This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. So I first would like to welcome all the newcomers to this morning here, Saturday morning. And I'd like to say thank you for being here, for bringing us new possibilities among all the experts. So thank you for waking us up. So today's talk is, I titled it The Wayseeking Mind of Martin Luther King Jr. And so some of us know a lot about way-seeking mind, those experts in the room.

[01:01]

And I was going to joke, I think I am going to say the joke I told Zumwala. I'm going to channel him, his way-seeking mind talk, but not quite. Anyway, before I get started, I wanted to dedicate this talk to Marlene Jones. And Marlene Jones is a Dharma teacher and a companion, was a companion on the path. And she passed away January 8th, 2013. She was surrounded by her family, her friends, and her teacher, Jack Kornfield, at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It was a shock to many. I found out. during a telephone conversation, I was having a meeting on the phone and they said, wait one moment, they're pulling the life support from Marlene Jones.

[02:08]

That's how I found out she was even sick. So that day, that was the very day that she passed. And for those who are just hearing about this and who know Marlene, maybe you might be hearing about it for the first time, I want to to let you know that we are holding a light for her right now at this moment. So there are many, many reasons to dedicate this to her. She was a pioneer at Spirit Rock. And my encounter with her was when she created the African-American Dharma Retreat at Spirit Rock that was held in 2002. And I was asked by a friend to come to this conference, and I had never really been to a Dharma practice event that was specified for either people of color or African Americans.

[03:21]

I had come from the Nishran tradition, which was very much dominated by people from everywhere. So I didn't quite understand what it was about, but I did come. And there I was introduced to Zen Buddhism. There were many, many teachers there that were from different traditions, teachers of African descent. There were about over 100 students, African-American Dharma students. And so I wanted to say if it wasn't really for Marlene Jones having that conference and me meeting the Zen teachers that were there, I would not be sitting in front of you this very moment. And that is how powerful her work has been. in our community. So I would never have met Ramon Gutierrez Baldequin. I would not have met Angel Kyoto Williams. And I would not have met Sala Steinbeck, all who are teachers in the Soto Zen tradition.

[04:29]

I would not have met them. So I want to honor them for the reason I'm seated here this morning. In that way, although there's many who supported me getting all the way to this seat, but the opening, the seat, was at that conference that Marlene Jones created. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that, too, in this moment and appreciate her. What I learned in that conference is that everyone is welcome to the Dharma, no matter who you are. You're welcome. So you're welcome today no matter who you are and no matter what your path has been or where you are going, if you're going anywhere but right here now. So just wanted to acknowledge that, too. And although there are many people who I can name teachers,

[05:37]

that also were part of my presence here as a roped person. I was happy to receive the invitation to come and talk about Martin Luther King, Jr., because he was, in fact, one of, I think, a person that really inspired me to want to be a part of that path that would teach and awaken people to how we are and how we live in the way that he did. And so when the civil rights movement started, I was about six years old. And when he died, I was 16. So I felt like I had a long relationship with him, a decade at least. And so... One of the things I think that I like to bring home today is that many people think that his birthday, which was January 15th, not today or Monday, it's January 15th.

[06:54]

He was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. And many people feel that that day is Black People's Day. or his celebration is Black People's Day holiday. And I almost, when I was invited to do this, I almost said, oh, no, no, I'm black. I shouldn't do that because they're going to think that that's all I do are things about black people. And then I said, oh, no, I better go and tell them this is not Black People's Day. I'm here to tell you. This is not Black People's Day. And in fact, Martin Luther King's teachings to me were less about bringing the races together, which is what a lot of people think of, and less about even nonviolence.

[08:07]

which is another aspect that's always brought forward. And I think there's reasons why that was brought forward, because he was not the only civil rights leader at the time. There was Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hammer. There were all these people, but they all had different consciousness and different teachings. And it was Martin Luther King's teachings that felt to be more, this country was able to receive in a better way than all the others, and were less frightened about. So I don't think it's, personally, this is a personal, you know, idea, is that his teachings were not so much about bringing the races together, which is, you always hear that last part of the speech of I had a dream, and I perfectly, purposely decided not to have those speeches played or listened to because that's all we hear.

