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. Zen Center and the Alpha Zen Center, warm welcome to Reverend Angel Fiona Williams. So great to have you here, I'm delighted. I had the opportunity to actually meet Angel in person last year at the Generation X conference in New York, so the first time, even though I've had you for a number of years. You know, mutual friend Greg Snyder of the Brooklyn Zen Center, so it's great to have you here in person once again. And for you, those of you who don't know Angel, I'm going to go ahead and just give a little bit of a bio for her so you have a little bit more sense who this wonderful being is.

[01:07]

Reverend Angel Keira Williams is a Buddhist teacher, author, mentor, and community activist, as well as the founder of the Center for Transformative Change in Berkeley. She has been called the most intriguing and vocal African-American Buddhist. Reverend Angel has been bridging the worlds of transformation and justice Justice sits her critically acclaimed first book, Being Black, Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. As a preeminent thought leader of transformative social change, much of Reverend Angel's work applies wisdom teachings and embodied practice to intractable social issues at the intersections of climate change, racial and economic justice. So tonight, Angel will be sharing with us teachings from her newest book, Collaboration, Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. And as Angel notes, love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change.

[02:10]

Without collective change, no change matters. So Angel, once again, I'm delighted you're here. Thank you again. Amen. Amen. I think we're patient around these parts. Good evening. I'm so delighted to see you all here and it's quite actually surprising. It's quite a number of you.

[03:11]

I never look up until this moment and so welcome. Very good to see you all. This is really very special for me. San Francisco Zen Center, if you've ever heard stories, because people always ask you, how did you come to Buddhism? San Francisco Zen Center is the real root of my initial attraction to and entry into the Zen path. I found a book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, all the way over there on the East Coast in Tower Bookstore, because I was looking for anything with the name Zen in it because I found that I was very attracted actually to the art and the spareness of the art and the spareness of the aesthetic. And so this book really spoke my mind.

[04:12]

It was not that I found it. It was like it found me. And... I realized shortly afterwards that I must really be a Zen person because you know how you discover something and then you wouldn't like share it with everyone else. And so I ran around sharing it with everyone else and they were like, I don't understand this. This like Greek. And for me it felt like, but this is my mind laid out in a book and someone knew my mind in ways that I didn't even know my mind myself. And so a couple, you know, I did the closet Dharma thing. I just had like literally a closet and some rolled up cushions for a while. And then I had the opportunity in 1992 to come to San Francisco. And I knew something had gone terribly wrong when I found myself waking up at five o'clock in the morning

[05:18]

to come for meditation instruction. But I happily left with my own Zafu, which I still have to this day, and my community members once in a while try to figure out how they'll get that yucky thing fixed. So it really is quite a pleasure to come back here, because it's sort of the seed of the problem, if you will. I also, though, had another experience which has been very formative in coming here one time. So this is some years later. I'm now wearing Samue, for those of you that don't know, that's the kind of work jacket and pants and, you know, had one of these little white doodads under my jacket and... a bib of some kind, you know, was a black one in our tradition and I was in our lineage and I was very excited to come back, you know, it's like I was making a pilgrimage back to the Bay Area, so excited.

[06:25]

And no disrespect intended, I got to the door and someone looked at me and they said, are you interested in Zen? And I said, well, yes. Because I thought I was all obvious and whatnot, right? Well, we can really show you some things. Okay. So this was one of the formative experiences I had that just followed as I went along the coast here and I visited center after center and got some variation of the same thing. I just couldn't be seen as a whole person.

[07:31]

I was seen only my interpretation was this colored woman that couldn't possibly know what she was up to. You know, it's almost like I was stumbling into places that, you know, by accident. I went to Green Gulch, actually. This is also back some time ago, and I was with my partner at the time, and I had my little outfit on. But they talked to her. She's much fairer than I am. And talked to her extensively. It was as if I wasn't there. And so this was early enough to very much shape the way that I began to think about, there might be a little challenge here. We might be having a little bit of a problem that is worthy of investigation, as my co-author, Lama Rod, would say. He says investigation a lot. So... So here we are.

