profound stillness and care for intimacy with the land, harmonizing.
Uh, the basic practices of Sotozen with. caring for the intimacy between the environment and the… The buildings and the beautiful things, and the gardens and people's hearts. So I just come here and appreciate all the effort that enables.
something so beautiful to be here for me in my travels and for for others.
The only way the Dharma. and be alive is if people… embody it. People are embodying it very beautifully here.
And I'm in the… I've been traveling. I live in Minneapolis, and I've been driving around the country. I'm on a 30-day traveling.
teaching tour, doing about 20 teaching events at different temples. So this is about my fifteenth. But who's counting?
And yeah, the sweet. So, and nice to see all you who are joining.
So I'm going to jump into the material of the talk. I'm going to be talking about the material in this book I wrote called Inside the Flower Garland Sutra.
I'm going to give a very brief sort of historical context and then move on to how these teachings, I think are very relevant.
to our contemporary lives. The Flower Garland Sutra, the original name was in Sanskrit is Avatamsaka Sutra, is a really very large and very influential Buddhist text that emerged about 1500 years ago in the middle of the first century.
Millennium. It was subsequently quite soon after translated into Chinese and in China and East Asia it became extremely influential.
So the flower girl in Sutra had a profound influence on probably all types of East Asian Buddhism.
and it also became the the source of a school of Buddhism, which is called the Huaiyan Buddhism.
And that's really the subject of my talk today. Huain is just classical Chinese for flower garland. So the name of the sutra in Chinese is Huayan Jing, and uh… By the way, I think there are native Chinese speakers, and I apologize profoundly for my terrible pronunciation. Anyway, Huayan.
The sutra Huayan. gave birth to this Huayan Buddhist tradition, which had its own, um.
texts and practices and is still a living tradition. You can find YN teachers in temples in China, and the name is pronounced differently in Korea, where Hawaiian is very influential. It's called Hwaom, and in Japan, Kaigon. So these are living traditions.
But it's not one of the biggest, most well-known contemporary Buddhist traditions. You more see the enormous influence it had historically on other traditions.
And that's really the area that I'll be emphasizing today.
The text itself is utterly gigantic. It's 1,400 pages in small print, large edition in English. I've learned from a Chinese national recently that it's 1 million Chinese characters.
So it's really, uh, it's a lot. So I was very fortunate to find a text which is very influential in Korea, which has multiple names. It's a… bad pronunciation of Korean name. I'll call it the ocean seal chart.
And this is a nice compact text which was written about 1,500 years ago by a Korean monk named Wee Sung, whose purpose was to try and bring the breadth of the Hawaiian tradition and the teachings of the Flower Garland Sutra into a.
compact tech that a person can easily memorize and can make as part of their daily practice, to sort of recall and deepen their understanding of what the tradition is about.
So this text, the ocean seal chart is 30 lines, seven Chinese characters each, so it's 210 characters. And when I thought, I'm going to write a book about a text, do I want to write about 1 million Chinese characters or 210? It was really not a difficult choice.
So this book is a new translation and commentary of the ocean seal chart with their 30 lines. So they're 30 chapters. Each chapter is a commentary on one line from the text.
So the reason I want… I wanted to do this project, write this book, and travel around teaching about this is, I think a Huayan is very… timely set of teaching.
So these are the themes of Hawaiian that I'm going to talk about today.
uh, celebrating abundance. Celebrating sensual experience.
If you are the kind of person who studies Buddhism a lot, you may know that early Buddhism does not emphasize celebrating abundance and celebrating sensual experience.
So the flower Garland Sutra takes Buddhism as a distinctly positive.
uh, joyful direction. So, celebrating abundance, celebrating, uh, sensual experience, celebrating interdependence. Most people would say this is the main hallmark of Huayan Buddhism.
celebrating that each thing depends on everything. Everything depends on each thing, and each thing depends on each thing. And every possible permutation of how you could think about or come to understand to know that.
So, celebration of abundance, celebration of sensual experience. Celebration of interdependence, and then celebration of social engagement.
And the diversity of people, of their needs, and of their practices.
