Yogacara Deconstructs Whiteness

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aus for us good morning dharma brothers and sisters bodhisattvas
ah well i've already had an altar malfunction so hopefully that means it'll be smooth sailing from now on ah
my talk is entitled a yoga chara deconstruction of white supremacy or understanding yoga child through the example of white so called supremacy and my wish is that we would get a little closer to ending racism and also closer to understood
standing and being able to benefit from this rather difficult teaching of buddhist psychology
so i wanna start with a quote from the somatic therapist rez mom and not come from his book my grandmother's hands and by the way i've asked i asked like to post all my references in the chat
so you can help those on
here's the quote you have the power to stop intergenerational and historical trauma in it's tracks and to keep it from spreading from your body into others above all you have the power to heal but first you have to choose to heal
so yoga chara is a system of mahayana buddhist psychology or you could say buddhist healing and we and our suzuki roshi song as have been studying at for on and off for quite a long time now rob anderson and green gulch was teaching it for years it seemed like can he wrote
a book about it and sojourn has done a few classes and was in dharma group studying it and i think the priest group was studying it for awhile and
at more recently allen and i and where i watch these videos are which are if you want her to a super deep dive into a yoga child i would that would this would not be the have had the easy thing just start with that they're called emptiness and the mind
receiving it and there on youtube but and i listed that in the references also any way we worked our way through most of those and then allen taught a class earlier in the summer and elena and i have been slowly working our way through the lump of tourists sutra which is a younger child text
so for me what's always been missing in my study of yoga chart is a really good straightforward and meaningful example to work with simple but not too simple
marybeth you put your hand to your ear does that mean someone can't am i being heard okay i'm an i'm assuming i wouldn't be someone would have said something else i thank you
and of course the difficult example that all of yoga char is pointing to his the self are mistaken projection of an inherent fixed self or the self other divide
so to me this is sort of like learning to ride a bicycle without the training wheels or without anyone helping you and then i was just thinking while i was sitting what's this isn't there said there's another metaphor like building an airplane while you're flying it i think or something like that and even more extreme have a anyway it's like that
it's not difficult i mean it's i think it's really difficult to understand the teaching of no fixed self it's not hard to have an experience of no fixed self but i find it is very hard to wrap my mind around in any useful bay
so i'm going to talk about three aspects of yoga charged teaching and use these lenses to look at our understanding and experience of race and society the three aspects are mind only the eight consciousnesses and the three nature's
and so we may not have much if any time for discussion cause it's kind of a lot but i'm happy to engage with any one one on one through email or by phone
ah
and
okay no apologies
as
ah so the mind only teaching is one that we really need to get right side up and not upside down mind only points out that all we know over the world is filtered through mind all our experience of the were all our experiences of the world have come through our covenant cognate
give processes for us to know them everything coming through or finds five senses is only named and known to us through mind
and the mind only teaching is saying something more that all our problems are uniquely human problems are due to this truth not only the truth about our cognitive process but especially the way that that's not how things appear our perceptions seem to be unfiltered
so this teaching includes both that our experiences mind only and that our experience seems to not be that i look out of my eyes and listen with my ears like right now looking at you and i it seems to me like i'm accessing the world directly i rarely experienced that there's a cog
native process in between me and the world
so the example of white supremacy can help us understand what this means our so-called perceptions of what skin color means exists exist only in our minds as we might have known for a long time or only learned recently from scholars like ephraim candy there's no
particular meaning and the different shades of skin there's nothing you know about another person based solely on their skin color
he ramekins candy says race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself in very real ways and in fact yoga child often uses the metaphor of a mirage in and i think that if you replace the word race in candy sentence with fixed self or
subject or object divide it's really like a one sentence summary of yoga chara so it be like subject object divide as a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways
so here's what the buddhist sad about twenty five hundred years ago in a vasectomy sutra one of our earliest scriptures and he's taught he's talking about all the different kinds of beings and first he lists what he calls the generic divisions of living beings including grasses and
trees moths and butterflies fish and birds and so on and when he gets to human beings he says with humans no differences of birth make a distinctive marking them nor in the hairs nor in the head nor in the ears nor in the eyes nor in the mouth nor in the nose goes through all the parts of the body and then
nor in the excuse me knowing in their color or in their voice in human bodies themselves nothing distinctive can be found distinction among human beings is purely verbal designation