[08:32]

I had the audacity, and I'm going to say this now. I finally get to say this in public. I had the audacity then, because I didn't know any better to set out and write a book back then. And no one told me that there was like a line, and you were supposed to get on the line. And I had skipped the line. And it did not draw the, you know... softest response from the Dharma community at the time. And my editor at some point said, you know, we're having a little trouble, and we need your help with kind of thinking about our strategy. And I said, well, you know, at the time, there were still Buddhist bookstores, if you can imagine that. This is how long ago that was. There was something, like, Amazon didn't exist, and there were still things called... Buddhist bookstores. There were actually a fair number of them and you could do a whole circuit and get out in the world with going to the Buddhist bookstores.

[09:32]

But the Buddhist bookstores said, this is not a Buddhist book. It was about my first book. Being Black, Zen, emphasis mine, and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace. This is not a Buddhist book, this is a black book. I thought maybe I should call it Being Zen, right? black in the art of living with fearlessness in place. I don't know, they just need to see the word sooner or what's happening here. Needless to say, that continued to shape me as well. But here was my aha moment at the time. And I've been thinking about that for 15 years since. That's about when the book came out. I cannot believe that. I'll just sort of sit with that for a moment. So there were all these experiences. I had jumped the line, right? And I didn't know that the commodification of the Dharma, you know, had already set in and that there was a line in terms of like who could like show up and dare to write a book about the thing, like you had to know something.

[10:45]

Because you know, though we don't really have so much hierarchy in Western Buddhism, There's definitely a hierarchy in getting your book published. And I had cut this line. So on the one hand I was kind of, can we speak French here? Okay, good. Screwed, that's not bad French, that's just a little one. I was so screwed on that end because people were looking at me from inside the Dharma community going, who the hell is she? Because you're supposed to be kind of no one. you know, for a good little while in the Dharma. And understandably, for those of us that have, you know, stuck our feet in the practice and didn't realize how obsessed we are with ourselves, it's going to be known for a good long while. But this was an honest effort. I did this because I wanted to study with my teacher.

[11:46]

And I, coming from a mixed class background, I... didn't know of any other way that one could pursue this retreat business and not have a job. So the only, I had the privilege in my life though of knowing a couple of writers that I was very close to. One was Alice Walker and one was Gloria Steinem and they were the only people in my life that I knew that had a lifestyle that could allow me to, like, take time off for retreat. I just could not figure out how anybody else could do it. Hint one about what might have been going on with some of the retreat, you know, some of the race stuff, right? It's like, it was a little bit inaccessible, a little bit. And the East Coast is different. I came here and realized people have a much more fluid job, but back then, the East Coast was like, you know, nine to five, ten to six. You did hours. And if you were either a teacher or an author.

[12:51]

And so I set out to write a book, not because I really thought I had something to really say that was going to be worthy, but if I could eke something out and just get a little bit of change, then I could go and practice. So I was really... So Being Black was written because I wanted to go to Ongo, which is the three-month... summer session. So somehow, by some bizarre twist of fate, I kind of like wrapped my brain to figure out like what I could say. And I thought, well, here we have this challenge of, you know, folks of color not coming to practice, which by now I had decided was the best thing in the world. And so I'll make this invitation And that's what being black was. It was an invitation. It was an invitation to really all people of color, really all people, but particularly people of color.

[13:57]

But, you know, being people of color didn't flow quite as well. So we just went with the being black thing. It worked for the cover of the book at the time also. And... And then I, you know... got myself out there and I heard this thing about this is a black book, not a Buddhist book. And it hit me that I had made this invitation for people to a place and a community to which they were not welcome. And so I spent the next 15 years of my life thinking through that as much as I possibly could and trying to unpack for myself and learn what I needed to learn as a practitioner about what was happening.

[14:59]

And then I took on trying to learn as an activist what I needed to try to understand about race in this country and what was really going on for us. in many ways I live on the cusp of different things and being mixed race and, you know, my family is sort of in two different economic groups and education classes and all of these things. And so I tend to live on the bridge. My mother lived in Manhattan, my father lived in Brooklyn. I literally lived on the bridge between the two, for those of you that know New York City, going back and forth. And so the bridge is a natural place for me. And now I needed to make a bridge between my inner life and my outer life. That is to say, my personal transformation, my personal liberation, and the liberation of society. I needed to make sense of that.

