Translator: Sue McGregor Reviewer: Denise RQ
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thoughts creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
Kindness in silence creates unity.
Therefore, the highest form of wisdom is kindness.
So please join me
in ten seconds of silence, please.
(Silence)
Many of you don’t know me,
and I’d like you to know
that I love you all, each and every one of you.
And you might think, “How’s that going to look like?”
I want you to remember
the next time that you look at the sky,
and this is our other cosmic home, the Milky Way,
a hundred billion stars,
and like that galaxy, there’s another;
a hundred billion galaxies like that.
But now, what is different about this time and age
is that in every star that you see, there is another planetary system,
and that was just discovered last year.
Many people have thought about that,
but now we have the means to detect Earth-sized planets.
Now we have close to 3,500 extra solar planets,
planets orbiting other stars,
and we know that 75% of all the stars in the Milky Way
are little red stars,
and around those little stars,
there are more likely super Earths, or planets like the Earth.
So now we have a catalogue of planets like the Earth.
So imagine, in 1606, when Galileo was grabbing those lenses
instead of spying on people and being fearful,
he’s like, “Let me look at those little sparks over there.”
And imagine the surprise when he thought
that that little bright light actually wasn’t a star but was a planet.
And that actually Copernicus was right
that there were some moons orbiting Jupiter,
and the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
With that came the Renaissance of humanity.
So I think that now, at least in the West,
because many other cultures already knew that, intuitively.
But now is very exciting times because we are in what I say,
in a new Renaissance of humanity.
So you can think about what I’m talking about here –
I’m talking about here
is how radical love can liberate the Earth,
meaning that the next time you see this
– this is not any flag;
I just like to call it our smiles flag.
Everybody loves it!
When I bike in there, in East Oakland, black brothers and sisters say,
“Hey you! I love your flag.”
Police officers smile, Chicano folks.
I’ve been in scientific communities, in elementary schools,
you name it, everybody loves it! –
So now we have a catalogue of planets like the Earth.
So we can think that it doesn’t matter what country,
what religion, what sexual orientation you are,
what matters is to be a responsible citizen of the world.
So that we can say the Earth is but one country,
and all living beings, visible and invisible, are citizens.
And not only that, we’re living in unprecedented times here,
because you might have heard about what happened in North Dakota,
where soldiers that have fought imperial wars,
and clergy that have participated in cultural genocide
– so you have cultural and physical genocide –
and these people have touched their heart that connect their minds,
and their mind is saying, “Go there and ask for forgiveness”
to the indigenous people.
So one thing is to talk about it, one thing is to read it in books,
but when you see these people were there,
and they knelt down, and you have the vets, and you have the clergy,
and all surrendered to the leadership
of indigenous people, especially indigenous women.
So for a recovering sexist, me,
to see that, that was pretty powerful.
A teacher of us, Joanna Macy,
call it we’re living the great turning,
a transition from an industrial growth society
to a sustained or a regenerative society.
Perhaps it’s time to have the understanding of science
and put it together with a world view, the indigenous world view
with a heart.
Gandhi put it very clearly, the three Hs:
the head, the heart, and the hands.
That is the secret to happiness.
What Sister Shira was sharing before,
how she was overflowing with that gratitude,
she felt that wisdom, she needed to share it.
So that’s what happen when you align your head, your heart, and your hands.
So I want you also to imagine an iceberg;
another friend Kris Mur Beckman likes to say,
this is the Gandhian Iceberg:
a non-violence manifesto in the age of the great turning.
Basically, an iceberg, if you can imagine it,
it only comes above the surface, only 10% of that,
and the 90% is below.
So imagine what Gandhi did with all this non-violence
and civil disobedience that inspired Martin Luther King Jr,
Cesar Chavez, and Aung San Suu Kyi, and so many others.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
That’s kind of a by-product.
That’s non-violent civil disobedience, that’s disobeying with great love.
But then you have the other part that you can see,
that’s the constructive program, the alternatives,
the independent media, the preventative medicine,
restorative justice, things that inspire people.
But you do not see that 90% of all that spiritual work
that requires to embody that forgiveness.