that's the buddha and in the more recent buddhist language of yoga chara it's mind only verbal designation mind only ah
okay so i want to pause and breathe and feel how i'm feeling and i invite you to do the same for a few half a minute or something

so it's really important to realize that this doesn't mean that white so-called supremacy is not manifesting in the world people bring it into the world based on these false imputations and projections through thoughts feelings words and actions that's how we
create our world and that unfolding process is what makes it appear to be in the skin color but the world of white privilege is all based on false imputations it's mind only and these false imputations arose out of a purpose a wish by white people to channel resources and safety towards themself
elves to justify the theft of land and labour from people of color
so one question that may be coming up for you as come up for me at what does mind only not mean for example we know that many people have been harmed and traumatize being by being told that something that they report is happening is only in your mind this teaching is not to be
used to deny someone's experience and it doesn't mean that anyone statement is as true or false as any other statement the world is round it's not flat
but columbus knew the truth that the world was round so we went around the world and killed a bunch of people that's not the kind of truth were interested in in buddhism
actually part of like columbus did what he does was because some earlier pope had said that was okay and that's getting closer to the kind of truth were talking about here the truth of what's ok the truth of who and what matters
if i'm going down the street and i see one person causing harm to another this teaching doesn't say that i think oh this is only happening in my mind and walk on know i hope i would think there appears to be harmed happening is there anything i can do to prevent it if not prevent it to mitigate it to help
peel to keep it from happening again
there's nowhere in yoga charge teachings that says that they supersede prior teachings about the precepts are about the importance of compassion actually had said that they should only be talked to people who are well grounded in precepts and in the bodhisattva vow to save all beings
so where i've ended up coming down on this is just that each of us needs to study this process and find out for ourselves when it is true and beneficial to apply mind only
so what is enlightenment in the context of mind only in the luck of a tar sutra it says as you become fully versed in the samadhi of the illusory you will use your higher powers insights and mastery is to help and protect all beings
for just as the earth's supports everything that lives so to to body suffers a beings everywhere
the samadhi of the illusory to me that's where we fully settle into and completely meet this reality that our own experience his mind only
so another pause to breathe
this
checking if anything

in the lack of atari sutra it also says if practitioners are able to see how projections flow from their own minds they will have their foreheads anointed by buddhists from countless lands
to me meaning buddha's will come close to us buddha's will touch us
and here with our various beliefs about skin color what we've been taught what be taken in we have an opportunity to actually see this how our ideas of what skin color means flow from our own minds not from anything external
so how do projections work and how do we deal with them that is explored more deeply in the teachings of the eight consciousnesses
the teaching of the eight consciousness is is based on an earlier buddhist teaching of the eighteen elements of experienced the eighteen daughters it sounds like a lot but it's just three groups of six so i'm going to share my screen
and someone can let me know if it's working
working okay
where do i put you guys here now didn't think about that before
and ehrlich do things i looked at three things
so i'm see here
is it a little
so here eh
so here we go these are the sixth sense organ eight or six lips i'm sorry i'm in the wrong one darn at all
here the sixth sense organs
eye ear nose tongue touch and in this regard mind is considered a sense organ
and we have six cents fields or objects sights sounds smells tastes bodily sensations and dharmas and this you can't see what this is this is like the we'll have feelings so this is like a chart with all the possible words for all those feelings behalf
and of course dharmas are much more than feelings it's all of our thoughts and stories and impulses and just anything that happens in our minds and then we have six cents consciousnesses seeing consciousness hearing consciousness smelling consciousness tasting consciousness touching ca
consciousness and mind consciousness and i guess i was in a little bit of a
over armageddon have a mood or something when i picked this graphic which you can't probably can see but it is a city with a mushroom cloud in the background but of course
my people's minds have also created innumerable beautiful thing so that's true too so these are the eighteen
and the point of this actually is not
that they to see them as separate but more like to see how we only have an experience when the three come together so there's only seeing when you have an eye a site and site consciousness so it's really the emerging that that it's about
and to be aware of how it's really the emerging when we have a moment of experience it's when these three come together so last week drinks says shane i noticed a during the first period our furnace was going as it was cold and and it's rather loud in the attic where we were sitting
and when i noticed as whenever my mind wandered i didn't hear the furnace and then when i brought myself back to my breath the sound of the furnace popped and suddenly and then my mind would wander and would go away and then when i brought my mind back i'd hear the furnace again so it was only when this see the here
ring consciousness came in this the air and the sounds were always there but i needed to have the hearing consciousness to actually hear something
and then of course to get the name heater at all i'm that's i'm already involved in all of this over here that's even though it's really fast it's a beat later than the hearing itself the pure hearing
so here's how we get
from the eighteen to the eight
and if i'd taken even more time on this and to invented and now
powerpoint i could have made a cool animation but i didn't so
go down here and we take
take these ten away eighteen minus ten is eight and then we have the eight the eight cents consciousnesses i mean the fires hide the five cents a five physical sense consciousness so you take away all the physical organs and fields and objects that business
and you are left with the mental fat the mental part so the consciousness with it goes with the five senses
mind which is in the yogurt charles called manas and then this dharmas has turned into the elia storehouse which is actually the eight so the order is a little confusing here so we have
the six the mind consciousness the seventh manas and the eighth a liar
k when we look at my notes again
oh right and so you know the five cents consciousnesses are sort of like the realm of zazen right i mean of course and encompasses everything here but our effort is to tune in to you know by tuning into our bras and the physical sensations of our breath
and other sensations inside our body and here letting sounds come in listening to sounds that's where our attention we try to bring our attention more here to this pure sensory experience
and you know all of this everything i'm saying is that isn't is a simplification but the other thing is so and also racism isn't happening here at all
nothing racism over here it's all over here and these three
i'm
and in yogurt shaw so in yoga char these three are the of the important ones that are always referred to
when they they talk about mind as the thing that splits between subject and object it seems like we can't think about things until we have that split between subject and object and then the elia is sort of like well it's somewhat analogous to the
a western idea of the unconscious mind it's described as full of seeds of everything that's ever happened to us
in the same way that the i oregon connects with sites a mine organ connects with things in the elias storehouse
which is you know thoughts feelings ideas and impulses in such stories and all that so another point about the elia it's seen as a container but it's also very porous very susceptible to ideas and images so called
seeds that are shared in our society so each of us has seeds planted by experiences from our families and our personal lives and also we have seeds that are being planted and watered in our storehouse consciousness all the time by others by our community and our society
so taking white skin privilege as an example it starts with an event in the visual consciousness when my eye consciousness detects a skin color
my mind oregon
paul's dig in advices digs down into the elia and pulls out information corresponding to that whatever's in there planted in there all the different various elements of meaning imputations projections which give rise to consciousness of below
leafs feelings thoughts words and actions
so we impute the meaning of the experience on to we impute the meeting onto the experience of color based on whatever we have been taught and however we have interpreted our experiences
so i'm gonna close the graphic unless there is a clamoring for keeping it open
because then i can see you
ah
so i wanted to think of an example a specific example but one that
it was not sort of in the rats of what we already struggle with around this issue
so what popped into my mind was an imaginary example of what if there was a imputation that people with white skin lacked empathy so that's why they were able to do all these things enslaved people and steal their land and so on and more importantly that that trade that lack of empathy is somehow in the white skin
so what if that was the thing rolling around in are all of our ally a storehouse consciousnesses let's imagine that that's been an idea that has stuck and i think once we start with that we can once we take in and believed that projection we could build a case for it based on evidence and all kinds of things that have happened for the law
s four hundred years and so to play out the process again experience of the i sing pinkish beige skin giving rise to a moment of seeing a mind oregon creates the separation between the thinker and the thought of and digs down into the alliance storehouse
comes up with lack of empathy projection onto the person and directs the perfect responses accordingly and we responded individuals and then individuals and groups create group responses and pass laws and create a structure based on all on imputations and eyes a white person would keep finding myself in that
box and a whole range of thoughts and feelings might come up doubt anger and so on
now there's a danger here of making this all sound to mental to frontal cortex
actually the elia very much includes the reptile brain all of our survival instincts and our limbic brain our sense of emotional safety or unsafe t it controls very elemental quick basically instantaneous responses it's as quick as a clutch purse or put
filling out a gun it's whether or not it feels safe to go into a room and sit with your back to a bunch of strangers it seems immediate but the point is it still based on a cognitive process
pause to breathe my notes say

so what is enlightenment in terms of the eight consciousnesses
here is called transformation at the base and the base is the elia consciousness the eighth consciousness somehow through study training and practice we transform the contents of the elia and our relationship to it and i think a big part of this transformation
ocean is what i'm talking about here seeing that these objects of mind are in here not out there
