Good morning, everyone. I want to speak this morning about zazen and marginalized beings. So our practice of sitting is to be present and upright and face the wall. So we finished a rahatsu, five days of shame last week, which started with talking about the first six ancestors of Zen in China, starting with Bodhidharma. Dogen's case about him is just that. Roddy Donner faced the wall for nine years. Mary Ann, can you hear me in the back? Let me know if not. So we sit and face the wall. And part of that is we face ourselves. And we settle. And we have a chance, through doing this regularly, to develop some sense of calm, sense of inner peace and dignity, and some sense of openness as we sit and face ourselves and all of our stuff.

[01:23]

But we also, when we face the wall, like Bodhidharma, we allow the wall to face us, or we sit like a wall facing the world. So we keep our eyes open, or we allow our eyes to be open, at least a little. So we're not just facing ourselves in sasa, we're also facing others when we face the wall. As we settle into being present and upright, and do this regularly, we see how deeply we are interconnected. with many, many people and beings. The people who are important in our lives, who become part of our Zazen in some ways, and vice versa. Our Zazen affects the people around us. And it takes a while to see this. Sometimes we don't realize it. But we start just to see, physically see, our deep interconnectedness. So facing the wall is also facing others.

[02:28]

We don't face the wall, we don't The wall is not there to keep out others, people we don't like or people we think are dangerous. We don't build a wall as a blockade. So this settling into this self, this deepening of our own awareness of ourselves and others, not just for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of all beings, we emphasize also that not just the practice of the sitting itself, but also how we express that awareness in the world when we get out from our seat, when we go into our world. And we have various teachings about that. Primarily one is the Bodhisattva Precepts. There are 16 of them, but basically they come down to not harming beings, which also means to be helpful. that come down to being respectful to all beings.

[03:30]

And there's one of them, one of the three precepts after taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, is about benefiting all beings. So this is deep in our practice and our tradition. It goes back to, for example, the Lotus Sutra that Paula talked about a couple of weeks ago, the one vehicle, seeing how we are deeply interconnected, this inclusive practice. We don't shut certain parts of ourself or parts of our wider self, of certain others, we don't shut them out. And we do this as Sangha, as community. And we can see Sangha as very wide. Of course, there's a particular Sangha, particular community of practitioners of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, many people who come here regularly.

[04:33]

But Sangha in the wider sense, the Maha Sangha, is to see how we're connected to all beings. The danger of Sanghas is to become very insular and kind of ignore what's going on around us. So in the talks last week, we also talked about the third ancestor in China, who was a leper. And I read some things from Rebecca Solnes, wonderful book, The Far Away and Nearby. Rebecca will be here first weekend in April. That actually leprosy, the damage from leprosy has to do with numbness, that people who contract A strange, it's very difficult to contract it, they don't really know, but the extremities become numb, our fingertips and hands and toes and feet and nose.

[05:39]

And it's through this numbness, through not feeling pain, people who are lepers become damaged through their own battering or ignoring the pain. And so, in a fundamental way, our practice is not to be numb, to face the sufferings of the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, that there is suffering, that there is, well, many things that are out of line, that are dissatisfactory. dis-eased. So our practice is not to build blockades to keep out the suffering, or others who we think are sources of suffering, but actually to face the difficulties of our life. This is what's really hard about practice, and sustained practice, and the difficulties of our world, beyond our stories of ourselves and our world.

[06:45]

So even though leprosy is very difficult to contract, lepers have been traditionally very much marginalized and feared. So what I want to talk about today, this is really like three or four Dharma talks which I'm going to give capsule versions of today, but there are many marginalized beings. So I want to talk about some of them. And I want to talk about this not in terms of politics or parties or politicians, particular politicians, but from the perspective of precepts, from my responsibility as a clergy to talk about what's going on in the world today, and all of our responsibilities as Zazen people, to face the world.

[07:51]

And these marginalized beings are not just out there, but also within us. They're parts of ourselves that we don't like to face. And it's not that we have to push all of this in our face all the time, but how do we not become numb How can we be willing to face our own pain and the pain of our world? This is really difficult. And our whole world is burning up from a kind of leprosy, a kind of numbness, a kind of unwillingness to face the pain. So, one example. is Muslims and refugees from Syria and elsewhere. There are 60 million refugees now trying to escape the Middle East from Syria and ISIS and our drone attacks from Pakistan and from Afghanistan and Iraq, from Yemen, from Sudan.

