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00:00:27.040Hey for the wild community, Ayanna here. Before we begin this episode, I want to take a moment
00:00:34.820to thank our friends at Mountain Rose Herbs for supporting this podcast. Some of you may know that
00:00:40.500my journey with the show, which used to be called Unlearn and Rewild, started with my awakening to
00:00:46.160the plant world through herbalism and my first plant teacher, the late Cascade Anderson Geller.
00:00:52.400So it feels close to my heart that seven years later, Mountain Rose is by our side.
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00:01:32.340their offerings at mountainroseherbs.com. All right, now on to the show.
00:01:37.720hello and welcome to for the wild podcast i'm ayana young today i will be speaking to lama rod
00:01:50.920owens an author activist and authorized lama buddhist teacher in the kagyu school of tibetan
00:01:58.620buddhism and is considered one of the leaders of his generation of buddhist teachers i started
00:02:04.540out early in my meditation solely practicing mindfulness. And then, of course, that gave way
00:02:10.200to the whole pantheon and a range of tantric Buddhism. And as I look at my practice now,
00:02:18.080look at living through the world now, I need a practice that introduces me to the totality
00:02:24.120of the world, the multidimensional reality of this world.
00:02:30.340Lama Rod holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist studies from Harvard Divinity School
00:02:35.560and is co-author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.
00:02:41.320Owens is the co-founder of Bhumi Sparsha, a Buddhist tantric practice and study community.
00:02:47.080He has been published and featured in several publications, including Buddha Dharma, Lion's Roar, Tricycle,
00:02:55.160the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and has offered talks, retreats, and workshops in over seven
00:03:00.220countries. Lama Rod facilitates undoing patriarchy workshops for male-identified practitioners in
00:03:06.320Brooklyn and Boston, and his forthcoming book, Love and Rage, The Path of Liberation Through
00:03:12.220Anger, will be released in June of 2020. So welcome, Lama Rod. It's so wonderful to have
00:03:20.460you with us today. Thanks so much for being with us. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me.
00:03:26.700Well, I really want to talk about your forthcoming book, Love and Rage, The Path of
00:03:32.420Liberation Through Anger. And it seems to show us how anger can be illuminating. And it's not
00:03:39.200a luxury, nor is it without purpose. And it shows us what we are attached to,
00:03:44.900where there is injustice. And so to begin, I wonder if you can share your own personal
00:03:50.540relationship to anger as well as the distinction between getting stuck in anger and essentially
00:03:56.280wasting it versus moving through it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have been angry my whole
00:04:05.540life. And I, you know, I am a black queer male. I grew up in the South and I grew up around and
00:04:14.280amongst so much discrimination, so much prejudice, and it just became this experience, this anger,
00:04:20.580this experience that just kind of began to dominate everything, you know. But the weird
00:04:29.440thing about my experience with anger was that I didn't feel safe enough to express anger,
00:04:34.560because as a Black queer man growing up in the South, I learned early on that I didn't have a
00:04:43.740right to express anger because my expression of anger no matter how you know weak or mundane it
00:04:51.880may seem was always considered a threat you know and so i saw black men like me over and over again
00:04:58.760being punished for expressing anger and so i intuitively learned to re-express my anger
00:05:08.600as passive aggressiveness you know and so I hid my anger impact you know and this passive
00:05:16.800aggressiveness and I just kind of took on this identity of being like the really nice kind
00:05:23.280patient black guy right and I had to practice a lot of apathy and detachment to really keep
00:05:33.720myself from touching into this experience of anger. And so when I started really getting0.59
00:05:39.220into activism, really in my late teens and moving into my twenties, you know, the anger was still
00:05:45.180there. But I was subtly expressing it in a way that kept me safe. And then I got into meditation
00:05:56.440and I got into meditation because I was really struggling with severe clinical depression.
00:06:01.040and meditation just became one of the many tools that I embraced to work with my mental illness.
00:06:09.860And at the beginning of meditation and later as I got into Buddhism proper,
00:06:14.220one of my mentors, I remember this very clearly, one of my mentors set me down one day
00:06:19.520and it was basically like, you have to do something about your anger.
00:06:22.780And I remember sitting there thinking, what the hell does she know about me being angry?
00:06:26.300right um but you know then she initiated this process for me you know where i had to start
00:06:33.920confronting the ways in which i had misplaced my anger um and had redirected it into passive
00:06:40.900aggressiveness you know and for me passive aggressiveness was like smiling and nodding
00:06:46.380and saying yes to everything and but like under my breath you know like cussing people out or
00:06:53.300You know, agreeing to do things, but then not doing it just to get back at someone. So things like that, that's how passive aggressiveness work out. And so I had to start using my meditation practice to start touching into the energy of anger and actually learning how to make space for it and to see it very clearly and to redirect it into, you know, just into practices that could channel the energy and balance the energy out for me.
00:07:22.800And in the process of doing that, I really began to understand how important my anger was, because my anger, you know, was something that alerted me to imbalance and injustice.
00:07:36.280And it helped me to understand that beneath everything, I was still experiencing deep woundedness and hurt.
00:07:43.240So I began to see that my anger was really a bodyguard for my woundedness.
00:07:47.640And so I started to embrace anger in that manner.
00:07:52.200I began to see anger as this really important, powerful, positive thing that, you know, when I took care of my woundedness, then I began to experience agency over the energy of anger.
00:08:04.580And that really began to transform my whole relationship to justice and to the way I moved through the world.
00:08:11.640Thank you for sharing some of your personal experiences in that last response.