And so, how are we going to put together,
I say, in order to align all that,
and have activists and spiritual people,
we need spiritual people to become active,
and activists to become spiritual.
So you have an inner revolution together with an outer revolution
to put the total revolution of the human spirit.
And I’ll share a quote
from Einstein
because I came to this part of the planet
attracted by the love and the sense of wonder of the universe
and got accepted into UC Berkeley to do a PhD in astrophysics,
because I love to look at the stars.
At the same time,
when the administration of Brother George Bush
decided to say, “We’re going to make a new set of nuclear weapons,”
I said, “Wait a minute!
I’m not against science.
I’m against the unethical implications of science.”
So it doesn’t matter that I’m here, in UC Berkeley getting my PhD;
we have enough PhDs; We need Ph”Do”s or Ph”Be”s.
So it doesn’t matter– I need one second, you know,
or one year to get my PhD,
I don’t want to receive a title from an irresponsible institution
that is putting at risk the survival of our species.
They say, “Alright, so if you don’t want to be here, you have 30 days to leave.”
That was Homeland Security,
Well, that was nine years ago.
So I’m here, disobeying with great love,
one of the most destructive empires in the history of humanity,
moment by moment.
How? With love.
So I’m one of the 12 million undocumented human beings
that want a better world.
We don’t want violence, we want love and generosity.
And If we wanted to prevent oppression,
we’re going to serve the oppressor.
How we’re going to serve the oppressor?
By preventing them from their oppression.
If there is someone bullying, you will be in service to that bully
by preventing them from their oppression.
So I’m so happy to be here with you
that I will share that quote for sure.
The movement in Standing Rock
started with people like you, with youth that said,
“We cannot put profit over people,
we cannot put profit over the health of our Earth.
Water is life.
And it was women that lead that too, afterwards.
So I want to share a story
of some people that are really aligned with the head, the heart, the hands,
about all this movement:
is the [inaudible] family.
They have been hosting very near from here,
a gathering and people can go there.
And the first hour, you’re in silence
so you can meditate, contemplate, celebrate,
whatever you want to do.
The second hour, people share some of A-ha! moments
from a passage that could be anything inspiring.
And the third hour,
you have this delicious meal that’s being served with so much love in silence,
and this mom comes and gives you seconds and thirds,
and you’re just overwhelmed with this love,
and anyone can go.
That sounds fun, you know, to do it,
but can you do it for almost 20 years every single Wednesday?
And so to be that radically generous when they’re telling us
you need to get profit to disobey the market in that way,
that’s revolutionary.
Or to be grateful,
but we’re talking about also go [back].
This is part of those…
…teachings of indigenous people that are so grateful for what they have.
So when you are grateful–
People say you need to have more and more,
but you are grateful about what you have;
that’s revolutionary.
And how these water protectors are defending their land.
They might jump in from this generosity here
in the city, at small scale, or our own minds;
when you are there, inside.
What did these ten little seconds of silence, or that hour
in the [inaudible] family when they do this?
We are rewiring our brains.
Because if someone says you can have 10,000 hours
of something that you can do, you become an expert on that activity.
And you don’t have to… you know, the Michael Jordan Center.
But what about if we become experts and automatic
on kindness, and generosity, and courage?
So our conscious mind can capture 20 transactions per second
while our subconscious mind can do like six orders of magnitude more – 20 million.
So there’s– possible that–
How we’re going to be dealing with that? We need to quiet our minds,
If we were only able to listen to the silent discourses of the stars,
we were living divine experiences with our own lives.
And indigenous people knew that.
When I was with the Lakota,
these women were very clear;
the way they call the stars in Lakota,
they call it, “wichahpi”
from “wicha-” which is a human being
and then the other part is falling; is a falling human being.
So every time that they are referring to a star,
they are referring to a falling human being or relative to a star.
They call it the star people, or the tree people, or the bison people.
And so, there is this connection and reverence to light.
And that’s when it connects to science:
the carbon in your skin,
the oxygen that you’re breathing,
the calcium in your bones,
the iron in your blood come from those explosions of those stars.
And these people knew there was a connection with that,
that we have this inherent light to say,
“We are going to do something different
when we’re reaching 400 parts per carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The first time that humans have ever experienced
we are warming up the planet.