So these are the themes I'll be talking about, and I'm going to start with celebrating abundance.
So in the ocean seal chart, we have a series of lines that says.
The abundant manifestations of wish fulfillment are inconceivable. This reign of jewels benefits all life, filling all space.
All beings benefit according to their capacities. So I just the the flower grown tradition in the sutra is very visual.
So sometimes we'll say that in the flower garland tradition, the Dharma is seen.
It's not heard in words, but it's directly seen or smelled.
pasted, very sensual. So we got this rain of joules. So I just imagine I I assume you have seen rain.
But just like, you can imagine, like, rain. This is what it looks like when it's raining.
And then just imagine every droplet of rain is a joule.
a diamond or an emerald, rubies, sapphires, I don't know much about jewels, citrines. I could make up some names, because I don't know.
So your entire field of vision and the whole breadth of space filled with an array of unbelievably beautiful and precious things.
This tradition is saying that's how the world is.
So you may think that's a. True, false, or just crazy. All good.
The emphasis on abundance and this overwhelming preciousness and beauty.
is intended as medicine in 2 ways. The first way is by viewing the world as so abundant.
in holding on to anything because why would you bother?
One has no…
There's plenty all the time.
So it's about
realizing grasping and then your energy can go to meeting the actual material needs of the people that you are.
This is a principal medicine of this abundance teaching.
The second
ist äh
comes from
I learned about it by reading from Korean commentators on the ocean.
and they all do the reign of jewels represent. What did the jewels represent the representful.
in Sanskr die Upaya.
Good idea.
That mean, guilful means.
The ability of a sentient being. Or to make it simpler, I'll say a person.
To do something right now.
That is effective at promoting well-being for everyone and everything.
Forever.
That's what skillful means means. And from a basic Buddhist philosophical standpoint, the basis of the tradition.
Is that if you are. Alive.
You have the capacity right now to do something that is conducive liberation.
For everyone and everything. And that's always true. Or everyone, the for noble truths.
It doesn't say on Tuesday, at 7 o'clock. You can be mindful.
And for Sunday morning you can have Samadhi, and on.
Thursdays, you should speak kindly. It just says you can always do those things.
Always, and that's true for you. And it's true for everyone.
So if we only limit this.
Inquiry, like sentient beings is very broad actually, but if we just are really narrow in our definition, we just say people.
Right now. In this moment there are 8. 1 billion people who can do something.
That is effective at promoting freedom from suffering for everyone and everything.
Forever, and that. To me is so much more mind boggling.
Then a paltry rain of jewels filling all space.
And what happens if you go through your days thinking.
Me. Everyone I see, and all the people I can't even imagine, can all do something.
Effective at promoting breeding, from suffering for everyone. It radically changes. How we engage in the world.
And my guess is most of us are not doing that most of the time.
You know you're kind of like. These people are just morons, and those people are terrible, and I don't even, you know.
Freedom from suffering. I just want to get this person out of my way or get this project over right.
So it's medicine.
The medicine of the teaching of abundance.
So I'm going to read short passage regarding.
This bit. From this book that I wrote.
A while back long time ago. This teaching is to evoke a sense of abundance.
It is to cut through anxiety, alienation, and clinging.
Early Buddhist texts focus on giving things up.
So we can be free of our clinging.
Yn emphasizes seeing a world so replete with riches.
That we feel no need to hold on. Why in teachers understand that these abundant manifestations require our actual giving.
In his commentary on this line, Bob Young writes.
It may be compared to the wish fulfilling gem possessed by a wheel turning King.
If it is kept in the royal treasury, it does not rain down all manner of treasures.
End Quote.
In a Poly canon text, though the Polycanon is the earliest layer of Buddhist teachings. The oldest layer.
In a Polycanon text. A king gets wise counsel on how to deal with bandits overrunning the realm.
His advisor tells him that punishment and violence cannot end the epidemic of crime.
But here I quote the Sutra. Quote with this plan you can completely eliminate the plague of crime.
To those in the kingdom who are engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle.
Let your Majesty distribute grain and fodder. Do those in trade give capital.
To those in Government service, assign proper living wages.
