[flute music]
Namaste and welcome.
Many of 
you know of the poet Hafez – one of my favorites -
he is a Sufi mystic.
And one story is that a man came to him and
talked to him about a profoundly enlightening
experience where he had seen a vision of God
and he had merged with light and love and
basically was asking, “Was it real?”
This is the response, “Do you have any goats?”
He nodded.
“Do you have a wife?”
He nodded.
“Children?”
Nodded again.
“Parents?
Friends?
– The realness of that experience shows
itself through the kindness you express with
each being in your life.”
This is the manifestation of a spiritual path
in a human realm: It’s kindness.
And I am aware as I think about it that really
the spiritual path cannot be separated from
our relationships with the world.
And if we think of the most famous spiritual
leaders from the last century – if you think
of Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu
or Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama – each
one of them were social activists – really
dedicated to social activism, responding to
suffering – and they’re particularly social
activists responding to the suffering of the
most oppressed and vulnerable people in the
world.
So notably their activism was out of compassion
and not hatred.
Their activism was a spiritual activism.
Compassion is beyond anything partisan.
It’s the human’s capacity for waking up.
That was their action.
I remember the first time I heard about the
Dalai Lama referring to the Chinese as “My
friend the enemy.”
I thought that was a great way to do it.
You know, he talks about “My religion is
kindness.”
So we are here together for the second of
a two-part series on really evolving our hearts
out of hatred, evolving into compassion.
And last week we explored how we turn on ourselves
- how we turn on ourselves with hatred and
aversion and judgment - and how to wake up
out of that trance of self-hatred.
And so we’re going to explore how we project
that outside of ourselves and how we get locked
into hating another or disliking another,
how they become a “bad other” and how
do we wake up out of that.
And the reality is that most everybody that
I have ever met has felt hurt or threatened
and out of that feeling of being hurt or threatened
has felt the distinct focused aversion towards
what they considered the source of it, what
was causing the trouble, and a reflexive sense
of badness.
And there is one story of a woman who approached
her psychology professor and asked him, “Could
you explain what’s a Freudian slip?”
And the professor is curious and says, “Well
what makes you ask?”
And she says, “Well the other day I was
having lunch with my mother and I meant to
ask her to pass the sault and instead I said,
‘You damn bitch you ruined my life!’”
So when we’ve been hurt, it’s in there
and we lash out – and sometimes it’s conscious
and sometimes it’s unconscious.
So the first step is: We can only start working
with this situation of “bad othering”
if we are conscious that we are doing it,
okay?
We need to know.
When it becomes conscious, there is a wisdom
in us that gradually draws us to letting go
of blame.
When we get conscious.
And I read a pretty interesting illustration.
A woman says, “My daughter and I just had
a knock down drag out bedroom hour.
Finally about ten minutes ago I put her to
bed and threw clenched teeth said, “’I
love you Helen but not another word tonight,
you are going to sleep now, I am done fussing
over stuffed animals.’
‘Mommy?’
I paused on the way out the door and literally
biting my tongue I was so frustrated, ‘What
is it Helen?’
‘I do have one more thing to say!’
Of course she did.
She was standing on the bed with her hands
on her hips too.
Her hair was wild and she was using her arm
to wipe her tears and snot away from her face.
‘Mommy,’ my three-year old said staring
me down with venom in her tiny voice, ‘I
forgive you.’
Then she lay down and cried and honest to
goodness for a hot minute I didn’t know
what to do.
The way she said, ‘I forgive you’ made
it sound like cuss words.
I walked over to the bedside and leaned over.
‘Baby girl, do you know what forgiveness
means?’
She was still sniffling, her face was shoved
deep into her Little Mermaid pillow.
‘Yes,’ she muttered.
I really had to hear this.
‘It means you’re wrong, I am tired of
being mad and now I am going to sleep and
my heart won’t have a tummy ache.’”
Think of that.
“Now I am going to sleep and my heart won’t
have a tummy ache.”
It’s brilliant!
There is something in us that knows that as
long as we hold on to blame we are going to
suffer on some level.
