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. All right. Yeah, that sounds better. So there's so much loss and grief in the world right now with the number of shootings, Santa Fe High School, in Texas and the disarray and unrest in the Gaza Strip. And so many times our society doesn't stop to mourn and to express the grief of the loss. And so I wanted to teach a little song right in the beginning. Hopefully I can teach it. It's a South African song, Zulu, and I think it was passed to many people here in this country by Maladoma Somme, and I learned it from Michael Mead.

[01:08]

So it's a song that is to help settle all of the spirits and the souls that are moving on and have a lot of them sacrifice themselves for us, for our liberation and being, existence. And so it's a pretty easy song. So I'm going to start out by myself. But if you can catch on with it, join me. I'll sing it a few times till I can kind of feel maybe you got it. And it's very simple. It's not a lot of words. So. Away, away. Away, away. Away, away. Elah, elah, elah. That's it. Away, away.

[02:13]

Away, away. Away, away. Ila, Ila, Ila. Away, away. Away, away. Away, away. Ila, Ila. I think of all the Lawson people that you know. Away, away. [...] Ila, Ila, Ila.

[03:17]

You can hum it. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. So, you know, song can be heard from way far away. Know that it is affecting all those who need that song, if not right here in this room. And to take time out to acknowledge loss and to pay attention to it, because it is one of the pathways, one of the gateways to seeing what this life is about and why we are here. And while we are here, maybe give us an idea of what we are to do, hopefully.

[04:25]

So anyway, I want to share with you some of this new book that every book I write feels unfinished. And this one really feels unfinished. But it's okay, because what is at the... The crux was set the foundation of this study that I did a meditation on home, homelessness, and belonging was a personal exploration. And so I wrote it as such, rather than trying to say this is what you do and this is how you do it. I thought I'd just share my experience so very much it's about loss. And it's about loss for not just myself, but for all living beings that human beings, animals, everyone that has lost a sense of home. And so I wanted to read one little, since we're all on this earth, and I think so far everyone probably sitting here was born on this earth.

[05:29]

I'm not sure if you want to reveal yourself if you weren't born here. So anyway... This is just a little piece of the poetry that's in here that I included as part of the book. We are sparks of dust on a strand of Mother Earth's hair. I'll say that again. We are specks of dust on a strand of Mother Earth's hair. There is no need for us to... We simply need to let her discard what has become stale. We need to release our planet of our wanting and begging, our ignorance and confusion, and be weaned from her breast

[06:38]

even when it feels we won't survive. When we stop exploiting the earth, she will return to sustainability on her own and share her bounty generously. So this is from the first chapter where the heart lives. And I... began writing this book just before the November 16th election, in which we currently have the same leader in office. And the day that it was announced that he would be our new leader, there was, in my heart, it sank, but at the same time, there was a great amount of joy. And what this joy was is that I finally felt that maybe where we live and how we live would be finally attended to by this confrontation of something we didn't want to really hear about or listen to, many of us, maybe some.

[07:59]

And so with that, I began to feel joined on this land and the belonging I felt. like it could happen. There was a possibility of belonging. And then so studying home and homelessness, which has a lot, each one has meaning. Home has meaning in different cultures and has meaning in our personal life. Homelessness has different meanings within the context of our relative life or our spiritual life. And then belonging has different meanings as well. And so, as you can see, this book could take off in many, many tangents. And so this was made it somewhat difficult to write about something that was so vast to me, as vast as the sky or the ocean, and to try to swim in it and to try to bring what was coming up. And many times in our practices, we hear, find home.

[09:05]

I want to find home. or bind a home within. And we hear that and we kind of go, sounds good, huh? Sounds real good. Yeah. And so we're not really clear what that means, though, but it sounds good. A lot of Buddhist words sound really good. I want that. You know? So... as I was, you know, exploring this teaching, you know, of finding home, there are so many layers involved in home as I began to explore it. And it's multi-layered in so many different ways. There's the way in which there's custom, there's language, there's familiarity. There's so many ways in which we, um, as people, you know, see home.

[10:06]

So finding home and feeling home and being at home are complex, multi-layered spiritual and cultural experiences that are independent of the place we live. So where is home? Where is home? Where is it? And where is the true nature? And what does it mean to be at home with it? And so often when we're not feeling at home, what we feel is needing a place for sanctuary or a place of refuge. So I would say that everyone in this room, everyone in this room has a group of ancestors that have lost home in some way or another. whether it be by war, by economic displacement, by ethnic cleansing, slavery, genocide, massacre.