Then, those people being intent on their occupations. Will not harm the kingdom.
Your Majesty's revenues will be great.
The land will be tranquil, and not be beset by thieves.
And the people with joy in their hearts. Laying with their children.
Will dwell in open houses.
So you may have encountered the idea that trying to end crime using punishment and violence is ineffective.
And what actually is effective is providing people the material needs. They need to thrive.
There are many contemporary movements based on this. Some of them a couple are called police.
Abolition and prison abolition. But there are other. All different kinds of people. Holding this idea.
And this is the point where I say. But are you talking about politics from the Dharma seat? Ben.
And I will say, Well, I'm just reading to you from the Poly Canon.
Which could not be a more canonical Buddhist source.
So these ideas are not new. They are not new.
So. I had a very vivid sense. Personally of the power of an abundance view. I've been around a lot of people who have used abundance as a teaching to help people get free.
In particular, working with indigenous people. In opposing the construction of a oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. A lot of the language.
Seeing that the world is fully abundant. So we don't need to extract so much from it, and clean so much.
And in other movements as well, but. Nothing has made me more aware of the power.
And reality of abundance, than living in Minneapolis for the last several months.
So I could talk for hours and hours about the incredible and beautiful things I have seen.
And I'm just going to talk about one tiny part of one project. I happen to be a part of.
And there were literally hundreds of things like this.
So in early December a friend of mine said: I want to start a new mutual aid group.
We've been doing mutual aid in Minneapolis in many ways for years, but she said, I want to make a new Mutual Aid Group.
Because we know ice was really brutal when they came to La.
Into Chicago, and we know there will be people who are immigrants who are not safe, leaving their home.
That we're going to make a sign up form for people in our neighborhood, where they can sign up and say, would you deliver food for me.
And then another sign up for people who would say, I would like to deliver food to people.
Need food delivered, so.
That was early December, mid, December.
I was at a meeting with the organizer, and they were like, I think.
We're gonna we have like 40 or 50 people signed up.
We're going to need to have someone who just takes the request and pairs people up. We need a volunteer.
On another level. Within this thing we're doing. Well, a couple months later there were thousands of people.
Signed up, and hundreds of deliveries being made every day, and it wasn't just delivering food.
It was driving people to work. It was taking people to court dates. It was meeting people who are being taken out of the.
Attention. And also we'd realize, because a lot of people hadn't been able to leave their homes.
The people were struggling to pay rent.
So we started a fundraising campaign, and by mid-march we'd raise 5.7 eine Million dollars to pay rent for people in our neighborhood.
This is not a nonprofit organization. It's just like someone who started a Google form in early.
December. What happens when people in a community just say we can take care of each other.
We have the resources to do it. Amazing and beautiful things.
Can happen. And this is not. This is totally not theoretical.
For my direct experience.
So that's a little bit about the theme of abundance that pervades.
Flower girl, and suture in the Hawaiian tradition. I'm going to move to a couple more themes. Interdependence.
Most people would say, this is the main theme of Yan Buddhism.
So I'm going to recite some lines from the Ocean seal chart.
Within one is all. Within many is one.
One is all.
The many are one. Within one moat of dust is.
Came the 10 directions, and with each phenomena.
It is also thus.
Immeasurable distant eons are one moment of mind. And one moment of mind is immeasurable.
So, because everything depends on each other thing you cannot remove.
As Nenzhen said yesterday, a thread from the fabric of life.
And say, This is actually separate. They all are, in fact, as they are utterly.
Connected, and the consequence is that. The entire universe is contained in each particular thing.
Because it cannot be removed from that context. And the entire universe can only exist.
As it is expressed in each particular thing. Each thing is utterly valuable and precious.
If you come around in a soto Zen context and you're like, why is there bow this way, you bow that way, and everyone cleans off their cushion.
It's because the Hawaiian tradition brought the emphasis of Buddhism to the taking care of.
Each particular thing, because it is.
Utterably valuable. Because it is, in fact.
The entire universe.
So I'm going to read just a little bit about this.
Wee song is the Korean monk, who's the author of the Ocean Seal Chart.