[09:08]

And we think that that's what, you know, is all that he was thinking about. And I also think nonviolence, he went beyond that. And so what do I think his teachings were about? And I think for me and the way I felt him, even at the age of six, that he He was trying to shift a consciousness of hatred, shift a consciousness of hatred into one of love and compassion. He was trying to shift a consciousness of hatred. And I could understand that as a child who was going to desegregated schools and where the hate was imposed. and in which I also embraced, you know, as a six-year-old, oh, my God, I'm not welcome.

[10:10]

And so I, of course, latched on to Martin Luther King when he was speaking. But I feel like as the years have gone by, that what he was talking about, the overarching teaching about hatred, gets lost. Hatred versus love and compassion. It gets lost. And hasn't been carried over into our way of being in terms of queer rights or immigrants coming into the country or not. These things have, his teachings are still like we're prodding toward it because there's still this way... in which we think that what he was talking about was just about black people. And everything's okay now because President Obama's in office. So we don't have to do what Martin Luther King was talking about.

[11:14]

But that's not what he was talking about. He wasn't talking about the counters, the drugstore counters where you eat, or the schools necessarily, or the buses. All of those were containers of hatred in which he used to show and to demonstrate to people what was happening in the country. And he talked about black people because he knew black people because that's who he was. That's who he felt he was. That was his own looking at himself, I feel. and seeing, hey, I have my own hatred about myself. And that's what I thought. I saw a picture of Martin Luther King as a boy, and I actually posted it, and he looked very sweet, a young boy.

[12:15]

And I imagined, I wonder if he came to Zen Center, what would be his way-seeking mind talk? What brought that little boy, did that little boy know who he was going to be? or what he was going to be? And how did that little boy get to the place in which he brought such teachings to us about love and compassion to all of us? So for this weekend, since a lot of people are celebrating Martin Luther King, I'm going to ask that you consider your own consciousness, your own consciousness of hatred, versus or your own consciousness of choosing that sometimes instead of love and compassion. Oh my God, hatred, that's such a big word. Oh my gosh, I don't hate anybody. Who, me? Who, me? But something, and the reasons why I think we come to paths and practices and sit here in places like this on sunny day

[13:26]

is to consider these things that we struggle with as living beings. And so I want you to consider and really focus on that place that maybe there is these moments in which you look upon a particular person or kind of person, and that person represents a whole group of people. Because we're talking about that kind of hatred, not others, but that kind. that kind where you just, it's just put on a group of people. So I want you to consider that when you see that. Does something crawl up your spine? You know, makes your stomach jump, make you flinch? You know, that initial fear. And then that initial fear stays and you decide, I'm going to avoid everybody and everything that looks like that and feels like, that makes me feel that way. I'm going to avoid it

[14:27]

A whole group of people. Now, there's some people who feel that way about Buddhists. Nobody in here. They stay away. And if you say, I'm a Buddhist, something crawls up in them. They might speak about it. And then you don't raise your hand because you don't want them to know you believe. you practice. But I'm just trying to help you find that place in which Martin Luther King was speaking to all of us. That everybody is not black people staying. So here at Zen Center, I keep saying the way seeking mind, We do these talks, students and teachers, will do a talk called The Way Seeking Mind.

[15:31]

So I want to say that that's where I got the term. And again, when I saw that he was so young, I really was curious about looking at him in that way, that way now that I've been practicing in that way that I myself have done three to four Way Seeking Mind talks. Dogen Zinji, which is the... founder of Soto Zen, which is the tradition that's here at Zen Center. And he said that the way seeking mind is just, he had a lot to say about it, but I'm, the self setting itself out to see itself. The self setting itself out to see itself. So I was wondering, what did Martin Luther King see of himself that led him down the path that he went, the path of compassion, love, nonviolence, the path of interrelatedness, very core teaching of the Dharma.

[16:43]

How did he get there? What stored consciousness from the collective struggle of humanity did he come to do what he did? And then I asked, what led a man to set out himself, to see himself in the way that he did? And so I began to kind of sit in that place of how I saw him and how I felt he was. So at first, of course, for me, what came up was his ancestors. You know, the very first whose shoulder he stood on. Now this man, he did not come up in a dire poverty. His parents were educated. His mother, Alberta, went to Spelman.

