So, I'm not sure whether... Did the piece that I sent out go out to people who were registered? It didn't. No. Which piece are you talking about? Okay. It was a piece called Loving Your Enemies. Okay, so people didn't some people got it some people didn't okay, that's all right because actually What I realized after I read that Was that there are Multiple texts of Variations of the same sermon Uh, and the one that I sent out, uh, was published in, uh, a book of Dr. King's called Strength to Love in 1963.

[01:03]

And I don't like it nearly as much as the one that I've been using, um, which is from, uh, November of 1957. Um, this is one of the problems with editing is that Sometimes you edit all the juice out and you, you know, you make stuff. It's more, this is more philosophical, but the earlier one is like really, really interesting and more Buddhistic in many ways, but also more, more detailed and more specific. So I'm going to work from that. It's the same. basic principles and it's working from the same from the same verses from the gospel which are probably familiar to many of you. It's Matthew 5 43 to 45 which says ye have heard that it's been said thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy

[02:11]

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you, that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven." It's a challenging text. But it's really parallel to quite a number of verses in the Dhammapada, which is possibly one of the earlier Buddhist texts, so some of these are familiar to you. Hatred is not overcome by hatred. By love alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law. Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.

[03:13]

Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth. Whoever tries to seek happiness through hurting others cannot find happiness. Speak not harshly to anyone. Those thus addressed will retort. Painful indeed is vindictive speech. Blows in exchange may bruise you. Better than a thousand utterances comprising useless words is one single beneficial word by hearing which one attains peace. There never was there never will be, nor is there now to be found anyone who is wholly blamed or wholly praised."

[04:19]

So this goes back to, I think, the principles that we were speaking of this morning in Beloved Community of including those. In the sermon that King gives, which I will do some commentary and we'll have a chance to discuss, I think he makes that point clearly. But I want to sing you a song first, which I have sung before, and many of you know, and you can sing along, because I think it encapsulates this teaching. If you're happy with the song, then you can just leave, because you can skip the rest of the talk and go back into the zendo and sit. But don't leave. So I think many of you know this. Because this is, if you don't know this,

[05:34]

It's essentially chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra that was made into a song by Greg Fane and Ben Gustin at Dasahara for a skit night, probably, I don't know, 15 years or so ago. And it's called Our Hero. And it tells its own story. I don't have to tell it. the main character is uh... bodhisattva never disparaging and his practice is we're talking about respect uh... there's a book called the lotus sutra that you really ought to know about A holy book that has the power to remove all fear and doubt.

[06:43]

And this book tells the story of a man who means the world to me. He could just as well have been a woman, except for male hegemony. So they call him the Bodhisattva Never Disparage, the Bodhisattva Never Despise. And I'm making it my life's ambition, To see the world through His pure eyes. Here's the chorus which many of you may know. I will never disparage you or keep you at arm's length, Where you only see your weaknesses, I only see your strength. I would never despise you or put you down in any way, Because it's clear to me, I can plainly see, You'll be a Buddha someday, I love you. Now the Bodhisattva never disparaging, Lived countless kalpas in the past, A really long time.

[07:48]

In the time of the counterfeit Dharma, And he was something of an outcast, Because the monks and nuns of his time, They were noted for their arrogance and vanity. These were the folks who exercised great power and authority. But my boy, he never concerned himself if they treated him like a freak. He just bowed to everybody equally and these are the words he'd speak. I would never disparage you or keep you at arms length. Where you only see your weaknesses, I only see your strength. I would never despise you or put you down in any way. Because it's clear to me, I can plainly see, You'll be a Buddha someday. I love you. He never read or recited the scriptures much.

[08:52]

He only liked to practice respect. But the monks and nuns of his time, They didn't meet it like you might expect. that they cursed him and they reviled him and they wished that he would go because they all had self-esteem issues like everybody else I know so they beat him and pelted him with clubs and stones and tried to drive him away but he just run off to a safe distance and he turned around and say I would never disparage you or keep you out of harm's way Where you only see your weaknesses, I only see your strengths. I would never despise you or put you down in any way. Because it's clear to me, I can plainly see, You'll be a Buddha someday. I love you.