This book is a commentary on. When we song traveled to China for the Dharma, he met a woman named Sun Mio, who fell in love with him.
He told her that his vow of celibacy meant he could not requite her love.
In her order to protect him on his path, transformed her into a dragon.
After years of caring for him on his travel, she became a great stone hovering over invaders outside one of the 1st temples he founded.
G. Is perched there right now. A great stone guardian overlooking the temple of the floating stone.
Musiaksa, near Jiangzhu City, in Korea. The times of myth.
Of history and of the present moment, can collapse in a good story.
Proma 2 can make the interpenetration of times vivid.
Yesterday someone described being overwhelmed by emotions during an argument with a friend.
Suddenly they had the jarring experience of being a three-year-old child.
Feeling the same rage and the same need to hold someone at bay.
We're showing up in their present life. This collapsing of time and identity rang true to my own experience when I was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress.
Somehow I could be totally aware of my own bodily sensations.
My own present moment, sensory environment. My own agency and adulthood, and also absolutely be the terrified child.
Consumed by shame, terror, and rage. When linear time had grown up 30 years ago.
Teachings on Karma have much in common with contemporary theories of trauma.
So does the Hawaiian emphasis on the interpenetration of past, present, and.
Future scientific data show the deep relationship between a child struggling to find food and safety in an impoverished neighborhood.
In an adult being pushed into a prison cell.
Understanding. Karma can help us know the importance of our actions.
Knowing interdependence opens up space for compassion.
And shows that we can create conditions for freedom.
For everyone.
So this interdependence has many implications, but one is that each thing.
Is so precious and valuable right here. I think I'm going to read.
Read a little bit about that.
So this what I'm going to read about is a commentary on the line from the Ocean Seal Chart, which says within one is all within many.
One. If you want to sum up y'n teachings in a single line. This is as good as it gets.
The idea that each thing contains everything, and everything is holding. Each thing pervades the tradition.
The implications are vast. When I interviewed people for an article about Tomoi Kadagiri, who was central in transmitting the practice of hand sewing Zen. Religious garments in North America.
Andrea Martin, said Homoisan continually showed that everything matters.
End quote: If the whole world is here in this cup of tea, this stitch.
For this bow. Don't you want to care for it?
The Hawaiian master. Jian wrote. Because in the Yn teaching phenomena are the teaching.
Whatever phenomena are brought up in exhaustible teachings are included.
End Quote.
Because everything is precious. Discernment about how to care for things is precious.
Once Tomoisan was carefully making us a cup of tea.
Regarding something we've been talking about a moment before I began to quote a line from the Meta Sutra.
She put down the tea things and faced me with her whole being relaxed.
Poised and alert. When the quote from the sutra was over, she returned to making tea.
In Weeisong's Commentary on this poem he repeatedly refers to the teaching of the.
coins. This is a common Hawaiian metaphor. If you have 10 coins.
Any one of them completely contains all 10. Or if you remove that one, there is No. 10.
Within the 10 coins. Each one is completely contained in the 10, for if the 10 were gone.
So, too, would be the one. More subtly. If part of the 10 were gone, the one would no longer be the exact same one. It was.
It wouldn't be the one that is thus. In this particular relational context.
If a bowl of soup costs 10 coins, the one, as part of 10 coins is sufficient.
As part of 9. It is not.
It is practical for people to agree that one coin always has the same value as one coin.
But this is a limited view.
A $50. Parking ticket means something very different to someone who is hungry and poor.
Then it does to someone with thousands. Millions or billions of dollars in the bank.
Power of one coin to buy a cup of tea or 10 coins to buy a bowl of soup.
Contains the entire universe. Which shows up in the form of a mutual agreement between people about the value of a piece of metal.
Let us practice looking at money, not just in terms of what we have and what we can get.
But how money impacts the whole.
And hence particular individuals within that whole. Our shared agreements about money often hide the fact that within the whole of our economy many individual people work all day for just enough money to live beneath a freeway overpass.
These shared agreements can make it seem that someone who doesn't have a job deserves to live under.
Freeway, overpass.
Seeing that one is all. We can do better.
So Hannah Arndt.
Is a philosopher.