00:08:20.620Now, in this interview between you and Kate Johnson, a meditation teacher and organizational
00:08:26.280change consultant, you share, quote, I wasn't acting angry. I had redirected it and deeply
00:08:32.780internalized it. That began this process that led into depression for me. And I think that I was so
00:08:38.780hesitant to externalize anger because externalizing anger as a black man was dangerous end quote
00:08:44.160and you spoke a little bit about this before and it's this recognizes both the politics of anger0.61
00:08:51.260and how the placing of externalized anger creates an internal poisoning as well as the correlation
00:08:57.880between anger and depression so i would love if you could further explain the relationship between
00:09:03.320anger and depression and what are the consequences of denying either? Well, you know, I think that
00:09:09.160quote points out something really important is that anger is politicized, you know, and we all
00:09:15.220depending on our identity locations have different access to anger or we've been granted different
00:09:22.540cultural permissions to be with our anger. You know, for me as a black man, as a black cisgender
00:09:28.000man I you know the message was that I didn't have a right to be angry if I expressed anger that I
00:09:35.040could lose my life and we continue to see this every single day even right now you know with0.79
00:09:41.120the the news of even more black men actually being killed and so and I have found that to be the case
00:09:50.180with some of the female identified folks that I work with some of my female identified colleagues
00:09:57.700and friends you know who talk about how they were raised you know to to believe that like good girls
00:10:04.460you know aren't angry you know um and so yes you know when i turned back to really connecting to
00:10:14.740my anger i knew very clearly early on you know in my work with anger that it had such a deep
00:10:24.260relationship with my depression it was if you know if the anger you know was just kind of like
00:10:32.220sitting deep in my experience creating like a pressurized experience that every other part
00:10:38.900of my experience was desperately trying to keep in place to keep from exploding and that really
00:10:44.000created um this experience of depression for me this this experience of self-depreciation loss
00:10:51.240of self-esteem, loss of motivation, because so much of my energy was going into repressing the
00:10:57.400anger because I really wanted to stay safe, right, you know? And for me, you know, the anger was one
00:11:04.320thing, right? And then actually naming depression in my experience was a completely different thing
00:11:09.580because also I was raised, you know, in a community where people weren't mentally ill.
00:11:15.040There was no such thing as mental illness.
00:11:18.280You know, Black people, you know, they weren't mentally ill.
00:13:14.840So this situation, this case really hits home for me.
00:13:19.040Like, it just continues to point out the realities that, you know, our bodies are moving through, right?
00:13:26.680And we're moving through realities and contexts and systems that for many of us were already established well before our birth.
00:13:36.740You know, we were born into racism and misogyny and patriarchy and capitalism and white supremacy, like we were born into these systems, you know, that were already established, you know, but the thing about it is that, you know, we're born into the system and for most of us, we just continue to perpetuate the systems unknowingly, right, you know.
00:13:59.500And so, you know, we may not be the ones out there, you know, creating physical violence, you know, but if we're not doing the work to disrupt the systems that we enjoy privileges from, then we're actually part of fueling the system against those who are being marginalized and attacked.
00:14:19.220You know, I think about some of the work that I do around undoing patriarchy, and I work with no-identified folks in workshops in this country and in other countries.
00:14:30.560And we get together and we work through the system of patriarchy and misogyny and how they have informed our thinking or our thought patterns, you know, our behaviors, you know.
00:14:42.240And we understand that, like, if we're not actively trying to disrupt and take the system down, then we are, therefore, actively participating in maintaining the system.
00:14:59.200You know, we either have to be working against the system or we're working to maintain the system, you know, even if it's by doing nothing, you know.
00:15:09.460um these were some of the questions that i had to really wrestle with coming out of activism
00:15:14.680into buddhism you know i had to start really understanding what karma was you know and i
00:15:20.800you know am black black american and for many years i just like i just really felt like being
00:15:27.180black and queer were like these punishments like i was just felt so punished i felt like i had
00:15:33.620lost the bet of God. And I came into this life, you know, having so many strikes against me,
00:15:40.000you know, and I've spent years working through, you know, the just the utter heartbreak of what
00:15:47.740it has meant in my early life to be born into this body, and not having the opportunity to
00:15:54.000do certain things because of my sexual orientation and race as well. But when I came into Buddhism,
00:16:01.720and really started working through the practices, working through meditation, working through
00:16:05.020cultivating love and compassion for myself, I actually really began to see that my identity
00:16:11.940locations, particularly around being Black and queer, were actual gifts. They were actually
00:16:17.340blessings. And I began to understand that I was deeply internalizing the messages and narratives
00:16:25.940of systems of violence, particularly systems of homophobia and systems of racism. And I deeply
00:16:32.960internalized those really detrimental messages my whole life. And I had to use practice,
00:16:38.480I had to use my Dharma practice and meditation practice as a kind of a detox to start undoing
00:16:44.440these really harmful negative messages that I had metabolized in my system. And now at this
00:16:52.420point of my life, I celebrate, you know, I celebrate being black, I celebrate being queer,
00:16:59.160I celebrate being fat, you know, I celebrate, you know, all these things that society tells me not
00:17:05.660to celebrate and not to be happy about. You know, karma, you know, can be so oversimplified,
00:17:15.040you know, and I think in pop culture and mainstream media, you know, it's, that's where the really
00:17:21.400intense oversimplification of karma happens. And karma is more than just people getting what they
00:17:27.080deserve. It's more about me doing something wrong and then getting punished. You know, karma is
00:17:32.380really actually about the study and the awareness of how I create energy, how I'm held responsible
00:17:41.760for actually moving through the energies that I create and build around me. You know, so when I do
00:17:50.520good things and positive things when i do things to decrease violence and to decrease harm and i
00:17:57.580begin to live in an energetic reality that actually helps me to reduce harm for myself
00:18:04.340you know and um as well so i begin to experience a reduction of harm and violence in the same way
00:18:11.040that i've worked to reduce harm and violence for others around me you know if i create energy
00:18:16.200that's harmful and violent, then I actually have to live within this energetic reality
00:18:21.340that is harmful, that is violent, you know, particularly against myself.