So the “bad othering” that plays out in
our personal life – and we all do it, we
all have people that we think are doing things
wrong and we are angry at and they become
the “bad other” – it also of course
plays out on societal level where our unconscious
biases and our unfazed fears fuel “bad othering”
of certain other groups of people - whether
it’s on basis of their skin color, on basis
of their religion, on basis of their sexual
orientation or their gender identity or their
socio-economic class, political view – we
have groups that become “bad other,” right?
So this is very much played out societally.
And we might not be aware that our “bad
othering” is causing that tummy ache in
the heart; we might not be aware of it, but
it does keep us small and tight and disconnected
from who we really are.
We are really looking at this with the lance
of awakening our spiritual path and that “othering”
gets in the way.
This is Mother Theresa, she says, “If we
have no peace, it is because we’ve forgotten
that we belong to each other.”
So we’re going to focus on this outward
“bad othering.”
And I shared last class Arthur Brooks has
a book called “Love Your Enemy.”
And Arthur Brooks founded a conservative think
tank called the American Enterprise Institute.
And his book and his message is very non-partisan,
it’s very beautiful, it’s very compassion-based.
He himself votes on Republican, he is Conservative
I think for the most part, and he has this
message that I think may be the most important
phrase I’ve heard in a long time that “We
are in a culture of contempt.”
“This is a culture of contempt right now.”
And it’s a really toxic state what’s going
on.
Contempt means…
Contempt is a mix of anger and disgust and
it’s a way that we put down others, push
away others, make them bad.
So these times, if you read the newspapers,
you can feel that energy.
And I talk to a number of people in the last
few weeks, I have had a lot of calls, a lot
of emails – about how much is stirred up.
One friend just shared that she expressed
a lot of trauma from what’s going on, especially
from the news, and, you know, taking in the
news and sent me a cartoon.
The cartoon has this bird in a cage and the
bird is freaked out, it’s… like fur is
all spiked and it’s smoking something, it’s
totally panicked, and the owners are talking
to each other saying, “You know, maybe we
shouldn’t be layering his cage with newspaper
anymore.”
So there is a light side, and it’s disturbing.
I’m going to share a bit more of my own
story of disturbance.
But just to say: One teacher from our community
here in Washington visited with me and she
has been in this country for thirty-eight
years, worked at the IMF for twenty-five years,
Latino woman, light skin Latino woman who,
four years ago when we were having a lot of
diversity/inclusivity meetings, wasn’t so
drawn and didn’t consider herself a person
of color.
Now she does.
And she says she understands a lot more because
she feels like she is now an outsider.
She said to me, “I am one of these immigrants
that doesn’t belong and is endangered.”
And then she looked me in the eyes and said,
“Tara, there is a sickness in the soul of
our society.”
And it’s the cruelty and violence that comes
from “bad othering.”
And what’s important is that we are all
susceptible, it’s part of each of our psyche,
this is not just certain people doing a bad
thing, all of us have this conditioning – it’s
primitive brain conditioning – and what’s
really interesting to watch is that when it’s
triggered it gets contagious.
So the enquiry I’d like to invite us all
together in is: How am I contributing to a
culture of contempt?
How is my own way of thinking and blaming
contributing?
And how can we heal that in a way that really
ripples out?
Because that’s our enquiry.
This is real honest self-examination.
Each of us and groups of us are rigged under
stress-conditioning to get hijacked by the
primitive brain and point.
We grab for ourselves, we push others aside
and when we are threatened we put others down.
So the survival brain is alive and well and
when it dominates it does show up as a sickness
in our society.
So it’s contagious and there is a reactive
looping which happens when the violence by
some creates anger and reactivity in others
and then we make those that are creating “bad
others” into “bad others,” does that
make sense?
When some people do “bad othering” and
causing violence then other people then they
are bad others for doing that.
So we are just continuing the cycle of “bad
othering.”
And to me there is a really important teaching
here which is: It’s really natural to respond
with anger and upset at “bad othering”
when we detect it.
And if we stay and get stuck in our own reactivity,
we block our potential to transform our society.
This is Alan Paton – he is an anti-apartheid
activist – he said, “There is a hard law.
When a deep injury is done to us, we never
recover until we forgive.”