Was a philosopher. She was a Jewish woman. Who escaped Europe in the late thirties before.
The old cost really began.
And immigrated to the United States. And she wrote a lot of things, but she wrote a lot about how an authoritarian state comes into existence.
And how you can prevent there from being an authoritarian state.
And she once wrote even the smallest act.
In the most limited circumstances, bears the seed of boundlessness.
Even the smallest act in the most limited circumstances, bears the seed of boundlessness.
If you would have quoted this to me and said, that's from a Hawaiian text, or from the Flower Girl, and Sutra.
I would say, not surprising. That just sounds like straight. Ym.
Hannah Arndt never read any yn.
But one of the reasons she wrote this is that when it comes to.
Authoritarianism there's a tendency to look. At the Authoritarian Leader.
And the people directly around him, and be like those people, are terrible.
And evil, and I don't like them, and we should get rid of them, and then everything will be fine.
And her point is that foreign authoritarian leader to have power. There needs to be millions and millions of acts of active support for the authoritarian.
End of pass it, and passive complicity. With what they are doing, and without all that millions of effort they have no power.
And kind of a fun thing for me is that I've.
This was like so.
Resonant with the Hawaiian Worldview that we are co-creating the world we live in all the time.
And rather than objectifying things, we can focus on our agency within the system.
But I've been leading for the last 6 months. I've been providing.
Trainings in how to not cooperate with authoritarianism in Minneapolis.
And our training was designed by a group called Freedom trainers based on social science research.
Looking at countries where there was an authoritarian breakthrough like the United States right now.
According to their social science. And they said, What are the countries that successfully prevented themselves from becoming authoritarian states?
And what are the ones that ended up being authoritarian states? There have been many, many instances.
And so they looked at the things were effective.
And the training is about. Well, let's do the effective things.
And the main theme of that training.
Is to realize that there are all these supports that allow authoritarianism to come to be and to sustain itself.
Each one of us has some kind of agency within that within.
Educational systems.
Religious systems.
That's my my field
Governmental systems, the business world.
All these different things are part of what upholds the power, and each one of us has relationships. If we want to.
Where we can take actions. Diminish that power and diminish the support that sustains authoritarianism.
So it's just like, you know, this Social Science.
It's like, Wow. That looks so similar.
These Dharma teachings. How does this come to be.
Okay.
So I have one more theme. I want to talk about.
Which is kind of a. I think we're in a segue here.
Social engagement and diversity of people, needs and practices.
So these are big emphasizes emphasis in hain. It's very relational.
And
The Sutra itself. The flower Ground Sutra is super long. It's the longest booze sutra that there is.
And it's composed with. Made up of many parts that were brought together, that already existed before they were.
Compiled, and 3 of the chapters from the flower grounds, which are particularly influential.
So I'm going to talk about one of those right now.
The Gonda Viewhasutra, or entry into the realm of reality.
Is the 3rd of the key standalone sutures that were incorporated into the flower garland. Sutra.
It constitutes the final and longest chapter of the Avatomsica.
Why, in.
It tells the story of a young man named Sudana, who commits his life to liberation, from suffering for everyone and everything.
And of his long and wondrous pilgrimage on the path.
He meets with 53 teachers. Each of whom shows him a staggering.
Staggering level of spiritual attainment.
And then ends their meeting by saying they can't possibly know the way to liberation.
It tells him he should go on to visit another teacher.
To keep practicing.
The teachers include beggars.
Queens, boys and girls, monks, nuns, rich men.
Mathematicians, sailors, perfumers, goddesses.
Doctors, musicians, bark, clad outcasts.
Folks who change genders, people dressed in rags, those bedecked in jewels.
A prince who almost loses his life, working to free all the prisoners in his land.
And great Bodhisattvas, such as Avalukitishwara and Jushri.
And Samanthabadra. They teach in many, many ways all different and appropriate to themselves, and those they meet.
They teach, by feeding people. Through physical touch.
By making beautiful scents and buildings. By writing, by teaching, meditation.
By expounding the Dharma, by revealing suffering.
And by guiding people through storms.
This Sutra provides inspiration for those of us looking.
