I was in Los Angeles a few years ago. I was living on the opposite coast at the time, and yearning to revisit the Pacific Ocean, the ocean I played in as a kid, an ocean that was grand, crashing, wild, next to jagged rocks. I like an ocean that is slightly terrifying, too big and chaotic to control. In New York where I was living, I was studying with a Buddhist priest named Daiken, who traveled here for my ordination, and I took vows in that particular lineage that was introduced to the United States in Los Angeles, at what is now Zen Center of Los Angeles. So I stopped by the Zen Center situated a bit outside of Koreatown, and when I arrived at the center late morning on a weekday, there was no one visibly around. There was a nice bench near a garden, so I just sat there taking in the environment, thinking I would not have a chance to talk with anybody there. After a few mins, an elder gentleman walks by and notices me. I tell him I’m from out of town, and just wanted to see the center where my teacher once lived and studied. Without hesitating, he said: I have to go to the bookstore, and you’re welcome to join me.

He unlocked a door and flipped on the lights, and then I understood that he wasn’t going to the bookstore to buy a book, he was opening it up so people could come in and buy from him. He motioned to a chair, and said “have a seat if you’d like.” I asked him about what brought him to the Zen Center, and he told me he was introduced by beatniks during the 1960’s. He said he didn’t understand it, but he kept coming back, and meditating. He told me that he misses how casually people took Zen back in those days. He said the younger people now are far too enthusiastic for this taste, too serious and committed. He was a writer, and we talked about the creative process. I shared with him a bit of my journey, about how I too discovered meditation, and find it strange that I’d keep wanting to do it. We talked about the West Coast, we laughed together, and before I knew it I looked at my watch and it had been an hour and a half. My wife Jennifer was waiting and I told him I should get along, but I enjoyed the conversation. He said he enjoyed it too, and I left.

I remember this years later with fondness. At first I wondered why this encounter would leave such an impression on me – you could argue nothing much happened. What impressed me then and still impresses me was how gracefully I was welcomed into someone’s world, and then before I knew it we had a shared world. Two strangers, who were not forcing affection or forcing either closeness or separateness. It was easy, and we were just sharing ourselves, whatever came without expectation or hope that it would lead to or mean anything. I was welcomed in, and felt whether it was true or not that I could have been there 10 mins or 4 hours, and it would have been okay. It was ok to just be there, and see what came up, or what we felt like talking about. It didn’t feel overly polite or that we trying to fulfill anything for each other, just simple company.

I think all my life I’ve had a commitment that I continually need and want to renew: the commitment to a shared life. This is really nothing all that exotic or special. Just two strangers of different generations, different backgrounds, different experiences sharing life in the same room together for a brief period of time.

I’m continually aware of how brief of a time we have, even if we are blessed with a relatively long life. I see now with more clarity and force how the days go by, and opportunities can be lost, and what seems to matter and leave an impression are these moments of a shared life: whether that is shared life with family and loved ones, a shared life with a stranger, a shared life at a protest, a shared life with those we vehemently disagree with. I think the last one is the hardest, and I think relating to having a shared life with those who frighten and repel us may be one of the most crucial things we do as individuals during this time.

I feel like the definition of an individual is undergoing a radical re-definition. It used to be that we thought of ourselves as an individual, which meant our personal biography: where we grew up, who our parents were, where we went to school, our gender, race, sexuality, the profession we work, etc. We are growing now into a much larger sense of the individual, which is confusing. Now we see during a pandemic that we can stay inside and follow proper health protocols, but if enough people disregard these guidelines, our community will be infected.

At that moment, we have a choice. We can feel self-righteous that we made different choices, or we can see that our shared life is also actually our life, whether we like it or not, and the choices others make become our life and vice versa.

We have an addiction in this country that has come to define the old definition of an individual. We are addicted to seeing ourselves and being seen as innocent. We perpetuate this addiction in many ways. We continually single out other individuals, and say that’s not me. That person or those groups of people are not me. It would make sense that we would do this. Everything in our culture up to this point is based on the addiction of seeming innocent. What do we do with guilty people? With those who are found guilty, especially if they belong to a historically oppressed group, we incarcerate them. We put people in cells, feed them subpar food, expose them to sickness, deny them close relationships with loved ones, and then when they get out we stigmatize them and make it difficult for them to get a job and have a life.

If we do not belong to a historically oppressed group, there are loopholes in the system to ensure our narrative of innocence, even if we’re guilty. It would make sense that we would be addicted to protecting our innocence. Even if prison is not the result, we live in a culture that will single out an individual and make them a pariah if they don’t attempt to fall in line with the narrative of innocence. We are addicted to seeing ourselves as completely innocent, and it is doing us a lot of harm.

