Good morning, everyone. Welcome on this beautiful Chicago morning. Usually, we talk about Buddhist or Zen Buddhist practice or teachings. And in a way, this is also about that. But I want to talk today about Muhammad Ali, who passed away last week, truly a great man. So I'll start with what Bob Dylan said about him. If the measure of greatness is to gladden the heart of every human being on the face of the earth, then he truly was the greatest. In every way, he was the bravest, the kindest, and the most excellent of men, unquote. So some of what I want to say about Muhammad Ali is personal in terms of how he affected me.

[01:10]

And there is so much to say about this man. I remember listening to the early fights of Cassius Clay on the radio in the early 60s. So for people who were not around in the 60s, it's hard to understand who this man was. Already then, when he was using what he later called his slave name, he was a dynamic figure. He was a poet, he had flair, he was funny, he had charm, grace, great voice. He had won the Olympics in Rome in 1960 when he was 18. And he told the story later that he came back from winning the gold medal in the Olympics.

[02:13]

He came back home to Louisville, Kentucky. And he went downtown. I think he was wearing his gold medal. And he went into a diner to get some food. And the waitress told him, we don't serve Negroes here. And he said, I don't eat them either. Bring me a hamburger. and she brought the manager and they wouldn't let him eat there. He was amazing as a boxer. He would give poems, he would say poems where he predicted the rounds of when he would knock out his opponents and then he did it. And, you know, as he said, it's not bragging if it's true. He was a tough fighter, a macho, you know, in this macho boxing game. But he kept talking about how pretty he was. He was mysterious and full of contradictions.

[03:16]

Again, there's so much to say. He was a complicated guy. In 1964, he beat Sonny Liston. Nobody expected that, and he became the heavyweight champion of the world. And the next day, he declared himself a Muslim, and he changed his name, first to Cassius X and then to Muhammad Ali soon after. That took tremendous courage. He received a lot of anger from the mainstream media, the mainstream sports business. He was hated by many people in the African-American community, by most of mainstream American media. In 1965, I was a high school student in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I was already upset about the Vietnam War.

[04:19]

I was going to demonstrations downtown at the draft board to protest. I would be one of four or five people at these demonstrations. My government was napalming innocent civilians in Vietnam, and I was horrified. And frankly, I feel this has continued often from time to time in various places ever since. We dropped white phosphorus, a later version of napalm, in Fallujah in Iraq. Anyway, the next year, in 1966, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted to go to Vietnam and declared himself a conscientious objector. He was the very first major public figure to come out against the war. I was really grateful. So I want to read Muhammad Ali's speech about Vietnam in 1966. The man was really eloquent.

[05:20]

He said, why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam, while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy. he was the heavyweight champion of the world, and could cause me to lose millions of dollars, which should accrue to me as the champion, and he did. But I have said it once and I will say it again, the real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people, or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom, and equality.

[06:28]

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me. I'd join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the law of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs, so I'll go to jail. We've been in jail for 400 years. So that was a very strong statement. The man was incredibly courageous and made this huge sacrifice. Standing up for African American people, standing up for peace, he was a great fighter. So there's so many aspects to this. Ali traced his racial and political identity back to the murder in 1955 of Ahmed Till. a black 14-year-old from Chicago.

[07:33]

Some of you may remember. He was believed to have flirted, he was visiting Mississippi and he was believed to have flirted with a white woman. And he was, Emmett Till was tortured and lynched. And when his body came back to Chicago, his mother insisted in his body being shown in an open casket and photographed so people could see what had been done to him. Clay was about the same age as Emmett Till, and the photographs of the brutalized dead youth haunted him, he said. So now, still, all these years after 1955, we have Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times recently in Chicago. Sandra Bland from the Chicago area. college teacher, pulled over in Texas for not using her turn signal and then dying in jail, and on and on and on.

[08:35]

Almost every week, an unarmed black person being killed. Ali said back then, I'm fighting to uplift my brothers who are sleeping on concrete floors today in America. and for black people who don't have no future. The man was incredibly eloquent and didn't hold back. After announcing that he would not go to war, he was eventually arrested, found guilty of draft evasion charges by an all-white jury, sentenced to five years in prison, and stripped of his heavyweight title. He successfully appealed and fought hard, it was difficult, through the courts, all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which eventually, in 1971, unanimously overturned his conviction.

