long time as a student of Zenkei Blanche Hartman's and then her Dharma transmission was completed by Shosan Vicky Austin not so long ago. And Zenju is the teacher at Still Breathing You get all the meanings? Yes. I don't know. I get none of them. And that's in the Oakland Hills. And she is also a wonderful writer. And her most recent book, which you may have seen, is called The Way of Tenderness, Awakenings Through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, published by Wisdom Press, available Thank you, Hosan.

[01:43]

And thank you, Roshi Sojin, once more, for having this place to practice. And so we also have another name of our centers called Yudhoji, which means excellent way, and Isho Fujita gave us that name. So we also use that, Yudhoji. It's our new one. So I thought I'd start out with something. Let's see if you guys are with me on this. So, I didn't mean to cause you any sorrow. I didn't mean to cause you any pain. I only wanted to make you happy. I wanted to see you standing in the purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain.

[02:45]

Purple rain, purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain. All right. All right. How much difference? So that was just on my mind. I said, OK. So I wanted to share this morning a little bit about, um, this book, uh, that came, uh, to me. I, and I feel through me, um, called the way of tenderness awakening through sexuality, race, sexuality, and gender. And, um, I felt like once I finished doing it, it felt like it was a little bit of a dissertation or something of my practice because as I walked all the years in Zen, I always had these questions about my own life and my own embodiment.

[03:57]

and how these practices of Dogen and Zen, Soto Zen, would impact the discrimination and systemic oppression that I experienced in my life. And I felt that if it didn't really have, you know, I couldn't integrate these teachings with this embodiment that it was going to be difficult to continue this practice. But as you can see, I continued even with the difficulty. So, and continued difficulty. There are no answers in this book. Sorry. and no formulas. It's an exploration in which I took the teachings and interpreted them based on my experience in embodiment. So it's interesting that Prince dies this week because I felt like his sort of fluid embodiment

[04:57]

actually speaks to some of what I was trying to say in the way of tenderness in that how we may appear may be not how we really are, you know, and that maybe one at one point we're one way and at another point we're another way. And that we're to meet each other each time, each time we come face to face, each time we see each other's eyes, each time we be awakened by another's experience. So I felt like he embodied that a lot and who he was. I don't know his life, I don't know him personally, but just on his, famous stardom persona. It appeared that way. So this book also came to me as I was studying at Tassajara. We had quite a few conversations about racism, sexism, homophobia in the community. And I often found that when we did have these discussions or when

[06:05]

Zen Center was going to address these topics or issues, we would always step outside of the teachings to get the answers. We would bring in a diversity trainer or we would bring in someone with various skills that we thought we didn't have. And that kind of unnerved me a little bit because I felt like if I'm here, then it should be right here. It should be right in this room. It should be what we're being taught. It should be in the teachings. And I was sure it was. I was sure it was in the teachings. And, but yet we had not been able to integrate it. So this book, The Way of Tenderness, is an attempt and an effort to integrate it. And I think it could be, we could go further with it. This is not the final, you know. exploration, I feel and hope, and I think there are more books getting ready to come out on race and dharma, and I do know one already on its way in July. So we're beginning to, I think, use the teachings to speak to exactly where we are and exactly where we practice and how we practice.

[07:18]

And opening up the gateways to our awakening. I feel that, and I experienced it, that the awakening gates are through our embodiment. That if we ignored race, sexuality, and gender or other forms of embodiment in which there may be systemic oppression or marginalization, then we, in our spiritual practice, then we may be ignoring the beautiful and most wonderful and the most widest gates of enlightenment that we have been gifted. And that is this body in this nature, in this form, because we are nature. And so that is the premise of the whole book and the teaching. And so if you don't have time to read it, there's the cliff notes, so. Anyway, and if you do happen to read it, I suggest you take it in small pieces and you don't have to take it, read it in order.