[09:54]

And so it went on for years and years. He was the target of scorn and abuse. Still our hero, he shed no tears, Nor did he ever wonder, what's the use? Instead he came to the end of his natural lifespan, He lay down fixin' to die. And he heard the holy Lotus Sutra, Bein' preached up in the sky, And his life was extended for millions of years, He's livin' to this day. And in the pages of the Lotus Sutra, Well, you still can hear him say, I would never disparage you, or keep you at arm's length. Where you only see your weaknesses, I only see your strength. I would never despise you, or put you down in any way. Because it's clear to me, I can plainly see, You'll be a Buddha someday. Yes, it's clear to me, I can plainly see,

[10:58]

Buddha someday. I love you. I love you. So that's really the whole deal. You'll have to sit alone in there maybe. It's very sad. So Dr. King says, I want to turn, so this is, I'm sorry, this was given in November of 1957, which was a year after the Montgomery bus boycott, which was the first action that Dr. King led before it was successfully concluded. It was a year long boycott of public transportation in the city of Montgomery and also of a lot of the stores in downtown Montgomery bringing economic pressure on the system of segregation and drawing attention, national attention to it.

[12:13]

And finally, the city and the bus company relented. And they won after a really difficult time where the people of Montgomery, Alabama, the African-American people, they had to walk to work or they had to develop a complex carpool system of their own and really figure out how to support themselves. And Dr. King, At the time, this was his first, he was at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and that was his first congregation. And basically, in many ways, he got appointed because he was the youngest one. He was, so in 1955, he was 26, 25, 26. And all of the other established pastors and ministers, they, nobody wanted that responsibility.

[13:27]

And they thought it was going to be a, you know, just like a few day bus boycott, and it ended up being a year. And there was violence. Dr. King's house was bombed in the course of that. And other people were injured. But he was young, he was highly educated, he hadn't completed his PhD but he was working on it, he was articulate and he was passionate and he said yes, and other people said no. So this is a year later and so he's telling, this is in Montgomery at his church where he's preaching on the subject of love your enemies, which was a really challenging thing to preach on to people who had been, they had been used, they had been despitefully used and persecuted.

[14:37]

And so he was sharing that sentiment with them. and he was sharing it in the context of his sort of philosophical framework of love and came out of Christian theology three kinds of love he talked about eros which was romantic love physical love second kind is philia which is kind of like fraternal love bonding among friends and then he talked what he really focused on throughout this and throughout his life and his preaching was Agape which is unconditional love love that doesn't necessarily have an object

[15:42]

but it's just directed everywhere and it's so similar to our expression of metta or maitri to me they're completely parallel the unconditional love, the love that just flows when you see another being because that being is like you or because you might see that that being is has the Christ nature or the Buddha nature and you recognize that in all beings so this is where he began so he says, he quotes the passage from Matthew and he says Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command.

[16:46]

He wasn't playing. He realized that it's hard to love your enemies. He realized that it's difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. But he wasn't playing. It's an interesting expression here. We cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole. I'm not exactly sure what that means. Why it's oriental rather than occidental, I don't know. A sort of exaggeration to get over the point. We have the moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words and to discover how we can live out this command and why we should live by this command. So then he gets this really, this is the part that's missing from this later version, and this is, to me, it's so powerful.

[17:49]

Now let us deal first with this practical question. How do you go about loving your enemies? I guess the first thing is this. In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. Is this familiar? I'm sure that seems strange to you that I'm telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. So this is, it's kind of Genjo Koan, right? To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To love your enemies is to study yourself. Now, I'm aware of the fact that some people will not like you, not because of something you have done to them, but they just won't like you.

[18:57]

Some people aren't going to like the way you walk. Some people aren't going to like the way you talk. Some people aren't going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs. Some people aren't going to like you because other people like you. Some people aren't going to like you because your hair is a little shorter than theirs, or your hair is a little longer than theirs, or because your skin is a little brighter than theirs. And others aren't going to like you because your skin is a little darker than theirs. They're going to dislike you, not because of something you've done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are prevalent in human nature. Self-esteem issues. They all have self-esteem issues, like everybody else I know. Right. And systemic racism. What? And systemic racism. Yes. That's, you know, he doesn't skip over that.

[20:07]

but he's going around it at the moment. But after looking at these things, this is really interesting, this is such a challenging thing to say to that audience. After looking at these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something we've done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess. Something that we've done deep and we've down and we've forgotten about it. But it was something that aroused the hate response within that individual. This is why I say begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual. So that's, that's, yeah, that's, yes. After looking at these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something we've done deep down in the past.