[16:00]

So there's nothing particularly magic about the approach to this other than we just do what we need for ourselves. And I happened to stumble across... Another fellow, his name is Lama Rod Owens. He is a queer black man that is trained in the Tibetan tradition, in the Kagu tradition, and he is a llama now. So he's... I was like, wow, like, you're weirder than me. I'm weird. You're, like, really weirder. So I... paired up with him mostly because it makes me feel better. That there's somebody like actually stranger than I am. And he's younger, so he just has no real excuse. You had other options, dude. And a young woman that has been a long time practitioner with me, Dr.

[17:05]

Now, Dr. Yasmin Saedullah. So those are my co-authors. And I got here and I was like, oh, this is about the book. So I think I'll read from the book. And you all will have to give me some space. This is the first time that I'm doing this. In fact, I got the book just under two weeks ago. Just under, about 10 days ago. It is the first time that it actually showed up. in my hand, and I have not looked at the thing good, except to thumb it through a few pages, because I've been so full on with just trying to get here and show up and have my clothes on. So I'm going to read passages just to introduce their flavor. also from Rod and Yasmin, and beg their pardon, because I haven't asked them to do that.

[18:07]

And hope you will just go with me. I'll take a little bit of time and pull out passages. I have a couple, but I'll just go from there. You know, what would be helpful for me as a clock? I'm terrible with time, even with a clock, so without one, it's pretty bad. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. A little bit more? Okay. Okay, thank you. I'll do this. I'm gonna read the opening quotes because they say something. I like to arrive 10 minutes early just to let bitches know who the fuck they're dealing with. RuPaul.

[19:14]

I'm going to take off my glasses. For some reason the light is not working and I'm not seeing too well here. If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. Emma Goldman. There is a candle in your heart really ready to be kindled. There is a void. I'm sorry, my eyes are having a little trouble. Did I say it was like 20 years ago that I was here? Things change just a little bit. Huh? That's as far as it'll go? Okay, I think it'll be okay. Yeah, I just think that I'm adjusting. There is a candle in your heart ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul ready to be filled.

[20:21]

You feel it, don't you? And that's by rooming. A friend admitted during her introduction before one of my Dharma talks that I had intrigued her because she had never heard a Dharma teacher say the things I had during teachings. I was tickled because she was right and this is very common feedback I receive. Thank you. That's super awesome. I think this, it's just those are smaller and italicized and that's all not, I'm thinking I'm good, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, I'm going to read that again. A friend admitted during her introduction before one of my Dharma talks that I had intrigued her because she had never heard a Dharma teacher say the things I did during teachings. I was tickled because she was right, and this is very common feedback I receive. Over the past several years of being a formal Dharma teacher,

[21:25]

My style of teaching has evolved to be very informal in what seems to be an unorganized flow of thoughts, impressions, insights, and direct references to pop culture happenings. I almost never prepare written notes, and even if I have already selected a topic in teaching description, I often have no idea what I'll be saying on the topic until I sit on the cushion and open my mouth. I know that this scares the shit out of most people. I noticed that when I prepared a Dharma talk, I was expecting people to show up and meet me where I was. This began to feel a little manipulative and insensitive to the needs of folks in the space. Unconsciously, my goal became to meet people where they are in the very moment we begin to share space together. I do not know where the group is until I am in the room. I can write a Dharma talk beforehand, but that talk is based upon where I think the group will be at the time of the talk and therefore doesn't take into consideration. the unique causes and conditions that inform how individuals are showing up at that moment, and how that particular showing up has to be seen, appreciated, and spoken to.

[22:36]

Overall, I just try to trust where I am led. So that's Lama Rad, and I chose that because that could be exactly what I would say about myself. And here's from Yasmin Saidullah. The chapter is called What the World Needs Now. Contrary to popular belief in the United States, freedom is a prison. The notion may strike the modern American imagination as counterintuitive or just plain wrong, but if we turn to the language of the Constitution, we find this loophole, a glaring time warp of contradiction that legitimates the ongoing presence of slave-like conditions within our national practice of liberty. The 13th Amendment, the constitutional abolition of slavery in 1865, remains one of the country's crowning achievements, proof positive that democracy works and is an ever-evolving, self-correcting system of consensus, justice, and deliberation.