[08:24]

You just can read it where you want to read it. And that's the lovely thing about it, I think. So I wanted to share with you some of the writing that's here. I read in a book, and you've read this probably yourself, and thank you for that bell, a pause of mindfulness. So I read in a book of Buddhist teachings called the Dhammapada. And how many are familiar with the Dhammapada here today? Great. And I forgot to ask, how many are new here today at Berkeley Zen Center? Is this your first time? Any first-timers? Okay, great. All right, so we're all experts here. So, anyway. And the Dhammapada starts off, mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief. They are all mind-wrought. And so that's one interpretation, and I thought I'd bring another, several interpretations of that.

[09:27]

I thought I'd bring another one. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you, as the will follows the ox that draws the heart. So this is from the Pali Canon. of the three teachings, the three baskets, the Tipitaka. And so we won't get into all of that, but they're the sacred scriptures. So although Buddha was addressing his monks with those lines and that teaching, we can easily read his words in reference to the collective mind of our society as it views race, sexuality, and gender. When individuals in our society speak or act out of hatred against a whole group of people based solely on superficial appearance, it is a reflection of the mental state of our whole society.

[10:29]

We don't escape because we are not the ones who are hated. When whole groups of people are subject to genocide, massacres, slavery, or other atrocities based on perceived unacceptable differences, we see a society cracking and crumbling. We can recognize this in our personal lives. We ourselves fall into hatred when because of someone's appearance, we seek to render them or the group to which we feel they belong invisible. It is also an act of hatred to grant privilege, superiority, and favor to a person or group of people because of their embodiment. And so, um, It's interesting, this book was written after the many killings that were happening in the community, shootings by police of young black men. This book was already written and I had already began to

[11:33]

question this because it wasn't a new issue in my mind. And I've lived long enough in this country and in this time to know that it's been ongoing since probably the landing of many different people into this country where there has been some type of atrocity And probably with all people, there's been some kind of atrocity that has happened based on some kind of misperception, some kind of misunderstanding of what they think the people are and who they are. So this is not... I would say not one group has a monopoly on hatred and being hated. This is widespread among us. And so also what is widespread among us is the oneness and the harmony that we all strive to have in our life, in the peace.

[12:34]

And so oftentimes when issues such as race or marginalization or oppression or atrocities come up, on a spiritual path, I have heard people say, this is not what I've come to hear. This is not what I want to talk about while I'm here, my quiet spiritual path. Let's talk about our oneness and let's talk about our harmony and these things that actually make us feel very good and they're very, sound very romantic, actually. to even say I'm going to a Zen center, I see people go, ah, automatically. You know, and I know they haven't been, you know. As soon as they kind of give me that peaceful look, you know. So there is, you know, this sort of misconception that has been

[13:38]

I'd say permeating our society and our psychic mind. So I say, and I feel, that oneness and these things like oneness are just themselves. Oneness is itself. Oneness is itself. We have nothing to do with it. It is here. We have nothing absolutely to do with it. We didn't make it, we didn't create it, and we can't create it. And because we can't create it, thank goodness, then we can't destroy it. So when someone speaks of their embodiment, and it appears to sound as though they're separating or dividing, and you may feel they're also taking away the oneness.

[14:40]

So you wanna go, let's go back to the peace and the oneness. Then you are actually ignoring the oneness because the oneness is everything. There's a multiplicity in the oneness, the book talks about that. There's a multiplicity in it. So that everything is in it. And if it's a oneness that we create, then it's not a oneness that we were born into. because we were born into it. So we didn't suddenly, now that we can think and talk and walk, let me create this oneness. But you're already born into it. So we don't have to worry about, I think, the absolute truth. I think the absolute truth. And we don't have to worry about the essence of non-duality. I think non-duality exists. And duality exists. and neither one are superior over the other. Non-duality, so we don't have to work at being non-dual here, because if you do, you're gonna be dual.

[15:44]

I can guarantee you, you're going to be dual, because you're using this mind. So just non-duality is something you meet, is an experience you meet. Oneness is an experience you meet. Peace is an experience you meet. through your practice, meditation, or walking on a path, a spiritual path, whichever it is that you walk on. And so we're not creating it. I think that's what I begin to feel. And that if we held that the absolute truth exists and that it's working in us, that it would appear to us. and we didn't have to work at it. And of course we don't have to work at being dual, we're really good at that. So, because we're embodied, we're embodied. And so that embodiment is, we understand that it's not everything we are.

