Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Belief in the fixity rather than the fluidity of human nature or maybe in guilt without redemption shows up everywhere — not just in the formal legal system that decides questions of innocence, guilt and responsibility but also in the social sphere, in which we render verdicts replete with both unexamined assumptions about human nature and prejudices for and against particular kinds of people and acts.

Are you who you used to be? Specifically, are you the person who made that mistake, held that view now regarded as reprehensible or ignorant, committed that harm years or decades ago? Most of us who came of age in the last century have changed our worldviews around race, gender, sexuality and other key issues over the decades. The past decade in particular unfolded like an ad hoc seminar on these issues for those who chose to pay attention.

Still, we often speak and treat one another as though each of us is the sum of all our past beliefs and actions, nothing added, subtracted or transformed.’ (from the New York Times)