00:02:05.800I think so often we might misunderstand karma on an individual level as an act of divine retribution.
00:02:15.300So how are you framing the persistence of racism in relation to a collective Buddhist understanding of karma?
00:02:25.680Well, what I tried to point to in the book, which is a very small book, but still nevertheless tried to point to,
00:02:35.800how I understand karma based on what I understand from the Buddhist tradition
00:02:40.420is it is action. That's the translation of the word. And it's not just action. It is
00:02:51.460every action creates other actions. It's like I'm sitting in front right now of a sycamore tree,
00:02:59.380and uh it is perfuming the air and that's what actions do actions of thought ways of thinking
00:03:07.860about things in the case of race is the way of thinking about which in western mind means
00:03:15.380categorization in particular uh of different species and then in the work of that
00:03:23.620if you want to call it that that description of different kinds of species
00:03:29.380people with different skin tones got categorized along with flowers and
00:03:36.340other phenomena and so what i mean by karma is that categorization has been
00:03:46.020feeding itself it is still alive it is a repeating pattern in our thoughts
00:03:52.900in our speech look at the way we talk about race uh and the way we're silent around race
00:04:01.300and uh and then in our behaviors uh someone just reported to their surprise that the
00:04:09.300uh the covenants of not selling property to african americans native americans etc
00:04:16.340uh in this case are still on the books in many places in in the united states which i already
00:04:21.380knew but um so that's a behavioral pattern and so when i go into a conversation about buying a house
00:04:30.340or something i always read everything and i always have asked why is this still here
00:04:38.500and the evasiveness of facing the result of the action of racialized consciousness
00:04:47.780process is what I mean by karma. It's the results of previous action. And every previous action
00:04:56.960creates other previous actions, and the pattern gets repeated, unless you change it.
00:05:04.900In an article titled Healing America's Racial Karma, you write, quote,
00:05:11.040Most of us know that changing habits is challenging. How much of what we do is habitual?
00:05:18.960Studies by neurobiologists and psychologists researching habit formation indicate that 40-95% of human behavior, how we think, how we respond with emotions, what we say, and how we act, falls into the habit category.
00:05:36.080So when it comes to deeply rooted thoughts and behaviors, however good we think our intentions may be, without insight about the need to change, the strong resolve to make it happen, and the corresponding action, a good 50% of the time will default to habit.
00:05:54.460end quote. And this raises the topic of neuroplasticity in terms of our upbringing
00:06:04.360in an incredibly racist culture. And as someone who has deeply studied the neuroscience of
00:06:11.580meditation, I wonder if you could share the importance of bridging the in-between spaces
00:06:17.140of habit, culture, and healing the world's racial karma?
00:06:23.620Well, briefly, I think what is one both occurring
00:06:29.080at some levels of societies around the world
00:06:32.760and what needs to occur is rewiring our brains.
00:06:38.640And what I mean by rewiring our brains
00:06:42.400is consciously choosing to activate our neuroplasticity
00:07:51.280And so for me, a lot of individuals around the world need to step up into learning how
00:08:02.000to be in their own bodies and in their own minds at the same time, to learn how to recognize our
00:08:10.180unprocessed trauma, which all of us have everywhere in the world. And I became clear over my lifetime
00:08:20.240that there is so much trauma in individuals and cultures and societies, and it's unprocessed.
00:08:30.620And so our reaction to it is easily triggered, easily manipulated.
00:08:39.000And so for me, taking charge of your own development as a human being and as a group of human beings around this planet is what we must do.
00:08:49.720Otherwise, the patterns will continue because people, for one, are making money out of the pattern.
00:08:55.260And for two, people are making power out of the pattern.
00:09:00.620So that's one reason it's so hard to change is because so many people in the right position still benefit from the habit of racism sociologically.
00:09:12.620And then, of course, there's the personal benefit of thinking you're superior, which is, of course, another illusion.
