Save All Beings

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a talk I offered to Morning Star Zen Sangha on April 4, 2018.

From The Way of Tenderness, by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel: ”Complete tenderness trusts the fluidity of our life energy and its extension into those around us. It allows rage and anger to flow in and out again without holding on to it as proof of being human. The way of tenderness is an elixir for the clogged arteries in the heart of our world. The way of tenderness does not equal quiescence. It does not mean that fiery emotions disappear. It does not render acceptable that anyone could hurt or abuse life. Tenderness doesn't erase the inequities we face in the relative world. It doesn't encourage a spiritual bypass of the feelings, we experience.”

I've been feeling really grateful to be here tonight with all of you sitting together and getting to hear the ringing of the bells. How lucky we are to take refuge in the presence of one another, in our sangha. We have this remarkable, safe space to allow ourselves to unfold. Not everyone is so fortunate. 

50 years ago tonight, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. I've been listening to stories about him on the radio. I’ve been recalling Black people who have been unjustly killed. Aura Rosser. Philando Castille. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. 12 year old Tamir Rice. The anniversary of Dr. King’s murder reminds us of what he was fighting for. At the moment of his assassination, it was economic justice. He was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers of the city. And it's frustrating to look out into our world now and see that economic justice has not come, that we have actually maintained economic disparities between the races. It's staggering. I recently read that the average white family in Boston has about $250,000 in equity, and the average Black family has $8. King also fought against mass incarceration and violence against Black people, yet assassinations and imprisonments continue. One in four young Black men go to prison. We have a name for it: the school to prison pipeline. We can either think that there is something wrong with Black people, or we can think that there is something wrong with our society that these continue to be the outcomes. I believe the latter.

Some of us may also be tuned into the injustice facing a voiceless constituent: the environment -- the way that environmental protections are being stripped away one after another even though it's clear that this causes great harm to us all, and disproportionate harm to the poor and people of color. And worldwide, we see great suffering -- refugee crises, war, genocides, starvation. As King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." So much of it is driven by the 3 poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance, but mostly greed. And the greedy suffer too. In Buddhism, this endless longing to possess is personified as hungry ghosts, creatures with a huge bellies and tiny mouths who cannot ingest as much food as they desire. This rampant longing to consume the world could destroy us all. 

Our practice on the cushion is not about escapism or denial. It's about awakening to things as they are, and that includes suffering in the world. We are called to alleviate suffering for all beings. That is the heart of this practice. The mind sometimes wants to jump ahead. How do I do it? And then, of course, we run up against inevitable failure and may feel that the next best thing is to just give up. And yet, here we come, week after week, and make our bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings from suffering. How is it that we fulfill our vow to free all beings? Faced with this living koan again and again, do we go to a place of denial, a place of quietism, or do we practice the brave way of tenderness, of being awake? 

Part of the reason we do not practice turning away from our own suffering is so that we can bear the suffering of all, so that we don't have to turn away, so that we can bear witness to it, feel it ourselves and not be completely overwhelmed. Or if we are overwhelmed, even in being overwhelmed, to realize that this being overwhelmed is impermanent, that we can re-engage for the sake of those who are suffering. 

One of the great, powerful images of our tradition is Avalokiteshvara with her thousand hands reaching out to help others, tears streaming down her face. Ours is not a practice of closing our eyes to the pain that we find in the world. We come here and sit on the cushion week after week, night after night, because it gives us a great capacity and remarkable faith that we can indeed bear this pain, that we actually don't need to turn away, that we are indeed saved by the beautiful sound of the bell, that each moment, we are actually saved by all beings. We are saved because we are not separate, and it's precisely because we are not separate that we are called to serve.

Some of us in BoWZ just studied a book by Oluo called So You Want to Talk about Race. Really interesting book. One theme was that those of us who are privileged in some way can recognize that that privilege gives us inequitable access to power that we can use to help others. I could use my position in the public schools to help change systems that have not benefited many Black and Latin American children. It's a simple and brilliant concept, deeply empowering, that we might be able to use privileges that we have -- in the same way we might be able to use this fortunate gift that we've been given of a Buddhist practice to tolerate and bear witness to the suffering of the world -- that we might be of service. 

This does not mean that we have to constantly be thinking about the problems of the world. There are times when we sit and we just hear the bell, and we are saved. By allowing ourselves to be saved in our practice again and again, by allowing ourselves to simply bear witness to what is, we find something quite indestructible: the nonduality of our heart-minds and the universe, a salvific revelation that fortifies us and nourishes us, a deep sense of connectivity and compassion that fills us up again and again as we sit on the cushion. 

We don't have to think about this to make this happen. This is the sometimes sudden, the sometimes gradual realization of our true nature, already true, that nourishes our capacity to step forth in the world and be of service. None of us, with all of our effort, could ever erase all of the suffering in the world. But each of us can do something, and collectively we bring about change. 

Each of us will be called to quite different forms of service, and this is as it should be. So the question is, what is it that calls to you? In what ways can you be of service? Can we all take this precious gift that we are given in our sangha, in this restorative practice, and bring it forth into the world in service? This is the way of tenderness. 

It's hard. I don't know about you but I am so often so sad and sometimes angry about injustices in the world. Sometimes I realize that I am unconsciously participating in injustices. But witnessing is just the beginning. Each of us can return to the cushion and be saved, be restored, be renewed, then each of us can do something to alleviate the problem. This is how we save all beings, by seeing the child in front of us who needs our help and offering that help. Or perhaps it's by getting involved politically, supporting a campaign, or writing to congresspeople. 

What is your path?