this morning, partly because I was encouraged to do so by resident physicians, because on Friday I had abdominal surgery. So this position seems to be recommended. it was for a hernia, abdominal hernia, and it seems to be going quite well, the healing. And I must admit, what you say, a certain preference for sitting cross-legged when I talk with you. I feel very stable sitting cross-legged and energetic, but I

[01:10]

give it up for the moment and stand before you. And I, in some sense, comfort myself with the thought that perhaps it's appropriate that I stand today because today I'd like to talk to you about Martin Luther King. And I think he often stood when he spoke to his community. Part of the reason why I want to talk about Martin Luther King is because I believe yesterday was his birthday, January 15th, 1929. So I guess he would be 75, 76. 76, like Ray. And I said Martin Luther King, but I actually... perhaps I should say Martin Luther King Jr.

[02:28]

I, to some extent, want to tell a story about him. And I can't tell his whole life story, but I want to bring up some aspects of it that I thought might be helpful to look at. And so one of the first things I wanted to bring up was, or basically one of the things I want to bring up about him is the influences upon him. The influences, the conditions that formed this person. And that's part of the reason why it may be appropriate to say Martin Luther King Jr., because there was a Martin Luther King Sr. called Daddy King.

[03:36]

And his father, Martin Luther King Jr. 's father, seemed to have been quite a person. And he I think he wanted to have a very powerful influence on his boy. And I sense that, as one biographer said, he muscled his way to a skeptical state of mind. he had to work hard to stand up to his father and not just believe everything his father said. He had to be skeptical towards his tradition, his religious tradition, and his father's influence. But he managed to do so quite well, so that he could choose his own ideas

[04:48]

about what life and religion was about rather than just swallowing whole his tradition and his father's influence. And I'd like to pick up his life at the point in 1948, when he was about 18 or 19, when you went to a school called the Crozer Theological Seminary outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a school of high reputation, in which there was an atmosphere of unorthodox free thinking. I think that most of the people who went to the school, my impression is that most of the students who went to the school went there not because of hearing that it was an unorthodox, free-thinking space, but because it had a very high reputation of excellent scholarship for training ministers.

[06:19]

It had New Testament scholars there of world renown, and most of the students were somewhat surprised by this free-thinking environment that they encountered, and actually probably most of the African-American who at that time were called Negroes who went to the school were expecting that it was a white school and that they would be one or just a few of African-Americans in the school. But at the time that Martin Luther King went in his class, 10 of the 32 in his class were African American. And there were also Chinese, Japanese, and quite a few Indians.

[07:30]

And I wasn't clear whether it was Native Americans or Asian Indians. And people from all over Europe. I think they were surprised to find this. The racial mix of this school has been said to be the most thorough of any seminary up to that time and since. So this young man from Georgia went to a very good school and found this unexpectedly high level of racial mixture. But what was most shocking to most of the students was that underneath the chapel was a pool hall. We may call upon the abbess later to have some comments about pools, but at that time pool halls had an association with smoke-filled rooms where people planned robberies.

[08:48]

So these young men, at that time I think it probably was all young men, I'm not sure, but I think it was all young men, were quite shocked by the environment. And before Martin Luther King, before King Jr. came to this college, he had studied quite well, but when he got to this college he really became absorbed in these studies and he was very happy to be in an environment of philosophy and religious teachings. He really immediately changed into a very intensely interested and enthusiastic student which led him to become valedictorian of his class.

[09:55]

And as I mentioned earlier, he already had developed a somewhat skeptical state of mind towards religious teaching, so he welcomed the skeptical rigor of the school. The approach to seminary training at this school was to strip away to tear down the student's religious belief system and to start over, building from scratch. And it said, like a boot camp for Marines, but, in other words, to strip away a person's normal social and other conditioning and give them, start a new one. It said, but with a drastically less fixed idea of what the finished product would be like.

[11:03]

So they wanted to strip away the religious belief systems that the students came with and start over, but not with the idea of what they should build from this empty space, from this open ground. And I I'm struck by the similarity between that and Zen training. The idea in our training system is to give up your ideas, and it isn't that you give up your ideas and listen to the teachers and accept the teachers, but that you give up your ideas and see what you understand when you've given up your ideas. You see a lot of frowning faces. And it just pops in my mind, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

[12:16]

You don't have to accept my ideas, just give up yours. Now, if you do, you'd say, but then I couldn't do that because that would be one of your ideas. But it's not one of my ideas. Really, I gave that one up. So here, too, the environment of that college was similar to the environment of Zen or Buddhism. The environment of Buddhism is not like one of those isms, like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, Judaism, Communism. It's not one of those isms, including it's also not Buddhism. Buddhism is when you give up Buddhism. Forget about Buddhism, and forget about Judaism, and give up Christianity, and give up Islam, and give up communism, and give up capitalism.

