Tara Brach - A Conversation with Tara and Stephen Fulder: What is our Refuge in the Midst of Crisis

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

A Conversation with Tara and Stephen Fulder: What is our Refuge in the Midst of Crisis - Stephen Fulder is a senior Buddhist teacher, author and peace activist who lives and teaches in Israel. In this conversation Stephen shares about his experience during the unfolding violence in the Middle East, and what he and his community are doing to tend to the huge trauma people are feeling. He talks about being with intense fear and emotions, and how to talk with those who have very different views. And he shares about the past decades of the deep and powerful work he's been involved in, bringing groups of Israeli and Palestinian people together to find their shared hearts and humanity. Together Stephen and Tara look at what our true refuge is in the midst of a world in crisis and pathways that can carry us to that precious space of equanimity, compassion and love. Stephen is author of "The Five Powers: A guide to personal peace and freedom"   www.stephenfulder.com TUnNbZ2CdBvG0zsBjT88

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends. Today I'm having a conversation with Stephen Fulder, who's a senior Buddhist teacher and he's a lifelong peace activist who lives and teaches in Israel. So in this conversation, Stephen shares about his experience, his last couple of weeks, the unfolding violence in the Middle East, and what he and his community are doing to tend to the huge trauma people are feeling. He talks about how to be with intense fears and emotions. And he also talks about how to communicate with people who have very different views. So he's just about how to communicate with people who have very different views. So he's shares about the decades, these past decades of this very deep and powerful work he's been doing, bringing groups of Israeli and Palestinian people together to find their shared hearts and humanity. And together we talk about really what's our refuge, what's our true refuge in the

midst of this very traumatizing world and what are the pathways that can carry us to equanimity, compassion, to love. So I want to note that during our conversation, and this is due to the activity of the Israeli military, there's some static interference on the internet, so you will notice it in several spots. Okay, dear ones, I really hope that this expands your heart, expands your mind. First of all, what is the immediate status for you and Rachel? How are you doing? We're okay. We're really all right. Personally, I would say, Rachel is just now starting the olive harvest.

She doesn't also use kind of machines and so on. She depends on two or three Bedouin grandmothers. And there's three grandmothers together doing the olive harvest. So she's doing the olive harvest. I'm doing a lot of connection with people in Israel and abroad. but also simplicity, vegetable garden, feeding animals, living simply as well. It's important for that ground that I feel that sort of base of the small things in life. So we're fine physically, and I don't feel big risk unless things really blow up with Lebanon and Hisbola.

And then we're in serious trouble. I don't quite know what we're going to do but the moment but I have to say that I'm feeling quite a lot of pain from just the center, the whole day there is

artillery going from the Israeli side to the Lebanese side so you hear the booms all the time and it just feels like so much pain there where is it falling where on who is the shells falling and the soldiers themselves.

And the whole thing is very painful. So I'm feeling that pain in the body and in the mind and in the heart. But I don't feel risk. So I want to pause here because I want to just say to anyone that's listening, we jumped right in. Maybe you could start just so anyone listening knows where you're located, where you're located in relationship to all that's going on and what your personal experience has been over the last couple of weeks

kind of get us tuned in here. Yeah, thank you, Tara. Well, I'm living in Galilee in an ecological Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi inspired village, which I helped to start. Now has a thousand souls in it, lots of children.

it's not right up against the Lebanese border, but it's relatively close. So our experience has been in the last two weeks personally of being watchful and at the same time, as I say, listening to the military activity which is there around us constantly. So it's in the north. The south of Israel is where the... Hamas invaded and caused so much death, destruction and tragedy and pain. We're in the north and so far, we're not at great risk, but uncertainty for sure.

I'm imagining, though, that you know many people who either have lost their lives or no people who have, that it's not very far from you. It's very close and constantly I'm meeting people and I have to say that there is first aid here needed and first aid is spiritual first aid, emotional first aid and physical first aid. And that is immediate and some people are shattered and in the dark, the Dharma community has been very, very active in Israel and giving that first aid health. to people who are really coming from that slaughter and need relief, need help, need a kind soul, need love, need food sometimes. So I'm feeling that very much and I'm meeting people all the time but at the same time, of course, meeting a huge rage and anger and revenge and desire for violence and so on and that's also painful. Personally, when it broke out, I had two days on Saturday morning

when I heard about it early two days when my heart was just so heavy I couldn't talk to anybody I couldn't teach I was just in that heaviness and I needed to be quiet and I just settled

I sat with the compassion of the heart saying this is beyond anything for the people around this is beyond and I just let my heart flow on the second on the third day I could begin to connect with people and teach. I have to say that sometimes I've really felt fear in the body coming from a place

that I don't understand exactly. The mind doesn't sort of give me a cause of it, but I feel I'm picking up a lot of the fear. Entering the body sometimes. It happened the other morning. I woke up four o'clock and I just, the body was filled with fear. I don't know why. There's no reason. So I just worked with it and explored it and opened it and met it and hugged myself. And then after 10, 50 minutes, I said, I renounced it. I said, okay, thank you, Fia. I've seen you. Enough is enough.