[09:42]

By that time, he had not fought for nearly four years. He lost his period of peak performance as an athlete. In 1974, he regained his title against George Foreman. Around 1975, I was working as a film editor in the 70s, and again later in the 80s, I worked as a filmmaker. But I was working at one point for NBC News in New York, and I saw Ali in person. He was being interviewed. So this was, I guess, shortly after he regained his title. I saw him being interviewed in a room, and then he passed by in the hall afterwards, and he was greeting people. He didn't just greet the important people, just said hello. But the thing is, he was a really big man. I mean, not just in other ways, but physically he was tall, he was big.

[10:48]

You didn't realize it when you saw him on television. He was really a big man. He impressed me that way when I saw him. His refusal to go to Vietnam in 1966 had huge reverberations. Dr. Martin Luther King came out against the war. in Vietnam later on, 1967, a year to the day before he was, before Dr. King was assassinated. Dr. King was criticized by the mainstream press and his own advisors in the civil rights movement had told him not to focus on foreign policy. But Dr. King forged ahead and justified his new stand. He said publicly, like Muhammad Ali puts it, we are all, black and brown and poor, victims of the same system of oppression. So Ali was the pioneer.

[11:51]

When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa, on Robben Island, he said that Muhammad Ali gave him hope that walls would someday come tumbling down. A tennis star, Billie Jean King, was aiming to win equal rights for women in sports. And Muhammad Ali said to her, Billie Jean King, you are the queen. She said that made her feel brave in her own skin. Bill Russell, the basketball star, said in 1967 when Ali was threatened with jail, I'm not worried about Muhammad Ali.

[12:54]

I'm worried about the rest of us. One thing Ali said, some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. Everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn't trying to be a leader, I just wanted to be free. I made a stand all people, not just black people, should have thought about making. Because it wasn't just black people being drafted. The government had a system where the rich man's son went to college, the poor man's son went to war. And, you know, that's still happening. Then after the rich man's son got out of college, he did other things to keep him out of the army until he was too old to be drafted. So one of my books is called Faces of Compassion, Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression, and I wrote about Ali in that book. So this is a book about the different bodhisattva figures, bodhisattvas.

[13:56]

in Mahayana Buddhism, which Zen is part of, are kind of iconic figures representing aspects of this practice of universal awakening and helping to enlighten beings in responding to suffering. So I focused on seven major, the major figures of Bodhisattvas in East Asia and They're all in this temple. Several of them are in the room. Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kanzeon. But the first one I talked about was Shakyamuni Buddha, who before he became a Buddha was a prince, Siddhartha Gautama, historical figure in northeastern, that's now northeastern India, 2,500 years ago, considered a bodhisattva before he became the Buddha. And his story, this archetypal or his story that's about his approach,

[15:02]

strategy to Bodhisattva practice, awakening practice, is about his choice. He was born as a prince. The story goes he could have become a king with great power. He was brought up in this very sheltered situation. He gave up his crown. He had this choice and he gave up his crown. to go respond to the suffering for his spiritual beliefs, to search out the cause of suffering, and eventually became the founder of Buddhism. For each of the chapters, I talk about modern culture figures who exemplify that approach to bodhisattva practice. And I wrote about the very first modern exemplar figure I talked about was Muhammad Ali. So I'll read a little bit of what I wrote. In terms of abandoning kingship for spiritual values, Muhammad Ali is one of the best known contemporary cases.

[16:16]

As boxing's heavyweight champion of the world, he first risked his title to change his name from Cassius Clay for the sake of his spiritual beliefs as a Muslim. The brash and colorful young boxer, already a controversial figure, had offended many establishment commentators by his lack of simulated modesty and his pride in his skill, predicting his own victories. We may recall the cocky pronouncement attributed in Buddhist legend to the infant Siddhartha soon after his birth that, I alone am the world-honored one. The young Ali similarly announced to the world how pretty he was and claimed, I am the greatest. Ali's adoption of Muslim beliefs and forms was highly unpopular. His faith was politically controversial. It strongly upheld values of self-esteem for African Americans at a time when the civil rights movement was under threat. Ali's spiritual values were far from frivolous or fabricated from early in his career up to the present, and the first edition of this was written in 1998.

