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. Morning. Oh, impermanence. I'm literally in the midst of it. And... This fan also feels very incumbent. And incumbent on my back as best I can. Good to see everyone. We 2024. Let's start off by just saying hello to each other. Do that. Just feel free to have everyone. Hello. All right.

[01:03]

My name is Raharun KD-Lin-Shutt. I want to thank the City Senator Abbott, Mako Reher, and the Council Tim for the invitation to speak today, and of course to thank senior government teacher Paul Howler and central Abbott Dave Zimmerman, for being here. Sorry, this thing is a little hard for me. I'm going to focus now. And, of course, to thank Vicki Austin, my teacher, and then Gail Vonstall also. And, of course, though she's here in spirit, in fact. When I was told I was going to sit in the CIOC, and it was... Experson Seed, of course, I thought Paul Seed. I thought Blanche, because I'm Lisa Blanche being here.

[02:08]

And that did have this very high platform. I feel like in the Therogon's division, I'm not supposed to be in the high bed. And when I was told I was stepping up on here, I just feel like, wow, really? A little uncomfortable for me, so sorry. Let me adjust to it in so many ways. All right. I really appreciate being the first one to give a talk here at City Center and money going forward to layout and all. In some ways, then, it's about, I would say, right or skillful view. which is the first study for PATH, of course. And I think it's kind of a new year soon, too, to kind of start going, oh, what is it that I want this year to be?

[03:12]

How do I set my view, wouldn't you say, on how I was I doing this year? Do people still do resolutions and thinking about anyone? Right. All right. I am going to be talking from my book, which came out in August, and thank you for the invitation to talk about it. Stockholm is here practicing anti-racism with the engaged hateful path. So I must start the introduction here. I will say the book starts, and I'll say here also, with a content warning. I will be saying some slurs. This is not an invitation to use slurs yourself, even if it's referring to you, just because it tends to be activating for people.

[04:17]

However, it goes with the book, and so I will be saying it in this context. So the introduction, the wholeness of life. Location, location, location. Where are you from? No, no, really, where are you from? Hey chick, go home. People like you shouldn't live in this neighborhood. I was in your country and saved your people. Why can you act like a white girl? You're a Twinkie, aren't you? If you don't know what a Twinkie is, you want me to explain it? Twinkie is a derogatory word for someone who is perceived to be Asian or yellow on the outside and white from the inside. A banana is another derogatory term.

[05:22]

Buddhism came to America for some 49 or 50 years after Don't you know this is the women's restroom? Fucking lesbian. In each moment, we are located by lineage and ancestry, by others, by ourselves, by sight, by perception, by differentiation, by discrimination, by institutions. by policies, by governmental structures, by systems of oppressions, by homophobia, by sexism, by genderphobia, by white supremacy culture, by racism, by erasure, by invisibilization, by exclusion, by inclusion,

[06:27]

by equity, by love, with hatred, with fear, with anxiety, with love, with care, with tenderness, with joy. In isolation, in community, in belonging, in the world, in time, in space, in emptiness, in homes. As a Lebanese-American adoptee, 1.5 generation, immigrant, cisgender female, gender nonconforming, lesbian, so do centuries, in my late years of chronological life, I'm often located by others, as I don't always present or behave in ways people believe my social location is to be.

[07:33]

For instance, I'm often asked as I enter a washroom, don't you know this is the women's dress room? Perhaps it could be because of my shaved head due to being a priest, but likely it's also because I have been non-conforming in the ways I've cured myself for most of my life, in gender, and other socially prescribed manners. When I was in Vietnam in 2002 and traveling with Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American friends, I would often ask you to stay in the van as I went in to negotiate the lodging price. This was due to the unofficial, but commonly used, tiered pricing style, lowest for current Vietnamese nationals. next level for Vietnamese and diaspora, and most expensive for foreigners. According to my friends, while my ethnic identity was visually apparent, the way I held myself was American.

[08:39]

They felt that I exuded too much confidence and took up too much space compared to a typical Vietnamese female. For most of my life, I have had to be hyper-aware of my social locations wherever I am, especially of locations imputed on me by systems of oppression. By location, I mean a framing for how an individual is designated a position in specific systems and with it the assumptions and privileges, for lack of them, that come with it. This framing of locationality allows for an understanding that my identity always comes with embedded social power, that can change depending on which system is operating in each moment of interaction with another, interpersonally and in structures.