00:18:25.920And, you know, it's also particularly harmful against other folks, you know.
00:18:30.660So whatever I put out into the world, I am ultimately responsible for processing
00:18:37.020and metabolizing whatever energy I put out into the world.
00:18:41.020And so for me, again, going back to identity, it's not the identity that's the problem. It's the ways in which people get together and create harm for other people based upon some identity location or some aesthetic.
00:18:58.060You know, that's the issue. So the negative karma is actually being expressed and generated by those who oppress and marginalize others. Right.
00:19:11.340And so as, you know, a recipient of this marginalization or this violence, you know, I have this incredible opportunity to return this harm with energy that disrupts that harm and violence.
00:19:29.000So I return this harm of prejudice or discrimination or violence with love and with compassion and with generosity, you know.
00:19:40.560And it doesn't mean that I just let things happen to me, but it means that, like, I become really sensitive to how I can easily fall into reproducing the same acts of violence that are perpetuated against me
00:19:54.720and reproducing those to hurt other people, you know, who hurt me in the same way.
00:19:59.860So that's really, like, my broad understanding of karma and identity.
00:20:05.340And to just lastly say that, like, you know, karma is really about a state of mind, you know?
00:20:13.220And this is where Buddhism and Dharma really is quite beneficial.
00:20:21.000I thought being born Black was a punishment, and that changed my mind, and I began to understand, oh, this is actually really beautiful. You know, it's the system of racism that's ugly and harmful, but being Black is not harmful, you know, or ugly inherently. But racism is inherently bad and harmful.
00:20:41.960mm-hmm yeah it makes me think about ancestry and the belief that we're karmically repaying debts
00:20:53.800and learning lessons yet we also carry the trauma and experiences of our genealogical ancestors
00:20:59.940you know we then might have very different experiences when it comes to ancestral
00:21:05.120relationships or relationships to embodiment and dissociation. Yeah, so there's a lot there.
00:21:12.020And I'm thinking about how when anger is justified and deeply informed by the world,
00:21:19.000prophetic almost, it's not well received by the masses. However, I think fairly quickly,
00:21:25.580many people who have gone through life not having been forced to be aware will find themselves
00:21:31.100angry very soon. And I wonder if you could talk about how anger is informed by awareness and the
00:21:37.840power of anger as a positive source and mobilizing factor, as well as any advice for
00:21:43.560those who are experiencing anger in isolation. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, there are two
00:21:50.980different realities when I think about anger. The first reality is having a compulsory relationship
00:21:58.760with anger. And the second reality, which I've already mentioned, is actually having agency
00:22:03.740over anger. So in the former, so having a compulsory relationship with anger,
00:22:11.840that simply means that I'm just reacting to anger. And so I feel the anger, and then in a second,
00:22:19.040I'm just reacting to it. And as I react to it, I have no space or agency. I actually need space
00:22:24.460around anger to have agency. So if I have no space, then I'm going to react to anger in a way
00:22:30.100that just may potentially create more violence in the world. And I think that's the expression
00:22:34.920of anger that we've seen the most. That's the example of people getting angry and doing
00:22:40.460something really harmful, you know? And we see it, at least for me, you know, not now, right,
00:22:46.320you know, now that, you know, I'm more in quarantine and sitting, you know, but when I've
00:22:51.280and times but out in the world in public spaces i i used to see it every time i've gone out you
00:22:57.320know around people i've seen people respond to anger so many different ways especially in boston
00:23:02.560just crossing the street you know becomes an occasion for people to have conflicts right
00:23:08.380you know to yell at cars for not slowing down or what have you you know and so so that's being in
00:23:14.760a compulsive relationship but then we turn to the other end of this having agency over anger
00:23:20.260you know, which means that I actually have a choice as to how I am responding to my anger.
00:23:26.500And I have this choice because I have noticed my anger arise in my experience. And then I have
00:23:34.580understood instantly that my anger is pointing me back to woundedness, to a place where I've been
00:23:40.580hurt. And so I'm able to go back to that place, take care of myself, or begin the process of
00:23:46.160taking care of myself and then that takes this fixation around anger away or it really greatly
00:23:53.380decreases it and so i'm able to turn back into my experience of anger and just saying okay i'm
00:23:59.700taking care of myself and so this energy of anger i can actually use to do something that's more
00:24:05.800beneficial than just kicking someone's ass for pissing me off right you know um and i think that
00:24:13.840the people in our culture, in our history who have had agency over their anger, they've been0.98
00:24:21.620the most powerful leaders, you know, for us to study. And, you know, and these leaders, you know,
00:24:31.420have been people who have exhibited and embodied what we would call a righteous anger, right? A
00:24:36.960Righteous anger means that, like, yes, there's anger in reaction to injustice, you know, and that anger becomes like a light, a searchlight, a flashlight that begins to highlight these experiences of injustice.
00:24:54.020You know, of course, not everyone's interested in, you know, experiences of injustice being highlighted, especially if you're part of perpetuating that injustice.
00:25:04.060You know, so we have also created all kinds of really sophisticated ways to shut people down, to erase people, to bypass people, especially when they've been embodied righteous anger.
00:25:16.920I think one of the ways that we do that is through tone policing.
00:25:20.900You know, we've gotten to this place where, you know, we have these ideas that, like, I can't possibly listen to someone until they fit into this acceptable way of communication, right?
00:25:32.820You know, if you're yelling at me, then I can't possibly listen to you, you know?
00:25:37.200And so we just shut those people down and we bypass them, you know?
00:25:41.300And that's becoming more and more a thing, you know, it's kind of tone policing.
00:25:46.900And so if we're really interested in justice, we have to be interested in anger.
00:25:51.980Like, we have to be interested in our own anger.
00:25:54.440We have to be interested in the anger from other folks because our anger is pointing us to injustice.
