This talk, originally given to a Zoom audience of white people, acknowledges the intensity of this moment in American history: a convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse with 40 million unemployed, and now global protests against racism in America. Zenki Christian Dillo, a white immigrant born in Germany, reflects on his personal experience with the collective trauma of the Holocaust. He offers the view that, as part of a path of liberation, the crime of slavery and continuing racism need to be recognized as a collective trauma, even by those who do not experience it themselves as victims, because it diminishes the full aliveness of everyone in American society. We are resonant bodies. Resonance, experienced on the sensation level of our experience, is the root of compassion. Buddhist practice is to learn to feel this fundamental resonance with a stable and fearless mind and to let it move us to take appropriate action.

This talk gives Zazen instruction for disentangling attention from thinking. The koan story of Baizhang’s Wild Ducks (Case #40 of the Blue Cliff Records) is brought up to clarify the attentional body that needs to be practiced to stabilize a mind that is able to notice without thinking about. It is through this attentional body that the teachings of “no coming, no going” and “no birth, no death” become experientially accessible.