[08:56]

60 million refugees in the world today. This is the most since World War II. and many places are responding with fear and hatred. But really, most of this difficulty in the Middle East and now beyond has to do with, or is a result of, The United States are invading Iraq. That's sort of started everything tumbling and destabilizing. It's a result of our own policy, our country's policy of using military first rather than diplomacy. And there have been some good efforts at diplomacy, but the corporate politicians from both parties and the mainstream media in our country

[09:59]

have this mindset of using weapons. And now we use weapons where it doesn't affect, where we don't have to put boots on the ground, as they say. But recently, even the people who push the buttons to set off the drones, who live in Arizona and places like that, and go home to their swimming pools, are suffering PTSD. Because they know the effect. of what they're doing. A number of these drones, so-called pilots in Arizona, have become whistleblowers recently, talking about how we are making it worse. We kill many civilians throughout the Mideast, and that just feeds into ISIS and this horrible violence. And the U.S. weapons makers sell weapons to all sides in a give money to Saudi Arabia who funds them.

[11:04]

So it's just a terrible, confusing thing, and it's hard to talk about, and it's hard to think about, and it's hard to face. The Syrian civil war is also affected by climate damage. There was a drought and food shortage that contributed to starting that civil war. So now, you know, we, I was in Paris the day of the attacks, a month ago today. I left to go to a seminar that I was teaching south of Paris late that afternoon, a little while before the attacks. Terrible, terrible, horrible thing. People sitting in cafes or just going to a concert would be attacked like this. So, of course, we're afraid.

[12:06]

But the truth is that there are many, many, many more people dead from gun violence in this country, and many more people dead from climate damage already, and there will be many more than from any jihadi attacks. as horrible as they are. So to, and there have been, there's a lot of, what's the word, Islamophobia, there have been attacks against Islamic people in this country, as if all Islamic people are to blame for these horrible attacks that are, in many ways, a misunderstanding of their own, you know, the people who get involved in these attacks are looking for some excuse to act out in some ways. Anyway, it's very complicated. And so, you know, everything in our culture is telling us to be afraid.

[13:16]

Be very afraid. There are Islamic terrorists who are, you know, Islamic people, people, women with scarves on their heads are dangerous. This kind of idea is, I would say, really dangerous. We're a country of immigrants. We, well, except for Native Americans, we, you know, our ancestors came from different places to escape, as the refugees now are trying to escape ISIS and escape drone attacks. and escape all the warfare throughout the Middle East. People came to this country to escape situations in other places. Well, except African-Americans were forced to come. Their ancestors were forced like sardines into the holds of slave ships coming from Africa. And so now that karmic legacy is impacting all of us. So,

[14:17]

And that's so, again, I just want to say I think that being afraid of all Muslims is dangerous. It feeds into the recruiting of ISIS and groups like that, that there's a holy war against Muslims. And some American politicians have even said that. And that just exacerbates things. We need to learn how to respond carefully and appropriately and realize the differences between different people. Instead of lumping all Muslims into one group. But I want to shift now to the karmic legacy that we have from slavery in this country. that impacts all of us. Our whole economy, North and South, has built on slavery. So, again, marginalized people. African Americans are very much marginalized in this country.

[15:21]

Daily, African American men and women face threats to their safety from supposed authorities. It seems like every week, maybe more in the United States now, there are incidents of And they're captured on camera of unarmed African-American men or women being attacked by police. And because we have it on camera now, we know about it, maybe this isn't going on all along. So I think this is something also that we have to face. One of the number of examples I want to give Muslims, African-Americans, of marginalized people. And I want to come back to what this has to do with our Zazen. I don't think this is just about particular bad police officers.

[16:24]

Maybe there are some, but our whole culture is based on racism and fear and mass incarcerations of young African-American men. Our society spends more on prisons in many places than on education. Certainly related to African American communities. So I attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when it's our patriotic duty to go out and shop, as if that will solve our problems. Anyway, So I attended that march, and I will again when I have opportunities. This isn't something that just happens other places. Here in Chicago, Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by police in the back.

