we've been very fortunate to have his brother here to talk about his experiences in life talk about buddhism talk about you know meditation talking about things that i think all people should know a little bit about the problem with so many of us we don't know each other and we don't know what you're of the you know thing our traditions are so then there's always misgivings there's always you know we always have suspect and so forth so this is  buddhism is for black americans a conversation but it's also for for other people to kind of get insight so without further ado i want you to tell your story well what i wanted to make sure and give a shout out to the buddhist the africa african american buddhist l g b t q community they're doing some fantastic work in places where people have been reluctant to try and some some place systems you know same sex relationships is against the doctrine that doesn't mean that people insane sex relationships or exploring their sexuality are less human and so they too have the same challenges with their emotions that we do in the sisk community and i just want to you know i know that there are people who've been out there for at least the last twenty years holden space creating safe places to go sharing meditation techniques encouraging people to broaden their horizons in terms of what buddhism is for them to encourage their political activity and to really meet the needs of their community and i cannot speak for them but i think it's important to send that shout out and  and that's one of the reasons is nothing in the buddhist doctrine that says that that a person's sexuality restricts them in any way or lessens them or great or makes them greater than anyone so that that being said  you know one of the things i wanted to to remind folks about myself is you know i am a ghetto boy i was raised in a place where you know the neighbor down the street put their woman put put her baby in a pot of boiling water and you know there was crime everywhere there was violence everywhere we had white young men going through our neighborhood shooting up the  houses we had riots at our high school one time i went out the front door of my high school and the there was a police line always down the street in the middle of the street on the other side was screaming yelling yelling white kids you know saying all kinds of epithets and threatening us this is the sixty's and it was intense and i tried to get away from that by going to college and within the first three weeks i smell smoke in my dormitory i thought let me call in and pull the fire alarm do you know save everybody and when i open the door this cross was burning and fell on fell on the carpet so i spent that moment stomping on it and sort of had that you know kind of in my face racism and we had riots in our in our university in the common area and over food white fraternity was having a food fight and our members in slow motion a piece of cake flew up in the air and hit a sister i in my my theater training i i i disinform was accepted for study at the royal academy of dramatic art in london patronized by the queen of england on governor street and  when i finally made it to the front door and i was about to step over the threshold i thought to miles i said i thought to myself somebody made a mistake i should not be doing this i did not feel worthy i had addition to against every young actor in the english speaking world and i had made my place but still i didn't feel it was my place because i took my injury from america with me and so you know i am not i was not a privilege kid i did not grow up isolated in insulated from what was going on i remember martin's success on the steps of the lincoln memorial i remember seeing his  his casket going down the street i remember malcolm on on television debating and you know being shocked at that what he would had the unmitigated gall to say and i remember the seeing him splayed up you know with a shotgun blast  remember seeing tanks in armored carriers going down the street and men with fixed bayonets in the beating and and the bludgeoning in all the the brothers who had come back from the vietnam war who weren't and want to jump in the cars with their rifles  and going into the city because they were just because they take it anymore and where i grew up in all of that and buddhism the control of the upset in my humanity is my response because if i were to move forward in my life i couldn't be a father holding on that i couldn't be a loving husband i couldn't be anything and i couldn't live with myself and so i think that you know if you want to break it down to what it what it is why i'm into this i'm not thinking buddhism is so great i just knew i was like a somebody who went to the hospital and try to find the medicine that would work for me and that's all it is and  and so that i like the fact that it can be shared and i say this to all of my buddhist teaching colleagues who are afraid to teach in the black community who are afraid to talk to the nation of islam who are afraid to look in the mirror and see the ugliness in themselves we have to be better than this see because there's nobody coming for our community that's for sure but us and it's how we this is our time this is our time to make a statement to our young people we know the feelings that they go through because we had to and we know who survived and who didn't and so this is our time regardless of what track  to return that investment that was made to us that mulattoes to be here exactly so you know that's that's what's behind my interest in buddhism and you know we have not sent discoverers into the buddhist world from our community very much so i tell people it's like looking at the stars you know and an