00:26:02.820And we won't ever, ever be able to see real justice and social change happening until we develop agency over our anger by first, you know, learning how to take care of ourselves, you know.
00:26:14.780And so I think about, you know, us sitting in quarantine during this pandemic, and I, like many people, are really angry and really frustrated, you know, particularly being in America where, you know, I feel as if I know our government has really, like, dropped the ball, you know.
00:26:34.160And there are states who are dropping the ball, you know, and there are other people who I interpret as not really caring about the safety and well-being of others, you know, who are breaking these quarantines and going out to protest and forcing people to come back out into the public space to work and so forth without any regard to the fact that many people will die and get sick.
00:26:56.340um that's really you know frustrating like i'm pissed off about that you know and so i know that
00:27:04.760from my practice i have to look at the ways in which i just feel deeply hurt i feel deeply erased
00:27:11.160i feel deeply disregarded and i have to take care of that hurts you know i take care of it by
00:27:17.120noticing it i take care of it by giving it space you know i take care of it by understanding that
00:27:23.960i am not the only person who is experiencing hurt right now in this moment and that gives me the
00:27:30.540space to be with my anger you know and so when i'm with my anger and i also have space to
00:27:37.660to really consider compassion so to consider that yes you know these people that i'm angry at0.97
00:27:44.060they're hurting too you know and though they're hurting they're still making stupid decisions that
00:27:50.500really impact my life and the lives of so many other folks, you know, but I've also done really0.98
00:27:57.100stupid things that have endangered the lives of other people in my life as well. So I get that.
00:28:02.120I understand how hard it is to cultivate a sense of wisdom and compassion and truth and love,
00:28:10.240you know, and I understand the difficulty of that, you know, so I hold the anger within this kind of
00:28:16.820reflective compassion you know but the anger still remains there the hurt still stays you know but
00:28:23.520there's just more spaciousness to hold all of this you know and everything that i can't deal
00:28:28.780with everything that i can't you know resolve is all the material that i have to mourn you know
00:28:36.360and i have to grieve i have to grieve the fact that there are people dying i have to grieve the
00:28:41.680fact that I live in a country with an apt government. I have to grieve the fact there
00:28:46.460are people who don't care about their well-being or health or their well-being and health of other
00:28:52.420people. I have to just allow myself to touch into the sadness of that whole thing and just sit with
00:28:58.480that discomfort, you know, and just allow there to be space around that discomfort. And this is
00:29:04.100what it means to be human, to live in a contradictory world. This is what it means to
00:29:10.060live with other people, you know, particularly living with other people that you don't really
00:29:16.140want to live with. You know, every single day, I get up and say, I wish that I lived in a country
00:29:22.900where everyone was just like me, right? Or at least was, you know, on the same page politically,
00:29:28.660you know, where everyone had the same values about justice and equity, where, you know,
00:29:34.340People had what they needed and people could live their lives in a way, you know, that would feed into their ultimate happiness and, you know, and so forth.
00:29:46.480But we just don't live in a reality like that.
00:29:49.740And I have to grieve that, you know, and commit myself every day to, for the rest of my life,
00:29:57.160trying to work and doing everything that I can to bring about a society that reflects my values of nonviolence and decreased harm.
00:30:05.640Water and fire, water and fire, strange bedfellows.
00:32:14.760And recognize the experience we're having on earth in this present moment, in this time really full of grief.
00:32:26.040And in response to one of your love and rage story time series, you shared, quote, the work ahead is taking care of our grief, mourning it, loving and releasing the trauma and letting go of the person we used to be in the world we used to live in.
00:32:43.720And if you choose to do the work, there's no magic pillar potion that will instantly heal us. Healing is long, continuous, and heartbreaking work that over time results in the capacity to experience resiliency, which I feel energetically as buoyancy or the ability to ride the suffering and not get swallowed in it. Not all of us will be able to do the work or choose to do it. Not all of us will make it. Please know that I am mourning this as well, end quote.
00:33:11.480And I wanted to ask you a question about grief, but I also wanted to bring up the powerful end
00:33:20.560of this reflection, quote, not all of us will make it. Please know that I'm mourning that as
00:33:25.360well, end quote. And I wonder if you might discuss this further, who gets to make it and how do we
00:33:31.020reckon and get through this uncertainty? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, and when I say
00:33:38.100there are those who won't make it it doesn't mean that like for people who are going to die
00:33:43.800that's not what i mean by not making it you know what i mean by not making it is that there are
00:33:49.940people who will refuse you know to actually adapt to change to work with the the the complete
00:34:01.860how the world is completely shifting there are people who will refuse to acknowledge that
00:34:06.500You know, and so they'll get, they'll choose to really to kind of plant themselves in an old reality, in an old narrative, you know, while the rest of folks in the rest of the world move beyond them, you know.
00:34:22.140And so even if you die physically, it doesn't mean that, like, you're left behind, that you haven't made it because you're still continuing on a path.
00:34:30.720And as long as we open up to our death and open up to our transition into the spirit world, then we're continuing to adapt.
00:34:38.020So we're continuing to move forward, you know.
00:34:41.540I'm just really, like, sad about the folks who won't be able to change.
00:34:49.540They won't be able to let go of the past, you know.
00:34:53.220Our old lives and old world no longer exist, you know.
00:34:57.920And there are people who will desperately try to recreate the world pre-pandemic, and it will result in a lot of suffering and a lot of violence, you know, for themselves and definitely violence against others.
