The Art Of Non-Discrimination

There is some hesitation,

But I think that's a good,

Uncomfortable feeling to be sitting with.

So we'll start from there.

So what I want to talk about today is being at home in the world.

And to start off,

I think it's well enough to start off with what do we mean by home?

And so for me,

When I was thinking about this,

What does it mean to be at home with myself?

And upon reflecting on this,

It has to do with this sense of belonging where you are,

The sense of security,

Safety.

There is a kind of warm temperature to being at home for me.

And I think it's quite easy to feel not at home.

I think that is probably the more typical experience.

And so what does it mean to feel like you're not at home in the world?

And that's to feel this sense of disease.

The sense that there's a kind of background neurotic layer of just kind of like it's OK,

It's not great.

And there's this sense that you need to grab onto things.

And you can see it a lot when you think of its subtle ways of showing up is when we are often grasping things.

I had a experience in my life where I was listening to like audio books and nonstop and studying nonstop.

And it was quite fun.

But I began to notice that there was this subtle motivation that was beyond gaining knowledge.

I couldn't really stand the silence of just sitting with myself.

The sense that I needed to do something,

The sense that I needed to grab onto something external in order to feel sober.

So for me,

I kind of started off with my search for a home.

And this started a long time ago.

So I was apparently born in Corpus Christi,

Texas.

And I say apparently because I don't have any recollection of the place.

And it's supposedly on the seaside,

Which is quite nice to know that I was born near seaside.

And quickly,

Probably by the time I was one or two,

I was orphaned.

And then I went into foster care.

And by the time I was 16,

I think I had lived in eight different families,

Maybe more,

Maybe a little less.

And so the precarity of home for me was much more obvious.

But there's two sides of that coin.

And the first side is,

I guess it's good to give a little color to the families that I lived with.

And I'll try to explain them in conventional terms,

Which won't do them the greatest justice.

But in the allotted time I have,

I guess we'll have to go forward with that.

So I've lived in families where getting a $0.

39 cheeseburger on Wednesday nights was expensive.

So very poor families.

And I've also lived with very rich families where smuggling in two monkeys from Nevada that cost a fortune back to California was kind of fun,

What they would call fun.

So I've also lived in quite extravagant families.

And across all those,

They are also what you would call different culturally.

So I have lived in a,

Traditionally speaking,

In a Filipino family.

I've lived in a Mexican family.

I've lived in a African American family,

A white family,

A British Irish family.

Let's see if I'm forgetting any.

An Indian family from India.

And on the surface,

I say that because we often think that that is a way to find differences.

And so,

Of course,

In one family,

Picking up a fork and eating was perfectly appropriate.

And in another family,

Eating with your hands was appropriate.

And then if I went back and used my hands in one family,

That was seen as barbaric.

And using a fork was seen as pretentious.

And so I was a really confused little,

I guess I could say boy,

I don't even know if I identify that much as a boy even.

And so I went through each of these families living with them and I started to.

So for me,

I should say this,

Because I think it adds some good colors that I never really thought of.

So I could do it in comparison.

So there was other kids that were living there,

Some biological,

Some foster who suffered much more than I did.

And so I want to make it clear that I think I am a very lucky person.

And a lot of times their suffering stemmed from this distinction between the real family and the fake family or the temporary family.

And seeing that when they were living in the family with me,

That wasn't their biological family.

They felt like they needed to get out of there as soon as possible.

But I never felt that sense of needing to go back to the real family.

And I didn't have a sense that there was such a thing as a real family.

And in certain ways that might be saddening,

But I actually felt like it saved me from a lot of suffering that I saw in these other children.

And so as I watched them suffer from having this belief that these parents,

These new parents were not good enough,

That there was something greater that they needed to get back to this authentic real place.

I think I started to see at a very young age how these ideas were parasitic.

They could be parasitic.

It could also be very helpful.

And so at a young age,

I think I quickly began to adopt whatever.