[13:34]

Let go of all views. That's the central entry point to Buddhism, which isn't really Buddhism. So I was touched that he went through this kind of boot camp, kind of emptiness boot camp, where he was encouraged to give up his ideas. And he somewhat welcomed it because he had to be giving up his father's ideas for quite a while. Still, one of the ideas he was exposed to at this school was the idea of a German philosopher, actually a German philosopher, I guess, who came to the United States in the 19th century. His name was Walter Rauschenbusch, and he was a Lutheran-turned-Baptist who worked in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York

[14:46]

And as a result of that experience of trying to practice Christianity in that environment, he wrote a book called Christianity and Social Crisis, and the publication of this book is said to be the initiation of what's called the Social Gospel Movement in American churches. And basically the Social Gospel Movement is to reject the usual religious emphasis on piety, metaphysics and the supernatural, proposing that Christianity is really the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood made manifest in social ethics. And I think that the teaching of the Buddha would agree that the Buddha way is to make manifest brotherhood and sisterhood, and brotherhood, sisterhood, to make that manifest in the world as social ethics.

[16:20]

But that's not the whole story. based on these social ethics, we must also give up all of our ideas of what social ethics are. We must be unshakably committed to social ethics and then give up our view of what they are. So this social ethics, just to fill it out a little bit more, is an extension of the Old Testament prophets who denounced pride, selfishness, and oppression as transgressions against the divine plan. The divine plan which is love perfection among all beings.

[17:28]

Love, perfection among all beings, of course, doesn't go with being proud, or selfish, or oppressive, or being oppressed. So within this movement, this social gospel movement, social justice was seen as the closest possible approximation, the closest possible human approximation of God's love. This is part of what Martin Luther King Jr. studied in his first year at Crozer Theological Seminary. And I think he found some real brightness there.

[18:33]

He also heard about Gandhi and was influenced by Gandhi's political activities of non-violence. Then in his last year, his last undergraduate year, when he was already planning to go on for his doctorate, I think at Yale, and he started to read, he first read the German philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr. And this experience seemed to have changed nearly everything in his life, including his fundamental outlook on religion.

[19:42]

Before he read Nibbur, he was pursuing his doctorate for reasons of pleasure, inertia, and prestige. Throughout his college years he used to play with his colleagues, addressing each other by various dignified titles. He was into titles. He wanted to excel in the white world, and he did. He wanted to train himself to be more like what African-Americans think white people are and less like what white people think African-Americans are. And he did. After he read Niebuhr, he experienced for the first time a loss of confidence

[20:56]

in his own chosen ideas. Fortunately, he had already lost some confidence in the ideas that had been fed to him. He received the ideas with intelligence and some respect, but was skeptical about them, which I think is good. And he chose his own ideas and had confidence in them. And he chose the social justice, I mean the social, yeah, social justice and the policy of the social gospel school, he chose that. It wasn't forced upon him. He thought it was good. He chose Gandhi's teachings. They weren't fed to him. And he chose other ideas, too, but after reading Nibbur, he lost confidence in his chosen ideas.

[22:02]

To me this is something to consider whether this is true about him, but to me this is like perhaps one of the most important things I've heard about him. So after this reading Nibbār, the social gospel lost a good deal of its glow for him, and he never again fell so completely under the spell of any school of thought, including Nibbār's. After reading Nibbār he never again fell completely under the spell of any school of thought, including Nibbār. This is very close to the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, the Bodhisattva's wisdom. Nibbāra attacked the social gospel teaching, the premise of the social gospel teaching,

[23:28]

or one of the premises of the social gospel teaching, that a steady advance in reason and goodwill in the modern age were capable of eradicating social evils. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? That a steady advance in reason and goodwill in the world are capable of eradicating social evils. evil among humans. What's missing? What's missing is an awareness of the power of attachment to our ideas of what reason and goodwill are. Niebuhr liked St.

[24:41]

Augustine, who was kind of a conservative ancestor, but he said that St. Augustine saw very clearly that it was not the mind which governs the self, but the self which governs the mind. To translate that a little bit into Buddhist language, It's not the mind that governs the idea of self or the self which you think exists independent of other selves. It's not the mind which governs your selfhood, your personhood, but it's your belief in personhood that pushes your mind around. Without overcoming this basic misconception, attempts to free us of social evil will not necessarily be fully successful.