[16:49]

We understand that and we know that. But it still is the relative truth of our lives. And so the way of tenderness is to meet this relative truth along with the absolute truth of our lives, to allow them both to be part of what we call living. And it is part of what we call dying as well. And so the living and the dying together is the way of tenderness and meeting that as we walk in this world and until we don't walk, until there's no longer a breath. So I wanted to read a little more here. Let's see. I have these wonderful Facebook friends who always tag me when they take a picture of an excerpt of a book. And to me, that leads me to perhaps that might be interesting to people. So this was sent to me through a Facebook friend, sending me my words.

[17:57]

I love that. And I read it too, as if I've never read them before. I've written them so that I too can learn and see if it still makes sense, if it's still true, if something has evolved from that for me. So this is what this person excerpt. When we assign superiority and inferiority to particular embodiments, we distort their identities. When we distort identity, we disfigure, denigrate, and malign the natural body. When we act based on such disfigurement, we create the horrific abuse and annihilation that we see among humanity around the world. When young black males or black people in general are distortedly represented as thieves, thugs, and murderers, it is easy to ignore a young black-skinned man being shot down in the street than it would be to ignore someone else.

[19:03]

It is easier to take land, culture, and language from or commit genocide against a group of people when their identities, their natural appearances, have been distorted into something monstrous. We may even distort our own bodily identities, distorting our perceptions of who we are, and it is possible that this has affected the decisions we have made in our lives. Identity itself does not cause our suffering, but the distortions we bring to identity open the door to suffering. So when I wrote that statement, I thought I'd probably be kicked out of the Zen world. That identity is not the suffering. Because I think I kept hearing that it was, and I know that clinging to it is. I did hear that story, but I wanted to explore that. And as I explored the clinging to, I came up with that even in that clinging, that there's some kind of distortion occurring in identity.

[20:06]

And I began to think that identity wasn't necessarily, identity itself wasn't necessarily the problem because there wasn't a way in which I felt I was not going to experience myself as a black queer woman. It wasn't going to happen. And so I wanted to see how could I experience the black queer woman in a boundless way? How could you have both? How could you do both? And so as I begin to look at identity, I begin to see it as just as it is too. Identity is just what it is. And then when we start to add to it, it's something else. So a tree is a tree and a redwood's a redwood. A redwood has an identity. There's a redwood tree. It has an identity and there's nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when we decide that the oak trees are less important than the redwoods.

[21:11]

So a city probably would be quicker to chop down an oak tree than they probably would a redwood. And I've seen that happen. We really protect our redwoods. Or someone gave you a flower and they gave you a daisy as opposed to an orchid, you would go, oh, orchid, daisy, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Because somewhere in there, there's a distortion about the daisy and the orchid, right? And there's no difference between really, you know, if they're flowers, you know, or a car, you know, could be a VW or a Mercedes. So we have, oh, whoa, when did you get that? You know, just because it costs more doesn't mean it's anything different than the VW. So these are the things that I wanted to bring to the table, to our practice, to our walk, to how we can explore boundlessness.

[22:16]

How can we explore the nature of embodiment within a boundless life? Because both, are true teachings. Both are true teachings. And I kind of remember the Dalai Lama, there was a saying that he said for this country, meaning the United States, that it would be, that instead of focusing so much on the Four Noble Truths, that it would be great if we could focus on the two truths of relative and absolute, or conventional, unconventional, because we are such a multicultural society, you know, and that we have an opportunity and that we're very fortunate to be able to live together with so many variations of the former nature, the magnificent variations of the former nature. And I always held that because it sounded like a way to practice, a way to recognize each other, a way to recognize the original light, the awakened one, even if it is Buddha, or the awakened light in each other, is to really be able to understand the two truths as existing in the oneness.

[23:32]

And that is where the premise of this book continues to call itself. Who is keeping the time? I just wanna know, you are? Okay, so I wanna make time enough for questions, because I really like dialogue around this topic. And so, how much more time? Okay, I think I would like to stop and have questions, I think, at this point. And then if there's time for a little another excerpt, I'll do that. So, questions. Yes, in the back. Thank you. I was struck by what you were saying about identity and not being, you know, seeing that your identity was not going to vanish anytime soon. And I was thinking about being white, it is possible to not the specificity of my identity.

