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I remember speaking to a group of ninety-nine People of Color—one of the very few POC talks I had given. There was one white person who showed up for the talk, and they wanted me to ask him to leave. I was told they didn’t feel comfortable—didn’t feel safe—with that one person there. I was dumbfounded! I asked them who put such a notion in their heads that one white person (they didn’t even know) was that threatening? I did not ask him to leave. I gave an excellent talk that night on dharma that transcended racial disparity. They benefited, and so did he. Anything I can say to one person, I can say to any person. It is not words as much as the spirit of harmlessness they ride upon.

When we walk into a room, we should come in loving and accepting ourselves. Don’t you know our worth is not dependent on others loving us? Come with the love offering and the notion that wrapped up in that gift is the courage and compassion to deliver it in person.

The truth is, everybody is not going to love you or accept you. You have to have enough love and acceptance for yourself. And when you keep building on just that, acceptance overflows and spills onto those who deserve it and those who don’t. In other words, you can look on all people with the same equanimity, helping or instructing some when you can, accepting others when you can’t.

When you don’t have self-acceptance, resentment flourishes that leads to hatred and all manner of unrighteous conduct. Being a woman in this Black skin for seventy years has taught me that! This is not about just race but about all kinds of differences and biases. There is temptation to aversion everywhere! But this is precisely what the dharma addresses and ensures victory over if we have the patience and courage to learn it, practice it, and perfect it.

You have to have enough love and acceptance for yourself. And when you keep building on just that, acceptance overflows and spills onto those who deserve it and those who don’t.

What I know is true, is that we impart what is in us. So there is this constant exchange of energies in the world. What is my contribution to it all? That’s the question I ask myself again and again.

If we look at our country, we have to admit that things are much better on the surface as the centuries have passed. But the perspectives that defined the emerging nation have not changed much from the 1600s. Some laws and rules have made things better, but scratch just beneath the surface and all the poisons and defilements are still there.

I see it in India and Thailand, too, as I work with inequities of outlawed “untouchability” and sanctioned patriarchy. I see it here in our society in regards to race, social injustice, income and opportunity disparity, immigration, and too many other issues. I also see it even within the small American bhikkhuni sangha of which I am a part, gatekeepers including and excluding sisters based upon narrow and debatable interpretations of “correct” procedures. Yes, when virtue is lost, we need to create laws. But we should also recognize their insufficiency to change hearts. After all, laws are for the lawless.

So what can change us from the inside? I believe that’s the work of the sages—those who have cried out from their own bowels, “Give me a clean heart and renew an upright spirit within me. . . then will I teach transgressors the way”—and have then done the work. A certificate does not a sage make! So we should be careful about overinflation of capability and eagerness to establish a “brand.”

One cannot hold this station if they are not both ready and able to surrender all—fame, status, wealth—for the excellency of upholding the truth. It takes a superior vision beyond the ordinary worldly view, courage, and compassion. It also takes surrendering an attachment to the pains one has become acquainted with. That’s the difficult part. We cannot play the victim. That will always presume a power over us.

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