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. Good morning, everyone here in this room. Good morning, everyone online. Good morning to our ancestors and the bodhisattvas whose qualities support us. Good morning to the person who invited me to speak, who's recovering from COVID. I hope that goes in an uncomplicated way. That was Timo, the head of practice here at Green Gulch. And thank you very much to everybody for your patience and your presence and your practice. Now, I want to ask you to sit... in a comfortable way that would allow you to sit forever.

[01:04]

Okay, so just take a moment. If you want these extra cushions, I've got a couple of extra cushions right here. Okay, so I highly recommend that if you're on a chair or on a Zafu, that you're sitting a little bit higher, your hips are a little higher than your knees, so that you can take advantage of your sense of balance that allows you to breathe. Because we're going to speak about an important topic today and one that affects all of us equally. Are you happy? Are you posturally happy? Okay, I also want to ask you to feel free to adjust your posture during this lecture if you need to. The important thing is that you be able to sit or lie down in an aligned way. that allows you easy access to breath and gives you the psychic space to actually hear the teachings of the Buddha and our ancestors and try to, you know, meet them.

[02:14]

Because if you're stuck with intense pain or, you know, a feeling that something's not quite right, it doesn't give you the space to do that. So please, you know, we're all Dharma friends here and there. Okay. Okay, thanks for... Do I need to exact an oath from you? I vow to take care of myself during this whole hour or whatever it is. Okay, thanks. I'll take that as... you know, an important intention. So think about how hard it is to take care of ourselves during the social situation of a lecture, right? And think about how hard it is to cope if the person next to you is making sounds or like squirming around and stuff.

[03:23]

So individual and interpersonal is hard enough. But when we get to group groups or structural formations in the society and in the world, it's very difficult to locate harm, to take care of harm, to feel empowered to give feedback or to take care of harm. So today I want to talk about the lobster pot of harm, you know, and how we get stuck in actions, ways of acting that have harmful impact. And what does compassion have to do with our response? So you know how we feel pain when someone around us is in pain? That's compassion. That's the basic feeling of compassion.

[04:27]

And sometimes it's easy to understand what to do with that. For instance, you look hungry. Do you want some lunch? It's not too complicated. Or you don't have an air ticket to visit your dying dad. Do you need some miles? A little more complicated, but we can do it. Or interpersonal. There's really something I've been meaning to talk to you about. There's something in our relationship that's very uncomfortable for me. I wouldn't bring it up except that I also feel like it might be harming the trust between you and me. Okay, so we can feel the pain and respond to it if it's just one or two people, even in a group. Look, we've been going to the farmer's market and cooking for five years. And you always make smelly food. You know, so it's possible even in a group of friends.

[05:32]

But what happens when it gets larger than that? So I want to speak yogically about wisdom and compassion just a little bit. And how long is this lecture supposed to be? So what if about 15 or 20 minutes before you give me a warning so that we can discuss stuff? Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. My conscience. Yeah. So I want to just talk about this stuff. So, you know, we have these... these bodhisattva precepts as a practice that we do in Soto Zen. And at our three temples, City Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch, we work on this.

[06:36]

So we acknowledge it every month in a ceremony called the Full Moon Ceremony. A ceremony where we... think about the harm that we've done that comes from greed, hate, and delusion through body, speech, and mind. And my dharma name, this has always been an interesting topic for me. I was ordained as a priest in 1982, and both my English name and my dharma name remind me of the concept of evil and how to align myself with not doing evil and trying to do good instead. So my English name is Victoria Austin and I was named for Avigdor and I started using Victoria again in 2011 when I found out that Avigdor saved my mother's life at the cost of his own.

[07:38]

And my Dharma name, Shosan, is the English, the one I use in the U.S., means sunlight mountain. But the one I use in Japan is Gigan. And this G means something untranslatable in English, but basically honor, justice, virtue, or even alignment or integration, purpose, meaning. So it has all of those meanings. And then the last character means something that's inconceivable. And so I think about, well, what is it to honor the inconceivable? What is it to notice what's inconceivable or unnamed in our life? And so I think about evil as sometimes being inconceivable when it's socially supported or reinforced. So we have a precept later on in our list of precepts that says that we're not going to harm or kill.