To create multicultural, engaged.
Buddhist communities. So.
So the suture, the Gonda view has Sutra and the Hawaiian tradition that emerges from it. There's so much emphasis on.
Relationship, encounter the particularity of each side of the relationship.
That I, when I'm with you. It's not just like me, and an object. It's.
What we are changes in each particular time. I'm with a new person. There's not a solid me.
There's a me in relationship, and that's the only me that I ever get.
The relational one right now.
And I have, you know, used this worldview to help myself. Be.
Part of many beautiful communities in all of our country, like right here.
I'm lucky. Me and in Minneapolis in particular.
And so I was able to be a part of and connected to a lot of.
Credible and beautiful things.
That happened in Minneapolis.
In 2026, I. Mentioned one. I'm going to mention a few more.
But it's important to know that I'm still only just talking about a few little parts of things that happen.
And the point of this is that the things that people were doing.
We're different. An enormous array of differences in how people found ways to practice.
So as you may know. How many people have like seen a video of violent.
In Minneapolis in the last few months. Also pure than I might think.
Well, just I don't want to dwell on this.
The Federal Government brought an incredible.
Staggering level of violence to my community. Many people I know were physically attacked.
We're tear gassed. We're pepper sprayed. People were detained illegally, relentlessly.
It was really.
Astonishing, and like thousands of people.
So, anyway, in response to this. There had been something a little like this in Chicago, although the Federal Government brought.
times as many people. To Minneapolis if they brought to Chicago.
So that was a lot. And we're we're a 3rd the size. So it was kind of a lot.
So, anyway, people in Chicago. When the when the ice came, they started networks of like alerting people in neighborhoods.
So they could be safe. And so any case you're like well, shouldn't they? Should. Shouldn't they arrest.
Illegal immigrants. A lot of people they arrested were not here illegally.
Just so, you know, so that's part of the question. So I just want to.
Make sure I'm not. I don't just seem like I'm crazy here.
So, anyway, the Chicago people said, Well, this is how we set up networks.
So people could go in the street and document what was happening.
And just go there and video record the violence that the State was bringing, or the Federal government was.
Bringing to our community and within. Days people were mobilizing, and within weeks there were thousands of people.
Who were available to just zoom out on really short notice.
And go to where the violence was happening and document it.
And this was really necessary to be so fast, because the strategy of the ice agents was to.
Get people in 5 or 6 min.
So they would. Multiple people, I know, have seen like ice would come in, surround a car.
Pull someone out of it and take them away.
And the car hadn't been, was still rolling on the street, and bystanders had to put it in Park.
I know people who saw Come in within just a couple of minutes, grab someone on a car, drive away.
Take the detention. There were children still in the car.
So in order to provide the documentation that some of you had seen.
It took enormous coordination, energy. And and just that willingness to bear witness.
Bearing witness being one of the central. Themes of all Buddhist practice.
Just reveal suffering.
So, anyway, thousands of people did this, and it was dangerous. 2 of them were murdered by Federal agents.
And many, many other, were brutalizing the pain in other ways. So it took enormous courage. I mean these people. I just bow.
I bow, but that was a drop in the bucket of what people were doing.
Because, while that was happening, neighborhood organizations, like the one my friend founded, were helping deliver food.
Driving people to work, providing rent relief. And this sort of thing, and then also they were just like all these, like little neighborhood groups, where all the all the more elderly people in the neighborhood would just go out and stand outside of a school to keep the kids safe.
We have singing resistance where thousands of people would go on the street and just sing beautiful songs.
M.
I can't. Even I could go on and on, and of course there were protests. We had a.
A Buddhist, silent vigil. March.
Where we visited George Floyd Square, and the site where Renee Good was murdered.
people came and just walked in silence for 2 h.
With nothing but bells.
The cigar meditation in the streets.
I can go on and on all different expressions of ways to be together in taking care of each other.
And believe that we can be free together.
So this sense of abundance, and the power and the beauty of diversity of people and needs and practices.
Utterly vivid for me, and throughout this whole thing.
I was doing a lot of those things, but I also got up every morning and came to the exempt center and sat so I was in.
