Congressman John Lewis just died and his life and his courage are being spoken everywhere. Even my 92 year old mother was telling me about how powerful one person’s life could be. I have been teaching and living with the koan of race and gender for the past two years and it informs me. My koan is Will racism and sexism ever cease being? The Buddha and many zen masters, spoke of buddhanature being our birthright, just in the form we are. Just in the way the buddhadharma expresses itself in all beings, sentient and nonsentient. However, there was suffering in this absence, in this invisibility of women in my own spiritual practice tradition. That suffering led to deeper looking.

When I first came to an awareness of our zen ancestors and noticed the absence of females in stories and teachings, I looked harder and found them. They are there in full force, just hidden from most of the stories and ancestral lineage charts. More and more evidence is showing up that there were women zen master who had hundreds of followers, both men and women, and In China, Japan, Korea, and India. This wonderful discovery then led to me starting a dharma discussion group, called the Tea Ladies, on women in zen practice.

Every time we met: Asking What is This? What is happening right now? Who am I? This led our discussions on dharma beyond femaleness, and onto other Ways of Being. This led me to my new consciousness of how is my zen practice looking at black and brown bodies, bodies who are hard of hearing, or differently-abled, or nonbinary, and my world opened up and opened up to more Awareness of Zen Practice. More spaciousness of practice. I saw again more suffering. The Buddha came to teach about human suffering and the end to suffering. So again I asked What is this?

Black Lives Matters teachers brought more light to my awareness of suffering, And I became aware of a large blockage in my practice. I understood the suffering of race in America from a distance. “It’s wrong, it’s a system of oppression, it needs to change.”  I always understood that discrimination and racism were bad for people and society, I had “heard” of the pain and suffering—I stayed intellectually detached. Feelings of Race and harm did not affect me. I committed in my Vows to perceive delusions and to see Truth, and to save all beings.

I saw—what we are all now seeing– there were two Americas—a White one and one for the rest of America. Besides my class privilege, I learned to SEE the System of Racism really for the FIRST TIME.

I began to see how American education systems fail Black and Brown Americans, and fail also with substandard health care, and with an economy that has white households worth 10 times that of black households, with more Black unemployment, and the mass incarceration of Brown and Black people, poor housing and food, and how climate crisis hits Black communities more. And now, coming into awareness: Blacks die twice the rate of whites in COVID. Latinos even more. The Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers offers a Way. A way of seeing and being: Not Knowing and Bearing Witness takes us to a place…of understanding and compassion. And after a while…right action comes out of it.

John Lewis was inspired by Reverend Jim Lawson who studied nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi. In John’s memoir, he wrote that he believed in redemptive suffering as a way to touch and change ourselves and those around us. He said it unleashes a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and morale and is the basics of human consciousness. He wrote that it “opens us” and touches our hearts and makes us feel compassion where we need to have it. Redemptive suffering is at the heart of nonviolent protest….

I now know that racism now touches my heart in a new way. I know that I have been very comfortable in my white neighborhood and with white friends, white organizations, doing good–and have not cared to look so deeply —to see or hear most intimately, the racial trauma and harm of our brothers and sisters. And I realize now that I benefited from whiteness economically, socially, in my career, and education and health, and my children benefited…… I was still Separate —Not intimate to the suffering around me. What a Zen awakening!

My daughter said to me, “Well what are you doing about Black Lives Matter, Mom? Will you give some money or join a protest?” I answered straight from my heart, not sure where it came from , “I will conduct a workshop on Waking Up to Whiteness.” And I did this month and will do again next month, not knowing where to start, and will continue to do so until I can continue to turn my heart and other hearts toward really seeing.

In 1962, when I was four years old, I saw an African-American for the first time.  He had carried my family’s luggage into a motel room in Iowa.  I was old enough to notice that he looked different from me, different from my mother, my father, my brother, or anyone else that I had ever seen.  My child mind had no information whatsoever about the variability of human skin color.  No, my child mind assumed that this man’s skin was white.  It assumed that that skin was just covered up, obscured—dirty.

And so I asked, while he was still in the room, “Mom, why is that man’s face so dirty?”

Of course, my mother was mortified.  Of course, she tried to explain that his face was not dirty at all.  And—of course—the damage could not be undone.  As so often happens, the blurted words of children bring out into the light those unspoken horrors and shames that adults wish could be hidden away.  Perhaps a child’s innocent but embarrassing questions can be tolerated as a universal human constant—but only in children.  Only children should enjoy the privilege of believing that their limited world contains everything necessary for life.

