Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for coming to the Dharma Talk today at Green Gulch Farm. A reminder for those of you who know we have enabled live transcript, which I'm right now trying to turn off on my own device. So you're welcome to have that if it's helpful to you. And you also in your settings should be able to turn it off if you prefer not to have the transcripts gone. So today I'm very happy and honored to be introducing our speaker, Duncan Ryuken Williams. I will be offering the Dharma Talk today. He's a friend of Green Gulch, a scholar and author, professor at USC, and Soto Zen priest at Zenshuji Soto Mission in Los Angeles, a social activist all around, an amazing an inspiring dharma teacher.

[08:51]

So thank you, Duncan, so much for coming. We have also with us, as many of you know, we are in practice period. Here in the practice period has gathered in person and is watching all together, and they will lead us in the opening chant at practice period. So please, if you'd like, chant along with them the opening verse. Thank you. Well, good morning, and so glad to join your sangha this morning once again.

[10:12]

You know, in our Japanese-American temples, we have a little bit of a strange practice for dharma messages, and we have to give some kind of a little bit of a corny joke to begin. it can't be a good joke, but it can't be horrific either. And so I'm going to start with that. I was talking just a few minutes ago with Jiryu about this gathering, and well, he mentioned to me that many of you have been studying Sandokai, a text, a very important text for Soto Zen tradition. And I was originally going to say something about the kind of matters of race in America and Buddhist approaches to racial reconciliation.

[11:16]

And usually I get asked to talk about subjects of that kind, about anti-Asian animus and so on. But I thought I would try to mash it together. And in the last few seconds, I've been trying to think about this. Anyway, the joke is this, which is that among... I also teach at a university and among university professors, there's a little, how should we say, joke that is circulating where some of my junior faculty, I'm the department chair, and junior faculty sent me this joke about how as assistant professors, they relate to this thing that's going around. And it basically says, if you're a PhD student and you have a important presentation, conference talk or something, and it's seven days away from the talk, you start to get worried, panic a little bit, get ready and prepare. But if you're an assistant professor and you have a little bit more confidence, it can be even like seven hours before your talk, you start really preparing your talk. And then if you are a full professor, which I became just two years ago, it's like seven minutes before the talk, you start to get ready.

[12:25]

And then I was like, well, if you're a Zen teacher, maybe you only have seven seconds to get ready. to do the talk. And so my thought today was, you know, I'll give a talk, but I'm also happy to within seconds or whatever, you know, more like a Dharma exchange than just a straightforward Dharma talk. I will give a Dharma talk, you know, some message, but I hope we can also have some time for each other. Just... and within seven seconds, trying to understand what we are feeling, thinking. And what I will try to do, I've been trying to think about how to take a few things I wanted to say about the topics I've been thinking about recently, about is there a kind of fruitful Buddhist approach or a way to think about some of these questions about racial justice in America?

[13:26]

today and of the past. And I sometimes talk about it as the karma of the nation, like what we inherit and what we have to face today and how can we, whatever background we are, try to approach it, but from a Buddhist vantage point. So that's one kind of talk I want to share with you. But also I respect to learn that you have been studying sandokai, which is, you know, we chant all the time, and it's very, how should we say, on the one hand, very profound and ever-revealing text, and yet also sometimes very clear, straightforward teaching is there. And so I thought maybe I'll try to find a way to say something about both. So this is something I think any of you who know me from before, I've heard maybe that my interest in Buddhism and Dogen and so forth, Soto Zen Buddhism began when I was a teenager, when I was living in Japan.

[14:38]

And I was trying to struggle through my own understanding of, you know, having grown up in a family that was of mixed, both racial, religious, every kind of language background. My mom is, you know, very... traditional Japanese family from Yawanashi prefecture, my grandfather's Dankasodai, or like the head, you know, of the Buddhist temple. And I kind of received that lineage in my family. But my dad is from England. And so we, you know, spoke also some, tried to speak anyway. My English was not so good back then, but English. And then we went to the... St. Albans Church in Roppongi area of Tokyo, which is an Anglican church because it's British Church of England. And so we grew up kind of like Buddhist and Christian, sometimes English. My brother and I would speak sometimes English and then end the same sentence in Japanese or other way around. And so I began to question, you know, I have a phenotypically.

[15:45]

I don't think I look as Japanese as, let's say, my younger brother. could almost pass as Japanese. He looked more genetically like my Japanese uncle, actually. And so I had this kind of face and a name like Duncan Williams. So I couldn't fit in so well in Japan as a Japanese person, even though that's kind of how I grew up. And when I went to the UK, I also found very quickly I couldn't quite fit in there. My father sent me to the UK to do a boarding school for two years because I guess my English was so bad compared to my Japanese language abilities. And so he thought if I did it intensively for a few years. So then I realized just how I thought maybe that's where I'll fit in. But of course, I think myself and a kid from Pakistan, a kid from Hong Kong, we were the non-

[16:47]

people who didn't grow up in the UK. And so it was very, very difficult to try to fit into British society and all the norms I thought I knew from my father. Nothing was relevant to trying to adapt to life there. So all to say that my search for Buddhism always had to do with this question of who am I? And this is a very Buddhist question and Dogen asks it in... To study the Buddha way is to study the self. So this is to investigate who we are deeply. This is a very important gateway for our practice. And so when I met my first Zen teacher, he's my Zen teacher today too, but ordination teacher, when I was a teenager, he... came from a very rural Japanese temple, but my family also had a house in this area called Nagano Prefecture.

