An Excerpt from Jay Sensei's Non-Discrimination Talk at the Ohio Statehouse November 13th, 2008.

"Those discriminations and distinctions that we fight for and with, actually don't exist, save in our own mind. And so a simple practice that almost any Buddhist, and specifically the Zen lineage, the one that I hold and represent, will engage in is the practice of silence. Contemplative silence. And from the point of view of our particular lineage, if to some degree that contemplative intelligence has not been awakened, then we suffer. We suffer from the effects of our own entrapment in conditioning. And so I thought it might be a nice thing for us to just take a second, and please sit straight with me if you would for a moment. In zen you know words fail. And by the way, also, most mystic and contemplative traditions (practice this), its not strictly a Buddhist thing. If you look at Christian mysticism, Jewish mysticism, over and over the gate is silence. And so as we take just a second, please bring your attention to your breath, and please just feel the breath enter the body, and leave the body. And as you hear the discussions outside let them continue. Don't try to fight them, but don't let yourself get pulled out and distracted by them. All of us share this breath. There is not a Buddhist breath, there is not a Democratic breath, or a Republican breath, or a gay or a straight breath. There is simply this breath. Thank you everyone."

-Jay Rinsen Weik