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. Sorry that took so long. About half the lecture just getting seated. So what do you call the world? I was invited to come today to honor the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday, and that is a wonderful picture. And as I was thinking about what to say, I realized that honoring him was somehow incomplete, as though I was looking on him as an object, a story that I could tell about a truly great man. who has become an integral part of American history.

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And that seemed wrong to me, far removed from the impact that story has had on my life and on the life of this world, a world-honored one. So what I really want to say is how I feel about his story, how that story has been an inspiration for my life, is I don't think we just want to hear stories about great people. I think we want to find ways to be like them, to be like those who have devoted their lives to the welfare of others. When the Reverend King reflected on himself as a young child and later as a young man, he said, I had an inner urge to serve humanity, an urge derived from the moral roots of both the peace movement and and the movement for civil rights. So I would propose that this community as well, here in San Francisco, the city of St.

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Francis, arose from the same moral roots as Dr. King, or what we call the Bodhisattva vow. A simple vow, just like his, that we chant nearly every morning, to end all evil, to cultivate all good, and to free all beings. So using the inspiration of his example and some of his words, I hope to express what I see as common ground with the Buddha's teaching, the teaching of living for the benefit of others, starting with a story from the Book of Serenity called Ditsang, Planting the Fields. This story of planting the fields is particularly popular at Green Gulch Farm, where I come from, committed as we are to helping both plants and humans to grow. Ditsang asks Suesan, where do you come from?

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Suesan replies, from the South, like Dr. King. Ditsang says, how is Buddhism in the South these days? Suesan replies, there is extensive discussion. Di San says, well, how can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice for people to eat? Sui San says, what can you do about the world? Di San says, what do you call the world? So the first part of this story has to do with the distinction between simply talking about it and doing something about it. it being whatever it is that each of us calls the world, between speech and action, between Zereshan's extensive discussion and Ditsang planting the fields and making rice for people to eat.

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Speech and action come to life within each of us as human beings in those very earliest years as we are being taught how to speak, how to explain, how to think. just as they came to life in Dr. King, in Shakyamuni Buddha, in Rosa Parks, and many, many others, both known and unknown. To vow means to give your word, the bodhisattva vow. And we say, that's good. And it is good, and yet, what's better is keeping your word through every action of your body, speech, and mind. And that, as we know, is not so easy. For Dr. King, the mantle of moral leadership was placed on him by others. He did not show up and volunteer. As one of his companions said later, he had a great gift of speech and a moral authority, and so the cross was laid upon him.

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His own aspiration and the source of his personal happiness as a bright, well-educated young minister had been his family and his church, where he planned to live out a long and peaceful life in a middle-class enclave of the black community in the segregated South. And yet, when called, he chose to turn his deeply held spiritual beliefs into action. And that commitment never faltered until the day that he was shot, April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old. The sermon that he was planning to give that very week was entitled, Why America May Go to Hell. I think most of you in this room right now are probably younger than me. I was a sophomore in college the year that Dr. King was assassinated. I remember that day very well and the riots and the pain that followed as his prophecy came to pass.

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And yet there never was a time in his life as a spiritual teacher, as a leader, that he himself wavered in his commitment to nonviolence. Ahimsa. Even in the face of all the threats daily, 50 threats a day to his life against both himself and his family, After his home was bombed, he said to those who came to protect him with weapons, this is not the way. If we practice an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, we will be a nation of the blind and toothless. As with the Buddha before him, he saw no practical or moral outcome to a life based on acts of violence, even in response to the violence and oppression of others. His commitment was not to annihilate his opponents, the angry white supremacists, and those who in their passivity supported them, but rather from deep within his faith to teach them and convert them to a path of compassion and peace.

[07:33]

As he famously said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Dr. King shared his miraculous vision with his congregation the very night before he was murdered. And then I got to Memphis, and some began to talk about the threats that were out and what will happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn't matter with me now. Because I have been to the mountaintop, and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I have looked over, and I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight,

[08:39]

that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. An authentic honoring of Dr. King and his legacy would be for us as individuals and as a community to transform our talk about freeing all beings into action. In recent years, the Zen Center has been talking and studying racism, sexism, classism, and ableism, each of these mere words referring to nearly unfathomable systems of oppression. Humans formed these systems over millennia. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt. Africans in America's South and women... pretty much everywhere. As we study and talk, yet again, the question keeps being asked, so when are you going to do something?

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And unfortunately, the response thus far seems to be, do what? A sincere response, perhaps, and yet, as of today, the dynamics that are creating these inequities have barely been made to squeak. When the events of 9-11 happened, I was struck by the Dalai Lama's wise counsel, don't look for blame, look for causes. So this is the very teaching the Buddha gave to us as well more than 2,500 years ago. Suffering is caused by how you, each of you and me, see the world and based on what we see, take action. This is karma. action being the mandate for personal as well as social change. As a result, actions that are based in greed, hatred, and delusion continue to result in very bad outcomes for us all.