[17:19]

Ali has not forgotten his roots in the suffering of others. He frequently has used his financial resources and his social position to assist many altruistic projects, including the African American community, and actually all around the world. He did many things, but avoided unnecessary publicity and praise for his charitable endeavors. Ali's renunciation of his palace was fully enacted when he refused to fight in what he and many others considered an unjust war in Vietnam. So I talked about him abandoning his title. He was stripped of his world championship, proclaiming conscientious objection. Ali was adamant he would rather go to jail than fight in what he insisted was not his war. He said that he had no desire or reason to go across the world and kill Vietnamese people who had done him no harm. He added, no Viet Cong ever called me N-word. He persevered courageously and eventually, four years later, after the Supreme Court ruling allowed him to box again, he regained his title.

[18:28]

Ali's affirmation of spiritual principles of a worldly acclaim clearly exemplifies the important aspect of spiritual choice in the Siddhartha archetype. And I talk about, and I want to talk about this later, that people may question Ali's stance. People did question Ali's stance because he was a professional fighter. So they questioned whether he could be a conscientious objector. We can look back at Shakyamuni, who was also from the warrior caste and trained in martial arts, And I wrote in the book, Ali continues his caring involvement and genuine friendliness with people of all stations, even while dealing with his physically impairing Parkinson's syndrome, which I want to come back to. Ali has written about the theme of healing and he speaks to high school students from diverse backgrounds about the value of love and tolerance and of overcoming the wounds of racial hatred and prejudice. And he has talked a lot about healing and interfaith work.

[19:32]

But as it happens, a student who read the book sent a copy, and his family had some connection with Muhammad Ali, sent a copy of the book to Muhammad Ali. And Muhammad Ali wrote him a letter back, July 22, 1999, with his script and a little squiggle at the top with a yellow B, because he talked about floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. And he said, thank you for sending me the book written by your teacher, Taigan Leighton. I was very humbled. to think that Mr. Layton and others may very well consider me as having ways similar to that of the Buddha. I have always tried to live my life in a just and fair manner, hopefully engaging the blessing of a higher power as I transgress through life. I believe that God places many prophets on this earth, Ali continues, some who are sent directly to a certain group of people.

[20:43]

I believe Buddha to have been one of these prophets as well as Jesus. I only dream that my life has been an example to others. I am in no way perfect. However, I struggle like everyone else to continue loving my fellow human beings without reservation or judgment." So that's the humble side of Ali. I love it that he talks about transgressing through life. There's so much to say. I want to talk about him being a Muslim. I want to talk about him as a sports figure. And I want to talk about his Parkinson's. I'll mention some of what the progressive sports writer Dave Zirin said about him. What Muhammad Ali did in a culture that worships sports and violence, as well as a culture that idolizes black athletes while criminalizing black skin, was redefine what it meant to be tough and collectivize the very idea of courage.

[21:54]

So yeah, what it means to be courageous. Ali embodied that and really gave us a different example of what that really means. Through the champ's words on the streets and deeds in the ring, bravery was not only standing up to Sonny Liston, it was speaking truth to power, no matter the cost. He was a boxer whose very presence and persona taught a simple and dangerous lesson. Real men fight for peace, and real women raise their voices and join the fray. His response to Vietnam was not only an assertion of black power, but a statement of international solidarity, of oppressed people coming together in an act of global resistance. It was a statement that connected wars abroad with attacks on the black, brown, and poor at home. And it was said from the most hyper-exalted platform our society offered at the time, the platform of being the champ. These views did not only earn him the hatred of the mainstream press and the right wing of this country, it also made him a target of liberals in the media as well as the mainstream civil rights movement who did not like Ali for his membership in the Nation of Islam in opposition to what was President Lyndon Johnson's war.