[25:43]

Niebuhr said that the liberal world, the liberals, were in perfect flight from the Christian doctrine of sin. liberals at that time cringed from the word sin. But what is sin? Sin is basically the belief in the appearance of the separation between mind and the objects of knowledge. It's the basic separation between you and what you know, between your mind and other beings. That's basically it. and somebody's shaking her head. You can talk in question and answer. That's basically sin in the Old Testament, and that's basically sin in the Buddhadharma.

[26:54]

The belief in the appearance of separation between self and other. And Nibor said that the liberal world was in flight from this, from the power of this, from the power of basic delusion. Now I skip over a very huge period of transformation for Martin Luther King Jr., from when he graduated from Crozer College, got his doctorate and started being a minister, and all the conditions that led him to feeling that he should work to free this land from segregation of races,

[28:03]

I heard that during this period he became, I heard, anybody who knows differently can correct me, but I heard that at one point he was thinking of, what do you say, taking up arms against the onslaught of injustice, and that he had in his basement arms And then his house got bombed, and he started to see things differently, and became converted to nonviolence, to nonviolent resistance, to social injustice, to social evil, to the social evils that arise from selfishness, which arises from the belief in the self.

[29:17]

And many people joined him in this, so I guess on August 28th, 1963 I think there was this march on Washington and I think a quarter of a million people joined it and he spoke to them and he gave this speech called the I have a dream speech and then a little bit like 10 days later on September 9th, 1963, it was announced on the Huntley Brinkley News Hour that the Birmingham schools were finally going to open, three of them, to African-American students.

[30:24]

And then the governor of Alabama, I guess, George Wallace, sent in National Guard troops and barred the students from entering school. However, across the state, in Huntsville, Alabama, a six-year-old girl entered elementary school, six-year-old African-American girl entered elementary school and became the first one to enter a white school in Alabama. Later that day, maybe, John F. Kennedy federalized the situation and removed the National Guard troops and the students were able to enter school in Birmingham. And then we have this huge backlash, lots of students, white students walking out and so on.

[31:36]

And then, of course, the big thing on September the 15th, Sunday, September 15th, at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, on the annual Youth Day, a bomb went off and killed four young girls. and critically injured so many others. Martin Luther King went to Washington and talked to JFK, and JFK wasn't able to offer much, wasn't able to send in federal troops to protect the situation in Birmingham.

[33:33]

And Martin Luther King Jr. sort of went along with that, at least initially, and the newspapers said, you know, something like, King accepts the President saying that Birmingham can take care of itself. And then actually the opposition went to see Kennedy also, and Kennedy said, can't you just do something? Can't you hire one Negro clerk at a white store? Can't you hire at least one Negro policeman? Can't you do something? And they basically pretty much said, no, we can't do anything. Do you realize what would happen to the police force if we hired one or more Negro?

[34:49]

A third of them probably would quit and so on. Anyway, they really walked away not doing anything. And Kennedy, I think, really felt helpless. Felt like he couldn't do anything. And King was kind of humiliated because he sort of went along with it. One of the things that happened at that church that was blown up and where the girls were killed was that the one stained glass window that didn't get blown away, that didn't get blown out of its space, had the face of Christ blown out of it. And shortly afterward, in New York television, James Baldwin met with Reinhold Niebuhr to discuss the missing face of Christ

[36:03]

the old great Germanic theologian and the young tormented ghetto artist met and were in allegiance. However, James Baldwin chafed under these circumstances. James Baldwin chafed at the limits of nonviolence, which he criticized as a psychological affliction, particular to Negroes. Then Nibor gently chided him for adopting the prevailing condescension towards nonviolence as a ghetto for the weak.

[37:25]

Nibor said, people ask me, since I am such a strong anti-pacifist, how can I have this admiration for a pacifist like Martin Luther King?" Well, I have a simple answer. King's doctrine of nonviolence, resistance, is not pacifism. The philosopher says, King's doctrine of non-violent resistance to social evil is not pacifism, therefore I admire him. Pacifism, according to Nibbur, in its really classical form, is where you are concerned about your own purity,

[38:38]

not responsibility. According to this person, who was perhaps the most important influence on Martin Luther King, pacifism in its classical form is about personal purity, not responsibility. The struggle occurs in Buddhism too, the struggle between personal purity and your relationship, your responsive relationship with all beings. The great ethical divide, according to Nibbā, is between people who want to be pure and those who want to be responsible. I think King has shown this difference.