[17:33]

Maybe he was carrying a knife, but he was at some distance from the police who just opened fire. And it took 13 months for these videos to be released, or for charges against a particular police officer. This is just one example. And we know also about the gun violence and guns being spread throughout our society. So I want to read some things from a book that I want to recommend. It's by a man named Ta-Nehisi Coates, called Between the World and Me. He's African-American and has written as a note to his 15-year-old son. And it's a book that I think all people who think that you're white should read. He talks about race and the way in which that's a construct and used as a way of dividing people. But I just want to read a few passages because I think it's very informative. The whole book is. And it's also painful, but it speaks truth.

[18:41]

So just a few excerpts. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear. And whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies, the sprawling state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects are the product of democratic will. So to challenge the police is to challenge the American people, to send them into the saying self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the dream. He talks about the dream of being white and of being privileged. Just a couple more excerpts. He's a very powerful writer.

[19:42]

All my life I've heard people tell their black boys and black girls to be twice as which is to say, accept half as much. These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. Perhaps the defining feature of being drafted into the black race was the inescapable robbery of time, because the moments we spend readying the mask or readying ourselves to accept half as much could not be recovered. The robbery of time is not measured in lifespans, but in moments. So, just one more excerpt about what it's like, as Tom DC Coase tells his 15-year-old son, and what African Americans have to face.

[20:59]

Here's what I would like you to know. In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body. It is heritage. The slaveman was not merely the antiseptic bartering of labor. It is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interests. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rigged so regular as to be industrial. There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible. That is precisely why they are so precious." So, for those of us who think your life is really important to get out, and again, I'd recommend the whole book very much.

[22:07]

But there's so many other beings who are marginalized. So still in this time, all women are marginalized. In addition to being paid less for the same work as men, women's health is now being threatened by health clinics under attack. Roe v. Wade is functionally repealed in many states. There's a lot of ways in which women are under attack in our society. In the United States, women... It's been less than a hundred years since women can vote. It happened in 1920. Less than a hundred years since women were deemed, what, fit enough, intelligent enough, worthy enough to even be able to vote. And amongst all the political pundits talking about the right to life only of fetuses and not of mothers, there's been one political pundit who actually has called recently for the women's vote to be repealed.

[23:30]

So, you know, there's so many ways in which our society, our official mainstream society, is marginalizing different people. There's another book I want to recommend. Rebecca Solnit, who again is coming here at the beginning of April, wrote a book amongst her many other wonderful books, Men Explain Things to Me. So this is a book that all men should read. It starts with her going to a, I don't know, party at a fancy person's house, and there was a guy there who was the host, started telling her about a book he had read about conservation in the West. And her friend who was with her, Rebecca's friend, she said to the guy, oh, you know, she wrote that book. And the guy kept going, explaining it to her, and telling her all about it. He heard her friend say, oh, she wrote it.

[24:33]

And he just kept going and explaining it to her, because she was just a woman, you know. And it turned out he hadn't even read the book, he'd just read a book review of it. And she goes on from there. Again, the book is called Men Explain Things to Me, to talk about all the ways in which women are under attack in the incidence of rape, and in colleges and military, and just the whole culture of rape that is part of our culture. So again, another more marginalized beings. And there's many more. LGBT people, even though there's gay marriage now, still, it's very difficult in many places for our brothers and sisters who are LGBT. poor people, or now middle-class people if there are any of those left, the inequity in our society.

[25:36]

So I could go on and on. Again, I'm not talking about this from the point of view of politics or politicians or parties, but how do we stay open and not numb to suffering around us? How do we face an Just to bear witness to these realities and to be open to seeing them has an impact. So I'll come back to that. Aside from all the people I've mentioned, there's also non-human and human-endangered beings. So we are connected with them. The air we breathe depends on the oxygen from the rainforests, which are endangered now in many places. So climate damage created by our big corporations are now endangering the whole polar biosystem.

[26:42]

Marine animals on all levels are endangered by the acidification of the ocean. Greenland ice caps are melting. Science is very clear about all of this. It's not questionable. So a week or so after I left Paris, there was this, just this past week, this Paris COP meeting was just concluded, and amidst self-congratulation, because they finally realized that it's not enough to keep the rise in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, but they've acknowledged 1.5, and that's good. But really, I have to say, this meeting was a farce, not nearly enough to do what is needed and it's not binding, so it makes it look like there's things happening.

