Human Action
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov
This talk, given the day after the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, speaks of the importance of transcending the labels of political, social, or environmental action to take care, through simple, compassionate human action, of the most pressing issues facing us today.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Human Action
Good morning, and welcome. If this is your first time, welcome to everyone. But welcome, if this is your first time, to the monastery.
This morning, something a little unusual, in what I took as auspicious, happened, which, given that it was on the heels of an auspicious and unusual 36 hours, I took it, I took it as a good omen. I woke up about half an hour before my alarm, which is always a good sign. I woke up and I was just ready to go. I was filled with energy.
A group of us haven't slept that much the last couple of nights, so I felt good and ready to go. You know, maybe I'm just going on adrenaline, and the fall will be swift and precipitous later. But right now, I'm still okay.
I was heading to the Sangha house, and it was dark. There was an animal to my right, about four feet from me. When I shone my flashlight on it, I realized it was a barred owl. It was just on the ground. It was just sitting there, staring straight at the building. I thought maybe it had run into Rudy just before, our cat.
It was just sitting there. So I stopped. Like I said, I'm quite close, but maybe just a little more than the distance between me and Kyosho. I crouched, and I have my flashlight on it, and it's still not moving. Then, you know, just like in the movies, it just moves, you know, its whole head to look at me. So it's looking straight at me.
I don't know if you've ever been stared at by an owl, which I had, in fact, once before, several owls. It's rather unsettling. It's a little unsettling. It was as if what I felt, of course, now I'm putting words to it, but what I felt was that she was asking, what are you doing with your life? So I felt kind of put on notice, not in a bad way, but kind of in a waking way.
As I said, this followed on the heels of an unusual 36 hours. A group of us, about 30 of us, went to the March on Washington, the Women's March on Washington. Truth be told, it was more like a shuffle than a march. There were so many of us. They said about 500,000 people, that you couldn't move. You were quite literally, at times, pressed in between this ocean of people, this sea of people.
So we walked about a block, and that's because we really made an effort to do so, kind of on the sidewalk, just so we could say we had marched. By the time we could actually move, it was time to go. We had to turn around and take the buses back. We weren't the only ones there.
If you've looked at the news at all, you know they said there were about 650 marches, 650 marches all over the world, on all seven continents. Women, mostly women, but there were a lot of men too, got together to walk and to speak. All of the main cities, of course, New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Los Angeles had 750,000 people. But Springfield, Missouri, Park City, Utah, and Poughkeepsie had a march.
Cities all over the world, in London, Mexico City, Nairobi, Accra, Ghana, Zagreb, Berlin, Macau. There was an expedition ship off of the coast of Antarctica, Paradise Bay, that had 30 women, and a few men were also sort of marching in solidarity.
Before they even started, these marches were already being criticized. Like they're not going to do anything, they're being very divisive, they're exclusive. From my perspective, and being in just one of them, it was anything but. It was anything but divisive or exclusive.
I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.
There were children. There were young people. There were old people. Like I said, lots and lots of women, men who were wearing the pink hats in solidarity. I'll say this. These big, big, burly guys with their pink hats with ears, it was wonderful.
This vast ocean gathering of men and women and children, as we were coming out of the subway, it felt like the tide. We were just rising from the subway. At one point, there was an escalator that you just had to walk up on, and we turned back, and you just saw this quite literal tide of people coming up. At one corner of the station, somebody would start, whoo, and then the whole thing would just go. You felt this swell of energy, and everybody would start cheering.
The rally, which we were late to, because it took us about two and a half hours to get from the bus to the rally, the place where they had the stage, there were the big names. Gloria Steinem was there, and Elizabeth Warren was in Boston. Other actors like Ashley Judd and Scarlett Johansson were there. They also had a lot of artists and musicians, and they had this six-year-old girl.
She's American, but her parents are Mexican. She stood up on that stage like she had been talking to crowds of half a million people her whole life, previous lifetimes. With her voice, it was just, I mean, she was fierce. She was like this lion cub.
She was saying to the adults, we have to fight, basically, for our families to not be torn apart. Then she said to the children, don't be afraid, because you're not alone. This tiny little thing, in traditional Mexican garb and wearing her braids, I think it was braids. She spoke in English and then in Spanish, and when she spoke in Spanish, the crowd just went wild.
Afterwards, there was a piece about her. Apparently, a couple of years earlier, she had pushed through security when the pope was in Washington, DC, to get to the Popemobile to hand deliver a letter to him about immigration. She was urging him to speak to Congress to enact immigration reform. Pretty, pretty extraordinary child.