that the things we're seeing hearing experiencing are happening in here not out there and with that transformation the elia becomes it is said the womb of awakening the womb of buddha
it's the means by which we wake up
at this means we have everything we need right here to transform this whole situation and the systems of racism which are causing so much pain and harm and it has to happen at this really deep level and it is actually happening all the time the ally is in a constant state of transformation and we just need to keep learned
ing how to more effectively engage with that process and you know i really feel like we have we must do this it's imperative to save our species in our planet we need to get underneath these things somehow
and that's why i think to have this very meaningful and concrete example to work with is so important
so to say more about with with this transformation means the yogurt charles develop the teaching of the three nature's
getting deeper and deeper into it here so i don't have a graphic for the three nature's apologies
the three natures are the imagined nature the other dependent nature and the realized or perfected nature
and it's important to remember that all of the natures are not the nature of the world out there but rather the nature of the world
as process through our cognitive apparatus
because that's the only world we know and the world where all of our problems originate this world is funneled through our cognitive process we only know our subjective experience especially in terms of knowing in in the sense of names and category
ys and beliefs and that kind of knowing
so the imagine nature is all our imputations about what skin color means their erroneous but it's still an eight a nature it's real in the sense that we really do imagine it and we take actions and create social structures based on the imputation
some people more than others
it's real in that sense and it really influences our choices so even though it's imagined in terms of what it's based on
and then the other dependent or the interdependent is the way things actually are all the different ways can color appears among different people everything that's involved in that all our amputations and the results of those how our experiences condition by cognitive apparatus and all the myriad causes and conditions
that form the basis for our experience all the way back to the big bang it's this huge interactivity that gives rise to our present moment experience that's the other dependent
in a sense this is the buddha nature perspective right the enlightened perspective it's hard to talk about because language always forces the subject object split and makes things seem more fixed and solid than they really are the other dependent is everything we are trying to connect
in our practice and to realize
now the third nature is really interesting it's translated as the thoroughly established the thoroughly realized or the consummate nature so one way to think about this is the second nature is what is what
what really is things dependently core rising and the first and third are about our perspective on what is
because you might think like the continent nature the enlightened way to see things is just to see the other dependent right
that seems to be the way we've been taught and thought about it in which case why is there even a third one why aren't there just to sort of like the conventional truth and the ultimate truth that we often talk about
but there's more to the consummate nature than just seeing the other dependent or the interdependent and this is the interesting part to me it's when we see that the first one the imagined does not reach the second one the interdependent
this is when we see that the imagined nature is not in the interdependent it doesn't touch it
so for example enlightenment is not to say oh i don't see skin color anymore or something i mean that's not really available to many of us at this time but instead it's when we say oh i'm noticing a difference in skin color and my mind immediately gives rise to a bunch of imputations in
projections and look at that i'm sticking them on to the situation and the person even though they're not in there in the skin color itself they seem to be in there
so buddha's enlightenment really goes beyond seeing things as they are to seeing that tension between how things are and how they appear and to engage with that both the mirage and how we organize ourselves around it
we can't just switch to not having any imputations about skin color or anything else
but we can and we have to we must wake up to what we're up to with regard to our projections of skin color and where that process is actually taking place
when more pause to breathe

so my last three i couldn't decide which way to phrase this so i'm in it give it to both ways if we can't transform something as sort of
obvious and huh
in a sense scientific as our projections of skin color if we can't see how we're doing that and transform that how can we go on to do something with the subject object split and general othering and and understanding you know how
we really exist not as a fixed inherent self that's one way to say in the other way to say it would be if we could
if we could do it with this very concrete
and you know it's in play right now it's in the air it's everywhere you look
if we can do it with this maybe we can take the training wheels off and go the next step to do it with
you know for one thing everything that we project onto another person you know
you know anda and also on to ourselves and our separation
thank you very much and i see that actually there is time for questions so
please
he's be thoughtful when you think of your question
good song that if you could raise your blue hen and you'll be called on ah and you can also type a question to me
it may put the a question mark before them

i see that peter has his blue hand up on my theory mama
do i call on people click your year muted that make you running back and forth between the chat in the blue yeah yes please please
