Mindfulness and the Police - Vulture Peak Gathering - 2016-06-15 New Hamlet - Cheri Maples

Lay Dharma teacher Cheri Maples offers a sharing during the 21-Day Retreat.

Dear Thay,

dear beloved community,

it's so wonderful to be here with you.

I had many things going on,

and Sister Chan Khong said you must come,

so here I am.

I came.

I always listen to sister Chan Khong.

My name is Cheri Maples.

I was a police officer
seven years into my career

when I ended up, you can decide,

by accident or coincidence

or a series of causes
and conditions that came together,

at my first retreat with Thay.

Before, I have noticed
with many police officers

three things start to happen
over the course of their career,

and that had already happened to me.

The effects of a career,
there are three of them.

Physiologically,

what happens --

many of you might be able
to relate to this

if you live very busy lives --

Research has shown that we all
have a certain amount of adrenaline,

and this is the normal
range of adrenaline.

People that know how to be
rather than do

probably are here and here.

What happens with police officers,

and you can probably relate to this
with multitasking and doing too,

is the adrenaline starts to shoot up
because of hyper vigilance

and being worried about your own safety
and the safety of everybody else.

You're always taught
about what can go wrong.

Not so much about what can go right,

which is the majority of the time,
but what can go wrong.

There's a lot of hyper vigilance.

So the adrenaline shoots
out of the normal area

and looks like a peak like that,

and it takes twenty-four hours

for it to come back into the normal range,

but what happens is people go back to work

before that twenty-four hours is up.

So their lives start to look like this,

if I had to just show it visually.

Up here, people are, you know,
making command decisions,

on their feet, they have a sense of humor,

the adrenaline has kicked in.

And then down here,

where they start
to spend their lives at home,

this looks a lot like no energy,

listlessness, depression,

a lot of the symbolic stuff
that happens down here

mimics depression really well.

And as sister Chan Khong said,

there are four times as many
police officers, in the US anyway,

that take their own lives,

as compared to the number
that are killed in the line of duty.

This is a very real phenomenon.

Physiologically,

there are many effects

that are very difficult.

That's the first area,

and emotionally what begins to happen

is the effects manifest
as irritation and impatience

and anger and depression.

There's a lot of cynicism

because if you were all
a group of police officers,

and I did a word association test,
and if I asked you,

"What's the first word
that comes to your mind

when you hear the word
Boy Scout leader?"

I guarantee you they would all scream out
in one, with one set word: pedophile.

Because those are the Boy Scout leaders
that they deal with.

So there's a very cynical
sort of response that develops,

and spiritually the effects,
I think, of doing that job

manifest as an armoring
and a numbing of the heart.

It's very hard to be compassionate
when those things are going on.

The other thing that happens

is you develop, what I call,
"I used to" syndrome.

I used to know how to water the seeds of joy.

I used to bike.
I used to play sports.

I used to garden.
I used to write poetry.

I used to have hobbies.

All those things are gone,

and your world becomes
smaller and smaller,

because of shift work and odd hours

and thinking that people don't understand,

you end up socializing and being
only with other police officers.

So all those things get reinforced.

That's how I showed up
at my very first retreat

with Thay in 1991.

I had a work injury,

and I was going to see a chiropractor,

and this chiropractor was very close
to where I reported for work.

She had a book of Thay
in the waiting room,

it was called Being Peace.

I picked it up,
and I was leafing through it,

and I went, "Hmmm,

this is very interesting."

Then I was ordered
off work for a little while,

and I saw a flyer on her bulletin board

for a retreat that
Thich Nhat Hahn was doing

in Munda Line, Illinois, in 1991,

so I thought, well, I will give it a try.

I came very armored and defended.

I was really ready for people to hate me

because I was a police officer.

That happens a lot, even among people
whose progressive politics they share.

They'd see the uniformity and immediately
make a decision about who I was.

That's the the attitude
I came there with, and what happened?

I have to show it.

This is very interesting what happened.

If you imagine ...

We did.

Then, the retreats were pretty quiet.

We did -- Thay taught
just about everything:

we did sitting meditation,
and we did eating meditation,

we did walking meditation.

There weren't nearly as many
monastics then as there are now.

Sister Chan Khong was there.

So many of the monastics
have had such a huge impact on my life.

What do you see there?
Anybody?

A red dot.

Well, that's where I was living and --

I think what meditation
and mindfulness is about

is it helps you see
the white space, right?