It made me think of another girl, as we were coming out of the subway. She was maybe eight or nine and had a sign that said, I'm a girl, what's your superpower? I thought, yeah. Stephanie Cruz, this young kid, she certainly embodies that.
There was everything. Some of the signs were a bit nasty, I have to say. Some of them were incredibly powerful. There was one that I really liked that said, I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.
What was really striking, I think what was most striking about it, was that there was this ocean of humanity, and it was incredibly peaceful. People were so kind. We were squished like this, you know, this far from each other, and I didn't experience anyone losing their temper, any fights breaking out. It was kind of extraordinary in that way.
At one point, a few of us had to go to the bathroom. You had to get to the porta potty, from here to where Ikozay is sitting. It took us an hour and a half to go and come back. There was just this wall of people. If you would come into the bathroom, they would cover their heads, their noses with scarves, because it was pretty bad in there. They would come in and come out, and then the whole wall would just move one step closer.
Everybody was like, no, you go. Oh, you go first. No, you go ahead. Please, can I help you? It was pretty incredible.
Ordinary people, ordinary people just speaking up for the things that they care about. Gender equality, clean air, voting rights, and an end to violence against women, against people of color, against LGBTQIA people. It was so good to be among so many people of different races and sizes and social classes. It was good to be acting. It was good to be participating in the creation and the protection of the kind of society that we want to live in.
What is that? A kind and just society. A society in which everyone can have a fulfilling life.
We can call it political action. We could say, as has been said, that these are outside the scope of a religious life. We could invoke separation of church and state and say we shouldn't really meddle. We could say they don't really make a difference in the long run. We could say, well, let's just wait and see.
Unfortunately, I don't think we have much time. I don't think we have time to wait. Waiting by itself doesn't bring about change. Waiting by itself doesn't bring about justice or equality or freedom.
Martin Luther King said in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that time is neutral. It doesn't take care of things. We're the ones who must choose how to fill it with either constructive or destructive actions. To do little or to do nothing, of course, doesn't help anyone, which seems so self-evident.
He was a lot more pointed than that. He said, you know, in the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say, those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern.
And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion, which makes a strange unbiblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
One who understands that body and soul, or we would say body and mind, are not two sees this as a strange distinction. And not only strange, but unhelpful, unskillful. One who understands the Dharma understands there is nothing outside of its scope. There’s nothing that is irrelevant. There’s nothing that is not sacred, that is dispensable.
It was good to be participating in the creation and the protection of the kind of society that we want to live in.
Many of us are familiar with that well-known quote by Dogen, who said 800 years ago in Genjokoen, those who understand or regard ordinary life as an obstacle to the Dharma only know that in the mundane nothing is sacred. They do not yet know that in the sacred nothing is mundane. In the sacred, there is no political or economic, contemplative or engaged. There is simply taking care of every moment of your life and of everyone and everything in it, every person in it, whether you know them or not, whether you agree with them or not, whether you like them or not, because they are you. They are your body and soul.
And at times like this, you feel that more keenly, especially when these actions are so peaceful. It is easier to feel one with others. But it’s also easy, very easy, to create a common villain, the one or ones on which we focus our anger, right, our discontent, our resentment, our suffering, where we place our rage or our disapproval, our helplessness in a person or in a room in our minds, so that we can just go on with our own lives with some measure of happiness.
Tenkei was, in fact, my partner, was the one who pointed this out as we were riding on the bus back, how easy it is and how quick we are to do that. We were all there for a common purpose, but there was the other. And is that necessary? Is that the only way it can be? Is that the cost of our well-being, of our happiness? It reminded me of a story which I have told before, not for a long time, that describes this very poignantly, Ursula Le Guin’s Those Who Walk Away From Omelas. And you may have read it. It’s the kind of story that has been so anthologized.
Because it basically talks about a society, you could say a utopian society, in which everyone is happy and has a true sense of well-being. There’s no laws, there’s no police. She said there’s religion, but no clergy, so there’s no abuse of power. Everyone has exactly as much as they need, no more and no less. Everyone is equal. The children are all loved, they’re taken care of, they’re raised. And she says, if you have a hard time picturing such a society, let me make it a little more believable for you.
She says, in one of the basements, in one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, there’s a basement. And in the basement, there’s a closet with a bunch of mops and brooms, and the ground is damp. And it’s dark, it’s completely dark in there. And in one corner, there’s a child. And you can no longer tell if the child is a girl or a boy. It’s probably about ten years old, but it’s become feeble-minded from the years of solitude. And so it acts like maybe like it’s four or five. And it’s always, he or she is always alone.
