one of his projects was what he called the Hunger Project. And he went around and he asked people, tell me about when you were hungry. And so they talked about... And then what he would do, he's primarily a photographer, and he'd take a bunch of photographs, and then when he put on his exhibition, you'd see the photograph of the person, and you'd listen on headphones to their narrative. What Michael would do is he'd get about an hour's worth of audio, and then he'd edit it down to about 10 minutes.

[07:35]

Each of us has a history. what I want you to know. It takes quite a bit of, for most of us, quite a bit of processing, courage, determination to get to what I want you to know. And of course, if we want to know, that really helps each of us come forth. And then when I was thinking of poverty and what I think of as economic oppression, I was thinking, oh, so there was Ireland and there was England.

[08:46]

And, of course, England was a very military, powerful country. So, of course, they oppressed the Irish, as seems to be the way of world history up to this point. If you have a bigger army, you oppress anyone you can. And we were oppressed. In the community I grew up in, Northern Ireland, our primary discrimination was religion. Catholics and Protestants. Catholics were the minority, so they were oppressed. That also impacted... You couldn't vote unless you owned property.

[09:52]

And guess what? Many of those impoverished Catholics didn't own property. So they had no representation in what was supposed to be a democracy. And that went on, and inspired by Martin Luther King's nonviolent process of protesting, there were protest marches in favor of the right to vote. And then there was also... Another social impact, which was in terms of work, work was scarce. So the group in power, which was Protestant, ensured that Protestants got jobs and Catholics didn't.

[11:12]

So all that bore relevance for me when my friend said, and she's a lovely person, Cristina Fernandez, worked her way up through the ranks until she was the CEO of a large corporation in the healthcare industry. and is now retired, and is devoting herself to engaging her Buddhist practice. I want you to know, I think of that as a white way of thinking.

[12:14]

hadn't occurred to me until she said it. And she expanded it a little bit in a charming, actually humorous way. And I thought of those categories of oppression that I personally experienced. And watched that environment that I grew up in, that society. Watched how protest, so those marchers, they decided they would march across Northern Ireland. It's not a very big place. And at one point, it seemed like this was becoming a significant protest.

[13:30]

So, first of all, the police, they thought, well, let's baton charge them. So they drew out their batons and they charged them and they beat them. But they came back, the protest marchers came back the next day And just kept marching. And then they thought, well, we need to take harsher steps to deter this marching. And then there was a wonderful, terrible, seemingly miscommunication. The army was called in. And the army commander said to the person who was in charge, I don't know what his rank was, colonel or whatever, he said, do whatever it takes to stop the march.

[14:38]

And the commander in the field thought that was a coded way of saying, if you have to shoot them, shoot them. And so guess what? That's what he did. The marchers came along. This was a non-violent protest. And he told the soldiers to open fire. And they did. And they shot, I forget how many. It wasn't a lot. Well, a single life's a lot. Maybe it's 15 or 20. And it set in motion... over 30 years of violence, 30 years of riots, 30 years of turning Belfast and some other cities in Northern Ireland into Catholic area, Protestant area.

[15:47]

30 years, and if you... If you were the wrong denomination for that area, your life was in danger. So you had to move. 30 years of bombing. 30 years of murders, shootings. And then guess what? he's got the right to vote so that's part of what I think of or what my reference is when we talk about protest marches I think uh oh Part of me thinks this is an expression of asking for justice.

[17:09]

In my background, there was no racial divide. There was no long history. what's happened in the United States in the last 250 years. But there was oppression. And now there's a slow often painful process of trying to put community back together. Soaring suicide rates, substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence,

[18:20]

criminal behavior. And I realize that this is not what most of you have experienced. But I don't think That's a definitive, my experience is definitive. In one way, it's quite unique. I mean, and then I left that environment and very fortunately for me, I was able to leave and very fortunate for me, I had one ingredient, well, I had several ingredients of support. While we were impoverished, we were community.