[23:42]

The amendment states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Emphasis added by both authors. Ever since the loophole of the 13th Amendment empowered the United States to democratize the experience of captivity far beyond the color line, far beyond... the physical space of the prison, the United States of America has become the planet's largest jailer, representing almost one quarter of the world's total prison population. As much as we want to believe in the promise of the American dream, the complete autonomy of the nuclear family, the domestic privacy of home ownership, the protection of our private property from the interference of the national government in our everyday lives, The halcyon wholesome image of freedom is only thinkable because of the fictions we spin around it.

[24:48]

It is, in reality, a thing rendered unfathomable for a large population of those this country seeks to protect. And I'll read from chapter... We broke the chapters of the book into a series of essays, and then inside of that is a bunch of conversations. We went across the country, and we were in four different cities. I'll say them in order. Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, and finally the Bay Area, to have these radical Dharma conversations. And where they came from, is feeling very much that we needed a response to what we were seeing unfold in the country.

[25:54]

I want to say the awareness of, not the surge, but the awareness of the level of anti-black racism that persists in this country. Primarily noticeable in the form of the police force, but as time has unfolded, we can see that it persists in other places as well. The decision to not prosecute in the Eric Garner case came down, and this was right about early December 2014. and Lion's Roar, which was formerly called Shambhala Sun magazine, asked myself and Lama Rad to have a conversation.

[26:54]

And out of that conversation, which, you know, in whatever way that you could say that something went viral in a Buddhist community, it went, you know, viral. Um... And what we felt, the pulse that we felt, it was a low pulse. But it was there. That the pulse of the community was that finally, for me, 15 years later, that maybe, just maybe, this community was actually ready for a conversation. And to the degree that they weren't, that we would push it And make sure they got ready. And so we put out a little call and the Shambhala Buddha Center in Atlanta was sort of, you know, stepped forward really quickly.

[28:00]

And those became the four cities we went to, which incidentally turned out to be the cities that each of us come from and the cities that each of us live in. And so Lama Rad comes from the Atlanta area and lives in Boston. I come from New York City and live in the Bay Area. And so it just turned out like that. We thought that was rather auspicious. So the book is really these conversations inside of the book kind of wrapped in our impressions in terms of what it means for three people of color to be practicing inside of a tradition that, you know, continues to be flavored on the fairer side. And Yasmin Saedula was actually originally our coordinator, but she's, as you can hear, she's quite a profound scholar looking at the connection particularly between slavery and the pursuit of liberation that has existed

[29:10]

did amongst black people since slavery into modern day and the forms that it has taken, which of course one of the modern forms is the prison institution. So we broke up the book into different chapters. One of the chapters we begin with is, which makes sense because we wanted to just take care of this because people always ask, like, what did you have to leave behind? And for those of us that are ordained, we know that there's this notion of home leaving. And so, Lama Rad and I are both ordained, and so we went with this concept of what we had to leave behind. We then stepped into what we're bringing next to really give people a sense of where we're coming from. And then the conversations are packaged inside of there. they are broken up from all of the different conversations, but then presented in a cluster of race, love, and liberation.

[30:15]

And then we end with basically what's next. So this is from Radical Dharma, Liberation. And it's an introduction to the conversations. It begins with a quote. One of the extraordinary things about liberation is that you do not feel the need... Here we go again. One of the extraordinary things about liberation is that you do not feel the need to control things when you're free. Because the illusory nature of control becomes clear to you. It says that I said that somewhere. I don't remember. So I was doing an interview with a young woman that was really trying to understand race and how it was showing up in Dharma communities. And so she asked me some questions and this passage came out of it.

[31:17]

And we titled it, What Does Liberation Look Like and Where Does It Live? Black women are the canary in the coal mine of the social structure of America. And as the canaries, they seek the air that is most clear because they know what it is like to suffocate. They know what it's like to suffocate as women, people of color, people in female gendered bodies. They know what it's like to suffocate as people in black skinned bodies. And so as a people that have touched the liberatory teachings when they seek liberation, when they seek a clear space to breathe, They create that space around everyone because they know what it's like to suffer, to suffocate. In the teachings of the Dharma, the first teaching is that life is suffering. It's not a thought, it's not an idea, it's not something that you should take as you go off onto the second noble truth. It's teaching.