But every once in a while, the people from Omelas, when they turn between eight and twelve, they’re told the covenant is that in order for the society to be free and to be happy, to have the well-being that they have, this child must be in that closet. And no one understands, some understand why that child must be there. Others don’t. But everyone knows that the child is there. And it’s kind of like a rite of passage. You’re taken to see this child. And there’s the rage and this belief and the anger. Somebody just gives the child a tray of food, closes the door again. And then you’re left to grow up with that knowledge, that your happiness and the happiness of everyone that you know depends on that child being in that closet.
And she says, if you find that difficult to believe, understand that there are those which, and she says it’s even more incredible, that there are those, there are the few who at one point decide to walk away, who cannot live with that choice that they know is the choice to throw away the happiness of thousands for the sake of the one. And to do that would be to let guilt come into the walls of Omelas, because it’s a guilt-free society. But there are those who cannot hold that pain. And so they go to a place that is even less imaginable than the city of happiness, she says. She says, I can’t describe it at all. It’s possible it doesn’t even exist. But they seem to know where they’re going, those who walk away from Omelas, and they never come back.
Believing in Everyone’s Happiness
Is there really a price to happiness, true happiness? Is it possible for true justice and freedom and equality to exist in the world, or is it just a dream, a fantasy? Every day now we’re saying in our morning service, we wish for the justice and freedom of our land and for, how do we say it, the wisdom and compassion of our leaders. Every day we’re offering, we’re giving rise to that aspiration, and we’re offering that. Do we believe in it? Do we believe it’s just a good wish, a nice thing to say, to aspire to? Do we believe that it’s actually possible?
Do we draw lines in our minds, you deserve to be happy, you don’t? That moment, sometimes very quick, in which judgment slips in, the woman on welfare, the undocumented family, the ultra-conservative white man, you deserve to be happy, you don’t, because look at your actions. In other words, who do we exclude when we form camps and factions? Well-meaning, well-meaning mostly, and yet inevitably, surely, we will leave someone out, someone out of the tribe, as someone said to me recently.
And it’s a very human impulse to form tribes, to want to belong, to want to feel connected. But what about those who are left out? In the Lotus Sutra, there’s a Bodhisattva called Never Disparaging, whose practice was to go up to people, strangers, and bow to them and say, I will never disparage you, because you too are a Buddha, paraphrasing slightly, but that’s what he would say. And people would drive him away with sticks, would insult him, because he was also predicting that everyone, every single person, regardless of their circumstances, their background, their history, would at one point realize themselves as a Buddha.
And he just does this practice every single day to every single person he meets. And I remember being very struck by that when I read it, but also thinking, I mean, is this a little naive? Is this an unrealistic view of our world? Now, I think, if so, let us be thoroughly naive and unrealistic. Saving all beings is completely unrealistic, and yet we vow to do it every day. Waking up in a world, in a society, that will have us stay asleep is completely unrealistic.
Bowing to not allow ourselves to be distracted when destruction is so compelling, is so comforting, is so much fun, it’s unrealistic. And yet it’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Every time we take our seats, and we turn our minds, we shine, we turn the light around to look at that mind unfiltered, to look at the mind unfiltered. Can we, at the very least, vow to listen to each other here, that we may increase our chance of doing it out there?
Even those whose opinions are different from ours, whose opinions may be difficult to understand, to agree with, or even just to take, to swallow, those may be the most important opinions to understand, in fact. The first thing that we did as we were coming out of the subway and we were gathering together as a group is we chanted the Metta Sutra, the Sutra on Loving Kindness. And we gathered around and we held up our banner. We had a big banner that said, wishing in gladness and in safety may all beings be at ease, which is a line from the Metta Sutra.
And then each of our smaller signs was meant to be a, you could say, a more direct expression of that ease of all beings. So somebody had sane energy and equal pay for equal work and Black Lives Matter, et cetera. And so we held up our signs and we held up the banner. And we chanted, radiating kindness over the entire world, spreading upwards to the skies and downwards to the depths, outwards and unbounded.
Choosing to See Reality
It’s completely unrealistic. And yet standing in that circle, flooded by those voices, I felt that I hadn’t done a more real thing in a long time. Is it enough? No, of course not. I mean, we’re just getting started. Our work is just getting started, from making phone calls and writing letters and educating ourselves, understanding the issues, to the work of grounding ourselves, grounding ourselves in reality, because reality is being challenged at every turn.
