So today I wanna talk about how change happens and also about what matters. I had a really ambitious talk planned, which was gonna be called Self Emptiness and Neuroplasticity. But then the last couple weeks, it feels like the world is just begging to be talked about. And I don't know exactly how to talk about it, but I want to try. So I thought I would compress my ambitious talk into 15 minutes, and then I can say something about the world, and then I want to hear your thoughts about the world also. So then, I'm going to put this out for us to look at while we're sitting.

[01:01]

This is three women who happen to be Oakland women, which is something I learned recently. And they are wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts. And it also says, yes. And it also says, make it right. I'm hoping that I can stick this here. And last night we served dinner at the men's shelter. And for a long time I've been wanting to serve a vegetarian meal there, which we don't typically do. And I finally got my nerve up. Because I feel like we serve vegetarian food for ourselves. And even though we're not necessarily vegetarians, or we don't hold to that, and we don't force the guys at the shelter to be vegetarians. But still, at the beginning of every meal, I say, hello, we're from Berkeley Zen Center and we made your dinner tonight.

[02:05]

We cut up your rotisserie chicken tonight. And there's some cognitive dissonance there for me. And I don't know what I'm gonna do. I haven't committed to anything. But anyway, I tried a vegetarian meal last night and we had chili and cornbread and salad. The chili, when you make chili sauce, it needs time to cook and for the flavors to meld and marry. So we didn't really quite have enough time. And I kind of wonder if this talk is going to be like that. It's maybe not quite there yet. But anyway, here it goes. So we just finished a practice period. And in the practice period, Sojourn Roshi was teaching us this teaching about the eight consciousnesses, also called the Yogacara teaching, or the manifestation-only school, which is, it's difficult and deep, and I think we just maybe started to scratch the surface, perhaps.

[03:09]

And one thing I struggled with myself was like, how do we apply those teachings in our practice, and what does it have to do with what we are doing here? And you know, I think one of the most, anyway, it's a teaching about how things change, you could say, would be one aspect of it. And you know, especially how our minds and our hearts and our behaviors change. And I think one of the more user-friendly aspects of that teaching is this thing about watering the seeds. Many people have heard So the idea is that we have a thing called the storehouse consciousness, which is, I think, somewhat analogous to our idea of the unconscious. Storehouse consciousness has seeds, seeds of every experience, and depending on what seeds get watered, they come into our conscious, our consciousness, our conscious mind.

[04:12]

And every time a seed is watered and comes, you know, it sort of surfaces, it goes back stronger So, and we water, seeds are in there from, you know, DNA, our ancestors, and from our experiences as children, in the womb even, and experiences up to the present. And we water our own, our own seeds are watered by our experience and our behaviors, and we water each other's seeds too. If I speak sharply, if I get my seed of anger watered and I speak sharply, it can happen that I can water, depending on what kind of seeds you have, I could water seeds of hurt or anger in you. And so it's all very, very dynamic. And we can't really control this process, but we can influence it.

[05:20]

It's being influenced all the time. It kind of is the way everything is always influencing everything. Zazen is a kind of way of watering certain seeds, seeds of non-reactivity, seeds of open-mindedness, open-heartedness. seeds of strength and flexibility. You know, we sit with our back straight and that, you know, on our own, not leaning against anything, and water seeds of sort of core strength and also flexibility. We try to be open to what's happening in the present. Open our minds, open our hearts. So, and many things in our practice are actually even though we don't talk about it that way, they are efforts to water wholesome seeds, beneficial seeds. And Thich Nhat Hanh says, so if a difficult guest comes, you invite a skillful guest to take care of him.

