"the true beauty of ourselves as nature"

I read a beautiful passage from a Buddhist nun named Reverend Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, where she writes from a Buddhist perspective on racism. Manuel remarks:

"There is nothing more powerful than looking out on nature and seeing the varied expressions of life, taking in its myriad forms that touch our hearts or that disturb them. We ourselves are just as magnificent as anything expressed in nature as nature.  We need only be that magnificence. Yet, when we try to 'be' magnificent, discrimination and discernment enter into our minds. We leave out who and what we think is not magnificent. We exclude whatever we judge to be lesser in our minds, which leads to manipulative action and to formation of ideologies that bind us to the true beauty of ourselves as nature" (From The Way of Tenderness, p.47)

This is such a deep and beautiful quote which for me tackles an important question, how Buddhism addresses or even explains social discrimination. But what also resonates with me here is the process that Reverend Manuel uses to help her readers understand the process. In the beginning of the passage, there is simply an unconditional respect for seeing life in its different expressions. Then there is the claim that we are just as magnificent as the natural world. This is true simply because all beings are born into mind, But the truly rich part about this narrative comes when Reverend Manuel remarks, "when we try to 'be' magnificent, discrimination and discernment enter into our minds." When I read this passage, I really started to reflect on the difference between acknowledging the magnificence that is one's natural birthright, and the magnificence that a person 'tries' to become by assuming a superior position to others. And why does this happen? It happens because somehow the original magnificence that is already mine and yours gets clouded or lost. It's not that we really lose magnificence, but it gets obscured, and people end up trying to discriminate themselves from others i different ways.

What's the reverse of this situation? Maybe it seems not easily reversible, but the magnificence that belongs to all beings needs to be recovered, and it needs to be directly experienced as well. But it takes a radical act of not trying to be anything, to get to this state. This not trying to be something is not the same as not doing anything. It seems an acknowledgment that all beings, in all their diversity, are worthy of the very greatest love and compassion. Not only this, but if a person even senses in a tiny way that she or he has to earn this love and compassion through some effort or another, then this kind of thinking progresses into the violence of trying to be 'better than' someone else in some way. As soon as a person has this tiny feeling of not being worthy,of having to strive to be worthy in one's basic being, it's best to put this down and try to come back to the fundamental magnificence that all sentient beings have, without exception. When a person is able to connect that emerging vexation within to the violence of the world, one can take a step back and start to recover the value that nobody ever needed to earn or even be privileged with.

Manuel, Zenju Earthlyn (2015) The Way of Tenderness: Awakening Through Race, Sexuality and Gender Boston,: Wisdom Publications