Abbot's Teaching

Zen and Dr. King's Dream
by Michael Zenkai Taiun Elliston Sensei
January, 2000

Michael Elliston (Zenkai Taiun) Sensei

Given at an Inter-Faith Service Sponsored by the Cobb County Martin Luther King, Jr. Support Group at Saint James Episcopal Church, Marietta, Georgia, Sunday January 9, 2000

When I was asked to speak at this remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., of course I felt honored, and accepted immediately. But after I thought about it, and when I realized that we would be talking about his "I have a Dream" speech, the most compelling piece of oratory since perhaps Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," I felt more than a little intimidated. And when I re-read the text of the speech, I felt humbled, and I still do. I decided to do my best to convey the Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva, or "enlightenment-being," which I feel has direct relevance to Dr. King's life, work, and death.

Serendipitously, yesterday I happened upon the January 2000 issue of Shambala Sun, a magazine dedicated to Buddhist culture and meditation. The cover story is an interview on love, anger, community and the message of Dr. Martin Luther King. The interview was conducted with the Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, of whom you may have heard, by the writer bell hooks. My view that Zen Buddhism would regard Dr. King as a Bodhisattva is confirmed by his remarks: Martin Luther King was among us as a brother, as a friend, as a leader. He was able to maintain that love alive. When you touch him, you touch a [B]odhisattva, for his love and understanding was enough to hold everything to him. He tried to transmit his insight and his love to the community, but maybe we have not received it enough. He was trying to transmit the best things to us; his goodness, his love, his non duality. But because we had clung so much to him as a person, we did not bring the essence of what he was teaching into our community. So now that he's no longer here, we are at a loss. We have to be aware that crucial transmission he was making was not the transmission of power, of authority, of position, but the transmission of the dharma. It means love.

Because you may not be very familiar with Buddhism, let me explain a little bit: the Bodhisattva is a human being who is near to awakening, enlightenment, or liberation, but holds back from crossing to the other shore, or Nirvana. He or she chooses to remain in this world of suffering to help all other beings to reach the other shore first. This is the view of Zen that no one can achieve liberation alone; all other beings must also be saved.

The suffering of this world that Buddha taught is of two kinds: natural suffering of sickness, old age and death, which is inevitable; and unnatural suffering that is inflicted by humankind upon others. The second kind is not inevitable and can be ended.

Dr. King pointed to this unnecessary suffering in his "I Have a Dream" speech. About halfway through, there is a line which says, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Dr. King lived his dream, and gave up his life for it for the sake of others and for the sake of all children to come. He saw through this dualistic self, the self as judged by the color of the skin, that separates oneself from all others, to the true self, shared in common with all humankind. Where others see apparent differences, he saw the essential sameness. This true self in Buddhism is called the original nature, or Buddha-nature. In maintaining this world view, Dr. King was like the Buddha.

Buddha means "awakened one". We all have this same potential to become the Buddha, to wake up completely. The person who was to become the historical Buddha was born a prince in northern India some five hundred years before Jesus. As a young man he turned his back on a life of luxury and indulgence and pursued the path of asceticism. Unsatisfied with either of these extreme ways of living, in his early thirties he sat down in meditation, resolved to find the truth, and was directly enlightened to the true condition of existence, and the illusory nature of the self. The attributes of this so-called self; his birth name, Siddhartha Gotama; his family, the Shakya clan; his birth as a citizen of India; his identity as a member of the Brahmin class; even his incarnation as a Caucasian, a male, and so forth, were all revealed in enlightenment as circumstances of birth, nothing more.

The life of Buddha was born out of this experience. He was henceforth known as Shakyamuni, sage of the Shakyas, or Tathagata, one who has apprehended Truth. For nearly fifty years thereafter, he manifested the "true self," which is not restricted to differences of birth, race, ethnic origin, or gender. In a caste-ridden society, he mingled with and taught freely and openly to any and all people regardless of their position in society, including the so-called untouchables. He taught compassion for all beings, which required relinquishing the self. In this he was like Dr. King.

The Buddha did not live a life free from tribulation, however. His own cousin, Devadatta, attempted to have him assassinated, out of jealousy. Even after this heinous act, however, the Buddha predicted that Devadatta would himself become enlightened in a future life. This is not seen as an act of forgiveness, exactly, but an example of the view common to Buddhism and Christianity that no matter how far we fall from grace, there is still opportunity for redemption.

Some five centuries later, Jesus Christ taught his gospel of divine love, even for one's enemies. He also taught to any and all who would listen. Experiencing this kind of universal love also required the surrender of the self. This great commonality between the two faiths--that both Buddhism and Christianity require the relinquishing of the illusory self to something greater--was first pointed out nearly seventy years ago by Sokei-an, founder of the New York Zen Institute, the first Zen Buddhist center in America.

Let me repeat that in the view of Zen Buddhism, Dr. King would be recognized as a Bodhisattva: an enlightened being of great compassion who dedicated his life to the salvation of all others before himself. Along with Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and many other great ones of all faiths, known and unknown to history, he is regarded as a true Bodhisattva.

In closing I would like to chant for you the Four Great Vows of the Bodhisattvas. We repeat these on a daily basis, following meditation.

The Four Great Vows