Minnesota Zen Meditation Center - Sunday Talk Archive
Jul 19, 2026 · 50 min · 11 segments
[](https://www.mnzencenter.org/uploads/2/9/5/8/29581455/20260719_sunday_audio_-_shodo_spring.mp3 "Download file: Dharma talk by Shodo Spring")…
Shodo SpringGuestBen ConnellyHostYESTERDAY AS I WAS WORKING ON THIS, WELL, I WAS LISTENING TO AN INTERVIEW WITH ZORA MONDONI AND I JUST HAD TO SHUT IT OFF IN ORDER TO START WRITING AND WORKING ON THIS.
AND WHAT I LEARNED, I MEAN, HE'S BEEN VERY POPULAR.
He seems to be making a difference.
And one of the things mentioned was that he's getting death threats.
And his family gets death threats.
And the interviewer asked him, has he made peace with it? And he says, well, not really.
And then he said, you know, I signed up for this.
He chose to have a public life.
His family didn't choose this, but they have to put up with it.
That got me thinking in the past week, stories of several people who have made a certain choice have shown up, and I will mention them, but first I'll mention this book that I'm reading.
Rutger Bregman, anybody know this name? A few, he's a Danish historian, for some reason moved to the US.
He wrote this lovely book called humankind in which he told all kinds of stories and did Investigations to show that people are nicer than we think they are We're not really all about greed hate and delusion and he said then he looked at the results of this book and he went oh no people are just thinking they can lie back and things will be okay and And so the book Moral Ambition, first I saw the YouTube and then I only just started on the book, but he investigates what makes the difference between people who actually change the course of history and people who just watch it go by.
And I've collected some of these.
But first I'll say he asked the question, how do people become the people, you know, how do you become Greta Thunberg? How do you become Zohra Mandani? How do you become Martin Luther King? How do you become? It seemed to him that there were a few characteristics.
I mean, people have done studies, of course.
And in this age, we tend to think of big forces make things happen, individuals not so much.
But he noticed there were two personal characteristics.
that mattered, and one of them was growing up with some sense of self-confidence.
And the other one was that people who did these wild things were often people who were a little on the edge.
YESTERDAY AS I WAS WORKING ON THIS, WELL, I WAS LISTENING TO AN INTERVIEW WITH ZORA MONDONI AND I JUST HAD TO SHUT IT OFF IN ORDER TO START WRITING AND WORKING ON THIS.
AND WHAT I LEARNED, I MEAN, HE'S BEEN VERY POPULAR.
He seems to be making a difference.
And one of the things mentioned was that he's getting death threats.
And his family gets death threats.
And the interviewer asked him, has he made peace with it? And he says, well, not really.
And then he said, you know, I signed up for this.
He chose to have a public life.
His family didn't choose this, but they have to put up with it.
That got me thinking in the past week, stories of several people who have made a certain choice have shown up, and I will mention them, but first I'll mention this book that I'm reading.
Rutger Bregman, anybody know this name? A few, he's a Danish historian, for some reason moved to the US.
He wrote this lovely book called humankind in which he told all kinds of stories and did Investigations to show that people are nicer than we think they are We're not really all about greed hate and delusion and he said then he looked at the results of this book and he went oh no people are just thinking they can lie back and things will be okay and And so the book Moral Ambition, first I saw the YouTube and then I only just started on the book, but he investigates what makes the difference between people who actually change the course of history and people who just watch it go by.
And I've collected some of these.
But first I'll say he asked the question, how do people become the people, you know, how do you become Greta Thunberg? How do you become Zohra Mandani? How do you become Martin Luther King? How do you become? It seemed to him that there were a few characteristics.
I mean, people have done studies, of course.
And in this age, we tend to think of big forces make things happen, individuals not so much.
But he noticed there were two personal characteristics.
that mattered, and one of them was growing up with some sense of self-confidence.
And the other one was that people who did these wild things were often people who were a little on the edge.
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