00:35:13.900and we have to mourn that you know we have to say we have to say yeah not all of us are going to
00:35:21.460adapt to get to the other side of this you know and and it's okay you know it's okay and for me
00:35:31.080it's okay because this isn't the end for anyone you know this is part of my belief paradigm is
00:35:37.400that yeah like you may not be able to do this work of adapting but it doesn't mean that like this is
00:35:42.060the end. This is it. You have, you know, a whole
00:35:46.040path ahead of you. And it's going to take all of us different times
00:35:50.140and different, you know, kind of different
00:35:58.260along this path of realization, you know. And so I'm okay
00:36:02.180with that, you know. And meanwhile, I will continue to do what I can to support
00:36:05.960everyone, you know. But what I can't do is
00:36:10.660force people to do the work that they're not ready to do you know and so I'll have to let go of
00:36:18.500people you know I have to let go of relationships I have to let go of people I have to have I've had
00:36:22.720to do that for many years now where I've changed and grown and there have been people in my life
00:36:28.380who refuse to acknowledge that change you know and that really is the end of our relationship
00:36:34.760because we're living two different realities I'm living in the present you know and I'm living in
00:36:39.780this new version of myself where as this other person I'm in a relationship with, they're still
00:36:44.620relating to me as this old version of myself. And I get confused because I have no idea who
00:36:51.100you're talking to now because that's not me anymore. And if you refuse to see me for what
00:36:56.300I am, then we can't have a relationship because we won't be able to communicate.
00:37:00.180As we sit in the depths of change, love, rebirth, and apocalypse, or at least the changing of worlds, my mind goes to refuge, which I know is something you've been reflecting on recently as well.
00:37:17.300And I come back to a quote from Terry Tempest Williams, which reads, quote, my refuge exists in my capacity to love. If I can learn to love death, then I can begin to find refuge and change, end quote.
00:37:30.180So I'd like to ask, what does your refuge look like and how do we identify our own refuge or might it be a collective state?
00:37:38.800Yeah, you know, I think that, like, for me, refuge is wherever I can fall back into and be held and taken care of, you know, and I think that we all have to just do the work of figuring out what is it in our lives that takes care of us, you know, and nourishes us and restores us, you know.
00:38:02.280um ultimately for me it's it's my relationship with um the divine mother you know this cosmic
00:38:08.960consciousness that is a embodiment of um this divine feminine nurturing energy you know so
00:38:15.640that's the mother for me and the mother is is something that i fall back into i'm held by that
00:38:22.440energy you know um and that's just one form of refuge but i have refuge you know i take refuge
00:38:29.980in my teachers, right? If they take care of me, they look out for me. I take refuge
00:38:34.060in my practice, right? And I take refuge in the earth
00:38:37.920as this source of refuge that's always holding me and loving me
00:38:57.320ability and capacity to experience wisdom and compassion and kindness and generosity.
00:39:05.800And so this taking refuge, it's not so much that it's taking something, but it's actually
00:39:12.320surrendering. So I surrender to being taken care of, right? I surrender. And we have to be very
00:39:19.100careful too with surrendering. We have to surrender to sources of refuge that can actually hold us.
00:39:26.160And unfortunately, many of us surrender to forms of refuge that actually are detrimental to our health and well-being. Some of us surrender into relationships that actually aren't good for us. We surrender into certain practices that are actually hurting us.
00:39:44.660And we can't surrender without trust. So we have to really trust that the source of refuge is going to hold us, you know.
00:39:54.420But this also brings into question another issue that many of us struggle with is that, you know, many of us don't feel safe, you know, surrendering and engaging in a refuge.
00:40:08.020Like some of us, we just feel powerless. We feel as if it takes away our agency. And so like many of us will never experience true refuge because we won't ever be able to experience our helplessness, you know.
00:40:25.740And we won't ever be able to understand that, like, we won't ever be able to understand that, like, we won't experience agency until we begin to experience our helplessness and that there is a kind of skillful helplessness that we have to begin practicing.
00:40:44.200And basically, that's just a deep, honest recognition that I can't do everything, right, that I can't possibly take care of everything and that I need to rely on other things, you know, in order to do work, to get things done, to fulfill the needs that I have.
00:41:04.640And that's a skillful helplessness. It's just a recognition that I'm not this all powerful being, that I have weaknesses, that I have edges, and I need to surrender to other sources that can help me, that can take care of me when I can't take care of myself.
00:41:20.900in an interview titled accessing refuge on tricycle you share quote we also may not realize
00:41:31.060that this is a period in which we are accumulating vast amounts of trauma when quarantine ends we
00:41:37.520won't just transition we're going to need to go through a re-acclimation period and some of us
00:41:43.580may need mental health therapy during this adjustment right now we're just trying to deal
00:41:48.100with the moment. We're trying to survive and take care of people and avoid getting sick or manage
00:41:52.960sickness. Because of this, we may not have the capacity to deal with post-pandemic right now
00:41:58.880or envision a new future, and that's okay, end quote. And I think not just in terms of the
00:42:06.340pandemic, but also in thinking about the future impacted by a changing climate, we experienced
00:42:12.300this tremendous tension of not wanting to be where we currently are, while also knowing that
00:42:17.280we can't get anywhere else unless we survive and take care of our basic needs, magnified by the
00:42:23.580fact that we want to plan to get out. And then on top of all of that, there is this cacophony of
00:42:29.600voices telling us to simultaneously use our time wisely, but also not be burdened by productivity,
00:42:36.380not act in urgency. And in all of that, we aren't talking about the trauma. So I'm wondering if you
00:42:44.240could share the function of trauma and how we should digest it to ensure that it doesn't remain
00:42:49.460within us and that we don't become attached to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, let me add another
00:42:55.860layer of complication and say that like we, even before this pandemic have experienced or rather
00:43:03.060we have accumulated mountains of trauma that it was almost impossible to address even before the
00:43:10.740pandemic, you know? And now we're in a pandemic, which is also perpetuating these experiences of
00:43:18.720trauma. And, you know, my whole thing is like, oh my God, how are we going to do any of this?