[17:47]

His father was a minister as he was, well-educated minister who studied divinity. And his great-grandfather, he just came from a lineage of people who had this urge to speak out and wake up people. This was already inside this child before he even began to speak to the world. It was already deep inside him. And he walked with that. And he sat with that. And it was, I think, because his father, who was also extremely an activist and who brought the spiritual and the political together, listening as a young boy to his father talk about these things, was creating those seeds and planting them inside him for that consciousness. Yet his father didn't go outside the church with it.

[18:55]

You know, he stayed inside the church. And that made the difference. That's what happens with ancestors. We kind of pick up, I think we kind of pick up in a relay, you know, with those who came before us. We're kind of like, and we go forward with it in another direction, but with kind of the same stored consciousness in some ways. Could go in what some people might call good or bad ways. I think that his ancestors, he had, I would say, an extreme amount of interrelatedness blood lying within him and reformer and activist. And then his father, I don't know what age Martin Luther King was, but his father decided to change his name from Michael Luther King Sr., to Martin Luther King, Sr. And when he changed his name, because Martin Luther King was also named Michael, they both became Martin Luther King to be named after Martin Luther.

[20:11]

Remember, his father is a noted scholar as well and studied, so he knew Martin Luther, the reformer of the Catholic Church, I believe. a great reformer, a great activist of the 16th century. So this, too, is inside this little boy. He's growing up now. He's got all these seeds ready to go, right? All he needs is a little watering, and out the door he goes. So now we got the Michaels or now Martin. Name changes are pretty powerful. Change your name and see what happens. Get a Dharma name and see what happens to you. Very powerful. Take on your Dharma name and see what happens to you. Notice the blank slate. I don't know any Zenju, but you sure remind me of Earthland. Someone actually told me that. I was like, wow. Whole thing erased, history erased by a name change.

[21:16]

So... The father, maybe he was erasing some kind of history, or maybe he was creating some kind of future for his son, and for himself, and for the people he lived with, his family, and the friends in the church around him. So this way-seeking mind is being created. So then at childhood, Martin Luther King begins, he has a new name, he begins to go to school. He notices, or he's just really out in the world, I would say, not school, just out in the world. And he begins to notice things that are happening to his family, his father, his father having to do things that felt bad to him, like go through the back door, bow, nod, don't say anything if somebody calls you boy or the N-word. And he's noticing this. He's going, wow, Dad, you talk about this in church and now

[22:18]

You're not doing anything about it. So new seed. The seed sprouts one direction. Dad stays in the church. Son says, I'm not taking this. I don't want to live this way. I don't want to be hated. This doesn't feel good. This pain does not feel good. And so he decides, I'm going to be a minister, but I'm going to be a different kind, a minister. And so he grows up and he does go to school. He follows his father to college, you know, the colleges that his father went to so that he could learn. And then stand up in the church was the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, to stand up in that church that his father stood up, stand up in his father's feet. As many of us kind of stand up in the feet of Suzuki Roshi here, just stand in those feet that have been here. So he stood up in those feet. And he said, my call to ministry came about in the summer of 1944 when I felt an inescapable urge to serve society.

[23:28]

In short, I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape. In short, I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape. So he wasn't intending on just being, I want to be someone someone talks about. I want to be famous. I want to touch somebody. I want to, I want to. No, it was a responsibility. It was an urge. He wanted to, he walked outside the church and he saw this must, what we're teaching in the church has to come outside the church. And it has to come in a way that it doesn't sound like we're at church at the same time. So he continues to hold this with him as he walks, I'm sure. So I kind of feel like he was much like Buddha in the sense that Buddha was raised in a palace and had a lot of teachers.