[39:52]

The race problems in America taught Martin Luther King Jr. hard lessons about the greater witness of sacrifice than truth. Truth is important, but as a witnessing act, sacrifice in the world may have more efficacy. nonviolence came upon him for a purpose that far transcends segregation. Nonviolence touches upon evils far beyond color, and addresses needs more human than status and possessions.

[41:22]

And I feel that in order to actually practice nonviolence, we must be fearless. Part of being fearless is to dare to live in a state of renouncing our own ideas of what is so. Being able to face that, we become fearless. Being fearless, we can be non-violent. I'm not saying that everybody who's fearless is non-violent. I'm just saying that those who wish to have perfect relationships with all beings need fearlessness to realize that harmonious relationship. When we meet someone we need to be not afraid of giving up our idea about this meeting.

[42:33]

When you seem to disagree with me, I need to be unafraid of my idea. I should say, I need to be unafraid of giving up my idea of how you're disagreeing with me. I can't dare to look through your eyes if I'm afraid to give up looking through mine. And to realize truth in this world, I think we must be able to make a wholehearted effort to see through the eyes of others. We may not be able to, but we need to be wanting to, for the sake of realizing truth and harmony.

[43:46]

To see through the eyes not just of others, but of strange others, like me. And foreigners. And different races. And enemies. people who are happy to admit that they are our enemies. We need to make the effort to see through their eyes, which includes being willing to give up looking through mine, or believing the way things look through mine. And that is conducive to and requires for its full realization, fearlessness. It seems to me that Martin Luther King's life is in accord with this kind of teaching and this kind of teaching is in accord with his life.

[44:53]

So I really more and more admire him and admire the processes that made him. I wanted to watch a video of his last speech, but I didn't have time before this morning. But I'm informed that his last speech, the speech he gave in Memphis, the night before he was assassinated, he said something like, I have seen the mountaintop. I've been to the mountaintop. and I've seen the promised land. But I will not be able to enter. But I'm not afraid." So I guess I basically agree with the part of the social gospel movement which says that social justice among humans is the closest approximation to God's love, to Buddha's love.

[46:34]

But I also feel that it's not just based on reason that we're going to get there. It's also based on not holding to our own line of reason, but to learn to follow the lines of reason of all beings, to have the courage to open our hearts to the lines of reason of all beings, and to show them how wonderful it would be if they would also give up their line of reason, and not take our line of reason. open to everyone. Be fearless enough to do that, and do that and be fearless, and then we will be able to be non-violent. The Buddha, John Kennedy, said, Martin Luther King Jr. has a terrific investment in non-violence.

[47:36]

And I thought, there's somebody else who did, too. Name was Shakyamuni Buddha. He was really intense about this non-violence thing. He got a little bit... what's the word? I don't know. Talked a little roughly about it sometimes, in the sense of saying, those who hate are not my students. When you hate, you are not my disciple. on the birthday of Martin Luther King, after we chanted the meditation on loving-kindness, our dedication of the merit of our efforts was said in this way. In the Dharma world, birth and death stand not apart.

[48:42]

There is no self or other, black or white. All things are peaceful, joyous and interconnected, sewn together gently and intimately into the endless robe of suchness. Not seeing the Dharma world, living beings appear as separate selves and suffer in the stream of dreams. Out of great compassion, awakened ones appear within duality to help all beings awaken and return to the peaceful vision of mutual assistance." Today, honoring the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., we gratefully remember, celebrate, and dedicate all merit and virtue

[50:10]

all something, all merit to the dreams and goals of his life and the life of all the sisters, all his sisters and brothers who stood upright, joined hands and walked and sang and danced together to demonstrate and encourage the spirit of nonviolence and reverence and justice for all life. May the spirit of selfless devotion to all beings be realized everywhere. That talk wasn't too short, was it?

[51:26]

May our intention equally extend to all beings and places with the true merit of Buddha's way. Names are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are impossible. I vow to rid them. Dharma is a dumbness. I vow to rescue them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. to be happy. Dreams are numberless. I vow to save them. The illusions are impossible.

[52:38]

I vow to end them. Narcotic dreams are helpless. I vow to enter them. Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Yes. Sin? Yeah. There are some different threads contributing to the way I would use the word sin.