astronaut who wonders what it's like up there i'm simply a buddha or not i wondered what it was like in the buddhist world because i saw my family and my friends were pictures of them how did that happen and i thought that's all that's been is and to use that as a healing mechanism you know that's that's that's a very important thing and there are there are we have a whole new crop of young muslims young buddhists young christians young scientists young doctors you know and they to the extent that we can inspire them with what we have been through in our lives to let them know that what comes at you is survivable and you need to check your baggage and make sure that you're not taking something in the future that's going to destroy you you know i mean this type of thing so i just wanted to thank you for your invitation for me to come and do these shows and to send send that message that's you know leaving here without saying that would have seemed to have been and i hear it from this one group the green party and their thing is have people come up and express the things that have happened in their lives and then how can they kill from it ok you expressed your history your disappointment your sadness ok so now how can i kill from this and these people tell their stories you know openly in the public right and other people doing the same thing then other people in the audience they say yeah i've gone through the same thing but i didn't want to express that because i feel that it would be maybe i'm not strong enough or it's a shortcoming and what other people have been the same thing and then this whole right whol this hurt you know because when a people have been subjected like what we have i mean we lost our culture you know this you know our religious traditions spiritual traditions our and return the deed of my mind to myself i had to come to grips with the fact that i am the world and in the world i'm around here this is not my place this is america i love america i'm american and i represent it but as a human being this is not my place i'm disconnected disassociated in a way that i can never go back i will never be able to be at one with my human history so therefore as a moron what is the way out how do i heal myself stop stop looking around for the add sers and i came to the conclusion that the healing for me begins inside now you see me travel all over the world i've sort of share that with you but let me say this where do you think the money came from i don't pay to travel people invite me all over the world because i work so hard on myself that for some reason it's inspirational to people last year i was invited to  by the government of india in the land of buddha to come and speak along with twenty law professor black law from professors from from colleges and universities in america along with  and a conference that also included dr king's son and raul gandhi and nine thousand people showed up and it was a great honor as a ghetto boy to be invited by the government of india in the land of buddha to come and just and that and the conference was on social justice so that's not important what's important is that i have worked hard to be a better person and that is a common language in the world if you we all struggle but if you if you can achieve a certain level of accomplishment in going inside and healing yourself that it becomes apparent to people and you can move through the world as an ambassador of personal inner transformation and so this buddhism gave me that ability i was in as i told you i was in the psych business for twenty years i didn't get it because i was allowed to not see myself as my own problem but buddhism does didn't allow me to do that i went to war with my weapons these are my weapons getting a beat on my ego outside and inside and then causing it to surrender to my will and there is no greater effort that our human being can make regardless of your faith every face faith has this aspect to it so you don't have to go here or go there or do it compare or see the higher the lower the judgment or this or that you just need to use what you have available to you and see who the real culprit if you decide it's factions in life and when you come to that conclusion and you realize you're marooned and nobody's coming for you you know who the doctor is that you need yourself you know what the medicine is your own mind and you know who the patient is your own dissatisfactions and so buddhism is like this but it's not unique to buddhism and so when we do that work so we've got to give people actual techniques and methods on how to help and heal themselves you can't just say you need to heal exactly see so that's why i'm with you today and i'm trying to share  shared the outward aspects of it you know travel you know that type of thing but inwardly what is the actual technique it was the blueprint yeah it is it is recognizing that the only person coming to destroy your life is you and the only person who can save you from you is you and and if you don't get about that work the inevitability is that no in the nature of anger alone and there are many other deleterious emotions but knowing that anger of the nature of of below the nadir so this is a scepter but it's also a weapon because this is the representation of where we look for that he goes hiding outside and inside and then we attack it with this weapon this is the wielding the the scepter and the bell of compassion when we attack it i love you don't run my life don't destroy me i will hold you safely don't be afraid i've got you i've got your back we're going to do this life is death is coming so between now and then let's let's be partners let's not be against each other and this symbol here is the this is the yang this