[23:18]

for an emerging movement that was demanding an end to racism by any means necessary in a very young, emerging anti-war struggle. He was a transformative figure. So this was just at the very beginning of the anti-Vietnam War movement, which became huge, but was just starting. And Ali was really, again, the first public figure to, I mean, he put his whole career on the line. He would have gone to jail. He risked everything to speak out. In the mid-1960s, Dave Zirin continues, the anti-war and anti-racist movements were on parallel tracks. Then you had the heavyweight champ with one foot in each. Or as poet Sonia Sanchez puts it with aching beauty, quote, it's hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was still a time. But hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft.

[24:21]

It was a war that was disproportionately killing young black brothers. And here was this beautiful, funny, poetical young man standing up and saying, no. Imagine it for a moment, the heavyweight champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of the ring into the arena of politics. And standing firm, the message was sent. So I want to say a little bit about Muhammad Ali as a Muslim. There was a funeral service Friday, big service in Louisville, and it was televised. And he orchestrated it. I mean, before he died, chose who would speak. Bill Clinton was there, but a lot of other people. Malcolm X's daughter, some Nihonzan Myohoji monks, these Buddhist peace monks who chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Lotus Sutra were also part of the presentation.

[25:28]

It was a long, I just saw a little bit of it on television. And he did this, and then there was an Islamic service the day before, but he did this at a time when he arranged this in his death, at a time when we have a presidential candidate threatening to ban all Muslims. So he was very good friends with Malcolm X. There's an interesting quote from Malcolm X in 1964 when he spoke out in support of Muhammad Ali right after the press began to attack him for joining the Nation of Islam. And this was still when he was Cassius Clay. I'll just read it. Malcolm X said, he's never been involved in any trouble. His record is clean. He's actually an all-American boy, or an all-African boy, as you will.

[26:31]

And an effort on the part of the press to attack him actually hurts America all over the world. So this is Malcolm X saying this. I've gotten letters from countries myself, foreign countries, expressing confidence and pride in the clean image that Cassius represents. And I think to attack him, especially on religious grounds, would be most destructive to America's image abroad. My advice always to Brother Cassius is that he never do anything that will in any way tarnish or take away from his image as the heavyweight champion of the world, because I frankly believe that Cassius is in a better position than anyone else to restore the sense of racial pride to not only our people in this country, but all over the world. And he is trying his best to live a clean life and project a clean image. But despite this, you find the press is constantly trying to paint him as something other than what he actually is. He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink. In fact, if he was white, they would be referring to him as the all-American boy, like they used to refer to Jack Armstrong. So, Malcolm X was another great hero of the 20th century.

[27:35]

Later in Malcolm's life, when he split with the Nation of Islam, Muhammad Ali abandoned him. It's a complicated story. Muhammad Ali very much supported Malcolm X's family later on, and Malcolm X's daughter talked about that in the service Friday. If Malcolm X had lived, late in his life he went to Mecca and he spoke out for a kind of universalist Islam. We will never know, but If he had lived, he might have changed the whole course of world Islam in the last 50 years. And the mess that we have, the difficulty we have with Islam today and maybe the parts of Islam have with itself. There are lots of books now with Malcolm X's speeches and they're really worth reading.

[28:40]

And if you haven't seen Spike Lee's movie, Malcolm X with Denzel Washington, I highly recommend it. But it's complicated. The author and activist Ishmael Reed wrote a biography called The Complete Muhammad Ali where he defended Elijah Muhammad and a lot of what Muhammad Ali said early on actually is quoted directly from Elijah Muhammad, so it's complicated. But again, now there's this, it's an election issue now, what we should do about Muslims and other so-called foreigners. After 9-11, most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but we invaded Iraq, and the United States keeps creating more war and selling more weapons in the Mideast.

[29:45]

So, a lot of what Muhammad Ali said is still relevant. Right after 9-11, Ali said, Islam is not a killer religion. I can't just sit home and watch people label Muslims as the reason for this problem. So, amidst all of the talk about Muhammad Ali now. He was a Muslim, but he also talked very much about religion and people of religion and people of faith. And as Buddhists, or whatever we are, as people who do Buddhist practice, there's a lot to respect in Muslim traditions.