[27:47]

We now know, to me this seems really important, that ExxonMobil in the 70s sponsored really good research on climate and they demonstrated that their product, fossil fuels and oil, was causing climate damage. and that it would be very serious. They knew this in the 1970s and they shut down the research and they spent hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, covering it up and sponsoring denial and sponsoring fake research. So, like the tobacco companies that knew that cigarettes were cancerous but kept denying it, but on a much higher scale. So now, again, in all of these cases of marginalized people or beings, it's not hopeless or overwhelming.

[28:52]

So one side is being numb to what's going on in our own lives and around us. Another kind of numbness is feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. That's another kind of numbness. There are things happening. There are Black Lives Matter marches going on, I think, almost daily in Chicago. There are women fighting back against inequality. There are people working on how to respond to climate damage. And there are a lot of positive things happening. around that. We now have alternate energy systems that actually could take care of all of our energy needs. How we make the change, given the interference by fossil fuel industry and the politicians and media they buy, that's difficult, but it's possible.

[29:52]

There are lots of possibilities. And we don't have to build walls to keep out people whose native language isn't English, people who speak Arabic or Spanish. We don't have to keep everybody out. We don't have to see all Muslims as potential terrorists. Of course, there needs to be good police work to find people who are dangerous. But being numb or feeling hopeless and overwhelmed is not helpful. So, going back to our precepts, how do we not cause harm? How do we not become intoxicated and distracted by all of the entertainments that are offered to us? So I want to end by talking about a writing from Thomas Merton, a great Catholic monk who initiated really the Buddhist-Catholic dialogue and met with the Dalai Lama, met with Buddhist people in Asia and unfortunately

[31:18]

was killed in the process, accidentally. But he has a wonderful writing that I like a lot about, well, he's talking about monks, and he's talking as a Catholic monk. But I think this applies in many ways to all spiritual people. I think this applies to us as Zazen practitioners, too. So I'll just read what he says. He says that monastics are marginal people outside the mundane world of society, but concerned for the ultimate spiritual state of all beings. For Merwin, a monk is a marginal person who withdraws deliberately to the margins of society. thereby seeking to deepen the essence of human experience in himself and for all people. So Britton describes how monks are intentionally irrelevant as they traverse the usual bounds of life.

[32:28]

So this applies in various ways to our practice. This is Jizo, the Bodhisattva, who helps beings in all states and represents this. But Merton says, the marginal person accepts the basic irrelevance of the human condition, an irrelevance which is manifested above all by the fact of death. So he was writing this in the 60s. the marginal person, the monk, the displaced person, the refugee, the prisoner, all these people live in the presence of death, which causes to question the meaning of our life. The office of the monk or the marginal person, the meditator person, or the poet, is to go beyond death, even in this life, to go beyond the dichotomy of life and death, and to be therefore a witness to life. So I want to say some more about witnessing. A few people in our sangha were present at the recent annual session or retreat that Bernie Glassman has at Auschwitz.

[33:38]

Very powerful to sit in the presence of seeing that are what humans are capable of. And he has people who are survived, who are descendants of Holocaust survivors, but also descendants of concentration camp guards. How to witness to this, just to witness to this, just to bear witness, just to see this reality, for all of us, has an impact. So again, this is about not being numb, about facing the wall. And there's going to be this Bernie Glassman and his people and his group have last year had their first similar witness at the Badlands to what happened to the Lakota people, Wounded Knee.

[34:42]

And still, one of the poorest places in the United States is the Pine Ridge Reservation. There's going to be another one of these witnesses, events in July. So, there are many holocausts. How so? Merton says that the marginal person, the meditative person, or the poet goes beyond death, even in this life, goes beyond the dichotomy of life and death, and is therefore a witness to life. We can witness and face these difficulties. So Merton's monk is marginal on the fringes outside and irrelevant to the common stream of social goals and conventions. So the ideal monk crosses back and forth over the boundaries between life and death, returning to the liminal, the transitional space, while remaining clear and observant of the fundamental meaning of whatever may be experienced.

[35:55]

Merton talks about the essential humility of the monk. And again, I feel like for people who, whether we're, you know, Zen priests or lay people, for people who are committed to a regular practice of facing the wall, all of this is relevant. He says such people are not better than ordinary people in the world. Most do not possess an unusual capacity to love others greatly. They understand that our capacity for love is limited. It has to be completed with the capacity to be loved, to accept love from others, to want to be loved by others, to admit our loneliness, and to live with our loneliness, because everybody is lonely. So, you know, part of our satsang It's not about fixing ourselves, although it does happen that there are benefits that people who do this sitting regularly find more calm, more flexibility, more openness, a wider capacity to respond.