[21:13]

Some personality attribute that we possess. Something that we've done and we've forgotten about. But it was something that aroused that response of the individual. That's why I say begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual. To me, he's talking here about karma and vipaka. And he's saying, to me, the way I read this is he's saying, we need to look at ourselves very carefully. You know, and he's not interposing this in instead of systemic racism. I think in a way that racism speaking for that audience, which is all, you know, his fellow congregants, he was saying, in order to make a change,

[22:27]

you have to take complete responsibility for how you act he's not saying that there aren't other factors here and he goes on he goes on and talks about that but what's interesting in this version of the talk is that he shifts immediately to a global view and radical view he says now this is the next paragraph he says now this is true in our international struggle we look at the struggle between America and Russia now certainly we can never give our allegiance to the Russian way of life to the communistic way of life because communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept.

[23:31]

But in spite of all the weaknesses and evils inherent in communism, we must at the same time see the weaknesses and evils within democracy. So here's where he shifts back. Democracy is the greatest form of government to my mind that man has ever conceived, But the weakness is that we have never practiced it. Isn't it true that we have taken the necessities from the masses to give luxury to the classes? Isn't it true that we often have in our democracy trampled over individuals and races with iron feet of oppression? Isn't it true Isn't it true that through our Western powers, we have perpetuated colonialism and imperialism? And all these things must be taken into consideration as we look at Russia.

[24:36]

We must face the fact that the rhythmic beat of deep rumblings of discontent from Asia and Africa is at bottom a revolt against the imperialism and colonialism perpetrated by Western civilization all these many years. The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system. And this is what Jesus means when he said, how is it that you can see the most in your brother's eye and not see the beam in your own eye? You know, it's just, he's talking very directly to his friends, to his community, and then he goes wide, and then brings it back, looking at the whole context. Yeah, Laurie? Now, was he already aware that he had a bigger audience in that early, or not, do you think?

[25:43]

I mean, what do you think he was aware of, who he was really talking to? I'm not sure. I think he did have a bigger audience because one of the things that they figured out very quickly is that they were playing to two audiences. They were playing to the very local, or three, the church, the city of Montgomery, and there was all this press. And the press you know, realized, okay, here's a charismatic person, and they were paying attention to him. But I think also what he was doing here was educating, that he was educating his community that there was a larger context than just the local form of oppression that they were experiencing

[26:45]

in Montgomery that it was connected to a wider system. And saying, you know, so, you know, like when Katie says structural racism, you know, he was making that connection. And I think it's really interesting because He was offering a political, a spiritual political analysis in 1957. It didn't wait until the Riverside Church talk of 1967. He already had these pieces in mind. Which is, to me, that's really interesting. As a 25-year-old black man working on a PhD in Boston, living in the South. intellectuals, even like college students, kind of probably understood Frantz Fanon and all these people working in the French post-colonial or soon-to-be post-colonial sphere.

[28:08]

They were definitely talking about American imperialism. Yeah. So that's why he said the deep rumblings of discontent from Asia and Africa, that's what he's talking about, right? You know, so he was very He was a very cosmopolitan and sophisticated thinker and if he's going to school at BU, he was getting really first class education on these issues. Yeah, he was really looking at the movement of Gandhi that was taking place in India. That's right. And he was able to transpose it. We got to understand something about Gandhi. He was really trying to show the English what a Christian man was, not what a Hindu man was, what a Christian man was. This is what really struck the fancy of Martin. He saw that, and he liked it, and then he took the other side. He started bringing these Eastern ideals into Christianity, which was a brilliant move.

[29:11]

Well, he talks about Gandhi later in this talk. But I'm just saying, even at this point, he's deeply influenced by this man and his movement, and he sees the Black Mita movement. Not that he's the one, you know he sees the road yeah you know that he's he's part of it anyway right he's also deeply in he's already influenced by african-american gandhians yes uh and and the gandhi started in africa was really heavy too yeah yeah that was kind of murky there uh uh no there's something there because it's like the caribbean i visited the caribbean there's this kind of melting pot of cultures you can't get anywhere else. And Africa has that too. Because you had Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim kind of almost intermarrying. I mean, they were like really close relationships. Yeah, I don't know. Because of the forces. Well, I'm just saying the same thing happened in the Caribbean.

