Good Life Project - Kate Johnson | Radical Friendship

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

Friends make life better. We’ve all experienced that. But, could a very specific kind of friendship - Radical Friendship - lead not only to lasting bonds, love and joy, but also to systemic social c...hange, liberation, and equality? That’s what we’re talking about today. Weaving in Buddhism, Western spiritual culture, dance, and social justice with my guest, Kate Johnson. Kate teaches classes and retreats integrating Buddhist meditation, somatics, social justice, and creativity at leading meditation centers, universities and cultural institutions around the country. She also works as a culture change consultant, partnering with organizations to help them achieve greater diversity and sustainability. She's a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center's four-year teacher training and she has also earned a BFA in Dance from The Alvin Ailey School/Fordham University and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU.Her moving new book, Radical Friendship, makes a case for friendship - grounded in Buddha’s teaching - as a radical practice of love, courage, and trust, offering seven strategies that pave the way for profound social change. She invites us to consider how wise relationships make it possible to transform the barriers created by societal injustice. Radical Friendship offers a path of depth and hope and shows us the importance of working toward collective wellbeing, one relationship at a time.You can find Kate Johnson at: Instagram | WebsiteIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Ruth King about equality and social justice in the workplace and beyond.My new book is available for pre-order:Order Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive and get your book bonuses!-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessmentâ„¢ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Simple truth. Friends make life better. We have all experienced that. But could a very specific kind of friendship, radical friendship, lead to not only lasting bonds and love and joy and fun, but also potentially to systemic social change, liberation, and equality. That's what we're talking about today, weaving in Buddhism, Western spiritual culture, dance, and social justice with my guest, Kate Johnson. So Kate teaches classes and retreats integrating Buddhist meditation, somatics, social justice, and creativity at leading meditation centers, universities, and cultural institutions around the country. She also works as a culture change consultant, partnering with organizations to really help them achieve greater diversity
Starting point is 00:00:50 and sustainability. And she's a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center's four-year teacher training. And she has also earned a BFA in dance from the Alvin Ailey School, Fordham University, and an MA in performance studies from NYU. And her movie new book, Radical Friendship, it makes the case for friendship grounded in Buddha's teaching as a radical practice of love, courage, and trust, offering seven strategies that really paved the way for profound social change. And she invites us to really consider how wise relationships make it possible to transform the barriers created by societal injustice. So Radical Friendship offers a path of depth and hope and shows us the importance of working
Starting point is 00:01:34 toward a collective well-being, one relationship at a time. Really excited to dive into this conversation with you. Before we dive in, over these next three weeks, I'll be sharing short stories, just two to three minutes from my new book, Sparked, which introduces you to the 10 sparkotypes or imprints for work that make you come alive. I was so inspired by all of these amazing people. I wanted to share their Sparked stories as a kind of short, fun hit of inspiration and insight as we all make the transition into a season of reimagining and for many, reinvention. Let's dive into today's short and sweet Sparta story. Walk into Jenny Blake's essentialist maven living room and the first thing you'll see is a wall of books. First thought, wow, that's a lot of books. Then it hits you. There's something else going on. Every book on
Starting point is 00:02:22 every shelf is ordered in a particular way, not by author or title, not by Dewey Decimal, not by fiction or nonfiction or genre. Every single one is arranged by the color of its cover in sequence of the rainbow. Red fades to orange, which eases into yellow, then green, gently morphing into blues, then indigo is finally delivering you a dozen feet down and to the right into the violets. Of course, a special place is set aside for the black to white spectrum, which is a healthy part of her canon. First impulse, run. This could only have been done by the mind of someone with serious issues. Second impulse, fascination. How, I wonder, does Jenny's brain work? What would motivate a human being to do this with over a thousand books and then maintain it? Before I get my answer,
Starting point is 00:03:09 the other shoe drops. As I stand before the wall of books, half wondering whether to head for the door or pull a book out, ease it into a different spot and see what wrathful response awaits, Jenny takes me deeper into the elegance of her system. It starts with color, she says, but do you notice anything else? A beat passes. Nope. Height, she responds. First is color, then height, then topic. I honestly don't understand why anyone would do it any other way. Jenny's living room library is just one of the many ways her essentialist impulse shows up in a personal way. This same impulse has driven incredible outcomes in her professional life as well. It fueled top grades in college where her notes were so organized
Starting point is 00:03:50 she ended up turning note-taking into a paid side hustle for other students. Upon graduating, her systems and process approach to making things clear and getting things done served as the driving force that landed her a position in one of the biggest tech companies in the world, where she quickly started rising up the ranks. And that same impulse then led her to reimagine the often chaotic, nonlinear, and frenetic way so many people develop their careers, devising frameworks, tools, systems, and processes that help simplify and add clarity to the process of career development and transition, and birthed two best-selling books, Life After College and Pivot, and yearning to really claim a fuller sense of control over the way she earned her living,
Starting point is 00:04:32 and also her ability to build and offer tools that helped others simplify and sensify the choices they made in work and life. She eventually went out on her own as a consultant, author, and speaker, where she could fully embody her essentialist nature. Hey, if you enjoyed that and are curious about your own Sparkotype, grab a copy of Spark using the link in the show notes or just head to your favorite bookseller. Plus, when you order before September 21st, which is when the book is actually published, you'll get some pretty cool bonuses. Okay, on to our amazing conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.
Starting point is 00:05:29 And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.
Starting point is 00:05:49 The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.