[17:54]

And he would tell me, for you, you need to not become attached to either extreme. Don't think that you are English or Japanese, or don't think that you are just... Buddhist or Christian or any kind of dual binary or two things don't stick because the freedom will come when you're not stuck in one thing. And I was probably like 16 or 17 when he said something like this. And it kind of stuck in my mind as a kind of nice hint about where is freedom and liberation. And also, where can you find your true self? And so what was interesting was, I think, probably along the way, I found another person who grew up in Japan, and she is of multiracial heritage, and she ended up being a scholar of cultural economics or something like that at one of the big...

[19:12]

universities in Paris and she started to study this question of people who are of mixed background and multilingual background and so forth and it was framed in terms of do you know companies benefit from people who can have multiple languages or have multiple cultural backgrounds. Is there any benefit to that? Or is that a detriment to hiring such individuals? And in the process, she came up with four kind of categories of how to understand identity for people of multi, you know, ethnic or racial or whatever backgrounds. And it, so I just want to mention what these are. And because it, I promise it'll relate to Sandokai in a moment. But she said, you know, the first type of, she studied like 5,000 people. And she said, when people grow up that way, some people really don't like it that they have to deal with multiplicity.

[20:16]

And they want to find a more kind of simple way to... figure out who they are and their identity. And they like to say like, what is my essence or my foundation? Or if I have parents of two different backgrounds, which of them is kind of more foundational? And then you kind of like pick one, choose one, that kind of way. So she calls that foundational identity formation. And I thought about that one and I can understand the appeal of it. It's much easier sometimes just to say I'm this or I'm that. So I can understand that. But I was like, that's a kind of little bit non-Buddhistic way of formulating oneself. But I can understand how some people will think like that. And then she said other people, second one is called situational identity formation. She said, you know, sometimes based on your situation, you shift your understanding of who you are and how you are in the world. And

[21:17]

I was like, oh, that one I can understand very well. You know, when I'm in the UK with my British grandparents or something, I'll probably act a little more British way. And when I'm in Japanese way, you know, my wife likes to make fun of me. I make phone calls to Japan all the time. And, of course, it's time different now. But I will start speaking Japanese. And then apparently my voice modulation changes. And I start bowing on the phone. And she's like, they can't even see. She's Korean-American. So I say... They can't even see you. And why are you doing that? And that's so stupid. But I think in the situation, it feels somehow like I know they know I am bowing or something like this. So somehow we, how should we say, code switch or shift up. And based on our karmic situation, we shift and our identity. So that's a different kind of style, right, of how we... think about ourselves and how we exist in the world, situational identity. But then she said, some people say, I don't like doing that.

[22:20]

I like to have a kind of integrated, unified identity that I present the same in whatever situation I'm in. And she said, people who lean that way, they call it integrationalist identity, but like the idea that I may be multiple things, but inside myself, I've kind of found a way to unify or merge or integrate or something like this, and that I can take that self wherever I go. And it's not foundational in the sense that it recognizes the multiplicity, but it's unified in a certain way. So she says that's called integration with identity. Some people really lean in that direction. And then finally, she said there's a fourth type of way called transcendentalist identity. That is to say, You know, if you are, you know, it is true, British and Japanese or Buddhist, like, you know, this identity that it is a humanly constructed thing.

[23:24]

And so in that sense, it's not, you know, it's not, it's artificial and we use it for convenience purpose. But so she says, some people are like, I refuse to identify with this identity. identity formation, this one or this one. And I want to have an identity that's beyond that, transcends that. Like I'm a human or I'm a sentient being or, you know what I mean? So to get away from some things that are artificially created. And so I was like, but you know what? I think now that I'm, you know, in my 50s, probably I would answer this differently if I was... back when I was 16 years old and first trying to investigate these matters. But now that I'm 50-something, I'm like, I've been through all four. I've leaned onto one style or another of those identity styles and cycled through all four of them probably multiple times by this point.

[24:30]

And I think something about, and this is where I'm going to get to Sandokai in a moment, there's something about Buddhist vantage point. that actually allows us to actually have some freedom to take various kinds of vantage points, position points, etc. And that to understand something like Sandokai, we should at least get a little bit of sense of, in the longer Buddhist history and teachings, where does a text like Sandokai lie? and what kind of ideas is it based on, the kind of vantage points. So, you know, if you've already been studying this, this may sound very basic and repetitional, but, you know, Sandokai is such an important key text for Soto Zen lineage, and yet it predates, you know, Dungshan or...

[25:37]

Tozan, the founder of, you know, we call us a Soto for a reason, right? Sozan and Tozan. And the founders, the latter character, Soto, the To is in Chinese way pronounced Dungshan, but in Japanese way we say Tozan. And so Tozan is, you know, 807 to 869. And Sekito Kisen, who writes Sandokai, is one generation earlier. And It's a text that is very much in the lineage of what follows with Tozan and his five ranks, and I'll come back to that later, but his ideas about absolute and relative, but also... comes after like Jir E and the Tiantai commentaries on the three truths and the Ji and Bi and Chu in Japanese ways of talking like ultimate reality, phenomenal or relative reality, and then Chu, the kind of middle idea.

