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. I'm Crystal Johnson. My pronouns are she, her, hers. And I'm speaking to you from the native land of the northern Pomo Indians. who lived in the area around what is now Mendocino, California. These last few months, it's been difficult to have everything go online. But it does mean that I get to share time with people who I would not be able to meet in person. And so I welcome everyone who has come this morning. All bodies, all minds, all colors, all genders, all abilities. all cultures, all everyone. I'm honored by your presence, and I appreciate this opportunity, again, to be with you in Sangha and to share the Dharma.

[01:07]

What I'd like to offer this morning is some reflections on practicing in inclusive community. I'd like to talk about how our practice helps us with the barriers to inclusiveness. Because it's my wish, and I imagine the wish of many, if not all of you, to open the doors to the Dharma to as many people as possible and as widely as possible. As you may have noticed, I'm white. I'm also cisgendered, straight, middle class, a woman of a certain age. And so my understanding is shaped and limited by my conditioning, by this lens through which I see the world. So if today I say or do something unskillful or something that offends or harms you, I hope that you will let me know. You can put it in the chat and Matt will draw my attention to it. You can speak out in the question and answer period.

[02:11]

If something comes to mind later, after you've had a chance to sit with things, please send me an email because I would very much like to learn with and from you. And this is how I know how to do it, by sharing my own experience and my practice and learning how this lands for you. Inclusive community is central to our lives and our sanghas. And I think most, if not every single one of us really longs to belong, deeply longs to belong. And yet, over the course of our lives, we learn that in order to belong to our family, to our community, our neighborhood, our sangha, our friend group, our workplace, that we have to hide or deny parts of ourselves. We have to leave them behind in order to be accepted. Which is ironic when I think about it, because when I've left out the supposedly problematic parts of myself in order to belong, who is it then who is actually belonging?

[03:16]

what is actually happening. What I feel is really important for our sanghas is to create a space where we can come together as whole people, people who belong in the sangha and to each other, and where we don't have to leave parts behind. And in this way, each of us can feel safe enough to fully open to the vulnerability of the practice, of the role of the student, and of the role of the teacher. Each of us can find the true refuge in Sangha that is one of the precious triple gems. And in this community, we can follow the teachings of the Buddha to learn to see more clearly, to unwind the tangle of delusion, to let go of clinging and separation and travel toward freedom together. So this is my wish for us all. So I'd like to offer first some examples from my own journey and how I see the practice as essential to it, and then offer some observations about that journey.

[04:27]

So as Kodo mentioned, I practice at the East Bay Meditation Center. And 10 or 12 years ago, now we put in place a fragrance-free practice policy. which I now see as a practice, so that we could be accessible to people who have environmental illnesses, chemical sensitivity, asthma, other things that make sense, harmful to them. And I was fine with that. I didn't mind. And I didn't really think about it much either. One day I was going to a meeting at the center and realized that I had kind of absentmindedly put on perfume after I took my shower that morning. So I thought, well, OK. I rolled down the windows to try to get it to off gas before I got to the meeting. And I thought, well, I'll try to do better next time. So I got to the meeting.

[05:29]

I went in. We greeted everybody. And then someone came up to me and said, could you step outside with me for a minute? So I said, sure. So I stepped outside with him. I thought he wanted to talk to me about something. But he said, wait here a minute. I'll be back. So I was standing outside on Broadway on a Sunday afternoon or something, thinking, wow, this is strange. But what I came to learn was that in going into that space wearing perfume and hugging people, I had caused an asthma attack, a serious breathing problem for one of my colleagues. And I was kind of shocked and ashamed. that I could have been so careless. And I wish I could say that that was the last time I did that, but it wasn't. And so after some time and some of this harming behavior, I really kind of took a look and said, what is happening? How can I continue to be doing this?

[06:30]

And this... This practice, you know, it was guided by my commitment to non-harming. It was guided by regret for the harm I had caused, compassion for the suffering I had caused. And as I sat with it, I could see that I was hanging on to this delusion of beauty, of years and years of the conditioning of advertising, that in order to be beautiful, in order to be a woman, in order to be okay, I needed to smell a certain way. I needed to add these chemicals. so that I could smell like, I don't know, flowers or whatever. And that there was this clinging to the me, the me who wanted to wear perfume, wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do, et cetera. And I thought, wow, so I'm actually choosing advertising over community. At that point, it became easy to give it up, to let go of that identity of a beautiful person. And I could see that what was skillful in my practice was to avoid scented products.