To turn to this seat, and to choose very deliberately to see all of reality, to vow to not turn away from any of it, to me is the true kindness. I’m Vanessa Zuisei. And, you know, the limits of our knowledge are what they are. Those of us who live here, for example, you know, we don’t have a vast array of facts and just knowledge about the economic underpinnings of what is happening right now, or certainly the political reasons, the many things that have converged to get us to this point in time in our history.
I mean, you know, we know what we read, and what we read in general, probably safe to say, for most of us comes from a particular type of source. And so, you know, it is somewhat limited. But we don’t have to be experts. Or rather, we just have to be expert on one thing, this body and mind. Because this body and mind is the source from which the political, the economic, the social arises, the religious arises.
We need to understand, when this arises, this comes to be. When that arises, that comes to be. And so, when I meet you with suspicion, with distrust, with ill will, that is the world that I create, that is the world that I inhabit. To know that we are not above bias, or ignorance, or narrow mindedness, that we are practicing, hopefully, because we want to be awake, we want to be clear about who we are, and that we’re all in a continuum.
And so, that what we’re seeing reflected every day in our news is what each of us experiences, is capable of. And that it completely depends on the choices that we make. In other words, can we resist injustice when it manifests and find a way to still respect the person? So difficult to do, so difficult to not demonize, to not create the other.
Because the reverse is also true. When I’m willing to regard you with respect, that is the world that I create, and the world that I live in. You know, and if you think to yourself, you know, I’m not really an activist, I’m not, this is not my thing. That’s not why I came to the monastery. I hear you. I’m not an activist. This is not my thing. That’s not why I came to the monastery.
But I don’t feel I have much of a choice anymore. Because especially I don’t want this tradition that I love, that I believe in, that I’ve staked my life on to become irrelevant. Or worse, complicit in the ill of the world. Here we are, Dr. King said, moving towards the exit of the 20th century, with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies, rather than a headlight leading people to higher levels of justice.
And I think this is a real danger. I know it’s a real danger, that in our effort to protect our way of life, a rather comfortable way of life, and not just us, all kinds of religious communities, all kinds of people, that by protecting our contemplative way of life, which all of us have chosen, who’ve come here, whether we knew that knowingly or not, and which, by the way, I think we should absolutely protect, but that if we do so at the expense of everyone else, everything else, it’s at the expense of the child in the closet.
We face the real possibility of becoming irrelevant. Are people finding, looking for refuge in a place like this and not finding it? Dada Roshi spoke of the monastery as the archive of sanity. But we need to truly be that archive of sanity. So, you know, if you don’t want to take to the streets, that’s fine. Just pick one thing that you care about and take care of that deeply. Take care of this place. Let’s take care of each other.
So that we can, in fact, continue to be a refuge, which monasteries have, in fact, been throughout the history of humanity. That also means deliberately protecting the state of our bodies and minds. That’s how Shantideva defines introspection, deeply knowing and protecting the state of your body and mind.
To know what we think, to know what we feel, to know what we feel and how these two shape the world. The Eight Awarenesses of an Enlightened Being, from the perspective of the Mahayana, is the Buddha’s last teaching. And they’re, in one sense, very simple, having few desires, knowing how to be satisfied, enjoying serenity and tranquility, exerting meticulous effort, not forgetting or maintaining right thought, practicing samadhi, cultivating wisdom, and avoiding idle talk.
That was the Buddha’s last teaching, avoid idle talk. Isn’t that interesting? If we need a guidebook on how to live, this is it. If we want to know how to proceed in the days and months and years to come, this teaching shows us how. How much is enough of what we need and want? Do I know what I want?
Knowing What We Truly Desire
I was saying to the month-long residents earlier in the week that the Buddha did not say have no desires. Although we chant, putting an end to desires, it’s not literal in the sense that you will then never desire again. You wouldn’t be alive as a human being. You certainly wouldn’t be practicing. That is a desire, the desire to awaken. He just said have few desires and know how to be satisfied.
So I was saying, if you’re turning towards something, which we actually do quite frequently, you’re going online, you’re ordering a pair of shoes, do you want that pair of shoes, in fact? Do you need that pair of shoes? Or are you looking for something else, like love? And then the shoes come, and there you are with your box from Zappos, and you open it and you realize, oh, I wanted love, but I have a pair of shoes.
And that’s actually, I’ve been there. I used to buy shoes when I was dissatisfied. It’s a very strange habit pattern. And I learned actually by this ordering of the shoes that I was feeling something that I didn’t want to feel. At times, that was unbearable to feel. And this was such an easy way.