[24:37]

And Martin Luther King Jr. was the same. There were a lot of prominent teachers going in and out of his house. you know, where he learned a lot from them, which is the same with Buddha. A lot of teachers from all kind of traditions, you know, were coming into the house to teach Buddha how to fast. That's why he could go out there and not die in the woods, how to meditate and how to do various things. He was taught by many teachers. And I believe Martin Luther King had that same background. And then when Buddha went out, he's like, oh, my goodness, this is not good. Why are we in here and this is happening out here and we haven't said anything about it? Same thing Martin Luther King said. Whoa, we're up here in church and we're singing. We're having a good time, a glorious time. We're feeling good. And then we step outside and look what's happening. Look what's happening to people and especially black people who were called Negroes at that time. Look what's happening. So all he knew then is to preach.

[25:41]

to continue preaching as his father did. He didn't know, really, probably how to go out until a particular woman named Rosa Parks did what she did. And so Rosa Parks was his inspirator. He was inspired by her. And she was on a bus, resting her feet. She was one lying behind the places where only white people could sit. She was one line where colored people sit, the sign say colored people. She was one row back. So when the white section got full, they usually had the first row of the colored people stand up and move so white people could take those seats. Well, one day she said no, that she wasn't going to do this. And she decided, oh, this will be my protest today. And she did not stand up. And as we know, again, maybe this is why I'm here.

[26:44]

Maybe this is because Martin Luther King was inspired by her boldness and her courageousness to just stand up for what she felt was her birthright, her birthright as a human being, as a living being. I'm a human being. I'm a human being. And this is what Martin Luther King's consciousness is about. We're all human beings. We're all living beings. And this is what Rosa is saying, too. She didn't say, no, I'm going to sit here just because you have a white up there and it's colored back here. It was more about, I'm a human being. I'm a woman. And I can sit here. And she wasn't, you know, some people feel like she was on the bus on her way or coming home. It was an evening coming home from cleaning somebody's house. She was not a maid. She was not the help. She was a scholar, and she had been studying protest movements and techniques at the Highlander Research and Education Institute.

[27:52]

She was a bona fide activist, bona fide, studying it, and also at the University of Alabama. So she was an educated woman. So we're talking about a line of people whose parents, their parents went to college. And their parents' parents went to college. I don't know if you know that. I think, you know, I'm trying to get something you can't Google too much. You know, something about when you Google Martin Luther King, you don't hear about that. So then he's, so he gets involved with the women. who are running this protest, this movement with the buses started by Rosa. He gets involved with these women because he's like, I'm impressed because I want to do something too. I just don't want preaching to church. And so he gets involved and he begins to speak out for them. He begins to help and lo and behold, he falls in love.

[28:57]

Coretta King's there. Coretta Scott is her name. So there he meets her and she, is more of an activist than he. She's been out there since she was in high school. Totally. Going to the school board, working on the school board. This is the woman he married. And so continues his way, seeking mind. How does she do this? How are these women doing this? How are they bringing this such powerful protest movement to the people in this country? And so he says, I don't know as much as her. I better start studying. I'm sure she gave him a few books. I understand. I heard that she might have introduced him to Gandhi and Henry Thoreau, who are the people that Martin Luther King studied the most. And both Henry Thoreau, who was a reformer as well as a writer, and Gandhi were people

[30:04]

who believed in doing something about whatever can be done. And so he was thoroughly impressed with both of them, and he followed Gandhi's non-violent movement tactic and everything. And so what happened in the civil rights movement around Martin Luther King, we can thank Gandhi. I'm just trying to show you the interrelatedness, the core of the interrelatedness, even starting from his ancestors. his name change with his father. And he's learning this. He's walking this. He's not reading it in a sutra, a sermon. He's not reading it in a how-to book, help me book. He is walking it in his life. And so he continues to walk it because it's feeling right for him. He's filling out the shoes that his great-great-grandfather laid out. He's walking it all. And so eventually his teachings emerge and they come forward and out into this world that we're living in now, and he is not.

[31:08]

And if you are wanting to know more about his consciousness and what he studied and what he taught, there are many books that he wrote. Look for books that he wrote in the early 1950, well, late 1950, 58, 59, books that he wrote. That will help you see his thinking and how he was coming to this place of teaching compassion. When he got to protesting the Vietnam War was when people really realized, oh, man, he's not just talking about black people. This is not black people's day. He was talking about life and saving it and what are we doing and what happens to us when we see a group of people and we decide they should not exist. I saw something horrible saying women, someone wrote when women who have an abortion should be shot.