It’s the first time in 3 million years the Earth is like that; we’re saying,
“We’re going to do something different.”
Water is life.
We have different ways to operate this.
How we’re going to do it?
With powerful love.
Martin Luther King Jr. puts it beautifully.
He said, “Power without love is reckless and abusive,
and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power at its best is love
complying with the demands of justice.
And justice at its best
is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
So that’s why we’re here,
to take this stand
of widening our circles of compassion.
And here’s a quote,
I promised you the quote,
so here we go.
A human being
is part of a whole,
called by us the universe,
a part restricted in space and time.
He or she experiences himself and his feelings and thoughts
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for people nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from that prison
by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living beings
and the whole of nature in her beauty.
And we could do it personally
with our thoughts, with words that we say,
with the food that we eat, and how we treat our neighbors,
and tap into that star nature we all come from;
we all come from stardust.
So next thing: when you [and our institutions] are taking decisions
because now the times are heating up, and you know that.
Brother Donald is coming to the administration.
So we need to be– really, we need to be really exercising
that muscle of disobeying with great love more and more,
and saying that we are doing this for the sake of them.
The last story, if you will,
is the Sister Cheryl Angel’s.
This is a Lakota woman
who was blessing
every single person in the camp.
Picture this woman: for 200 years, her people have been oppressed,
and the only thing that she has she says, “I’m empty.
I only want to give love and bless people.”
And when the highest point in the Standing Rock,
when they were sending attacking dogs
and pepper sprayed, and water cannons in freezing temperatures,
and sound cannons, and you name it,
she went and organize a group of women
to disobey with great love in a silent march
and walked 600 of them followed by men supporting them.
When they’re there, to the front line
and started blessing and singing songs of gratitude and generosity
to the militarized police,
she was so embodying that head, heart, and hands,
and those tears were touching the police officers;
that when she was blessing them in the front lines,
the police officers were nodding,
and they were putting their guns on the ground.
You can see that some of them were tearing.
So that’s the kind you don’t see in the news,
but is what keeps this world going.
So, if you want to be a rebel,
be kind, human-kind, be both.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thoughts creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
Kindness in silence creates unity.
Therefore, the highest form of wisdom is kindness.
So please join me
in ten seconds of silence, please.
(Silence)
Many of you don’t know me,
and I’d like you to know
that I love you all, each and every one of you.
And you might think, “How’s that going to look like?”
I want you to remember
the next time that you look at the sky,
and this is our other cosmic home, the Milky Way,
a hundred billion stars,
and like that galaxy, there’s another;
a hundred billion galaxies like that.
But now, what is different about this time and age
is that in every star that you see, there is another planetary system,
and that was just discovered last year.
Many people have thought about that,
but now we have the means to detect Earth-sized planets.
Now we have close to 3,500 extra solar planets,
planets orbiting other stars,
and we know that 75% of all the stars in the Milky Way
are little red stars,
and around those little stars,
there are more likely super Earths, or planets like the Earth.
So now we have a catalogue of planets like the Earth.
So imagine, in 1606, when Galileo was grabbing those lenses
instead of spying on people and being fearful,
he’s like, “Let me look at those little sparks over there.”
And imagine the surprise when he thought
that that little bright light actually wasn’t a star but was a planet.
And that actually Copernicus was right
that there were some moons orbiting Jupiter,
and the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
With that came the Renaissance of humanity.
So I think that now, at least in the West,
because many other cultures already knew that, intuitively.
But now is very exciting times because we are in what I say,
in a new Renaissance of humanity.
So you can think about what I’m talking about here –
I’m talking about here
is how radical love can liberate the Earth,
meaning that the next time you see this
– this is not any flag;
I just like to call it our smiles flag.
Everybody loves it!
When I bike in there, in East Oakland, black brothers and sisters say,
“Hey you! I love your flag.”
Police officers smile, Chicano folks.
I’ve been in scientific communities, in elementary schools,
you name it, everybody loves it! –
So now we have a catalogue of planets like the Earth.
So we can think that it doesn’t matter what country,
what religion, what sexual orientation you are,
what matters is to be a responsible citizen of the world.