[32:19]

It's something that you actually have to know. And if you don't truly know, know intimately that life is suffering. then you cannot know what it means to seek liberation. So black female bodies know suffering. That is the nature of their existence in this society. They know suffering, therefore they know liberation when they see it. And they are not capable of not seeking that liberation on behalf of others. Because that's what liberation is. That's what liberation actually gives rise to. You can't possibly come to know the depth of suffering and then have any wish other than to not only be free of your own suffering, but to have others be free of their suffering. Because of who they are in society, black women have to do that. So this section is called The People of Color Problem. And I'm going to say who the speaker is and then read their passage.

[33:25]

So this is Reverend Angel. What I get to hear largely about, what I get to hear is largely about white folks who are trying to figure out how to fix the people of color problem. That's what people ask me all the time. How do we invite more people of color? What I don't hear is this. I'm suffering. I'm experiencing trauma. What is it that I can do to help myself? I'm a ride. I think it says a lot about Sangha when the line is, well, we need to be more diverse. How do we get more brown bodies into these seats? I don't care about brown people populating the Sangha because that's a distraction for me. I'm interested in the healing piece. I'm interested in looking at how we're suffering, how we're creating these relationships that actually exclude people. I don't use the word diversity. I rarely use the word racism.

[34:27]

I think we have programmed responses to these words and we have to disrupt that by transforming the language a little bit or by using more precise language. The suffering of whiteness. The trauma of whiteness. Let's look at our suffering. How do we participate in such a way that we're restoring our humanity? How can we investigate that kind of transformation? Because healing is also transformation. Reverend Angel. How do we practice in such a way that we restore humanity? That suggests that our humanity has been compromised, that the humanity of white folks in particular has been compromised. Lama Rad. Well, the humanity of this country is compromised. One of the sisters over here spoke about embracing our history, which is an act of reconciliation. How do we say that our country is really a very violent place? We have a very violent history. We can wave the flag around and talk about democracy. How can we use the reconciliation models that we've seen in other countries, like South Africa, for instance?

[35:33]

That's healing, you know? That's saying, oh, there's trauma. We have historical trauma as a country, as communities, as different-bodied people, as different racially-identified people. There's trauma we have to start bringing to the surface and articulating the hurt, the guilt, the pain, holding the space for that, and I don't see that happening in our Buddhist communities. Reverend Angel, for too long these conversations have circulated around the healing that has to be done for people of color. Even reconciliation, even South Africa, the lens that is conventionally held is that there's healing to be done, but largely that healing is to be done on behalf of people of color. I may have to say I'm sorry as a white person, I may have to deal with some guilt and shame, but who's really being impacted, has really focused on people of color, different people. Oh, women are suffering. Oh, queer people are suffering. Oh, black people are suffering.

[36:35]

But for me too, there has been too little conversation allowing for this space for the unearthed suffering of white people. Almost because of the power dynamics involved and almost because we have been so racialized into saying, If I'm white, I'm supposed to feel bad for folks of color. But there's been zero space for white folks to really claim suffering around living in a racialized society. There's no space, it seems to me, for white people to actually get down to their conversation. Even folks sitting there feeling it and they're like, hmm, I better not say anything. It can't even be acknowledged that there is any suffering. I just... I don't know how we can ever expect that this dynamic is going to change if we can't allow people, all people, to fully claim their own suffering. And that's what the Dharma is actually about. It's about allowing people the space and the opportunity for discomfort so that they can touch their own suffering.

[37:36]

And this focus on other people's suffering, for me, frankly, feels like a distraction. It feels like we've spent decades now tiptoeing around other people's discomfort I think that there's some degree of relief that people feel. I think that some relationships may grow in those conditions. But in my own experience, when the shit hits the fan and people are in contraction, when the economy turns upside down, when the spaces that people live in start to change, when more people of color, more marginalized people enter the room, when people contract, they go back to those places of unaddressed suffering. And the behaviors that we experience as racialized behavior, like microaggressions and so on, continue. So we can all be on good behavior, and I feel that that's what we have done in the Dharma for the last 40 years. Good behavior Dharma. It's largely progressive, not 100%. And we have this progressive, liberal way of talking about race.