a peter overton please step forward in
and yourself ask a question and laurie feel free to call on people and we'll just go back and forth rate thank you i thank you very much for this presentation
i am well it raises a very simple and she were dumb question but
which of these mines or consciousnesses is the one that sees are just as bush with these minds and countries is involved in oh noticing that we are or this difference between
but we imagined gonna and what we can see also i observed it was really an airplane yeah that's a good question i guess it would be on which is taking a step towards untangling this process in this case know our problem with white supremacy yeah well
it all i think it's all happening in the three am i mean we can't if we're going to have a conversation wherein the three right we can't get out of three a popular so
there might be i don't know i mean i don't know a doctrinally what how to answer that question but i think that
it's some kind of maybe a direct seeing of the of the three like the merging of the three instead of there being split apart or something
i mean we we've all done it because we've all changed our minds right here in fact they're changing all the time even what in in millions of different ways in fact i was just reading an article in my yes magazine that if there's twenty five percent of the people towards a certain movement that will flip every penny
i guess that's all we need twenty five percent i would think we're getting closer
thank you
j i see years for her hand
not seeing you jake
did it
where okay okay good thank you lori m
what a very deep rich presentation you've made
i'm i'm wondering if you could
integrate what you said about ah
mind with a cultural and systemic racism and held at home
sure it is her so
powerful engine leading racism can be and keeping it from before us yeah well ah seeds in the elia consciousness that are constantly being watered
i mean that's in this version that's you know it's all people doing those things people making choices i mean it it's systemic yes but systems you know it's it's conditions perfect it's a condition process of condition people making condition choice
since you know
so it's it's some i mean i'm not i'm not minimizing it's it's a big deal the way it's become systemic and people sort of are doing things that they wouldn't may be due on their own you know just on their own consciences their conscience as much as
but they're able to do something because of these seeds that are saying it's okay
so i'm thinking come
if in dealing with racism
we have to look at fundamentally our system of laws and come
it's a to improve absolutely yeah this is not a menial out this is not to say that's not important at all not even a personal but racism yeah well the people who are going to change the laws are people whose minds are conditioned by seeds and watering the watering of so
seeds that would make them wanna do it differently so there's no magic to changing the system it's people people changing their minds changing her systems you know i mean i beg you the laws passed changes in but that ah
also influence of watering of seeds was and water seeds and everything is all watering seeds
thank you thank you
lord and thus bluhm rights you said that if we encounter an act of violence on the street that isn't quote just in our mind and quote unlike racism which is how is witnessing the breaking of a precept not also in our mind
ah i guess i mean if i guess that those words in that frame are in if it if the words breaking precept that's in our minds as is in our frame
i think that it's it's it's like the mirage you know that whether we organize around ourselves in important ways
can we think a minute ah it's
again i you have to decide for yourself how this is gonna be liberating and transformative it's not just a matter of
these concepts lining up in some perfect way but like whether they opened the door of your mind on
you know i mean i've just been joking with alan about santa claus is santa claus real or not
well yes and no
there isn't a guy up in the north pole making presence but there's all kinds of santa claus in our world millions of santa claus so it's not unreal and it's not real
jeff taylor i invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question
thanks for a really nice talk laurie i jabbed nice to hear you so there there are a couple of things from be raped in am talking about what it is that we believe about the world which may or may not have any intersection with what really is going on at work just what i believe and him stepping away from the see metaphor for justice
second and talking about how our experiences can tend to to reinforce something that really isn't happening now and we could point a dozens and dozens of experiences if we're going to talk about dismantling systemic racism if we're going to talk about changing minds eye
i think that we need to take a look at that which is relational and and that which which is about of the experience so i see a rope in the dirt and i decided to snake and i react like it's a stake and it's not it's just not and and you're walking with music signal jeff it's a rope and you go
over and u shaped a robe and because we're friends and we have a relationship and i'm having an experience something changes don't really know what that is but something will shift
i think one of the things that we witness in this most recent election is how minds are not changing and that because we have a segment of our population which is wholly ensconced in an echo chamber that tells them something that's not real and they believe it the solution to the that is something relational and something expire
oriental and then i think that's where our task lives we live in it very deeply racist country and it has become more racist as as many of us are so divorced from reality the experience of what is true no longer penetrates there are not available to it and so are r co on michael woman is
