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, everyone. Welcome to San Francisco Zen Center. I'm not sure this keeps moving around, so let me know, sound people, if... anything happens with it. My name is Kyoshin Wendy Lewis, and today I'll be addressing the interwoven themes of community and ethics. This afternoon, there will be a Jukai initiation in which a group of Zen students who are here today will receive the precepts or the ethical guidelines of Buddhism and Zen.

[01:03]

This ceremony is a wonderful celebration of commitment to a life of Zen practice and reflection. And it's also a statement of community or Sangha values. I just wanted to say that considering that the news is full of even more violence and massacre, I thought perhaps it would be okay for me to be a bit gloomy today while also honoring this afternoon's ceremony because they're interrelated, you know, these ways that we make commitments and ethical promises to ourselves and others. It's all related. Well, it's kind of twisted in the other way.

[02:06]

Yeah, that's what I thought. If I go like that. Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, that sounds better. So community, word we sort of throw around here and there, it implies both inclusion, my community, and exclusion. Those who, for whatever reason, are not part of what we consider community. You know, this is not judgmental. It's just like, this is how we work with these kind of concepts. And of course, you know, our cultural and personal assumptions play a part in defining what we consider to be community and what it includes and excludes, both positive and complex.

[03:14]

And in a spiritual context and in an institution like this that promotes and is established on the basis of the bodhisattva ideal, this can be very complex and ambiguous, as well as joyful and marked by deep friendship. So Michael gave the Dharma talk last week about Martin Luther King, and I was thinking about his legacy and how we absorb it and use it to talk about various things. So the holiday for Martin Luther King that celebrates him was this Monday, this past Monday, and then February is Black History Month.

[04:18]

And that is described as Every February, the US honors the contributions and sacrifices of African-Americans who have helped shaped the nation. Black History Month celebrates the rich cultural heritage, triumphs, and adversities that are an indelible part of our country's history. And of course, as I've mentioned before, and you all know, there are similar months that celebrate, for instance, women's history, Asian American and Pacific Islanders heritage, Jewish American heritage, and gay pride. And these are acknowledgments of both recognition and of difference of kind of human community and identity community. So when we celebrate Martin Luther King's

[05:23]

and give that Dharma talk, which was given with great grace and respect by Michael. Also, I reflect on how many Buddhists have sort of appropriated King as a bodhisattva ideal based on his advocacy of nonviolence. And part of that is true respect and appreciation. And another part I think is based in a form of fear. Considering the historical and current level of racist violence that's perpetuated in action, thought, and words by those referred to as white upon those referred to as black, it's logical to expect a response of fear. resentment and retaliation. I'm having my little comedy with this thing.

[06:38]

I actually was telling my sister when I meet a person of color on the street or on a bus or something like that and it feels like there's some distaste experience from them, I think, whew, I'm taking in some of that karma. It's okay. I appreciate it. So it's logical to expect it. And at the same time, King's intention, was to kind of circumvent the exchange of violence and hatred for violence and hatred, which is often the response in so many historical, including at the moment, circumstances. His advocacy of nonviolence was, as opposed to more militant anti-racism,

[07:48]

I think offers people a sense of safety and control. Like, oh, it's nonviolent, so I don't really have to worry in a certain way. And it also alleviates the fear of conflict that maintaining the status quo requires. And this can also often be the... in Buddhist communities, that fear of conflict. So we appropriate this idea of nonviolence and then it becomes a reason to not go there. So when I was in college in the 1970s, early 1970s at Lone Mountain, which is in San Francisco, it's now part of the University of San Francisco, but there was an unusual meeting And these kind of meetings sort of popped up here and there, but there it was at my college.

[08:48]

So what it was, was Jean Genet was in town. He's a French writer and radical political activist. David Hilliard and another member of the Black Panther Party were meeting to discuss justice and political action. And... The female French professor of Lone Mountain, she was like the only woman's voice, pretty much the whole thing, was the translator for Jean Genet. So it was this very interesting combination of realities. But it was in this large meeting space, and it was really crowded, and a lot of us had to stand up. And the discussion was really intense. Here was this person from France, and the Black Panthers at that time were very active, and actually a group that I used to meet with met in the same building that they did.