[07:35]

In this way, I would care for other people. And that in this way, I could keep my commitment to non-harming and to the health of my community. An aspect of our conditioning is that it's unconscious. And so we don't really encounter it until we practice in community. And we come in contact with others who have different lenses or who can alert us to our blind spots or our places of not understanding. Some years back, in the first year that we were teaching the Widen Awakening and Sangha class at Yisbe Meditation Center, at the end of the first talk I gave, at the end of the first day, one of the students came up to me and said, you know, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you talk as if all Native Americans are dead. And so I was like, wow. And I kind of tuned into my body and felt kind of tense and, you know, heat and agitation.

[08:47]

And it was a very unpleasant feeling tone. I had the impulse to say, no, I didn't. Emotion of shame came up. Just this very kind of intense and complex reaction. Fortunately, I took a deep breath. I invited her to say more, thanked her for her comment. And as I reflected on it later, I realized if you had asked me, are all Native Americans dead? I would have said, of course not. But somehow in the mental space of the talk, that is how I was thinking about it. As if the genocide were complete and Native Americans were all in the past. And so as I investigated it, I realized that I had come out of public school education history classes somehow with the idea that Native Americans were part of a past history, not a diverse range of living communities. Living in the white bubble, I didn't know Native people, and I really had never thought about who used to live on the land that was now Oakland.

[09:57]

Again, when I looked into it, I realized there are active Native communities quite near to where I live. In fact, if you're in the United States, there are probably Native communities near you right now. And we are most certainly living on land that were once Native people's land. But this was part of my conditioning, part of my unconscious conditioning. And it took another person to help me see it because I was not aware that that's what I thought because, of course, It's unconscious. Another kind of example is when we are clinging to an identity when we don't necessarily realize it. Some years ago, I was still working as a psychologist. I was running a supervision group with about a dozen graduate students. And after a few weeks, one of the students came to one of the students of color came to my office hours.

[10:59]

And she said, you know, the way that you run this group is not safe for me. So again, you know, I immediately felt my body tighten. I felt sort of the pressure, the tingling, the unpleasant Vedana. I imagined her as attacking me. I felt shame. I felt confusion. And all kinds of thoughts came up, like, I'm a good teacher. I'm a good white person. What do you know? I'm the teacher. I'm the supervisor. I've worked hard to introduce diverse material into the seminar just for you. And the me, me, me was so clear, kind of clinging to that identity, like really hardening into it, you know, as if she was trying to harm me, rather than just having her own experience and letting me know what it was. And so these signals, I now recognize as signals to listen and ask more rather than continue speaking. So I asked her, you know, please tell me more.

[12:03]

And what she told me kind of profoundly affected the way that I have taught ever since and the way I think about community ever since. And what she said was, you know, for me, I've had a lot of really negative experiences with white people in my life. And so if I'm in a group that includes white people, that's mostly white people, that is not safe for me. I really have to know who is in that group in order to be able to actually take part. And so the way that I had started the group, kind of as a work group, you know, let's get down to work together, wasn't working for her. That she needed a level of personal sharing that would allow her to see, okay, this is going to be a safe enough space for me. I am going to be able to take care of myself in this space. And so it was this practice of paying attention to the aggregates of clinging, to the body, to the feeling tone, perception, thought, feelings, impulses, and the me, the kind of hardness of me, that allowed me to observe and let go of the I am a good supervisor.

[13:15]

And it allowed me to hear her and change what I was doing. And in this way, she gave me the opportunity to create a space where she could have the same chance for learning that the white people in the group could. Because I realized as she was talking that what I thought was one group was not one group. She was in a different group than the white students were in. Because they were in a group of people that looked like them. They were in a group of people who had pretty similar backgrounds. And they felt safe enough already to relax and learn, whereas she didn't. When we are in community, this is a huge, complex, and often very emotional process to really pay attention to the conditioning and not just engage in conditioned responses. Because our task is to see the conditioning, to unravel it, investigate it, process what arises, and learn to be more skillfully in community.

[14:25]

And this was brought home to me, again, a few years ago. I was part of a large study group. There was a diverse teaching team, and it was a diverse group of students. And a teacher of color had just finished a talk, and a white man in the sangha addressing the teacher of color, said something like, I don't feel welcomed by you. You are excluding me, and I demand an apology. And I felt like my body caught fire. I felt this rush of heat and hard and tension, this very negative, very unpleasant feeling tone. I felt like this was really a bad guy. I completely shut down. You know, I felt overwhelmed by the emotions that came up. I felt overwhelmed by the confusion that arose. I actually literally had the thought, oh, I hope a person of color knows what to say, which is so unlovely, but that's what came up.