So that we can say the Earth is but one country,
and all living beings, visible and invisible, are citizens.
And not only that, we’re living in unprecedented times here,
because you might have heard about what happened in North Dakota,
where soldiers that have fought imperial wars,
and clergy that have participated in cultural genocide
– so you have cultural and physical genocide –
and these people have touched their heart that connect their minds,
and their mind is saying, “Go there and ask for forgiveness”
to the indigenous people.
So one thing is to talk about it, one thing is to read it in books,
but when you see these people were there,
and they knelt down, and you have the vets, and you have the clergy,
and all surrendered to the leadership
of indigenous people, especially indigenous women.
So for a recovering sexist, me,
to see that, that was pretty powerful.
A teacher of us, Joanna Macy,
call it we’re living the great turning,
a transition from an industrial growth society
to a sustained or a regenerative society.
Perhaps it’s time to have the understanding of science
and put it together with a world view, the indigenous world view
with a heart.
Gandhi put it very clearly, the three Hs:
the head, the heart, and the hands.
That is the secret to happiness.
What Sister Shira was sharing before,
how she was overflowing with that gratitude,
she felt that wisdom, she needed to share it.
So that’s what happen when you align your head, your heart, and your hands.
So I want you also to imagine an iceberg;
another friend Kris Mur Beckman likes to say,
this is the Gandhian Iceberg:
a non-violence manifesto in the age of the great turning.
Basically, an iceberg, if you can imagine it,
it only comes above the surface, only 10% of that,
and the 90% is below.
So imagine what Gandhi did with all this non-violence
and civil disobedience that inspired Martin Luther King Jr,
Cesar Chavez, and Aung San Suu Kyi, and so many others.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
That’s kind of a by-product.
That’s non-violent civil disobedience, that’s disobeying with great love.
But then you have the other part that you can see,
that’s the constructive program, the alternatives,
the independent media, the preventative medicine,
restorative justice, things that inspire people.
But you do not see that 90% of all that spiritual work
that requires to embody that forgiveness.
And so, how are we going to put together,
I say, in order to align all that,
and have activists and spiritual people,
we need spiritual people to become active,
and activists to become spiritual.
So you have an inner revolution together with an outer revolution
to put the total revolution of the human spirit.
And I’ll share a quote
from Einstein
because I came to this part of the planet
attracted by the love and the sense of wonder of the universe
and got accepted into UC Berkeley to do a PhD in astrophysics,
because I love to look at the stars.
At the same time,
when the administration of Brother George Bush
decided to say, “We’re going to make a new set of nuclear weapons,”
I said, “Wait a minute!
I’m not against science.
I’m against the unethical implications of science.”
So it doesn’t matter that I’m here, in UC Berkeley getting my PhD;
we have enough PhDs; We need Ph”Do”s or Ph”Be”s.
So it doesn’t matter– I need one second, you know,
or one year to get my PhD,
I don’t want to receive a title from an irresponsible institution
that is putting at risk the survival of our species.
They say, “Alright, so if you don’t want to be here, you have 30 days to leave.”
That was Homeland Security,
Well, that was nine years ago.
So I’m here, disobeying with great love,
one of the most destructive empires in the history of humanity,
moment by moment.
How? With love.
So I’m one of the 12 million undocumented human beings
that want a better world.
We don’t want violence, we want love and generosity.
And If we wanted to prevent oppression,
we’re going to serve the oppressor.
How we’re going to serve the oppressor?
By preventing them from their oppression.
If there is someone bullying, you will be in service to that bully
by preventing them from their oppression.
So I’m so happy to be here with you
that I will share that quote for sure.
The movement in Standing Rock
started with people like you, with youth that said,
“We cannot put profit over people,
we cannot put profit over the health of our Earth.
Water is life.
And it was women that lead that too, afterwards.
So I want to share a story
of some people that are really aligned with the head, the heart, the hands,
about all this movement:
is the [inaudible] family.
They have been hosting very near from here,
a gathering and people can go there.
And the first hour, you’re in silence
so you can meditate, contemplate, celebrate,
whatever you want to do.
The second hour, people share some of A-ha! moments
from a passage that could be anything inspiring.