00:09:23.100yeah those are really good points and i want to stay on the topic of neuroplasticity
00:09:36.120just a bit longer and specifically ask you about what living in a constant state of fear
00:09:44.020does to our body and i know this is a broad-ranging question because we could say that
00:09:51.120everyone in this country is living in fear of something. But it's certainly not the same type
00:09:57.720of fear. So I invite you to respond with whatever examples feel the closest in alignment with your
00:10:04.140practice. Well, our autonomic nervous system is evolutionarily designed to alert the fear response
00:10:14.360when we are threatened or think we are threatened
00:11:28.220And for me, that is the same attitude that created slavery.
00:11:35.020Someone asked me on another interview a few months ago about the difference or connection I saw between racism and injustice, environmentalism and justice.
00:11:48.760And for me, it is this perception within the human mind.
00:11:54.720So I want to make sure we understand it's a human issue.
00:22:41.660our lack of gratitude and enchantment for the world allows us to do really terrible things
00:22:58.540in our desensitization or a denial or just our disconnection and i loved that word disenchantment
00:23:05.380um or enchantment because I I know in myself when I feel the enchantment of the world
00:23:12.140the energy I feel for that and the love that comes and the gratitude and the joy and the
00:23:19.720connection is so strong that all I want is to be in deeper intimacy with others whether that's
00:23:27.580our more than human kin or our human relatives or the earth oh that's just such a beautiful point
00:23:33.460And I love that. In preparation for this interview, I came across a conversation where you shared a recent study on how human-created trauma has a far greater impact on the body and the mind than that of natural disasters, which, when we think about it, makes complete sense.
00:23:53.380but it gave me a moment of pause because so often in this realm, we're talking about climate
00:24:02.080adaptation, mitigation, and the sort of climate-based trauma that many are beginning to
00:24:08.040experience. And in doing so, I think that sort of pushes aside recognition of the collective
00:24:14.420trauma we live with when we remember that the greatest of humanity's wounds were caused by
00:24:20.780power-hungry people. So can you elaborate a bit more on the importance of recognizing the
00:24:27.840difference in magnitude between human-made trauma versus natural disasters? Okay.
00:24:35.720So one way to share about that are there's different types, typologies of trauma.
00:24:43.660uh one is really i mean this is a really brief summary but one for me is the kind of natural
00:24:53.100event occurrence that's also one of the ways the apocalypse is described is a natural disaster
00:25:00.600and the other kind of trauma is uh where i studied we called it the you know the the
00:25:10.340Be personalized trauma, trauma that's happened to us individually in our lifetime.
00:25:16.020And then the third kind of trauma is systemic trauma, poverty, sexism, racism, classism, genderism,
00:25:32.100however you want to describe these systemic habits that are like bureaucracy.
00:31:41.640and have the courage to step into the life urge,
00:31:46.360step into the stream of creating profound possibility for
00:31:53.520generations to come in the hopi tradition which i had the fortune of studying a little and
00:32:01.040practicing a little bit with um their medicine wheel is a great circle of archetypes but in the
00:32:09.360center of that wheel is a fire and it's called the children's fire so every architect every function
00:32:19.680in the relationship of the circle is to first make sure the fire does not go out
00:32:26.500and we are i think the new values that are emerging around the world are at least embedded
00:32:36.200and in many places they're they're embedded quietly because people have been conditioned
00:32:43.300not to speak out but they're operating and desire to operate at that level around wellness justice
00:32:51.300and harmony um and jonah salk's research suggested that uh once five percent of new energies new
00:33:01.860values new visions are embedded or emerging uh once we get to 20 it's unstoppable
00:33:11.060So for me, the work is to nourish the embedded so it is as rooted as possible that doesn't get blown away by greed, hatred, or ignorance, and to invest time and energy and love in the transition from embeddedness to more permanent.
00:33:42.000more stability in values of wholeness and care.
00:33:49.000So I see and know people around the world
00:35:04.000Yeah, I'm just metabolizing your response for a moment.