And did the service, and did a little bit of temple cleaning. And then I met with my students, and we had classes on how to read the Poly Canon.
And then, you know, one morning I got up, and I went to a big event where there are a couple 100 of us singing these nice songs to a big line of Federal agents in riot gear.
Because apparently Federal agents really like songs. So we thought we'd sync to them.
And then that evening I went to the Zen Center and led a weekend meditation retreat. We just sat in silence.
And developed our capacity to just be with what's here right now.
So the opportunities for everyone in this room. To do something that helps people. Refree are way beyond anything I could possibly imagine.
And my problem is when I do this. People think, you're telling me I have to be an activist.
I have no idea what you have to be.
I do not know that.
All I'm telling you is, I have seen a lot of people do a lot of different kind of things that were.
So beautiful and loving.
And that is a place that just gives me so much energy.
Going into practice. So thank you very much for listening.
And we now have time where people can. Ask questions or share reflections. It's a pretty big group in here, so if it's a reflection, it's nice if it's kind of short.
And any kind of question is welcome. I do not claim I can answer any kind of question. Well.
But I'm there's space for any kind of question.
For sure, so philosophical questions, personal questions. Anything. Go ahead.
Well, the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, where I am the guiding teacher.
Is, it's in the same tradition as this one. So there are a lot of things that we do are very similar.
You know we have daily meditation, practice. Services where we do, chanting.
Cleaning or taking care of the space practice which is really deeply related to this Yen tradition, we have.
Retreats every month. The difference is that it's right in the city.
So it's there. It's you don't have to drive up. I think a lot of you came a ways to get here.
You know I walk to the Zen center every day. I don't live there. It's non-residential.
But yeah, it's just a very lovely community.
Community of people and among our community. Some people were very involved in all this sort of.
Community stuff that I was talking about. One of them was one of the main fundraisers for raising all that money for rent relief.
But some people are just like, you know what I'm just trying to take care of my own mental health and my kids. So I come here and I meditate a little bit.
Get called, and there's room for all of that at our place.
Thank you. Go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of a contentious issue.
Because there's a lot in early Buddhism. Really, there's an emphasis on.
In early Buddhism on renouncing sensual pleasure, because if you give it up you can get free.
And this is really.
I've seen this really work so personally, I'm a recovering addict and alcoholic, so I was addicted to drugs and alcohol.
And giving them up. Something that I thought was so necessary for me.
Made me so much freer than I ever could have imagined.
And that's been true, then I was like, well, what if I give up lying.
What if I what if I'm just a little more generous with my money.
All of those things have helped me be more free.
So that's a particular medicine.
But in the Hawaiian there's this emphasis on. Like just enjoying what's here.
And and like seeing what's here, and being able to see how beautiful and wonderful it is.
And that is that tends to be a characteristic of Chinese Buddhisms.
This is not from the flower garland Sutra, but it gets to the theme of it.
In the Shurangama Sutra.
There's a story where.
These Bodhisafas enter a bathhouse.
And they go into the bathhouse, and when their bodies touch the water they all awaken together.
So this thing about just like letting the beauty and.
Pleasure of a moment. Touch you without clinging to it.
That's the challenging theme. Is like learning to let it touch you without clinging.
And that that's a bigger question.
So. Thank you.
Go ahead. I'll come online just a minute. I'm gonna go one more in the room.
Yeah, I'll just tell you an anecdote. I could tell so many stories like this.
But I was part of a team that brought.
In a span of one week we went from the idea to actually making it happen. We had 650 clergy, people from all over the country. All different religions come and do a date of training, and then go on the streets.
Participate with what was going on.
And so we had people coming. From like Florida, and I'm like getting. I'm like now we're getting off the bus to go on the street, and like.
Videotape ice, and they're like clergy people in their robes, and it's 10 degrees below 0.
And they just did it. They just said, I'm going, and I'm going to do this.
So it's like this is not about Minneapolis. This is about people just saying we can do this together.
Yeah. Everything's fine.
Yeah. Answer. The call. I love that.
Okay, I see Misha online. Hello, Misha.