All this spaciousness,

all this spaciousness that's available,
and we go right to the red dot.

Here we are with all this
spaciousness available to us,

and we hang on so tight to our little red dots:

our thoughts and our emotions.

Out here love is available,
happiness is available.

No coming, no going is available,
emptiness is available

the spaciousness of being
in everything and nothing at one time.

That's how, even after that first retreat,

I started to understand
some of that intuitively.

I hadn't read a lot.

All I wanted to do was practice.

I began to think of meditation

as just resting my mind

with this open awareness,

and at that retreat I touched peace
in a really fabulous way.

Many strange things happened
after that retreat.

I came back,

and I was working nights
as a sergeant then,

and I was going on calls,

and I couldn't understand
why everybody around me had changed.

They'd seem to have
gotten kinder in my absence.

Even people I was arresting.

(Laughing)

It didn't make any sense to me.

I didn't know somebody had gone around

and sprayed Prozac or some other
anti depressant while I was gone,

but it took me a little while to get

that it was my energy was different,

and people were responding to it.

That was an incredible teaching for me

because there it was, the proof in the pudding.

At that retreat also what happened,

as sister Chan Khong referred to it,

is this whole thing about the
five mindfulness trainings came up,

and of course the first one
is reverence for life,

and I said, "I can't take these,
I carry a gun for a living,

and I never know what's going to happen."

And to this day, I can't remember
if it was Thay or sister Chan Khong,

one of them said to me,

"Who else would we want to carry a gun
except somebody who will do it mindfully?"

(Laughing)

Oh! A whole new way to look at things.

What happened for me was such a transition

where it took a while,
the changes were incremental,

but I stopped doing my job
in a mechanical way.

And what I started to see

is what was right in front of me

that I seem to have missed
with the other attitude:

a suffering human being
who needed my help

and often didn't have
any place else to turn to.

So I started taking my time
on the calls I went on,

I started trying to connect with people
from a different space,

and I had these experiences early on.

One of my favorites that I like to tell

is the experience of going
on a domestic violence call.

We had a mandatory arrest
policy in those days,

so if anybody was threatening somebody,

in a physical way, in any way whatsoever,

you were supposed to arrest them.

That was a mandatory arrest.

So I went on this call,
and I didn't have any backup,

and a woman came running out and said,

"My husband has my child
and I'm really scared.

We just broke up, and he won't let her out

to come be with me, I'm picking her up.

We have an agreement about who
is supposed to have the child when,

and now it's my turn.

So, I asked her to go wait
in the car down the block,

and I went and I knocked on the door,

and there is -- I'm about five-three --

and this six-three, six-four inch man,

who looked very angry, opened the door,

and I could just see the suffering.

It was just so obvious to me.

In a very calm voice I said,

"May I come in?
I'm just here to listen and to help."

I came in, and I saw
his daughter over there,

and I said, "You know what,
I see your little girl over here,

and I know you love her,
and I know how much you care about her,

and I see that she's scared,

and I know you don't want that to happen.

So how about if we let her go out
and be with her mother,

and you and I talk."

And he did.

So rather than escalating this situation

to the point where
an arrest had to be made,

it was just a matter of being
compassionate and mindful.

So I violated every policy in the book,

and with my gun belt
and my bulletproof vest

I sat down next to this guy,
what you're never supposed to do,

on the couch and he started
crying in my arms.

That was an incredible experience for me

in terms of what a little kindness
and compassion can do,

and that there are alternative ways
to respond to people.

Of course when you're angry,
irritated and cynical yourself,

it's really hard
to see those possibilities.

I ran into this man three days later.

I was walking
down the street that I lived in

and he came up behind me,

and, you know, it's not good
to come up behind a police officer.

(Laughing)

He picked me up
off the ground and he said:

"You! You! You saved my life that night."

He picked me right up.

It was a wonderful experience.

So I served two of the teachings of Thay

and the Order of Interbeing
in our community,

our international community,

that I think are
so important is we focus --

There's such an emphasis, not only
on happiness in the present moment

and having a foundational
mindfulness practice,

but building community
and engaged practice.

Those two things you don't find
in too many other --

the emphasis on that --
in too many other Buddhist traditions.

I've heard teachings
from a lot of different traditions now,

and those two things are just so special.

And I started thinking
of a sangha, community.