[15:34]

And so I just, I fell into silence and yeah, I just didn't know what to do. And the room kind of went silent. It was awkward, and eventually we moved on, but it was quite a difficult moment. And so sitting with it later, I was trying to understand what was overwhelming, what had frozen me. And I realized that one of the things that had frozen me was that my social conditioning came up, the conditioning that says, Angry white men are dangerous, and you have to appease them immediately and give them what they want. And I thought about the situation, and this man was not threatening us. He was not going to do something physically harmful. He was having his experience and speaking from it. But what I was experiencing was, ah, this is a dangerous situation.

[16:37]

I better shut down. I better get really small. move away. And at the same time as I was experiencing that, I was also having the experience of, wow, this is going to be harmful. This is going to hurt some of the people here who feel very included by this teacher of color and hardly ever feel included. And so this is a moment for them, which is now being kind of intruded on by this white person. And so I was then trying to understand, well, what what should i have done like how how might i have spoken because part of my impulse was to tell him to stop that he was wrong and you know it's like well he was speaking from the experience he was having um so i realized well what i need to do is figure out like how do i speak from my experience how do i speak about you know what's what was coming up for me and as is often the uh

[17:38]

the case in these situations, the opportunity came again. And so there was another meeting of this same group, a teacher of color, maybe the same one, I'm not sure, was giving a talk and leading us through some exercises and divided us into affinity groups to put the white people on one side of the room and people of color on the other side of the room. And when we came back from the gathering, from the separate groups, again, a white man, a different white man, spoke up and said, you know, that was so alienating. You alienated me from my colleagues of color by dividing us into white and POC groups because before you did that, we were just one community. And I had a similar reaction as before. Like there was a lot of sort of jumbled thoughts arising and my body was very tense and I felt a lot of heat and pressure. My impulse was to shout him down, you know, as if... I don't know what is it, but just like to make this experience go away.

[18:43]

My heart was pounding. And I, you know, I tuned in enough and breathed enough to be able to raise my hand. And I said something like, you know, I actually see it differently. I think that the division between white people and people of color is already there. And that it's very visible to people of color here because they are so conditioned to see it. It so affects them. And that we as white people are not so affected by it. And so we can imagine that we're a unified community until someone brings race up. But that's a fantasy of our conditioning. And in that discussion, unlike the prior situation where we all just kind of froze, many people spoke about what their experiences were. There were people who were not American, who had grown up abroad, and they're like... I don't know why you're always talking about this, you know, white-nose POC splits. You know, it's not like that at home. Or, you know, there are just many ways of experiencing that moment.

[19:44]

But what was important about it, what was possible as a community, was that the teachers could hold the space, and therefore the group could hold the space, to make room for contradictory experiences. We didn't all have to feel the same. It didn't all have to be one way. that we could have multiple contradictory experiences that could all be present at the same time, that there wasn't an effort to make one experience right and the others wrong. And this is the nature of community, that we come together in our diversity and we have experience together. So our challenge is to make that space for everybody. So to have a vibrant, healthy sangha, we need to make space for all of these experiences. And for each of us to have the support we need to investigate those experiences and heal from harm. Because one of the dead ends that we can get into is when one experience is privileged over all the others.

[20:52]

When we say, oh, this is the way to practice. Oh, this is the meaning of that event. Oh, this is how you should be feeling. Oh, that response is not the right response. So I'm talking a lot about conditioning. And what do I mean by that? So one of the ways to conceptualize it, to think about it, and therefore a way to help us experience it, is that those of us who grew up in America and... maybe other places as well, although somewhat differently, that we have been trained into this American system of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism. And there's a system of oppression in place that privileges whiteness, maleness, property owning, and so forth. And we've been trained to see this process, this setup, this system as natural.

[21:57]

And we've also been schooled as to our role in it. And I invite you to just notice what arises for you when I say these words. White supremacist, patriarchal, capitalism. Notice the body. Tensing, relaxing. Is it neutral? The feeling tone, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? White supremacist, patriarchal, capitalism. What are their perceptions? What are the thoughts, the emotions, the ideas, the impulses that arise? Does it seem to be divisive language? Does it seem harsh, accurate, confusing, inappropriate, informative, boring, relieving?

[23:00]

simple fact that the language itself has a psychophysical impact and i'm guessing that there's a wide range of impacts in this group this makes me think that it's a very rich area for investigation for cultivation of loving kindness for compassion compassion for all that people have suffered and are suffering because of the ways that we've been conditioned So some of the things that this capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal culture transits in, one of the things is that whiteness is the norm and that American means white. White is better than non-white. White people are smarter, more capable. It's reasonable that we have the best jobs, the most money, better schools, bigger houses. We've learned the rules and the practices of white dominance. And while these rules are quite visible to people of color, typically, they're not so visible to us as white people.

