Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? I guess so. People are bowing. Yes. So, welcome, welcome. Yeah, we're doing this just online today because of the extreme weather here in Chicago. When I checked this morning, it was minus 30 degrees windchill. I imagine it's somewhat similar in Michigan, Nathan. We also have people, a couple people from New Mexico where I hope it's warmer. And there may be other further distance people, but welcome everyone. So, today I'm going to give my annual Martin Luther King Day talk. And I want to talk about my own personal relationship to Dr. King's work.

[01:05]

Hello, Eve. So, numbers of you are old enough to remember Dr. King, but a number of you also are younger and may not be aware of who Dr. King really was. And the pop icon image of Dr. King is an injustice to all who he was. Of course, he had a dream, but he wasn't just a dreamer. He was a civil rights leader working for equal rights for Black people. And he was, but he was much more than that. Also, he was, he strongly advocated for economic equality and supported poor people.

[02:09]

He was a strong advocate against war. He died campaigning for a union in Memphis. On April 4th, 1967, he came out strongly against the Vietnam War, which raged at that time, and for a while, for a good while later, one year to the day after that talk, he was murdered. And I think that's a coincidence. So, I'm mostly going to talk about Dr. King as an anti-war peace advocate. He said, a time comes when silence is betrayal. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate for our limited vision, but we must speak. He also said, I must be clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,

[03:15]

my own government. He might probably say the same thing about the United States government today. He said, the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense, and I'd add offense, than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. So, I'm speaking of all this today in the context of who Dr. King was, and what he means to us today, and also that Dr. King was a modern exemplar of Bodhisattva work, particularly in the spirit of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, the shining practice Bodhisattva, who, as Dr. King, worked to alleviate systems

[04:21]

of suffering and injustice, and also promoted love. Amongst many other things, Dr. King was a deep scholar of various classical aspects of love, and what love means. He said, hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. So, my good friend and friend of the Sangha, Ozan Alan Sanaki, abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, is certainly the American Zen teacher who has most deeply studied the teachings of Dr. King, and talked and written about that. Oh, Alan, who's an old friend of mine, is now in serious condition in a hospital in Berkeley. So, I want to dedicate the merit of our practice today to Alan, to his healing.

[05:28]

So, our Bodhisattva vow, and we'll say the four vows at the end of this, is to relieve suffering, to free all beings. It's maybe an inconceivable vow, it's beyond our idea of what it would mean to free all beings, to relieve suffering, but it's a direction that is meaningful for our practice and for the world today. So, just to face our societal realities today in the spirit of Dr. King, today we have a wave of politicians in our country, and actually around the world, who are brazenly working for fascism, and for an authoritarian government. They advocate policies of severe cruelty. They attack and endanger minorities, Black people, Muslims, Indigenous people.

[06:35]

These politicians of cruelty also now threaten and endanger all women with denial of reproductive and health care rights. Really despicable action. Also, they threaten and endanger all LGBT people with laws that threaten them. And they're actually threatening to end all democracy and the right to vote. So, this year is a, well, aside from being an election year, it's a serious year of danger for all of us and for our country. And in the spirit of Dr. King, I want to try and face that. So, of course, if Dr. King was still alive, he would be talking about climate breakdown, which is an existential crisis to the human species and various other forms of life on our planet.

[07:44]

And the cause of this from fossil fuel industry, but I'm not going to say any more about that today, but Dr. King certainly would be talking about it. Again, in April 1967, Dr. King spoke about Vietnam. He gave a talk called Time to Break the Silence in New York City. Dr. King said, silence in the face of war and injustice is complicity. So, in that spirit, I want to speak today about war. And in my lifetime, the United States has lost many wars. Many wars that we could never have won. There was no way to win them. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now the American war in Gaza.