It’s the essence of non-violent activism.
Martin Luther King called it “soul force”
anddd I’ll read you one of my most cherished
of what he taught.
He said, “To our most bitter opponents we
say: We shall meet your physical force with
soul force.
Do to us what you will and we shall continue
to love you.
We can not in all good conscience obey your
unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil
is as much a moral obligation as cooperation
with good.”
And he goes on to say, “One day we shall
win freedom but not only for ourselves.
We shall appeal to your heart and conscience
that we shall win yours in the process.”
This is the same teaching that the Buddhists
describe as “Hatred never ceases by hatred
but by love alone it ceases.
This is an ancient and eternal law.”
So this is kind of the framework for what
we’re going to be exploring more personally.
And because I am asking you to look into yourself
for, you know, where do you react and how
do you work with that, I thought I would share
quite personally my own experience this week
and how I’ve been trying to work with myself.
– Because you know I do that sometimes.
– And it’s not easy because this is just
so immediate and raw but I felt like it was
important to.
Last week – I think it was Thursday or towards
the end of the week – the president went
to El Paso to offer comfort in the wake of
a deadly attack against Hispanic people by
a person who wanted to stop the invasion of
immigrants into this country.
And just hours before, as many of you are
aware, the administration sent federal agents
to meet packing plants in Mississippi and
arrested about six-hundred-and-eighty mostly
Latino immigrants – just a few hours before
he went to offer comfort.
And there was mass confusion in those communities.
The older children were just in their first
day in school of these parents that were being
holed away in buses and imprisoned.
And so on the news what I could hear was people
yelling, “Let them go!
Let them go!
There are children here!”
And I could hear children crying.
And that’s when I just felt this welling
up of anger at the cruelty: this tearing apart
of Latino-immigrant families and that the
president was using the same language as used
by the terrorists “the invasion of immigrants”
so continuing to create the same atmosphere
of violence.
So this…
It welled up in me a lot of anger.
And I turned off the news, I said, “Oh okay,”
you know, “this is,” I could feel it in
me, went on, went back to work including writing
talks about peace and love and meditation
and everything I do, but there I was feeling
this grimness and this tightness and my heart
was like clenched and my anger was very focused,
I was very much a “bad othering,” and
then just more and more in the back of my
mind, “Hatred never ceases by hatred but
by love alone is healed” over and over again,
“Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love
alone is healed.
This is the ancient and eternal law.”
And it brings tears right now because it’s
such a truth.
It’s like, okay, so this body-mind got caught
in that tightness but there is such a bigger
truth.
So I stopped working and I sat down to meditate
and I did a few things.
The first thing is what I call a U-turn where
instead of aiming my anger outward at “bad
others,” I turned around and said, “Okay,
what’s really going on inside here?”
And under the anger what I was feeling was
a huge amount of fear: a fear and powerlessness
for the harm being caused to people that are
vulnerable including… it’s not very many
degrees of separation anymore, it’s like,
you know, friends and their families, that
close.
So fear.
And then underneath that was caring.
And there was mixed into the caring was the
huge amount of grief.
And so I wept, you know, I went from the anger
into the weeping and I just sat there as I
often do with my hands on my heart and I just
cried.
What followed that – I can loop back a little
later – was some more reflecting and some
action that I felt could be helpful in our
world-situation, my own little way.
But what I want to explore together is this
basic rounds of how we wake up out of the
trance that keeps us small, that aims blame
at me or a particular person or a group and
come to some larger place of understanding.
And that’s what I really want to explore.
And some of you may be thinking, “But outrage
and anger is totally appropriate!” because
we may need the energy to do something!”
And it is appropriate.
Anger is intelligent.
And I certainly wasn’t saying, “Oh I shouldn’t
be angry!”
In fact, I think we have to listen to our
anger.
And I know many, many people that are feeling
incredibly angry and disturbed and there is
an intelligence that knows that when there
is violent speech and violent action against
fellow beings that it’s crushing to know
that and that we want to help.
So it’s intelligent.
And here is one of my favorite lines.
This is from a very dear friend and Buddhist
teacher, Ruth King, she says, “Anger is
initiatory.