Starting point is 00:05:58 Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So you and I have, it sounds like a bunch of shared interests, Flight Risk. modern dance. I was a kid who grew up and my mom was a modern dancer. And while I wasn't a dancer myself, I was always deeply, deeply fascinated by movement. And I remember, you know, like seeing Ellie from the earliest days when Judith Jameson was dancing and like that whole troupe. So it's, it sounds like there's this, we have, we have this shared thread. You are, you are in it as, as a person who was doing and moving. And I was in it as somebody who was just exposed to the culture and some of the most incredible performers in the space. Oh, wow. That's so awesome. That's incredible. Yeah. So you spent time hanging
Starting point is 00:06:54 out in dance studios with dancers. And as you said it, I could almost smell... It sounds unpleasant, but I could smell the dance studio which is studio the smell that I love and also like feel the kind of humidity in the air and the sweat and um it's just an exciting place for me to be yeah there's something kind of magical about that isn't there but um you hit college and you're like I'm all in on this yeah yeah it was you know dance was always a part of my life and I I loved it and I had um I had family members and teachers saying to me, oh, but you're so smart. Like you really should do something else. As if, you know, dancers aren't smart.
Starting point is 00:07:34 I think that's a stereotype and it's so wrong, you know, as you know. But yeah, I felt this, you know, nudging to let dance be a hobby and a passion and to follow an academic discipline. And then I got into college my first year. I didn't exactly know what I was going to major in, but I went to a school that wasn't dance heavy. And then I just I missed it so much, you know. And so, yeah, I decided to switch school, switch majors, go to a major dance conservatory and really, you know, I guess it felt like taking a stand for something that was really important to me, which is that and something I believed in, which is that there is something really important about dance, about the body, trivial, trivial pursuit, you know, but something that's like, well, I felt that there was something really important for me about being able to like tap into a depth of feeling and to be able to sit with a group of people and feel together and to have a sense that we may be feeling something like the same thing as we were having this experience in the theater. So that was one piece. And then another piece was just that it felt right for me. It felt like a way to be true to myself to say like, this is actually, this is what I want to do. Yeah. I'm always curious when somebody
Starting point is 00:09:04 chooses a path of performing arts, especially, and I'm actually even more curious now because you went to school and you kind of said like, okay, I'm going to do this thing. And then you changed directions and said, no, this thing has been a part of me and it actually matters and I need to center it. When I'm always curious what that conversation looks like, especially at that stage in life with parents. You know, I'm trying to remember. I mean, there were several conversations. So one was that the conversation of I'm leaving school, I'm not going back, you know, that happened in between, that I had chosen the school that was really rigorous academically.
Starting point is 00:09:41 And I knew it wasn't right for me, both because it didn't have a dance major, but also because it was a predominantly white school. And I didn't realize how that would feel actually until I was there. And then I was so depressed. And the second that I left the school, I went to Berkeley, California for the summer because one of my friend's parents was building a dome house somewhere in Northern California. And so they, this is a very, as you do, as you do in Berkeley. And so they needed somebody to watch their, their, you know, nine cats and they're like hundreds of plants. And I was like, I'm up for this. I'm up for the task. So I spent the summer in Berkeley. And, and so that was the first conversation is like,
Starting point is 00:10:18 I'm leaving school. I went to Berkeley and I don't want to, I don't want to go back. And I just, and that was a body moment too. I knew in my bone, it was the first time I remember sitting and considering two divergent paths. I would think, okay, what would it be like to go back to college? And I would feel this night not in my chest and my heart start to race. And I just felt this tension and okay, what would it be like to stay? And at that time I had started, I'd found my way to some dance classes there in the Bay area. And it was working with a small dance company kind of as an apprentice. And when I thought about staying, my whole system just kind of relaxed. And so I knew, I knew it was right, you know? So I stayed there for a couple of years. And then you mentioned Ailey earlier. I saw the Alvin Ailey Company at Zellerbach Hall. And I didn't even have tickets. I was walking in sitting. And so I saw, I think I
Starting point is 00:11:25 saw someone leap through the air. I got closer, you know, as close as I could without entering the space. And I just was like, who is this? You know, I hadn't seen them before. And I thought, you know, with the conviction of someone who's 19, like, oh, that's where I should be. And so I just, I told my parents, I actually went back to Chicago and studied with my childhood ballet teacher for a little while and did the audition and got in. And then I was in New York. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing also that at that age that you were so tuned in to what your body
Starting point is 00:11:57 was telling you that you actually could sort of like weigh these two opportunities and not just think it through, like, let's make our list of pros and cons, but like, how am I actually responding physically? Which I think so many of us are so disconnected from that. We live from the head up and, you know, no matter what age you are, you know, like 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, we just, we completely dissociate from our visceral, you know, like embodied feelings and don't validate it as data. Yeah. I think that's true. And I think that's a learned behavior. You know, I feel like that's a trained dissociation and yeah, that's somewhere along the way, you know, we lose trust in what our bodies are so clearly telling us.