[08:49]

So, I want to speak personally about my own anti-war activism. With some of these wars, again, the wars that the United States has lost and could never have won in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, now Gaza. So, a year and a half or maybe two years before Dr. King's speech against the Vietnam War, I was actively organizing against the war as a high school student in Pittsburgh, where I grew up. I helped organize the first large demonstration in Pittsburgh against the Vietnam War. Later, I was arrested a couple times in New York protesting the war and racism, including with my friend Alan Sanaki, who I'm dedicating this talk today to,

[09:52]

and 700 of our friends at the Columbia University week-long building occupation. This was a couple weeks after Dr. King was murdered in 1968, and there was a large anti-war movement and a movement at the university where I was in New York against the war, but also against the racism that the university was involved with. And so, you know, I worked against the Vietnam War, as Dr. King did, and others before him. Jumping to 9-11 in 2001, the horrible attack in New York, the United States acted with impulsive vengeance and revenge. And so, one of the issues, practice issues,

[10:56]

that we need to be aware of is the impulse towards revenge and vengeance, which is very strong in our world today. So, I'll say more about this, but the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9-11, but this invasion created a great deal of misery and chaos throughout the Mideast, and that continues today, and it's part of the background for the war in Gaza. So, something really unusual happened back then. Before the invasion of Iraq, there were many hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating all around the world against the

[11:57]

war. I'm not sure if that's happened before. I don't think so. If people were demonstrating against the war before it was launched. But where I was in San Francisco, for three months, there were maybe a few hundred thousand people at the San Francisco Civic Center. For three months before that, before the invasion, I spoke at one of those rallies, but also there were hundreds of Zen students who were sitting Zazen near the stage supporting peace, providing steadiness and grounding to the event. And this sitting was appreciated by everyone there, not just, you know, Buddhist people. However, later, early in 2003, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney invaded Iraq anyway, or sent troops to invade Iraq. After that invasion, I was arrested twice,

[13:02]

once together with Alan Sanaki. So, this propensity for vengeance and for warfare, of course, has been prepped as, in some cases, that's the content of what is taught in history. I don't believe it is necessary to act with vengeance, to act with aggression. Our Buddhist practice is about cooperation. It's about peace. It's about how do we work together? How do we respect all beings? How do we try to see as many points of view and sides and opinions as we can? It's pretty difficult, but,

[14:04]

because we are limited human beings with limited perceptions and awareness. Anyway, I want to turn to the American war in Gaza. In the spirit of Dr. King, as a clergy person, as a Buddhist priest, I feel like I need to speak to that today. Of course, the soldiers who are occupying Gaza are Israeli, but almost all the bombs, the financing, the diplomatic support is from our government and with our tax dollars. And I'll just add here, so I want to say a lot about this, or, you know, some anyway, and then we'll have time for discussion and comments. And I don't expect that all of you will agree with every opinion I express here, and that's okay. We have to be able to disagree and talk about it

[15:10]

agreeably. That's part of the practice of cooperation and peace. But just to mention that the United States war profiteers are making many millions of dollars on what is clearly at least an ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Some of the Israeli government leaders talk about what's happening in terms of ethnic cleansing and in terms of genocide. Shortly after the October 7th horrible attack by Hamas against Israel, the United States government started transferring to Israel massive amounts of weapons. So among those weapons, Israel received more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells within just the first month and a half. These transfers in this American military campaign has been shrouded in secrecy to avoid

[16:12]

public scrutiny and to prevent Congress from exercising the meaningful oversight that is their job. So just to name names, not of people but of companies, Boeing, the world's fifth largest weapons manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces in Gaza, as well as multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs that have been used extensively during this war. This includes bombing of refugee centers in Gaza, hospitals, schools. Other companies who are profiting massively over this event in Gaza are weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed, Martin, Northrop Grumman and RTX, formerly known as Raytheon.