[19:29]

Everybody was impoverished. When Bapol was speaking, he'd be saying, well, when I lived in southern India, we were all poor. But when I lived in Chicago, and everybody else was rich, and we were poor, that was really hurtful. Yeah. When you're one of many, you know, when you We needed each other, that old Celtic saying, you know, we shelter in each other. That was a practical necessity. We had community. Even though we were oppressed as a nation, we had national pride. We were not ashamed of being Irish. And we had spirituality. Spirituality. It was a hymn we used to sing in church.

[20:30]

Faith of our fathers burning still in spite of dungeon fire and source. So it's a little bit more like something you would sing as you went into war. But, uh, we sang it in church, uh, And I think of those values applying to us. Applying to us literally. I've been very touched by the community meetings we've had. Where we took shelter in each other. To me, the feeling in the room was more important than...

[21:38]

points we brought up. I was particularly relieved when there was differences of opinion but the connection in the room stayed solid. To my mind this is how communication happens, you know. And that communication, when there's connection, that communication somehow heals. Somehow we learn about each other. We learn, we expand each other's worldview. Like Christina is saying, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but that's a very white way of thinking about things.

[22:45]

When I go back to Northern Ireland, when I started to go back to Northern Ireland, you know, it was curious, you know, local boy went off, run the world, got into this weird Zen thing, and now he's back here. But they would also always preface, when they'd write newspaper articles about it, they'd always preface me by saying, from the lower falls. Because the falls road is the area in which I lived. And the lower falls was the kind of the intense, most militant part of the falls. It's a little bit like saying, can you imagine someone from that area went off and did all that? The same area produced a Nobel Prize winner and a president of Ireland.

[23:55]

how we listen to each other, how we identify ourselves, and how we let that communication expand us. One evening, Burke and I were sitting in the dining room. And we started to talk about a Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet. And he was saying, oh, I said, does anybody in Turkey actually know of Nazim Hikmet? He said, oh, national hero, I'm up. category of people, socialists.

[25:19]

And then we discovered that both his grandfather and my father were both imprisoned for being socialists. That was an interesting commonality. What is it to be community? What is it to offer each other? That kind of support in these times. I was saying to Greg, you know, we've had many community meetings where Goyo and myself and Hakusho would sit up here and say, well, we don't exactly know what's going to happen next.

[26:24]

And I suspect the meeting we're going to have tomorrow, something, that phrase will be repeated, maybe not in the same words, but that sentiment. We don't exactly know what's going to happen next. Can it strengthen us as community? Or will we... in our upset, in our disappointment, in our anxiety, will we separate? I hope not. And in this owning who we are,

[27:28]

When I say that we, I think of the we as this odd group of people, which in this moment I would call, I don't mean this as exhaustively definitive, just one of the many ways we could describe who we are. Western Buddhist converts. Western Buddhist converts. To Zen Buddhism. Or to Zen. Each of us is a kind of radical. With maybe only one exception. It's not an environment we grew up in. Yet something in us made that shift.

[28:40]

When I look back on myself, the version of Christianity I grew up in, just for all the reasons I just described, had no appeal whatsoever to get away from it, to find something else. to find a spiritual system that promoted tolerance seemed pretty good to me. And that common identity, to me, it holds two things. For one, it holds the Bodhisattva vow. You know? Like in going back to Northern Ireland, it's seeing, you know, with a community, when the society is torn into pieces, a lot of healing has to happen and it takes time.

[29:58]

And I think of the black community In the United States, I think, as I heard a great black civil rights worker who marched with Martin Luther King, he said, I'm in it for the long haul. To me, that's a bodhisattva vow. I'm in it for the long haul. To me, one of the essential ingredients that supports is hopefulness. To me, impoverishment is lack of hope.

[31:07]

That the oppression is such that there is submission, compliance, nothing else. That way, the richness of expanding each other's view of the world, our capacity to listen to each other because we may have something that enriches, we may have something to say that enriches the group. What I want you to know There's hopefulness in even making this statement. The bodhisattva vow is not based on... We've already got it figured out.