Starting point is 00:12:45 And there's this tendency to, and almost like a virtue that's placed on overriding what our bodies are telling us in order to do what our thinking brain says is the next right move. And I know that I've always had a really hard time doing that. And for a long time, I felt that was a personal failing, that I couldn't get my body to just shut up so I could get with the program. And now I'm so glad that I never really was able to manage to do that. I think it served me well. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people are awakening to that a lot more these days. I wonder if you're
Starting point is 00:13:21 seeing that in the work that you're doing. I mean, there's a really interesting sort of trailing indicator of that to me, which is that Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps Score, has been out for years. But it's just in the last couple of years that it exploded onto the bestseller list and kind of bounces between one and three. And I've wondered, what's driving that? Are we just all waking up to the fact that we have sort of stuffed down so much and turn this thing off and now it's coming out as pain? Wow.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Yeah, I have seen a shift in both interest in the body and what the body has to say and also a willingness to listen. You know, as a meditation teacher, well, I'll say my experience of meditation has always been one that's deeply embodied, whether it's, you know, the, the fact that we're feeling my body in a moment to moment way, or the, the complaints that my body has when I'm sitting in the same place for a long, you know, my knee feels very embodied experience, you know, during meditation. But I think what I'm experiencing in the meditation world is there is this kind of revelation that's happening around, oh, I'm meditating in the body and that my body and mind are actually not separate. And I experience them that way often.
Starting point is 00:14:33 And when I experience them as separate, it's usually that my mind is the boss and it's telling my body what to do. And my body's kind of lumbering along doing its best, you know, be obedient. And then, you know, at some point, maybe can't take orders anymore because it gets sick or it gets tired. And then there's this feeling of betrayal, like, oh my God, how could you, you know, how could you be sick or be tired?
Starting point is 00:15:00 But yeah, I think there is this opening up to the landscape of the body and a new respect for what the body can tell us and a willingness to tune into a different way of listening to the body because it doesn't, body is sensation. And I think there's a renewed willingness to slow down and be patient, to allow sensation to unfold in a moment to moment way and to be with it long enough for kind of it to tell us what it means rather than us telling, telling it what it means. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I think I agree with that. And I wonder sometimes also in the last year and a half how that shifted, how the fact that
Starting point is 00:15:50 there've been these large blocks of time where we're kind of forced to stay fairly constrained in a lot of ways. And I think a lot of us, we've taken a hit to our bodies and we've had to sort of say, okay, where is the line where I need to actually be much more intentional about re-imagining how I'm going to both listen to and then reanimate my physical being because
Starting point is 00:16:10 it matters. And like you said, I think we're also really waking up to this notion that there's no separation. There's no mind and body. It's just this seamless interwoven feedback mechanism and organism where it's all one. And it's been interesting to sort of like see how different people and how I have, you know, really navigated this recent window. You mentioned there was this intervening window where you jumped back to Chicago, which is where you're from, grew up in Chicago. And coming up, so your dad is black, your mom is white, you're growing up in Chicago. And I know you write about an experience going all the way back to when you were four,
Starting point is 00:16:50 where you were on a playground and you were asked a question by a girl. And I'd love you to share that. But I'm also curious about this notion of having that moment be so real for you that even at four years old, like much later in life, it's still with you. Yeah. Well, what I remember is having been playing on the playground with this girl and having this moment of, oh, wow, a new friend. I think it happens often for kids where there's kind of parallel play. Kids are each doing their own thing, but in the same space. And then somehow you end up connecting and we connected on the, on the swings. We were impressing each other with different moves that we were doing on the swings. And then we were laughing, there were wood chips flying. And at some point she just turns to me and she says, oh, are you black or white? And I was stumped. You know, I just had never,
Starting point is 00:17:43 no one had ever asked me that question. No one ever told me how to respond to a question like that. So I just said, oh, I don't know. And she said, well, can you go home and ask so that I know whether or not I can play with you? And so I said, oh, sure. Okay. You know, it didn't have a heaviness to it. It was just like, you know, go find out. Same thing, like, you know, you would ask your mom, oh, can I play with this kid over the weekend? Or, you know, it just, it was a question. And, and so I went home and I remember my mom and I would often connect it, you know, in the bath and she was giving me a bath. And I just, I think, well,
Starting point is 00:18:19 what happened was I asked her if I was black or white and she, I remember her freezing, her body kind of stopping in that moment and the tension that kind of came to her body and her face. And she asked me, who asked you that question? Why do you want to know? And so I told her the whole thing and she told me that I was tan and that I was beautiful and that I could play with whoever I wanted. And I think why I remember that moment so clearly is because of that, like, that moment of tension and feeling like, oh, gosh, did I say something wrong? You know, like, which also sometimes happens when you're a kid. You know, you pick up a word or, you know, you think you're just kind of like making conversation with something new that you're learning. And suddenly you're like, oh, that wasn't, that wasn't what I was supposed to say. And so it was both, you know, not getting a totally satisfactory answer. And one that I knew that wouldn't really
Starting point is 00:19:14 satisfy the question that I was being asked at school. But also this feeling of like, oh, maybe this is something I'm not really supposed to talk about. Or this is something that clearly makes my mother really uncomfortable and my white mom. Yeah. I mean, was that after that moment, was that something where a seed of curiosity or our thinking or exploring was planted or was it kind of like, okay, so this was a moment that was kind of upsetting and then it gets tucked away or, and then, you know, to be revisited much later or, you know, a bit later in life. I think it made me cautious. I think it taught me that there were more criteria.