[06:26]

So, if you have something that happens that provokes painful feelings, we train ourselves to have another thing, other seeds we water when that happens. so that we stay close to our suffering or our pain or our thing that we want to be reactive about. So I think many of you know that I was looking for a job this last year and didn't find one. And I found that that process for me really watered seeds of self-doubt about my and I think that's probably something that other people experience in that process too. So I did, you know, I applied for many jobs, I wrote many cover letters, I paid someone to help me write cover letters, and I tailored my resume for each job, you know, did everything you're supposed to do, and I hardly ever got called back. You know, I got an interview for a terrible job that I didn't get,

[07:31]

I got interviewed for a job I wanted and the interview went really badly and I didn't get the job. And I got interviewed for a job when the interview went really well and I didn't get the job. And I even got a really awful job and got fired. So this has been, it's sort of like, it felt like, you know, kind of like an amusement park of scary rides about myself working. And you know, and each time you have to get on the ride. You get on the ride and then there's a process, you get disappointed. And one of the most disappointing, sad things when you don't get a job is that you have to keep looking for a job. That is actually one of the main, you know, one of the strongest disappointments. Because most of the time, Anyway, you may not be dying to do any certain job that you're applying for. But I also, so, you know, you're getting on the ride, and then you just, at some point you're thinking, what does this say about me?

[08:40]

And there's no answer to that question. So you can just keep going there, you just keep churning with that, what does this say about me? what is my value and I'm very lucky that I have lots of systems and structures in my life to water other seeds so that I go to Zazen and I get back into the present moment and you know I chant sutras and we have one sutra that says Each of the myriad things has merit expressed according to function and place. So that way I can keep returning to what's really true. Because there's no answer to the question about your self-worth. This person didn't give you a job, but then your friends love you. It's gonna go back and forth all the time. And another structure we have here that I think is one of the great unsung processes is it's called the check-in.

[09:42]

So like I'm in several groups where we do a check-in. So like, for example, the residents, at each resident meeting, one of us checks in. And the check-in means you talk a little bit about what's going on for you right at that time. And in the parent dharma group, we go around and everybody checks in about their life right then. And you know, it's really a great thing to do because we get to know each other, we understand each other, and we hear about how each other is practicing with something. But I also think it's like a ceremony of finding your place in the world, finding your place in the group. Because it's sort of like, oh, I'm important, and you're important too. I care about you and what happens to you and oh, you care about what happens to me. And so it's like it's a return to the truth of our interconnectedness and enacting it very viscerally.

[10:48]

So I recommend to anybody who doesn't have that opportunity to let us know and maybe we can find one of these groups that you can plug into. It's really a great thing. So then at some point you're off of the ride, right? You're on the scary ride and then it comes to an end. Either you sort of see through it or you work through it or you get bored with it or whatever. And then you're just sort of back in basic okayness. And I think that's another thing that we minimize or we miss, right? Because It's so nothing. It's like you just kind of basically feel okay. You feel friendly towards yourself and everybody else in a kind of temporary way. But I think that is actually the everyday big mind. Not the highfalutin big mind that we get when we meditate or we have some kind of enlightenment experience or something, but just the everyday moment when you kind of lapse into a sense of

[11:59]

general okayness. And that's a thing to water, to water those moments when you just basically feel friendly towards yourself and towards others. And so Thich Nhat Hanh says, continue to care for the seeds in an intelligent way. and store consciousness will offer flowers of love, understanding, and liberation. So one other aspect of this Yogacara teaching that I wanted to try to talk about, which is maybe not so user-friendly. When I first heard this teaching, I found it very upsetting and frightening, which is the idea that everything that we experience, everything that we know, perceive, cognize, understand, is being mediated through our cognitive apparatus. And so, we're not really, and you know, when you first hear this, it feels like they're saying, there's nothing out there, everything's in your head.

[13:08]

But that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is, what there is, both out there and over here, because there's no difference, is inconceivable. And we, when we package it into our cognitive apparatus, It changes it. It's just a version. It's just a photograph. It's just a facsimile. And you can have a more or less accurate photograph or facsimile. And it's good to work on having an accurate one. But also, it can be really powerful just to remember that what's happening is happening here. It's happening in here. because it so appears to be happening out there that it can be really powerful to remember when you see someone, maybe it's just they didn't make eye contact, maybe they just have a look in their eye, but you go to a whole place with it to remember like, oh, I just did that in my head, that just happened here.