[10:50]

Dr. King also stated in a sermon called Beyond Vietnam that true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. true compassion comes to see that the edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. For the Buddha, the main difficulty for the human being is to recognize, to see how their very own minds are at the center of both the cause and the cure for suffering. This is what the last two lines of the story about Ditsang, planting the fields, is referring to. When Zui-san says that in the South there is extensive discussion, Di-san asks him how that compares to planting rice and making food for people to eat. Zui-san doesn't answer the question, but instead challenges the teacher. What can you do about the world? To which Di-san replies, what do you call the world? The world, when seen by the enlightened vision of an awakened being,

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when seen from the mountaintop, is a land of purity, of milk and honey, as they say. So what is it that keeps us from seeing and behaving in such a way to make it so? The Buddhists said that we create the world by how we think, that the world is a creation of our mind. If we think kind thoughts and are generous to others, the world becomes a heavenly place. If we think hateful thoughts and are cruel to others, the world becomes a veritable hell. This teaching of how the world is a result of our thinking, that the world depends on our thinking, is called dependent co-arising. As I was reading through Dr. King's sermons, he too, as one who had been to the mountaintop, clearly came to realize the truth of dependent co-arising. Having been a young person during the years of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, I and my like-hearted friends were faced with only two choices, or so it seemed, rage or rage management.

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But we were very lucky in those days, as we are now, so lucky and blessed to have the teachings of great ones, of noble ones. of honorable women and men who could tell us what is right and what is wrong, and who themselves had walked through hell and gone beyond it. So here are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from a very beautiful sermon given in 1967 called The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life. It's a fairly long sermon, so I've taken out a section to read to you in which he's talking about the story of the Good Samaritan. And for those of you who are not familiar with the story, basically it recounts the reply that Jesus gave to a religious scholar who was asking about how he might come to inherit eternal life, the kingdom of heaven. Jesus asked the man, what is written in the law? The man replies, love the Lord with all your heart and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.

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The scholar then asks, who is my neighbor? So Jesus tells the story of a man who has been beaten and robbed and left for dead at the side of the road. Two travelers, kinsmen, come along and pass on by the injured man. But a Samaritan who was not of his tribe came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He bandaged his wounds, lifted him onto his own donkey, and cared for him. Jesus then asked the scholar, which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. And Jesus then said, go and do likewise. Go and do likewise. Here's what Dr. King adds after recounting this story. And don't forget in doing something for others that you have what you have because of others.

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Yes, sir. Don't forget that. We are tied together in life and in the world. And you may think you got all you got by yourself. But you know, before you got out here to church this morning, you were dependent on more than half of the world. That's right. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and you reach over for a bar of soap and that's handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that's given to you by a Turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And then you go on to the kitchen to get your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little coffee, and that's poured in your cup by a South American. That's right. Or maybe you decided you want a little tea this morning, only to discover that that's poured in your cup. By a Chinese. Yes. Or maybe you want a little cocoa. That's poured in your cup by a West African. Yes.

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And then you want a little bread. And you reach over to get it. And that's given to you by the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. That's right. Before you get through eating breakfast in the morning, you're dependent on more than half the world. That's right. That's the way God structured it. That's the way God structured this world. So let us be concerned about others because we are dependent on others. Oh yes. This is the very same teaching the Buddha gave at the moment of his own enlightenment with newly opened eyes that had grown kind and merciful. The entire world in the ten directions is the true human body, he said. That's right. This body and that body and each body sitting here right now in this room, alive together with all beings. Once our human eyes can see what's hard to see, then there are no others who are not our neighbors, our family, our sustenance, and our responsibility.

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Dr. King had eyes like that. And so to Mahatma Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Suzuki Roshi, and many, many others whose lives have been a blessing to those around them. And maybe you had a parent like that, or a friend, or a teacher, or maybe you're like that, and we all thank you for it. There's a verse from the Lotus Sutra that we chant on New Year's Eve as we process down to the garden at Green Gulch with candles inside handmade lotus boats, usually with over a hundred voices chanting together. Eyes of compassion observing sentient beings assemble an ocean of blessings beyond measure. What do we call the world? And how do we keep going when there's been a big shift a sea change, and how we imagine the world and ourselves to be. The only answer I can give, the only one that I know, is to keep on studying the teachings of the awakened ones with a commitment to awakening ourselves and to awakening those around us.

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One such teaching of awakening appears in a long poem by the 9th century Chinese Zen master Dongshan. who is considered to be the founder of our school of Buddhism called Soto Zen. I find this teaching particularly relevant to the kind of suffering that is arising in our world today. The poem which Dongshan is most famous for is called The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, and it's one that we chant weekly here at the Zen Center. Within this poem are embedded Dongshan's elaboration of the relationship between the host, and the guest. A formulation called the five ranks or the five perspectives on enlightenment. Other names for host and guest are the ultimate truth and the relative truth, the real and the apparent, the upright and the slanted, or the teacher and the student. And just what is it that the teacher is here to teach the students according to this master of Zen?