Starting point is 00:19:55 There was more information necessary to be able to assess whether or not I could connect with another person than I had previously understood. I think up until that point, more about like, do we have fun together? Are we around the same age? Do we like the same kinds of things? And then I think at that point, I understood that part of what it meant to be a friend, at least at that time in the community I was in, was are we the same kind of person? And I think I also understood at that moment that it wasn't clear what kind of person I really was. And so there was this always kind of moment of anxiety about, you know, how do I explain to other people whether or not I'm like them when I don't actually know, really understand what I am or nor do I feel like it's an appropriate question to ask. So, yeah, I think, I think it made me, you know, I would love to say it made me, it, it set me on this like lifelong quest to really understand identity and be able to talk with it. You know, I, I think that there's, there's some of that there, but I think as a child,
Starting point is 00:20:52 it made me cautious. It made me a little anxious about that moment of wanting to reach out and to connect, which is actually like, continues to be a very vulnerable moment in initiating a relationship, kind of reaching out or being able to say like, Hey, how are you? Or I want to play or I'm interested in you. And yeah, I guess it was like the moment where fear of rejection came in with respect to friendship. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting. I have a number of friends that we've actually explored this question different ways who are biracial and they get this question on a regular basis as like adults. What are you? Situations. Yeah. And some of them have a very strong reaction that says, okay, so somebody has just asked something which is intended to other
Starting point is 00:21:39 me and to make me like not okay in their eyes or not a part of this thing or this community or like to exclude me from a sense of belonging and then others it lands as a sense of somebody is curious about my like where i've been about my traditions about my ancestry about um what is actually like shared between us but they're just curious the same way that they might be curious about just somebody somebody who just navigates the world and is just deeply fascinated by other people and wants to know more. And I've always been, I've always wondered how, how that question lands with, with different people.
Starting point is 00:22:14 And like, what is, what is the thing that tips it from, oh, this, this is a question which is intended to now like push me aside. And it's really offensive to, this is actually a very open question, open question delivered out of a place of curiosity and desire to connect more deeply. Yeah, I feel that. I mean, I think it's a question that's transformed for me over time. I mean, the question I really prefer and that I will ask other people at times is, where are your people from? Because I think it is fascinating where the lineages and the histories, the people that we come from who have fed into us and make us who we are today. And I love to know, look at a person and kind of see the family tree spread out behind
Starting point is 00:23:01 them and the roots extending this way and that way. And I think we all have that. You know, I think the question, what are you? I think at times, you know, and when I was younger, I think I got that question a lot. And I think it really was from other kids. It did have a subtext of, are we the same kind of person or not? I think sometimes it also had the subtext of just pointing out like, oh, you're different. I can tell that you're different. And I don't know how, but what you mentioned about othering, I used to wait tables in New York city because I was a
Starting point is 00:23:29 modern dancer and that's what we did in the off season. At least that's what I did. And I would get it a lot from customers, you know, like, or sometimes they would ask straight up, what are you? Sometimes they would, they would ask like, hopefully like, oh, are you Brazilian? You know? And then look really disappointed when I'm like, no, I'm not Brazilian. I notice it's a question that people who are obviously kind of ambiguous racially get in a way that people who seem to be of a single lineage or history don't. I like to think that most often
Starting point is 00:23:59 there is some kind of genuine curiosity behind that question. And so like when I'm able to, I don't know, I have two minds about this because sometimes I feel like there's a feeling of entitlement to know more about me. And I feel objectified by the question. I think in part because we're all more than the sum of our parts, you know? And so there's this way of like, a way that it feels, it can feel invasive, you know? And I do think as a mixed race, Black identified person,
Starting point is 00:24:38 there is something that is interesting and maybe even valuable that can be known from a racially mixed experience that is worth talking about and that people maybe want to know more about. And the more that these, you know, wounds of having felt rejection or not belonging, you know, the more that they heal through really having new experiences of relationship, the more open I am to being able to explore for myself and share with other people, you know, what is actually valuable here that can be known through this, this subject position. I love that frame. It just, there's a certain amount of forgiveness and grace in it,
Starting point is 00:25:17 for lack of a better sort of, you know, not, not necessarily saying, oh, like it's, it's, everything's okay all the time and just go, but also, it's complicated, right? I wonder for you also how much of how it lands, especially because you're so somatically tuned, how much of whether this is okay or whether it's completely inappropriate lands in you, in your body. And that, that's the primary signal that sort of like informs where you go from there. Yeah. Well, always. I think always. And sometimes it has to do with me and where I'm at. Like, am I resourced in this moment and how generous am I feeling at the time? You know, do I want to ultimately there, you know, there's a bid for connection, right? And so am I in this moment where I feel resourced enough and ground enough in myself that I want, I'm open to extending myself towards this other being and letting them see me a little more deeply. Part of it is feeling like somatically like there's an exchange, that there can be a way in which a question like, what are you, or even where are your people people from can feel extractive. And it literally feels like kind of being like, like, like sucked or like,
Starting point is 00:26:30 like there's like a vacuum for information. Right. And part of what makes it feel safe is if there's an openness to say like, yeah, well, where, where are your people from? You know, I've seen my partner do this, you know, because he's similarly ethnically ambiguous, you know, to be, to he'll say, Oh, I'm, I'm my people from Cuba. I grew up in Staten Island. Like, how about you? You know, is there something I think in that exchange, if the person who's asking is in a, in a place where they're able to, or willing to signal that they would like to, to share also, they want this to be an equal exchange. It feels reciprocal in a way. And I'm trying to,
Starting point is 00:27:04 I'm gesturing with wildly with my hands. I'm trying to, I'm gesturing with wildly with my hands, I'm trying to describe how it feels in the body. It's like there's a simultaneous opening on both sides, right? As opposed to kind of information being pulled out of me and consumed by this other person. I think that it's also complex, and I experienced this in New York, that there's, it can be gendered also. I know for me, there's a certain kind of like hyper-sexualization of the, you know, it goes back to the kind of figure of the tragic mulatta, this kind of like mixed race woman doesn't belong here, doesn't belong there, and therefore kind of vulnerable to being taken advantage of. And sometimes I feel that like cultural trope kind of being layered in, in those moments as well. And so when it feels like there's this polar, there's this extractive quality of the question, I can just feel the, well, I'll say the armor kind of come up around the heart. And I don't think heart armor is always
Starting point is 00:27:57 a bad thing. You know, I know we in the spiritual world privilege, like being, being open, open hearted. I think that's really important. And I also think it's really important for us to know how to protect ourselves um you know heart heart is tender and um it deserves to be to be treated with care yeah mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun on January 24th tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.