I joined a sangha
right after that retreat,

but I started thinking
of community as wherever I was.

I started thinking
of my workplace as a sangha;

I started thinking
of my family as a sangha.

When I did direct-action-things
in the community,

I started thinking
of all of us as a sangha.

So I think community
is such a big piece of this.

In 2002 I came to Plum Village,

so eleven years has passed now,
and I've been practicing,

and practice is getting deeper and deeper,
and going on retreats,

and I became a member
of the the Order of Interbeing.

Thay transmitted
the 14 mindfulness trainings

to myself and 32 other people,

and I was here for the three-month retreat

and had such an incredibly grounding time.

In those days you wrote a letter to Thay,

I think you still write a letter
if you you want to be ordained,

and I didn't think that he read these,

so I just put it in the bell.

My letter was really about ...

I was still struggling

with feeling like both the victim
and oppressor in this job

and bouncing back and forth between those.

The next day there was a Dharma talk,

I can't remember which hall it was in,

but Thay gave a Dharma talk
on the different faces of love.

I was sitting in the back,

and he mentioned police officers,

and I was sitting in the back,

and I just had tears
streaming down my face.

Another big transition took place,

more softness, more understanding
of Thay's teaching

about "we're all victims and oppressors."

One of the things that happened
in the ripple effects of this --

I don't even know who it was,

and she will never know
the ripple effects of that.

If you're here, please come tell me --

We were doing working meditation
and chopping vegetables,

and I said, "I have this very, very,
ridiculous image in my head

of police officers holding hands
and doing walking meditation together,

creating peaceful steps on the earth,"

and she looked at me and she said,

"Cheri, you can make that happen.

You can make that happen."

Thursday there was
a question and answer session,

and I got up and I asked Thay

if he would come do a retreat
for police officers.

I'm very worried about
what the response will be,

and much to my happiness
it's the opposite of that.

He looked up and he said,
"Yes, I think we do it next year."

Which meant there was
a year to organize things

and try to get police officers
to come to a mindfulness retreat

with a Buddhist teacher.

There were many things that happened
during the course of that year,

but one of the --

I don't even have time to go into them,
they were quite ...

It was very, very hard.

There was a big reaction.

All over I started getting hate e-mails

in terms of: I'm Christian, and I want
to offer a stress reduction retreat.

The separation of church and state,

even though it was going to be
a nonsectarian retreat, came up,

and it was very challenging.

But I had wonderful people
in my own Sangha

and had contacted people
among the monastics.

That helped a lot.

So Thay came and we made this happen,

and there were, I don't remember
how many people.

There were about 16 officers
from my own police department

that were there,

and after Thay's first Dharma talk,

which was "Violence Begets Violence",

and talking about how, you know,

if you put out violence,
you are going to get violence pretty soon.

And the police officers,
after that first talk,

surrounded me and they were like,

"Cheri, what are we supposed to do?

What do you mean: you can't
fight violence with violence?

What does he mean by that?
What are we supposed to do?

We want to talk to him."

(Laughter)

And I said, "Well,

I've never had a personal talk
myself with Thich Nhat Hahn,

but I will see what I can do."

So, another long story short,

Thay came and talked
to just the police officers,

and by the end of that hour
that he spent with them,

the whole room went ...

It was just so beautiful,

and after that there was
never another problem

or objection that entire week.

One of the things that so affected me
at the end of that retreat

is Thay said: "Are we going to hear
from the police officers?"

The Thursday night
before the retreat ended,

the police officers gave a presentation,

and I have never heard
police officers share like that.

Share what life is like for them
as a police officer,

and never before have I

seen a community be so receptive

to what they had to say.

That was so --

I could just see them lighting up,

and it was just so meaningful

that there were people
who were willing to be receptive to this.

At the end of that retreat,

the sixteen officers
from my department and I

held hands and did walking meditation.

So you never know what
the ripple effects of anything can be.

Then all kinds of things happened

once I got back to Madison
out on the street.

So, one of the things that happened

-- this is a story that I just love --

is one of the people who was
at the retreat came up to me and said,

"Cheri, I just saw two of your officers,

two of your young officers
who were at the retreat,

and they were arresting somebody,

and they recognized me.

They arrested the person,
and they put them in the back of the car,

and they turned to me and they bowed.

(Laughter)

I said: "Well, when we bow
to the person that we're arresting

as well as to the community
that we're doing it for,

we will really have arrived.