[26:44]

So that's a very important Chinese philosophy developed, not in our school of Buddhism, but... precedes us as a Tientai or Tendai Buddhist philosophy. But Sekitoki-sen is very much leaning on or drawing from that lineage. And of course, that also goes all the way back to India to Jury's, and of course, is relying on Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti and Dharmakirti, all the kind of manjyamaka thinkers or which are thinkers of India who put forth this idea that the world as we perceive it should be understood as having two kind of registers or two perspectival vantage points, one called Paramata Satya and one called Samvaruti Satya, ultimate... or absolute reality and the phenomenon or relative reality. So when we study something like Sandokai, there's teachings before it.

[27:49]

And then right after Sandokai, there's our founder, Tozan or Dungshan, who has his teaching of five ranks. And so it lies kind of in the middle of this long lineage of teaching about how to see the world. And my argument today is that it's a little bit related to mixed race theory about positionality and how we situate ourselves in how and why we might want to look at reality in a given moment in a certain kind of vantage point. So, you know, we have, I wanted to say one more word about that. well, Sandokai, the word, the title of the text itself, and then a few of the lines, just to remind ourselves what is that text. And of course, Sandokai, in the Chinese characters, it has this connection to the idea of things that are differentiated, things that are therefore

[29:06]

of the phenomenal reality or relative reality. And in the Tendai thought, it would be connected with the character Ji for the relative reality. And Do is a flip. It's a idea of kind of a unified reality, the common reality, emptiness, the things that are not subject to differentiation. And so San Do, the Do, It just means like, normally in Japanese language, in the vernacular even, not even in Buddhist language, we use it to mean like something that is equal or same or unified or something like that. So that's the... From Tendai Thought, the character Di or the absolute reality, ultimate reality, unified reality, that kind of idea, is in the title of the text itself, San Do. Then Kai, Kai usually in the Japanese language, in the vernacular, we use it to mean like a contract, an agreement.

[30:14]

And in this case, probably we mean like when two parties come together to, you know, mutually come together in agreement, something like this. And so this text itself is saying, the title is just proclaiming. This is a text about the coming together or merging together of... Relative reality with ultimate reality, with a differentiation with the unity or something like that. And the rest of the text is a kind of large poem giving us a different vantage points of how to understand when we embrace both. This is like me, like not rejecting either my father or mother. When we embrace both our parents, when we embrace everything. about who we are, our Buddha nature, as well as all of our nonsense, we embrace everything, then what happens?

[31:15]

Right? Then what happens? And how can we see things? And I feel that all of Sandokai is kind of a different lines are giving us some hints about how to see things. And so I didn't want to go so, so much into line by line, you know, that's not the purpose, but the As you're doing the Sandokai study, if we can understand that and understand also in our lineage, the founding teacher, Tozan's way, he also has this theory about the, he calls it five ranks or in Japanese way, we say goi. Ranks is maybe not the right word. Usually that's the way it's translated, but it's like five, ii means like positions. Five, I like to translate more like vantage points. And there's five of them. And they also use the language of the Tendai philosophy that I mentioned, GD and Chu, Chu meaning the middle.

[32:17]

And all of the five ranks of Tozanryokai, the founder of our lineage of Chinese, you know, founder of Soto Zen Buddhism, Shochukai, Henshuchou, all those teachings, the five positions where he says the... the language is a little the character a little bit different but it's basically same thing he's saying the straight and the crooked are in the middle or you can see the crooked in the straight or the straight and the crooked or you can see that when they merge together all these things it's the same thing as saying GD Chu the Tendai way like what comes up in Sandokai that the absolute and relative and coming together, merging together in the middle somewhere and embracing everything sometimes and seeing each as its own sometimes. All those positionalities are represented in our founders, Tozan's teachings. And then later, our Japanese founder, Dogen Zenji, also...

[33:18]

Many of his texts are just explications of the same thing over in slightly different ways. So you read something like Sanseukyo, Mountains and Waters Sutra, and you imagine yourself, if you're a dragon, the water looks like a dragon. You know, because dragons in East Asian mythology live in the, you know, underwater in the oceans. It's like a palace. And if you're a hungry ghost, the water is like a burning flame. So it's all about vantage points and positionalities and the freedom to be able to move between the positionalities. And this is what I was trying to get at with the mixed race. transcendentalist situation. When you can move freely, comes a certain liberation. And yet, it's not like you land on one and that's it. And I think Sandokai says something like that, right?

[34:19]

That you come to absolute and if you think that's it, that's not quite right. You have to keep on being able to move freely. freely. I'm going to end with another to relate to Sekitoki-san, and I'll try to wrap up my thoughts about Sandokai, but the author of it, Sekitoki-san, has a beautiful poem called Song of the Grass Hut. In that poem, which again resonates very well with Sandokai, he says... Again, I hope my English translation is not so off, but he says something along the lines of, let us let go of myriad years and completely settle. And that's when we can open our hand and walk carefree. And he says thousands of words, myriads of interpretations are only there for you to free yourself from your obstructions.

[35:28]

So those are the verses in his important poem called Song of Grass Hut in the English rendition. But the idea of like, we let go of generations of habits and generations of fixed way of thinking, human society has given us about who we are, what we, he said, When we open our, you know, because that's about grasping onto something, even in like we grasp, but opening the hand, letting go, is actually a key aspect of getting to a position of being able to see things clearly and see things in multiplicity, see things in a way of interlinkedness, where all of the words on the teachings, they can actually be a... trap or kind of like an obstruction. But if we understand that they can also be hints of guidance and teachings that if we take it right, we can free.