[14:20]

So, just a quick word. So there's this term that neuroscience has come up with called neuroplasticity. Probably most of you have heard it, and I think that it corresponds really well with these teachings from the Yoga Chara. Neuroplasticity means that everything that happens to us, everything we experience, everything we think, say, or do, makes actual physical changes in our brain. An analogy would be like our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors kind of run on these tracks. and the more they run on a track, the more that track gets built up and it's like the crews come around and fix up those tracks, the ones that your thoughts are running on, and the other tracks that they're not running on get sort of overgrown with weeds and fall into disrepair.

[15:27]

And so you can actually, I mean, are you getting that process working for you or against you? To paraphrase a Zen slogan, Is your neuroplasticity, are you turning your neuroplasticity or is your neuroplasticity turning you? Because you can use that to inhibit the tracks that you actually don't want your mind to, you can interrupt the tracks that you don't want your mind to run on. And you can bolster and water the seeds and bolster the tracks that you do want your mind to run on. And so it's changing all the time. It just is changing all the time in one way or another. And we can't control that process. But it can be influenced. We're influencing all the time. We can influence each other. We can support each other to be influenced in beneficial ways. So, the world.

[16:28]

come to the world. When I first was thinking this, I was responding to really painful, tragic things that happened, like the shootings in Charleston, and more and always more news about global warming and about multinational corporations that appear to have no ethical conscience. But then this week it felt like, well, there was some good news too, you know, the really amazingly timed Supreme Court decision about marriage equality. And, you know, I think we can use that as an example that things do change. We can feel empowered to change other things that we want to change because we see that things change. things change all the time and sometimes they change in the way that we want them to. Sometimes they don't. I went to see my friend Kate Jorgensen yesterday who she was a Unitarian minister and she's one of the founders of

[17:40]

Faithful Fools, which is a street ministry for homeless people in San Francisco. It's a really amazing organization. They do these street retreats where you live like a homeless person and find out that you really aren't any different. There's no real difference. But she's moved over here now. She lives at Chaparral House. Just a really wonderful person. And I went and I told her, about my dilemma, I want to talk about the world. And what can I say, what should I say? And she said something about how you have to connect with people who share your concerns. And I heard part of what she was saying was don't fixate on what's so terrible. but don't turn your back on it either, but connect with other people who are concerned about the things you're concerned about.

[18:54]

And then she said, and put your anchor down there, which I just thought was really wonderful. Put your anchor down there. So, you know, it's sort of like watering, you know, we, we respond to awful things. We don't ignore them. but we put our anchor down in our connection with each other and how we have access to change all the time, at any time. And I believe that Buddhism is actually really well suited to the work of changing the world. It's about liberation. It's about non-harming. It's about the relationship, understanding the real relationship between self and other. It's about studying cause and effect to really understand how change happens.

[19:54]

And you could say, to borrow a phrase from liberation politics, it's about decolonizing our minds. Because you could say that our minds, in Buddhist terms, have been colonized by greed, hatred, and delusion. And so, if we free, if we decolonize our minds from them, what's left is our basic Buddha nature, our basic Buddha mind. However, when we talk about Buddhism, it always seems to start with and return to the individual, like what you're doing with your own mind. That's where we always return to. So I think it's up to us in this generation to figure out the ways to make these teachings really work in the world, work in groups, work for each other. Maybe more about how we water seeds in each other. as well as in ourselves. One of the ways that we have here of watering seeds is we make, we state intentions publicly.

[21:02]

So like we take vows, like at the end of the chant we're gonna take some vows, which is like saying publicly. And that's a very powerful way to water seeds. Say something publicly and other people see you do it and you see that they see you do it. So I want to say some things myself, and if you want to say some things later, I welcome that. I would like to dismantle racism. I would like racism to end, and I would like to be part of that. And it will end, because as we know, all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. It will end, so what can we do every day to hasten that day? Let's see, I wanted to put a quote from this magazine. This is a quote from Wendell Berry.

[22:05]

Racism involves an emotional dynamic that has disordered the heart, both of the society as a whole and of every person in the society. I want to know as fully and exactly as I can what the wound is, and how much I'm suffering from it, and I want to be cured. I want to be free of the wound myself, and I do not want to pass it on to my children. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about racism, but I had a couple other vows I wanted to make in front of you here. I would like to end climate change. And I would like to help us return to a really healthy relationship with the earth. I was talking to a friend of mine a couple days ago who was very concerned and I want to do something about climate change. I really want to do something and she proposed that we had cost some people at another table at the restaurant we were at, and asked them if they were concerned about climate change.