[09:42]

For instance, as a table body in Misa Nerton, I'm located in the down power position, or location of less privilege within a system of white supremacy. Yet I am not empowered a more privileged location than ableism. Understanding one's location is important because, depending on the embedded lack of or privilege of power, one's responsibility changes. I've tried to grasp solidly onto some of these locations at times. trying hard to be American or Vietnamese, for others and for myself. At other times, I've tried rejecting locations, especially those repeated on me by others and by citizens. I've done both in many ways, individually and with others, through academic studies, art, therapy, volunteerism, activism, and work as a social worker.

[10:51]

Then finally, when my suffering couldn't be processed thoroughly through those means, I leaned into my Buddhist practice. At first, it was out of utter confusion. After my graduate studies, I went back to Vietnam for the first time after 28 years. I thought I was going home. But after five months, I realized that the home I envisioned was simply that, a vision carried from my past and my childhood. This three weeks were a loop, and I came back to the United States utterly shaping. Who am I? Where do I belong? I had been practicing late Buddhism for almost six years by then. With this shattering of old ideas about myself, I then decided to go to a monastery in northern California to do some intensive meditation, chanting, and other Buddhist practices.

[12:00]

Initially, my eating was a three-month intensive retreat, and I ended up staying there for three and a half years in ordaining as a priest in the sectarian tradition. Fast forward to more than two decades later, And with the years of practice and being a Buddhist and meditation teacher, I've developed a more complete sense of how to hold my experiences of social locations in ways that are more grounding yet responsive, fostering healing and restoration. So that's the beginning of the book, and I wanted to really talk about location. I think when I know from this view, I'm obviously in the literal up-power position, very up-power right now, and you all, I love leads. Online, you're more directly, I don't know.

[13:03]

But I think yes, right? Depending on how you interact, even though I'm literally in Ireland and Paul, obviously being a senior Dharma teacher, Paul has more power. in the temple and also in social locations for the United States, right? So how we're located depends not just on our literal space, but who we try to interact with. Now, yes, I did ask you to say hi to everyone, and that was also on purpose. So I'll actually close your eyes for a minute and Think back to when I asked you to say hi to people. Think about what was some of the drive or the motivation or the impetus for who you turn to, how you address people.

[14:11]

What is the energetic sense, the motivations, think about what might have been some unconscious sense. All right, go ahead and open your eyes when you're ready. Anybody want to say, share anything that came up for them about how he chose you to say hi to or didn't say hi to? Sure, tell us your name. Hacup. I chose to say hi to everybody I could see. Uh-huh. Okay. And would you say, in a Zen form, in a Zen-no, literally, you didn't get up, to go play out? No, I did not. Yeah, so that's kind of like a, you know, a form here. I mean, most people would think to get up.

[15:13]

My aunt said, feel free to get up, but then I thought that might be more chaos here. Uh-huh. Anyone else want to share? Yes. That was your name. For me, I think it was just proximity. Proximity. Okay, now, think back. Where did your side sit next to you? Or where did you want to sit? And by that problem, you just too, right? But also, perhaps, like, I'm actually a little bit harder hearing. So I sit close. But then also, as a Vietnamese American, often I like to sit up front. Right? And so I sit back. even though I have a sense of I need to move forward to be more visible, but I have to fight these kind of conditions. And so we're taught how to locate ourselves all the time. And we're doing it all the time. And certain of us, depending on how much instruction you were given explicitly or implicitly, depending on the various social locations that you've grown up to, have more and more messages about how we should comport ourselves.

[16:28]

And that's a part of what we're taught of our conditioning. And some of it's perfectly fine. The issue is, are we aware of And then from that, how did we want to respond? How much of it is old and unconscious? And are we willing to examine that and then bring more consciousness to? Now, when we also talk about saying hi, really, or the exercise of saying hi, is that there's a For the Zanjiko Narum, you already probably know that there's a teaching from the Bhavikam Sapa Sutra on the Indra's net. So it's described often as the universe, this a net, and at each section in which the strands cross, there's a jewel.

[17:34]

So at the Nehru's, there are jewels. And because of the nature of jewels, the way they're cut, they're faceted, they reflect. And so at each note, there's a jewel, and so each jewel reflects all the other jewels. Sounds lovely, right? So maybe it's about our interconnectedness, how we reflect each other, impact each other. And it's a lovely image. Now, sometimes that's used, I think, to have this sense that, oh, all the jewels should be the same. That equality is that we all should somehow be the same. What did you say? Maybe it's your seat. Now, I want to really bring in that the oneness, when we want to talk about oneness of practice, that is the streams, it's the net itself is where we need to pay more attention. not just on the individual jewels.