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The teacher is here to teach three things, ethics, concentration, and wisdom, shila, samadhi, and prajna, also known as the three trainings. These three things make up the entirety of the Buddha's own pathway to awakening. First comes ethics, the development of good character, which includes deportment or manners, As young boys, both Martin Luther King Jr. and the Buddha were taught good manners, what we often in our culture disparage as overly fussy rules of etiquette. As with all human behavior, manners can become a means of cultural oppression for the enforcement of caste systems privileging the very few. And yet without setting aside the dangers that are inherent in the rules of deportment, it's essential for humans to find some agreement on how to live and work together, the rule of law.

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If those laws are unjust or unfair and are not founded on principles of wisdom and compassion, we have only relentless conflict, as is being highlighted in this nation today. This is not dissimilar to what was happening in the Buddha's day. as city-states were being transformed into empires by the privileged few. Manners for the Buddha were the primary means by which he taught his community of young monks to survive without owning property or carrying weapons of self-defense. He taught them to walk slowly and quietly, to enter into the donors' houses with warm smiles and deep bows, to show their gratitude for food and shelter, and like the Good Samaritan, to devote themselves to the welfare of those in need. Love your neighbor as yourself. Or as the Dalai Lama has said, my religion is kindness. The golden rule is not about accumulating wealth.

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It is about the development of good character. And character, or dignity, or one's attitude, as Viktor Frankl called it in Man's Search for Meaning, is the one thing that cannot be taken from you. In the retelling of his survival under the Nazi regime, having been deprived of his family, his home, and even his own clothing, Frankl deeply understood what was at the core of a life truly worth living. He had developed his character. And although he was often afraid and quite certain, as was Dr. King, that he would be killed... Like Dr. King, he discovered that he did not lose his dignity or succumb to the bullying of those who had taken command of his society. Developing our character, becoming respectful in our personal relationship to the world, meaning to the other, is the first of the five ranks which are presented in Dongshan's poem. The guest...

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or the student enters deeply into a relationship of mutual respect with the host as personified by a teacher. At this stage of practice, the first of the five ranks, the meeting appears to take place in utter darkness. Who is the teacher? The other. The universe. In the very formation of our personal life, as it is differentiating from the rest of the universe, right there within our mother's womb, we are faced with a profound darkness. There's nothing there to be seen at all, and yet we have a strong sense of intimacy with the ancient wellspring from which we are about to be born. And so the question remains before us throughout our life, who is the other? Here's Dongshan's verse that accompanies the first of the five ranks. At the beginning of the third watch, before moonrise, don't be surprised if there is meeting without recognition.

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One still vaguely harbors the elegance of former days. In the second stage of practice, the second of the five ranks, we have emerged from the darkness into the light of self-awareness, what we call the world, the world of color, sound, odor, taste, touch, and thought. This is the verse that accompanies the second of the five ranks. Having overslept, an old woman encounters the ancient mirror. This is clearly meeting face to face. Only then is it genuine. Don't lose your head by validating shadows. Through thinking, we discriminate preferences among the multitude of appearances, and we learn how to negotiate in the world that appears to come toward us, either in friendship or in enmity. And along with that comes the arising of greed on the one hand and hatred on the other, and therein lies the danger in how we come to see the world.

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This is the stage in which our prejudices and preferences become deeply ingrained. I like it, I don't like it, I don't know yet if I like it or not. Such habits of thought may take a lifetime to unravel. The next three stages of the five ranks are descriptive of the spiritual journey through which we come to integrate the darkness of the universe with this single human life we have an oh-so-brief opportunity to explore. By integrating our understanding of the world, the universe, and our own place in it, we too may come to find this dignity that cannot be taken from us by any means. The biggest choices within this human life are encompassed in the teachings by the Buddha who is said to have awakened to his own dual identity, his dual citizenship, as both the universe itself and as a single person.

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Or as Dongshan said on the occasion of his awakening, gazing at his reflection in the water, just this person. The three trainings that I mentioned earlier, ethics, concentration, and wisdom, are the tools or practices for realizing a fully awakened life. Tools which are used continuously and are exploration of these five facets of awakening. The first training, ethics or deportment, requires the support of the other two, concentration and wisdom. Concentration allows us to study and to recognize the elaborate workings of the human mind, allows us to slow down in order to more deeply consider our motives, our actions, and our thoughts. We even call such a person considerate. But it's the third training itself, wisdom, that is seeking wisdom. a search that's undertaken within our very own body and mind.

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How? Don't move. Don't talk so much. Don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't sexualize, don't slander, and don't hate anything or anyone. Not so easy. Zen Master Dogen called this practice just sitting, just sitting. allows us to explore the workings of our mind until we discover its hidden truth, that we are not alone, we are not separate, and that we are here in this world to live in harmony with everyone. Those who know this do not fight against each other. As students of the Buddha's teaching, this is our commitment, our value, and our vow to follow a pathway of truth of nonviolence, and of respect for all beings. And yet I, for one, am greatly challenged in that commitment on this and every day. The sea change which has taken place in our society through the rhetoric of hatred and exclusivity is utterly frightening.

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And yet, like Viktor Frankl, I have great faith in the power of human dignity. and a great although thinning hope that those in power will awaken from their selfish interests. And until they do, our mandate as people of conscience is continuous vigilance and a well-reasoned response. Ethics, concentration, and wisdom. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King. Junior, happy birthday. 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.

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May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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