Hi, Ben. Thank you so much. My question has to do with, you know, while the rest of you were busy doing all of these things.
With ice in Minnesota. We were watching it from a distance.
Some of us, and. I wonder, because I know how upset.
And angry. It made many of us feel. I imagine the same thing was true there, even more so because you were in the middle of it.
So I'm wondering, from a practice point of view.
How did you talk to people about this? How did you deal with it for yourself?
Yeah, thank you for that. There was a lot, and still is a lot of rage and anger among people I know in Minneapolis about this.
And I'm emphasizing like all the beautiful. You know. We went the street and sang.
But I should be, I'd be explicit. There are many people who were just.
Like at the Federal Building, where they did, where the detaining happens, and the Ice agents come in and out of the gate.
There are people who are there 24 HA day, with bullhorns just yelling vile.
Vicious insults at them all day.
I'm not. It's like, wow. You go there. We'd go there to do like a Buddhist vigil, and there's someone over on the corner just like I'm not going to repeat it.
So. And that was not, you know, when, yes, there was a lot of just.
Intense rage and anger. I have a lot of training because I came to activism through supporting black lives. Matter.
I don't go into a space and try and police anybody.
And in general, that's kind of. Fields like practice. My job is not to control or demand what other people do.
And if someone is enraged.
I want to bear witness to their rage. Try and understand them. If someone is really sad, I wanna know that.
And I did have the ability, though. To create context for healing and for people to process that. So one of the things that I was part of.
Was. We had a weekly sorry a nightly. Zoom call. That was for the people who did the rapid response who were going to meet ice in the street.
And they could come in, and we would give them somatic meditation. So meditation practices that were calming, and allowed them to process the trauma.
Because it really was pretty traumatic.
And to talk about how they felt, and to be real about it, so we could bear witness.
They're suffering, and they could have healing.
In a part of what was really beautiful about this whole movement, with many other people, were doing this kind of healing work.
It was about acknowledging how upsetting it was.
And making space for people to know and process that.
And to me absolutely the core of my Buddhist practice.
Is to know the emotion that is present.
And give it compassion right now.
So a big and a great question. Thank you, Michelle.
Thank you.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah. So real.
Yeah, it seems like a big question. I don't know. You know you're you're I'm leading this team, and it just feels like.
People aren't growing as much as they can. You can't. Maybe you can't as well.
You? Yeah? Yeah?
Well, I I'm just gonna give the most vague answer, because I don't know any details. I will say.
That we have a teaching in Mahayana. Buddhism called the teaching of emptiness.
Which is really the central idea which is everything, is.
Is not what you think it is.
And the the way that is a medicine is, it helps us realize we cannot actually control.
Anything.
It appears like we can control things, and that's a complex question. But if you just kind of like, try and take in the medicine. It's like.
I just have all these teachings in Buddhism to remind myself I can't control anything.
These definitely not other people.
And so then it's like. But you can do something.
And you may already know this. But the more we emphasize just being like all right, the mind just keeps wanting to control.
Unconsciously, and the more I can come back and be like I.
that is never going to work. And then I just go. Okay, what am I doing.
And then a lot of the frustration that happens can be softened.
And that's like a viewpoint that can be deepened.
Over time. So that's just something to play with.
Cool. Thank you.
And I think we're coming up on. I think maybe we should wrap up because this we've been here for a little.
Wow. So this is just really sweet to be with you.
And because I was talking about all this wonderful stuff or stuff, I thought, is wonderful.
From Minneapolis. What I have no interest in doing is being like Minneapolis is really cool.
The point is, people can do stuff. Like we're people, and and the stuff we can do is going to be different.
You know the variety of things that you can do, and the people around you can do is.
Way more beyond our limited view of what it.
The flower gone. Sutras is invitation to recognize the unlimitedness of our capacity individually.
And collectively to move in a direction that's beautiful.
I am compassionate.
So I have. The thing is like, you're all doing great things.
You might not even know it. You're like I'm not doing anything great.
Everyone knows good things, you know, so like celebrate it, enjoy it, and then let that.
Feed how you live. So thank you very much for for listening. Thank you so much.