Starting point is 00:28:30 Y'all need a pilot? The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X,
Starting point is 00:28:52 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. I mean, you used the phrase earlier, properly resourced, which I think sometimes we don't. We just kind of think like, you know, we either answer it or we don't. But I think also, you know, part of the inner dialogue is, have I developed the skills, the practices, the access to resources? And in this moment in time, even if I have, do I have the energy to
Starting point is 00:29:26 utilize them or do I need to just put up the order because I'm just not in a place at this moment where engaging at this level and having outflow at that level is going to allow me to still be okay? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And it takes whatever... As you were talking about this, I'm thinking like, wow, whenever that question comes up, whatever the circumstances are, meaning whether I'm resourced or question, like a need to explain oneself or like, you know, defensive, like, oh, I was just asking because, you know, you don't have to get upset. And so whether it's, you know, me working with the risk to kind of open up and share honestly with someone about like, you know, who I am and where I'm coming from and the hope that they'll do the same, or whether it's the having to express a boundary and not know how that's going to be received or respected. It's work. I think that's what people don't get about that question.
Starting point is 00:30:35 You're not the first person that's asked and it's always going to be work, whatever my response is at this moment. Yeah. So you end up in New York and you're dancing for about a decade and waiting tables and doing all this stuff that people do to sustain themselves in a city that's not the easiest to sustain themselves. And at some point, Buddhism and meditation drops into your life and it becomes something that you decide that, okay, so this isn't just something that's interesting to me. This is something that's really calling me on a deeper level. I'm wondering what it was about it, what it was giving to you that made you sort of say, oh, this is something I need to not only play with, but actually deepen into. I don't think it was a single moment, but I think it was a series of moments. I had always been kind of
Starting point is 00:31:26 interested in Buddhist thought, iconography, just really drawn to, you know, these like deeply symbolic images of the Buddha and of the Bodhisattvas and, you know, wanted to learn about all of their, you know, accoutrement and just the beauty of it, you and I think is also aware of you that the ancestors of these traditions were not my ancestors you know and um not wanting to be like weird about it for lack of words you know not wanting to like be like consume these cultural traditions as products or to you know try to pretend to be something that I wasn't, that I'm not culturally. And so there's always this feeling of like, oh, maybe it's not, you know, I can't just want to have a healthy respect for how I approach those traditions,
Starting point is 00:32:14 even from a young age. And then, yeah, getting to New York, I think part of what I was looking for was a way to meet and respond to my experience of the city and my experience of being in a professional modern dance setting, which was like super competitive, you know, very intimidating. Auditions were awful. I mean, like, oh, just, you know, hundreds of people dressed alike, you know, a number pinned to your guitar, people trying to intimidate each other with like wild stretches and the waiting rooms and feeling like having come from a space where I was definitely one of the best to being like in a space where everybody was one of the best where they were from. And so suddenly just not being quite, quite as special and feeling the really, the bigness of the city. I just didn't do well
Starting point is 00:33:05 in a competitive environment. What I understand about myself now that I didn't know then is that I love to dance. I do not love to perform. And I hated to audition. And because I love to dance, I thought that meant that I should be professional. And that was not true for me. But I didn't know how to navigate that at the time. I was looking at the, you know, extreme wealth gap in New York, which was big then in 2003. And I think it's much, much deeper now. It is all over, all over the world. And so there's this deep sense of injustice and kind of not knowing what my role was or how to, how to mediate or manage that.
Starting point is 00:33:41 And I felt incredibly overwhelmed. I felt, my heart felt waterlogged. And I think that, you know, on the one hand, I was looking for just something that could really relieve what I started to identify as suffering, you know, like this heartbreak around, you know, relationships that people had with one another, the relationships that we were all having with the earth, and also, you know, a continued sense of tenderness or hesitancy around making friends just really felt like, okay, the Buddhist teachings start with an understanding that suffering exists. And that's something that I could really, it felt like a relief to admit, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:14 rather than to walk around pretending, you know, painting the smile on and being, everything's great. I love auditioning. I don't mind that, you know, like I live on the deep outskirts of the city and have to, you know, travel in and so worried about, you know, finances and to just be able to say, oh, no, there's a lot of suffering in this realm was a deep relief. I think also looking back, I was really interested in making friends with other people who wanted to meditate, you know, and who wanted to, who were interested in exploring ways of finding happiness and satisfaction beyond the material world, you know, beyond buying things and getting things and having things and consuming things. And so I wanted to hang out with other people who were interested in that. And so like, you know,
Starting point is 00:34:59 at the time you could go to a meditation. I mean, I don't know when we're going to be like this again, right. But we could go to a meditation class, you know, in the East village and be with, you know, 20, 30 other people. I found a meditation center that was like a lot of, a lot more young people. And it felt like it both offered this personal path of transformation and also the promise of not having that path be so lonely. Yeah. I mean, I think I would imagine it was a powerful experience, especially when you're out there trying to earn your living and, quote, prove yourself in the city where everybody, the best of the best come to do the exact same thing. And it's kind of a brutal path for a lot of people.