[53:45]

One is the etymological, which is that sin has the etymology of the root, which means sunder. Sunder, you know what sunder means? To cut, to separate. So that's what I would see as the, aside from the word sin, as the basic... Well, not just the sundering, but the belief in the sundering. So, the separation of consciousness and what is known that sundering I would see as the basic misconception, the basic sin, the basic error. So I would use sin as equal to error or misconception, and particularly the misconception of separation. And I remember one time Suzuki Roshi said, when you look at a flower and you say it's beautiful, that's sin, that's a sin.

[54:56]

And when I heard that, I thought, I didn't grow up with much baggage around the word sin. It was almost never used in my house. Not that we didn't have other words used in my house, but the word sin was never really part of what I grew up with, fortunately or unfortunately. But I understand that it brings baggage for a lot of other people, which is very difficult to deal with. But my general feeling about everything in life good things and harmful things, is that if they stay in the back, in the closet, they will destroy us. But if we bring them out in front, they can liberate us. So I know when I bring the word sin out, a lot of painful, twisted, difficult stuff comes up for people, but I feel, okay, let's look at it, let's study it, and let's become free through that study. And then if people can say, well, sin means this, sin means that, and we can distinguish between... Well, we didn't mean that part.

[56:06]

We just mean basic misconception. And when Suzuki Roshi said, calling a flower beautiful, in a way, the way I would understand that, one of the ways I would understand that as a sin is that you look at the flower and you don't just meet the flower, protect yourself, you separate yourself from the flower by naming it and feeling that it is something beautiful separate from you. It demeans the relationship by putting it in that verbal designation. And I also feel that this kind of error of projecting independent existence upon things. In other words, independent existence being projected on things is the same as, I'm independently existing over here, separate from you independently existing over there. That kind of projection of essence upon self and other

[57:08]

is necessary in order to participate in language. Conventional designation depends on this projection. So it's not like optional for humans. So it's a necessary part of our evolution is to use this misconception to be human and to use language, but then to understand how we're using this misconception and become free of it. Is that enough? Yes. I think actually, I think when we see a flower, when we meet anything, actually we are directly exposed to its beauty immediately. We're always actually exposed to the beauty of things. Always.

[58:13]

Every experience we're exposed to the beauty of the experience. But we have strong predispositions to make a conventional designation about this meeting with beauty. We're infused with predispositions, with powerful habits to conventionally designate every experience. It doesn't mean we will conventionally designate every experience, just that there's a powerful force, a powerful prejudice towards designating things. So we have a beautiful experience, immediate beautiful experience, and then we cast a packaging on it so we can call it beautiful. But you already have met the beauty, but then when we package it and name it, we kill the beauty, in a sense. We kill it for ourselves anyway. So if I look at you and meet you without any idea, I'm meeting the beauty of you.

[59:15]

But when I meet you without any idea of you, I basically don't know who you are. And I can't talk about you. But I'm strongly inclined to having a meaningful meeting with you. And the ordinary meeting depends on interpreting you as an image, as an essence, and naming you. That's the normal meaningful meeting. So I have to give up my normal meaningful meeting with people in order to dare to expose myself to the glorious beauty of the moment. We need training to do that, though. But the beauty is already there. It's just that we cast upon the beauty some packaging, some essence. and then that divorces us. But now we know, but now we know the meaning, now we know the beauty. So I like also this story, the Greek myth of Amor and Psyche.

[60:18]

You know that myth? So Amor, Eros, Love, Cupid meets Psyche. They get together. Originally, Eros was sent by his mom, Venus or Aphrodite, to bump off Psyche, because Psyche was so beautiful that people were worshiping Psyche over the goddess of love. So she sent her son to bump her off. But when he saw her, he fell in love with her, too. I mean, love fell in love, love joined with Psyche, according to this myth. In the dark, the Psyche was enjoying the meeting with love, and love was enjoying intimacy with Psyche, but they didn't know. There was no meaning. It was just love. I don't know why I love you like I do.

[61:23]

I don't know why, I just do. I've got to not laugh. So then Psyche's sisters say, kind of like, they come to visit her in the daytime when love goes away in the light. Love goes away in the light. Love goes away in the light. What light? The light of projection of concepts upon love. Put the light of conceptualization on love, it goes away. Then we get an idea of love. So they come and visit her in the daytime when actually love is gone, and she tells them about love. Plus they get to see the housing that love has provided to her, which is palatial and spiffy. And she's supplied with celestial food and drink and music. And they're a little bit jealous.