[09:53]

So we'd meet in the halls and say hello and everything, and yet all this other stuff was going on. It was very strange or complex. I don't know exactly how to describe it. But I remember feeling this sort of combination of emotions and thoughts, uncertainty, and grief, and this sense of the dignity and sort of carefully articulated thoughts and ideas from David Hilliard and his colleague. There were comments made during the discussion about violence and activism, and the Black Panther said that responding to the accepted murder of blacks in American culture included, the response included violence towards the representatives of that culture.

[10:55]

And then during the question and answer at the end, a young white man stood up and asked, well, would you kill white people who are supporting your protest and demand for justice? And David Hilliard sort of paused and he said, yes. And I thought, you know, it's like we think we get these little certificates of goodness that protect us. And I'm not, this isn't judgmental. It's just like, how do we negotiate all this? And I sort of was a little relieved that he had responded to the man in that way. And then there was that sense, that perplexity, and this sense of ambivalence about how justice can be addressed. Because certainly it's not exactly working.

[11:58]

I mean, things change. There's movement, there's adjustment. But nonviolence hasn't really worked, but it can also ameliorate fear and defensiveness. Often those who choose a nonviolent way of addressing these issues sort of get mowed over or silenced, and then they become martyrs. And then, you know, It goes on. And yet, for the very sake of our humanity, I think nonviolence needs to be kept as an ideology or hope regarding this repetitive tendency to address our disagreements and arguments over power and ownership through silencing and murder.

[13:00]

And violence itself can bring attention to injustice, fear, and defensiveness. But it doesn't really work either. So in my experience of the women's movement, I considered my anger and sense of disempowerment in the balance of my inheritance from my male ancestors, and my love for particular men, historical figures as well as family and friends and lovers. And it didn't resolve my anger, but keeping it in mind offered this kind of compass and resource for self-examination. So my anger was justified and useful, and unsafe to really express, usually.

[14:03]

But then how does one find freedom in the midst of these historically entrenched cultural assumptions and so on? And who's in charge of maintaining those assumptions? And these are not new or profound questions, yet I think they can take on energy. and a wider perspective in the context of community and ethics. We can take them in more deeply and less defensively. To me, studying ethics, as in taking the precepts, is a process of being taken apart and put back together again and again and again. One of the things that precepts remind us is to ask how we know when we are keeping them and when we are not. In Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson examine the resistance most of us have

[15:22]

to looking at our personal and general complicity in mistakes of judgment, understanding, equity, and awareness. And our cognitive and emotional resistance to considering how that might be addressed openly. And through what Buddhist practice describes as repentance. And that's also part of the initiation ceremony. The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions, especially the wrong ones, is an unpleasant feeling called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions, ideas, attitudes, beliefs, or opinions, and that are psychologically inconsistent.

[16:23]

Just as a side thing, I've been pondering for a while the combination of animal rights, vegetarianism, and veganism in terms of the pet food industry. And this cognitive dissonance that that doesn't seem to be addressed. in concerns with animal rights, like, well, if we're not supposed to eat meat, how does the whole pet food industry work in terms of providing meat for our pets? And that process has a huge ecological impact. So where do we stand? What do we choose? Somebody, one of the, I was reading a review of two books about animal rights, and one of the, authors said cats should be kept indoors. I guess so they don't kill birds.

[17:26]

But then what do they eat? They eat other animals, and that has to be processed and packaged and everything. And so this little odd dissonance about exactly what we value and what our preferences are. We want our pets, and yet... talk about rescue pets. So I'm still working on it, but I think that that's the kind of dissonance that is uncomfortable and just deeply goes into some of these things. Perhaps the greatest lesson of dissonance theory is that we can't wait around for people to have moral conversions, sudden changes of heart, or new insights. Most human beings and institutions are going to do everything in their power to reduce dissonance in ways that are favorable to them, that allow them to justify their mistakes and maintain business as usual. Understanding how the mind yearns for consonance and rejects information that questions our beliefs, decisions, or preferences teaches us to be open to the possibility of error.