[30:12]

If you look at the Caribbean like the Guianas, British Guiana, I mean, there's the same kind of I don't want to get into particularities of that. But I'm just saying I think it influenced him. But I want to say one of the direct influences at that he was already close with a fellow named Jim Lawson, who was a Methodist minister, who was the person who was training the Freedom Riders and Lunch Counter sit-ins, which was going back to 55. And just in case you don't know it, Jim's brother, Phil, is in Richmond. Does anyone know Phil Lawson? Yeah. Yeah. Phil is an amazing guy. And I've, I've, I know him pretty well.

[31:15]

He's still alive. Both of them are still alive. But, you know, it's just like, to feel in contact with a piece of that history is just really remarkable. And Phil is brilliant and has that same open inclusivity that King and his brother Jim had. Anyway, let me go on. So he moves from that global analysis to say, and from looking at oneself, then he says, the second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love one's enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy. Every time you begin to hate that person, realize that there is some good there. And this is exactly the point that we read in that Dhammapada verse.

[32:20]

Never was and never will be found anyone who is wholly blamed or wholly praised. So find this element of good and look at those good points which can overbalance the bad points. Then he says, again, takes it back to himself, he says, there's a recalcitrant south of our soul revolting against the north of our soul. There's something that within us, or within all of us, that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe. There's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue. Even the race that hates you most has some good in it.

[33:24]

And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every person and see deep down within him what religion calls the image of God, the image of Buddha, you begin to love him this is just like bodhisattva never disparage and there is an element of goodness that he can never slough off discover the element of good in your enemy and as you seek to hate him find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude this is what I was saying to James earlier today I'd like to get practical. Well, maybe we will, and maybe we won't, but let's hear it. Where's the good in Donald Trump? I was just thinking, can somebody name a few Trump things we can focus on that are real? Let me tell you a dream I had, if that's okay.

[34:26]

It's not about Donald Trump. It's about Ronald Reagan. Someone. Someone that I certainly did not harbor a lot of good feelings for. Although, as a bumper sticker says on my guitar case, one of my guitar cases said, I still miss Nixon. How we change. But I had a dream. I had a dream. that I was sitting down face to face with Reagan. And it was late in his life. And he had Alzheimer's, right?

[35:32]

And he had this tragic and sort of lost and sad expression on his face. And sitting there, I wasn't thinking about the terrible things he had done or the policies he had enacted, but I just saw a a sad and lost human being, and my heart went out to him. And when I think about Trump, when I think about Dick Cheney, when I think about some people, I go back to that dream, at least as a teaching. I don't like Donald Trump. where Dr. King comes back to these three kinds of love, he says, and this is what Jesus means, I think, in, well, no, I want to read the paragraph before, so let me get to your question, but let me do it through his text, okay?

[36:54]

There will come a time in many instances when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. He doesn't say defeat them politically, he means defeat them in human terms. It might be in terms of recommendation for a job. It might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in their life. That's the time you must do it. In the final analysis, love is not a sentimental something that we talk about. It is not merely an emotional something. Love is creative understanding, goodwill for all people. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, you seek only to defeat evil systems.

[38:10]

Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, or individuals, if you will, even who are driving that system. What? Or appear to. You love, but you seek to defeat the system. This is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, love your enemy. It's significant that he does not say, like your enemy. Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. He says, there are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don't like what they do to me. I don't like what they say about me and other people. I don't like their attitudes. I don't like some of the things they're doing. But love is greater than like. Love is understanding redemptive goodwill for all people. So that you love everybody because God loves them. You refuse to do anything to defeat an individual because you have agape in your soul.

[39:18]

I just wanted to point out, or ask you if you think, that our vow not to kill, to me that's how I embody the not to kill vow. I don't despise somebody that's killing them. I don't despise systems, to me, that's killing. So when I am practicing not to kill, it's not vegetables which I eat, it's not insects which I kill when I sleep, it's not the things that die in my path. But it's those individuals or circumstances I come into where I could despise or hate. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are all forms of killing. Some of them are literal, and some of them are like this, using killing in thoughts, killing and also in actions. Yes, and the Buddha wanted, I think, to make it clear, at least in the story of Siddhartha, these guys brushing insects out actually killing, and Sojin says it too. We're not talking about not killing to eat.