00:35:07.560the lesson that i've been receiving personally as it relates to moving through suffering and grief
00:35:18.320has been the importance of vulnerability and vulnerability and allowing myself to
00:35:26.100feel the emotion rather than get caught up in the story and through that i find so much release
00:35:33.240And I wonder if you also might have something to share about the importance of respecting our own vulnerability as we work to heal the wounds originated by colonization.
00:35:45.460yes for me it it comes back to applying mindfulness as a practice
00:35:56.760to my own experience of my wounds of history still alive in my body and
00:36:06.680And so every day I design my life as best I can so that I can have my heart broken
00:36:17.100and face those wounds and face the fear that comes up, the pain that comes up, the agony,0.98
00:36:24.900the distrust, the imposter syndrome of all of this dukkha, of the suffering, and understand
00:36:42.240that what I call suffering exists along with non-suffering.0.90
00:36:48.680And so for me, part of the skill is learning how to create an awareness of a space within that is not touched by suffering and use the energy of that space to help heal suffering, to enclose that suffering or embrace that suffering, name that suffering, be with that suffering, not as an enemy, not as an other.
00:37:18.680but as a part of my own body and mind.
00:38:10.680We may be able to limp along for a while,
00:38:13.420but then we'll flip back into our social habits,
00:38:16.960Especially because social habits, however detestable they may be in many places, they are rewarded just enough for people to keep hanging on to the habit.
00:38:30.120And so our healing will necessarily take us outside the habit to come back to the habit, or we don't have, as Einstein put it, you can't solve a problem at the same level of energy that created it.
00:38:47.100and so we must get to the include recognizing ourself another level of energy
00:38:54.100that can assist the dismantlement of what needs to vanish and but also as you point out very
00:39:03.960important to keep your eyes and hearts and behaviors focused on creating the next
00:40:02.380And I think many might think that spiritual or theological practices are used to bypass or transcend the heartbreak and disappointment of what it means to exist in the echoes of colonial and capitalist worlds.
00:40:27.860Well, I'd have to respond this way for me.
00:40:31.100first of all it has to do with one's intention in the practice um and so for me there's a
00:40:40.280there's a spectrum here of um unconsciousness at one level um there are people who are like oh my
00:40:49.700god i didn't know this i didn't know that happened i didn't know there were 60 million native
00:40:54.440americans and it went down to five in a couple hundred years five million and um there's that
00:41:00.600level of unconsciousness there's the level of you know people who are starting to think about
00:41:06.360some of these issues and then there's passive aggressive people who are beginning to really
00:41:15.100get angry about thinking about these issues and then there are people who get actively aggressive
00:41:21.480to attack, who shoot, who murder, who bomb
00:41:24.880because they are not well in facing these issues
00:41:31.760and not know how, in many cases, to face these issues.
00:41:38.300So I think it's not an either-or question.
00:41:45.000The legacy of colonial impacts is global.
00:41:51.480And all over, it's just, and not just the impacts of, you know, this is again about trauma.
00:42:01.200Trauma is not just what happens to you.
00:42:04.220Trauma is what happens to you because that happened to you.
00:42:08.960And then trauma is how you've learned to cope with what really happened to you because that happened to you.
00:42:15.960And so to go through these levels with the skills of resilience practice as a component of spiritual practice helped me and helps many people embrace the reality without becoming victim to the reality.
00:49:44.620All you can do is get stuck again in fight, flight, or immobilization.
00:49:58.700As a follow-up to my previous question, you mentioned wanting to discuss the link between America's racial karma and our crisis in loving the wild.
00:50:10.820And I'd love to hear how you view these patterns linking or furthering our binary approach to each other and the world.
00:50:22.300Okay, a couple of ways of responding to that.
00:50:24.940One is that from a neuroscientific point of view, we have an instinct toward a subject-object relationship with everything we encounter.
00:50:40.040uh as human beings and even further from a buddhist uh perspective we have a kind of
00:50:48.540addiction to dualism of duality of not being able to see the connection between things
00:50:55.600and ourselves as one reality one living reality and so it's it's um
00:51:06.940For me, this is why I'm back to Dr. Ambedkar, without having the opportunity to do the spiritual transformational work, which is possible, and many people are doing it, without disengaging from concrete work in the suffering of the world or of this planet.