[32:20]

What is that? What is that thinking, that kind of consciousness of hatred that you would even think or even think to go to war to kill somebody or let's go get him? This is what he was talking about. And he's still talking about it through us. Us. You know. I wanted to stop early enough to get your questions. I know today is a day of silence, this morning was, and we're just beginning a new practice period today as well. And so I do want to not overtalk you as we move and transition into sitting with light, our way-seeking mind, sitting at the cell in front of itself and witnessing.

[33:24]

And so, would you tell me what time it is, Eno? A couple of minutes. Okay, let me do this really quick then. And I really cut out a lot in this talk. There's so much to say. I wanted to, there's a speech that maybe some of you never heard, and that is his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. So, of course, I'm not going to read the speech to you. I will read snippets of it. And so he says, I am only mindful, he says, first, I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement. And he says, I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children crying out for brotherhood. He's not a feminist. were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death.

[34:30]

I'm mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. Now, we don't have that, but we do have, say, young transgender youth being brutalized and murdered. We still have the same nature, changing people. And only yesterday, more than 40 houses of worship and the state of Mississippi alone were bombed. Do we have that today? Yes. Bombed or burned because they are offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful, he is mindful, mindful is not a new word, mindfulness, that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest front of the economic ladder. Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement that which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle, to a moment, a movement, which has not won the very peace and brotherhood, which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

[35:38]

Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace and thereby transform this pending cosmic allergy. Isn't that beautiful? Pending cosmic allergy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. He's not a feminist. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict, a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation evolve from a conflict method, which we must reject revenge, aggression, and retaliation. I'm hoping for this. The foundation of such a method is love.

[36:43]

He was violently assassinated April 6, 1968. with the words of love literally falling from his mouth. As he was speaking love, he was shocked. Doing his work. So I ask you to consider setting yourselves out to see yourself. What has appeared to you that would drive you toward a method of love? To act in compassionate action for everyone. What has appeared before you? So many things appeared before him. What has appeared before you in your life? For yourself, in your personal life. Look at that. So are there maybe one question? Two. She says I can do two questions because we're not going to have a question and answer and tea and cookies today.

[37:49]

I know it's a tea and cookie part. That's the most important. We're not having that today because it's a day of silence. So we're going to have the question and answers here. Any questions? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just interested in a very short statement of what you would have said if we had another hour. Oh, my gosh. Well, maybe we'll have a class. Yeah, what I would. Particularly about the connections between your priest's practice and the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. I did a snippet on that and that I do believe the reason why he went into the ministry is the same reason why I went into wearing the robes with a great sense of responsibility. Although as I walk into Zen and Zen Buddhism, that's not the path, right, to go off and do in the way that the Christian tradition does and the way of trying to, you know, bring people into, you know, the path.

[38:55]

And so it's quite different. You must walk your life. and present your life as the teachings rather than trying to convince people of that. But I still have that inside of me that I have a responsibility. And because of that, I'm booked out for the rest of the year. I am going to go out and teach. I'm not going to sit in the temple only. I will not sit in the temple only. justice and transform it to compassion and love. When you start with your own, very often we think the compassion and love has to be done upon somebody. But if you're not intimate with your own suffering or intimate with suffering, in the way that he was, Martin Luther King had to be.

[39:55]

He had to be in order to speak from his heart in the way that he spoke. Now, listen to somebody who speaks from their heart about justice and somebody who just speaks about justice. And listen to them and see which one you find yourself moving toward. And so you must be set yourself out in front of yourself to see yourself and study yourself and then gain an experience of compassion. Because if you have no experience of compassion, you have just a little bit of hate in your own mind and just a little bit of doubt and just a little bit of I'm not it, I'm not enough, or oh, I made so many mistakes, you're not going to be able to speak from your heart and to galvanize or even tell a friend. You might be mild to word, but if you're not walking it, you have to be very careful with it because we're very smart and we can act like right now. We can start a movement right now. We're very smart. But would that movement be pure?

[40:56]

Would it be from our hearts? Would it be from our walking and working in the way and staying with it year after year after year after year? You know? Doing the long haul, I call it. Do we take the long haul? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:37]

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