[18:36]

The jewels are part of the net, so yes, we want to pay attention to the jewels. And depending on if your part of the net has more torn or has not historically been taking care of the strands so that they're broken or that they're weak, then perhaps more attention needs to be put on attending to the jewels in that area. How can we build the net again? How can we fix, you know, when you look at cobwebs, especially those that seem like they are not attended to for sections of it, you know, to see a spider, right, when there's a, besides going to get the bug that they're going to eat, they're repairing the nets. And so we want to think about, where is it that I don't pay enough attention the net. If we're talking about oneness, am I just interested in the net around me, or where I can go?

[19:44]

And yet, the net, if we think of, if we turn our view to not just be on the jewels, it becomes the words of the net. But the net becomes the thing that is more important. One way to talk about the myth is, what is the connection between us? How are those connections made? So, as I was writing this book, literally this book emerged out of a call from students. I like to say this book does not start out as a book, it started out as a response. So in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of Asian-American students called me up and said, hey, my health, all this violence against Asian-Americans is really distressing.

[20:48]

I'm afraid to leave my home. How can you support me? And so I actually have been developing these since 2017. I was at Generation X teacher conference that several of the people around were at. And it was right after yet another round of sexual misconduct in congregate centers. And so the right use of power was brought in as a restoration model. And I got the right use of power, and we've done it here. And I've been to a lot of trainings in my priest career. and some other models always being brought in, non-violent communication. And I love them all. Really, I do. And yet, there must be something in the teachings themselves. That's where I go when I travel. So I thought about it. I've been with the support of the Amira Foundation, the Buddhist Foundation. I've been developing the Four Number Truths to be what I call the engaged version, as a restorative model.

[21:56]

So in that restorative model, We start out by saying harm and harming has happened, not just that there's suffering in life. Because to restore anything, we have to acknowledge that there's been brokenness, that the values that we say that we uphold, the view that we say, oh, there's equality, there's equity, that we hold these views And that is, whenever we have to agree on that. So much of the conflict in the world arises that disagreement about what is it that needs attending to, or is broken and needs to be fixed, you see? And so it's really important that the beginning of restoration is to acknowledge what is. As I was doing these, I would say there are three, what I call, essential aspects to restoration.

[23:00]

One is this, acknowledging what is, which, by the way, echoes the personal truth, right? Harmon-harming has happened, we have to acknowledge it, and then knowing what shifts are especially needed, and learning how to put those shifts into practice. And then the last of the two and three, So, let's talk about knowing what shifts are especially needed. So I will go to chapter 1, and just read you briefly. Okay, in age 1, we are complete and whole. By the way, Tim, I have no thought, so can you... or someone can get me a time check. Time for it. Time for it. Thank you. The ring of a bell signaled it's my turn for Dr. Son, an entity to discuss my practice with the Soto Zen Master at this 500-year-old training monastery in Japan.

[24:12]

I picked up a small mouth and struck the cast iron bell in front of me, one time, letting it ring. Then a second time, I rose and hurried down along off the tony nets, the woven straw flooring in traditional Japanese living spaces, passing through the ikaiya, a narrow room lying on both sides with rows of individual altars for deceased santa community members. They silently witnessed the squish of cloth as my long black priest's robes rubbed back and forth around my ankles. with each quick step. At the end of the hall, three steps rose up. I stopped at the bottom and performed a short gush-up, bowing with palms touching and elbows out. Then in one swift motion, I grabbed the end of my zaku, or priest bowing a lot, laid it down on a tummy, and folded it into a square.

[25:18]

I dropped down and started my full frustrations. as quickly as possible, body crouched in child's clothes, both hands upstretched and palms placed on the floor. Then, with symmetrical precision, hands raised past the ears and down again before rising to stand. I did this three times quickly, as is the custom, after which I refolded and slid the zoggle back over my left wrist. One of them picked out a show, and then I chatted up those three singers to my dokusama Sakei Haradao Roshi, the abbot of Kuhushigi Monastery in Obama, Japan. I entered the room ready to ask the essential question of my life. I'd come to Japan after leaving the predominantly white conference of Kimzen Buddhist Monastery in Central California, where I thought I would spend the rest of my life.