[17:21]

All this money goes to military spending while politicians cannot seem to afford to significantly fund health care, housing, education, and yet there's this massive amount of money. So I wish not to take sides in all of this. I also deeply appreciate the fears and suffering of Israelis after the horrific Hamas attack October 7th. So I feel and recognize the suffering in Gaza and amongst Palestinians in the West Bank, but also the fear of Israelis. My own Jewish roots are reflected in the October 2018 massacre of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. I received bar mitzvah

[18:29]

at the Tree of Life synagogue, a few short blocks away from where I grew up at Pittsburgh. One of the victims of that massacre was a high school classmate of mine, another was a woman who lived across the street from me growing up. So I do sympathize with the Israelis and their fear and their suffering. However, I believe the Israeli war on Gaza and on other Palestinians on the West Bank will be very damaging long term to Israel as well as to all of the Middle East. And again, in the spirit of Dr. King, who was a strong peace and anti-war advocate, I need to speak about this today. I am very, very deeply offended personally that criticism of the Israeli government

[19:30]

is now described as anti-Semitism. That itself is anti-Semitism and it's being weaponized to support war. There is real anti-Semitism. It attacks on Jewish people in this country and around the world, also attacks on Muslim people. So to criticize a government for its policies is not the same. So my activity against the Vietnam War and against the Iraq invasion was not anti-American. I'm an American and I like a lot of things about our country and our culture. So criticizing the Netanyahu government is not anti-Semitism. So as of, you know, some time a week ago, there were 22,000 people killed in Gaza and many more

[20:46]

are under the rubble, not counted yet. Another 7,000 are missing, presumed dead. The majority of people in Gaza were killed by the Israeli government. Who have been killed are women and children. According to UNICEF and other sources, 10,000 children have been killed. 1% of all the children in Gaza. 10% of all the Gazans, 40% excuse me, of all the Gazans killed are children. 370 schools have been bombed. More than 1,000 Palestinian children have lost one or both legs. This is with bombs supplied by our government and our weapons manufacturers who are making great profit with our tax money. And these bombs are being dropped on hospitals, schools,

[21:49]

refugee centers, civilian housing. Journalists are being targeted. As of earlier this week, 85% of the people in Gaza have been displaced from their homes. And now with the blocking of access from humanitarian aid, the significant amounts of humanitarian aid that are really needed in Gaza in this hellish situation, it's estimated that 500,000 Gazan people will die from starvation and disease due to the destruction of the infrastructure. What's happening there is just, it's horrific, it's unspeakable, it's hard for us to imagine.

[22:51]

It's possible to see reports about this and images from Gaza. And again, I do understand the fear of Israelis. It's a horrible, difficult situation. How do we respond? Beyond all that, there's a serious danger of expanding, of expanded warfare in the whole region, which may involve, go beyond the region. Some of the countries involved have nuclear weapons. There's already warfare in northern Israel with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of course on the West Bank. So I'm talking about this in the context of a Buddhist Dharma talk because,

[23:57]

well, today I'm honoring Dr. King, who spoke out against war and does represent kind of Bodhisattva perspective. How do we face this? So our practice in Zazen is to face the wall, which is to say to face our lives, to face the world. Of course, we have pain and suffering in our own, on our own seats, in our own lives, in our interactions with friends and family. But again, in the spirit of Dr. King, I want to not ignore what's happening in the world. How can we face it all? So I want to encourage all of us not to turn away from suffering,

[25:05]

the suffering that is being support, massively supported by our tax dollars. And, you know, it seems like something far beyond, and what can we do? And this is a, a response that is so easy for us to feel, that there's that hopeless and that there's nothing that we can do, to feel overwhelmed. But there are things we can do. But first, I think it's important to face the sadness, to face the suffering, to grieve. We can't really respond unless we also can feel the grief and sadness. So there are things we can do. We can ask our representatives in Congress or in

[26:20]

the U.S. government to support a ceasefire, just to give a time and a chance for humanitarian aid to get into Gaza, to help these people who are literally starving to death. Children, many children. But I don't want to ignore either that what comes up for us in Zazen is to face our own particular personal qualities, our own ancient twisted karma. This is an important part of our practice. So our own suffering, our own anxieties, our own pain and regret is what we must face as we sit facing the wall, facing ourselves.