[36:36]

And anything can be a, you know, Tozan, the founder of our lineage in China, it said he was walking and saw a stream and saw his own reflection in the stream and he woke up. He saw something very deep about the nature of reality himself. and his reflection, the stream. So anything, any moment can be opening. Anything can be Dharma gate. Any words can be the same myriad of words and teachings, but they can be a trap. They can be the things we hold on to. Like my teacher was saying when I was 16 years, you can think you're X or Y, but don't get stuck there. That's a type of very nice teaching of Buddhism. is we are given many, many hints and many, many guidances, and yet we can walk freely if we don't get stuck in just one perspective. So that's why Tozan gives us five. That's why Jury gives us three.

[37:38]

That's why Sandokai gives us three and a half or something. You know what I mean? It's a very... complex text in a certain way. And so we can freely move and study these texts and study these teachings. And if they're helpful, then we can use them to free up. And then we can also get a little bit stuck. So if we get too locked in to something. So I think that's why. Also, Sandokai Tech says things like, you know, in the lightness, you can see the darkness, but don't kind of get stuck trying to understand, you know, that darkness. It's not about the same thing, you know, flip side. It's about how we're interlinked and how we are interconnected and how our Buddha nature is interconnected with our nonsense. All the kind of regular personality quirks and... et cetera, we may have in our karmic composition is beautifully interpenetrating with Buddha nature.

[38:42]

And yet each thing is kind of, you know, we can also take it on its own and it's on its own has a kind of integrity and purpose and so forth. And so I'm going to try to end with going back to what I was originally going to talk about, which was America's racial karma and topics like that. But it occurs to me that we have some very powerful teachings within our Buddhist texts and language and so forth that allow us to not get stuck in either difference or sameness. And that's, I think, our teaching of Sandokai. Not to get stuck in difference, but also recognize fully everything. And somehow freedom from suffering, freedom from racial suffering, freedom from suffering of things around race that have been done in the past and sometimes even continue and endure in the present because that's the way racial karma works, as does collective karma in general.

[39:51]

It's not our doing, but we inherit many things. And how we deal with what we inherit how we deal with what our parents tell us, what our grandparents tell us, what our ancestors have gone through in body and mind, if they experienced racial hurt, if they perpetrated racial hurt. All these things are kind of transmitted. And whether we like it or not, we have to, we inherit all of it. And so we inherit a lot of... nonsense, we inherit a lot of goodness, we inherit a lot of virtue, we inherit a lot of hurt, we inherit all this, and yet we are also Buddhas and free, and we have to deal with it in the middle. And so this is, I think, the beautiful thing about something like, you know, let's just end with, like, Jule Natavindra, that we are like a, you know, beautiful,

[40:54]

We live in a universe that is of multitude, of infinite multitude. That's the difference aside, right? That all of us are kind of unique jewels in a vast and infinite net. It's like a tennis court net with the knots in it. We're like a knot in, you know, each one of us are distinct, beautiful, differentiated things. We hold them together. multitude within ourselves and yet we are like a jewel and a mirror you know cut in such a way that in each of us we can see each other and and and we can see each other's pain and we can see each other's hopes and aspirations and and because each of the jewels are mirrors when we see each other we see so much if we care to look, and we see our cell, inside our cell, our mirror, our kitchen, you know, Dogen's Tenzo Kyokun metaphor of we are our kitchen and we have to understand our ingredients, we have to look deeply, that question I raised at the beginning, who am I?

[42:08]

That's a good one. But Dogen's teaching doesn't stop there because he says when we look at that, we look and see that we are actualized by 10,000 things. So, And then we have to keep going. And we not only see that, but we pursue a way of freedom that shows that there is no, how should we say, beginning or end. And there's no up and down. I think Sandokai likes to also say, you know, there's no north and southern patriarchy. You know, we find a world beyond that doesn't leave any traces. This is very, very beautiful teaching. And so we have different positionalities and different karmic situations. And I think this is the wonderful teaching of something like Sandokai or Five Ranks or Three Truths or Jira Yi or whatever, is depending on what we need and what we each other need, we can change our positions a little bit and be free and help each other to release suffering, including...

[43:14]

you know, I was going to say about racial suffering or kind of things like that, the hurts that continue and linger. And sometimes we deal with it by directly, actually directly going to the hurt. And other times we let go of that and we reframe and that helps. Or sometimes, you know, there's so many techniques of how to handle difficulty that the Buddha taught us. And so we are the inheritors of so much teaching and so much perspective and so much compassion. And so that's what we, I think, need is to handle many of the things in our American society or global society. We have a lot as Buddhists to bring to the table of how to do it with each other. as Buddhists, but also with people who are not Buddhists or who don't share our point of view.

[44:18]

How do we deal with that difference as well? And so with that, maybe I'll stop speaking and then be glad to do more like a Dharma exchange. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. As Duncan said, if anybody has a question or comment, please feel free to raise your hand. You should be able to find maybe on the reactions button on your menu, a hand raise option. You can also send something in the chat. And if anyone from the practice period wants to offer something, also welcome to. Yes, please.