how do i work with somebody who thinks it's a snake even after i shook the rope
who is that person what's my relationship and how do i work with them
so that i get in the way of that feedback loop with something that's a little different based on something relational
yeah two things so one thing is that and there's so many different me this is a great time for us to be alive because we have these terrible problems and there's so many different angles that people are taking to try to get some leverage on them
one thing that i really like this book my grandmother's hands because he really talks about the nuts and bolts about how minds changed through processing of of trauma and feelings so that's one angle that's a very personal angle passing the laws and such as another angle when i think
about the people you're talking about them i like to think about what i want for them which is the exact same thing i want for everybody
and that's that's what i think about i want by once the exact same thing for them that i want for everybody which is food clothing shelter healthcare the access to help here i'm a reasonable job with reasonable hours a reasonable pay a chance for your children to thrive and learn
learn basic things i want that for everybody and i want that for people who disagree with me too i'm going to inflict that just a little bit and then i want to inflict good towards you're dealing with systems of racism when you touched on one side of it which is passing last return and to
make sure that we enforce standard of behavior that that seems reasonable but the other side of that is how do you relate to those people inside of that system it is a much larger kind of question it's a much larger sort of how how do i relate to groups and how to groups relate to groups how do we inflict that that's
true and you know i think part of it is the where the mind only comes in is a kind of feeling about people as being very fixed and in what they are and yes they seemed so people seem very fixed until they change and then it flips really a conflict really fast so if we're keeping up
up with this mind of fixing people in a certain way you know that's just my normally
you know so i don't you know even if i can get up the way it really is i do know that they're not that they're not what i think they are and my track record for fixing things is really not great
what we can do it we can do it that's all i know we can do it but someone's getting and i were gonna get a bunch of good ideas and creativity and more and more stuff until the twenty five percent or whatever and then i mean it might not be that fast but it could be this is our work is our work
ken palace and i invite you to meet yourself and ask a question
actually it's more work katie hi katie
ah
the kennedy had a similar questions and political time in but am
was wondering and i know from your activism and how you that you like to eat thought about this as well as wondering if you could connect what you're saying to power and privilege because in at once
this once racism is systemic then there's no doesn't it doesn't matter what some people believe it doesn't matter for long and it didn't matter for a long time what enslaved people thought or didn't matter as much and so
you know just kind of thinking about if i found it to them though i mean it probably mattered to them that if they're absolutely in and and as i'm saying that i was thinking about slave rebellions i was thinking about resistance in all these kinds of things so syringe was hearing about a day experience how they dealt with difficulty and i'll accept that sweet honey and there
rock song you know how did they do that how did they do that
yeah i guess you get i guess i wonder if we're thinking about dismantling racism and
just it seems to me that there is that individual level and that's where the yoga child teachings really resonate for me and a relational level but about about people and but that there is this kind of other emergent level
we were on
which is based on the same thing but you has created power has created coercion has made it so it's you know changing the laws is not simply a matter of a certain number of people changing their minds for example
speak to that i yeah i mean we might
yeah i think it's
we think a minute
it's kind of like a big connor a racket or something that you know at it's it's it's still i don't know how it can be anything other than people who can stop it honestly an individual people doing their individual acts and joining not just individually all alone but
joining together
i i don't see why we're making these structures into something that sort of disembodied from people i mean but i could be wrong maybe i'm wrong maybe those structures are more true because that's more of a codependent arising version than my version which includes people who are doing stuff which is not very interdict
pendant so
i just
people people want access to resources and
they'll do stuff to get that some more than others
and for mats were never gonna that that's just you know we're working with them that's part of what this is a working with human nature how to bring out the best that's when our practices really about really as to how do we bring out our best selves and quiet those other parts that are so scared and want
security and safety no matter what the cost you know
yeah i'd be great if i could influence whole bunch of people not even on this call but hundreds and thousands through this talk or something yeah i mean
yeah that would be create whatever you can do whatever you can think of to do and whatever you're already doing and what or whatever we're already doing
when i was thinking about power how power operates
it doesn't necessarily need to be anything other than
i'm mind only but it is a a
an amplification and a leveraging not just of ideas but also have fears or here it's a lot of beginning he has over combining and creating kind of repetitive but go enforcement of a law creates
coercion it's it's a very precise application of fear and