[11:15]

Every one of us has an experienced ancestor in that realm, and therefore every one of us has an imprint of that upon us. And so sometimes I feel that when we hear that teaching, finding home, that it's necessary to acknowledge the homelessness or being home or not being home and not belonging and how it gets transferred to us and through our family. First thing they tell you is buy a house. Right? You know, buy a house. Get some land under your feet and hold on to it no matter what. Hold on to this land because this land is going to be what? Who you are. This is who you are and how you are and how you're going to exist. So today this is a huge problem, right? It's very difficult to buy a home, buy some land.

[12:21]

Maybe you have inherited... you know, some lamb from your family, and that's wonderful. Congratulations, that's really powerful. And then what is it that we're trying to own, though? What was it that really that the parents, and then parents before that, grandparents, great-grandparents, what were they trying to truly convey to us in buying a home? Because once we bought the home, we're like, okay, whoo, mortgage. You know? Taxes, I don't know what they're talking about. Maintenance, oh man, this is getting worse. Oh no, can I hold on to this? If I don't hold on to this, then I don't hold on to me. And if I don't hold on to it, then my parents or my family or my community will think I'm unstable or I'm not worthy. I don't know how to exist in this life. So these kinds of things that we learn

[13:22]

really helped me to continue to sit with this. It actually is a written meditation, sitting with, not zazen, because in zazen we don't dwell, but sitting, this is another kind of meditation where you're sitting with, what is this place called home and sanctuary? What is that? And how does it affect who we are? So I want to read this section about belonging. If you have a sense of not belonging based on prolonged systemic mistreatment, if you've been a target of hatred and violence, that disregard affects your well-being. So everybody right now in every land, in every country... every continent in this world that's dealing with land and owning it is affecting a sense of well-being.

[14:23]

And so if it's affecting a sense of well-being anywhere, it's affecting that well-being for us as well. It's not over there, it's right here. So in a relative sense, those who are dehumanized are never home, in a relative sense. In the absolute sense, Home is in the heart and cannot be touched by any outside force, even the most oppressive. Both senses are true. So the absolute truth and the relative truth. Oppressed groups live with the paradox that we are and are not home. You're living with that paradox of both. So while we are encouraged to make a home, buy a house, is that home? Make a home in this country manifesting such is a struggle. So there's a struggle. We may have come here to Zen Center looking for a home.

[15:29]

We may have come here looking for sanctuary from the home we had. So home is one thing, and sanctuary is when there's a failed quest for feeling at home. So home is one thing where we have this feeling where it resonates in our heart. You feel welcome. You feel seen. Things are familiar to you. Yeah, this is home. The food is right. And then the people are right for you. And then something gets disrupted in that home. And we seek sanctuary. And sanctuary, again, has many, many meanings in many levels as right now. Many people are being deported, immigrants especially from Mexico are being deported through agencies called ICE.

[16:30]

And so this deporting that's going on is affecting who we are as a country here and how many of the people Well, home is here, and sanctuary was here. So they found sanctuary here, looking for home, coming to this country. And so sanctuary then is what? If there is a home, why do we need sanctuary? And these are the questions that we can explore together and what I explored here as well. So as I said, sanctuary, when I access sanctuary, when I don't feel like I belong or I'm not at home, I would seek an actual sanctuary that was maybe Zen center, maybe some other community, some group or sangha that had some affinity.

[17:35]

I learned how to drum in a community that was a way of... getting sanctuary, going to a drum circle and staying there for many years, learning how to play rhythms. And so the sanctuary I feel is necessary because many of us find it difficult and struggle with finding home. So having sanctuary can be the beginning of coming to that home, finding home that the Buddha was talking about. If you go to Deer Park in Escondido, that's Thich Nhat Hanh's sanctuary there. And how many have been there? Anyone here have been there? Okay. All right, so when you go to that place, as soon as you drive up, it says, you have arrived. Or you are home. As soon as you get there, there's these signs right there. And there's a sense that might come over you and say,

[18:38]

Oh, okay. That feels good. At least it felt good to me when I rode up there. A few times I've been there. And the last time I talked there, I was really pulled by those signs. I have arrived and you are home. And I looked how beautiful the hills were and how beautiful the buildings were. But what made me feel at home was how beautiful the people were. You know, it was the people and the way in which they were caring for each other and caring for everyone who came to visit. And that was just a wonderful feeling. And if you looked over a certain age, I guess they helped you with everything. They grabbed your bags, and that was me. And, you know, they just did a, you never carried a bag. If you were older and elder, they really respect elders. And you get a ride here and you get a ride there. You know, they really super take care of whatever they have to do.