[23:14]

And I didn't get the point of that. She's an extrovert, I'm an introvert, so that was, we had a different idea right there. But I said, why don't you get a beehive? Because I just read in this magazine that a third of our food crops are pollinated by bees. Like that, think about that. That is really important. A third of our food is pollinated by bees. And also, the urban environments are very good for bees. There's actually less pesticides, unless you use pesticides or your neighbors do, there's fewer pesticides in an urban environment than there is in an agricultural area where they're using pesticides, you know, in big ways. And she was like, my neighbors would freak out. She was really hesitant about that. So then I said, well, you could get the gray water from your washing machine to go to water your garden.

[24:16]

And I'm not doing these things myself, right? So I don't have much ground to stand on here. But still, I proposed a thing she could do. I feel that way about plastic. I am so much more aware of plastic when I'm throwing things away than I am in the grocery store. Do you notice that? I've trained myself now. I feel really bad when I throw away, when I put a piece of plastic in the garbage. I feel really bad. But I don't feel that way when I'm shopping. I don't know what it is. I need to track it back in time until I get up to the point where I'm doing the shopping. Because you're supposed to bring your own metal container and buy things in bulk. I'm just saying. So many things we could do. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I also want to correct income inequality.

[25:19]

and inhibit the power of multinational corporations who, like I mentioned, appear to have no conscience. Some people have a job of making other people's lives miserable. That is just really not good. I hope none of you have that kind of job. I'm not joking. The people who work in Amazon warehouses have to run from one thing that they buy all through the shelves of the whole warehouse and they get like seven minutes for a break and there isn't time to go to the break room in that. I mean it's really kind of scary and that's just one example, you know, not even mentioning internationally. So I want to read you a little factoid about income inequality. The percent of wealth the average American believes to be owned by the top 20% of U.S.

[26:23]

households is 59%. The percentage of wealth actually owned by the top 20% of U.S. households, 84%. The percent of wealth the average American believes to be owned by the bottom 20% of households, 9%. the percentage of wealth actually owned by the bottom 20% of U.S. households, 0.1%. The percentage of Americans who cite income inequality as a major problem in the U.S., 5%. So, I mean, we kind of have to keep, privilege is kind of like a sleeping sickness, right? It's like you hear about it, but then you go back. I mean, I spend a lot of time just trying to get through my day every day, you know? It's hard to be aware of this stuff. But we can, you know, help remind each other, too. And not just get discouraged, not get despair, but like, that was just about what we believe.

[27:26]

We can change what we believe. We can, our minds can change. Information changes what we think, right? So, I made a strange, how are we doing on time? We've got plenty of time. We have about, it's about 7 o'clock. Oh. We've got lots of time. Okay. I made a strange segue, which again, maybe because I'm a well-trained Buddhist, I went again to the mind, you know, instead of the world. And I've just been trying to remember, there's a koan, which I cannot remember, and I meant to look up, but I didn't get a chance. It's like, but the punchline is, what do you call the world? Remember what the beginning part is? You remember it, Ron? Yes, Dizong. Dizong, but what's the question? The question is, Dizong asks his kind of travelers who are coming through, how is Buddhism

[28:28]

in the South, and they say, oh, there's lots of discussion. And then he says, well, what do you think about me up here just taking care of my rice fields? And they say, well, what about the world? And he says, well, what do you call the world? That's pretty good, although I imagined it being something more like your mind, you know? The world is the world. Yeah, that's the world. So anyway, I started thinking about my experience raising kids. One of the hardest things for me raising kids was dealing with my kids. You know, kids are bundles of pure, naked desire, right? Am I right? When you have a tiny, tiny baby, you just want to give them everything they want. Their needs and their wants are exactly the same. If they're hungry, you feed them. If they are cold, you make them warm.