[38:38]

Either I'm colorblind, or I'm okay with colored folks in theory. But the reality is that people of color are not feeling welcome. They're not feeling welcome and they're not feeling welcome because there aren't enough POC scholarships. I'm just gonna read one more passage. So this is a peculiar chapter.

[39:53]

It's called It's Not About Love After All. We have witnessed the way in which movements for justice that denounce dominant culture yet have an underlying commitment to corrupt uses of power do not really create fundamental changes in our societal structure. When radical activists have not made a core break from dominant thinking, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, there is no union of theory and practice and real change is not sustained. It is precisely because the dictates of dominant culture structure our lives that is so difficult for love to prevail. That's bell hooks. I've been mulling over the role of love in movements for well over two decades now. I feel a sense of calling to activist work, ushering the third wave of feminism and changing minds about the so-called apathetic Generation X. Our cross-country voter registration drive felt significant and I felt like I was part of something making a difference.

[41:04]

Not too much later, after I dropped anchor in a spiritual practice, the conflicting ideas that seemed almost normal became increasingly apparent. Like many activists, I was alarmed by the destructive behavior of my comrades and colleagues and confounded by how it could be possible we could ever create a world we wanted to live in if we could not be the change. Although we were young women with good models for kindness towards each other, much of our work was driving against this or that, and to drive so hard and fast required fuel, and that fuel was anger. Vehicles to freedom, what's your ride? Starting out 500 to 600 years before the Common Era, the historic Buddha taught for over 50 years. His teaching naturally evolved over his own lifetime, and he died leaving a significant wealth of discourses. By the 14th century, what was referred to simply as the teachings of the Buddha had virtually disappeared from the land of its birth in India.

[42:07]

As the teachings found themselves in different countries stretched out over hundreds, even... than even a thousand years, different aspects were focused on. Not long... Actually, I'll save this. So the first turning is the Hinayana, a smaller vehicle. And the framing for that is the Arhat ideal, or codes of conduct for the liberation of oneself. Not long after finding my place as an activist for social justice, I came up against the need for not just reacting to what was happening in the world, which gave me a sense of purpose, but developing a way to look at what was happening, which provided a sense of meaning. I found a second home in cultivating a spiritual life. Though I didn't originally think of it that way, my formal Zen practice and training were teaching me to find a more restful place that I could abide in within myself, despite the chaos and calamity that living in an unjust society meant we were constantly surrounded by.

[43:11]

It also gave me a way to be in response to sometimes overwhelming situations that could just leave me to a downward spiral of anger and negativity. I didn't know a lot, but I knew I didn't want to live a life driven by anger and rage. I could see that many activist elders and now my younger counterparts had fallen into that vortex, and it seemed difficult to get out of once you were caught there. So I go on to talk about the different vehicles and finally end with a conversation about the potential for a fourth turning of the wheel, a turning of the collective wheel in which we are actually learning from each other. But my hope is that you'll find whatever I've shared here, worthy enough to pick up a copy yourself and continue, and maybe we can continue the conversation online.

[44:12]

Thank you so much. I think I'll be able to see you with my glasses on. So a few questions, yes, please. Please say your name. My name is Diana. You talked a little bit about touching into the way that living in a racialized society creates suffering for white people. How do we start to address that without recentering whiteness and without making the conversation all about white people? By yourselves. Yeah, white folks need to have conversations with and amongst white folks, and there is increasing numbers of resources for that purpose. there's nothing wrong with having a conversation about, I want to say this really clearly, about what ails you. And whiteness ails you. Whiteness ails all of our society.

[45:13]

I don't mean the fact that you have white skin, I mean the construct of whiteness ails us all. And maybe there's good and useful things you might want to keep, but I don't know, I haven't been there. But just like the ego... We need to probe it and investigate it fully. And then we can reclaim the ego and with it in its appropriate place, we can leverage it on behalf of our liberation rather than be caught up in it and mistake it for who we actually are. And I think that whiteness acts exactly like a social ego, except that we have taken it to be self. Yes. My name is Anne Marie. Thank you for sharing your talk with us. Justice, a sense of justice and injustice, I get hooked very easily on that, particularly in my workplace.