[27:24]

And often, we don't know what to do about that either. But Zazen gives us some nourishment and support to actually be able to not turn away from our own problems, from our own fears and care. And I would say that the personal and the communal or societal are not separate. Maybe it's harder to see how we are impacted personally by warfare, by injustice, by the use of our tax dollars to promote war instead of health care, for example. So I want to speak of the positive value of our practice now, that what we do can make a difference. We don't know the outcome of all our efforts. We never do. It's like ripples that go out from

[28:36]

sanghas from Zazen. Dr. King spoke extensively at length about beloved community, the power of sangha, the power of nonviolent response. So he warned about the dangers of militarism and war and injustice and racism. But he also spoke about love. How do we find in our practice, in our Zazen, our own capacity for caring for each other, friends, neighbors, sangha members, for ourselves. We have to take care of ourselves too. Self-care is an important part of this. But also for all of the troubles of the world that do impact us personally.

[29:43]

My friend and mentor Joanna Macy has talked about sanghas as islands of sanity. How do we try to support sanity in a world that is chaotic? And Matt, how do we support each other? How do we find nourishment in our practice and in sangha? This is the challenge that Dr. King gives us today. Again, the outcomes of our practice are uncertain. But our efforts at supporting awareness, supporting kindness, do make a difference in the world. I spoke last week about a Dharmakaya practice, a practice that recognizes

[31:00]

the quality of Buddha in everything, in the whole phenomenal world, everywhere. Seeing the wholeness of reality, underlying even the cruelty of war and the vicious politicians promoting cruelty. Our Zazen is a support and a nourishment, helping us to respond appropriately. And there's no one right way to do that. We each have our own way of supporting kindness and caring and awareness in the world. Again, we must first feel the sadness and grief. But then how do we give our best efforts to be helpful and aware? And that includes, you know, in our personal life, but also when we see a way to respond to suffering in the world,

[32:08]

how do we help with that? Our Zazen is a great support and nourishment for being helpful. So I could say a lot more about Dr. King and all he did. All he was killed for. And, you know, when he gave that speech against the Vietnam War in April 1967, he was reviled by, you know, mainstream politicians, mainstream media, even many people in the civil rights movement. They said, why are you talking about that? You need to support civil rights in this country and voting rights for African American people. That was his main focus. But he also was aware of the range of challenges

[33:20]

in the world. And so he spoke out about Vietnam. He certainly was not the first person to speak out against Vietnam. Muhammad Ali refused to go to Vietnam a while before that speech by Dr. King, but he took a great risk and he was actually killed. So, okay, maybe I've said as much as what I need to say. Again, I don't want to say anything. I don't expect that all of you will agree with everything I've said. And that's good. We have to be open to hearing each other, hearing many sides and many viewpoints. This is how we learn to cooperate. But I'm going to open this up for discussion now. So, anybody who wants to comment or ask questions, please feel free. Thank you.

[34:27]

And you can raise your hand if you're visible, or you can go to the bottom of this Zoom screen to—there's a raise hand function, I think. So, Eve, you have your hand raised, so please proceed. Well, I think one of the most important things to recognize about Martin Luther King was his ability to reach out across ethnic lines and, you know, to recognize the commonality of struggles and to work, you know, across religious lines as well. And I feel like a lot of the left has lost that. I totally agree with you that saying, you know, supporting—saying that criticizing the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic, but not making a distinction between criticizing

[35:42]

the current government and, you know, supporting the right of Israel to exist as a state, including, you know, as a member of a two-state solution in the region. And, you know, saying that—and, you know, spitting at Jewish students, harassing Jewish students because they're presumed to support Israel in any form, or just because they're Jewish, I think, you know, that is anti-Semitic. And I was reprimanded because I reached out to some Jewish students in the current climate because I had—you know, I mean, I spoke to a young woman on Wabash Avenue who was assaulted physically for wearing a Jewish star. I mean, she wasn't a student on my campus. She was a student at Columbia. And given, you know, the virulence of what's online, I had reason to think that,