[18:39]

It also helps us to let go of the need to be right. So we're always going into some sort of a circle. And I think one tendency in this circle thing, circular thing, is that we keep reiterating intentions without actually offering evidence of them being fulfilled. So it makes us feel good to say we believe in something being right that's a benefit to others, but we don't actually do anything significant or change anything significant. And I think this sometimes takes the form of expressing ideologies such as bodhisattva-hood without quite including adjustment and sacrifice and generosity. And that's not a criticism because just what is it we can do?

[19:43]

And what form does it take? And if we overdo adjustment and sacrifice and generosity, they can appear as patronizing, arrogant, or tokenism. So I think in the context of community, precepts and ethical considerations keep us alert. and offer a wider version of reality that includes self-understanding and self-knowledge that then can be extended through compassion to others. Because when we understand ourselves and our own conflicted thinking and emotions, then we can extend that understanding to everyone else. And the precepts kind of wear down our selfishness and our self-protectiveness so that we can get as close as possible to wisdom.

[20:44]

In our daily confrontation with our likes and dislikes and ideologies and ambiguities and resentment and forgiveness, and our saints and our evildoers, I think there's always this option and opportunity for reflection and contemplation. And part of that includes a willingness to experience ruefulness and sometimes even laugh at ourselves and our ideologies without forsaking ourselves or them. So we take a narrow view and then an open view, again and again. There's really only one person we can change, and that's not egotistical or ineffective. In Buddhist teaching, it's stated as, no one can purify another.

[21:51]

So the path of character development and self-knowledge often works most deeply through moments or experiences of failure, misunderstanding, loneliness, or those searing positive and negative emotions that are based in desire and hatred. So they don't need to be avoided. They're actually signals to us of defensiveness and fear and so on and so forth. so they can be really deep moments for this sort of self-knowledge that becomes character development. And I think in times of where things seem a little bit worse than usual, you know, times of violence and retaliation, which are happening between us daily, as well as in the world,

[23:00]

we can resist the temptation to consider ourselves innocent or capable of offering sort of armchair expertise about who is right and wrong. And at the same time, we have to care and keep all these ambiguities in mind. In Dale Wright's chapter on morality in The Six Perfections, Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character, he points to the ambiguities of the teachings. How the bodhisattva is to fulfill this paradoxical demand of understanding there is no substantial independent self, and yet the requirement of practicing morality, is difficult to grasp and will be deferred over and over until we arrive at the sixth perfection of wisdom.

[24:01]

But that deferral is precisely what bodhisattvas face. They begin their Buddhist practice within the parameters of their original understanding of the world. How could they begin otherwise? I am feeling rather gloomy. Sorry about that. Things, you know, continue to arise that please us or frighten us, hurt, horrify, annoy, affirm us or dismiss us, and that support or threaten us and those around us. And I think we continue, you know, to respond in various skillful and unskillful ways. And when we encounter these experiences in the context of community, our container, I think navigating them is enriched and made more complex the more diverse the community is able to be.

[25:27]

So the reminders, always reminding us that community is small and wide. and very dispersed. So the Buddhist recommendation is contradictory and it's filled with distress and celebration. Applying Buddhist ethics and then engaging in contemplation and reflection and sustaining this kind of radical hope in the possibility of something like peace or patience or a combination of everything and generosity for ourselves and others. And knowing that this hope is unlikely to be met, we might despair and even avoid making the effort required to work towards it.

[26:33]

And just to say things and not do things that are evidence of our intention. And yet, you know, we have everything we need to bring this hope to fulfillment. And part of that is through not just stating intentions, but following through, see what happens, let them unfold. and accept the experimentation and the risk and the humility that is required. 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 Domo.

[27:37]

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