[30:47]

There's a great deal of devotion that's really strong. So there's a lot to say about that. So there's so much about Muhammad Ali and who he was. Again, he traveled all over the world. He donated to good causes all over the world. Again, quoting Ishmael Reed, a great writer and activist who wrote a book called The Complete Muhammad Ali, a biography published last year, I think his death sort of represents a great tragedy because this is a man who stayed in the ring too long, was abandoned by his entourage, was broke and suffering from brain damage when he fought his last two fights, according to his trainer, Angelo Dundee.

[31:53]

It's a great tragedy, and without his intervention of his current wife, I think he might be, well, might have died a long time ago. I'm very skeptical about this adulation that's happening now, because none of these people who are praising him wanted to rescue him or tried to intervene when, for example, he was suffering horrible physical damage from taking punches from people like Larry Holmes in his last fight. So I think this is a great tragedy. So I want to talk about Ali and his Parkinson's syndrome. But first I want to say a little bit about Ali as a sports figure. So again, when he declared that he was a conscientious objector, people disbelieved him because he was a boxer, he was a fighter. You're a fighter, how can you be against war? And part of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision was that they actually looked at the Nation of Islam's teachings and came to agree that that was valid for conscientious objection.

[33:09]

And Elijah Muhammad actually was a conscientious objector in World War II. But I want to talk a little bit about sports. Some of my Zen friends, Peter Coyote, for example, and I think a number of people here at Ancient Dragon, think following sports as a spectator is a frivolous activity, and maybe so. But just to acknowledge personally, I grew up as a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I grew up in Pittsburgh and became a fan of the Pirates in the late 50s before they won the World Series and met Roberto Clemente, who was another great hero. There are many sports heroes who actually did things that changed our society. Jackie Robinson, who integrated baseball, was a great inspiration. Roberto Clemente was, he was also this really, this big, heroic figure.

[34:15]

He was the first great Latino player and I got to meet him. He died tragically. New Year's Eve 1971, he personally wanted to, he was in a plane that crashed, taking relief materials from Puerto Rico, where he lived, to Nicaragua, where there had been this devastating earthquake, and he heard that the dictator there, who I think the United States helped put in power, keep in power, was not letting relief materials get through to the people who need it, so he wanted to go personally, and the plane was overloaded, and it crashed. And he did a lot to help people in the state of Puerto Rico. like Ali when they used his slave name Cassius Clay. By the way, Cassius Clay was named after Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was a black abolitionist, one of his ancestors.

[35:21]

But I saw that he might have been, his slave name might have partly come from one ancestor, Henry Clay, who was a great, great, who was an important political figure who sponsored slavery. Our legacy of slavery and racism in this country is so complicated and so powerful. Anyway, but Roberto Clemente, the sportscaster for a while wouldn't call him Roberto, you know, which was his name. They called him Bobby. Just another indication. Anyway, later on I actually worked on the staff of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Steelers. I worked for them. You know, I've been a sports fan. But coming back to Muhammad Ali, his Parkinson's syndrome started in 1984, and it certainly comes from having taken too many punches. And it affected his speech first, and then his movement in later decades.

[36:26]

So I want to talk about his Parkinson's syndrome and how it relates to sports. And I want to talk about Will Smith, the actor who played Ali in the movie Ali. It's a good movie, although there's some really good documentaries now about Ali from the days when he was a fighter. And go look in YouTube or look for the documentaries. But Will Smith was one of the pallbearers at the service on Friday. Will Smith also starred in a movie, Men in Black, which I wrote about a little bit in my most recent book, Just This Is It, and I said was my favorite American Buddhist movie. So if you haven't seen Men in Black, it's not obvious why it's an American Buddhist movie, but I highly recommend it. But his most, Wilson's most recent movie is called Concussion.

[37:30]

And it's very relevant to Muhammad Ali's Parkinson syndrome. So the movie is a true story about the Pittsburgh Steelers, who I used to work for, and about injuries to athletes, in this case, in the NFL. the American National Football League. And it's also a movie about Pittsburgh pathologists. So it interested me since my father was a pathology professor at the University of Pittsburgh while I was growing up. And he knew one of the major figures in the movie. So it's a true story, the movie, one of the pathologists. Anyway, Will Smith plays a pathologist from Nigeria, again, true story, who discovered that professional NFL football players, starting with a number of Pittsburgh Steelers, were suffering from what he named CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. brain degeneration disease.