[26:24]

When I asked to be ordained after more than eight years of meditating with Buddhist practice, I felt the deep calling to live as a Buddhist minister. But this did not come to me. I left the California monastery after three and a half years there, heartbroken and confused about the racism I had experienced on both a personal and structural level. The persistent white supremacy culture of the monastery made it unsafe and did not support me as a Vietnamese-American practitioner. This was true for many other people of color staying there as well. The experience was a huge shock to my understanding of Buddhist practice and my sense of place in the world. As I make plans to weave that California monastery, and figured out how to practice as a newly ordained priest, I was contacted by someone who studied under Sapeyarada Roshi in Japan.

[27:31]

They urged me to study with him as he was acknowledged as in the land that next year. I had only practiced such as Zen in predominantly white-convert settings in the United States, and I felt drawn to the practice in Japan, the birthplace of this sect, Buddhism. I think I told Shinji for three weeks, trying to process my despair from having to leave California. There was another young Napa monster, a white one. Instead of being someone I could connect with, she harassed me, saying things like, you're good for nothing, you're trash. And the way I thought about it, I didn't put it, but I'll tell you, she also said, you should die. and hissed whispers as we moved about the various ceremonies and tasks of the temple. I couldn't get away from her, either.

[28:33]

We were housed in the same nun's quarter together. We had come to Kulshinji around the same time, so we had similar seniority, and we were the same height, so we were often paired together for ceremonies. Her helpful whispers seemed to follow me all over the temple The race of the line I experienced in California, I followed me all the way to Japan. Entering the room for Doku-san with Satayakura, I barely sat down before blurting out a quintessential question of my existence up to that moment. Why does patriot seem to follow me wherever I go? I asked. Seke, however, didn't hesitate. No hatred completely. Cheyenne ordered me. No hatred completely. He answered.

[29:33]

Then he grabbed the hand down to his right and rang it vigorously, signaling the end of my enemy. I scrambled out of the room, doing the frustrations and vows of reverse order. My mind raised. to make meaning of what had just happened. Nothing came. My mind has stopped. A koan in Zen practice is a story assigned by a teacher for you to work with. Various traditions have different ways of practicing the koans, but giving an answer to the teacher as part of the process is a commonality across that. Now, how the teacher accepts or rejects the answer is part of the mythology of this practice. One of our koans is, at this very moment, what is your original face before your parents were born?

[30:41]

Many people think koans are paradoxes, but really they're stories to stop your mind, to bump it off its group of incessant and well-worn patterns of thinking, planning, and processing. Koans open us to an understanding that's beyond habitual thinking. Life also gives us koans. For me, racism has been a koan I've turned over and over. Studying race theory was one of my answers to this koan. Other answers from my life have included activism. My various work as a social worker focused on addressing the harmful results of racism. All of these were good answers. And then, like I said, the question is more important than the answer.

[31:41]

Why? Because questions often come up at uncomfortable moments, questions arise when we're faced with circumstances in which our coping mechanisms aren't working anymore. At such moments, transformation between us is possible if we stay open to all answers, especially unexpected ones. The system of white supremacy centers whites, fragmenting us all. into the delusion of separateness. Aware of this dynamic and its harm to people of color, I have to be careful not to simply search outside myself for answers. Like many Asian Americans and other people of color, at some point I have to learn to value myself, reclaiming the validity of my own experience in any moment and in any condition.

[32:46]

Buddha's practice over many years has supported me to return to knowing and trusting my hopes. No hatred completely. That moment with Roshis stopped my mind from its official looping to try to understand Rista. All my intellectual theories and years of anti-racist work didn't address my suffering in a useful way at this bridge point of my life. That moment stopped my frantic search to find some reason why it should have followed me. We already know, right? This is no luck question you said about it. I already knew that from what my race theory had said. What I needed was to attend to the hurt and harm from being the target of racism.

[33:50]

In Buddhism, we practice to be able to find settledness and clarity that's not dependent on the conditions of the world. To find such settledness and clarity, we have to attend to our suffering embodied heart and mind. The colon of racism It was not just something I wanted to understand. What I really want, even now, is to heal from the hurt and pain I've had. So the reason that I really developed the Engaged Form of Truth, And then we don't talk about the four-minute books. They're not just implicit in all this teaching. But we don't specifically talk about it. And technically, the Eightfold Path is considered a then-run teaching on how to be an arap, right?