I believe that a grossly limited and self-satisfied view has left every one of us with a knee on our necks.  For some of us, it’s a literal knee.  For others, it is a knee of crushing neglect—social, economic, psychological, medical.  Here, in Michigan, 40% of the people who died from COVID-19 were African-American, “even though African-Americans are only 14% of the state’s population.”¹  COVID-19 has made the reality of systemic racism conspicuous to at least some white folks.  But the fact that it took a pandemic to do so is itself a symptom of the same privileged worldview that killed George Floyd.

It is a worldview that is at the heart of Toni Morrison’s oft-quoted metaphor of the fishbowl.  For a goldfish, the fishbowl is a world of pleasant, homey waters with languid bubbles, castle decorations, and plenty of flakes on which to nibble.  The goldfish sees this world as a perfectly sensible whole, a structure that has meaning because it makes life easy and self-sustaining.  What the goldfish does not see, however, is that this meaningful “whole” is enclosed by an invisible and unsensed boundary, a conditioned worldview that cannot be changed without the whole world splashing apart, leaving the fish flopping on the floor, gasping for air.

Now I believe white folks really do get this metaphor.  I think we really do get that our fishbowl is really a port-a-potty of our own creation, a fantasy habitat in which we necessarily swim in our own refuse.  We breathe it, eat it, and drink it every day.  But it’s going to kill us if we do not see our way beyond it.  How do we do that?  How do we solve this problem, this life-koan, unable to stay in the bowl and unable to leave it?  How do we swim free without ending up on the floor, helpless and pleading, “I can’t breathe”?

On seeing the defaced statue of George Washington in Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, MD

Reading an article about four confederate statues in Baltimore that quietly came down in 2017,  I felt pride to have grown up in Baltimore.  Then, I opened an article showing a picture of a statue of George Washington in Druid Hill Park that had been draped in red paint and the words “Destroy racists” and “BLM” carved into the base of the statue. 

I started to sob and hyperventilate and embrace joy all at the same time.  As a child, I played in Druid Hill Park, visited there with my family many times, loved the animals – there was a zoo – the plants, the green, the space – until my mother said, no we shouldn’t go there, that is where the “colored people” go. 

Seeing the statues there come down – something hard and firm, the embedded racist history of our country, entombed ,enshrined, venerated – toppling to the ground evoked something deeply painful, hallowed, indescribably hopeful,  in me.  I’ve so long questioned  – where is that white oppressor residing in me, fragmenting, crushing, sealing off, deadening a piece of my soul?  How do I access it, acknowledge it, release its grasp to make whole again? There it was, is – here it is – I still can’t describe it but I’m touching it.  Oh, white people, we need to touch this, we need to find this place in ourselves that allows this all to go on and on – that values politeness, civility and white solidarity above this raw, powerful, effective, desperately required releasing of the demons long held in our collective story.  Eating us alive from the inside.  All of us.  Fatal to people with brown and black skin, but eating all of us alive. 

Baltimore.  As I grew older, my mother increasingly warned us – don’t go shopping at Mondawmin Mall,  avoid this area, avoid that area – that’s the Negro(sic) area of Baltimore – that’s dangerous. 

That’s where, oh yes, our maid lived.  And that also is where a young man named Ta-Nehisi Coates was born in 1975. While I was in grad school in California, beginning my practice at Zen Center of Los Angeles, a young Ta-Nehisi Coates also inhabited Baltimore, his Baltimore, my Baltimore. 

Dear white people, let the statues fall, let that entombed history crumble beneath our rage – it is our rage too – it was our rage first – why else to hang, mutilate, destroy, marginalize people who dared to look for success and happiness and excellence in their lives, just like us,  even after we had bought and sold people — yes, people– bred families of them to serve our needs as though they were livestock – indeed deemed them possessions unworthy of human rights?  That, my white friends, was our rage, white rage.  Feel the possibility of that rage spilling from those statues, absorbing back into the generous, eternally patient, yet tenderly fragile Earth, making fertilizer for the huge,  barely mapped but inevitable – yes I choose to proclaim inevitable – work ahead.  Building on decades, centuries of work already done, the work ahead. 