Starting point is 00:35:45 So you start to deepen into this, you deepen into the community, you reach a point where you decide you want to teach and you start to move along that path. And at the same time, as you shared, it sounds like, you know, you've always had a lens, which is, which is broader, which looks at what's happening in society around me and notices inequity. And it sounds like you also started to notice that in different contexts, you know, like both in terms of what's happening in the world around me, while you're moving through this whole experience, but also within the community of meditation itself. You mentioned that, you know, these traditions come from people thousands
Starting point is 00:36:18 of years ago who don't share the same ancestry as you. And then when it hits the US, especially in major cities, very often the people that hang out in meditation centers also are not people who share that lineage at all. And the teachings can be really powerful and the practice is really powerful and expansive and open. But sometimes the culture and the trappings that get wrapped around it in modern practice and community
Starting point is 00:36:43 do the exact opposite. And it sounds like you were feeling a lot of that same experience. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you using the word trappings to refer to the culture that emerges in these Western kind of Buddhist contexts, because I think what I often heard at that time was white Western Buddha teachers talk about the Asian cultural practices around the Buddha Dharma as the trappings, you know, that these are the cultural trappings that were kind of diluting the teachings or making them inaccessible. And so we should get rid of those and really focus on what they identified as the real practice, which primarily consisted of, you know, silent sitting Buddhist meditation. And yeah, I mean, I think that that's an issue in and of
Starting point is 00:37:27 itself, right? That the perception, well, first the idea that any of us, especially who came to practice in our young adulthood and weren't raised in these traditions, have the ability to know what's essential and what's not. And then we can kind of like a la carte, you know, I mean, I think there is something to be said for taking what you like and leave the rest in terms of like entering into a path. But I think when we start to, you know, cultivate mastery or, you know, become a teacher, there's just gotta be a respect for the depth of the lineage and some humility towards that. Like, I don't, you know, maybe I think this instance is inconsequential, but how would I
Starting point is 00:38:12 really know that, you know? So that's one piece. And then the privileging of a practice of silent sitting meditation over some of the other kind of like social or relational practices that you will see in sometimes called heritage buddhist spaces or you know um the asian asian buddhist centers of which there are still many you know all over the country and um while part of my desire to be here uh meaning in those buddhist centers is a desire to be with other people. And there is this being with other people. There's a reason why people aren't just sitting by themselves at home. And then instead they're coming to these centers and listening to Dharma talks and asking questions and answers and having this kind of social experience of a meditation class that there
Starting point is 00:39:01 wasn't a lot that I was experiencing at that time done to foster the connections between practitioners. So we would kind of like go into the center, you kind of like avoid eye contact, put your shoes down next to someone else's shoes, head into the room in silence, sit in silence until the teacher came in, listen silently to the teacher's thoughts on the dharma and instructions on meditation, asked questions and answers with the teacher, but not with having conversations with one another. And they would get up and leave, you know, and some people around me seem to be making friends somehow and that, you know, kind of coming and going, but I wasn't really at, you know, outside of coming together and sharing those spaces. Like I wasn't exchanging
Starting point is 00:39:42 numbers or, you know, connecting with people where like, you know, they could call me when they were sick or sad or needed a friend. And there was something about, I think, that culture of silence and self-containment that I think really reinforces a larger kind of white Western societal construct of individualism and isolation that I think now is actually a hindrance to progress along the path taken to its extreme. So yeah, those are some of the, and then, and then on top of that, there were some just overtly racist things that happened in those centers. You know, there were just, there were, you know, I consistently go, you know, as a, as a younger practitioner, an early, both younger and early in my practice. And then later as a, you know, even as I'd been practicing deeply for, you know, over a decade and I would go into spaces, people would, you know, who greet me at the door would consistently like ask me, oh, is this your first time here? Like, no, it's not. But why, why do you think that? You know, because I'm brown, because I'm young.
Starting point is 00:40:48 And a number of other, you know, not so subtle ways of just getting the message that I didn't really belong there or that I was exceptional for being there. And I'm thinking back in the earlier in our conversation around this piece around the body and like, you know, just thinking back to that time and like it never, it never really sat right with me. And I wanted, I wanted the teachings. And so I rationalized the culture of those spaces and I really tried hard to like behave in them. And also it, it, um, it never really sat right with me to, um, just have it be this kind of personal practice is the only practice. Yeah. Um. Having been in some of those spaces as, you know, like a white middle-aged male, it's interesting to sort of like hear your experience
Starting point is 00:41:32 in them. Interesting also, because I was never, even as me, I was never comfortable because even just because I always felt that similar sense of isolation, like we're not in this together. There's not like, this is not, this is not a genuine community, even though all of like the signaling and the messaging was no, yes, yes, yes, it is. I'd never felt that in a number of different spaces. And so if you take that and you extend it to the level of your experience, I could imagine how that becomes even more and more amplified, you know. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era,
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Starting point is 00:42:48 And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. It's interesting to see that, you know, your response, it's, it sounds like was, okay,
Starting point is 00:43:28 so let me take everything that I, that I know, let me take the broader set of skills and interests and capabilities and my curiosity, you know, like somatic experience, creativity, relationships, Buddhist practice. And what if we created something that drew from all of them and brought it together to create ideas, ideals, concepts, ways to gather that actually reserved the aspects of the practice that are really powerful and also integrated more into it to create something different, something new, something more expansive and inclusive. You eventually start teaching and then leading these retreats that integrate all these different modalities. And this term emerges over time, radical friendship, which is the title of your new book, which is fantastic.