00:51:28.320So what I begin to see is, oh, the same way the colonial mind treated indigenous peoples, which is still going on today, and slaves, is the same way we treat the earth.0.53
00:52:22.780So bravery in the spiritual aspects of it, for me, is partially learning how to ask brave questions about myself, my life, my thoughts, my language, and my behaviors.
00:52:45.500And for me, unless we begin to actually reawaken our imaginations, rediscover the profound nature of being human, and reconnect to our kinship with all things, we will need at least those three energies pointing toward creating a manifestation of the new universe.
00:54:41.540Well, Dr. Ward, as we come to a close, I'd like to ask you about the curriculum you developed to follow America's racial karma, which I think listeners will be eager to hear about as so often we digest information, yet we don't know what to do with it next.
00:55:05.680so what is the importance of cultivating a mindfulness practice alongside efforts to
00:55:13.320transmute our collective trauma well practically to that end we created an online course called
00:55:22.180the earth gate which offers training in understanding trauma the skills to recognize
00:55:31.580it in one's own body. Six, seven skills to learn how to respond skillfully to a traumatic
00:55:41.700occurrence within. It gets activated through a memory or an event or a circumstance or a sound
00:55:49.400or a color. All of our senses are doorways into our body's experience of deregulation,
00:55:57.420dysregulation which is what i mean by trauma when our nervous system loses balance and integrity and
00:56:07.020so i think that's that's one part of it so we created the earth gate the next course which
00:56:13.980will come out in the spring next year is called the wind gate so the earth gate course is to give
00:56:20.700people the skills to work with their trauma around race or around gender or around catastrophe.
00:56:30.140Any form of traumatic experience, the Earth Gate gives you some basic skills
00:56:35.600and education to work with trauma. The next course, which follows the book, America's Racial
00:56:42.920karma is called the wind gate. And the wind gate is the gate of change. And this follow through
00:56:53.820of the book is a deeper look at what sustains racism, what feeds it, what nourishes it,
00:57:08.440both in individuals and in society and what can we learn about practicing mindfully with
00:57:16.480recognizing that energy in ourselves and in our society and in our systems being able to name
00:57:23.220that energy being able to face the truth of that energy but also to be able to transform that
00:57:32.180energy into energy of goodness of wellness of justice and harmony so we're in not just a social
00:57:43.060to use the word battle we're in an energetic battle for where energy is placed where energy
00:57:50.900is enhanced and cared for and and because uh you know 10 percent of the world 15 percent of the
00:58:00.920world pretty much determines the world's agenda. The rest of us must know that our energy is as
00:58:11.460profound as anyone else's energy. And I'm thinking back to civil rights days and understanding
00:58:20.820that our energy is much larger, much deeper, much more refined
00:58:29.840to handle our suffering because we have had to learn how and so part of the challenge for me is
00:58:38.820and I think all of us around the world is how to make this shift
00:58:44.820which we are in the midst of how to make sure this shift survives this energy of freshness
00:58:53.060this energy of new language, new art, new music, new sound, new decisions, new kinds
00:58:59.840of institutions and systems to make sure that the energy survives to create these things.
00:59:07.180That our generativity is not lost in the folly of politics or in the pain of commercialism.
00:59:18.420all those things are true and we must deal with all those things without getting lost
00:59:24.260so that our energy is like the lawsuits like the process you talked about with the minds
00:59:30.880that's their strategy is to force you to use your energy that way so that you don't have
00:59:39.540the energy to do what you're talking about would be the greatest thing that's a conscious strategy
00:59:47.160And so many North Americans don't understand how their consent is manufactured, to use an old term.
00:59:59.240and to recognize this checking in myself
01:00:06.680rather than living out of someone's else definition of who i should be who i could be
01:00:12.820who i wish i was to have the courage to create a life that is based in individuation not simply