[29:31]

If they want to cuddle, you cuddle with them. If they want to watch things, you give them interesting things to watch. You just do what they want. And what they want and need are the same. But very soon, by the time they're old enough to grab your glasses or whatever, you have to inhibit that. And that means we have to learn how to deal with our desire from such an early age. Um, and it's intense as a parent, you know, especially in our society where, you know, people get paid the big bucks to play on our desires all the time, to figure out how to play on our desires. So it's really, and that's a really powerful force. If you're around children, you, it's intense because they don't stop and they don't take a break. And you, most of us don't have that much. Chi, to meet that all the time.

[30:31]

And I also was thinking about another really powerful force is parents have a lot of energy tied up in anxiety about their kids, a huge amount of anxiety. My kids went through the Berkeley schools and people in Berkeley are very progressive and they really care, they really want everybody to get a good education. but they also want their kids to get the best. And they don't have a problem with that. Like you can hold those two contradictory thoughts in your brain because that's how our brains are. And I mean, and I'm sure I was doing the same thing. I mean, I would notice it when it was something that I didn't need or need for my kids or something. But, you know, you just, if there's a best teacher, you use every power you have, every privilege and power you have, no matter whether, you know, what kind of, what level of privilege you have, you're using it all to get the best for your kids.

[31:34]

And that's normal. But I still feel like these two experiences, these two forces are behind a lot of the problems in the world. If you keep going to what's at the bottom, part of our practice is to look at what's at the bottom. And these are normal things, these are natural, right? How do we learn how to manage our anxiety as parents? How do we learn that it's safer for us if everybody gets a good education? It's safer for our kids. if everyone gets a good education. Or even a not fantastic but reasonably good. Better for everyone to get a reasonably good than for some people to get a crappy one and for some people to get a fantastic one. At least I think so, maybe you don't agree. So, I don't know whether you think that has bearing on the world, what we call the world.

[32:38]

or not, but I just wanted to read you a few, to close with a few little factoids. One is about how much the wealth of the North was fueled by the slave trade and by cotton, the cotton industry. 70% of the British textile, cotton in the British textile industry came from the US. and New York had 40% of the share of all the cotton revenue in the US, went to New York. 48% of the total wealth in the South was slaves, was the value of slaves, the financial value of slaves. After the Civil War, There was this, you know, we hear this idea of 40 acres and a mule.

[33:40]

Well, that was repealed. President, I didn't know that, President Andrew Johnson overturned General Sherman's famous promise, which would have distributed roughly 400,000 acres to newly freed black families. However, the owners got $300 per slave. African-Americans have barely any of the nation's wealth and therefore little to pass down to future generations. Economists estimate that up to 80% of lifetime wealth accumulation depends upon intergenerational transfers. Martin Luther King, Jr. calculated that making good on the promise of 40 acres and a mule would total $800 billion. That was back then when he said this. And here's a great Dr. King quote that I bet you haven't heard. They owe us a lot of money.

[34:42]

I don't think that one's ever been on a calendar. And then I just wanted to say a little bit because that was kind of hard, painful stuff. I want to read you a little bit from this Alicia Garza, who was actually the originator of the Black Lives Matter slogan in Oakland three years ago. I didn't know that. It was around when George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder charges of killing Trayvon Martin. She turned to Facebook to express her Black Lives Matter in Oakland and sparked a nationwide discussion of the way black lives are consistently undervalued in America and what people can do to change that.

[35:42]

Access to that national network helped their message spread quickly and soon activist organizations across the country were using Hashtag Black Lives Matter to shine light on underreported incidents of black people being attacked or killed by police. But here's what she says. I'm going to close with this because it's a positive watering of seeds. Love is what sustains us through all the hardships that come with this work, even love for people who disagree. Love is what will ultimately get us to a place where we can change the world we live in. So, those are my thoughts this morning, and I'd like to hear what your thoughts are, especially if you have any intentions you want to share. Sue? Thank you, Laurie. Tell me one of your vows again, please.

[36:45]

I would like to dismantle racism. I want it to end, and I want to be part of it. If you changed that phrase to, I vow to end racism, I think it would be very powerful. It didn't seem powerful enough, the way I said it? No. I vow to end racism. Yeah. Peter, then Stephan. Thank you, Laurie. What this, and also our ongoing study of the Yogacara teachings is simulating in me, It's how, and particularly your talk is a really great example of this, how we are practicing our way in the world of form, and how we, you know, in doing that, you raise the question of how do we water the seeds in ourselves. and how when we open our mouth, we want to be water in those seeds.