[40:25]

He's talking about not despising or degrading the food in order, I'm superior to you Mr. Cow or Mrs. Cow, and therefore I can eat you. It's not like the buffalo, I honor you fully and I will take you in and live you rather than kill you. Yeah, and there are different views on that, but what he's saying here is, don't defeat a person, or don't defeat a being. And the question is, what does defeat mean? Yeah. Where this gets muddy for me, and I get very, just, you know, the cup is full, so it's hard to take in anything more, is it's so easy for me to hear these through moralistic filters, and it can just fun that way, and I don't think that that's really the point. So for me, always, including in the Dhammapada, it's always important

[41:29]

And so when you were talking about, you know, the Zen Peacemaker's spin on the three pure precepts, right, of not knowing, bearing witness, and various versions of the third one, appropriate response, healing action, loving action. For me, that brings together skillful means with emptiness teachings. I'm in a Dogen class with one of Shinraku Akamura's students, and one of the things that he says that Akamura is really emphasizing these days, maybe always, is that, that came from Uchiyama and Kodosawaki, is that it's the recognition deep in your gut, not a mild version, but really in your gut, that impermanence is real. And so if I connect that to this teaching with this word love and love your enemy, which has all kinds of, you know, because of our culture and my upbringing or whatever, I could go in a lot of ways.

[42:49]

It feels like that's a really important bridge because then the reason that I don't, the reason that teaching arises is from the deep recognition which you know we could experience on the cushion or when the bamboo hits the whatever when you drop your chopstick on the floor and the server comes by and brings it back to you is that we're deeply interconnected I think that that's right but I also think that what James is bringing up is our human the human feeling that we have of two-ness, just not to dismiss the two-ness and fold it into oneness. Right, but oneness includes Tunis and Tunis includes oneness. Yeah, it's because the thing is otherwise, we you know, there's this whole thing of emergent strategy in that book, you know, the strategies emerge from what's happening.

[43:59]

It's not like, you know, birds in the sky don't have a, you know, a strategic meeting about how they're going to fly. They flock together. So that too is included. And you know, like a human, a human framing of this, and that's the thing that I'm wondering about in terms of this two-ness, oneness. I think you have to keep wondering. Well, because I'm just wondering, what if somebody's in the room right now who really, you know, and there's a lot that's going on in the country around this, who's really into Donald Trump for... I don't assume that there isn't somebody in the room like that. I never assume that. when I'm sitting in this place, you know, and I can tell you what I think. I don't wish evil for Donald Trump. You know, I didn't, you know, I'm very happy right now with, I feel like George Bush was our last presidential enemy, if you will.

[45:09]

What I wished for him all along was a happy life on his ranch, far from public policy. And you know what? That's what he's got. And, you know, you can see, and you see in glimpses, the goodness. It's there. I don't know about Donald Trump. I'm sure there are people who, I'm sure his family, there are people in his family who really love him. you know. But is that really the point? It's not the point. I don't give a shit about it. The context for me connects to right here in this neighborhood with that building across the street and our relationship to that around structural racism has to connect to more than whether or not we love an individual that he's bringing that. That's too comp, I can't. Hand over here. Yeah, yeah, there's the, I want to. I never said anything. Yes, Dan and then Ellen. The three forms of love that you described in there just remind me very strongly of a lecture that Sojourn gave about two months ago on love, where he identified the same three, well, distinctive love and love mostly about sex, emotional love, which are things you like or things that make you feel good, and last one is conscious love.

[46:32]

And the thing that just blew my mind, and I've been thinking about it ever since, on every day since I heard your statements, is that And this connects it to the practice, which is that conscious love of accepting what's in front of you is mindfulness, and it's vastness. That is, it's vast enough to include the opposites in reality. To include Donald Trump and Barack Obama, or whatever opposites you want to set up. And so thinking of it like from a Christian, rather than say, the combined cause and effect of the entire universe, you could say God's will is the same thing. It's maybe a more personified vision of it. But the point is, if Donald Trump exists, then he has some validity because he exists. He came into being. And from an absolute point of view, there's value in that. Now, from a relative point of view, he may be in a struggle against him, and then you're in a different

[47:38]

And that's where I am grasping, trying to understand a connection. I could see the mindfulness and the vastness, including everything, of value. I think Dr. King speaks this really clearly. But how do you deal with that in the field of relative truth? Yes. Where he's doing horrible things to people, innocent children were trying to come to this country. Right. You could go on and on and on. And that we need to stop him from doing those things and that sets up a struggle and duality and so I'm not quite sure how do you how does the the vastness and the conscious love of your God how does that how does that play out in the relative world of struggles and opposites and duality? I if I can criticize Dr. King I have the hubris to do that.