[34:55]

A person who's enlightened develops that Eightfold Path. And secondly, we focus much more on the six-paramitas as the behavior of a dhoti sapa. And so that's partly why we don't hear the specificity. However, to me, the Eightfold Path is just the fourth of the four-notes. By the way, the engaged four-notes object is hurt and harm as happened. Understanding the second is how do we fully understand the causes and conditions for the arising of harm and harm, hurt and harm. And it's somewhat similar to the classic second-notes object. However, before much more on the systemic. We're still doing personal work to overcome racialization, but we focus on how we're not just, it's not like a self thing on me. It's not only for me to overcome what are the impacts of racism or other oppressions that are on me.

[35:58]

It's to understand that whole systems are responsible for how I can envision, and therefore systems need to shift, so that the healing is not just an individual healing, but a societal healing. And those are important. And then the third is, I like to say, the good news of Buddhism, is that there's agency. Where is the possibility to know that we have agency in the midst of hurting our, possibly, of course, the alleviation of the end of suffering? And then the last is the painful path. Now, knowing the shifts, I think, but really, I think, elegateness of the Eightfold Path is that it really lays out for us what it is that we can work on.

[36:58]

And so, as I said, I've laid it out as acknowledging what it is, which is to I suppose it's laid out in these three ways. The first part is seeing the world as it is. So how do we have a view of the world? And then it also helps concentration. The meditative practice of concentration really helps us to settle. In the Eightfold Path, they're broken into three sections. One is called the wisdom section, which is the skillful view, which is to understand the fourth whole truth of karma. Recently, I was thinking karma. Karma, of course, broadly, is causal and fact, and it's very complicated all in all. But what do you think about karma is that it's habitual tendency, or habitual motivation, or unconscious energy, the way in which things start up.

[38:04]

We are conditioned, and we act in certain ways, and we behave in certain ways, and we speak in certain ways. We are conditioned, and life conditioning is bad, by the way. So much of a form in a Zen building, you think it's just like that way to the sea, and then we all turn right. We're being conditioned, but it's in a way to help us all move together as one body. And then you don't want somebody, and then you have to say, oh, sorry, sorry. And then you break the silence of the zen dove, right? And so you break everyone else's constitution. So just because things are conditioned and we're taught for them, doesn't make it bad. The idea is, are we conscious of how we're conditioned? And are they useful men? They may have been useful men. In fact, the race of them, so many of our parents, taught us ways of dealing with the impact of racism.

[39:06]

You've heard about how, in particular, black children, black and male children, really need to set their light up here is to talk about how they have to be very careful, how they hold themselves, how they talk to certain people, especially cops in certain areas, very specifically, of course, the white people. You know, when I was in Vietnam, my mother would teach me how to move out of the way when a GI was coming our way. So we're taught these things, and the idea is that it's for our safety. Our parents often taught us things for our safety. And that person can go the other way around, you know, if you're taught that certain people of color are unsafe, and so you shouldn't interact with them. And so the issue is how do we examine how we've been conditioned and really useful for us anymore. Is there safety issues in the moment that we have to be attended to at times?

[40:10]

This certainly is true. And for some of us, you know, more than others. So it's not in itself about me, but the key is, is it useful now? Is it true in this moment, in each moment that you are? We want to work on that. And then the second is, when we shift to learning what shifts are needed, we want to go to what the world means now, or to this book. Skillful motivation, which is actually thinking. Skillful thinking. And in Buddhism, thinking is not passive. This is why the more popular translation of Sankhapala these days is intention. I like motivation. And motivation, because to me, motivation does give you the sense that you think it, and then you're motivated to move, to do, to speak.

[41:15]

And so it goes actually into the second verb, which is what's usually called the ethical conduct section. I would call it the compassionate conduct section, which is Skillful speech, skillful action, and skillful life. This is the interactive part. How we speak. Skillful action is essentially the five precepts. And then skillful life. How do we use the energy of our life? Not just for work, but it's about work and the teachings. What kind of jobs are more wholesome than others. Then we bring in the meditative factors of skillful effort, and skillful mindfulness into that. And then, realizing the wholeness of the world. This is where we get to learn this gesture to practice, which is really part two, part three. So we want to realize the whole miserable world by the precepts, skillful action, which I have reframed as skillful enactment.