So on the test that I would take,

I would sign my sometimes gender changes,

Mostly racial changes,

Whatever race the family was.

And so I felt very loose in my identity.

And because of this,

I had the opportunity to really begin to look for my true home.

And then to be able to realize that my true home is not limited to any one family or to any one location,

Race,

Sex,

To any identity that we usually identify with and find belonging with,

I was able to see at a young age that there was something greater that I could feel at home in the world no matter what family I was in.

And I could adopt whatever it is that their values were and begin to see that within myself,

There was what I first thought were contradictions because I came from this British family and they talked this way.

And then I went to this other family where that way of talking was.

And I felt constantly like I was contradicting myself.

And then eventually,

Once that breakthrough started to happen,

I started to see that I could not claim any of these identities.

I could not claim that I am British,

That I am white,

That I am black,

That I am Mexican,

That I am Filipino.

And it is more of the case that I am all of these things.

That within me,

That I contain multitudes.

And that I could see that that was the only way for me to not contradict myself,

To see that in myself.

And so what I discovered was the kind of the art of non-discrimination.

And not that a social activist sense,

More so in the sense of living in order to be at home in the world,

You must practice the art of non-discrimination.

And the way to do that is to begin to look at things at a much deeper level than we usually do.

And so just giving a working definition of non-discrimination.

It meant that when I moved to China for a project and was able to live in between with my partner and her parents,

That the distinction between Chinese and American was basically not there for me.

That I could easily connect with these people who maybe they themselves saw me as an American initially were quickly able to see that we were connected in the same way that their next door neighbors would be.

And so for me,

It's not really about the other person reaching this because we can't expect that.

But when we act out of this place of non-discrimination and what I mean is utterly no discrimination.

In seeing that the contradictions when I spoke with certain families,

They would say,

Well,

We're a Mexican family.

This is what Mexicans do.

And then I'd see contradictions and they say,

And of course,

The white people are like this.

And then I say,

Well,

I lived with them and that wasn't the case for all of them.

And there would just continue to be these contradictions.

And when you really look inside the complexity of what it means to be human,

You arrive at non-discrimination.

It doesn't mean that people aren't different.

They surely are.

They're just not different in the very clean ways we like to describe them in culture.

In fact,

If you go into a family that's Mexican and one that's black,

Let's say,

You're going to find as much differences between the people and the family as you will between the groups.

And that's something I discovered quite directly.

So the root of all this is non-discrimination.

And in order to do that,

I think that's the question is how do you not discriminate?

If I want to be at home in the world,

That means there cannot be this large distinction between myself and the other.

Because if I go to China and I see the image,

I create this image in my head of myself,

Who I am,

And it's this professional person,

Data scientists,

American person,

And I see that that's me.

And then I create another image of the Chinese person and I use that as a way to compare myself as a way to say that I can't be at home in the world because they're just not like me.

And so this is a very limited view to not see that they themselves contain multitudes and contain the suffering,

A lot of the suffering that you've been through and a lot of the joy.

And so in practicing this,

You have to first give up the idea that you are this solid sense of self.

And you already know this because you are constantly contradicting yourself,

Likely.

If you're not,

Then you have a really good defensive complex going on.

But typically,

We live in contradiction.

We say we want to be this way,

I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and then we don't.

And then there's all sorts of these contradictions.

All you have to do is look inwards and see that they're always there.

And they're not actually contradictions.

They're only contradictions against the background of discrimination.

You can discriminate against yourself by saying,

I should be like this.

But you're currently,

At least for the moment,

Not.

And so now you've discriminated by creating this better self versus current self.

And now there's conflict.

And we do this all the time.

And so moving towards non-discrimination,

It doesn't mean that we don't see differences.

I also want to make that clear.

We are uniquely different in some interesting ways.

It's just that we are mostly the same.

And so what does it take for us to see a bird outside and see that as close as family as we would a person that we've known for 20 years?

And of course,

This is an aspiration.