[48:40]

I think that what he was putting forward was a tremendously idealistic perspective on love. And I think that he was mistaken in being dismissive of the first two kinds of love. I don't think we can just dismiss eros or philia. I think that our nature includes all three of them, and we have to find how they're balancing in total dynamic working, as to use Dogen's expression. And it's all very well to say you should love Donald Trump and defeat his systems. But in point of fact, you can't do that without using some kind of force.

[49:47]

And that kind of force is going to, we have the tension. This is why, if I was really gonna get into this, which I don't, what time do we stop? Okay, so just to talk about, So Dr. Ambedkar in India spoke about liberty, equality, fraternity. So liberty is, you know, it can be... Donald Trump wants liberty to do whatever he wants. That's liberty, you know. But all those things have to be in balance with each other. Liberty, equality, and fraternity. Equality means each being is of equal value, is of equal valence. And that means that everybody can do what they want according to their personal force or their political force.

[50:54]

So equality is a balance on liberty. And fraternity is looking at the oneness of society, recognizing that the fact is, as the Buddha said, and as King says here, that we are all tied into a garment, a single garment of mutual interdependence. And so all these things, it's not like you can come down on one side. All these things are working, and you know, you try different things. What do you find at the, like, Upaya, I'm using Agape, is to say, like, darkness breeds darkness, hate breeds hate. Like, this is about metta practice, this is... I think it's true, but just to say, I think one of the great shadow forces in his life was that Eros was kept a secret and that was completely his vulnerability to being blackmailed by Hoover and being undermined.

[52:15]

And actually, Hoover tried to get him to kill himself. Hoover sent notes to his wife So to keep that side a shadow, as if it doesn't exist, and to pretend to exist on just this glorious plane, that's not real. Helen had her hand up a moment ago. I think that time might have passed, but I had a request, an idea of what if we broke into little groups and talked to each other? That's an idea. It's just really juicy stuff and I find this way of having a conversation very difficult. But that's me and then that would probably not your vision anyway. I don't have a vision. I'm open but I'm not sure what time we have.

[53:18]

I like that idea. I'd like you to finish doing this. So let me go through this a little further, okay? Could anybody who wants to do what Helen's doing stay after the last period is up and come back in here and break up into small groups? You can? format to consider maybe in the future. Can I make a suggestion about that? That format works when, like right now, you know a lot about Martin Luther King, but I don't know him, since I'm hearing you, impart that information. But the kind of discussion you're talking about, people have sort of a similar level of information. So, for example, If you send out a reading and everybody read it, then you can have multiple discussions. Come to the MLK Day program. Each MLK Day, we do that. So one of the things that I've done in the past, I've done, I usually do this as like a weekend workshop.

[54:24]

And one of the things that we do that's really interesting is we read aloud the entire letter from Birmingham Jail. We go around the room, we read it, and it takes about an hour, hour and a quarter. we break up into groups and talk about it, because everybody is working from the same inspiring text. You've been saying a lot, so I don't want to call on you so much, but Blake. Before it's over, I'd like to get your sort of view of it as a Jewish American on anti-Jewish, anti-Semitism. which I rarely hear from, because there's so many Jewish... Jewish community is strong in the Zen Buddhist community, but I rarely hear a Zen priest talk about anti-Semitism. Let me come back to that. Would you, at some point? It doesn't need to be today. Yeah. So, it's just... because it gets good here.

[55:27]

Now, for the few moments left, I'm quoting the text here. Let us move from the practical how to the theoretical why. It's necessary to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think that the first reason we should love our enemies is this, that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. A little familiar? then the scrape has it. If I hit you, and you hit me, and I hit you back, and you hit me back, and we go on, you see that continues ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere, somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.