[24:34]

And I think that's a big part of being white, is to think that it's normal, that it's invisible. And I've, over time, developed a practice of trying to be aware of that. But I just wondered... Great question, thank you. for asking that, and yes, there is the invisibility that you might be experiencing, and we'll just kind of dialogue about that. I would ask you to explore that as whether or not that's the superiority, that there's superiority in even feeling invisible, that you have an invisible embodiment. and that that comes up because there's an inferiority and superiority. We don't tend to, you know, gravitate toward that which appears to be peaceful. And I talk about that, that because those who are marginalized or experience systemic oppression tend to be the vocal, the voice of the suffering of the society.

[25:41]

And it appears that only people of color or queer people or disabled people or poor people are the only ones who are suffering and they're very vocal and they're very loud about it, whereas those who aren't are quiet and nice and peaceful. And we know that's not true, right? But that's the way it comes across, that there's some peacefulness in it. So it can cause you to go into that blind invisibility and numbness, you know, really it's that around what is really going on because that loud voice is also yours. That loud yelling that is because we're in this together. So if suddenly something fell right here and they just hit this portion of the Zindo and only we screamed, you would still be, you should still be affected by that. You wouldn't suddenly be invisible or not know that you were a part of that group that just screamed that suffering and calling out, I'm in trouble.

[26:49]

You know, so that the practice would be to look and explore the superiority that is being held. and the inferiority in your life all around. I do the same thing for myself. What's inferior, what's inferior, what's superior, you know, and how I walk with that and how I treat life, treat self, treat myself in things, you know. So it would be a good practice to, um, to not see that you're watching. I was asked to do a workshop, and I did do it at Spirit Rock, and they entitled it People of Color and Allies Retreat. And so I taught the retreat, and I thought it was, on the one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity, and it was a wonderful opportunity for those who were in interracial marriages, or a couple who had interracial children, or friends who were interracial and multicultural.

[27:54]

It was a wonderful retreat in that way. But I wouldn't teach it, again, with that title. And they asked me, would you teach it? And I said, no, I don't like the title. And they said, why don't you like the title, People of Color and Allies? I said, well, it appears that it's going to be the people of color are going to be there, and only the allies have a job. They're allying. Well, what are we doing? You know, what are we doing? You know, so it didn't, to me, give a, I say, an equal opportunity to practice together so that the stories aren't just one-sided. And then, you know, we get allied in that story, people of color or whatever. And so I just wanted the title to, I wanted a job. in the retreat. I wanted a role in the practice.

[28:56]

What am I practicing? If they're allying, you know, so it was a question and I, and I, and I rolled with that. I don't know if I talk about it in the book or not, but you know, so hope that helps. Yeah. One, two. Okay. One, two. Yeah. I think there's a subtle, um, The things that you're talking about in terms of duality, duality as in black and white, and the duality of duality and non-duality. So the duality of black and white or gay and straight, they have these subtle things that come up where I've experienced where you get a certain attitude sometimes from straight people who are being very welcoming, but there's a tint to it of I am admitting you to the club and maybe they're aware of it and maybe they're not aware of it but what that depicts to me is the duality of the straight and gay and so how do you transcend that it's by what you were touching on and saying

[30:04]

then you see a particular thing in front of you, but at that moment, can you see the whole universe in that one particular thing? If I see a daisy, I see all of nature and all of everything. If I see the redwood, I see all of nature and everything through the particularity of the redwood, the daisy, or through the particularity of the gay woman, or the black woman, or the straight man, or whatever it is. The particular is right there in front of you, But through it comes the absolute. Aside from that, you get stuck in this little, very subtle... And you can, you can get stuck in a duality and you can get stuck in thinking you're in the non-duality. You can get stuck in both. And it's so in the mind. And so it should arise from the heart. It should arise through love. That's Buddha's teachings, love. And so it should arise in the genuine understanding of interrelatedness and not in an effort to go, I'm going to, I see she's black but I'm going to be a little bit whiter than that.