[19:41]

If they have to bring your food to your feet, they will bring your food to your feet. And these are the kinds of things that make us feel like we're home. And so back, back, back. And there's a famous story in the Book of Serenity where the Buddha was walking along with an assembly of monks. And Buddha was all about sanctuary, you know, all about finding home for those who didn't feel they were home. The ill, the marginalized, the dying, the poor. He recognized that as soon as he left the palace. And so his work has always been about finding sanctuary. So in my idea, when he was finding home, he was finding sanctuary. So he was doing this in this famous story in the Book of Serenity where the assembly of monks were following along.

[20:41]

They knew he was looking for a sanctuary, looking for a place. And so he says, I think this is it. This is the place. And he points to the ground. And then Indra, who was the emperor of the gods. You have to study that. You can Google it. And the emperor of the gods took a piece of grass and put it in the spot. He says, the sanctuary is built. We're done. We're done. So this happened again. He's walking along with this assembly of monks. He's looking for sanctuary here. And one of the elders in the community was walking along with him. And he says, well, actually, he uses his hair on this thing. He undoes his hair and lets his hair fall into the spot, Buddha, lets his hair fall into the spot where the sanctuary should be.

[21:43]

And the elder runs up. He takes a stake, a piece of wood, and it is built twice. Sanctuary is now built. What kind of sanctuary is that? What is that? What are they saying about home, really? That place that it could be right there or right now without the building, without the buying a house, without a land, without even freedom. How does one find home when they're incarcerated are in a refugee camp? Or how does one find home when they're at Zen Center? And they live here, if you live here. So these are the questions that came up, and I think part of what happens in this process is first, how do we perceive home?

[22:48]

What is our perception of it? And if our perception of home has many different layers as it does, culturally, spiritually, you know, these different things that we would like to have so that we feel we're at home. And if we're not home, we can find sanctuary within the home, which many of us find in this country. We find sanctuary. In order to stay in the country, we find sanctuary. So what are we perceiving? Because how we perceive home is how we will suffer not having it. This is what the Buddha was getting, how we perceive it. So did the Buddha perceive the sanctuary as a blade of grass? Maybe not. Or a stick pounded into the ground? Maybe not. And so this journey is one of looking into one's own culture, identity,

[23:54]

acknowledging what has happened, what's in the past consciousness of one's own being and existence, what is there, understanding that, and then bringing that forward when the suffering of not belonging or some way of feeling homeless is there or not having a home is present, even including not being housed. I'm including housing. And so when we're exploring that, it can open up the suffering and it can open up the idea of home to a more vast place so that you can at least acknowledge it and awaken to what is going on for you and for yourself. So I had an experience that I do talk about in this book where... I was scheduled to, well, not scheduled, but wanted to, in my mind, I was scheduled to buy a house.

[24:58]

And this was back, I guess, 2013 or 14 or something, maybe 12. And it's a second house. It would be the second house. And in the process of that, there was so much... anger or rage at the system and how difficult it is to buy the economic disparity that exists in the world. And this utter need as just a living being to have safety without the struggle to have it. And through all of this rage, I could feel an intense anger at the owner and felt that I wanted the owner to do something different. I want all owners to do something different, to know that a one-bedroom apartment at 4,000 could easily be all right at even two, which is crazy.

[26:08]

But even at 15 or 12, they know that that still is all right in terms of their bank account. So I had this hope and this prayer. So then I would get all, you know, high and mighty on my idea of what should be done and how it should be done and blaming. In the end, I had a conversation later with the owner, did not get the house, had a conversation later with the person and said, over tea, I was kind of reluctant about doing that. It's like, I don't know why I would have a conversation about something that, you know, was difficult, but I'll do this because it seemed like it should be done. And I went, we had tea and right in the middle while she was talking, suddenly I couldn't hear, I couldn't hear a word she was saying. I just see the mouth, her mouth was moving. And I couldn't even hear what I was saying, you know, cause I was responding back. And there was this void, and the void was that it didn't matter what was being said.

[27:10]

And the words weren't so much important as to what I was experiencing in the moment. And I got really close, really close to this place of ancestors and not having a land, and not having a language. And you all know that Manuel is the slave owner of my people. My last name is not my last name. It's not. And having that visceral feeling as she was talking, knowing that no matter who he got the house, that this core uprising within me was... showing me something about what I've been carrying around and how I've been relating even to home and to land and to belonging. And it was so visceral.