[45:27]

First of all, I just wanted to thank you for coming and speaking to our community. I've heard you several times and I'm so grateful for your teaching. So welcome. I don't know if you know who I am. Yes, of course. Again, welcome. My question really was when you mentioned techniques, we have so many techniques for dealing with these challenges, particularly racial challenges. the challenges of racial discrimination in our culture. I'm wondering if you could just mention a few of those that you found either yourself that are helpful or that you've heard of. I think we're looking for those in our community as well. Thank you so much for that question. You know, so one thing is, I mentioned the idea of karma of a nation. It comes from Reverend Kyoshiro Tokunaga. He was a person who served the San Jose Buddhist temple for many years. And back in World War II, he was right after Pearl Harbor, taken by a train and taken to one of these internment camps and spent his war years there.

[46:38]

And he was physically quite ill. And on the train going to these internment camps, he met African-American like a train porter who helped, you know, his physical condition so he could survive. But also talk to him about, oh, you know, what you're going through with the targeting of, you know, Japanese-Americans or Buddhist people or whatever is something, you know, African-American people went through before. And based on that conversation, psychologically, it helped him to feel like, oh, you know, I'm not alone. And this is something I think number one is very important is I think a Buddhist way to approach matters of racial questions around hurt both present and past, how to repair kind of racial not only trauma that continues

[47:42]

for many people, if they experience that kind of thing, you know, it's not only in the mind, but in the body. So how do we kind of attend to kind of repairing that? I think, and there's some techniques we can talk about just on that, but more broadly, the first point I wanted to make was he recognized that a lot of these things, that he wasn't the first person. He wasn't the only person who experienced racial discrimination. And there are many other people who experienced things and who persisted, survived, overcame some difficulty and that we can learn from each other and that to become freer and more capable and more resilient and more when we're faced with things that are how should we say, quite big, some people even call it a structural part of our society and our history, to know that you don't have to solve it just by yourself, that in itself is already a great teaching of Buddhism.

[48:56]

You know, we say, our first line of bodhisattva vow is, sentient beings are innumerable, yet we vow to liberate all. So we can only become free, you know, together. This is very, very powerful teaching for how we can come together to solve things like racial problems of the past. And I mentioned the idea of racial karma because it's also the solution is not done alone, but also the problem is not an alone problem. When I was growing up... I felt like I was the only one who didn't know how to belong in this world or something like that. Once you know there are other people who have been able to figure out a way to see things, move forward, and so forth, that's powerful. I'm going to share something very private, but my brother, unfortunately, he committed suicide when he was 24 years old. He couldn't fit in either Japan or he went to the UK.

[49:59]

I experienced a lot of discrimination there too, but, um, he had much worse experience. Uh, people would not only like verbal things is like, I was very used to normal, but he, they put feces on his door and, uh, just, uh, kind of him being part Asian was a very, uh, and as I said, he looked more Asian than I did. So he really had difficulty for two years living there and, and, uh, ultimately he just couldn't. And he also came out as, uh, gay. So he just couldn't find his place in the world. And I think I've always been a little bit, how should I say, motivated around these questions because not just me alone, but like my brother and many other people I know who have had difficult thing and not knowing, I think if he had, I was too young, you know, he's 24, I was 25. Like we can only share insight or Buddhist teaching or some perspective that might be helpful, you know, when the karmic circumstance, right?

[51:07]

And it wasn't quite right then. And I couldn't share anything that was going to be helpful for him. But I've been intent on like, how can we do that for other people, maybe in a similar situation around race or, you know, any other thing. And I think one of the key things I figured out was to know that you're not alone. That's a really, And I think sangha is that for us Buddhist people. Why the Buddha said that's an important refuge or treasure. So that's number one. Maybe it's not a technique, but it's a treasure from our Buddhist heritage is something called sangha. That means that we practice together and not alone. Sometimes we have to... be alone, but we're doing it together at least with other people. There's something powerful about the Sangha. So that's number one for me. There's more specific things and that what we inherit as things that are difficult, that our parents may have experienced racial discrimination or may have perpetrated.

[52:22]

I always think about like There's a book by Isabel Wilkerson called Cast, and it's one image of this lynching that's happening in the American South. And we immediately think of what were the family members of the person who was lynched, how they're trying to process and go through when they lost their loved one like that. But I think a Buddhist way to think about this is there was this photograph of the lynching that she describes in words. And there's an 11-year-old white girl who is attending the lynching as if it were a picnic. They're having a picnic. And I'm like, what is the racial karma inherited by that 11-year-old girl to think that this is a normal thing to have a picnic around? And what does that 11-year-old girl's children and grand...

[53:24]

there as well. And to solve the issues around race in America, we have to all come together, whatever our racial background, because we inherit many things in our bodies and minds through all this, whether we like it or not, you know, we just inherit. So how can we take things and depersonalize, not make it about guilt or your responsibility, this and that, not like that type of way, you know, but a Buddhist way. which is about these are just that we inherit nonsense, whether we like it or not, of our ancestors, and we inherit the teachings and wisdom of our ancestors. And it's, you know, our life, we can do something to have some discernment and understanding. And when we inherit the nonsense, how do we transform it? This is the powerful message of especially... are more like Vajrayana teachings, is how do we take the most difficult things and not look away from it, not try to throw it away, not hide away from it or something, but take it and actually transform.