It is not transformative.”
Anger is initiatory it is not transformative.
We need the energy, it wakes us up, it alerts
us.
But then we need to keep on going to what’s
next.
Another teacher of mine, Ruby Sales who is
a civil rights activist and an elder, she
describes non-redemptive anger is when you
lose access to your deepest intelligence and
wisdom, redemptive anger is when you get energized
but then you move on to out-of-care acting.
So non-redemptive anger – getting stuck
in “bad othering” – actually fuels the
soul-sickness of our society.
And there is a wisdom in us that knows what
Martin Luther King means by “soul force,”
that knows that when we are really, really
alive with caring and when we join hands that’s
soul force, we can act out of compassion to
make a difference.
So what I’d like to do is to take a moment
to reflect, invite you to check in with yourself,
because I shared where I got caught and the
work that helped me.
And just to give you a taste of these two
steps that we can take.
And the first is the U-turn where we come
back to what’s actually going on inside
us and the second step is to bring a really
kind presence to what’s here.
Only then can we act from soul-force.
So you might reflect, scan this week, last
week, where you might have felt hooked in
your own way in “bad othering,” where
you may have felt anger and blame, contempt
or hatred or whatever level kind of fixate
or hook onto a person or a group.
And as part of checking this out, sense what
is the worst part of this for you, really
what is most disturbing so you are honestly
recognizing what’s going on for you.
And for some of you it might not be so externalized on a societal level.
Maybe there is a “bad othering” going
on in your immediate relationships and if
you’d like to work with that you can too.
Or you are making somebody else wrong or the
enemy.
Just sensing the worst part.
And when you’ve really gotten in touch with
the worst part, what you think is most distressing
about this, what most upsets you – and there
may be images with it and so on  - making
the U-turn and sense how the “bad othering”
feels in your body: What goes on?
What’s it like when you are blaming or angry,
when you feel hate or aversion?
How does your heart feel or your mind?
And to deepen the attention you might sense:
If you weren’t caught in the anger, what
underneath that would you have to feel that
would be really painful?
If you had to put aside the anger and really
drop under it, would it be feeling powerless?
Would it be feeling hurt?
Would it be feeling broken-hearted on behalf
of others?
Would it be feeling fear that’s out of control
when it’s going to get worse?
That you are threatened or others are threatened
that you care about?
What’s under the anger?
What’s the most vulnerable place under the
anger?
And you might even just put your hand on your
heart as you pay attention like:
What's really there?
Holding a very kind presence with whatever
vulnerability is there.
Breathing with it.
Sensing under that, the “bad othering,”
is a place of hurt or fear or grief that you
can bring tenderness to.
Because if you can come home to yourself in
this way, feeling the vulnerability bringing
kindness there, then you might be able to
sense your intention to be part of the healing,
to really respond to our world from compassion
with that soul force.
If you’d like you can open your eyes.
What we are exploring together is the inner
work that evolves us from being dominated
or hijacked by hatred.
And some of you may have really gotten in
touch with really strong charge “bad othering.”
And others of you may be they’re tired or
distracted or maybe didn’t have “bad othering”
going on and that’s totally fine, you can
just use this as kind of a template for another
time.
But it’s a critical process for all of us
at some point if we want to transform our
world.
And it takes really deep intention because
it is so much easier than it is to pause and
feel what’s under that.
Anger is way easier.
So it takes a really deep intention otherwise
we get seduced.
And we have to do it over and over.
I didn’t just do one round this week.
I am not telling you about one time that I
happened to say, “Oh hatred never ceases
by hatred” and paused.
It was over and over again because I listen
to the news every day; I’m pretty addicted
these days to it.
And I have to listen and then I have to breathe
and see where I’ve gotten smaller and reopen
again.
What I’d like to do is read you something
I read from Gandhi years ago that really stayed
with me.
And this is him describing his own spiritual
unfolding in this realm.
He said, “I hold myself to be incapable
of hating any being on earth.
By a lone course of prayerful discipline I
have ceased for over forty years to hate anybody.
I know this is a big claim.
Nevertheless I make it in all humility.”