[62:27]

And they say, you know, you might be a fool here. You don't know what this what this love is like. He might be a monster. Maybe he's just fattening you for the kill. In this story, love is masculine and psyche is feminine. You can switch the genders, maybe. I don't know. We'll have to think about that. He might be a monster. You don't know what he is. I know it's true. I don't know what he is, but I like him. He's cool. But gradually she starts to doubt and thinks, well, maybe I should find out who he is. It would be nice to know, after all. So she goes in the night. Well, I think after she has her nightly meeting with him and he's kind of like resting afterwards, she goes and gets a knife and an oil lamp and comes back

[63:33]

to see, and as she approaches him and the light illuminates him, it turns out he's not a monster, he's really kind of a cute little guy. But then she spills a little oil on him and he wakes up and he said, Oh, I told you if you find out who I am you're going to lose me, you blew it! So then he starts to exalt himself back to his mom. She holds on to his leg, but he's got powerful wings both on his back and his angles. So he and his arrows take off and she can't stop him, so she loses love right after she found out who he is. So the same with us. Every person we meet, we're exposed to beauty and our true relationship of perfect love. It's there already, but we can't stand it. so we know it and then we lose it.

[64:34]

Every moment we know it and lose it, but it's there. We have to stop somehow, take a break from believing that the packaging of who we meet, of what we meet, is what we're meeting, rather than the packaging is based on or superimposed upon what we're meeting. And by training ourselves, we can gradually stop strongly adhering to our ideas, our projection upon things as being their beautiful, dependently co-arisen nature. And then we can open to the absence of our ideas of people and things, in the people and things, in their original, ungraspable radiance. Get the picture? But it requires quite a bit of training and getting over quite a bit of fear. Because when we meet people, we kind of feel somewhat responsible to know who we're meeting, right?

[65:39]

We feel it's kind of silly to meet somebody and not know who they are, right? That's not like adult or whatever. But that's part of what's required to meet people without the idea of who we're meeting. So you meet somebody and then, boink, you know, die to the appearance, and then look again. Respect. Look again. Okay, there's Nancy. Close my eyes now. Almost before I can see who she is, but just keep pointing in the same direction. It works a little bit, just that little trick, you know. Just meet somebody and then give up the idea and look again. Okay, there's John. There's John, and then, what's that? There's John, give it up, what's that? I'm not going to say John. I'm going to say, but not too hard, because it hurts in the abdomen.

[66:44]

Okay? Okay, Jen or Rudy? What? For now? That's what I meant. I meant for now. I don't mean then. Roger? Roger, I mean? Yeah, this is what one of his biographers said, is that one of the hard lessons he learned through this racial struggle in America was the greater witness of sacrifice than truth. Sometimes you hold the truth up to people and they kind of like, you know, they pass on it. Like, later, man, that's, you know, get out of my face.

[67:51]

But a sacrifice right in their face sometimes gets them to pay attention more than the truth. The Bodhisattva might call this, the first way to get people's attention is through giving, through generosity. If you're generous enough with people, they'll stop, you know, I mean they'll give up ignoring what's happening. They'll start to open. They'll start to witness what's in front of them. You know, usually, I don't know what, but sometimes we meet people and we think, oh, that's a such-and-such. In other words, we don't really witness what's happening, we just say they're what we think they are. Like, oh, that's an African American, or that's a Republican, or that's a Democrat, or that's a fascist, or that's a hippie, etc., you know.

[68:56]

And we just go for that rather than respecting them enough to wonder what they are. Which means sacrifice your idea of what is happening or be generous with the person. And when they see that sacrifice of your idea of them, They like it. It opens them up. Then they start to say, I wonder who you are, anyway. First they think you're a such-and-such or a so-and-so, but when you're really generous they go, I wonder what you are, actually. Maybe you're not just a guy or a girl or a black man or a white man. Maybe you're something beyond my idea of what you are. And to get my attention sometimes, sacrifice is more powerful than to come up to say, I'm really dependent-co-arising. I'm really beauty. I'm really the truth. Here's the truth. Maybe that won't make me come off my truth.

[70:00]

I've got a truth, too. Get out of my face. But by sacrificing your position, by sacrificing your view, you may get me to pay attention to who you are." Something like that is what I think is being expressed by sacrifice may have a greater function to promote witnessing than the truth. Yes? Do you want to say something? An example? Okay, well, the standard one that I often use is, I was having dinner with my wife at some people's house, and my wife says to the man and the couple, she says, Where do you work? He says, I work in Irvine, California. And she says, Well, what's Irvine like?