[08:49]

And why is there a precept about evil and a precept about harming or killing? And I think it's because of the intentionality of evil, the motivation of evil. I think that makes the difference between between harm and evil. And I also think about the unconsciousness of evil. So the unconsciousness of impact, that's part of evil. And that can happen between people. It can happen between people of privilege and people not of privilege or countries of privilege that don't have to think about their shadow. Or cultures of privilege. We have to understand this if we're really going to have the intention to not commit evil. And evil comes in three flavors.

[09:55]

We can deliberately commit evil. Right? Whether it's just us or whether it's people we're working with to commit evil or... whether it's a group. But that's not the one I really want to focus on today. I want to try to think about, because it's not in the precept so much, what about the evils that we collude with, that we support through consumer choices or social choices or voting choices? Or what about the evil that we condone because we don't know about it or because The suffering of those around us isn't real to us. What about that? So just. If you wouldn't mind taking three breaths. And just. For a moment. Without. Going into it too much. You don't have to raise your hand.

[10:59]

But let's take three breaths and then all together. I won't because I'm miked, but altogether we can say one word of an evil that we probably unintentionally collude with or condone. So I won't say it, but I'll think it, but three breaths and then I'll hold up a staff to say that word. Ready? Let's say it together. You can say it softly. Go. Thank you. Thank you very much. This admission is our gateway into practice.

[12:13]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for admitting an evil. It takes vulnerability and courage to admit that we cooperate with or collude with evil. And a lot of times we don't know that we're cooperating or colluding with because we become inured to it through advertising, propaganda, or descriptions that we inherit from our parents or our friends or our colleagues. So thank you for admitting it. I'm going to give you... So I recently picked up again a book that I had read in the late 1990s when it came out, and it's called Unmasking Administrative Evil.

[13:20]

And I picked it up because one of my relatives died, so it had me thinking about my other relatives, many of whom were refugees, all of whom were refugees. So it had me thinking about these... kind of social forces that we're refugees from, or that we were refugees from. I was born in the United States, but my sister was not born in the United States, and my parents and none of my family was born in the United States. We came here because of social evils, social harm. So that book, Administrative Evil, started a whole movement to understand what is the structural and cultural evil in our society.

[14:22]

And so my question, of course, is, you know, I've been studying Zen for 54, 55 years, and that's really helped me understand the harm I do in my own body and mind, but what would it be to actually be able to apply it to my life in the world? So I remember when I was, it was the 1960s, and I was, at that time I was commuting from Long Island to Columbia University to take science classes. And one day I went there and there were students sitting in the plaza and in the windows of the dean's office. I said, what is this about? And I was about 15 years old. So those people were protesting the American war in Vietnam. And my eyes were really opened.

[15:24]

I said, what is this about? And I heard about it. And so I went home and I started organizing marches and protests. And I got in a lot of trouble. But I suddenly became very passionate about political life at that time. And within months, I was completely exhausted because it was too intense. And my kind of, what should I say? I was into the idea of revenge or retribution or... You know, this is wrong, so you have to stop doing it. I was 15, right? And I didn't really know how to conduct myself. And shortly after that, Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh came out with a Xerox called The Miracle of Being Awake.

[16:26]

And it was a copy of the Mahasatigatana Sutta. the Sutra on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and on the Anapanasati Sutta, the Sutra where you learn how to understand breathing. And I thought, wow, how is this going to help? But then he made a statement, and his statement was that we had to take care of ourselves, much like if you're in an airplane that's in trouble, you have to put your own mask on first, so that this mindfulness will help us understand what we bring to the situation and what our shadow is. So that was really useful. And so I read that book some years later, about 20 years later, Unmasking Administrative Evil. And then I was aware that there was a whole film series that was organized by some people at Grand Valley State University in the 2000s.

[17:31]

They came up with 10 ways that group and societal evil gets masked so that we can't see it or relate to it. We just feel uneasy with it. But we tend to squash that down if that evil is socially or culturally or structurally condoned. So I'm going to depart from the forum once again, just like... just like before when I asked you to say something. But the way I'm departing from the form right now is I'll ask you to get comfortable once again to maybe close your eyes or to go into enough of a meditative state that you can feel whether any of these ten things resonates with you as a possible way that evil or harm is masked. in your life, in my life. So I've been through this exercise on my own, and it was really helpful.