[56:36]

That's like one of my favorite quotations. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure universe, that strong and powerful element of love. And there's another reason why you should love your enemies, and that's because hate distorts the personality of the hater. This goes to Fanon, right? We usually think of what hate does for the individuals hated or the individual or the groups hated, but it's even more tragic. It is ruinous and injurious to the individual weights. You just begin hating somebody and you will begin to do irrational things. You can't see straight when you hate. You can't stand upright. You can't sit upright.

[57:37]

There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater. The way to be integrated with yourself is to be sure the way to be integrated with yourself is to be sure that you meet every situation of life with abounding love to meet it with respect segregation to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber substitutes an I-It relationship for an I-Thou relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things which is Another way of saying what Sojin has said so many times, don't treat anyone or anything like an object.

[58:45]

What that means is treat everything subjectively, which implies you treat everything as if it were part of you. But isn't anger part of us? Yeah. And that's not hate, necessarily. No, anger is not the same as hate. And you treat anger the way I would treat this cup. And hate as well, right? Hate you have to treat very carefully because it's hot and will burn you. You don't push it away. You don't push it away, but this is where there's a great verse in Our Hero. He would run off to a safe distance and then he'd turn around and say. In other words, it's not like you are obligated to embrace everyone. Because when you embrace those things and they're burning hot, they will burn you up.

[59:52]

But you don't turn away from them. you have a little safe distance and then you turn around and this is I'll say this has been it's a practice I've tried to cultivate there have been people not in this community who I have found very hurtful and you know first there's the gnashing of teeth you know it's like Why me? What did I do to deserve this? I didn't do anything. You know, why are they doing this? And once you get past that, you just, I mean, I figured out, okay, I'm just going to treat that person with respect. I'm talking about my own hate, though. I know. I know. I'm talking about my own, my own dislike for somebody who seems irrationally disliking me.

[60:55]

And I have to, even if it's and I think that for me I have to not turn away from that hate but not you know it's like this is I often talk about this sentient being save all the sentient beings of your mind hate is a sentient being of one's mind so how do you treat it how do you take care of a sentient being of your mind as if it were your child you know, you never stop loving your child but you may have to use force or strong measures to protect it and you may have to use that to protect yourself from that but you never reject it Yeah, Ed. I just want to just say folks know we've been doing this election machines now since 2004.

[61:56]

And we've been trying to create this kind of community in different places and cities around the East and the West Coast. And I just want to comment that this issue is a struggle. the struggle is worth it in the sense of not only in terms of being effective and people really like you when you have this openness and an open heart and you approach a door and talk to people, but it also helps your own humanity and you feel a lot better about yourself and you feel about I mean, I've been, you know, and because being in Nevada during Trump's election, we marched down the street and we were, people were screaming at us and flipping us off and everything like that.

[63:10]

So it's very, very frightening. However, to lose my humanity out of that is really disruptive for me. I think that it doesn't ... people like to be seen as people, not as objects. And even people that you disagree with. And there's just a lot of warm heartedness and positiveness. I wouldn't idealize that though, because it's not always like that, right? Oh no, it's not like that at all. Sometimes people heap abuse on you. And you feel it, you feel it. It is, and it's frightening, people yelling at you to get off their porch. It's very frightening. But this is where we have our practice. Right.

[64:10]

I want to just get these last points here. Practically it works, it's worth it. We're okay. Now there's a final reason I think that Jesus says love your enemies. It's that love has within it a redemptive power. And there's a power there that eventually transforms individuals. This is what he believes in. This is his practice. If you hate your enemy, you have no way to redeem and transform them. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them even though they're mistreating you. Here's the person who is a neighbor and the person who's doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. That's what I was going to say that I practiced with somebody who was abusive to me. Just being friendly to them and Don't do anything to embarrass them, just keep loving them and they can't stand it too long.

[65:16]

Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because you're mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings and sometimes they'll hate you more at that transition. But just keep loving them and by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love you see, it's redemptive. And that's why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. And I want to read you something from Shantideva. I think this is a good place to end. Shantideva, do you know Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life? If you don't, it's a wonderful, it's actually a commentary, we should think about this, it's a commentary on the Parmitas. Yeah, which we're going to study for aspects. So verse 110, 111. But surely my enemy is not to be venerated, for he intends to cause me harm.