[71:00]

He says, It's beautiful. And his wife says, It's ugly. And he says, It's ugly. He sacrificed his view of Irvine. And then my wife turns to me and says, You should learn that. So now, as I've told you a number of times recently, I've learned that when people insult me, I sacrifice my idea that I'm being insulted. And rather than being defensive, etc., when I'm insulted or attacked, I give up my idea that I'm being insulted and attacked, and then I laugh. So don't insult me until I recover from this operation. And also, when I'm attacked, I often now don't.

[72:02]

I sacrifice my idea that I'm being attacked, and then so often I feel it's very funny. When I'm being complimented, if I would sacrifice my view that I'm being complimented, I would laugh at that, too. But I laugh even more when I sacrifice my idea that I'm being attacked or insulted. That's one example. And another one from the documentary? Dr. Martin Luther King chose places for these demonstrations to restrain himself from, you know, really attacking and bullying and hurting people. And so the truth of the march, what they were marching for, was apparent. But then seeing what happened to the people who had that be on television, the sacrifice people made, that's what really made people change their minds. Did you hear that?

[73:06]

Did you get your example? You didn't hear it? Did everybody else hear it? Would you tell her later and drive it deep into her heart? Because she's going to Africa. Yes? Is there such a thing as a Zen personality? Well, anyway, if there is a Zen personality, then I think our practice is to become free of Zen personality. not to get into there is or isn't a Zen. If you say there is a Zen personality, you're somewhat hung up on it.

[74:08]

If you say there isn't, you're somewhat hung up on it. But I don't say it is or it isn't. I say, if there is, fine, let's become free of it. If there isn't, fine, let's become free of that there isn't. That's the point. Yeah, duality is the original sin. Well, not just duality. It's not just duality. It's believing that duality is so. It's believing it. It's tasting it. It's eating and making the duality part of your body. Would I say that they use something more neutral?

[75:48]

Well, if you wonder how it works out, keep your eyes open and let's watch. Let's watch how it works out. If I don't use the word for the next two weeks or three years, you'll see how it works out. If I do use the word or you use the word, you'll see how it works out. We're going to see how it works out, OK? And if you have an opinion about how it's working out now, I would say that you have an opinion about how it's working out now. And guess what I would suggest to do with your opinion. I see anybody who besides Jane and Laura that had their hand raised in the past? Jane. In the Huna religion from Hawaii, their word that translates as sin means missing the mark or they have a model that has a high

[77:05]

Yeah, and some people would say that separating yourself from the Divine. But I would just say separating yourself from anything. Laura? Not so much separating yourself, but believing that you're separated from yourself. You can't separate yourself from anything. It's impossible, I would say. But believing that you can, this will cause suffering to one and all. because we're all connected. So if you screw up and believe you're separate from anybody, everybody has to live with that. That's the thing about personal purity and responsibility. All the people who feel separate from certain other people are responsible for that world that's created by that. I can't get myself to be pure and away from all these people who are trying to be pure. by getting themselves separated from something.

[78:15]

I can't separate myself from those who are trying to separate themselves from sin. I'm connected to all the people who want to sin and all the people who want to separate themselves from sin, which is just a reiteration of the basic problem, to separate ourselves from anything. This is just a basic error. Yes, Laura? Actually, it's interesting that this biographer who said, after he read Reinhold Niebuhr,

[79:24]

His plans didn't change, but almost everything else did. So he was planning to go to graduate school, and the reason he was planning to go was for prestige and pleasure and I don't know what else. So his plans to go to graduate school didn't change when he read Nibbar in his senior year. But his confidence in all his chosen ideas, and of course he already didn't have confidence in other people's ideas, but his confidence in his chosen ideas were shaken. So I would say he still may make plans and you still may make plans and decide to buy shoelaces next Tuesday, but can you tolerate not being under the spell of the thought process that you're going to go get shoelaces. It's to give up the enchantment of our plans that's important.

[80:39]

And then you can go ahead and make plans like, I'm going to go to such-and-such a college, I'm going to go shopping, I'm going to go talk to so-and-so, I'm going to practice Zen, make these decisions. These are thought processes. You're involved in them. Okay? But are you caught by what you do? Do you believe that actually you're going to do this, and that you did this by yourself? Do you believe all that? And if you do, then you've been enchanted by your own thinking about what you're going to do. But it doesn't mean that stopping thinking you're going to do anything would work, because that would be another enchantment. That would be what you call a counter-enchantment. Just accept the enchantments they're doing, like, I think this would be a good thing to do this afternoon, But don't proceed with this kind of confidence that that's really going to happen, you know, and that's really so, but just this is my idea of what's going to happen. And somebody could come up to me and say, you know, like you walk this afternoon, you could say, well, I decided to go to Green Gulch and walk in the hillsides, and it's a beautiful day, and someone can say, no, it's not.