00:43:26.260You know, particularly as we live in a country and society that's really not trauma-informed,
00:43:32.420like we're not interested in trauma. You know, again, I grew up in a community where things
00:43:37.780like trauma mental illness that was something that other people experienced that black people
00:43:42.760didn't experience that i absolutely know that to not to be the case any longer right um and so as
00:43:51.080you know as we're sitting here you know i you know i hear so many people talk about oh post
00:43:56.660pandemic soon as the soon as we can you know start gathering again i'm gonna be out of the house
00:44:01.920blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, you won't actually, because this isn't how all of this
00:44:09.860works because we have been sitting within a culture of fear and paranoia that we've been
00:44:14.660absorbing for two months now. If many people like me, I watch the news, I keep on top of everything
00:44:23.840that's happening with the pandemic. And I know how many people are dying. I know who's dying.
00:44:29.800I know where these outbreaks are, you know, and I've had friends who have survived the virus and it's been really, really painful to kind of like support them through that.
00:44:44.880I have also known, I've known at least one person now who's died from COVID-19 as well, including having many friends who have had family members who passed or who themselves have survived the virus as well.
00:45:01.700We're sitting around absorbing all of this, you know, and it's unconsciously collecting, you know, beneath the surface of our consciousness, right?
00:45:10.820And so even as I look into my experience, like I, I even find it really difficult to go to just like walk around my block or just to go to the grocery store, right? Because in my mind, there's this intense ingrained fear and paranoia of contracting the virus and potentially dying, you know, and that's something that's going to stay with me for a while is going to definitely stay with me until there's an actual effective vaccine.
00:45:40.820You know, which we're still a while away from, you know, we have to address that.
00:46:00.880It's this trapped energy in our nervous system that keeps cycling, you know, in our nervous system without being released.
00:46:08.280So it begins to impact our behaviors and our thoughts, you know, and how we relate to certain things and to certain people and so forth and so on.
00:46:17.840And in order for us to move back, you know, into something that's, you know, productive and healthy, we have to, like, we have to become trauma-informed.
00:46:29.640We have to start seeking out, you know, support groups.
00:46:33.140We have to start now doing practices, you know, of holding space for a lot of the fear, you know, and doing some supportive practices, you know, that I call like these kind of self-care practices of cultivating compassion and love for ourselves and sending that out and sharing that with other folks around us.
00:46:56.920um you know and unfortunately most people for most people the the trauma and trauma in general
00:47:06.960is really unconscious it's not something they notice and i was definitely in that case many
00:47:11.460years ago as someone who believes that no as as i believe that i wasn't at all impacted by trauma
00:47:19.360um until um the emergence of black lives matter where i began to really see a lot of racial
00:47:25.980trauma and my experience and just begin to do the work um to to look at that and to to move the
00:47:31.960modalities um to to come into a state of um a deeper equilibrium and health um yeah you know
00:47:40.980again you know you're not going to make it until you start looking at and working with the trauma
00:47:48.000that we're accumulating you know and this is you know we you know mentioned the ancestors um early
00:47:54.320beyond. You know, yes, and we're also born into ancestral lines where we have been gifted
00:48:02.040intergenerational trauma and transhistorical trauma. So not only are we dealing with the
00:48:07.440traumas that we're experiencing in this world, in this body, in this time, we're also dealing
00:48:12.360with the trauma that we've inherited from my ancestors. And this is overwhelming. And this
00:48:18.260is why it's taken me 20 years of just really kicking my ass in practice to work through0.98
00:48:23.940to work through the suffering to work through the pain to work through the trauma and the0.96
00:48:30.220woundedness and the rage and the anger to come into a place where I experience buoyancy right
00:48:36.260and again the buoyancy for me is that like it's not that there isn't suffering it anymore but
00:48:41.540it's the case that now I have the skills to float you know on on the suffering like I see it I feel
00:48:49.680it, but I don't get lost in it because I have the practices to cultivate spaciousness and openness
00:48:54.980in my experience. And I also engage in a practice called consuming, consuming the chaos. And so
00:49:02.780instead of like suffering, consuming me, I work to consume the suffering by getting spacious and
00:49:09.160wide and expansive and clear and wise and more loving and compassionate, you know, and to use
00:49:15.440those qualities to hold space for these experiences of suffering and trauma. So it's a lot of work
00:49:22.260to do this, you know, and I'm afraid that like, we don't really understand
00:49:27.500the level of work and diligence that we're facing in order to move through the impacts of this pandemic.
00:51:07.700And it's clear that secular mindfulness, especially the commodified version we have
00:51:12.500today in the West is not it. However, I'm also wary of how for the majority of settlers in the
00:51:21.300so-called US, we have a history of just appropriating in the easiest way possible
00:51:27.040until we're walking in the shell of something. So I wonder if I could ask you about taking up
00:51:34.360Buddhism or specifically tantric Buddhism as an aid during this time and how do you see theology
00:51:40.640or spiritual practice fitting in during this time as well as how to practice with integrity
00:51:45.660and not just buy into the sort of watered down version of spirituality?
00:51:50.880Yeah, absolutely. That's a really important question. And I think that for me, I wouldn't
00:51:59.700be alive without tantric Buddhism. You know, secular mindfulness, I started out early in my
00:52:08.100meditation solely practicing mindfulness. And then, of course, that gave way to the whole
00:52:14.380pantheon and a range of tantric Buddhism. And as I look at my practice now, look at living through
00:52:21.620the world now, I need a practice that introduces me to the totality of the world, the multidimensional
00:52:29.760reality of this world, you know? And specifically what I mean by that is that, like, I want to
00:52:36.540I need to have practices that help me to be in relationship with the earth, you know, with the spirits and the deities of the earth.
00:52:47.120I need to be in relationship with the spirit realm.
00:52:49.920I need to be in relationship with my ancestors.
00:52:53.260I need to be in relationship, you know, with the mother, right?