[66:25]

But how could patience be practiced if, like doctors, people always strove to do me good?" Did you get that? Yeah. How could patience be practiced if, like doctors, people always tried to do good for me? Thus, since patience acceptance is produced in dependence upon one with a hateful mind... Got that? Patience dependence is produced in dependence on one with a hateful mind. That person should be worthy of veneration, just like the sacred dharma, because that person is a cause of patience. There's our Donald Trump fan. You got that? It's something to practice. It is really something to practice. Norman Fisher says that, talks about in his book, the new book.

[67:33]

The world could be otherwise. I wish it were different. When he talks about generosity, he talks about the gift of the world. which is challenging you. You only learn from the challenge of your life, and you only learn from that challenge actually at practice. So people like Donald Trump or anybody else who's difficult, that's really where the rubber meets the road. If you can't get past that, then that's a problem. Thus, since patience acceptance is produced in dependence upon one with a hateful mind, that person should be worthy of veneration, just like the sacred dharma, because that person is the cause of patience.

[68:33]

And because one of Lori and I, one of our favorite lines is, patience is the incinerator of defilements. Yeah, but it can't stay internal. It can't stay internal. It has to then be manifest. This is what I was talking about in the context of community this morning, that it depends upon the doing. That the real manifestation is in what we do. Hold on. I don't think you can just do this. You've got to come to this. I just, I really don't think, you know what I mean? I mean, you can practice this, but that doesn't make it happen. You've got to come to this. I mean, it's got to be a natural reaction. Gandhi talked about that to his son. at one point, that it's got to come from your heart. You can't just do it dryly.

[69:35]

People do, but it's superficial, you know. I think, I think, but it's better to do that than not do it. Let's put it that way, I'll give you that. What I would say is, what we're talking about here are Bodhisattva practices. The fully actualized Bodhisattva does this naturally. Of course, but he's come to it. You have to cultivate it. That's what I'm saying. Right, which means you have to do it, you have to think... Well, I do in a way. I respect my enemy, but I don't love him. But I respect him, and that's a kind of love. Yeah, respect is where it starts. Yeah. Okay. Yes, Katie. I don't know that it's my thing, but I was just... I'm really glad that you brought up action again. and kind of can be internal, and kind of like, how do I get to be okay with these horrible feelings that Donald Trump causes to arise in me, and all that he's doing, and all that, and I think that it's, you know, how do we express the love we feel, or the love and or Buddha nature that we have in a concrete,

[71:04]

way in the relative world, like it's a transition perhaps for some people. So I feel like there's a lot to this basic foundation and then there's a whole edifice. This is not about ideas, it's not just about ideas, but the ideas are where things can start. We have to have the idea to even know, I mean, the thing that I did with this friend who was hurtful to me, the idea came from reading the Vasuri Maga, the path of purification, which is a massive Theravada manual saying, you know, what do you do with an enemy, you know, and it's like you practice respect, you practice friendliness, you give them a gift, and that It took 10 years and things shifted.

[72:05]

Just to say also, sometimes we don't know who our enemies are and what our internal enemies are. No. For example, we live in such a segregated society that we can intellectually know things but not really know it. No, that's right. This is, you know, the kind of... When we talk about unconscious bias, it's unconscious. until we do practices, we do study, we enter into activity that help us recognize the impact that we have, that we might be unthinkingly having on other people. That's why we're studying this. We really are going to need to end. What I was thinking too, I don't know if you're responding to this, but Your enemy could be yourself. Of course. I think that's what Helen was saying.

[73:07]

And you can transform yourself. There can be nothing out there, right? Maybe there's something causing it, but nothing out there. But you can befriend, like you're saying. You can drive all blame into one. Right. Well, that's why, that's what King said as the first step. You know, you really need to look at your attitude towards yourself and what is that internal mechanism. We always have to be reflexively moving back and forth into that territory. James, okay. So about 20 years ago, when I read in the newspaper that at the anniversary of Selma, George Wallace went to the bridge and sat under a tree in his wheelchair and apologized for his actions at that Selma confrontation to everyone who would listen.

[74:27]

And if George Wallace could do that, There's hope for Donald Trump. Yeah, just get him out of office. Let's do the Bodhisattva vow. And thank you very much. I look forward to continuing in some way. If you have thoughts about that, let me know.

[74:58]

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