[18:36]

I don't want to get heavy about it, so if you don't want to do it, it's okay. So these are ways that groups mask or make unconscious the evil that's in their shadow. So I'll just go through what they are. I'll say the name of the masking activity, and I'll give an example of it. I won't go too deeply into what it is because I don't want to take six hours for this lecture. So the first one is euphemism. Euphemism. So an example of euphemism or saying a name that's easier to take is... When I was president, I was trying to work on San Francisco Zen Center's racial and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

[19:39]

And so a group of us hired a group of people of color who were experts in group consultation. And we came up with a proposal. The proposal had the word oppression in it. And I didn't want to use the word oppression because it was too strong and political. So I used a euphemism for the word oppression. And so because I was president, that was colluding with the structural evil of oppression because I was prettying it up. So that's euphemism. I'll take a breath after each one. The second one is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization means one part can't see the whole. So for instance when I was the Tenzo or the head cook I bought cheap vegetables not

[20:57]

understanding San Francisco Zen Center's relationship with organic and conscience-based growing. So I bought those vegetables because they were, because my role as Tenzo meant I had to get the meal out every day and I had to stay on budget. So I compartmentalized my perception to my role. The third one that they named was instrumental rationality. So for instance, processes and structures that objectify people and commodify information. So they did decrease the ability of ethical discernment. So for instance, I was in a conflict with someone and it was too painful to put my heart into actually hearing what I was hearing.

[21:58]

And so I just followed the process, but my heart wasn't in it. So I used the instrumental rationality of the process and said, if we go through this process, the conflict will be resolved. But I didn't actually want to admit what the person was saying, so it didn't work. So I used the rational process as an excuse to not actually hear. So I got stuck in polite listening because of the rationality of the process. A fourth form of social colluding or tolerating of evil is when we allow laws to be passed, legalism, so laws that legitimize forms of oppression or support unethical goals. So one example of this was separate but equal as far as different kinds of marriages were concerned. So we thought that it was okay to use the legitimizing of partnerships without marriage, even though it meant that when people died, their own children wouldn't have rights in relation to their will and their stuff.

[23:24]

and their wishes. That's legalism. Another one is accountability structures. So accountability structures, there was a long time ago, there was a Stanford prison experiment in which there was a group of men and some of them were assigned to be guards. And some of them were assigned to be prisoners. And the experiment was supposed to last for several weeks, but it had to be discontinued after six days because the guards started acting guard-like and the prisoners started acting prisoner-like. They couldn't separate themselves from their roles. Another one is dehumanization. So who does a... civilization say is inside who does a civilization say is outside so a good example of a discussion of this is in Michel Foucault's book Madness and Civilization that talks about how a society who a society thinks is in can be defined by who it thinks is crazy or out

[24:49]

It won't be this heavy for the whole lecture, okay? Okay, another one is called Ethical Fading. I thought this one was really interesting. So that's what I meant by the lobster pot, a kind of a psychic numbing that decreases self-reflection. Like if we tolerate harm to one person, it's easier to tolerate harm to two people or to ten people. We start small with evil. It's hard to go big. So an example is Deborah Layton in the film Jonestown said, nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organization. You join a political movement. You join with people that you really like. So through condoning or going along with the rules of the community, It led to the disastrous results of killings in the community.

[25:59]

Only two more, okay? The ninth one is called Moral Inversion. And it's just the handy habit of redefining evil as good. So, for instance, if we define freedom of speech... to include hate speech. We would say, oh no, that's just freedom of speech. But really what it's doing is hurting people, hurting groups of people. The last one that keeps evil masked in these structures that we're part of is called reward and punishment. So I don't know if anyone else here is old enough to remember the 60s, but do you remember how cigarette executives, cigarette company executives, were promoted and paid to hide what happens to people who regularly use tobacco.