00:52:58.680And I need to have a deep overarching awareness of the complexity of existence and the complexity of reality and the complexity of multiple dimensions happening in the very same time and place that we're living in.
00:53:15.080Because I need to understand that, you know, I guess ultimately what I need to understand is that I impact the world in ways that I'm not aware of and I want to limit my impact.
00:53:34.100And I need to rely on these sources of refuge and sources of support to help me to understand that.
00:53:43.380You know, it's been really my practice with the earth and, you know, local deities do my plant medicine practice that's helped me to really understand that the earth is living, like the earth is a living entity, a living spirit, a living deity, you know, and that we are negatively impacting this beautiful living spirit.
00:54:10.000And so I have to do the work to disrupt the ways in which I am negatively impacting the earth.
00:54:16.120And I have to do what I can to bring awareness to, you know, as many people as possible about the impact that we're having on this entity of the earth.
00:54:26.420You know, we talked about a little earlier, you know, yeah, it's, you know, we're getting a lot of different messages about how to be productive and how to produce.
00:54:39.040You know, because our self-worth, you know, within this culture is tied to what we produce, you know. We're no good if we can't produce something, you know. Or we're no good if we don't control the production and the creation of wealth.
00:54:58.680If we don't do any of that, we're just, we're just worthless. Right. And we have to disrupt that, you know, because that, that mentality, that investment and that kind of mentality drives climate change and climate instability, you know, by, you know, by, you know, drawing resources from the earth, you know, that create instability for the earth.
00:55:22.340Um, and so for me, mindfulness is, you know, secular mindfulness is something that's a shell of the richness of the tradition in which it's been extracted from, you know, um, real mindfulness, you know, as we would say, the root of mindfulness is within a text called the Satipatthana.
00:55:45.040The Satipatthana, you know, the mindfulness that the Buddha taught was really about how do we understand ethics and goodness and reduction of harm and violence. That's the point. You know, the point of the Satipatthana was not to feel good, not to be happy, you know, not to be productive, but it was actually about how do I become a good person and what is goodness and virtue and ethics.
00:56:11.140And this is what we're missing, you know, because, you know, a practice that centers on virtue and ethics will inevitably call into question the ways in which we're actually participating in things that are not virtuous and actually things that are quite harmful and detrimental to the earth and to our community.
00:56:28.500I've often wondered about who will be needed to either hospice or transition us and I'd like to
00:56:35.780ask you if somehow or if you somehow feel more equipped during this time because of the time
00:56:42.540you experienced a monastic life and renunciation and how renunciation is not a form of escapism
00:56:48.900but a confrontation and I'm wondering what was made visible during this time for you
00:56:55.160yeah yeah well you know i spent almost three and a half years in retreat in a cloistered small group
00:57:04.080retreat you know and so you know people reach out to me and they're like how are you doing and i'm
00:57:09.620like oh i've been through this before you know and actually you know um the experience that i'm
00:57:16.940having right now is i feel as if i'm thriving you know i feel happy um i feel deeply grateful i feel
00:57:26.460deeply resourced um right now and i know this is the complete opposite experience that most people
00:57:33.560are having right now and i understand that you know um i have yet to experience boredom over
00:57:40.540the past few months at all you know i don't like that's not been a trace in my experience um and
00:57:47.420that i think that is that is because i have been trained to to use stillness and solitude
00:57:56.780uh and to you know to to deepen my practice to to be of help to others um and my time as a monk
00:58:08.840and my time going through retreat, it really just taught me to understand that happiness
00:58:13.940is just something that's inherently a part of my experience.
00:58:32.420I've already worked to touch into the experience of happiness for myself.
00:58:38.840And no matter how I feel, there may be moments of anger and fear and frustration or sadness
00:58:45.760or despair, but at the same time, these experiences of happiness are still there.
00:58:51.220Also, you know, what my experiences of being in solitude and being a mob taught me was
00:58:55.900that, like, it taught me back then that the one thing that I was most afraid of was myself.
00:59:01.160I was afraid of being alone with myself and that whole experience forced me to befriend myself to0.79
00:59:10.320be in a loving warm relationship with myself and that's I think that's what's scaring the shit out
00:59:16.500of people is that you have to like sit with yourself now you know you have to sit at home
00:59:21.420with yourself we don't have you know the luxury to distract ourselves you know well we do we
00:59:28.220definitely have all these ways to distract ourselves, but they don't always work. And the
00:59:34.320longer we move through this period, the less effective they will be. And so I just, I learned
00:59:41.440how to befriend myself. I've learned how to love myself. And of course, I'm using this opportunity
00:59:45.680being in quarantine to deepen that practice, to search out parts of my experience that I need to
00:59:51.100work through. But yeah, this has been for me a blessing to move through this experience.
00:59:58.220And I know that this is a blessing within the context of so much suffering.
01:00:02.620And I embrace this blessing, you know, because this is my experience, you know, and I do everything that I can to support as many people as possible right now.
01:00:16.060But at the same time, I own my experience, you know, and I wouldn't be able to help people and to do the work that I'm doing without having this experience of being a resource.
01:00:28.220and being able to experience generosity from this experience of being resourced as well.
01:00:35.860I'd like to explore your facilitation of undoing patriarchy workshops and
01:00:41.240how you're guiding and inviting folks to divest from patriarchy. Personally, what I've really been
01:00:48.020feeling lately is that it's not enough to just recognize what patriarchy is doing to us or
01:00:53.680knowing its historical origins if we're still unconsciously maintaining it. For example,
01:00:58.900I find that in many spaces that openly critique patriarchy, that might even identify as
01:01:04.440anti-patriarchal, we're still placing our trust in very typical patriarchal figures.