So, there were miracles that happened.

And then, in 2007, I went to Vietnam.

Probably many of you were there also,
a big group of Westerners and --

with Thay and the monastic community
and that had a big impact on me.

Toward the end of that,

sister Chan Khong
delivered the message to me

that Thay wanted
to make me a dharma teacher,

transmit the lamp to me.

And it was OK.

So in 2008, that transmission
of the lamp happened,

and this is the gatha, my gatha for Thay
that I'd like to share with you.

You know, we always,

Thay and the person
always exchange gatha's.

Breathing in,

I know that mindfulness
is the path to peace

Breathing out,

I know that peace
is the path to mindfulness

Breathing in,

I know that peace is the path to justice

Breathing out,

I know that justice is the path to peace

Breathing in,

I know my duty is to provide
safety and protection to all beings

Breathing out,

I am humbled and honored
by my duty as a Peace Officer

Breathing in,

I choose mindfulness as my armor
and compassion as my weapon

Breathing out,

I aspire to bring love
and understanding to all I serve

So that was really wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you as the sangha
that holds up all of us.

There are three interrelated areas

that I found my own
personal work happening in

over the course of the years

that the practice
got deeper and deeper for me,

and that was my own inner work,

my own meditation
and mindfulness practice,

which is of course
the foundation for everything.

The second area was relationships,

and the third area was engaged practice.

There is an African-American man
in the United States

by the name of Cornell West,

who said the epitome

of how I think we should
view police scene, and he said:

"Justice is what love
looks like in public."

Justice is what love looks like in public.

How different would our system look,

if we adopted this definition of justice

as the foundation for our whole system?

It would just be incredible.

One of the things
that the Buddha was so good at

is providing the architecture
for our distress

and also providing
the architecture for our liberation.

And Thay was so wonderful

at conveying the Buddhist teachings

in such a simple way
that could be understood.

One of the things that happened for me

can probably be described --

how Thay describes it is
the psychology of mindfulness.

In the psychology of mindfulness

there are two things
that were asked to be.

One is a good curator
of the museum of our past,

and the other is a good gardener
of our store consciousness.

So if we're a good curator
of the museum of our past,

it means that we can reframe our past,

we can understand it
in the service of our own freedom.

Now, if we carry it too far,
and we don't balance it with the other,

we get attached to the wound itself,

because then we're constantly
just taking tickets,

bus tickets back to our past,

and we get attached to the wound itself.

Over here, we're learning
how to be a good gardener.

We're learning what to incline
our mind toward.

We're learning what we can incline
our mind toward, our hearts toward,

and water the seeds of joy
and kindness and understanding

and compassion.

But in order to be able to do this,

we have to understand

how our experience
is born moment to moment.

So if we can start to recognise,
start to watch what arises

and notice how our experience
is born moment to moment,

if we can do that,
we can also make conscious decisions

about how to incline the heart and mind.

And that is probably
the most powerful thing

that has happened to me
over the years of this practice.

I can't tell you how many people
come up to me and say:

"Cheri, you've gotten so much softer."

And I guess it's true!

You know, those protective layerings
of armor removed one at a time.

You learned about craving and aversion

and how to work with with both of them.

And one of the ways
that I noticed about myself,

a very subtle form of craving
that I really wanted to heal,

was this craving to be calm.

This craving to be calm

with all of the achievements
that go along with it and blah blah --

All the doing that goes along with it;

all the identity that gets created.

So you build up this identity,

just to learn that you
have to strip it down,

because so much of this practice

is about dissolution of the the ego.

Unfortunately in our society

success often gets equated with doing.

One of the things that I love

about what Thay has helped me understand

is that the quality of your doing

will always be dependent
on the quality of your being.

In order to really make that manifest,

it requires a certain discipline

in that you cannot let the things
that matter the most

be at the mercy of the things
that matter the least.

So often we think:
if I just going to get this done,

I'll just get this done
and just get this done,

and then I'll focus on my practice.

Then we become habitual waiters.

We become habitual waiters.

We become addicted to doing,

and we have so many exhausted people
running around that are addicted to doing.

As a result, in my culture anyway,

we have a lot of people
who are tired and wired.

Which leads to a lot
of contentious behavior.

Understanding is so key to this practice.

I want to tell you a little story

that when I think back on it
makes me smile so much.

It was my first week
of being a police officer,

a rookie police officer on the street.