[46:21]

And I find myself driven by anger. And I don't even know what's happening until I've made myself sick. and then I'm in remorse, and then I get to a place of equity. But it seems to me I have to go through this particular routine over and over again. How, I mean, years and years of practice, yes, how else do you mitigate that hook when you see, when one sees the injustice, or what I perceive as injustice, I don't even know my ego's in it until it's almost I've made a mess trying to do the right thing. And then I do repair work around it, and that's why I'm here. Yeah, I mean, plenty of us, we're kind of navigating the messes that have been left. You're not alone. You know, in a word, love. People have looked at me and said, like, really?

[47:28]

Are you just being cheesy? I'm not. And what I mean when I say love, and we talk about this extensively, it's not like kumbaya love. Because, you know, black folks can't afford kumbaya love in this country. Praise Jesus for those that are trying to do it. Because they're going to hit something, and they're going to hit it hard at some point. But when we love ourselves and we are deeply comfortable with the parts of ourselves that don't feel shiny and presentable, we can stop trying to control the unshiny and unpresentable parts of other people and we can reclaim our humanity. So in reclaiming our humanity, we restore the humanity of others and we can distinguish humanity from behavior. And so that anger is not driving us, love is driving us.

[48:32]

So love drives us to respond to injustice and the outcome is entirely different than when anger drives us to basically try to assuage our ego about things not working out the way that we want to. If this were not the case, I mean, honestly, you know, queer folks would have torn up the place by now. Women would have torn up the place by now. Black people would have torn up the place by now. All kinds of folks would have just torn up the place by now if they could not, in some kind of way, center themselves back in love. It's not always a complete investigation into how that through line takes them to a social liberation But to come back to a place in which one self-honors and self-loves and has the love of community and family and a regard, a deep regard for oneself is actually how people have, over hundreds of years in this country, developed incredible resilience to be able to manage and have a grace, which is where the title of being black came from, to have a grace.

[49:52]

that allows them to continue to navigate with a sense of enlivened hope for the possibility of us all being human beings together. Maybe one more? Well, my name is Miguel and I just want to say thank you for this power The crossroads that I kind of find myself at is, how do I get my heritage, my roots, to kind of meld with this root that I've now taken? How do I combine, how do I express my, because I'm trying to express this out to my family, to my community, to the people who are willing to listen to me. help here in Los Angeles, everywhere on Facebook, that there's something good to be had here.

[50:57]

But my issue is, how do I press this hot mess through this gate and let them see? Because the example you just gave me is spectacular. I want to know how you did that. Of course it's going to be different for all of us. I just stopped trying. I mean, this is so complicated. The whole no-self thing. The whole no-self thing, yeah. And the whole identity thing, right? Like, how do we, like, allow ourselves to be fully expressive of the, of identity? And, like, you know, white American sandhas are so weirded out by identity. Like, we're just, like, trying to, like, get away from it. Like, whoa, right?

[52:00]

Like, don't be expressing your, your identity because, like, that's not dharmic. Right? This is about, like, no identity. Right? No ego. And, like, if you talk about your identity, your heritage. Right? Like, that's your, That's your ego expressing itself. So I don't have enough time to talk about that at length, but I'll just say that's just bullshit, and we can just say that. But on a personal level, on an intimate, personal level, it really is dropping into the depths of who you are without a fixation on who you think you are, and who you're trying to be, and then you actually emerge. So you drop deeply into the reality of who you are, all of the feeling sense, and just let go of the ways in which you've been told you ought to show up, and just be, just be, just be in your practice,

[53:11]

B, in your largely white sangha, with everybody going, what the hell are you doing? Why are you there? And B, because you have the scent of liberation. You can smell it. You can taste it. And it's your responsibility to not let the racialization get in the way of what's possible for you. So you just go there. there's a certain amount of trust that in that dropping in, that the you that is truly you emerges and they're going to get that anyway. Meaning everyone around you, your family, everyone around you is going to get that. And so don't do what I did and try to write a book before you discover that. That's what happened. I wrote a book that I was like, oh... I'm just going to... I'll just do this.

[54:20]

Thank you. Thank you so much. 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.

[54:59]

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