And the third hour,
you have this delicious meal that’s being served with so much love in silence,
and this mom comes and gives you seconds and thirds,
and you’re just overwhelmed with this love,
and anyone can go.
That sounds fun, you know, to do it,
but can you do it for almost 20 years every single Wednesday?
And so to be that radically generous when they’re telling us
you need to get profit to disobey the market in that way,
that’s revolutionary.
Or to be grateful,
but we’re talking about also go [back].
This is part of those…
…teachings of indigenous people that are so grateful for what they have.
So when you are grateful–
People say you need to have more and more,
but you are grateful about what you have;
that’s revolutionary.
And how these water protectors are defending their land.
They might jump in from this generosity here
in the city, at small scale, or our own minds;
when you are there, inside.
What did these ten little seconds of silence, or that hour
in the [inaudible] family when they do this?
We are rewiring our brains.
Because if someone says you can have 10,000 hours
of something that you can do, you become an expert on that activity.
And you don’t have to… you know, the Michael Jordan Center.
But what about if we become experts and automatic
on kindness, and generosity, and courage?
So our conscious mind can capture 20 transactions per second
while our subconscious mind can do like six orders of magnitude more – 20 million.
So there’s– possible that–
How we’re going to be dealing with that? We need to quiet our minds,
If we were only able to listen to the silent discourses of the stars,
we were living divine experiences with our own lives.
And indigenous people knew that.
When I was with the Lakota,
these women were very clear;
the way they call the stars in Lakota,
they call it, “wichahpi”
from “wicha-” which is a human being
and then the other part is falling; is a falling human being.
So every time that they are referring to a star,
they are referring to a falling human being or relative to a star.
They call it the star people, or the tree people, or the bison people.
And so, there is this connection and reverence to light.
And that’s when it connects to science:
the carbon in your skin,
the oxygen that you’re breathing,
the calcium in your bones,
the iron in your blood come from those explosions of those stars.
And these people knew there was a connection with that,
that we have this inherent light to say,
“We are going to do something different
when we’re reaching 400 parts per carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The first time that humans have ever experienced
we are warming up the planet.
It’s the first time in 3 million years the Earth is like that; we’re saying,
“We’re going to do something different.”
Water is life.
We have different ways to operate this.
How we’re going to do it?
With powerful love.
Martin Luther King Jr. puts it beautifully.
He said, “Power without love is reckless and abusive,
and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power at its best is love
complying with the demands of justice.
And justice at its best
is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
So that’s why we’re here,
to take this stand
of widening our circles of compassion.
And here’s a quote,
I promised you the quote,
so here we go.
A human being
is part of a whole,
called by us the universe,
a part restricted in space and time.
He or she experiences himself and his feelings and thoughts
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for people nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from that prison
by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living beings
and the whole of nature in her beauty.
And we could do it personally
with our thoughts, with words that we say,
with the food that we eat, and how we treat our neighbors,
and tap into that star nature we all come from;
we all come from stardust.
So next thing: when you [and our institutions] are taking decisions
because now the times are heating up, and you know that.
Brother Donald is coming to the administration.
So we need to be– really, we need to be really exercising
that muscle of disobeying with great love more and more,
and saying that we are doing this for the sake of them.
The last story, if you will,
is the Sister Cheryl Angel’s.
This is a Lakota woman
who was blessing
every single person in the camp.
Picture this woman: for 200 years, her people have been oppressed,
and the only thing that she has she says, “I’m empty.
I only want to give love and bless people.”
And when the highest point in the Standing Rock,
when they were sending attacking dogs
and pepper sprayed, and water cannons in freezing temperatures,
and sound cannons, and you name it,
she went and organize a group of women
to disobey with great love in a silent march
and walked 600 of them followed by men supporting them.
When they’re there, to the front line
and started blessing and singing songs of gratitude and generosity
to the militarized police,
she was so embodying that head, heart, and hands,
and those tears were touching the police officers;
that when she was blessing them in the front lines,
the police officers were nodding,
and they were putting their guns on the ground.
You can see that some of them were tearing.
So that’s the kind you don’t see in the news,
but is what keeps this world going.
So, if you want to be a rebel,
be kind, human-kind, be both.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
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