We had just come off

all of our experiences
with our field training officers,

and we're now riding alone.

One of the first things
that happened to me

is the lieutenant of my shift --

I mean, we have these briefing sessions
before every shift starts -- said to me,

"Maples, there's a homeless guy

down there in the basement,

where our squad cars are
and where our evidence room is,

I want you to go down there
and get him out of there

and skip briefing to do it."

And I say, "OK,"

and I go down there,
and I make contact with this man,

who proceeds to tell me
he doesn't have to go anywhere

because he's the president
of the United States.

Rather than understanding him
and trying to put myself in his position,

I'm arguing with him that he's not
the president of the United States,

and I'm getting more and more nervous

because I know
all these veteran police officers

are going to be coming down the stairs,

and that I'm failing
at my very first assignment, right?

And so, this is not going well ...

Finally, one of the veteran
officers walks down.

He says, "Hey, rookie,
let me show you how it's done."

He goes and he gets a key

to the squad closest
to where this homeless man is standing,

he opens the back door,

and he says, "Mister President,
your limo awaits you."

(Laughter)

And the guy gets right in
and off they go.

So that also taught me something
about working for social change.

One of the things that I think
is really important

is that we have to learn the difference

between self-esteem and self-compassion,

because until we learn how to bring
true self-compassion to ourselves,

the practice doesn't really work well
with other people.

And when I say self esteem, I mean,

we used to have a lot of -- we still do --

new age spirituality stuff
in our bookstores

that's all about self-improvement, right?

You can make a full time job
out of self-improvement,

which leads to high self-esteem,

and I guess that's better
than low self-esteem.

But the problem with high self-esteem
is you're still comparing yourself

to other people,

and in fact sometimes
you're competing with them

and secretly hoping
they do worse than you do.

It's not a very good way
to live a spiritual life.

With self-compassion we're learning how
to not just bring empathy to ourselves

but goodwill to ourselves,
in a phenomenal way.

One of the things that I've noticed

is when I'm able to do that
with the tools in the practice

that the volume of 'me' goes way down.

And I'm happiest
when the volume of me is lowest.

When the volume of me goes up,
I start getting ready,

and all those habit seeds
are ready to spring into action.

I wish I had more time, but I know
you've been sitting here for a while,

and I think I want to go directly to --

I do want to read
a quote by Thomas Merton,

and then I want to tell you
about the five things

that I think need to happen
in the policing profession.

OK?

Thomas Merton said this,

and this is to me such a --

the epitome of Thay's teachings:

"To allow ourselves to be carried away

by a multitude of conflicting concerns;

to surrender to too many demands;

to commit oneself to too many projects;

to want to help everyone and everything

is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of our activism
neutralizes our work for peace;

it destroys our own
inner capacity for peace;

it destroys the fruitfulness
of our own work

because it kills the root of inner wisdom,

which makes work fruitful."

One of the things I want to say,

and I've done a lot of engaged work.

We have prison projects in Wisconsin now,

that went from being in one prison
to being in the entire system,

and I'm now happy to say
that we are about to be able

to start teaching
mindfulness to the guards.

We've been doing segregation,

and people have noticed
that culture's changing.

And with all the scientific research
that's out there on mindfulness now,

they are now asking us to bring it,
not just to the correctional officers,

but to probation
and parole agents as well.

That is huge.

And I'll tell you about a couple
of other little projects,

but I want to say,

that it's so important to keep our --

that's why we have
sixty days of mindfulness

as members of the Order of Interbeing --

it's so important to keep
the energy of our practice alive,

and I've heard this
term that they use now,

called compassion fatigue.

Any of you heard of that term,
compassion fatigue, burnout?

To me, burnout is a sign that we're
violating our own nature in some way.

It's usually regarded as a result
of trying to give too much,

but I think it could result
from trying to give what we don't have,

and this is the ultimate
in giving too little.

I think that's where
compassion fatigue comes from.

So when the gift that we give

is an intregral and valued part
of our own journey,

when it comes from
the organic reality of inner work,

it's going to renew itself
and be limitless in nature.

But that means we have to keep
our practice very strong and very alive.

With respect to relationships,
I just want to say,

to me relationships are
the litmus test of spirituality.

If our practice doesn't
show up in our relationships

then something is wrong.