[37:06]

There are benefits to doing this practice, but really it's facing this deep interconnectedness that we are with all beings. to be willing to be marginal in some sense, to not follow the mainstream goals of gain and material accumulation. We are intimately connected with other marginal beings. So, you know, it's a kind of marginal activity, you know, to come and sit on a Sunday morning and face the wall. strange thing that we do, and yet we're willing to face ourselves and face the world around us. And then, of course, so witnessing is important, and speaking about it sometimes is important. Not shutting it out.

[38:08]

We are intimately connecting with all the marginal beings. So how do we respond? How do we try and be helpful? This is the great question. There's no one right way. Each of us And all of you in this room have ways in which you are helping to include all beings. And, you know, this requires paying attention, being present, being willing to face ourselves and all the marginal parts of ourselves. there is work we can do. Suzuki Roshi, my teacher's teacher, said, you're perfect just as you are, so you have a lot of work to do. If we're paying attention to the problems of our life and of this world, sometimes, not always, but sometimes we can see

[39:19]

ways to help. Sometimes we can see ways to respond. So, the different ways to do this. There's no one right way. Each of us has our own capacities and interests. I really was grateful to be able to join the Black Lives Matter march. I hope I can join in more. I hope we can all see that blaming all Muslims for those terrible Paris attacks is helping to make things right. So really there could have been three or four Dharma talks, but I wanted to touch on all of these things.

[40:25]

We just have a little bit of time, but if someone has a response or comment, please feel free. to a few days ago, there was an interesting piece about American and the Scottish police were teaching the Americans how they handled, without guns, you know, incidents that we seem to be overwhelmed with.

[41:33]

Perhaps you all didn't read it, but I think it's like a little Thank you for sharing that. No, I didn't see that. And I think there are lots and lots and lots of little rays of hope. And despite, you know, the predominance of guns and, you know, the sacredness of the right to bear arms, supposedly, in this country, it's... Anyway, thank you for sharing that. There are lots of signs of hope. There are lots of possibilities. If we can actually face climate damage and make that change, it's going to change a lot. So change does happen. That's the other thing I need to say. It's basic teaching in Buddhism. And we don't know how it happens. And it happens suddenly. Peace breaks out, or suddenly there's some change.

[42:36]

So to feel hopeless and numb that way is not realistic. Thank you very much. last comment or question. Alex. You talked a little bit about witnessing all of what's going on in the world. Could you talk about the relationship between witnessing and taking action in the world? Or that's an important question. I think witnessing is a first step. And deep witnessing, witnessing that, you know, like being willing to sit for a week right next to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, you know. Being willing to see the way that African American men are treated in this society. Being willing to see the way that women are discriminated against and so forth.

[43:40]

Witnessing to all of this is It's very deep, actually. So I think it is a kind of action, because it changes how we all think. But then, yes, it's not enough to just pay attention and see the situation. How do we respond? Well, I think there are lots of responses that are happening in our world. There are lots of people who are, you know, there's so many different ways to respond. you know, from going to demonstrations or writing to Congress people, to making changes in our own lives, taking responsibility for trying to conserve, being friendly and saying hello Muslims, not just assuming that they're all, you know, and also just, well, the thing that you helped initiate where we, it's a small thing, but we will have another event, I think in February, maybe, of helping out the Lakeview Pantry, helping to feed people in our area that people from our Sangha can go to.

[45:05]

And we have to be creative about it. And so I don't have like one answer. I don't think there's one size fits all to respond in each of us in our own lives. But then when we can see things we can do together also to do that, to respond, to try and be helpful, to in some ways recognize that we're all marginalized because we care. And that's not what, you know, I think that's actually, I think, you know, a large majority of people in our country care about all these things and care about, you know, the values that our country claims, but how do we show the reality? It's certainly not what's projected in the corporate media. So, you know, partly it's becoming... one response is to become more informed.

[46:11]

How the change happens, I don't know. So do you have ideas about this? Everything you said sounds good. Well, I think we have to think more about how to respond. I agree that... I know for myself that small steps I raise Yeah, and then there's sometimes when we can do, you know, take actions in more dramatic ways, like going and joining a demonstration or writing to, you know, I don't think, we're not, the changes that we need aren't going to come from politicians or so-called leaders, they will come from all of us being more aware.

[46:55]

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