[32:23]

In my mind, the beauty of the bodhisattva vow is that we don't have it all figured out. That we're probably never going to have it all figured out. But we're in it for the long haul. And then the other aspect of the bodhisattva vow, for me, is the inclusiveness of it. And everyone's included. Last year, I met with someone in Northern Ireland. And in Northern Ireland, it's a small community. It's about a million and a half people. So you can more or less get somebody's background

[33:30]

and history before we meet with him. So I knew his background. He knew my background. I came from a staunch militant Catholic area. He came from a staunch militant Protestant area. And he was a leader in that. And at one point, they were violently oppressive of our neighborhood. And we talked about that. And then amazingly, as we continued to talk, we discovered that it's quite likely that both of our fathers worked for the same person when they were working. We're not as different as we think we are.

[34:34]

And we talked about, and he's a religious person, and we talked about the efficacy and the inclusiveness of compassion. And to me, that's part of our spiritual support. What supports the bodhisattva vow? How does a human being find the courage, the tenacity, the resilience, the compassion, the wisdom to engage it? To my mind, in the paramitas. In standing in a circle and chanting the loving-kindness meditation.

[35:49]

In letting the little details of our life become rituals. doing the inner work so that we are more capable of doing the interpersonal work. So my hope is that we learn something in going through, okay, what's the impact of the pandemic? What's the impact on our formal practice?

[37:00]

How we're here in this beautiful valley? What are schedules going to be? Tomorrow we'll discuss what's the impact of being on the brink of the fire season. And it's my hope that, and I hope your hope too, that that will be an opportunity for us to listen deeply to each other. Even though we might think, poverty? Oh, I know what poverty is. Do we know this person's history with it? Do we know what it means to that particular person, that word, that phrase?

[38:06]

I think we could ask each other, what does it mean to be on the brink of fire season? watch the appropriate response. The way my mind works with it is we don't have to be able to answer those questions right now. We'll enter into it and discover what's appropriate. Hopefully we'll learn about what needs to be considered and But I think back of growing up in an impoverished environment. It's inner city, big families, small houses, narrow streets.

[39:14]

And I think of being about seven or eight, listening to my mother talk to Mrs. Kennedy, who lived next door, McKenna, excuse me, Mrs. McKenna, who lived next door, talking about how maybe the woman who may have to cross the street three doors up might need some help because her daughter is having a difficult time. Community. That's how you produce a Nobel Peace Prize winner. One of the women in the neighborhood started women's marches. Women's marches for peace. And it took fire just like that. We want to be able to have a safe environment for our children.

[40:29]

Nobel Peace Prize for that thought. I want to end by reading you something from Nassim Ahmed. This is a lovely poem that I would recommend you read if you're so inclined. Last letter to my son. That's the poem, but I'm just going to pick a snippet from it. Don't live in the world. His son's name is Mehmet. Don't live in the world as if you were renting or here only for the summer. But act as if it's your father's house. Believe in seeds, earth, the sea, and people above all. Love clouds, machines, books, people above all.

[41:43]

Grieve for the withering branch, the dying star, the herd animal, but feel for people above all. Rejoice in all the earth's blessings, darkness and light, the four seasons, but people above all. Mehmet, our Turkey, is one sweet country and its people Its real people are hardworking, serious, and brave, but frightfully poor. Its people are long-suffering, but it will turn out good. You and our people there will build communism, and you will see it with your eyes and touch it with your hands. What is it we're building? Can it start with how we relate to each other?

[42:50]

Can we be hopeless enough? Can we be hopeful enough? Courageous enough, reckless enough to say to each other, what I want you to know. And can something in that inform us and teach us what it is to listen to everyone? If this practice that we're doing isn't utterly practical and relevant surely we need to look at that surely the challenge for us is to make it utterly relevant and practical and I would add benevolent compassionate and skillful it's quite a lot

[44:13]

It's my hope that together we can do that. That we will face this next challenge. That each of us will listen and each of us will feel empowered to speak. not because we have all the answers, because each of us is an essential part of this community. I was reading a piece by an African American And she was saying, because she was raised in the sun, I am the product of the sun.

[45:29]

I was owned and raped in the sun. What a long, challenging journey that's going to be. To listen to that, to take it in, to be informed about it, to respond to it. So tomorrow we'll meet our version of challenge. Hopefully, in doing that, it contributes to supporting everyone. Thank you.

[46:40]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

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