This single, from a practice perspective
probably the single most important thing,

and resource that I developed over time
in my own practice,

especially as a cop
who carried a gun on a daily basis,

is I started to experience

the incredible healing power
of non-aggression.

What I learned to bring to any interaction

was the intention not to cause more harm,

and that included those times
when I had to use force,

but that intention was always there.

And one of the other things that Thay
taught me that was so valuable,

is that compassion can be gentle
and compassion can be fierce.

Wisdom is knowing when to employ
the gentle compassion of understanding

or the fierce compassion
of good boundaries.

That is very important.

And I think how we talk
and relate to others

is probably the most important peace-work
that we can engage in.

I remember at work when I was
captain of personnel and training,

and one of the great things,

as I was then in charge
of training the whole department,

and so I could get
some really good things done.

But, I remember sitting at my computer,

working on this Academy,
curriculum for the Academy,

when one of my young officers
came in and said,

"Captain, can I please talk to you?"

And internally I went, "Argh!",

because I didn't want
to interrupt what was happening,

I had to get this done.

That was such a lesson to me.

I immediately recognized
what was happening,

and made a commitment

that I was going to switch
the foreground and the background.

That relationships were going to be
more important to me than tasks.

That meant managing a to-do list.

And it meant some people would be upset,

it meant that I didn't get
as many things done as I did before,

but what could be more important

than giving my presence
to another human being.

Because the ripple effects of that,
you can never, never know.

Well, there were many other things,

but I'm going to --

I do want to talk to you ...

about the current criminal justice system

and what I think needs to change in it.

I can't speak

for what's going on in Europe

or Vietnam or Thailand

or other countries,

but I can speak from what's
going on in the United States.

And that is that our current
criminal justice system

is based on this very faulty premise.

That premise is that
the punishment of the perpetrator

is going to heal the victim
and rehabilitate the perpetrator.

What I found is that
neither one of those things are true.

It seems to reflect a collective belief

that contributes to all kinds
of interpersonal and systemic dysfunction,

because what this premise
fails to recognize

is one of the basic premises
of restorative justice.

And that is that it's not
the wrong-doer's repentance

that creates forgiveness,

but it's the victim's forgiveness
that creates repentance.

And I've seen this happen
over and over and over again.

So what do we have to do

to change the criminal justice system?

Well, I've been focusing on five things.

One is we need to recognize

what working as a police officer does.

And if you take soldiers
or people that are on the SWAT-teams,

or the ops-teams in policing,

the effects that I talked about
are much more intense.

So we teach people
how to keep themselves physically safe.

We teach them how to keep themselves
physically safe and others physically safe

by using force and how to use force.

But we don't teach them
how to keep themselves emotionally safe.

And that's where I receive such gift,

is with mindfulness from Thay.

It's so important that we begin

to provide criminal justice professionals

with the training
that will help them identify

how their world works
and how it can be undone,

especially in the emotional realm.

It's important that we
not just do stress reduction.

The thing about mindfulness,
and we know this from the trainees,

is it brings a whole
ethical framework along with it

that's really important
not to leave behind.

What I do, as somebody
who is a police officer,

is I know how to translate that language

into language they understand.

Don't talk to them about Buddhism.

I know the language, I know the culture,

and all of you know this same thing
wherever you are:

you know the language,
you know the culture,

we have to figure out how to translate it.

So focusing on the emotional health

of criminal justice professionals
is very important.

The second thing that is so important

is we need to take seriously

the conscious and unconscious biases

that police officers
and other criminal justice professionals

are walking around with

that leads to racial profiling

and the incredible racial disparities
throughout our system.

And these unconscious biases
show up, not just in the obvious ways,

not in the worst possible ways
of deadly force,

but they also show up in ways that --

with coworkers
and people we interact with.

That builds resentments
and fuels divisions

and threatens our own safety
as well as the safety of others.

With respect to racial disparities,
I think police officers can be trained

to slow down the decision making process.

I used to watch young officers stop a car,

and I would say to them,

"OK, I want you to talk me through

the reasons you made that stop
and what was going on.

And now I want you to talk me through
where your reasonable suspicion was

for having them get out of the car
and search the car.

I want you to talk me through
the thought process that happened."

There usually is an opportunity for me
to really make a difference.

When we're dealing with racism
and racial disparities,

there are decision making points
in any organization

that can be identified,
where race can be a factor.

And there are hundreds of them
in the criminal justice profession.