[28:11]

I was surprised that it felt like I didn't know who she was. I didn't know who I was, where we were. And I mean, the conversation kind of ended when I was in this void and I walked out. I talk about it in the book. I walked out of the coffee shop and I was in Berkeley and I didn't like, where am I? I didn't even know where I was because everything that was relatively explainable was no longer there. And so I began to really look at the depth of what home means and why it is a core practice within the Dharma and in Buddhism. And... And so when I sat with it longer, I realized that the Buddha, when he said find home within to me now does not mean necessarily I have to feel it in here, but that I had to understand the ways in which I was holding myself back and the ways in which I didn't acknowledge anything that was ancestral within me that was playing out.

[29:23]

you know, in my consciousness about home and how I was with the owner, you know, I was like, okay, you know, we can talk and talk, but this is not going to really touch what has, what this whale I have been, you know, walking around with. And so sometimes we hear the words of Buddha and we think that we understand it because it's been translated into English already. but we really don't know what in Sanskrit or Pali it means. And so I'm still not sure if we know what it means, finding home within and finding home where the heart is. Where is the heart and where is the home? And so I do know that it starts with acknowledging where you're not feeling that. So you can understand how you're viewing the world and how you are feeling about it, you know, the world.

[30:24]

And then once that process happens, you get to understand where your identity lies and how your identity is also, you know, complex and complicated by where you live and your land and these kinds of things. And so I began to see that home, first of all, finding home, it sounds like it's something we can go do. You know, like finding it. And so I realized even that verb, finding home, wasn't necessarily how I was thinking about it. Like you go around and you look for it and it's sought after. Or even home itself, you know. Was the Buddha talking about the home that we know? You know, the home that we know. Or was he talking about that home in which you understand suffering and you're liberated from it by understanding it?

[31:28]

So home is not a thing necessarily. That's why I just put that blade of grass. It's not the blade of grass. It's not the post. It's life itself. that home is life itself. And that broadens it to be wherever you are, wherever you are alive, that's home. So in Haiti, I have a few Haitian friends now, and I met one as a priest, and I'm planning on making a trip to Haiti to visit with a priestess, high priestess in Mambo one day. She found me, through an article I wrote on the systemic oppression and the second noble truth. I wrote this article, and she wanted to know who I was. So we've been in contact, and I asked her how might she perceive home, because I was in the middle of this. And she said the word for home in Haitian is laque, L-A-K-A-Y, laque.

[32:37]

So it's Creole. Creole. My family speaks Creole too, but Louisiana Creole. Haitian Creole is a bit different. So laque means, so when they ask you, do you have a laque? Where are you a person? They'll ask where you live or where you're home or where you're from. They'll say, where are you a person? Instead of asking you where you're from. So where are you a person? A very interesting question. And especially in our practice where a person can really be deconstructed, right? There's no person. Right? So is there a person? Is there a person? There's no person. There's no person without... other persons, other living beings.

[33:40]

That's what they mean by no person, no self. So the Buddha wasn't talking about a home for oneself. So when we come in, I'm finding a home for me. Hope you all get one. Good luck. Good luck with that. And so even the sense of a monastery or a Buddhist center is It's that way of actually not having a monastery and not having a Buddha center, but having a location in which one is a person and one comes in as a person, fills the place as sanctuary, and then knows that the life that is happening within it is the sanctuary, not the building. So that makes it kind of difficult because then when you have a complaint, it's like, okay, wait a minute. It's just life going on here. Where do I go? How do I handle this? Or you need to talk to somebody about the practice.

[34:41]

How do I handle that? So you learn eventually in the sitting and in the stillness that you can't really touch home. Sorry to say. You can't have it and you can't possess it. Sorry to say. You know that these things are even if you're going out searching for it. So I found that home and most things that are ultimate in our teachings, most of the absolute teachings, are things that we meet along the way. They're experiences that we meet. Home is an experience we meet along the way. It can happen in the moment, and it can happen two years from now, three years from now, ten years. Wow. I finally feel that place where I understand the suffering, I understand how the nature of life in which there is suffering. And I do understand that there is a way of viewing it.

[35:43]

There's some intention around it. There's some speech that has nothing to do with how we speak, but some speech that is related to how we practice. That's why speech is connected to how we practice. Not our method, not our approach. not our technique to speech, but how we practice. That's how we reach and meet speech. So home was closely related to Buddha's Four Noble Truths. This is what I'm bringing in here. And closely related to the two truths, the absolute and the relative truth. So when we have a home as an experience, it allows every day... and every moment and everything around home to happen. So I thought it would be really difficult to do this talk today because I feel a lot of grief in the world and a lot of grief in my own life as I'm in the middle of losing another home.