[81:51]

And you can say, it's not. You're not stuck in your naming of this day. Or if you are, you say, I confess, I'm stuck in what I think is happening. I really think that what I think is happening is true, and I'm strongly adhering to that, and I am a sinner. I'm a sinner, because I believe that what I think is really true, including I believe that I'm a sinner, which is a sin. But now I'm not a sinner, because I don't believe I'm a sinner. But what am I? What am I? I don't know what I am. I don't know if I'm a falcon, a storm, or a great song. Are you ready? Yes. How do you feel more prepared to learn about sacrifice, and that the idea that one can achieve mutualism, that we would achieve

[82:54]

Yeah. I can understand that. I once... I once... Was that that stage of development? Please tell us that story. And this story is not necessarily about his final understanding, but he went through that phase. He went through phases. You know, he was like a very smart, enthusiastic young student, son of a very powerful Baptist minister. He's quite a guy. But he also was pretty immature, too, at various points. Like I said, when he went to graduate school, Before he read Niebuhr, he was kind of like into the pleasure of religious studies and the status of it and all that. So maybe this wasn't the final development of him.

[84:00]

So what's my story? My story is, I was going to do a class here, a workshop here at Green Gulch. I think Pat was in it. Patricia, the one who's going to Africa, she was in that class on fear and fearlessness. Weren't you? Weren't you in a class like that? Yeah, she was. And she's a big person in this story, so watch. She will leave Green Gulch famous. Maybe. But you won't be enchanted by this story of her fame, will you? Anyway, so they're coming, so I thought, before they came, I thought, now what can I do to frighten them? So I had the office tell the people who signed up to bring a bathing suit. Now, I didn't realize the multidimensional possibilities of the fear that might arise, or for fear that might arise.

[85:11]

What I was thinking of was to take the people in the workshop down to the beach to go swimming in the dark. That's what I was thinking of as kind of a scary experience we could do together, so we could have some direct experience of fear and fearlessness. But I didn't realize that perhaps when people heard about the bathing suits, they thought maybe they were going to have to stand before their group in their bathing suit. or whatever, you know, I realized that the bathing suit gets closer to the naked body and all that. Anyway, so that announcement—did you hear that announcement? No. Anyway, I think there was an announcement like that, and I don't know if it increased or decreased the enrollment. But then I thought a little bit more about it, and I thought, if we go down there in the dark and then we go into the ocean, it's gonna be hard for me to keep track of the people after they go in the water in the dark. I might lose a few.

[86:12]

So we just walked down to the beach. Do you remember walking to the beach? You don't. She doesn't remember. So this is gonna be a new story for Patricia. So we walked to the beach, but we didn't go in the water. We held hands all the way to the beach, in the dark, and we came back. But it turned out that that wasn't that scary for people. What I realized, at some point in the workshop, I realized that what was most scary for people was to be themselves and have other people see it. That was what was most scary to them. And Patricia, as I remember, was afraid that if she was herself, this group of 50 people wouldn't be able to handle it. And I said to her, Patricia, we can handle it, go ahead. But she said, no thanks. I don't remember what she said. But anyway, I realized that that's what people are most afraid of, is to be themselves and be seen.

[87:27]

In other words, what we want most, we're most afraid of. And you don't have to have a special outfit or anything. It's always this possibility that you'll be yourself and people will see. And they might not like it, or whatever. Or they might like it and then change their mind again. They might love it and then stop. It's very scary for people. That's what I realized. So I realized I didn't have to manipulate the situation to have the scary situation. And maybe Martin Luther King realized that later, too. that all he had to do was do what he thought was really appropriate, and that would turn out to be requiring sacrifice. Sacrifice means, in some sense, to make something sacred. And I would say we make ourselves sacred when we give ourselves up. A person who gives herself up becomes a sacred person. But you can't give yourself up before you get yourself out there to give up.

[88:30]

That's hard, too. That's scary. So it's scary to be who we are, and then it's scary to give it up, but in this open space is where we really meet, where we perfect love. I think so. But it's just my idea. Don't be enchanted by it. Is it time for me to stop? My God, it's exactly 12.30, right? It's exactly 12.30 and I'm supposed to stop at 12.30. Wouldn't it be amazing if we did? Wouldn't it be astounding if we were on Zen time?

[89:12]

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