[54:37]

There's a power that we have in our lineages about transformation of even the most difficult things. And so... I don't know, the broad picture is something like that. And then there's specifics, I think, for each individual case or particular issues in a, I don't know, particular sangha or something. Like there's different things. But broadly, we have many, many teachings and tools. But to me, the big one is like we're not doing it alone and we're sangha and we're going to do it together. This is a powerful way to see how we can resolve these questions. And do it with a sense of wisdom, but also great sense of compassion that this is our life in the middle. Finding our freedom is going to require a lot of encounter with things that when we look at ourselves, when we look at our entirety, there is hurt.

[55:42]

And that's the beauty of Buddhism is that we are the religion that says, we're going to tackle the suffering, you know, head on. And sometimes we will have different, many, many techniques of directly tackling, transforming, but also sometimes, like, you need to let it be and do something else, and then it transforms itself. Or, you know, there's so many ways to take our teachings and, in each circumstance, do something. Sorry, I'm talking too much. So, but... I believe we have many teachings we can draw on and many rituals, ceremony, and not just philosophical ideas that we can use. And then most importantly, the compassion that comes from being together and practicing together in community. I see the hand, Joan, Joanne.

[56:42]

Thank you so much for this teaching. It just speaks to my heart in so many ways. And I too would recommend a book by Kazu Haga called Healing Resistance. He is Japanese American and also Buddhist. And we are reading this now as part of a book group. So you're mentioning this as practicing together. We are practicing nonviolence in this book group because he... is based on King nonviolence training. And he gives a lot of ways to deal with individual trauma and cultural trauma. So he's suggesting we need to look at that first and then be able to resist racism and other cultural oppressions. It's a fascinating, wonderful book. And in the back he does, he gives sequences of... different ways to approach this through gratitude practice or metta meditation, but you're, you're speaking to this and thank you for sharing your personal story because that too is just heartfelt.

[57:57]

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I guess if I would comment anything, it's something like, you know, sometimes because I'm active in different type of, you know, I'm one of the national co-chairs for a group called Tsurufa Solidarity. It's a Japanese American group. kind of racial justice organization. And because I hear a lot of discussion around how to, you know, approach these type of issues. And it is framed in terms of resistance or in terms of anti-racism. But I feel like one of the things that might be also helpful from Buddhist vantage point is say what we are for is and not just what we're against. We do the analysis, of course, with a clear mind about what the difficulties are. But that having, you mentioned gratitude practice, or like having something that, to me, that kind of resistance is actually, the real way is just having integrity about what we are for.

[59:07]

And we just do that together and that is a kind of maybe nice buddhist contribution we can make to our friends who may not be buddhist or others who are doing very beautiful important work but maybe sometimes i i often find like my friends who are in this type of area they get so burnt out so easily because it's a very tiring type of you know kind of process and so having some perspective and some way to also generate the positive things about, you mentioned gratitude, loving kindness. These are wonderful resources from within Buddhist tradition, but also other religious and non-religious have beautiful things that can contribute too. But that is about affirming, not just kind of going up against, you know. So thank you for sharing very much. Hi, thank you so much for your talk, Duncan.

[60:20]

Yeah, I just wanted to appreciate you sharing your experience and just how much it illuminates my own and kind of speaks to my own experience as a Japanese-American. Yeah, and along with Chen Singhan's book, Be the Refuge, I feel like I'm not alone. All of these experiences are varied and very unique, but yeah, something about... So there's this short film that I just watched. It's called Whole. I don't know if you know it, but there's this idea called hafu, as you know, like half Japanese. And there's the scene where... someone asks um the main character like oh you must be half and he's like no i'm whole and i think that um yeah it's just such a um powerful way of like you're saying like including your whole experience and and not sticking to one side and i've just been really appreciating that idea and and um just feeling into that and just just thank you very much

[61:35]

Oh, thank you so much for sharing. And yes, it's one of those things like the most difficult part is to accept it all, the all aspects, you know, what we bring. And some of it is including some difficulty. And, you know, especially when you are like trying to be zen, Buddhist teacher or whatever, like, you know, it's expected we would come with a perfection. But actually, we have many, many different things that are not so good things. But this is why I think Dogen's teaching is so important about taking even, you know, that Tenzo Kyokun teaching about the, we have to first take inventory of who you are, but understand what's in the kitchen. But then we cook a meal for everyone that includes maybe the rotting cabbage or the ingredients that are not the finest ingredients, but still we can make something of it.

[62:45]

This is a very powerful, powerful teaching that he made for us and not wasting anything, including some of the difficult things, I think is challenging, but worthy, worthy. Thank you. Thank you very much for the talk. I just have a short question. I think I'm always like when I read history about what happened in the past, racism. I always have strong emotions and people do read histories. So I think I understand a little bit from your talk how to think about history. But maybe can you maybe enlighten me a little bit more on how we should think about those like history and when we read them. Sorry. Okay. Sure. So I think.

[63:47]

I should say history at once can if how it's told can be both. distancing as well as connecting. You know, sometimes it feels like it seems so far away and unrelated to our lives and it's what happened to other people. And so it can seem distancing on the one hand and other times, depending on how it's told, we can resonate, feel something, even if it doesn't seem directly related to us or our experience. I remember when I first was thinking about this issue, for example, about how to... repair or this, you know, there's a concept called reparations or racial reparations. And, you know, in terms of like Japanese Americans, there was a recognition by the United States government. There was an apology letter and a check for $20,000. there was some reckoning and recompense that went along with reviewing that history of what happened during World War II.