But when we can do that,

Imagine how at home in the world you would actually be,

Where you can,

Wherever you are,

Look to the things around you and fill your connection with them.

And that's really the basis of non-discrimination.

So the next thing I'll do is if you can bring up something in your room and your place,

Just a simple thing.

I'm just going to bring up this plant.

And you can bring up anything.

It doesn't have to be an organic.

It can be a piece of wood.

And I wanted to teach something that the Zen teacher,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

Teaches.

And it's called interbeing.

And it says,

Basically,

If you look at the plant at the most shallow level,

You see the forms.

You see the colors,

The texture.

And that's the plant.

But when you look deeply into the plant,

Just in this simple plant,

You can see the sun.

You can see clouds.

You can see people.

You can see that this plant is actually made up of nothing but non-plant elements.

I'm really trying to take that in.

This plant is made up of nothing but non-plant elements.

And if we keep going back to the root,

To the seed,

And we go back even further to where there were no plants,

We end up seeing that there's only one root.

That actually in this plant,

The whole cosmos exists.

And it's not in a.

.

.

I'm not just saying this in an artsy way.

But I'm saying,

Actually,

The plant is made up of,

Scientifically,

Nothing but non-plant elements.

And if you look at your face,

And if you really try to think deeply looking at your face and try to pull it back all the way to the point where maybe in the Big Bang,

It was scattered across as minerals,

As rocks,

And that your current formation is a temporary formation that when you so-called die,

You become figments,

And eventually that forms into something else.

So in a sense,

The garbage,

Which we call compost,

Is the flower.

So within this flower,

I can see the garbage.

So everything is within it.

And it means I cannot draw a line between myself and the plant when I look deeply.

So that is interbeing.

And so that means that to be American is to be made up of non-American elements.

That means to be white is to be made up of non-white races.

And you can continue to break it down.

Now what this does is it can be somewhat overwhelming because you cannot distinguish the bad guy from the good guy.

Because within the bad guy,

The good guy has to exist.

And so we cannot make these harsh distinctions between the other.

And now we can notice that these distinctions only exist in the shallow realm of seeing.

But we can train ourselves to actually see from this deeper perspective.

And so you may look at me and see an American or an Indian or an African American or a British person.

But I can assure you that I am made up of everything but those elements.

And it's not a denial of those things.

It's to say that if what you mean by that is to create a distinction between yourself and I,

Then it cannot be true.

And it's a temporary illusion.

And so that's interbeing,

Seeing that within a flower,

Within a plant,

We can see the whole cosmos.

And so to kind of end on the interbeing note,

I want to read part of the poem by Thich Nhat Hanh.

And it's called,

Call Me.

Please call me by my true names.

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply.

I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch,

To be a tiny bird with wings still fragile,

Learning to sing in my newness,

To be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

To be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry,

In order to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river.

I am the bird which when spring comes arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond.

I am also the grass snake who approaches in silence and feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda,

All skin and bones,

My legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12 year old girl,

Refugee on a small boat,

Who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

My heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of drug lords with plenty of power in my hands.

I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people,

Dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring,

So warm it makes flowers bloom and all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears,

So full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

So I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,

So I can see that my joy and my pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

So I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open,

The door of compassion.

So I'll just pause there.

I didn't get through what I wanted to,

But I actually feel this I'm content with leaving it here.

And so I leave I want to leave time for questions.

And I want to just conclude with that in this talk,

I hope that I could convey to you that you contain multitudes that you are if you fill yourself as a contradiction.

It's quite natural because you are you contain multitudes and that being at home in the world requires you to see that you are utterly unconditionally connected to everything.

And that means that you may have to give up taking strong sides where you see a bad guy that isn't filled with good or a good guy who isn't filled with bad.

And if you can come to do that in your by way of mindfulness by looking deeply by being mindful of what arises,

Then you can come home and it will always be with you wherever you go.

So thank you,

Guys.

Thank you,

Christian.