Let it fall, let it go.  Breathe.  Let the statues carry our collective grief, the hideous suffering of hundreds of years and still daily suffering of the people oppressed by what those statues embody back into the earth.  And let those falling statues call forth the yet to be acknowledged, seen and embraced sorrow and shame of the oppressors – that is our call to action, we who oppressed – that is ours to do even if we don’t yet know how.  As a child of the Buddha, I too reach and touch the Earth asking her to bear witness, as she ever does,  to the suffering and to bear witness to the joy of a hope born of voices louder and clearer, voices to which I add my own small voice proclaiming that we are the suffering, the sufferer and the cause and that we can stop.

From the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL

There was almost no education about racism in my early education. I lived in a segregated environment in Billings Montana. There were no African Americans in Billings. The Crow people who were the original inhabitants of the land were segregated on nearby reservations (as they still are to a large degree). However, one teacher talked about slavery when I was in primary school. She put one of the children on a chair, pretended to sell her and asked us to look at how a slave market made us feel. That teaching was the moment that I first experienced a tiny piece of the horror and cruelty of racism. Maybe she spent a half hour giving us a direct experience of what it would be like to be chattel.  The rest of my Billings education was around “the civil war was about states’ rights”, “in many ways the Africans fared better as slaves”, etc. That one moment of truth shaped my understanding.

Later, teenager me, I stumbled across James Baldwin at the local bookstore. His words were transforming for me in how I thought about race.  In college, I participated in the “Third World Strike” at UC Berkeley starting in 1967. The Third World Liberation Front’s main goal was to establish “ethic studies” at Berkeley and San Francisco State. Amazing to think today that at that time there was almost no education about racism.

Just by chance, really, I worked in a factory canning peaches in Oakland where I was the only white worker (the supervisors were white) and I shared a lab with the Berkeley Black Student Union. Also, I have had several African Americans as close friends. So I have considered myself to have a lot of credentials as “not a racist”.

Basically, my understanding was along the lines of “we are all the same–just different amounts of melanin”

It was watching the movie “Dear White People” that I had a tiny woke moment. Waking up to the incredibly complex and subtle ways that I carry my privilege. All of the ways that I say and do things with the people of color in my life that are hurtful and ignorant. And how I do not stand up and fight for racial justice.

Now my personal anti-racism practice consists of (at least) three aspects.

1. Education. I am aware that the half hour a teacher spent showing white children the horror of slavery, may have informed my whole life. I vow to educate myself about the Black experience. I vow to grok the physical, spiritual and economic injustices towards people of color. Here is a very short video that explains how the economic disparity happened.https://youtu.be/AGUwcs9qJXY
2. Personal mindfulness. Noticing when I have a racist thought or am insensitive to the inequalities that have created harm. Abandoning the practice of “only think of positive things”, and allowing myself to experience the feelings of awkwardness, guilt and shame by becoming more and more aware of the harm I cause through my ideas and stereotyping of others.
3. Action. I recognize that it will take some very big action to make the changes that need to be made to achieve some kind of justice. But for me I am doing the best I can with the ingredients that I have (as influenced by Bernie). Listening rather than explaining. Cultivating relationships with non-white friends. Speaking up when I can to help change minds. Like sharing that video I posted in #1 with people who say “all lives matter”. Here is a list of 75 things white people can do for racial justice that I review every now and again and see if there is another one of these I can do.https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234

Thanks for listening
Seisen Saunders

It’s been 36 days since George Floyd was murdered. I’ve been feeling grief for Mr. Floyd’s family and close circle, outrage that it has happened yet again, and shame for being complicit with the entire system that put its knee on his neck.

I’ve also been feeling encouraged by the growing awareness of our history of racial injustice, that so many are doing the work to understand the inner functioning of racism, that protests, demonstrations and public hearings are continuing, and that maybe this time, just maybe, we’ll be able to sustain this energy through the months and years it will take to put true reform in place.

I want this council to continue on, as part of that sustaining energy, so that this moment won’t just pass like others have.

I’m very grateful for this practice of council. For encouragement and background, here is a link to a Sun Magazine interview with Jared Oshin Seide, the director of the Center For Council, discussing the practice and reflections on how he uses it in challenging situations:

https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/534/the-power-of-story

Welcome, everyone, to our council. We’re bearing witness to the suffering of Black, Indigenous and People of Color due to current and historic racial injustice.

As we do this, we keep in mind the three tenets of council:
1. Not-Knowing: giving up fixed ideas about ourselves, others and the universe
2. Bearing Witness: to the joy and suffering of the world
3. Taking Action: that arises from Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness

May we open our hearts and awaken the bodhi mind together.