[64:49]

But for Black Americans or Native Americans, like there's never been, you know, there were promised at the end of the Civil War, 40 acres and a mule. But it was a promise that was never kept. And Martin Luther King talked about it as a check that would bounce. And, you know, like there's these things that happened in our American past that Sometimes as somebody who immigrated from Japan when I was 17 years old, I don't have African-American ancestors. I don't have white American ancestors who either were enslaved people. So there's a tendency, especially among recently immigrated people, like, oh, that's not our history. It has nothing to do. So why should we be concerned? Or why would we reckon with America? But one thing I realized over time, there's a beautiful talk that someone called Frederick Douglass, he was a famous orator and former enslaved person himself, African-American, who gave a speech in Boston.

[65:58]

It's called his Composite Nation speech. And it was a speech when the Chinese were first being considered for... under federal immigration law for exclusion from America. In 1881, the United States first, you know, up to then, people just came to America from all parts of the world. They didn't need to get a visa. They didn't, you know, there wasn't a Department of Homeland Security or Immigration Naturalization Service. It was a very loose kind of border time. But for the first time in American life in 1881, they set a federal immigration law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was the first time the United States said one group of people, because of their race, and also they called them the heathen Chinese, these racially unassumable but also religiously unacceptable group because they're a majority Buddhist, they're not acceptable here in America. We're going to exclude them. And this gentleman, Frederick Douglass, gave a speech in Boston to advocate for Chinese immigration.

[67:01]

And he said, why? Why? Because America is a nation that is made better, is perfected in its union because of multiplicity, because of people coming in from many different parts of the world. Some people like him and his ancestors, you know, came into America, not voluntarily, but under enslavement. Other people came in from different, you know... areas of the world, other people were here as Native Americans, but he said all these people together compose a beautiful nation because of its multiple creeds or religious traditions, multiple ethnicities and so forth. So it was a vision of America that relied on multiplicity difference as the prerequisite for unity. And we talked about Sandokai today. It's multiplicity and unity kind of merging Sandokai in relationship to each other.

[68:05]

But Douglas's vision was one that said, you need that diversity to form a beautiful unity. And he was saying this speech, given this particular political situation. So I guess what I am trying to... to suggest is that when we look at history and we think it has nothing to do with us, some people like Douglas reminds us that the reason why he was defending Chinese immigrants, but also reminding people who are immigrants, whether from China or elsewhere, that the reason America looked attractive to come to for economic opportunity or whatever was built on the wealth that was created on the backs of enslaved African-Americans. And that connection that he made in his speech really struck me that even though I may be a recent immigrant, I don't have any, you know, family ties to some of this history, but.

[69:15]

I inherited all. I became a citizen after 33 years of being in this country. 2020, I became a U.S. citizen. And as a new citizen, I inherit all of it. That entire history flows into who I must contend with to be an American. And so I guess this is my way of saying something about we may think these histories are... disconnected from us, but actually everything our ancestors did, whether we have blood connection to them or not, we receive it and we have to contend with it. And we try to leave our life, we try to take down that mountain of suffering a little bit. That's our commitment as Buddhist people, is I guess how I would phrase it. So thank you for your question. Yuki? Thank you very much.

[70:23]

I'm a Japanese, lived in America more than half of my life. And we are the same generation, I guess. I was born in Miyagi Prefecture, and I have been practicing Zen in the San Francisco Zen Center. And your multiplicity of our life who we are also creates difficulty as a racism because race is not the universal experience, I think. And when a person of color like myself tells a white person, this experience is different for me because I'm not white. When often the white people learn the situation through their own lived experience, and it often does not make sense. This is usually where the desire to dismiss the claims of racial oppression comes from.

[71:33]

It doesn't make sense to them, so it cannot be, it does not make sense to you, so it cannot be right. But I often, and then as a Japanese or Asian, I don't fight. you know i just give up in a way okay but inside of me if your experience right why my experience is not right always a question so that racism is not only our inherited but like my inheritance more like a society is also making it it's um Like, when I grew up in Japan, I didn't have a notion of I'm a person of color. Because as you know, over 95% is Japanese. I'm not going to be called as a person of color.

[72:36]

But as soon as I came here, I started learning, oh, people consider me as a person of color. So how you deal with that? And there is a hierarchy. how people take seriously about who you are and some people won't because how you look like, how you speak, your gender, is that just that you say delusion? Yuki, thank you for your question and sharing your experience. This is what I found very interesting. When we honestly share different experiences we go through, then that's the time when other people who can, how should I say, they know what you... Everything you said is not a new thing.

[73:44]

Many people also experience such a thing. And... But sometimes if we don't talk about it, then we don't know who else also in our community, whether it's a Buddhist community or our work community or our neighborhood. First step is we have to talk to each other and share what you are saying. Because if we don't share these things, it can feel very isolating. You know what I mean? As if like we're the only person who goes through different, as you were saying, kind of dismissal or like not being included or different kinds of things happen. So first step is definitely... we have to share with each other what we go through. But then you mentioned, you know, you feel deflated or you want to give, you know, you don't know what to, you know.