But it's important, I think,
that every single one of us

identifies those decision making points
in our own organizations,

really sit down and think about them.

So, with respect to discrimination
and oppression in our collective lives,

activists face many challenges.

For those of us who have experienced
marginalization of some kind,

it's how do we free ourselves

from the adaptations
that we've made to our oppression.

And for those areas

that we have unearthed
the unearned assets of privileges,

how do we cut through

our sense of privilege
in some areas of life

and our inferior status in others?

How do we get over our superiority,
inferiority and equality complexes?

The third thing that I think has to happen

is coordinated community responses.

We have to start taking seriously

the proposition that public safety

really depends on the capacity
of neighborhoods

and how to build the capacity
of neighborhoods.

And in terms of engaged Buddhism,

we've come up with several
different ways to do that,

and I hope I get a chance to do
a Q&A session at some point

and then tell you about those.

And the fourth strategy
is that we would put a lot more effort

into reducing environmental
opportunities for crime.

So we would gather more data
to notice what the patterns really are,

and we would be proactive
rather than reactive,

so that we don't keep responding
to the same thing over and over,

and rather than having officers
tied to radio calls, go here, go there,

they would be more connected
to neighborhoods and technology

and crime prevention resources.

So, police officers have to
really begin to understand

that in order to be effective
they can't rely on their authority,

that they have to rely on so much more,

and that they have to rely on a much
larger coordinated community effort.

A fifth thing I want to address

is that we should all be
very, very concerned

about the militarization
of our police departments.

The police mission
is very, very different.

The police mission
is to serve and protect

our neighbors, our friends,
our community residents.

And we don't do that
by militarizing our departments

and turning people into enemies.

I think that's where communities
really come into being,

because it's pressure
of police departments to change

that makes all the difference
in the world.

And on the other hand,
it's very, very important

-- the last thing I would say --

is that police officers need your support,

they need your understanding.

I've seen what happens when they get it,

and they need to hear from you,

and they need to understand you.

So, the more situations
that we can put police officers

and residents of communities in

where they just have
the opportunity for dialogue.

I think that makes
all the difference in the world.

And the other thing
I want to say to all of you,

I don't know what cultures
and organizations that you work in,

but one of the things
that I got committed to,

as a result of my own engaged Buddhism,

is noticing the unwritten
and unconscious agreements

that existed in the organization,
in the culture of policing.

Those things aren't in the policy manual,

but the things we get
socialized to in any community

can be identified.

And once you identify those

and you bring them into
the conscious arena for discussion,

more ethical behaviors
just start to happen.

Because people are examining
and thinking about those behaviors.

And so often in our associational lives,

especially in the organizations
and communities we're part of,

we tend to think of ourselves
as effect rather than cause.

Somebody else,
the leader is responsible for this,

somebody else did this.

We seem to believe
that someone or something else

is the problem,

and that someone needs to do
something better for things to change.

We forget that we're a member
of this organization.

People come out of a meeting and say,
"Oh, that was a terrible meeting."

And I say, "Were you there?"

It was a terrible meeting
because we all made it a terrible meeting.

What could you have done to improve it?

So in authentic community membership,

we're always holding ourselves accountable

for the well being
of the larger community.

We become more than just
judging critics and consumers,

and we start to shift
the belief that this world,

this organization, this meeting,
this gathering,

is ours to construct together.

And that's what has to happen.

Any one of us

can make such an important
difference in any given moment.

You can be the person

that makes the difference
in a contentious interaction;

you can be the person
that because of your practice

pauses and refrains

and holds that grounding;

and you can be the person

that rather than exacerbating
pain and violence,

transforms that by the way
you bear witness to it;

and you can be the person

who instead of telling people
how it should be,

that you bring those unconscious
and unskillful ways

into the conscious arena
of question and dialogue;

and you can be the person
who chooses not to gossip

or to recruit others to your viewpoint
behind closed doors in an organisation.

So, let me just say in conclusion

that probably the most
radical political act

that any of us will engage in

is how to learn live in more harmony

with everyone and everything.

To change the world or to love everybody

is too big an ambition
for any single person,

but to respond to this moment

with engagement and compassion

is possible for each and every one of us.

And what Thich Nhat Hahn inspired in me

was a strong belief

that even something like
carrying a gun for a living

can be an act of love,

if one is also armed

with mindfulness
and a compassionate intention.

So, thank you for your presence,
your practice and your attention.