[27:02]

So they were rewarded with promotions and status to take that untenable position. Anyway, so I'll just say the names again. I feel like I'm... You know, like this is Passover and I'm reciting the Ten Flakes or something. But this is actually social ills and the sutras don't talk about this too much. So it's our job as American Buddhists to think about impact as kind of a fourth turning of the Dharma wheel and to understand in this democratic society how we can relate to evil and from the point of view of our conscience. So again, the names are euphemism, compartmentalization, instrumental rationality, legalism, accountability structures, dehumanization, ethical fading,

[28:12]

Moral inversion, reward and punishment. So these are part of the systemic evil that is in our shadow, that we collude with by supporting its policies and practices, or that we condone by saying, oh, that's too painful, I can't face it. So we need to understand What compassion or feeling others' pain would be able to contribute if we wanted to address and work with these kinds of social evils? How could we as individuals expand our practice of compassion to actually help? So I want to introduce this. Compassion means just feeling with or feeling pain with. It includes empathy and discernment.

[29:18]

So it includes a sense of kindness and a sense of wisdom through the experience that we gain from direct perception. So I'd like to introduce the relationship between compassion and conscience. It's consciousness of harm. And then it goes beyond consciousness of harm to be conscious with harm, to guide our actions in groups and in our culture. So it gives us a compassion can be used as a kind of a moral compass to give us a sense of direction, to give us a sort of functional wisdom. that actually relates to other beings and to our society as real. Real means able to be realized.

[30:19]

Real doesn't mean rigid. So I'd like to give examples of compassion becoming conscience, a group conscience. I'd just like to give a couple of examples. In this organization, San Francisco Zen Center, as I said, we've come a long way from when I would not use the word oppression because it was, ew, that word, you know, and used a euphemism instead. I'm very sorry I did that. It's like one of the blots on my administrative conscience. face the situation of being old. Then I understood what oppression was. Even though I had fought oppression as a woman in the 1960s, I somehow disassociated from that experience when it came time to do those policy adjustments.

[31:30]

But in the past three years, I hope you know that San Francisco Zen Center has developed major changes to its DEIA structure and the dissemination of information about DEIA. So a lot of organizations are kind of walking back on DEIA initiatives, but San Francisco Zen Center is not. This is not just an ad for San Francisco Zen Center. It's an example that I'm offering so that you can feel empowered at San Francisco Zen Center to not collude with or condone with oppression, and instead act in ways that give life, act in ways that empower you within the institution, because you are empowered. So I want to say that we hired and empowered my Dharma cousin, So On Genkan, Eli,

[32:34]

as the director of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and created a whole website access for that, for feedback. And this is important. Feedback, as Cedar Barstow says, is an investment in relationship. And feedback is an investment in our relationship with a group. Another structural and cultural example from our society is the way the marches, the Black Lives Matter marches changed our legal and scholarly forms of investigation. So following the murder of George Floyd, policymakers and academia worked together to to create new structural and cultural understandings of institutionalized and systematized racism. So just point out four of those dialogues that have changed things in housing, in reparation, the discussion on reparation, in support of businesses run by black people and people of color and support structures for those business endeavors.

[33:55]

And in college admissions, even though the discussions might not always go the way I like or the way you like, there are discussions and that's different. And so it gives me hope that we can have global conversations about the climate, about equity and so on. And this is not a political lecture. This is a lecture in which I'm trying to understand and create conversation around how can we bring our individual meditative understanding of wisdom into relationship and one great causal condition. How can we bring that to our lives as social and organizational and national, international beings.

[34:57]

So anyway, I have all this thought about obstacles to compassion that I can tell you. But I want to give just a reading by David White on vulnerability. Because I think vulnerability is key. The vulnerability to the experience of shared pain. So David White says, Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is an underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerabilities, to run from the essence of our nature. The attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to be something we are not.

[36:02]

So my aside is, we are compassionate. We are wise. But because of our habits and preconceptions, we might not realize it, especially if we're encouraged not to. So invulnerability is a vain attempt to be something we're not, most especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, refusing our vulnerability, we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence. We immobilize the essential, title, and conversational foundations. To have a temporary isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is one of the privileges and the prime conceits of being human, especially of being youthfully human, but a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share untouchable powers.

[37:16]

We didn't say we love some people. We vow to love, honor, appreciate all people and all beings. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability. How we become larger, more courageous, more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or, conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely or completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door. Okay, so I ask, can we walk through the door?

[38:21]

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.

[38:46]

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