Starting point is 00:44:15 And so of the moment in so many different ways right now. But tell me when we use that phrase, what are we actually talking about? Well, first I love to hear you like talk about the way that this emerged, cause it sounds so cohesive and smooth. It really was. It sounds so intentional and like strategic and it really was not, you know, in so many ways it was just like, man, we're trying to, you know, trying to, trying to figure out how to help this, you know, these spaces feel better for me, feel welcoming to the people that I love, feel relevant and relational and yeah, real and exciting, you know.
Starting point is 00:44:48 But yeah, radical friendship. Radical friendship refers to, in this case, a set of practices that the Buddha taught around relationship. And there are so many actually teachings on relationship in the Buddhist texts. And that's something that I was both shocked and delighted to learn as I deepened in the practice, right? That even though silent sitting meditation is the number one thing that is taught in Buddhist centers, in my experience, that when you look at the early teachings of the Buddha and the Pali Canon, like 90% of the texts are about how we get along with one another across differences in power, like how parents and children relate to one another, how employers and employees and people who are partnered.
Starting point is 00:45:36 And there's so much of that, those teachings. And so the teaching that I have been focused on and really interested in over the past few years has been a one text called the Mita Sutta. And it's a guide to the seven kind of key qualities or characteristics of a spiritual friend. And so this word Kalyana Mita is usually translated as spiritual friend, and it has multiple meanings. It means, you know, sometimes a teacher-student relationship, sometimes the relationship between practitioners, like what I mentioned I was really looking for in this community of people who had, you know, similar values and similar ideals and really believe that, you know,
Starting point is 00:46:14 meditation and transformative practices were central to how they wanted to live their life and could have an impact on the world as a whole. And so I say radical friendship because in being in these meditation spaces that clearly had, you know, so much wisdom, there was so much goodness, there was so much compassion. I mean, I don't want to brush over those parts of it that people were really like, you know, coming together to work with their minds and hearts, you know, as sincerely and earnestly and honestly as we could. And then that there were also these kind of areas of unconsciousness that we were replicating in
Starting point is 00:46:51 our communities without meaning to, that had everything to do with the societal structures of privilege and oppression that existed, you know, outside the space and that we started to become honest about the presence of those structures inside of the meditation space that we actually, despite our best intentions, could not keep them out and that we had to deal with them. And there's this hope, I think, for me that those teachings on that is ensnared by greed and hatred and delusion or confusion. You know, the mind that is free to express its true nature of luminosity and inherent worthiness and decency, which is, you know, said to be at the heart of what every being is. And so the removal of anything that obstructs that so that we can express that fully in our whole life, that commitment to show up for one another's liberation
Starting point is 00:47:51 in that way that we express in community could potentially be liberating not only spiritually, but also socially and also politically so that there might be something that we can learn about these guidelines for spiritual friendship that could liberate us, you know, even at the level of community, even at the level of society and, you know, at this macro, macro level, and also even be liberating for our relationship with ourselves, you know, and ceasing to be at war with who we really are. And so even down to the micro, micro level. And so that's what makes it feel radical
Starting point is 00:48:32 to me and why Radical Friendship felt like the right way of translating this concept, the right title for this book, a sense of like deep, deep transformation all the way to the roots. Yeah. I love the frame of friendship as a source of transformation. When you think about what's been in the news cycle, when you think about the state of social justice in this country and around the world, one of the words that has emerged a lot, well, there are a lot of words that have emerged, but like the notion of allyship has come up. But radical friendship is interesting in that it's sort of this alternative or maybe complementary path where it feels like it's steeped more in desire and devotion than a
Starting point is 00:49:13 sense of sometimes what people will feel duty, which feels like it comes more out of an understanding of if we really understand each other on the level and hold each other and love each other and see each other on the level of friendship, how can you not act? How can you, how can, because we are like, we're in this together. Yeah. Yeah. That's the hope. And, and, you know, like, I appreciate you saying that it could be a complimentary path because I don't think allyship is the enemy. You know, allyship is not horrible. It's not the same as causing outright harm. right? There is an attempt there to recognize that there are systems of power and privilege and oppression that exist and that they enter into our relationships in ways that we don't choose and that we actually can't control. And that a way that we can mediate them is through
Starting point is 00:50:01 acting to leverage that power in a way that benefits those who would be denied it otherwise, right? And I think that's what allyship is at its best, and it's not wrong, you know? And it has a way of maintaining this sense of separation in the same moment of wanting to, like, leverage privilege, wanting to kind of give it over or turn it back or share it, that in that same moment can reinforce this feeling of, oh, I have so much and you have so little and let me kind of give to you in a way that is less about compassion, which is, you know, in this tradition, a relationship between equals, and it's more like pity, like, and it carries with it over responsibility of like, oh, I, you know,, yeah, like what I'm saying, I have so much, you have so little, like I have to fix your life, you know, and it's such a burden rather than really seeing one another as each having the skills and the capacities and the destiny really to meet the circumstances of our lives and to grow from them in a way that moves us all towards liberation. And so I think that's the difference with real friendship. It's like,
Starting point is 00:51:11 it's a relationship between equals. It is not as clean as allyship in that it's not as transactional. It doesn't have as much of a set of rules. I think it's messier and often inconvenient, you know? And I think that it's the kind of intimacy that brings up for us the places where we're each still caught, you know, in, you know, trying to get what we want, being unable to want what we have, you know, taking what's not ours, feeling superior, inferior. And there's a way that when we get into close relationship, those messy and unsatisfactory aspects of relational experience come up and they can come up in a way in relationship where we can, if we meet them consciously and with enough stability and resource, we can actually both grow spiritually.