Forty years, okay?
Forty years.
But what I love about this is that that was
the center of his prayer, “Please may this
heart awaken to love.
May I wake up out of hate.”
Ant that’s what’s possible for us: that
we can evolve, we can evolve this heart and
the society’s heart.
So I want to name some elements that can support
us as we are responding to the sickness in
the soul of our society.
This is the ground level: coming back again
and again to where we know we are in a trance,
we know we’re reacting, kind of feels good,
it’s seductive, and we get it: there is
a wisdom in us that gets it that we can’t
help our world if we stay in it.
There is another piece which is seeking to
widen our view very actively.
There is a tendency to think that some individual
is at fault, whereas the “bad othering”
comes from energies that move through all
of our psyches.
It’s not like you get rid of one bad individual
and things change.
It’s in our psyches.
It’s in all of our psyches.
It’s a delusion and unhelpful to fixate
blame.
It doesn’t help.
The other thing is that if you imagine the
person that you are blaming for causing harm,
okay, if you have somebody in mind whether
it’s in your personal life, you know, the
boss that’s being completely unjust and
vindictive or if it’s in the political world,
whatever, if you imagine that person and you
imagine living in their body with their mind
and their heart, wearing the expressions on
that particular face, imagine that, when somebody
is seeking power over others, when someone
is grasping at wealth, when someone is aggressing,
it’s not possible for them to feel love
or for them to feel wonder or tenderness or
peace.
Imagine what it’s like to be that person.
There is a suffering going on and I don’t
say this in a sense of “always, I mean,
there may be certain forms of psychopathology
where a person doesn’t feel the suffering
that goes along with greed and hatred and
delusion – but most of us do to some degree.
So for me after I went through that kind of
like hatred never ceases by hatred and by
love alone is healed” and kind of did the
U-turn I started to widen my view.
And I would imagine when somebody was saying
those words “invasion of immigrants” and
quiet and actually sensed it, I could sense
that there are for so many a very real fear
of losing position, role power and meaning.
And Ruby Sales describes this as “the spiritual
crisis of white America.”
Ruby Sales again is this civil rights activist
I referred to.
And I want to read you a little bit of what
she says.
She says, “It’ a spiritual crisis of white
America and it’s the calling of this time.”
She says, “I don’t hear anyone speaking
to the forty-five year old person in Apalegia
who is dying of a young age who feels like
they have been eradicated because whiteness
is so much smaller today than it was yesterday.
What is it that public theology can say to
this white person in Massachusetts who is
heroine addicted because they feel their lives
have no meaning because of the triple down
impact of whiteness in the world today.”
She talks about her theology as a theology
of love.
She says, “I love everybody.
I love everybody in my heart.
And you can’t make me hate you.
And you can’t make me hate you in my heart.”
And that’s from “Black Spiritual.”
She goes on to describe her mantra or her
way of moving through the world now.
And this is not that long ago that she had
this shift where she says that when she sees
somebody that’s in trouble or that’s acting
in causing trouble she asks the question,
“Where does it hurt?” so she can see beyond
the mask of “bad other.”
Where does it hurt?
And if you look in your own life – and now
I’m talking personally – at somebody you
are angry about and you are blaming and you
first do the U-turn and take care of your
own heart you can start looking at them and
asking that question and it widens your view.
You start getting that they’re struggling
too.
You become bigger.
So that’s one piece is widening your view.
A second piece I want to name is that to begin
to feel that sense of soul force we actually
need to act, that compassion, the mature version
of compassion, has some action.
It can be through our prayers, it can be through
our conversations with each other, it can
be through what we write, it can be through
rallies or it can be through whatever it is
and certainly through voting – please, please
vote – but we need to act.
And that’s the fruition on the Bodhisattva
path, the path of an awakening being, is to
feel compassion and from that compassion act.
And in these days it means acting on behalf
of those who are being violated that may not
have a voice.
These times really are calling us to stand
up for the most vulnerable.
It feels really deep in my heart to say that.
I was reading again a lot of Martin Luther
King over the last week.