[36:45]

you know, students in our program were affected, but I was reprimanded for reaching out to them. And I think it's important, you know, for us to build the ability to talk to each other, to listen to each other. And sometimes slogans, even if you support the intent behind the slogan, I think, you know, sometimes slogans hurt more than they help, and we need to go beyond slogans to dialogue. Sorry, I was muted. Thank you, Eve, for your work to help sanity and kindness. David Weiner. David, you're muted, I think. Thank you. Three things that are important. If you have a chance, read his April 1962 speech,

[38:00]

Levels of Love, in which Dr. King talks about the levels of love. I think that's a very important speech. Yes. And that he calls true love, adape, God operating in the human heart. And very inspiring speech. The other thing about the Beloved Community is something that actually came from an American philosopher, Jeremiah Royce, and he says to agree to disagree is not allowed. What we have to do is find our commonality. And it became the backbone of the Highlander Institute, or it used to be the Highlander Folk School, and that's where actually John Lewis and Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders trained. And I think for us as Buddhists, thirdly, as Buddhists, we have to remember the three poisons,

[39:11]

greed, hatred, and delusion. And this reaction and hate and anger is what gets us in trouble, which causes misery. And I say us, it affects all of us. The pain that is in Gaza is pain that all of us feel. No one wants to see a baby starve. No one wants to see a hospital close and the babies who are in the incubator units die. So that's something that affects every one of us in some way. And I think it's important that we realize that this is a basis of our Buddhist teachings, is not to have anger or hate. And I'm just so reminded of April 1st, 1933, when the Nazis sent brown shirts to all the

[40:23]

stores throughout Germany that were owned by Jews and refused to let anybody into those stores. And it was a form of hatred to stop anybody from helping a Jewish person in any way by not shopping at those stores. And yet, we look at what's happening now in the Middle East, it's actually a repetition of that in some way, especially on the West Bank, where settlers are plowing up the roads leading to the fields where the Palestinian people are raising their crops and they can't go get their crops. What does hate get us? What does hate turn us into? And I think as Buddhists, we have to look at that for ourselves individually. It's much more nuanced. It's not black and white.

[41:25]

There's lots of shades of gray in there, but we have to come down to the basic core of what is hate, and it's what I'm doing coming from a place of hate. And that's all I want to say. Thank you very much, David. Other comments or responses, please feel free. Yeah, we have some time, but I want to give anybody who wants to speak a chance to do so. I could say a lot more about how Dr. King and all of his work and his writings and teachings are so congruent with Buddhism. This is a part of our practice and our teaching. How do we

[42:29]

express caring and cooperation and loving kindness and support for people who are in trouble? So, comments, anyone? Thank you.

[43:41]

Any comments? Please, if you disagree with anything I've said, I would like to hear that. Okay, well, at least here in the Chicago area, it's very cold out there. Please be careful. Is it about the same in Michigan, Nathan? Yeah. Okay, well, again, you know, one of the things that we can do is to contact representatives, contact our government to express how you feel. I hope that our government

[44:44]

will stop blocking a ceasefire, which they've done in the United Nations. There are cases in the International Court of Justice about what Israel and what our bombs are doing as genocide. I don't know about any of those definitions, but it's certainly a situation. So, there are things we can do to support at least a ceasefire to try and work through all of the difficult issues, but also to just bring basic humanitarian aid to the people who are literally starving in Gaza and who are being bombed, even when they go to places where they're told it's safe to go. Okay, let's do the four bodhisattvas, and then we will have

[45:52]

announcements. So, Lo or Jerry, can you lead us in vows? To realize it beings are numberless. We vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible.

[46:52]

We vow to cut through them. Dharma gates are boundless. We vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. Beings are numberless. We vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. We vow to cut through them. Dharma gates are boundless. We vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. Thank you all for joining this morning. It's now time for our announcement.

[47:54]

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