[36:47]

And as you'll see in here, this whole book is about the different places I lost home and I'm losing home again, physical home, housing, losing housing. And so sitting with that and looking at the ways in which many, many homes have gone by houses, in that sense, home as house. And the house we were in was a partner, and that's how we got in the house at all in Oakland. And definitely paying way, way below market rate. And so the person, the partner... who have most of the ownership has been diagnosed with cancer and needs to sell the home. So it's like, hmm. It's like a repeat of the story I just told you about when I went to the tea with the person. It's a repeat. And I said, why am I repeating? Why am I repeating these experiences? So I've been sitting with, this time at least I had no rage and anger toward me.

[37:51]

where the owner, the one who had the most money or the partner, it wasn't that I had none at all. And not because she was diagnosed with cancer, but because I had another experience of the same experience before and had come to acknowledge where the visceral rage was coming from, not having a last name, not knowing if I'm Igbo or whatever. not knowing my tribe. So that kind of visceral loss and grief and knowing that. So I know that. So when this happened again, which was two days before us to go teach at Green Gulch, two days, she comes and says, this house is gone. Like, wow. So I continue to sit with knowing that this is not home necessarily. It's a house. and that I'm still meeting that place of home every moment, wherever I am, wherever there is life, wherever there is living beings, where there is a person.

[39:04]

For me, usually there's people involved in that home experience that I meet, or sanctuary, wherever that is. So this time the experience is more of understanding and not attached to some past experience, historical otherwise, in my consciousness, but one of somehow being freed of something. And that's why I didn't feel any anger. It was interesting, I felt free. like free, even this is like my umpteenth house I'm losing. And I'm fortunate enough to have been practicing at Zen Center to be invited to teach at Green Gulch. When I was offered the position, they said, would you like to, you know, teach at Green Gulch and come live here?

[40:05]

And my first answer was no. You know, really like just right, the first answer was no. And I was like, well, that was quick. And this situation happened before the news about the house, right? This is before. And so then I said, well, you said you wanted to live in a more rural area. And I'm going, okay, God, not, not, not. Not schedules in center, 4 o'clock wake-up time. So I turned around and said yes. And then this thing happened with the partner, happened later, like a few weeks later, this place no longer exists for you. And I was like, wow, if I had got really caught up, it would have been an interesting thing to see and to watch and to just be, you know, landing in my room knowing I'm now a resident of Mirror Beach and not Oakland.

[41:08]

Like, okay, something here has happened for now. Something has happened. And then looking at that experience. So what I'm showing you is that it's just moment to moment, life to life that we're meeting. And home is one of the things, peace, harmony, safety. We're looking for these things, but they're here for us. They're here for us. We just have to meet it. Now, what it looks like, we don't know. We don't know. And I don't know. you know, I won't be at Green Gulch forever. I don't know what the next step is, you know, and whether or not, you know, I could get an actual house. But that's one discussion, you know, and there's definitely a political discussion around housing in this whole country, in this whole land. It always has been, always has been. This is not new. This is You know, we're talking centuries and centuries and centuries old of who's on the land.

[42:16]

Whose land is it? What? And when possession became important, possessing land, and when boundaries became important, there weren't always boundaries. There weren't any boundaries. You know, we got more boundaries. Like right here, are we in? What part of San Francisco are we in? You know, there's so many. No, that's what. Give me one of those. Noe Valley. Hayes Valley. It's San Francisco. So if you say I'm in Hayes Valley or Noah Valley or Ingleside, then people are like, oh. I remember when I moved here, I didn't know any of the different areas. And I had a job. I had a really good job when I moved here from L.A., Los Angeles. And I said, you know, I'm glad I catch the bus because I'm really not quite sure where I live. I just know where to get on the bus and get off. And they said, well, where do you live? And I said, well, over there where those towers are.

[43:19]

And they said, in Twin Peaks? How did you get in Twin Peaks? And to me, it meant nothing. And it meant everything to them. That Twin Peaks was some, you know, then it's like, okay, it's some special place where people are who have a lot of money in. I didn't have that money like that. I didn't have that. But how these things work and really trying to disconstruct them and disrupt this kind of thinking we have about land and home. And if you are one that owns land, that you really look at what it means to... to be on land and to have a place, to have a roof. And it doesn't mean to feel guilty and then run out and take care of everybody who doesn't because giving based on guilt is giving based on guilt. And it's just not the best giving way of giving.

[44:27]

So I just want to invite you to more. I wanted to read... Away, away. [...] Elah, elah, elah. Away, away. Away, away. Away, away. Elah, elah, elah.

[45:30]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:58]

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