The exception to this seems to be the way we are engaging racism now. For many decades, nobody would say they were racist. Racist people were only individuals who were overt about their racism – KKK members, etc. We lived in a time not too long ago, as long as you pretended not to see color, you were innocent, and your family, friends, and community would support your innocence. Now there is a much more mature and humane perspective. Now the prevailing perspective is that though I may not as an individual knowingly harbor racist sentiments, my whole life has been built and is the product of racist actions.

So I’m culpable. I play some part in that. It’s a perspective that is expanding and redefining the individual, and what and who we are accountable to. Along with this realization of being culpable in a culture that disgusts many of us, there is a certain fragility that has emerged. It’s often called white fragility, but I think there are many different kinds of fragility. The root of this fragility is an outdated version of the individual that we are still trying to live by, even though it doesn’t make sense any more. It is very fragile to hold the narrative that I’m an individual who made personal choices that were mostly innocent and good, and all these other bad people did bad things I find reprehensible, and that has nothing to do with who I am. That is a very fragile perspective, and that fragility means it’s time for a new definition of the individual.

The new individual of today has the opportunity to see that what is happening in the collective is part of my individuality. It is easy and normal to say for instance that I don’t believe in violence, murder, racism, and oppression. Right now we have the opportunity to say absolutely there are things happening now that we find reprehensible, but those things are not happening outside of me. My whole life is a product of violence, murder, racism and oppression. It is a different impact for each individual, but I would not have the life I have today without these things. The city I live in wouldn’t have been built. The schools I attended, the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, the opportunities I’ve had, the definition of success I’ve inherited – all of it relates to things I find reprehensible. Of course this doesn’t mean that everything is bad. There are wonderful and beautiful things about all aspects of our life: where we live, the memories of our city, our co-workers, the lives we’ve built. It is beautiful, just not purely innocent. According to an outmoded view of the individual, this should just make us feel bad; it would make us feel fragile.

But there is another aspect to this new individual that is emerging that is very important. In facing all the ways we participate in what we find reprehensible, we can begin again. This understanding offsets the fragility, gives us somewhere to go, rather than just feeling bad about ourselves. We see facing the lack of innocence as an opportunity for growth, an opportunity for a new beginning. We move away from seeing lack of innocence as a prison sentence or a recipe for becoming a pariah, but rather a recipe to becoming a real, mature, person.

According to the Jewish calendar, this weekend is Rosh Hashanah, where according to Torah God begins to create the world. It’s a new beginning. I feel it in my bones this year. I read the Bible regularly, and most people I speak with about the Bible usually say that the first testament is the hardest to read: it’s full of violence, contradiction, sacrifice. It’s story after story of God telling the people to act a certain way if they want to save themselves, and then they do the opposite, and then try to trick God that they’re really innocent. And then when there’s nowhere left to turn, the people finally admit what they’ve done, and then there is atonement, a new beginning.

I love it. When I look around, I see there is a truth in these writings, an honest look at the struggle of being human and not doing what we know to be right. For those who are not religious, terms like atonement can feel optional, like a matter of belief. But I don’t think we have that luxury anymore. Being atoned, or at-one is not just for the Jewish people, or those who consider themselves religious. It is all for all those who are ready to become a true individual.

Many have a theory that our country is divided right now. I think we are only divided in mind. We are united through our shared actions and our shared life together, whether we like it or not. And if we don’t like it, it’s really important we pay attention to it. It’s really important that we don’t deflect, and say this has nothing to do with me, but to look more deeply and see how this too is our life. All these actions are making our life, and giving us an opportunity for an individual healing response, a new beginning. Not all of these actions we’re seeing are harmful. There is a lot of healing happening too – those who are caring for the sick, the needy, the disenfranchised. The world and our country is full of people looking out for the best interest of their families and communities. All of this is also us, if we learn how to access it.

I feel so grateful to be alive during this new creation of the individual that is now emerging. It begins with fragility, but it leads in time to a stable maturity. We can stop pretending that we and those we identify with are always good and those we disagree with and find reprehensible are always bad. We can move out of this simplistic view into something more real and ultimately satisfying. We see that we all are part of a shared life, and that shared life is varied and full of goodness and acts we find harmful and inappropriate. We are moving toward the opportunity to hold a person accountable for their actions, while understanding that we all play some part in forming a new beginning.