One of the things he said that struck me,
he said, “History will have to record that
the greatest tragedy of this period of social
transition was not the stridened clammer of
the bad people but the appalling silence of
the good people.”
We have to act if we want to be true to ourselves
on some level.
Everybody is going to have a different way.
Mostly it helps to be able to act and be part
of acting with others.
I found for myself that if I feel like some
lone voice or I am huddled by myself, you
know, it’s burnout, but when I feel an energy
with others, a caring together, when I remember
how many people care, all of a sudden oh my
Gosh, that’s soul force.
A friend of mine was telling me about visiting
the Redwoods.
As you know Redwood trees are these magestic,
amazing, huge trees.
And he found out that they had very shallow
root system which he thought was really interesting.
So the friend that was showing him… taking
him on this kind of tour he asked her, “How
do they manage to stand so tall?”
And as it turns out red woods grow in clusters
and they interlock their roots.
And I kind of want to close on that note that
there are a lot of forces to trigger us into
the primitive brain that feels separate, threatened
and reactive.
And if we want to keep evolving consciousness,
we really need the togetherness, we need to
interlock our roots and our hearts and our
caring and create the world we believe in.
We need to do it together.
One teacher – Andrew Harvey – said whatever,
you know, find your thing that… the area
that works for you realizing all beings are
part of our heart.
So it may be those that are being violated
– and I don’t even like the word immigrants,
those who have immigrated which is all of
us at some generation or other, right?
– other species, stand up for other species,
stand up for our earth.
Andrew Harvey put it this way, he said, “Follow
your heartbreak.
Follow your heartbreak.”
And hold hands as you are doing it because
we really need to do that, to feel that soul
force.
The trick is not to get a sense of “It’s
not about me,” not to remove ourselves.
Martin Niemöller –who opposed the Nazis
in the 1930’s wrote this, “First they
came for the socialists I did not speak out
because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and
I did not speak up because I was not a trade
unionist.
Then they came for the Jews and I did not
speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one
left to speak for me.”
We need to act not out of hatred but because
we belong together, because we care.
There is a woman that went to the genocide
memorial center in Rwanda.
And when she came back she had written down
what was engraved on one plak and she sent
it to me.
Here is what she found: “If you knew me,
and you really knew yourself, you would not
have killed me.”
There is a connectedness that we’ll discover
but we each need to dedicate like Gandhi did,
you know, just have it be our prayer, “Please
may I evolve out of that hatred.
Please may I remember the love.”
It means every day when we catch ourselves
getting in the trance some part of us, “Wait
a minute!
Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love
alone is healed” and make the U-turn and
bring kindness inward and then look again,
widen our view, hold hands and act.
So let’s take a few minutes to close together.
Inviting yourself into presence.
Taking a moment to scan and sense if there
is any way you’ve turned on yourself that
you’re holding against yourself right now,
if there is any way that you are making yourself
a bad other feeling the intention from your
own wisdom heart to let go of blame, to breathe
with what feels vulnerable and to offer some
gesture of kindness to yourself, some words,
some reminder to open your heart to yourself.
And then feeling that same intention to evolve
into love you might sense where there is something
between you and feeling connected with another
person in your life right now, just anybody
that comes to mind.
And without knowing the pathway from here
to there, just sense really your aspiration,
“May there be more loving.”
Maybe feel your own vulnerability in the relationship
– what’s hurting, where you feel fear,
disappointment – hold that with kindness.
And perhaps now or at some point in the not
distant future you can look at them and in
some way ask that question, “Where does
it hurt?”
And sense how they are struggling too.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have
forgotten that we belong to each other.”
We’ll close with a shared prayer.
To sense the beings in our life – those
that we know, those that we don’t know – all
those that are vulnerable right now and afraid,
all those that are closed and cut off, all
those beings everywhere that are struggling
for survival, we hold in our heart the earth,
our mother, and all beings.
May all beings awaken into loving presence
that’s their very essence.
May all beings be held in loving presence.
May all beings be happy, know the natural
joy of being alive.
May all beings live in natural peace.
May there be peace on earth.
May there be peace on earth.
May there be peace on earth and peace everywhere.
May all beings awaken and be free.
Namaste.