is the union the power of the union yet never been separated and we pray in life you must use the time that you have to not be distracted to get to that point and then hold on the point and you can do that and and have a job and you  know take care your family raise your job you do all that and this at the same time in our tradition when i practice i tell my students i do not give a flying anything about you and what you think about your meditation i want to talk to your wife i want to talk to your kids because until they see a change in you based on your belief whatever your thinking is irrelevant  so the measure of i'm saying i'm sure that a technique and hard work more to locals of the focus is now what is the measure of success to measure of success of is the people around you are relieved of the burden of you not doing your work this is what it's all about it's not unique to buddhism but the family where the the father turns around and starts being angry starts drinking or that the son decides to give up you know gang life or the drugs or you know abusing women and so with the person who changes the behavior the being brings relief to the people who have no choice in being close to you because they love you then you understand the locus of the focus and the measure of success and the rest is how you are by yourself too it's of so you know a lot of people come to  me and i say this not in our community i see this all over the world in france i say it to my friends translator in sweden i say it to my swedish translator in india i said through my indian translator in cambodia i say it to my camp because everywhere in the world this what i just said is applicable right it's a human thing and it is not located in a particular faith we men have to have a reckoning with our own humanity for the betterment of those around us we abandoned marooned people in this american experience must rise to be if necessary global leaders and how to accomplish overcoming great suffering and if and when we do that and the world is waiting for us they are there waiting there sitting up there will cain we saw dr king and then we saw malcolm we saw the pastors and that they're waiting for us and this is our time that's my my feedback you know and from from from asking people all over the world you know what do you really want from african american we want you guys to stand up and be who you we know you are right and i don't that's not a judgment that's not up it's not a putdown it's a call for us to rise above the goings on that we see when the african american people and will be all of us or whatever but it'll be a good number you know when we get ourselves together from this person these people this group can do it then anybody can humanity and i'm saying if that happens to me and this is my little thinking that the universe will be complete i cannot tell you what it's like to be a ghetto child on the border of russia and here in heavy russian accents them quoting dr king malcolm knowing about the path there's alice walker you know on the other side of the earth in a culture that's not to hear them passionately talking about the liberty of aspects of those efforts and how it affected the people of russia and to be down in the slums of india where literacy is that is the is a way of life for them to talk about d king they know c their leaders know even though that the people are ignorant they they spent a lot of time talking to them by radio back in the day and touring india and explaining the african american up from slavery story and these people who are illiterate memorized our story and i hear them recount it as something memorable that they heard that even after all these years and i met you know elders who heard this discussion back in the fifty's you know they heard about african americans and the boys and madame c j walker and all of the efforts to get black soldiers out of the dregs of military life and into the throes of battle or whatever they wanted to do all of these things that here these these these people who i mean you you look at them and you think they have nothing but they know who we are so we have already impacted the world we have changed the world we are a model for people who have no chance whatsoever to even understand the basic freedoms that we know and take for granted every day we are a light to them and and so that is that is our duty it doesn't matter what what's going on in washington d c and what the you know what color hat somebody wears and what phrase they put on it this this all we've seen all these things come and go before our wedding what stays is what is our response what is our dignified response as human beings and so you know i agree with you yes that that this this is a very important and seminal issue and unfortunately we don't travel as a community and if we do we travel like tourists and everything is made in prepared for us and so we never think it engage with people on a humanistic level but when you make the effort to do that you find that you know african americans despite what we've been through are highly regarded in this world and so that's our legacy that's our tradition that's who we are doesn't matter what we're called here who we are in the world is significant and so i agree with you and and i'm just giving you feedback having traveled in all these places i'm not i don't read this in a book been  i didn't i didn't go to a lecture and hear about this i mean these feet right here been down the road and you know brave the cold in the heat and the jungle in the mosquitoes and the freezing temperatures and the abuse and all of it so i think you're right i think the world is looking for us to return to the elegance of our greatest leaders and our generation if