[74:46]

And so that's the part where it's a little bit of like, on the one hand, we have to, we do things to become resilient and persist and survive. And that's a, we have a kind of defense mechanisms to do that, right? Because if people don't, hear what we are saying, or if people dismiss it very easily, quickly, and so forth, we have to put up certain barriers so that we don't get, feel like, you know what I'm saying? Like we have to, we set up some things to be able to survive and persist in a world that doesn't seem to understand what we're going through. So, but within all of that, you know, the Buddha, taught us, like, how do you deal with suffering? He had the very simple teaching. He's like, when you're, remember in the sutras it says, you know, the example the Buddha gives is, if you're shot by an arrow on the battlefield, the first step is take the arrow out.

[75:55]

You know what I mean? You don't question, like, where was it shot from? Who was the maker of the arrow? You just try to take the arrow out. So, The Buddha's teaching is very, very simple. First step is if the suffering is such that you can't get to the roots of it, you know what I mean? Like the roots of who made it, who shot it, how do I prevent future arrows from coming my way? The first step is just to take the arrow out and try to heal the wound, right? But then the next step is you do want to know where did that arrow come from? Because you don't want to be shot... one more time, three more times, 10 more times. And so it's good to go to the root of where is the arrows that are hurting us coming from. And so I guess that's my kind of response. It's like, it's a multi-tiered when you, I think this is your question. What do we do with it? It's a multi-tiered thing where step one is let's make sure we don't let the arrows just stick in there and let it fester.

[77:00]

Let's take it out, clean the wound and try to At least do that. But the next step is so that we don't have thousands of arrows coming into us, we should figure out where is it coming from and what can we do to get at the root of why are these things being shot out in the first place. And that's a thing that we can't do it just by ourselves. And that's what I was trying to say earlier. We have to do it together. Because the people who are shooting the arrows have to also stop shooting the arrows for that to result. And so that's why, but first step is take care of the wound. Duncan, what I want to say is that as a person of color living in this country, sometimes I don't have enough time to my wounds heal. Arrow comes, not 1,000 arrow at one point, but one after another, my wounds heal. not going to be healed. So, you know, this is something where I'm glad, you know, although I'm not part of your Sangha community, for you to just even mention this to other people in the Sangha is very helpful because sometimes maybe somebody can help to at least put a shield in front of you so that the arrows are not one after the other.

[78:27]

going into your body, but onto a shield. Or other people can help maybe deal with one of the arrows. Not all of them at once, you know. So it's a cooperative type of thing. It's the only way, I mean, it's just a, it's true. It's sometimes very, very constant and hard to deal with. And so we need the help of our Sangha. And that's a kind of appeal to each other if we live in, you know, a workplace sangha or a Buddhist sangha or a neighborhood sangha. In many ways, we can't sometimes do it alone because, as you were saying, it's just so constant. And sometimes it's about dealing with the root. Sometimes it's about putting a shield up. Sometimes it's about taking the arrows out. And sometimes it's about, once the arrows are out, letting it have enough time. to heal before the next arrow comes.

[79:29]

And so I very much appreciate what you're sharing. And I hope, you know, for those of us who are in your circle of sangha, we can do some different things to help each other. And yeah, you know, sometimes it's like collectively, it's the person next to you also receiving, you know, you can... Put the two different shields together to help. It's sometimes not just about to be a bodhisattva. Sometimes we have to be the one who is helping. We have a thousand arms and we're helping. And sometimes we have to be the ones being helped. Otherwise, we're prohibiting somebody else from being a bodhisattva. So sometimes we need help and sometimes we give help. That's just a way of being in a bodhisattva community. And so I hope we can do that for each other. Thank you.

[80:36]

Thank you, Duncan. I'm sorry, Basha, we're out of time. We had promised we would end at 1130. So I just want to thank you very much again, Duncan, for coming. And if we could close, maybe Duncan, if you have a final word, and then we'll close with the closing verse, which the practice period will offer and the text of which I'll put in the chat window. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. It's so hard to not be together in person. We can feel the warmth more palpably when we're together like that. But even... this fashion, hopefully we can feel something with each other. And, you know, sometimes just a little difference of perspective wisdom can, in one instance, change the way we handle things. But also the warmth of compassion can just sometimes, just a little bit, can be the...

[81:39]

Wonderful healing medicine. Yuki mentioned getting so many wounds. It's just a medicine we have from our tradition. So beautiful. That's why we need the sangha. And thank you for coming together as you do and forming some warm sangha together. And let's try to continue to sometimes be the one helping, sometimes being the one helped, but together. getting some way towards alleviating that suffering. So with that, maybe, Didi, I could ask you to do the final verse. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit Buddha's way Beings are numberless I vow to save them Delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them

[83:10]

Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to be coming. Thank you again, everybody, for coming. Before we close, I wanted to offer the opportunity, if you would consider making a donation to the San Francisco Zen Center, now would be Good time to do so. We do rely on your donations. And I've put in the chat window a link. Let's see here. A link for you to be able to do so. So please, if you're able to make an offering to keep our program flowing, please consider doing so. Thank you again, Duncan, for coming and all of you for being here today. And if you'd like to come on and say goodbye, you are... almost very welcome to.

[84:12]

Please feel free to unmute yourself and say goodbye. Thank you again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[84:27]

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