[38:33]

So a number of Pittsburgh Steelers committed suicide or went crazy from head injuries that they suffered playing American National Football League football. This doesn't apply to real football or soccer that they play in Europe. And the movie is a story about how they brought this to the attention of the media. I mean, they did the science on it and were fought because the NFL is, you know, huge business. It's, you know, maybe it's, maybe the Super Bowl is the American, I don't know what, it's the biggest holiday in America or something, anyway. But, You know, this is with all due respect to the athletes, the boxers like Muhammad Ali and the football players. And it wasn't just the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it started there.

[39:35]

That's how this Nigerian pathologist in Pittsburgh discovered this condition. And like Muhammad Ali, and for many football players and other athletes, From the difficulties that were of growing up in African American in the society, there are not so many options, but, and I used to really appreciate the artistry of, you know, I worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers when Franco Harris and Terry Bradshaw and, you know, the great Pittsburgh Steelers were just starting, anyway. But later on, there were these guys who went crazy and started killing themselves because their brains were scrambled from playing this football. Anyway, they proved it, but still the NFL was big, big, big business.

[40:41]

And Muhammad Ali suffered from being punched too long. You know, and we celebrate sports figures, especially boxing and NFL football, or maybe not, maybe less so boxing today, almost as substitutes for war, you know? We get our aggressions out in America by watching these guys hit each other. But somehow we still have wars. So, you know, celebrating Ali as a truly courageous fighter for peace, it would, in honoring Ali, it would dishonor him not to mention that America's still involved in imperial wars, that we still have racial injustice throughout our country. So, Ali himself said about his Parkinson's, maybe my Parkinson's is God's way of reminding me what is important. it slowed me down and caused me to listen rather than talk so much.

[41:48]

And for a while, he still sort of looked pretty, but he couldn't talk. He slurred his voice, and then he couldn't move so well. He says, actually, people pay more attention to me now that I don't talk so much. So I'll just close with another quote from Ali. And again, there's just so much to say about the man. He did so much. I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous and who treated everyone right, as a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him, who stood up for his beliefs, who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that's too much, then I guess I'd settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was. So, in honor of Muhammad Ali, does anyone have any questions, comments, other reflections or stories or statements to make?

[43:06]

Yes, Miriam. really bothering and being mean and unpleasant and driving, finally, I'm going to turn to him and say, if you don't cut that out right now, I will buy a house in your neighborhood. Yeah, good one. Other comments or stories or questions or anything? Yes, Stephen. Oh yeah? What happened? Who won? I don't know, I didn't read the episode. But I think you did pretty well. I'm sure I did. Other questions or comments?

[44:10]

Again, you know, usually we talk about Zen or Buddhist teaching or practice, but this man was an example of so much of Bodhisattva spirit, to put it that way. Not to claim him as a Buddhist, he was a Muslim. Yes, Haksha. Yeah. Wasn't a sacrifice, yeah. Yeah. He said it in a lot of ways, that it wasn't a sacrifice.

[45:26]

He said, for example, I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs, so I'll go to jail. We've been in jail for 400 years. He said, I just wanted to be free. Everything I did was according to my conscience. Yeah. Clear conviction. Yeah. Yes, Aisha. Yes. likely. It could change, but we most likely will never be as visible as Muhammad Ali. But just a reminder of how by you guys doing what you think is right and being an encouragement to others, you can really touch a lot of people.

[46:37]

Yes. To be the champion at being you. To be the champion at what you're doing. But it's not just about you. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And he did that, you know, for so many people, you know, that's, you know, as Dylan said, he gladdened the heart of every human being on the face of the earth. And he was. just all over the world, except maybe by the racists and the warmongers who didn't like him. But all over the world, people didn't know who he was except they knew who he was. But the thing about the choice, the reason I talked about him in relationship to Siddhartha and Shakyamuni is he had this choice.

[47:44]

He could have been the champion. He could have made lots of money. I mean, some people compared him to Michael Jordan, and this isn't to put down Michael Jordan, but he had that kind of position. And instead of getting shoe deals or whatever, he put everything on the line.

[48:00]

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