[42:23]

Because to me, enactment gives us a sense that It's not just the precepts I have to memorize and, you know, decide that I'm doing it right or wrong, good or bad, for other people. But it really is, to me, I close the sense of that. I'm vowing to enact what I hold truth. The values that I hold. The precepts. How do I bring those into my life? How do I act on those? You know, recently, I just finished a whole series of the precept studies for eight months. And someone I talked to in practice discussion said to me, you know, just finished. And so they get to write their own, again, version, so that's in their own words. By the way, I got that from Vicki, I was a general teacher, so I passed it on to my students. And then I knew a little, whatever, thankful year when I was working it out.

[43:24]

I print it out for them, or I put it laid out, you know, like that I send to them these days, of course. And so, you know, I say, other people put them up, so you can look at the precepts all the time, right? And so this person said they were so bad about something, so, so bad. And then they looked at that precept, and their wording was, I'm paraphrasing, like, I vow that when I'm angry, to really examine my anger and find rarest of compassion. And so when they look at that, they just back up. Okay, where can I have compassion here? For myself and for the person I'm at? And they said, that made everything. That gave them a moment. It's kind of like stopping the line. It's another moment stopping the line. From this habitual loop of Whose fault is it? Why am I getting what I need? Whatever your thing is that makes you angry. It stops you, and then it says, oh, re-centers.

[44:28]

This is my value here. This is where my enactment is. I'm going to enact this by pausing, thinking it through, and recalibrating how I'm going to be in a world in another. And they said, wow. That was amazing, and I didn't think that it would be such a thing, right? Here we go. So, I'm a little frustrated here, but that's okay. All right. So, and then still fully, what is the energy we want to put behind it? All right, I am... way behind on my stuff, so I'm just gonna think. Here we go. I'm gonna end, actually, with a chapter with W Roshi there, and take some questions.

[45:43]

The day after the mind-stopping meeting in Japan, Sakeyarabha Roshi offered me another chance for Dokusan. I rang my bell, did my vows, and went into the practice discussion, ready to share my insights about how this answer had affected me. Before I could open my mouth, Roshi launched into a lengthy story of shocking me Buddha's life. and enlightenment along with the histories of other early Buddhist ancestors. Thirty minutes. Then, once again, he ran me out of the room. We never spoke about my question again. This event impacted me deeply, and I continued to turn it over for many years afterward. When I remember my Dopa songs with Sakeyagoda, actually,

[46:45]

This last part has always puzzled me. I often wonder, what was this point about it all? In writing this now, I have an understanding of what it was teaching me. The Buddha and ancestors were searching for the same things as you and me. The end to suffering. I think Roshi was saying that there can't be spiritual bypass. He realized, and after that initial exchange, I too realized, that I was looking for a way to explain away the hurt and pain by wanting to discuss it. Discussion isn't wrong. Theory isn't wrong. Activism isn't wrong. But we can't use these things for spiritual violence .

[47:46]

We can't use Buddhist practice or any methods, such as grace theory or activism , as a way to stick over the human condition inherent in the First Noble Truth, experiencing the hurts and pains of our lives. Trying to get away from it, via any method, is to try and skip over or bypass fully experiencing our life as it is. Our practice is to get closer and closer to know it completely. Because in doing so, we can actually then have more clarity on how we can heal. In Pali, the first recorded language of Buddhism, the term, , is usually translated as wise attention. It can also be translated as attention that takes the whole into account.

[48:52]

This is what Seke Haggai Roshi was pointing me toward. The practice of investigating yoga, which sees it in context, in totality, in the whole magic right now, for scriptures. and not just the hurt and pain of the moment. Then, the rest of the engaged Four Noble Truths offers us descriptions and practices for how to connect or reconnect to the wholeness of life, that our existence is seen, relevant, healable, and valued. When we remember and access the context that validate us and support us to thrive, not just to thrive, but to thrive. Additionally, we need to remember that all beings want the same thing, to be free from suffering and the callus of suffering. This is what connects us all.

[49:56]

Denying that systems of oppression exist is to deny reality as it is. Learning to negotiate these systems with self and collective determined agency is a practice of engaged liberation. In practicing collective liberation, this is what I wish for us. That we may come home to a sense of wholeness, grounded in one of the safe and of value to all. May we then aspire to spread that out, to work together to strengthen safety and care for each other. This is the work and the preparation to understanding, practicing, and developing the engage on objects. Thank you for your attention. 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.

[51:02]

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.

[51:16]

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