creating this persistent condition so to change that system is not just changing people's minds but it also allowing people give him supporting people so that they don't feel the same fear the that
the to give them the resources to
feel that we're all together supported each other and changing these systems is it's we really do need to be working altogether
to support ourselves as we make these changes i guess is what that ticks me yeah yeah i mean we have to feel i
the some you know some of us think that this way to get the most safety as of everyone has access to the things they need
and some people think that will never happen therefore i'd better get my own so that i have it at least i mean that's kind of simplistic way to think about the two different ways to think about it but
what are they think that some people are not included in the everyone's acquia
which makes it easier to think about a you don't have the is not a complicated i'm thinking about so many different people
thank you thank you nice to see you guys
hey go i invite you to
i meet yourself and ask a question
thank you
i am have been reading recently and scientific american very interesting article about go using people having fear and using their ability to claim these sources i to empower themselves and to either other groups this was happening a thousand years ago when
cody this article when farmers i started staying in place and under gatherers who were masters of tools i were on their periphery the record shows is that that the farmers ultimately dominated the the yad the flint knapping
years and the toolmakers and buried them in disrespectful ways and other cultural thing showing in the record added to scientists found ah enslaved them and it's i think hey katie i hit it did the fear that people are going to lose what they have or
or the power of having what they've got that makes them feel good as dead dead
they want to hang onto it so i think is really important to recognize that it's a human being to other and that is not necessarily a white thing at all you know they mean i think we all understand that but the
world and we which we live is full of things would say just for example farmers are better you know it's inherent in the his way to everywhere we turn there's at twenty five percent or greater reminder that farmers are better okay or i forgot that people in power are better and they look white in ah
our culture ah so i think it's really important to say to all of us we have this trap to fall into each of us and whether his manners ah whether it's external symbols of power and a good things that we would consider good
that influences to follow in as that have inherent racism built in so
we're all guilty i think that's the deeper part of the buddhist if you go deeper into the of hr it's really about this self others let period any kind of thinking of the other as other you know but again it's you know we need some training wheels to get there i don't find it that
easy i mean i i i i am i feel very fortunate that i have not been born in a situation where it makes sense to me to do really hurtful things to you know violently hurt both things to other people cause it's condition and now it's your condition so i feel really lucky and it ice it freaks me out
when i hear what people event other people just freak freaks me out
so will you might agree that having a jet airplane to dominate another culture regardless of their race is the problem we're dealing with yeah right
does
like showing just have linda and then be done maybe where is okay that sounds great linda hess please step forward
worrying worrying anybody
so i learned that was the forges of presentation you know that would you like my graphic the graphics were great but we'll discuss later how you determined on those particular ones and how much creativity with their beds and if it was hard to put that much
content and was too and i think you didn't really good job and then of course it it's much more difficult than anybody could ever present in twenty five minutes so the discussion is reflecting that so here's when it
even though you said at the beginning that this doesn't mean there's nothing real
this your guitar teaching it just takes a spare you know it takes us to the to good edge of the unreality cliff you know nothing is real will never know because this that's why this example to me as so good
of yeah okay
i hope point in
well i guess he just have real and it's not real how yeah and then as will see where where i is please sorry i move into area and
because we're old friends we are
on
i just want to say where i went with it that the that the question the challenge we have with this teaching is as i thought about it this morning
not to figure it out to be can't we cannot solve it with the mine
but for me to real recognize that the bodhisattva vow whatever it means is deeper than the question of real or unreal
so
good so we it it reminded me of gandhi who i don't always bring up as a good example but he just said there's all that says this in the texan says that in the sacred books and says that in the tradition fine but
is is it in is it a harmonious with a himself or nonviolence if it's not i'm finished so we have a touchdown and that is the bodhisattva vow and it's
instead of deciding whether our perception of the situation is real or unreal when mean that that's a valuable exercise we just it's like jumping off the hundred foot pole we jump we finally take a step based on a vow which we cannot really understand that's what i wanted to say
and yeah i mean to bring it back that some kind of space that what seems to be a big obstacle keeping you from doing that is just mind all he had a right
that's where the mind only as it's what it's what's impeding answer was conflicting constricting us are scaring us are you know i think
anyway i guess we have to bring this to a close
thank you everybody for spending this morning with me and listening to meet him helper hope i didn't offend too many people