Here’s something that I can control. I press a button, they come. They don’t fit. I fix them. Maybe they will work. And I did that for quite a while, actually, embarrassingly for quite a while, before I realized what was happening. I just didn’t want to feel what I was feeling. It was very simple, actually.
And so the more you learn to identify what your real true desires are, then there is that moment where you know exactly what you want, and it’s in front of you, and it’s completely fulfilling, and then it’s gone, and you’re able to let it. You don’t even have to let it go. It’s done. It’s complete.
I’ve experienced that, too. So the Buddha basically said, just look. Look deeply at what you say you want and know how to be satisfied with what you do have. How do you do, in fact, what you need to do without losing your ground, without constantly being swayed by the many winds, by your desire and your aversion, your opinions, others’ opinions?
This very easy kind of giving away of our power, of letting others tell us what to think and what to do. But to stand, as I often say, to stand on our own two feet, to stand on our own ground. That’s serenity and tranquility, equanimity.
What is right and meticulous effort? And what kind? What kind of effort and for what? Of all the things that we could do, that need to be done, that we would like to do, which ones do we choose and why? And how much? How much time do we devote to these things that we find, that we feel are important?
How do we keep in mind right thought, which is the thought of renunciation, of freedom from ill will, of harmlessness, or the thought, our aspiration, to awaken? How do we always keep that in mind? How do we protect our mind, our focus and concentration, and cultivate wisdom?
And lastly, how do we choose to speak about, what do we choose to speak about and give voice to? And on the commentary for avoiding idle talk, Master Dogen says that it’s really having realization and being free from discrimination is what is called avoiding idle talk. To totally know the true form of all things is the same as being without idle talk.
So there’s a practical side of it, of just refraining from gossip, criticism, chatter, inner and outer. But there’s more fundamentally closing the gap between us and others. That as long as we talk of things, about things and people as if they were outside of ourselves, that that is engaging in idle talk. And that, the Buddha said, will not lead you to happiness, will not lead you to freedom.
It could also apply to what we take in. You know, we want to know what’s going on. We should know what’s going on. But how much? How much from whom? How many articles disparaging another political figure do we need to read? And after we read them, what is the state of our body and mind?
What do we actually need to know to be most effective, most skillful? And then what are the thoughts we are thinking, each one of us, moment by moment, day by day? Are we aware of our thoughts? Are we aware of our feelings? And how they do, in fact, directly shape, they directly turn into the world that we then inhabit, as I said.
Awakening the Power Within
The human mind is incredibly powerful. We skim the barest layer, the surface. And what we are trying to do is to plumb its depths. That’s why this takes time. It would be good. It would be good to not use up our time arguing about whether we should be engaged in social action, political action, environmental action, because we need every bit of energy that we have.
Why don’t we just say, let’s engage in human action, which we can’t avoid, in fact, no matter what. We’re engaging in it every day. But if we let that action be as deep and grounded, as clear as we can possibly make it to be, then really our power as individuals, I’ve often felt, is infinite.
I was saying to someone earlier, Gandhi used to say that repeating the name of God has more power than the atomic bomb. And so he was just speaking about really practice of gathering the mind and what you’re giving rise to. And given what he was able to do, I don’t doubt it for a moment.
When we say, well, what can one person do? That is not understanding what one person is, what one person is capable of. What is the reach of one person? We do, in fact, have enormous power as individuals. To use that power well is our choice.
And the clearer we are about one choice, the clearer we can be about the next one, and the next one. And one.
So that ocean of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, you know, that was coming out of the subway into the streets, because it’s the ocean, it’s exactly the same ocean that’s in the White House right now, and that is in the news outlets, and that is in our institutions, in our churches, in our schools.
There’s no, there’s Buddhas over here, but no Buddhas over here. And the more we understand that and are able to keep that in mind, the more, what’s the word I’m looking for, the more. More. The more. Effective is not, is not, doesn’t, doesn’t reach it. The more pervasive, the more pervasive our action will be.
You know, so our kindness, when we are, in fact, expressing, giving rise to kindness, is no longer just for me and the people I know and the people I love, but that it, in fact, radiates in every direction.
That these vows that we make, you know, as part of the spiritual path, if they were conventional, it would just be more of the same. They need to be unconventional. Martin Luther King said, you’re calling me an extremist? Yes, I am an extremist in love. I’m an extremist in the belief that every human being has the right and the ability to fulfill their place.
So let’s be extremists in the most skillful, most awake way that we can possibly be.
Human Action, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : “Genjokoan” by Master Dogen
02 : "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin