How You Can Help Transform America's Racial Karma | Dr. Larry Ward

WEBVTT
1
00:00:03.149 --> 00:00:11.839
From ABC, it's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, guys,
2
00:00:11.939 --> 00:00:15.400
what can you as an individual do to help break
3
00:00:15.460 --> 00:00:19.839
the cycles of rage, pain, fear and violence that continue
4
00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:22.539
to grip America and many other parts of the world
5
00:00:23.239 --> 00:00:26.440
relating to the issue of race? Even though our guest
6
00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:29.179
this week was shot at by white police officers when
7
00:00:29.219 --> 00:00:32.329
he was only 11 and then Later in his life,
8
00:00:32.369 --> 00:00:36.670
had his house firebombed, allegedly by local racists in the
9
00:00:36.710 --> 00:00:39.770
town where he was living. Even though he's gone through
10
00:00:39.810 --> 00:00:43.049
all of that, he is still hopeful that now is
11
00:00:43.109 --> 00:00:47.240
a moment of true potential, an opportunity to transform what
12
00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:52.000
he calls America's racial karma, and by extension, ourselves.
13
00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:53.100
Dr.
14
00:00:53.140 --> 00:00:55.920
Larry Ward is a lay minister in the lineage of
15
00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.729
the great Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, He's an
16
00:00:59.770 --> 00:01:03.189
advisor to the Executive Mind Leadership Institute at the Peter F.
17
00:01:03.210 --> 00:01:06.319
Drucker School of Management. He's done consulting work with Fortune
18
00:01:06.319 --> 00:01:09.900
500 companies, and he has a PhD in religious studies
19
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.980
with an emphasis on Buddhism. His forthcoming book is called
20
00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:20.909
America's Racial Karma. And here we go with Dr. Larry Ward. Well,
21
00:01:20.930 --> 00:01:22.829
it's nice to meet you remotely, and thank you for
22
00:01:22.849 --> 00:01:23.209
doing this.
23
00:01:23.469 --> 00:01:25.430
Sure. Nice to meet you, too. Take good care of.
24
00:01:27.310 --> 00:01:29.319
We have a lot of meditators who listen to the show.
25
00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:31.620
And so I'd love to know more about what you
26
00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:37.379
do in your own mind when you feel the kind
27
00:01:37.400 --> 00:01:42.609
of suffering where you're empathizing with the families of these
28
00:01:42.629 --> 00:01:45.909
young people who have been killed or when memories are
29
00:01:45.950 --> 00:01:48.629
coming up for you from your own personal story.
30
00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:51.730
I think the other two pieces are important to this.
31
00:01:51.829 --> 00:01:58.640
It's also the intergenerational flow of trauma. And it is
32
00:01:59.060 --> 00:02:02.120
also the trauma I experienced on the land in which
33
00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:08.020
we live. And so how I practice caring for myself
34
00:02:08.439 --> 00:02:14.580
different ways, depending on what I'm feeling, etc. So sometimes
35
00:02:14.699 --> 00:02:19.810
I put on just music and listen to music that
36
00:02:19.870 --> 00:02:24.110
will help me move energy that may be stuck somewhere
37
00:02:24.169 --> 00:02:25.289
in my body out.
38
00:02:26.210 --> 00:02:26.789
What do you like?
39
00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:29.930
Through well what kind of music uh well i have
40
00:02:29.939 --> 00:02:35.449
a pretty wide pretty wide range of music i like
41
00:02:35.530 --> 00:02:38.050
and depending on the mood or what i'm feeling needs
42
00:02:38.090 --> 00:02:43.129
to be processed uh michael jackson uh helps me a
43
00:02:43.169 --> 00:02:47.460
lot with some of his particular songs especially the one
44
00:02:47.509 --> 00:02:51.599
he that was sung at his memorial will you be
45
00:02:51.659 --> 00:02:56.729
there harry belafonte when I need to feel like beauty
46
00:02:57.229 --> 00:02:58.930
is still in the world.
47
00:02:59.810 --> 00:03:00.560
Jump in the line?
48
00:03:01.740 --> 00:03:06.520
No, I do try to remember. I'm kind of a
49
00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:10.740
romantic at heart, and so that soothes that part of
50
00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:14.530
me that helps me remember life is beautiful, that it
51
00:03:14.569 --> 00:03:17.870
can be captured in word and in sound and in
52
00:03:17.949 --> 00:03:23.449
vibration and in color. Sometimes I listen or observe Natalie Staltzman,
53
00:03:24.360 --> 00:03:30.939
who's a brilliant conductor, especially in her version of Ombre
54
00:03:30.979 --> 00:03:35.479
Ma Fou. So sometimes I go the classical route and
55
00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:40.060
choose different melodies and symphonies that also can move energy.
56
00:03:40.090 --> 00:03:45.050
So all of our creative arts and methods from our
57
00:03:45.150 --> 00:03:48.729
ancestors in one way is designed to do these things.
58
00:03:49.409 --> 00:03:51.530
But if we don't learn to master them and don't
59
00:03:51.550 --> 00:03:54.430
learn to take the time to do them, We just,
60
00:03:54.530 --> 00:03:57.030
as my grandmother used to say, run around like chickens
61
00:03:57.069 --> 00:03:57.930
with our heads cut off.
62
00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:02.270
So you put the music on and dance as a
63
00:04:02.310 --> 00:04:06.210
way to get the energy flowing?
64
00:04:06.389 --> 00:04:11.250
Sometimes I dance. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I lay down
65
00:04:11.310 --> 00:04:14.930
and just let the sound and the music wash over
66
00:04:14.969 --> 00:04:19.990
my body. Sometimes it inspires a poem, etc., or another
67
00:04:20.069 --> 00:04:25.870
song that I find healing. and energizing and recovering to
68
00:04:25.910 --> 00:04:28.550
listen to so I don't get lost in my pain.
69
00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:36.639
And then sometimes, always, every day, I go outside. So
70
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:39.759
one of my practices daily at morning and noon and night,
71
00:04:39.839 --> 00:04:42.990
if I can, is to be outside of four walls
72
00:04:44.449 --> 00:04:49.620
and pay attention to the equanimity of nature. One of
73
00:04:49.660 --> 00:04:53.050
the things I learned a long time ago is why
74
00:04:53.850 --> 00:04:56.889
I discovered my love for the natural world is I
75
00:04:56.949 --> 00:05:01.810
find it nonjudgmental. I can lay on a tree. I
76
00:05:01.850 --> 00:05:04.009
can sit on a rock. I can put my toes
77
00:05:04.089 --> 00:05:06.810
in a river. And I've done all those things all
78
00:05:06.889 --> 00:05:09.430
over the world many times and are yet to be rejected.
79
00:05:11.209 --> 00:05:13.629
And so I find spending time in nature, learning to
80
00:05:13.750 --> 00:05:19.199
rest in nature, observe nature, appreciate nature, including observing animals
81
00:05:19.259 --> 00:05:22.949
and their behaviors and insects and all these creatures. I
82
00:05:22.970 --> 00:05:26.529
spend a part of my day doing that. And it
83
00:05:26.589 --> 00:05:29.350
gets to remind me that we're in a world much bigger,
84
00:05:30.110 --> 00:05:33.480
but that we are a part of that process. So
85
00:05:33.540 --> 00:05:37.259
I find that helpful. Sometimes I read poems. Sometimes I
86
00:05:37.300 --> 00:05:42.360
write poems. Then, of course, I meditate daily. And I
87
00:05:42.379 --> 00:05:45.379
have different practices of that from many years of learning
88
00:05:45.420 --> 00:05:46.730
from many people around the world.
89
00:05:49.819 --> 00:05:54.079
For trauma specifically, is meditation useful and what kind of meditation?
90
00:05:54.399 --> 00:06:00.069
Okay. It's a very good question. And my caveat to
91
00:06:00.110 --> 00:06:05.970
that is not always. Because my experience has been in
92
00:06:06.029 --> 00:06:11.000
feedback from both new practitioners and even older practitioners is
93
00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:15.279
think traumatic things come up in meditation for many people.
94
00:06:16.079 --> 00:06:18.480
But when it comes up, they don't know how to
95
00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:24.279
care for it. So it ends up re-triggering them, re-traumatizing them.
96
00:06:24.980 --> 00:06:28.399
And so my approach now, based on what I've been
97
00:06:28.420 --> 00:06:31.560
learning about myself, which is very consistent with the first
98
00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:35.199
foundation of mindfulness practice in Buddhism, is to understand the
99
00:06:35.259 --> 00:06:39.290
body not just as an external phenomenon or a bunch
100
00:06:39.319 --> 00:06:41.949
of organs, though all that's very important, but to understand
101
00:06:42.009 --> 00:06:47.350
our systems, our biological, emotional systems, and learn how to
102
00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:50.930
master what we can of those learn how to enhance
103
00:06:51.730 --> 00:06:55.050
what we can of those. So that's kind of how
104
00:06:55.170 --> 00:07:00.009
I'm learning and continuing to practice. And so for some people, not,
105
00:07:01.139 --> 00:07:06.759
you know, deep meditation, maybe just relaxation meditation to begin,
106
00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:10.779
but to go deeper, I find it helpful now in
107
00:07:10.839 --> 00:07:13.389
this world at this moment for people to have a
108
00:07:13.439 --> 00:07:15.829
sense of being able to be in their body, be
109
00:07:16.050 --> 00:07:19.459
grounded in their body, know the sensations of the whole
110
00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:23.420
movement of somatic experiencing that's going on. Those are life skills,
111
00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:27.910
so they can become second nature to us. So I
112
00:07:27.970 --> 00:07:32.250
can take a walk. And in taking a walk, if
113
00:07:32.329 --> 00:07:35.370
I'm processing my trauma, the question is, what is my
114
00:07:35.449 --> 00:07:39.360
mind doing when I'm walking? And so one of the
115
00:07:39.399 --> 00:07:43.279
practices I have that I really learned from Thich Nhat
116
00:07:43.300 --> 00:07:46.759
Hanh is to do walking meditation. And when I put
117
00:07:46.819 --> 00:07:50.079
my feet down I let go of the energy that's
118
00:07:50.139 --> 00:07:54.990
causing me harm. And when my feet touch the earth,
119
00:07:55.089 --> 00:07:58.930
then I receive the energy from the earth, which is
120
00:07:59.110 --> 00:08:04.129
pure equanimity, the earth's energy. And then I receive that.
121
00:08:04.189 --> 00:08:06.310
I could feel that energy entering my body. So it's
122
00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:12.860
very kinesthetic practice of Buddhism, not abstract Buddhism, though I'm
123
00:08:12.939 --> 00:08:15.240
studied in all those things. But to me, all that
124
00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:18.839
abstract stuff is pointing to practice. Otherwise, like, what good
125
00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:19.149
is it?
126
00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:24.860
It's so interesting to hear you describe this moving meditation
127
00:08:24.899 --> 00:08:27.279
that you learned from Thich Nhat Hanh. As you step
128
00:08:27.360 --> 00:08:33.100
onto the earth, you're letting go of pain, suffering, and
129
00:08:33.539 --> 00:08:37.470
receiving the support of the planet. It's in many ways
130
00:08:37.529 --> 00:08:41.970
kind of a mirror of the Tibetan Tonglen practice where
131
00:08:41.990 --> 00:08:44.889
you're breathing in other people's suffering and breathing out your
132
00:08:44.929 --> 00:08:48.000
wish for their And both seem necessary. We have to
133
00:08:48.039 --> 00:08:49.879
care for ourselves and we need to care for other people.
134
00:08:50.220 --> 00:08:53.480
You can't do the caring for other people if you're
135
00:08:53.500 --> 00:08:53.860
a mess.
136
00:08:54.100 --> 00:08:58.299
That's correct. That's correct. And so, so many of us
137
00:08:58.860 --> 00:09:03.750
burn out in justice work and healthcare work, corporate work,
138
00:09:03.759 --> 00:09:07.190
or we could take any field, educational work, especially if
139
00:09:07.330 --> 00:09:12.029
it gets close to the candle of justice. It's easy
140
00:09:12.110 --> 00:09:14.490
for our empathy to burn us out if we don't
141
00:09:14.529 --> 00:09:18.340
know how to take our empathy energy and transmute it
142
00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:24.700
into compassion. And so part of my regime, my daily
143
00:09:24.759 --> 00:09:28.580
practice is to allow my empathy to unfold because I
144
00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:34.909
believe we basically have an empathy insufficiency world across everywhere
145
00:09:35.549 --> 00:09:41.250
I've been. And I don't see much possibility or another
146
00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:43.149
way to say, I think our next step is to
147
00:09:43.230 --> 00:09:46.860
recover our humanity and In this sense of our basic
148
00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:53.019
empathy as really the ground for society or civilization. When
149
00:09:53.039 --> 00:09:56.889
Margaret Mead was asked once about what did she consider
150
00:09:56.929 --> 00:10:01.200
a civilization, she told a story about a thigh. of
151
00:10:01.259 --> 00:10:04.720
a person found in the forest that you could tell
152
00:10:04.799 --> 00:10:07.399
somebody tried to care for this person and they didn't
153
00:10:07.419 --> 00:10:11.080
make it. And her point was caring is the fundamental
154
00:10:12.100 --> 00:10:16.379
foundation of a society, care for one another. And so
155
00:10:16.519 --> 00:10:19.259
we have yet to learn how to do that here.
156
00:10:22.379 --> 00:10:24.779
Here specifically, America specifically.
157
00:10:24.799 --> 00:10:28.779
Correct. I can say that anywhere, but I'm here now
158
00:10:30.279 --> 00:10:35.419
and here for 400 years with the same experience of
159
00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:41.230
insufficiency of empathy. And there is consequences for the person
160
00:10:41.330 --> 00:10:46.330
whose empathy is shut down. It is so, and when
161
00:10:46.350 --> 00:10:50.649
we think about trauma, we have to remember victims, perpetrators,
162
00:10:50.850 --> 00:10:55.960
and witnesses. Because in our human experience, in our neurological research,
163
00:10:56.049 --> 00:11:01.399
we know witnessing a trauma activates trauma in you as
164
00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:08.000
a witness, let alone the perpetrator, whose nervous systems have
165
00:11:08.039 --> 00:11:10.100
really been destroyed by their own destruction.
166
00:11:12.490 --> 00:11:17.730
I'm curious, when you're doing a formal seated meditation, I
167
00:11:17.750 --> 00:11:20.710
don't know what your practice looks like, but whether you're
168
00:11:20.750 --> 00:11:23.389
mostly doing moving meditation these days, or let's just say
169
00:11:23.409 --> 00:11:28.110
you're doing seated meditation and some strong trauma comes up
170
00:11:28.190 --> 00:11:32.350
for you. Now, granted, you're not a beginner, but how
171
00:11:32.370 --> 00:11:34.350
do you handle that in the moment?
172
00:11:35.190 --> 00:11:37.929
In the moment, what I do is I direct my
173
00:11:38.090 --> 00:11:44.539
attention to the sensations two inches below my navel, or
174
00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:48.980
the tendin, as it's sometimes referred to. Because that lower
175
00:11:49.059 --> 00:11:53.840
center of gravity allows my nervous system and my entire
176
00:11:53.919 --> 00:12:00.350
breathing process to begin to get more space. Begin to
177
00:12:00.389 --> 00:12:05.090
get calmer. And so I stay there and sometimes I
178
00:12:05.129 --> 00:12:07.450
hold my hands on my stomach and just stay with
179
00:12:07.470 --> 00:12:12.370
the rising and falling sensation. But I leave my mind.
180
00:12:13.940 --> 00:12:16.240
Stay with the body because that's where the trauma is.
181
00:12:16.279 --> 00:12:19.080
The mind is thinking about the trauma, but the body
182
00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:23.399
is holding the trauma. And so that's immediately what I do.
183
00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:27.299
And if I'm in sitting position or if I'm in
184
00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:29.899
sitting position and that doesn't do it, I go lay
185
00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:35.519
down on the earth and do that same practice. But
186
00:12:35.899 --> 00:12:38.019
as I begin and I'm starting to feel the earth
187
00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:42.980
energy radiating up, coming up through my body. And so
188
00:12:43.059 --> 00:12:48.299
I'm feeling I have some stability underneath me as I
189
00:12:49.090 --> 00:12:50.509
breathe that way.
190
00:12:51.629 --> 00:12:52.649
I hear two things there.
191
00:12:52.830 --> 00:12:53.389
One is.
192
00:12:54.809 --> 00:12:56.730
You're not going to do much in terms of taking
193
00:12:56.750 --> 00:12:58.509
care of yourself in the face of trauma if you're
194
00:12:58.529 --> 00:13:02.360
stuck in your own thinking. And two, the power of
195
00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:04.840
nature again, because if you lie on the earth, it's
196
00:13:04.899 --> 00:13:06.159
not going to judge or reject you.
197
00:13:06.259 --> 00:13:11.240
Yeah. And learning how to feel that, feeling that sensation
198
00:13:11.299 --> 00:13:16.799
of safety in your body. And that's a very powerful
199
00:13:18.440 --> 00:13:20.399
sensation of safety.
200
00:13:21.940 --> 00:13:24.980
That seems powerful in no small measure because so many
201
00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:26.980
black Americans right now do not feel safe.
202
00:13:27.379 --> 00:13:31.570
That's correct. You know, and part of what for many
203
00:13:31.639 --> 00:13:35.690
people has opened up in their consciousness, well, you know,
204
00:13:35.809 --> 00:13:40.169
I have never felt safe except through my own practice.
205
00:13:42.820 --> 00:13:45.759
Society has not given me any reason to feel safe
206
00:13:47.110 --> 00:13:50.210
for my whole life. When I feel safe, I am
207
00:13:50.250 --> 00:13:55.330
grounded in safety because of my spiritual practice. And so
208
00:13:56.009 --> 00:14:02.269
that allows me to navigate my way through unsafety, which
209
00:14:02.330 --> 00:14:04.929
is not just a personal experience or a black experience,
210
00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:08.799
quote unquote, as a human experience. And that's why understanding
211
00:14:08.860 --> 00:14:12.250
how our nervous systems work And, you know, the nervous
212
00:14:12.289 --> 00:14:15.649
system of a human is the same wherever we are,
213
00:14:16.389 --> 00:14:19.049
which some people seem to have trouble understanding about the virus.
214
00:14:19.129 --> 00:14:22.049
But I've said to my wife recently, more people should
215
00:14:22.100 --> 00:14:27.080
have paid attention in biology. And I'm really learning how
216
00:14:27.179 --> 00:14:30.740
important it is to, as I get older especially, to
217
00:14:30.840 --> 00:14:35.820
understand more and more how to respect my body. And
218
00:14:35.860 --> 00:14:38.490
the information it's giving me, how it's communicating, what it's
219
00:14:38.570 --> 00:14:42.899
telling me. And then I get choices once I'm sensitive
220
00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.320
enough to that. My range of choices of how to
221
00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:46.679
respond is expanded.
222
00:14:49.100 --> 00:14:51.710
You just when you're you're you're comment about more people
223
00:14:51.730 --> 00:14:54.830
should have studied biology in relation to the virus reminds me.
224
00:14:54.950 --> 00:14:58.330
I was on the set of Good Morning America recently
225
00:14:58.450 --> 00:15:02.470
and we were playing some videos of people, some swarm
226
00:15:02.549 --> 00:15:06.929
of revelers on Memorial Day. Nobody wearing a mask.
227
00:15:06.970 --> 00:15:07.129
Yeah.
228
00:15:07.669 --> 00:15:09.720
And I remember turning to one of my, I might
229
00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:11.200
get in trouble for saying this, but I'll say it.
230
00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:13.720
I remember turning to one of my co-anchors and saying, well,
231
00:15:13.740 --> 00:15:16.279
I guess we have a constitutional right to be stupid.
232
00:15:17.340 --> 00:15:20.720
Well, you know, and it's sad because of what's at risk.
233
00:15:22.179 --> 00:15:24.200
I mean, their very lives are at risk. And so
234
00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:30.019
I understand the challenges of trying to get a modern
235
00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:34.059
culture like ours that has strong habit patterns and energies
236
00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:37.100
around doing what I want whenever I want, if I can.
237
00:15:38.509 --> 00:15:42.090
And so the idea of, you know, following a set
238
00:15:42.129 --> 00:15:45.110
of rules for whatever reason, it's very difficult for some
239
00:15:45.149 --> 00:15:51.730
people to even understand why. We've been so individuated, fragmented
240
00:15:51.789 --> 00:15:53.830
in our understanding of what it means to be human
241
00:15:53.870 --> 00:15:59.169
here as individuals that we take all the glory as
242
00:15:59.210 --> 00:16:03.250
an individual, but we also take all the blame and
243
00:16:03.309 --> 00:16:06.720
pay little attention as possible to the systems that or
244
00:16:06.740 --> 00:16:09.580
the context that creates the situation in which we're having
245
00:16:09.620 --> 00:16:10.360
these experiences.
246
00:16:14.509 --> 00:16:17.190
Let me go back to the early part of this interview,
247
00:16:17.250 --> 00:16:19.070
because I want to ask a question that I suspect
248
00:16:19.129 --> 00:16:22.210
will in some way actually build on a note you've
249
00:16:22.230 --> 00:16:26.759
been sounding, maybe an undertone I've been hearing throughout this interview.
250
00:16:27.179 --> 00:16:30.870
Hopefully my empathic sense is tuned enough so that I'm
251
00:16:31.129 --> 00:16:33.250
actually taking you in the direction you want to go here.
252
00:16:33.629 --> 00:16:35.840
But one of the things you said very early on
253
00:16:35.879 --> 00:16:38.059
in the interview was when I was asking you how
254
00:16:38.100 --> 00:16:40.659
you're doing right now, one of the, you listed a
255
00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:44.139
lot of difficult emotions, but you also talk about feeling
256
00:16:44.179 --> 00:16:49.220
a sense of potential. And so can you talk about
257
00:16:49.899 --> 00:16:53.289
why that is and what the potential you see may be?
258
00:16:54.710 --> 00:16:59.570
Well, there's several different frameworks I can use to But
259
00:16:59.590 --> 00:17:03.350
these are only metaphors. But in the Four Noble Truths
260
00:17:04.319 --> 00:17:10.740
of the Buddhist tradition, our capacity for liberation, spiritual liberation
261
00:17:11.460 --> 00:17:15.259
embodied in our life, goes through the doorway of suffering.
262
00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:20.420
It does not go around it. And so it's no
263
00:17:20.460 --> 00:17:24.250
different than me. Last week I was visiting for an
264
00:17:24.289 --> 00:17:27.130
annual checkup at the hospital, and so they're checking me out.
265
00:17:28.099 --> 00:17:29.660
And then I get to have a test and I
266
00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:32.119
get feedback that says, well, your body is suffering here.
267
00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:34.910
Your body may be suffering there. And so for me
268
00:17:34.950 --> 00:17:36.470
to care for my body is the same as to
269
00:17:36.509 --> 00:17:40.269
care for my mind. To recognize my suffering, do not
270
00:17:40.329 --> 00:17:43.049
pretend it's not there. That's the most dangerous thing one
271
00:17:43.089 --> 00:17:47.230
can do because then one internalizes it. I mean, Freud
272
00:17:47.250 --> 00:17:53.369
talked about this. We internalize our shadow, which is our
273
00:17:53.430 --> 00:17:57.369
suffering if we don't handle it with care. It becomes...
274
00:17:57.960 --> 00:18:02.900
And when that shadow, if it's so intense, gets provoked,
275
00:18:03.029 --> 00:18:10.509
it turns primitive, irrational in responding to life's issues and
276
00:18:10.869 --> 00:18:16.549
angst of being a human being. So I think we
277
00:18:16.589 --> 00:18:19.529
have the potential because we're suffering so and so many
278
00:18:19.589 --> 00:18:23.470
more of us are recognizing the suffering. We have the
279
00:18:23.529 --> 00:18:28.500
potential to heal and transform the suffering. But if we
280
00:18:28.539 --> 00:18:33.559
cannot recognize, we can't heal or transform it. It will
281
00:18:33.599 --> 00:18:38.509
just continue as it is. And part of what the quote-unquote,
282
00:18:39.349 --> 00:18:41.430
I don't know what to call these. These aren't riots.
283
00:18:41.569 --> 00:18:48.450
These aren't even protests. They're acknowledgments of a system flaw.
284
00:18:49.890 --> 00:18:53.230
William Irwin Thompson, he used to teach at MIT, wrote
285
00:18:53.250 --> 00:18:57.619
a book many years ago. He talked about the utopian flaw.
286
00:18:58.799 --> 00:19:02.359
that exist in the founding of every human organization or institution.
287
00:19:04.339 --> 00:19:09.460
And we're having to confront our utopian flaw. We have
288
00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:11.779
put it off as long as we can. We've talked
289
00:19:11.819 --> 00:19:14.789
around it as long as we can. We pretended it
290
00:19:14.829 --> 00:19:16.910
wasn't there as long as we can, but enough people
291
00:19:16.990 --> 00:19:20.910
are witnessing the flaw in our human interactions with one
292
00:19:20.970 --> 00:19:24.930
another and our capacity for living well together in a
293
00:19:24.970 --> 00:19:28.140
world and a society of justice and caring That people
294
00:19:28.180 --> 00:19:30.259
are realizing, hey, I want to live in a society
295
00:19:30.279 --> 00:19:34.940
with justice and caring, not that. And for me, that's potential.
296
00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:40.420
How exactly would you articulate our utopian flaw?
297
00:19:41.880 --> 00:19:44.420
Well, most recently, the insight I had into it is
298
00:19:45.349 --> 00:19:48.910
the title of the most recent blog is America, the
299
00:19:48.950 --> 00:19:55.000
business world. trying to become a country or an article
300
00:19:55.359 --> 00:19:58.970
last year in wall street journal new york times wrote
301
00:19:59.049 --> 00:20:03.289
an editorial said when did we become how did we
302
00:20:03.349 --> 00:20:08.769
move from being uh having a marketplace to becoming a
303
00:20:08.809 --> 00:20:15.680
market culture So translation, the economic function of our society
304
00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:19.500
in terms of how we value it dominates all other
305
00:20:19.539 --> 00:20:24.309
functions of society. So to have meaning, to be of worth,
306
00:20:25.269 --> 00:20:32.150
to have a life of value is about accumulating economics, power, capacity, etc. Now,
307
00:20:32.210 --> 00:20:35.750
you don't have a society without economics because you don't
308
00:20:35.769 --> 00:20:38.049
have food, you can't eat, and you're dead. So to me,
309
00:20:38.069 --> 00:20:41.279
that's not the issue. The issue is What's happened to
310
00:20:41.359 --> 00:20:45.559
our whole social fabric? So if our social fabric was
311
00:20:45.980 --> 00:20:50.289
a triangle, our emphasis and dominance of the economic on
312
00:20:50.349 --> 00:20:52.950
our perceptions of what it means to be human, what
313
00:20:53.009 --> 00:20:57.730
is valuable in the human experience, what is our life purpose? Like,
314
00:20:57.750 --> 00:21:00.960
you know, our triangles has a huge chunk of it
315
00:21:01.019 --> 00:21:04.940
that says economics and our politics has become an ally
316
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.549
to that. And that collapses our cultural sense, and therefore
317
00:21:10.750 --> 00:21:15.269
no unity is possible, no shared meaning is possible. And
318
00:21:15.309 --> 00:21:19.150
then if you individuate all of that, we don't even
319
00:21:19.170 --> 00:21:22.490
know it's happening until we have something like this occur.
320
00:21:24.490 --> 00:21:31.099
And this primacy of the market as it pertains to
321
00:21:31.210 --> 00:21:34.240
race is the root of that, that we brought millions of,
322
00:21:35.039 --> 00:21:39.079
people from Africa here solely for economic purposes?
323
00:21:39.339 --> 00:21:41.920
Well, that's part of it, but I'm talking at root
324
00:21:41.960 --> 00:21:45.839
about the whole colonial enterprise all the way from the
325
00:21:46.619 --> 00:21:54.630
doctrine of discovery that all was, you know, let's build wealth. Right.
326
00:21:54.650 --> 00:21:55.970
We began as a business endeavor.
327
00:21:56.109 --> 00:22:02.170
Yeah, exactly. And so, and I liked business and, Okay,
328
00:22:02.210 --> 00:22:04.769
I think it's important. I enjoy doing it. I enjoy
329
00:22:04.789 --> 00:22:11.660
working with it. But business is not the final definition
330
00:22:11.799 --> 00:22:13.220
of what it means to be a human being.
331
00:22:15.339 --> 00:22:21.339
But weren't there lofty non-economic goals in there? I mean, Jefferson,
332
00:22:21.420 --> 00:22:24.269
himself a slave owner, let's not forget, talked about life, liberty,
333
00:22:24.309 --> 00:22:27.190
and the pursuit of happiness, although it began as life, liberty,
334
00:22:27.230 --> 00:22:28.230
and the pursuit of property.
335
00:22:28.250 --> 00:22:29.349
Exactly.
336
00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:33.890
But nonetheless, life and liberty and then what he edited
337
00:22:34.130 --> 00:22:39.289
into of pursuit of happiness, those are non-economic goals, right?
338
00:22:39.509 --> 00:22:43.269
But the way we've designed the society is how we
339
00:22:43.309 --> 00:22:48.789
define what life, liberty, and what we should pursue. And
340
00:22:48.849 --> 00:22:52.430
so all those things now are defined by economic indicators.
341
00:22:53.829 --> 00:22:56.380
Yeah, happiness is a McMansion and a Mercedes.
342
00:22:56.390 --> 00:23:02.539
Right, exactly. Great insight from Jefferson. Very important. However, it's
343
00:23:02.599 --> 00:23:08.119
how we take our insights from our founding, from our teachers,
344
00:23:08.180 --> 00:23:11.380
from philosophers, from history. It's how we think about those
345
00:23:11.460 --> 00:23:14.059
insights and apply them and how we look underneath them
346
00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:18.480
so we can see how they get shifted and moved around.
347
00:23:20.079 --> 00:23:22.000
So we can ask ourselves, is this how we want
348
00:23:22.019 --> 00:23:24.160
to live? Right.
349
00:23:24.180 --> 00:23:27.559
So you've brought us back to potential. And another way
350
00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:31.000
you phrase the potential of this moment, and in reading
351
00:23:31.240 --> 00:23:33.029
some of your blog posts recently, there are a couple
352
00:23:33.049 --> 00:23:35.730
of ways you've phrased it. One that's coming to mind
353
00:23:35.829 --> 00:23:38.029
is that we have an opportunity here. We have the
354
00:23:38.049 --> 00:23:42.869
potential to break your phrase here, America's racial karma.
355
00:23:43.329 --> 00:23:46.099
Correct.
356
00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:48.240
Can you unpack that for us?
357
00:23:48.859 --> 00:23:51.339
Sure. Sure. I have a book coming out on that
358
00:23:51.359 --> 00:23:53.980
in September, and it's right now at the copy editor,
359
00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:57.720
I'm happy to say, with that title. And what intrigued
360
00:23:57.789 --> 00:24:02.549
me about, as I studied and practiced Buddhism and worked
361
00:24:02.609 --> 00:24:05.089
in my PhD in Buddhist studies and blah, blah, blah,
362
00:24:06.390 --> 00:24:11.029
and I've been at this inevitably without choice at the
363
00:24:11.069 --> 00:24:14.930
race matter my whole life. So karma, in this sense,
364
00:24:15.019 --> 00:24:18.079
what I mean is a repeating cycle that causes suffering.
365
00:24:21.190 --> 00:24:27.210
a pattern of repeated cycles that create suffering. And the
366
00:24:27.250 --> 00:24:32.569
classic definition of karma is action. And my understanding of
367
00:24:32.630 --> 00:24:36.410
it in the book is it's action that continues to live.
368
00:24:38.410 --> 00:24:43.250
So part of what's happening now in the streets, as
369
00:24:43.390 --> 00:24:47.819
Dave Chappelle has put it, is that people are standing
370
00:24:47.930 --> 00:24:52.109
up and saying, this living action of this kind of
371
00:24:52.230 --> 00:25:00.700
suffering needs to stop. And karma is just energy that
372
00:25:00.859 --> 00:25:05.519
then shows up in our thinking, in our language, boy,
373
00:25:05.539 --> 00:25:08.599
can we see that, in our speech, and in our
374
00:25:08.660 --> 00:25:14.140
physical behavior, and in our institutions and systems of being
375
00:25:14.529 --> 00:25:18.109
a society. And so that whole thread of that whole
376
00:25:18.269 --> 00:25:23.289
energy This is basically a business, and then we try
377
00:25:23.329 --> 00:25:28.009
to make everything work around that principle. It's not sustainable
378
00:25:28.029 --> 00:25:32.750
for very long, especially as people wake up to themselves,
379
00:25:33.109 --> 00:25:36.539
to their education, to the nature of the world, and
380
00:25:36.579 --> 00:25:40.240
a future that none of us have figured out. So
381
00:25:40.519 --> 00:25:42.220
people are like, I'm not doing this because I want
382
00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:44.240
to destroy something. I'm doing this because I want to
383
00:25:44.299 --> 00:25:50.009
create something. And so also I see that as potential.
384
00:25:50.349 --> 00:25:55.369
If we can redirect that energy in the direction of
385
00:25:55.430 --> 00:25:59.910
creating something together that we'd be happy to live with
386
00:25:59.970 --> 00:26:01.210
and have our children live with.
387
00:26:03.319 --> 00:26:05.440
Just to pick up on what you said about Dave Chappelle,
388
00:26:05.460 --> 00:26:09.460
I want to recommend listeners check out the new clip
389
00:26:09.480 --> 00:26:15.180
he posted on YouTube with his response to George Floyd.
390
00:26:15.859 --> 00:26:17.380
Dave Chappelle is one of my personal favorites.
391
00:26:17.799 --> 00:26:18.140
Heroes.
392
00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:21.569
I've quoted him in both books I've written, and my
393
00:26:21.630 --> 00:26:23.289
goal is to make sure I get a Dave Chappelle
394
00:26:23.309 --> 00:26:23.950
quote in every.
395
00:26:23.789 --> 00:26:24.980
Book I write. That's great.
396
00:26:25.700 --> 00:26:28.549
So go check that out. But back to the economics
397
00:26:28.769 --> 00:26:33.769
that you're describing here, do you see policy ramifications from–
398
00:26:33.789 --> 00:26:37.720
I mean, it's interesting to hear a critique of capitalism
399
00:26:37.779 --> 00:26:40.220
from you because, obviously, you've done so much work with
400
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.759
Fortune 500 companies. You've just said you don't dislike business.
401
00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:48.069
You're not anti-capitalist per se. So how would this rethink
402
00:26:48.170 --> 00:26:51.950
of the role of the marketplace in our life, in
403
00:26:52.009 --> 00:26:55.730
our lives– show up on a policy level or is it,
404
00:26:55.779 --> 00:26:58.019
or what is what you're talking about much more sort
405
00:26:58.039 --> 00:26:59.339
of psychological, spiritual?
406
00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:03.680
Well, at the first instance, for me, it's psychological and
407
00:27:03.740 --> 00:27:08.670
spiritual because if our relationship to the meaning of life
408
00:27:10.670 --> 00:27:14.910
only stays in the realm of materiality, which is what
409
00:27:14.970 --> 00:27:18.410
another way of describing what I'm talking about, we can
410
00:27:18.470 --> 00:27:22.250
never be fully human in our experience with ourselves and
411
00:27:22.759 --> 00:27:27.460
or with one another, because things are just things. However beautiful,
412
00:27:27.519 --> 00:27:32.150
however grand, and I think business is very important. The
413
00:27:32.190 --> 00:27:35.609
question for me about economics is how to build wealth
414
00:27:36.410 --> 00:27:42.009
without creating suffering. You can do wonderful things with wealth
415
00:27:44.079 --> 00:27:47.799
if one does, if one is willing, if one can,
416
00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:51.089
and so Part of the dilemma with that is we've
417
00:27:51.150 --> 00:27:56.410
so individuated the meaning of being wealthy that we actually
418
00:27:56.450 --> 00:28:02.259
don't see our society as wealthy. That has consequences about
419
00:28:02.279 --> 00:28:06.900
how we think about policies. So what I'm trying to
420
00:28:06.940 --> 00:28:10.859
say is the psychological and spiritual dimension actually rules how
421
00:28:10.920 --> 00:28:14.099
we design and think about systems and what we even
422
00:28:14.180 --> 00:28:15.480
conceive of as possible.
423
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:21.220
So the veneration in our society of the rugged individual.
424
00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:21.779
Yeah.
425
00:28:22.380 --> 00:28:26.769
Sounds like you think that maybe that's the utopian flaw.
426
00:28:28.269 --> 00:28:32.269
That's a piece of it. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know,
427
00:28:32.289 --> 00:28:36.049
there's a great book called Outliers written some years ago.
428
00:28:36.069 --> 00:28:39.769
There's a great interview with Bill Gates in it, and
429
00:28:39.789 --> 00:28:44.660
he described his high school. And how his unique high
430
00:28:44.700 --> 00:28:49.079
school experience contributed to him becoming who he is. The teachers,
431
00:28:49.140 --> 00:28:55.750
the environment, the equipment. And so he's capable of recognizing
432
00:28:56.569 --> 00:29:03.210
how he did not create himself. And that's what I'm
433
00:29:03.250 --> 00:29:07.579
talking about. So that we understand how we contribute to
434
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:11.190
each other's lives. And right now, our frame for how
435
00:29:11.250 --> 00:29:17.059
we impact each other is framed in negativity. We have
436
00:29:17.119 --> 00:29:22.740
very little sharing, communication, news, information about how we impact
437
00:29:22.779 --> 00:29:28.109
each other's lives positively. I saw an astounding clip recently
438
00:29:28.140 --> 00:29:31.710
in the UK on the QT network. I've never seen that,
439
00:29:31.769 --> 00:29:35.170
but it was a protest march, I think in London
440
00:29:35.210 --> 00:29:38.900
or Bristol, someplace like that. And It was a confrontation
441
00:29:39.160 --> 00:29:42.319
between black lives. Matter people a spattering of other groups
442
00:29:43.019 --> 00:29:46.980
and quote unquote the far right there in Europe and
443
00:29:47.150 --> 00:29:50.670
one of the far right white guys was being attacked
444
00:29:51.950 --> 00:29:55.589
and life was literally being physically threatened and he was
445
00:29:55.690 --> 00:29:58.119
rescued by the Black Lives Matter guys who were there
446
00:29:59.089 --> 00:30:02.390
But that's not on the news. So, I mean, it's
447
00:30:02.430 --> 00:30:06.009
how we feed our minds, how we feed our emotions
448
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:11.299
that will either redirect the energy, which is profound. I
449
00:30:11.359 --> 00:30:13.519
think we have no idea how much energy we have
450
00:30:13.539 --> 00:30:15.640
to create the future in America because so much of
451
00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:19.480
it is going to managing our stress, managing our shame,
452
00:30:19.599 --> 00:30:23.789
managing our guilt. We have a huge reservoir of energy
453
00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:28.089
and talent, which I have confidence in.
454
00:30:31.329 --> 00:30:41.170
More 10 percent happier after this. In terms of potential,
455
00:30:41.190 --> 00:30:44.150
there was something quite moving in a recent blog post
456
00:30:44.210 --> 00:30:51.319
from you about how moved you've been by the multiracial
457
00:30:51.460 --> 00:30:55.589
nature of. You were struggling to find the word for it,
458
00:30:55.630 --> 00:30:58.990
protests or whatever we're seeing, whatever you want to call
459
00:30:59.009 --> 00:31:04.369
what we're seeing right now. And you posited that what
460
00:31:04.410 --> 00:31:08.190
we're seeing right now, perhaps because we've all been forced
461
00:31:08.230 --> 00:31:12.710
to slow down because of the pandemic, is just an
462
00:31:12.769 --> 00:31:17.039
awakening of empathy after we've all witnessed the George Floyd
463
00:31:17.059 --> 00:31:19.319
video and then obviously taken in the facts of Breonna
464
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:20.799
Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, etc.
465
00:31:20.839 --> 00:31:20.960
etc.
466
00:31:21.769 --> 00:31:23.829
Am I describing your view correctly, and can you say
467
00:31:23.890 --> 00:31:24.670
more about it, if so?
468
00:31:24.950 --> 00:31:28.369
Yes, and I think, back to the Margaret Mead example
469
00:31:28.430 --> 00:31:31.210
and some others, but empathy as part of the fabric
470
00:31:31.269 --> 00:31:37.059
of human sociality. We wouldn't have survived as a species
471
00:31:37.779 --> 00:31:44.759
without the neurological capacity for empathy. So I think it's
472
00:31:45.619 --> 00:31:51.569
feeling someone's pain, but that's also being able to to
473
00:31:51.609 --> 00:31:58.009
feel someone's joy. And so when we suppress or become
474
00:31:58.289 --> 00:32:02.990
deficient in our capacity to feel our own humanity, we
475
00:32:03.079 --> 00:32:08.019
rob ourselves of a very rich experience of meaning. So
476
00:32:08.140 --> 00:32:15.160
I think that the energy flowing from empathy to a
477
00:32:15.200 --> 00:32:20.240
larger sense or a compassionate sense of what's possible for
478
00:32:20.319 --> 00:32:24.579
our world and our planet. A friend of mine has
479
00:32:24.619 --> 00:32:29.480
a book called The Compassionate Civilization. I think that's what's
480
00:32:29.700 --> 00:32:33.880
trying to be born. I think, oh, another way to
481
00:32:33.920 --> 00:32:38.680
say that kind of negatively is a non-predatory world in
482
00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:42.640
terms of both our relationship to one another and to nature.
483
00:32:43.980 --> 00:32:47.079
This is a big shift in our human conditioning and
484
00:32:47.140 --> 00:32:52.710
neurological patterning to date. That's why it's so hard. The
485
00:32:52.750 --> 00:32:56.450
reason I also see this as potential and possible is
486
00:32:56.490 --> 00:33:01.250
because genetically and neurologically, we have these things within us already.
487
00:33:01.309 --> 00:33:05.109
It's not like you can go get it from somewhere.
488
00:33:07.150 --> 00:33:10.210
It's already within us all. So how do we nourish that?
489
00:33:10.289 --> 00:33:13.019
How do we care for that? How do we protect that?
490
00:33:14.390 --> 00:33:17.079
in ourselves, and in our children, and in our society.
491
00:33:18.119 --> 00:33:20.819
I've been around the world many times and in many places,
492
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:27.180
and my basic experience has been great. And I've been
493
00:33:27.240 --> 00:33:30.730
in remote villages, and I've been in Calcutta, I've been
494
00:33:30.750 --> 00:33:36.710
in Hong Kong, and London, you know, Mexico City, Caracas, Toronto,
495
00:33:36.730 --> 00:33:39.940
I can go on and on, Brussels, Paris, etc., up
496
00:33:39.980 --> 00:33:42.440
in the mountains in Italy, working with village people there
497
00:33:42.500 --> 00:33:48.099
on socioeconomic development projects, as well as in Kenya and Ghana, etc.
498
00:33:48.700 --> 00:33:54.869
And everywhere I've been, my fundamental experience of humanity has
499
00:33:54.900 --> 00:33:59.369
been great. But part of what I'm trying to say
500
00:33:59.569 --> 00:34:04.549
to us is we need to tell that story to ourselves.
501
00:34:06.829 --> 00:34:11.139
We tell ourselves a very different story My wife and
502
00:34:11.199 --> 00:34:13.880
I were on a trip to China to go study
503
00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:18.829
at some temples there. And it so happened to be
504
00:34:20.349 --> 00:34:23.289
the day after the U.S. had accidentally bombed the Chinese
505
00:34:23.349 --> 00:34:26.909
embassy in Belgrade. And so people were saying, don't go.
506
00:34:26.929 --> 00:34:29.840
You're going to have a problem. And so we couldn't
507
00:34:29.880 --> 00:34:31.519
afford not to go if we had our tickets. So
508
00:34:31.559 --> 00:34:34.739
we went and we got emails from our friends saying,
509
00:34:34.760 --> 00:34:39.099
what problems do you have with being in China? Two things.
510
00:34:40.409 --> 00:34:42.530
Some people greeted us at the airport who could speak
511
00:34:42.610 --> 00:34:49.380
English well and said, please don't confuse us with our government.
512
00:34:52.219 --> 00:34:56.880
And we won't confuse you with yours. And so I'm
513
00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:03.119
really talking about how we as citizens, civil society, think
514
00:35:03.179 --> 00:35:07.159
about ourselves and not simply turn over how we shape
515
00:35:07.199 --> 00:35:13.340
the future to people in whatever positions. Because it's obvious
516
00:35:13.420 --> 00:35:18.260
we need to change and grow. The planet's telling us that.
517
00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:22.269
Our social structures are telling us that. People, bodies in
518
00:35:22.289 --> 00:35:24.750
the streets and in camps and in cages are all
519
00:35:24.809 --> 00:35:32.469
telling us that. And I think that's possible. I see
520
00:35:32.510 --> 00:35:37.110
no reason it's not possible. But unless we choose to
521
00:35:37.179 --> 00:35:43.829
change ourselves, we'll stay in the pattern. that will repeat
522
00:35:43.909 --> 00:35:47.949
itself of what we're seeing right now, which has been
523
00:35:47.989 --> 00:35:50.469
going on. I just got a list of all the
524
00:35:50.510 --> 00:35:53.369
similar events that have happened over the last hundred years alone.
525
00:35:53.389 --> 00:36:00.309
It's predictable. It's sadly predictable. And so to be willing
526
00:36:00.389 --> 00:36:04.269
to live in a society with that sad prediction harms
527
00:36:04.449 --> 00:36:10.820
us all. And it's quite tragic. Some people don't understand
528
00:36:11.159 --> 00:36:12.960
being human enough yet to get that.
529
00:36:15.469 --> 00:36:17.550
I imagine many people listening to this are thinking, well, yeah,
530
00:36:17.570 --> 00:36:19.309
I want to be part of this. I want to
531
00:36:19.349 --> 00:36:22.889
be part of the breaking of these cycles. To what
532
00:36:22.929 --> 00:36:29.650
extent can meditation for an individual help us be productive
533
00:36:29.710 --> 00:36:30.449
players right now?
534
00:36:31.389 --> 00:36:35.139
Well, one of the key things, dimensions of meditation practice
535
00:36:35.199 --> 00:36:41.780
beyond relaxation and getting calm is learning how your mind
536
00:36:42.079 --> 00:36:48.340
has actually been constructed by your own experience, by your society,
537
00:36:49.219 --> 00:36:54.769
by your history, and learning what those energies are in
538
00:36:54.809 --> 00:36:59.909
your own mind and selectively choosing which of those energies
539
00:36:59.989 --> 00:37:06.130
are going to get your most attention. And if you
540
00:37:06.210 --> 00:37:09.300
don't make conscious choices like that through your own practice,
541
00:37:10.239 --> 00:37:14.059
the energies that have the most momentum or the most
542
00:37:14.119 --> 00:37:20.500
habituation in your past thinking, speaking, and action will carry on. That,
543
00:37:20.539 --> 00:37:22.980
to me, is a piece of it. And so learning
544
00:37:23.019 --> 00:37:27.940
to recognize in myself or to deconstruct, working on a
545
00:37:28.139 --> 00:37:31.219
new course my wife teaches at the university, deconstructing the
546
00:37:31.260 --> 00:37:35.760
colonial mind, And so when people think of that, they
547
00:37:35.780 --> 00:37:38.039
tend to think, you know, they see images of ships
548
00:37:38.179 --> 00:37:42.920
and soldiers. But the colonial mind has nothing to do
549
00:37:42.940 --> 00:37:46.559
with how somebody's dressed particularly. It's a way of thinking
550
00:37:46.639 --> 00:37:49.619
about being human. It's a way of thinking about the world.
551
00:37:50.780 --> 00:37:52.699
It's a way of thinking about how to be together
552
00:37:52.760 --> 00:37:55.199
as a society. And so we need to look at
553
00:37:55.880 --> 00:38:05.300
our own internalized structures of sufferings. and decide and choose
554
00:38:05.840 --> 00:38:09.889
what we want to deconstruct. But deconstruction is not enough.
555
00:38:11.230 --> 00:38:13.809
My image for this is the rose bush right outside
556
00:38:13.869 --> 00:38:17.179
our house that deconstructs itself and reconstructs itself at the
557
00:38:17.219 --> 00:38:21.860
same time. So it's not deconstruction is only a part
558
00:38:21.900 --> 00:38:25.659
of the energy. The energy has to finally be focused
559
00:38:25.719 --> 00:38:27.840
and grounded in construction.
560
00:38:29.250 --> 00:38:32.510
If the colonial mind isn't just somebody with a tricorner
561
00:38:32.550 --> 00:38:35.670
hat and a fife and drum corps, how would I
562
00:38:35.829 --> 00:38:40.110
recognize the colonial mind in myself? What are the aspects
563
00:38:40.179 --> 00:38:41.639
of it that I should be on the lookout for?
564
00:38:42.119 --> 00:38:44.760
The way I'm learning to describe it, a piece of
565
00:38:44.880 --> 00:38:50.340
it is the mind of patriarchy, the male-centered view of
566
00:38:50.360 --> 00:38:54.429
the universe. And to me, the most powerful thing about
567
00:38:54.489 --> 00:38:59.010
this is It's not only the power of position and privilege,
568
00:38:59.070 --> 00:39:03.900
et cetera, it is the power of defining what humanity
569
00:39:03.980 --> 00:39:10.119
means for everyone else. That's one piece of it, definition
570
00:39:10.420 --> 00:39:15.800
of the human hierarchy. A second part of it is
571
00:39:15.889 --> 00:39:22.449
an orientation towards status and wealth and affirmation seen through
572
00:39:22.530 --> 00:39:28.179
material acquisition. And then I think the third part of
573
00:39:28.239 --> 00:39:34.420
it is power. Power over. Power to control. And we
574
00:39:34.519 --> 00:39:38.489
all have these urges in us. We can call them colonial,
575
00:39:38.510 --> 00:39:42.550
but I'm speaking in a specific context with the book
576
00:39:42.610 --> 00:39:46.510
and our discussion here about American race. And that whole
577
00:39:46.570 --> 00:39:51.690
adventure of colonialism itself. And this tragic results for many,
578
00:39:51.769 --> 00:39:57.429
many people. And so the idea, I mean, as a male,
579
00:39:57.590 --> 00:40:00.869
I'm continuing, quote unquote, a male, I'm continuing to learn
580
00:40:03.230 --> 00:40:06.210
when I think, oh, I know what to do. Oh,
581
00:40:07.610 --> 00:40:11.690
I'm supposed to take charge. Oh, I'm and I more
582
00:40:11.710 --> 00:40:15.690
and more recognize these patterns in myself. And as I
583
00:40:15.730 --> 00:40:17.820
have done that over the years and I'm still learning.
584
00:40:18.530 --> 00:40:24.449
for all my days. But I discovered I'm less stressful.
585
00:40:25.530 --> 00:40:28.550
I don't have to be in charge. I can support
586
00:40:28.590 --> 00:40:32.030
the process. I can support other people. I don't have
587
00:40:32.070 --> 00:40:34.329
to tell anybody what to do. I can ask people
588
00:40:34.349 --> 00:40:38.429
what they think should be done. And so that's how
589
00:40:38.530 --> 00:40:40.130
I am on a daily basis. I mean, of course,
590
00:40:40.150 --> 00:40:43.110
you're married, you have a partnership, whatever set of relationships.
591
00:40:43.570 --> 00:40:46.170
These energies are in us. We've been conditioned by a
592
00:40:46.449 --> 00:40:50.440
commercialized society. our movies and what we read and blah, blah, blah.
593
00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:56.320
So Thich Nhat Hanh's great insight here, one of them,
594
00:40:56.739 --> 00:41:02.590
is whatever unhealthy pattern I heal in myself, I heal
595
00:41:02.630 --> 00:41:11.650
in the world. But also whatever healthy patterns I create
596
00:41:11.989 --> 00:41:15.159
and generate in myself are healthy patterns that are being
597
00:41:15.199 --> 00:41:19.840
generated and created in the world. if we get past
598
00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:25.659
the idea that we passed the illusion of separateness, he
599
00:41:25.699 --> 00:41:28.920
calls it, if we get past that and can really
600
00:41:29.019 --> 00:41:32.030
see ourselves not just as matter, but also as energy,
601
00:41:32.050 --> 00:41:37.230
you know, back to thermodynamic laws, we can begin to
602
00:41:37.329 --> 00:41:41.960
really see who we are and therefore what we're capable of.
603
00:41:41.989 --> 00:41:45.409
And so my sadness that I'm experiencing, I know is
604
00:41:45.449 --> 00:41:49.909
the sadness of many people. And so is my joy,
605
00:41:50.889 --> 00:41:53.250
but so is my kindness. So is my, so that
606
00:41:53.369 --> 00:41:56.869
my experience of being a human being is not a
607
00:41:56.929 --> 00:42:01.670
separate experience from other humans being human. And so that's
608
00:42:01.710 --> 00:42:07.070
a part of my sense of safety. Um, and I've
609
00:42:07.110 --> 00:42:13.559
been in some not so safe situations as many people have. Right.
610
00:42:14.179 --> 00:42:17.010
Just to restate what you're saying there is I, as
611
00:42:17.070 --> 00:42:23.110
I understand it, is we think we are separate from
612
00:42:23.150 --> 00:42:26.239
the world. We're just like this fretful little ego peering
613
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:29.480
out at the world through these two eye holes in
614
00:42:29.539 --> 00:42:35.820
our skull. But if we have sight, that is. But
615
00:42:35.860 --> 00:42:39.719
in fact, we are moving through the world and impacting
616
00:42:39.820 --> 00:42:44.489
it and impacted by other people. And so when we
617
00:42:44.610 --> 00:42:49.869
work on our own mind and uproot unwholesome tendencies or
618
00:42:50.469 --> 00:42:54.670
strengthen wholesome ones, well, then that will ripple out inevitably.
619
00:42:55.010 --> 00:42:59.960
It always does. In Buddhism, there's something called leaks. And
620
00:43:00.019 --> 00:43:03.340
whatever goes on in my language, whatever goes on in
621
00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:08.159
our heart and mind, be it wholesome, unwholesome, positive or negative,
622
00:43:08.610 --> 00:43:13.599
leaks out into society. And so how we care for
623
00:43:13.699 --> 00:43:18.019
our own internal life, not in the sense of navel-gazing,
624
00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:20.980
but in the sense of healing and transforming so that
625
00:43:21.019 --> 00:43:25.280
our best possible qualities are released into the world, our
626
00:43:25.320 --> 00:43:30.190
best possible energies are released, we will still think we
627
00:43:30.230 --> 00:43:34.610
have a planet and then there's us. I mean, that's
628
00:43:34.650 --> 00:43:39.599
that deception of separation again. We are the planet. We
629
00:43:39.639 --> 00:43:45.679
are children of the planet. And that's a powerful insight
630
00:43:45.719 --> 00:43:50.519
that can occur in meditation if one practices paying attention
631
00:43:50.579 --> 00:43:54.539
deeply to what one observes, especially in the natural world.
632
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:56.940
Of course, the whole world is natural, but in the
633
00:43:56.980 --> 00:44:01.440
sense of rivers and mountains and streams and trees and
634
00:44:01.480 --> 00:44:04.420
bees and prairie dogs like we have here.
635
00:44:08.050 --> 00:44:10.909
A lot of people right now, just to pick up
636
00:44:12.050 --> 00:44:13.960
on the foregoing, a lot of people right now are
637
00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:18.380
really trying to figure out how can I help? And
638
00:44:18.400 --> 00:44:20.420
you write about this in some of your recent blog posts,
639
00:44:20.460 --> 00:44:23.320
you know, and no one of us is going to
640
00:44:24.019 --> 00:44:28.860
fix this problem we're seeing. But what I'm hearing from
641
00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:31.389
you is that by taking care of our own minds,
642
00:44:31.429 --> 00:44:35.989
by training our own minds, which is possible, Even though
643
00:44:36.010 --> 00:44:39.329
that may seem small, it actually is a real and
644
00:44:39.349 --> 00:44:41.369
an important thing that we can do right now.
645
00:44:41.829 --> 00:44:45.840
Yes, it's real and important, but only if it's embodied.
646
00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:50.579
This is not an intellectual exercise because the embodiment of
647
00:44:50.639 --> 00:44:53.920
a transformed and changed mind becomes the basis of a
648
00:44:53.980 --> 00:44:56.000
transformed and changed system.
649
00:44:57.570 --> 00:44:59.849
And by embodied, you mean like I actually act on
650
00:44:59.889 --> 00:45:02.050
it or I actually feel it south of my head?
651
00:45:02.070 --> 00:45:07.070
Both. It's in your body. It can become second nature.
652
00:45:07.989 --> 00:45:10.730
Kindness can become second nature if it's not your first
653
00:45:10.789 --> 00:45:13.820
nature because you already have all the genealogy to be kind.
654
00:45:14.980 --> 00:45:17.739
But if it's been suppressed and you've been rewarded for
655
00:45:17.780 --> 00:45:23.599
being cruel, you have to unpack your conditioning around cruelty
656
00:45:24.119 --> 00:45:27.760
and whatever you experience from that and begin to have
657
00:45:27.800 --> 00:45:30.239
the new experience of what is it like to be kind?
658
00:45:31.230 --> 00:45:34.590
Many people have not had that experience, either going one
659
00:45:34.630 --> 00:45:39.130
way or another, let alone between. And kindness for me
660
00:45:39.170 --> 00:45:45.010
is more than politeness, though politeness is great and a
661
00:45:45.670 --> 00:45:48.829
wonderful place to start. I think the other thing that
662
00:45:48.849 --> 00:45:53.409
to me here, if it's not embodied, it won't change anything.
663
00:45:56.130 --> 00:45:58.590
If it's not in our thinking, in our new, I mean,
664
00:45:58.610 --> 00:46:01.719
we have so much to rethink. which I find exciting,
665
00:46:01.780 --> 00:46:06.000
but to reimagine, to remount the slope of thought, as
666
00:46:06.039 --> 00:46:09.019
some philosophers say. So, you know, our way of thinking
667
00:46:09.079 --> 00:46:13.860
about education, people are, I'm on the board of the
668
00:46:13.920 --> 00:46:19.039
American School of Bangkok, and I interact with the principals
669
00:46:19.079 --> 00:46:23.570
there from time to time, and education is so very important.
670
00:46:23.590 --> 00:46:26.889
I spent a couple years there working with the school
671
00:46:26.989 --> 00:46:29.409
and the administration and the owners and the parents and
672
00:46:29.429 --> 00:46:34.239
the kids, and We had children from 44 nationalities. And
673
00:46:34.300 --> 00:46:37.539
what struck me the very first week I was there
674
00:46:38.719 --> 00:46:43.360
is none of them thought they were supposed to harm
675
00:46:43.409 --> 00:46:48.829
each other. It was an astounding experience to see all
676
00:46:48.909 --> 00:46:53.789
these children from all these parts of the world casually
677
00:46:53.869 --> 00:46:57.489
and calmly playing, getting along. Of course you get upset.
678
00:46:57.510 --> 00:47:00.250
Of course you get hurt. But there was never this
679
00:47:00.409 --> 00:47:06.510
intention of harm. And that energy of harm or any
680
00:47:06.630 --> 00:47:10.389
other negative energy permeates our bodies. We don't escape stuff
681
00:47:10.429 --> 00:47:12.780
like that. You can walk in a room and have
682
00:47:12.840 --> 00:47:16.760
a feeling of what happened before you got there. Whether
683
00:47:16.780 --> 00:47:19.780
it was whether you wish you had been there earlier
684
00:47:19.800 --> 00:47:23.639
or come later, depending on the energy that's still present.
685
00:47:24.099 --> 00:47:27.480
So we must learn to be sensitive to our whole humanity.
686
00:47:28.139 --> 00:47:33.159
or we'll be hijacked by our unregulated nervous system, or
687
00:47:33.179 --> 00:47:38.630
we'll be hijacked by some ideology or any other model
688
00:47:38.690 --> 00:47:43.309
of thought that we don't critique. And therefore, to me,
689
00:47:43.349 --> 00:47:46.159
if we don't critique our thinking, our speech, and our action,
690
00:47:46.280 --> 00:47:50.059
we're not free. We're just living out of conditionings.
691
00:47:52.170 --> 00:47:55.090
I want to go back to economics for a second. You, as,
692
00:47:55.289 --> 00:48:00.820
as referenced work with major corporations on a number of issues,
693
00:48:00.860 --> 00:48:06.219
including diversity and inclusion. What is the role of what
694
00:48:06.239 --> 00:48:09.440
we're seeing all these corporations issue statements? Some of them
695
00:48:09.480 --> 00:48:13.079
have been criticized for, you know, these statements being either
696
00:48:13.119 --> 00:48:17.659
tone deaf or just wrote recitations of, you know, bromides, um,
697
00:48:18.739 --> 00:48:20.429
And of course, you know, some of the statements have
698
00:48:20.449 --> 00:48:22.710
been well received, et cetera, et cetera. But everybody, all
699
00:48:22.730 --> 00:48:25.230
the corporations feel like they need to say something. What,
700
00:48:25.289 --> 00:48:28.110
in your view, do corporations need to do right now?
701
00:48:28.190 --> 00:48:32.760
And can corporations be part of the solution as we
702
00:48:32.800 --> 00:48:39.739
think about America's racial karma? I hear a wind chime
703
00:48:39.760 --> 00:48:40.340
in the background.
704
00:48:40.440 --> 00:48:44.119
Yeah, it is. It's got a nice breeze coming through
705
00:48:44.179 --> 00:48:48.320
down from the mountain today. Well... That's a complex question.
706
00:48:48.360 --> 00:48:53.019
Let me share a few thoughts. Corporations can either help
707
00:48:53.219 --> 00:49:00.860
or hurt. Any institutional power can help or hurt, contribute
708
00:49:01.010 --> 00:49:04.429
or not contribute to the continuation of America's racial karma.
709
00:49:05.250 --> 00:49:10.550
So choices are made. We make choices. Part of the
710
00:49:10.590 --> 00:49:15.329
dilemma is systems, this is more from Carl Jung after
711
00:49:16.309 --> 00:49:22.840
is distrust of institutions because institutions don't have conscience. And
712
00:49:22.920 --> 00:49:27.900
so I think any corporation who tries to do the
713
00:49:27.940 --> 00:49:31.989
right thing for many people will be suspect because of
714
00:49:32.030 --> 00:49:38.170
past patterns. I think corporations can help profoundly and must help.
715
00:49:39.019 --> 00:49:42.260
And one of the ways I think corporations must help
716
00:49:42.420 --> 00:49:46.960
is demonstrate what you said. I want to see your campus.
717
00:49:47.079 --> 00:49:49.760
I want to see your workforce. I want to see
718
00:49:49.820 --> 00:49:55.170
your board. I want to embody the change you say
719
00:49:55.210 --> 00:49:59.289
you want to see. That, to me, is how corporations
720
00:49:59.329 --> 00:50:03.769
can help. Or any institution can help. Or I can help.
721
00:50:03.889 --> 00:50:07.099
A new family just moved in down there. I could
722
00:50:07.139 --> 00:50:10.789
walk down there and meet them. I mean, so it
723
00:50:10.869 --> 00:50:13.909
doesn't have to be, I'm just saying if it's not embodied,
724
00:50:15.210 --> 00:50:18.889
it won't really, neutral is not for me an option.
725
00:50:22.110 --> 00:50:25.900
Neutral continues the pattern, continues the negative karma.
726
00:50:28.639 --> 00:50:30.900
Is there anything I should have asked, but I failed
727
00:50:30.920 --> 00:50:31.300
to ask?
728
00:50:32.360 --> 00:50:42.010
Well, not especially. Okay. I appreciate you for what you
729
00:50:42.030 --> 00:50:42.570
have asked.
730
00:50:46.110 --> 00:50:51.579
I appreciate you for what you have answered. It's been
731
00:50:51.599 --> 00:50:54.519
a pleasure to spend some time with you. I just
732
00:50:54.539 --> 00:50:57.280
want to make sure I didn't fail to steer us
733
00:50:57.340 --> 00:51:00.260
in a direction that you were thinking that might be
734
00:51:00.389 --> 00:51:00.929
useful to go.
735
00:51:01.969 --> 00:51:06.429
No, that was great. But part of my practice as
736
00:51:06.570 --> 00:51:09.190
a Dharma teacher is whenever I have Q & A
737
00:51:10.389 --> 00:51:15.170
question and answers. I just try to be open. Yeah.
738
00:51:16.409 --> 00:51:20.659
Can you, before we close, I have a suspicion that
739
00:51:20.679 --> 00:51:23.159
people having listened to you for a while will want
740
00:51:23.239 --> 00:51:25.179
to be able to learn more about you. Can you
741
00:51:25.920 --> 00:51:29.579
tell us where we can, you know, learn more about
742
00:51:29.860 --> 00:51:33.079
you and from you, uh, in terms of on the
743
00:51:33.139 --> 00:51:36.210
internet books, you've written books, you're, you're about to publish,
744
00:51:36.250 --> 00:51:36.909
et cetera, et cetera.
745
00:51:36.949 --> 00:51:44.909
Okay. The presale on now, America's Racial Karma, and publisher
746
00:51:45.250 --> 00:51:50.590
is Parallax Press in Berkeley, in cooperation with some other
747
00:51:50.929 --> 00:51:57.030
publishing enterprises. I and my wonderful team of people can
748
00:51:57.090 --> 00:52:05.590
be reached at www.thelotusinstitute.org. They'll take you to our website,
749
00:52:05.869 --> 00:52:11.280
and there's Videos and exercises and an online course for managing,
750
00:52:12.579 --> 00:52:15.599
learning how to work with trauma at the first level
751
00:52:15.800 --> 00:52:19.940
and understanding body systems and mindfulness of the body is
752
00:52:20.019 --> 00:52:23.059
also there. It's called the Earthgate. It might be very
753
00:52:23.099 --> 00:52:24.050
helpful for some people.
754
00:52:24.840 --> 00:52:27.260
And the blog that we keep referencing, that's there too?
755
00:52:27.449 --> 00:52:32.329
Yes. Great. And I just had my operations director three
756
00:52:32.369 --> 00:52:34.530
weeks ago suggest I do a blog. I've never done
757
00:52:34.610 --> 00:52:37.769
one before. So it's like, okay. I try to follow
758
00:52:37.809 --> 00:52:41.739
people's instructions as much as I can because they're usually wise.
759
00:52:42.599 --> 00:52:43.199
Great job, Larry.
760
00:52:43.260 --> 00:52:46.519
Thank you. Thank you, Dan. You had some great reflective questions.
761
00:52:46.739 --> 00:52:51.369
Thank you. I could tell you prepared. Thank you. Be well.
762
00:52:51.869 --> 00:52:53.820
You too. And of course....
763
00:53:15.670 --> 00:53:17.980
Hearty shout out to my guys from ABC News, Ryan
764
00:53:18.019 --> 00:53:21.630
Kessler and Josh Kohan. We'll see you all on Friday
765
00:53:21.670 --> 00:53:24.030
for a bonus. And then we'll be back on Monday
766
00:53:24.050 --> 00:53:25.219
with another fresh episode.