Starting point is 00:52:01 And that it does create the foundation for, as you say, having such a profound understanding of one another's humanity and having such an unforgettable experience of being human together that we can't not show up for one another, that we are compelled. Yeah. I know your frame for Radical Friendship, and in fact, the whole structure of the book is based around what you shared with me, the seven qualities of friendship. And you also, you share some practices, you know, like,
Starting point is 00:52:32 what do we actually, like, how do we, what do we do? How do we step into this? You know, one of them is, I mean,
Starting point is 00:52:39 they're all powerful and interesting. One really jumped out at me because it's also one of the four measurables, mudita, what you describe as sympathetic joy, which has been, it was taught to me originally as, I think the language was appreciative joy. And what my mind heard when I heard the description of that is actually not a different ancient language, which was Yiddish. And there's a term called nachis in Yiddish, which the grandmothers would use. And it's essentially, it's the feeling that you feel when somebody you love so wholeheartedly
Starting point is 00:53:15 goes out into the world and somehow is embraced or succeeds that you feel that as your own. And so I've always interpreted that one immeasurable as in my mind, it just lands as your own. And so I've always, you know, interpreted that, that one immeasurable as in my mind, it just lands as naches. And that, that is something, you know, as a parent, you know, that's something that you come to feel in a profound way. And I just like reading through a lot of your thoughts and retouching back into that practice. I'm like, yeah, you know, if we could feel this for people who seem in many ways different from us,
Starting point is 00:53:48 but we can develop a level of compassion and friendship and vulnerability and openness that we can actually feel that for each other. I feel like so much gets solved on a lot of different levels. Yeah. I love that word. Nachas. I'm going to remember it. I think in one way that
Starting point is 00:54:07 is true, that to be able to feel a deep joy, you know, at someone else's joy or success really wears down the feeling of me being separate from you. because if I can have experience of joy at seeing your joy and your success and your happiness, then that veil between you and I becomes thinner in a way, like more permeable. And we're aware of that permeability. What came up for me over and over again in the writing of this book is the way that living within systems of societal injustice make so complex these heart qualities, right? And same thing with mudita. What people will often ask me in classes when we teach mudita is like, is it, what about someone who derives joy from something that causes harm to someone else? And of course, that's not, it's not the same kind of heart quality. What's meant by
Starting point is 00:55:06 that is that kind of joy that is like a wholesome joy. That's a joy that someone experiencing joy at someone's joy, that is the result of their own kind of merit or good fortune or joy that is life affirming. And I don't think that we need to be encouraged or feel compelled to try to try to generate a sense of like happiness or even feeling OK with someone who's having a great book deal or an amazing partner, they appear to be having just their best life in this moment and we're not, it can feel like, oh, their success, their happiness is detracting a bit from my own. So there is this incredible healing
Starting point is 00:55:58 that can happen through being able to access happiness and our friend's good fortune. I think there's also, we live in a world where sometimes we really don't have enough, you know? And so it would be, I think, inappropriate to say to someone whose material needs aren't getting met or who is because of, you know, racism or transphobia or, you know, fat phobia or some other form of oppression continually passed over for opportunities, you know, to be like, oh, just be happy for your friend.
Starting point is 00:56:25 Like, no, actually, this is a moment where my sense of envy is tipping me off that there's something that I want, you know, that I don't currently have. And that there's nothing like not spiritual about wanting to be happy and wanting to have a beautiful experience in this lifetime also. So not to counter what you said, but just to kind of add on and to just demonstrate how infinitely more complex it is to practice these principles around friendship in a society like ours. Yeah. No, I think it's a really important distinction, Ashley. I appreciate you sharing that. And I agree, it's complicated.
Starting point is 00:57:00 And part of what you're signing up for is that it is complicated and that there are real hard truths, you know, and real inequities. Um, and that's all part of what we're saying yes to is like, let's actually, you know, let's step into this conversation. Let's step into, you know, this container of action taking and actually like expand it. But, um, yeah, so many powerful ideas. But just the notion, zooming the lens out of friendship as a mechanism for not only the betterment of my life and your life, okay, we're new friends, but like it's actually potentially a mechanism for a broader impact and justice and social justice and change and, you know, to drop back into more of the Buddhist language of liberation. I think it's a powerful notion and one that I'll be sitting with for a long time. It feels like a good place for us to
Starting point is 00:57:52 come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life. What comes up? What comes up for me is being free to give and receive all the love that I need and to be able to really feel that love fully. Thank you. Thank you. This was fun. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or platform. And if you appreciate the work we've been doing here at Good Life Project, please go ahead and check out my new book, Sparked. It reveals some really powerful things about you and the fundamental type of work that makes you come alive and also empties you out. So you can make better choices as you step into a season of reimagining. You can find a link in the show notes below, or you can find the book at your favorite booksellers
Starting point is 00:59:08 everywhere. Thanks so much. See you next time. Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.
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