01:01:12.500We could prioritize their knowledge and valorize their wisdom because I think so many are still
01:01:17.340deeply attached to the white daddy figure. So I have two questions. The first being if you think
01:01:25.000we need to really practice an active detachment from patriarchal figures. And then the second
01:01:30.120being in the process of divesting or undoing patriarchy, where do we turn to? Some could
01:01:38.120float matriarchy as the alternative, but I'm unconvinced that this transition is truly
01:01:42.800liberatory yeah yeah yeah oh this really beautiful question um to the first question how do we
01:01:51.380divest from this kind of white daddy figure you know we you know we invest in what has always
01:01:57.380historically felt comfortable for us right and and it's felt comfortable because it's the only
01:02:03.640thing that we know um and we have to actually you know understand that like comfort isn't going to
01:02:15.080get us free it's not going to crash the system if we're always trying to privilege comfort or if
01:02:21.440we're always trying to privilege what we know then like we won't see it end to any of this violence
01:02:26.700you know and it's funny because the thing that comes to mind instantly when you said that was
01:02:31.620joe biden you know and for me it was you know a joke you know that oh daddy joe is going to come
01:02:38.620and save us you know and it you know and back then you know early in the in the process it was
01:02:44.040like no joe biden isn't gonna you know there's no way you know with you know with sanders and
01:02:49.960and all the other folks um you know in the race and then all of a sudden it started happening
01:02:56.240and i was like oh like we're trying to go back to what's comfortable you know we're trying to
01:03:01.460go back to what's comfortable, that comfort isn't working out for us, you know? And so we have to
01:03:09.260start asking ourselves different questions and asking ourselves, okay, how can we begin to
01:03:13.960censor discomfort in a way that's more meaningful, right? In order for us to experience different
01:03:20.400ways of living together, being together, where people get more access to the resources that
01:03:26.040they need you know where other people with more resources aren't overprivileged you know and
01:03:32.480and overvalued compared to those of us who don't have much right um so that's one thing like we
01:03:38.080have to like really you know you know set these daddy archetypes on fire you know these like
01:03:46.280these you know these like embodiments of social patriarchy you know and patriarchal norms we have
01:03:54.780to kind of set that on fire and get rid of that you know to the second question right like who do0.92
01:03:59.600we look to right who you know um and the work that i do you know we're using you know feminist thoughts0.81
01:04:07.300like we're using the work for instance of bell hooks um and and many other feminist thinkers
01:04:13.980and writers within the curriculum you know and one of the things that i feel really strongly
01:04:21.200about is that I think mal-identified folks have to get together and learn how to rely on each other,
01:04:28.360particularly as we do the work of allowing our hearts to break. Because I think systems of0.82
01:04:32.980patriarchy maintain themselves when, you know, and all systems of violence, but particularly
01:04:37.880patriarchy maintains itself because we're not allowed to experience our emotions. We're not
01:04:43.280allowed to actually feel our anger, right? We're taught to respond to anger, to have a compulsive
01:04:51.520relationship to anger. And of course that creates more violence, you know, but we don't allow our
01:04:56.460hearts to break. We're not allowing ourselves to experience sadness and despair. We're not allowing
01:05:02.980ourselves to understand that like being a man and being distant from emotions actually is like
01:05:11.240being in prison, it's like being in cage. And that actually just creates more violence, you know,
01:05:16.300for ourselves and for others around us. You know, we have to, you know, and the spaces that I create,
01:05:23.820it's about doing collective mourning around this grief, you know, around being born into a system
01:05:29.160that was not of our choosing, to be born into, you know, this, you know, this identity location
01:05:36.580that is perpetuated by hardness and roughness and rigidity.
01:05:42.060And we have to mourn that and start loosening that up, you know.0.95
01:05:46.340And we have to start getting gender expansive.
01:05:48.900It's like we have to start understanding that, you know,
01:05:53.460my and our gender expression is not rigid, it's expansive, it's fluid, you know,
01:06:00.640and that we have to do the work of confronting the ways in which we are punished for being expansive and fluid, you know, and we have to make it a norm for us to start questioning and to start opening and start expanding.
01:06:20.220If not, then like this rigid system, patriarchy just continues and it continues to create harm for everyone, not just unidentified folks, but for everyone, you know.
01:06:30.140And this is the work that we're trying to do, the workshops.
01:06:35.800You know, we have to look to people who are doing the work to allow themselves to be free within their experience, to be gender expansive, to be gender fluid, and to learn from the work that they've been able to do and to allow ourselves to experience that same fluidity, right?
01:06:55.080To love who makes us happy, to, you know, to show up in a world that is most in line with how we feel and which is also most in line with what brings us joy and happiness and contentment.
01:07:14.720And so we're able to do that, then we're going to continue falling back into these old archetypes and these old embodiments of patriarchy.
01:07:24.140You know, the, you know, in my mind, what that looks like is like this kind of like firm, but rigid, you know, this kind of this kind, generous, but rigid expression of patriarchy, you know, which is what I grew up with.
01:07:38.240You know, it wasn't like there was violent expressions of patriarchy, but there were firm, rigid expressions of patriarchy, like this is what a man is supposed to be.
01:07:47.740And I've rejected that. And of course, that's put me at odds with the system of patriarchy.
01:07:52.440It's put me at odds with many men in my family as well.
01:07:55.580But that's the price that we have to pay in order to undo systems. Right.
01:07:59.200That's the front the front line of our work that we have to move into.
01:08:03.180And if you can't do that work, you know, then, you know, you won't ever be able to see liberation from systems like this ever.
01:08:11.840Well, thank you so much, Lama Rad. This has been a really expansive conversation. I appreciate your words and you sharing your experiences with us today. And yeah, there's a lot of food for thought here.
01:08:29.260So I'm sure all of us will take a good long while just to sit with these lessons and really try to look into our own selves and make some change.
01:08:40.900Because I know we all need it, especially as we go through this very strange and traumatic time.
01:08:49.220Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on.