[24:07]

But this training does not lead us to a practice of non-harming and renunciation. This practice leads us to harming, this conditioning, which is why it's important to try to undo it, to let it go. Another part of the conditioning process is that money matters. And the more money you have, the more important person you are. And also, the more valuable, like morally better. More money, more morally valuable. And this is not a practice of renunciation. This is a practice of greed. It cultivates hatred. It's based on delusion. Another part of our conditioning is that we value people based on what they produce. People who are less productive don't count as much.

[25:13]

People with disabilities or mental illness or trauma, they don't count as much. This is not a practice of loving kindness. This is not a practice of compassion. Another teaching is that it's the individual that matters. that ideally I should be able to do what's best for me without particular regard to its impact on others. If it's not illegal, I should be able to do it, whatever it is, whenever I want to. And this is not the training of non-harming. This is not the training of the bodhisattva vows of interdependence. This is the teaching of separation. It teaches us to cling to a mirage of self. It teaches us to cling to the aggregates, which are the root of suffering. We're also socialized into a binary system of gender. Those of us who are socialized as men are taught, among many things, that men aren't allowed to have feelings.

[26:20]

They have to be strong and competent, as rich as possible. That's what makes a man. Those of us socialized as women are taught that we need to do the feeling work to do most of the work of the house and childcare, because otherwise we threaten our men. We're less valuable because we produce less stuff that can be sold in a capitalist marketplace. We should be pleasing and not too aggressive. For myself, as a white, straight, cisgendered woman, this is an effort to take away parts of who I am, to dictate who I am, and to fit me into a box that keeps me productive, that reinforces a system of capitalism, of white supremacy, of patriarchy. And, you know, this is bad enough. But for people for whom the gender binary is not a close enough fit, they are left very much on their own in a socially devalued space because they don't fit the system.

[27:22]

And if we're not very, very careful, we will reproduce the dominant system in our sanghas in a way that excludes non-binary. Because without special effort, and especially when members of the dominant culture create communities, we really can't help but produce the culture of domination and exploitation and white supremacy. So we have to make specific effort. We have to consciously create community based on the values of non-harming, of compassion, of renunciation. using the tools of investigation of mindfulness. I think that one powerful reason that many, if not all of us, have sought out Buddhism as a spiritual practice is that at some level we recognize the great harm of this conditioning.

[28:29]

It harms us differently. You know, to some of us, you know, BIPOC, low income, people with mental illness, physical disability, LGBTQI, the harm is obvious and daily and real. To those of us who are white or male, who are cisgendered, straight and or middle class, able-bodied, et cetera, it can manifest differently, maybe as a sense of stress or disconnection, loneliness, depression, unhappiness. But the harm is there. And I think at some level we feel it. Because this system into which we've been conditioned is the same one as that which led to the murder of George Floyd and so many other black and brown people. It's the same system that has led to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on black and brown communities. It has led to the continuing desecration of native communities and their land. It's a system that has led to the specter of children in cages on our borders and the anti-Asian violence as a response to COVID-19.

[29:41]

And there's a powerful link through the causes and conditions, a powerful link between what we cultivate in our sanghas and what arises in the larger culture. We are not separate from the larger culture. We are of it. And if we are not looking to see more clearly and disrupt this system and create freedom in our sanghas, then we're supporting the system. We're supporting this great suffering. I think all of us here have been drawn to this practice that can take us in a very different direction. I imagine we took many different paths to get here, but I'm thinking that there's a reason for us coming, and that this reason can join us together in Sangha rather than divide us. If we can open our hearts to the possibility of community, of interdependence, of freedom, and if we can do this together, learning together, growing together, it is specifically through our practice, through our commitment to non-harming, our Bodhisattva vows,

[31:02]

the Eightfold Path, that we can practice together in community in a way that allows us to let go of the conditioning that has taught us that some of us are better than others, that some deserve more than others, that some know better than others, and that there should always be just a few people in positions of dominance who control access to resources and to safety. And that we can we can investigate and let go of the ways that we are clinging to views, to our identities, to our sense of a stable, ongoing, separate self that has to be defended, even if it is at the expense of others. And those of us with dominant identities have a particular responsibility to commit to this practice of community, since by definition, we have more power. We have more power to change, and we have more power to resist.

[32:02]

And I believe that we need to do this. If we're going to be true to our commitment to non-harming, our vow to liberate all beings, this is our path. This is our practice. This is the practice of community. 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.

[32:46]

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