[31:29]

You know, that won't work. It only will last for about a minute because it's not rising in you. But if you have a consciousness and a practice with it, it will arise in you and you'll be like, oh wow. Wow, this just blew open for me, you know, and it will blow open for you the more we sit, the more we sit, the more we do. Any spiritual practice I say that brings in stillness, doesn't have to be meditation, I don't like to proselytize meditation, but, you know, any stillness that you can bring to your life. will show you the light of the teachings, the light of awakening and who we all are and that we all are from, in everything living, is from this particular source of light from the beginning of time, long before Buddha, right? Long before Buddha. And Buddha made an attempt to talk about this, but we don't hear about those teachings around the caste system. That was one of his dreams, too.

[32:30]

He dreamed about the Four Noble Truths, but he also dreamed about a caste system. He was a dreamer, and he wanted that to end, and that has been difficult, right, for that to happen. So, because it has to arise. We can talk about it, and I think talking about it plants something in us. and together I'm hoping, you know, I'm not just planting it in you that, you know, you're planting it somehow, we're doing it together. And just so you, I kind of heard that non-duality is not in the end, like I said, there is a linear process, so I just want to make that clear that it's, just there, and duality is just there. And when we learn teachings, we learn to understand, you know, where we are. So mainly we're looking at how we suffer, right? So this practice is about how do we suffer and the nature of our suffering. And so when the duality is so thick and so tight and so alone from the non-duality, we suffer.

[33:39]

And in the non-duality, I believe those who think they're doing non-duality, I don't think anybody can do it, and think they're doing it also suffer, you know, because they're fearful or uncomfortable with duality. You know, so it can go. And then, you know, there's impermanence, right? So everything changes. The appearance change. I think I write in the book here, I kind of was born on the tip of when they were ending calling black people colored, kind of on the tip of that. And then we were Negro, and I remember that being very proper to say Negro. And then it went to Afro-American, but then the Afro is a hairdo, so it wasn't a country. So then it became African-American. And so these names go along with the people place in time and the impermanence of even this relative existence. And so every...

[34:42]

We can't land somewhere and say, this is it. Even what I write, we can't say, this is it. You can read it and then next year, toss it. Toss it out the window because it's going to be something different. There's going to be something different. But I hope maybe some of the universal truths that I brought from the Dharma into the book will remain as some kind of a, I would say, platform or table or a way of talking about these ways we suffer and how we are embodied in the relationship between the suffering and the embodiment. So thank you for your question. Two, three, four. Okay. Thank you. I think I heard and understood you saying in a way that the act of dividing identity in a sense very important, also very generous.

[36:07]

I guess I just wanted to simultaneously give voice to this feeling that I have that somewhere along the lines there, those who do I agree. Thank you. Thank you. You said that we don't create oneness, that oneness is there. And I'm wondering if we create duality or diversity, and how do you see the difference or distinction between duality and diversity? Okay, that's two questions, okay.

[37:11]

So we don't create diversity. It was here when you got here, when we were born was here, and we opened our eyes in the light and there was all these things in the world. So we don't create duality or non-duality. Duality and diversity are cousins. They're related. But I feel they're a bit different. Diversity in the broadest sense. I used to love that word. and how it's been used in so many different ways other than just the difference of things, that there's just a difference. Diversity is difference and variation. I use the word multiplicity in the book. You'll see that multiplicity of the oneness. And that's how I see diversity.

[38:11]

Those are the other words I use for diversity. Duality, we tend to see them as opposites, but even that says they're against each other rather than just there. So duality are two. Two. In non-duality, the two are in the one, right? The two are in the one, in the non-duality. So, but there's two. In diversity, there's a multiplicity. It could be thousands of diverse and variations of anything. And so that's how I see the difference in those. It was interesting that you opened with Prince today. And yesterday a friend of mine and I were sort of remembering him, put on some music and celebrated his life and his tragic early dying. It only occurred to me this morning that he was black. Now I wonder if that's something missing or what you think about that?