[37:57]

And yet we don't control what our words mean to other people. We keep having to test it out again and again to find out where we are with it. I agree. I think that's really important. I think it's important. I think a really great thing we could learn, I don't know if we can do this or not, but to really be willing to tell people how what they're saying is landing on us, and also to really inquire, to really try to find out, like not just say it, but find out how it landed. I got Stephanie and then Ali, is that? Okay, let's do Stephanie and then Ali. Thank you so much, Lori. This isn't on the level of a vow, per se, but it just so happened that in the last month, I was reading, cover to cover, a newspaper every day. And it was such an amazing experience, especially in the Chronicle where there's the international news and then the U.S.

[39:06]

news. And in both of those examples, everything that they you know, it's the world with little numbers. Everything is negative. Everything. And so I'm just sitting with that and trying to figure out how to change that. It's just, you know, there are so many positive things happening in the world and it's just not coming out. Right, and that's why, so that's what this magazine is all about. It's about positive futures. It's about all the positive things. So it connects to all the awful things that are happening, but only in the sense of what people are doing, particular stories of particular people and how they're changing it. So I really recommend, especially this issue. I barely scrapped the surface with it. It's so awesome. Make it right. And Ali. Thank you very much for your talk. came here when I was 18.

[40:07]

I've noticed that it really has come a long way. It has recognized genocide against the Native American and then the humanization of blackness. gay and lesbian and heterosexual and transgender. And now I feel really the most important thing is this invincible chain the media put around our neck and bombard us with images and really terrorizing us. The real evil right now is the war machine which dehumanizes the rest of the world Now the exploitation going, not to say inside, it's not happening, by multinational and the 1%.

[41:12]

Creating a volunteer army, which I think the real name should be a mercenary army. Terrorizing the world and terrorizing us. And really, right now, they're very clearly dehumanizing the Palestinians. And so, this is till this war machine stops, and then the whole resources is spent in that direction. Focus internally, we have a long way to go. Now climate change, a lot of things will change, till that change. As I said, we have come a long way. Maybe we put those issues aside and concentrate on stopping the war machine. It brings everything into focus. I know. It would be great if we could see it as a house of cards, that we just need to find the card.

[42:17]

We each might have a different idea of what the card is to pull out. But they're all connected. They're all connected. And I'm afraid that... And I have one question. Oh, it's a question. The power of the domains. The power of the domains. Yes. Well, I was very encouraged by your talk in the sense that one of the things that happens is we can get depressed and overwhelmed by all the terrible news. Very quickly. And then your energy goes. You feel so overwhelmed. What can I do? So even the suggestions you gave about, you know, what can I do today? if what if everybody did one thing today? What if two people in the room got beehives or something? The other thing that was encouraging was reminding us about change and our brains change because in the last two years, if you look at public opinion on gay marriage, now, I mean, it's completely changed.

[43:19]

I mean, from five years ago, it's amazing. I know and sometimes I feel, I can even feel bad about that because why, why are some things, why, but then if you think, I started to try to think it today, we could see that gay people have been oppressed longer. They've been, and that way it took long, you know, like it took a long time and we just happen to be here now when it's shifting. And we could be there for these other things. Yeah, but I mean it's just, if we can at least encourage each other that That it's not this horrible world. That it's always been a difficult world. And that change is happening every day all around us. So watery seeds of encouragement. I really appreciated your encouragement. There was a great quote. I looked everywhere for a Suzuki Roshi quote or something to pin this whole thing on. And I didn't find one. But there was one I love where he talked about how we should be thinking about our inmost request incessantly.

[44:20]

He used that word incessantly. And I just thought, you know, we should be thinking about the earth or Black Lives Matter. We should be thinking about it incessantly, but not in an overwhelmed, discouraged way. But like, what can I do today, right now? Read a novel written by a person of color. You know, just inform yourself. You know, so many things. There's no end to things. I'm afraid we're stopping. I'll talk to you out there.

[44:48]

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