[39:11]

Well, what do you think? I don't know why you... Okay, thank you. I guess... On my reflection, I thought, I'm not seeing him as black. Maybe that's something I get merit or something, right? But maybe I'm not seeing him fully, and that's kind of my question. And that's a good question for you to still walk with as well. But when Prince, I was telling my partner Simbwala, when Prince first came out, he had a little afro. You almost couldn't tell between him and Michael Jackson. And the Jackson 5 were out, they were out at the same time, really. And nobody really, Prince, who's that? But I saw him, I recognized him as a talent, you know, at that very young age. And he sung and [...] he sung. changed how he looked and how he was and started gender bending and all these, then he became, oh, Prince, you know, and then his music began to rock more and to rock into music that, um, I think was more favored by more people other than, um, black people.

[40:25]

It was no longer soul, just soul music R&B. So that's just kind of a riffing off of some idea in the moment right now about that. because he, which is what they call crossover. And that's what they like musicians to do, writers to, movie, you know, everybody has crossover. And when I write my books, you know, I remember sometimes I'll be writing it in my language, in my rhythm of blackness. And then when the editor writes it, it's like, well, what happened to the rhythm? You know, when I'm reading it, you know, like, oh my gosh. And it had to cross over. And so you lose the blackness. There's a loss of blackness in the way of tenderness. It's gone. And then there's some in there. But because, you know, you can't use that when people's not going to understand what you're trying to say. When you use be too often to be, we use be a lot, the word be, you know, so.

[41:28]

I think that that's what you're speaking to. That there is, you know, when he crossed over, it was no longer just black music, you know, but it was. And when it became favorable to the sensibilities of others, you know, around the whole world, you know, then he became a world superstar. And I think he understood that. I think a lot of artists and musicians and writers understand that when someone gets to that level, that old path they crossed over. Beyonce crossing, you know, crossing, you know, where people were like, oh, you know, they're getting to know you more than just where you were. Beyonce, I mean, when she was with the Destiny Child, they lived around the corner from my family in Los Angeles. Nobody knew them. And they still were singing as much as they sing now.

[42:31]

But they crossed over. Well, Beyonce had to step out for it to cross over. And the two darker ones didn't make it. The two darker, the Destiny Child, are not anywhere. Okay, I don't know the time. One, two. [...] the only one. And I've been very preoccupied for years with the sort of spiritual, political, you know, I respect the tension between them as well as that they can be multiple people.

[43:47]

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that an example from India where I do some work where one of the Buddhists who follow Ambedkar who are involved in liberation from caste, there's a little split between the meditators and the political activists to some extent. Within the Amdakar community? Yeah, that's oversimplified. But anyway, one person I spoke to said, I said, Are you involved in meditation? They were politically active. And they said, No, they're trying to take away our anger. And that represents to me something important. I just wonder if you want to comment. And I think that that feeling is genuine and valid because there is a quieting of the voice. And the practice is not quietism, even though we're quiet. And so oftentimes there is that, no, we want it. You can't bring your anger.

[44:48]

But I know, I know for sure I read it. Suzuki Roshi said, bring your full self, bring everything. Because if you don't bring everything, what are you working with? somebody else's thing, which we probably do. You know, we usually like to work on others other than ourselves. I'll work on her anger. Forget my own. Forget that I'm enraged. So, you know, that is, I believe, I agree with Suzuki Roshi fully. And when I heard that, I was in. Yes. This is my path. I'm in. Yeah, bring your full self and practice with it. It doesn't mean you get to hurt people or mistreat people with those emotions. You get to have them and you get to see that we're so willing, so willing to give over our anger, you know, and so unwilling to love, you know, that emotion. So unwilling. And I remember in Tassajar, they kept saying, we need, we want to talk about anger, how to manage it, how to manage it.

[45:52]

You know, there's a lot of anger fly. And I said, well, let's start with how to manage love. And maybe we'll, the anger will, you know, let's go on and try another route, you know, and see if that would change anything. And so anger. Yes. Love. Yes. All of it. Yes. Okay, all right, you'd rather reflect on that, okay. I have a signal to stop.

[46:25]

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