I'm going for a cup of English tea. But this is, I just want to slow down here, Stephen, because you just described, I mean, so many are feeling fear. those in Israel, those in Gaza, those here in the United States, I mean, fear, grief, so many strong emotions. And you just described very powerfully, okay, so you just stayed with it and you felt it and you hugged yourself. And yeah, maybe just to say a little more for so many of us that, you know, I was just with a group yesterday and the, the level of the anguish that so many are feeling, it's very, very strong. So maybe just because you've been teaching Buddhist teachings, mindfulness for so long, how do we work with the trauma and the strong emotions that are coming up right now?

Yeah. When emotions are so strong, I was able to deal with the fear, you know, in a relatively kind of friendly way. But when the fear is so strong, so overwhelming, you need more basic tools. And you need support of a sense that kindness isn't lost in the world. So helping community, kind eyes,

you need someone to listen. deep listening and being able to hold the tears and the stress and the confusion. It's another first aid. And from the Dharma point of view, you can kind of offer moments of relief to people who have overwhelmed by fear. Like, you know, like I said, the cup of tears is the symbol, but just exist. Life is still there. So I don't think it may not be appropriate to teach meditation in those situations in a classic way.

They may not be able to have access to mindful awareness. But a sense of the lived process is still going on and we can take a walk together outside and we can sit under a tree for a moment and just feel that this life is still going on. And we can see that a kid passing by or a dog and look and the birds above. And somehow reconnect with the life process is also a fundamental healing that even in most extreme situations can help. And final thing is just compassion. Because compassion just flows. a small story that I want to share with you.

The other day, I was in the local town and I met a woman who said just what a lot of people are saying. We have to wipe them out. I can't believe what's how we're, this is horrible and horrendous and indeed it is. But the response, there's no way I could ask, with that woman and say there's another way. She wouldn't be ready to listen to it. But the compassion in my heart said, I hear you. I understand where you're coming from.

I have to say there are other ways of looking at things. I hope you'll respect the fact that there are other ways of looking. But right now, I really hold your pain and I understand you. And I'm listening. And that's about all I could do in that situation. So it's hard. When it's extreme, it's hard. I heard there's just so many things I want to kind of unpack or pause with because one of the things that when it's, when there's trauma, trauma means we're cut off. And you just described beautifully how if we come back into relationship, if we can be there with each other, you know, if you are struggling, if you can see my eyes and know, care, that that begins the process of coming back. And we need that.

I saw that yesterday with one woman, this was on a Zoom, who was just feeling just so much heartbreak. And she said, I can't even meditate, I can't even sit. And I asked the group, how many of you are feeling that? And most hands went up. And for her to see hundreds of people feeling like they were doing. distraught, she knew she wasn't alone. So that feeling of whatever we're feeling when there is such a huge, huge disruption and horror, it's natural and that we're not alone. And I love the way you said

that and then describing just belonging again to life right here in the moment, that I can see my dog and pet my dog or see a tree and lean against it. You know, we need to. We need to. reconnect. So thank you for that. Yeah. And there are moments of relief, shall we say. And then an understanding that things change, the intensity of the fear and anger and hate often will always change. So the language of people now, after two weeks, is already changing. And I notice it there's a movement. So everything has. and changes, you can't say that to someone in the middle of the heat. But there is a sense that, okay, there's movement.

There is other ways of being and things change. Well, there's something about trusting in that and then bringing that trust to just that encounter you describe, Stephen, with the woman. Because, you know, it's such a challenge for most. of us when people really don't agree with us. You know, when we have strong opinions and they clash, it's such a challenge. And to not try in the heat of things to change another person's mind, but just to meet their heart, that allows the change you described to happen.

Gradually, we wake up, gradually. Yeah. And there is a beautiful text, traditional Souta, Buddhist text, that I like where someone asks the Buddha, what do you do when you meet someone with really strong views, really strong emotions that you can't argue with them? And the Buddha said, never underestimate the power of equanimity in situations like that. You can't argue with someone who has strong views and strong emotions at that moment, but you can, the power of equanimity. And I would add their trust because your word, and I think it relates to your

radical acceptance, trust, which is not hope that things are going to be better. Trust is something deep in us that says, I can meet what arises. I am ready to meet this situation, it's a kind of resource of power in a way, and it's the first part of my book on the five powers, the first power of trust, our ability to stand steady and meet even the most difficult circumstances. And I think that can be built. And certainly the Dharma and meditation practice helps us to do that. It's one of the powers, The inside mindfulness that we may not notice, but our ability to meet pain, even in the body,

allows us to say, yes, I'm ready to meet pain in the community, in the world, in conflict. So you're describing almost the inner quality, the Tibetans call it the lion's roar, that confidence, that awareness can meet any situation, and it can actually become start of the fuel. for awakening our hearts and minds. And so if we know that, then I encounter a person who is very caught in a very angry, blaming place, and there's some trust in me that this is, I don't have to change a mind.

We can't change minds like that. And I love the way you described meeting the heart, and also the other thing that comes to mind for me, is being honest with our own certainties about things. Because every day, and this is just my personal confession, every day as I'm taking in the news or whatever, I keep running into my own very solid views of good, bad, right, wrong. And they're very strong in my body.

And I have to keep being present until I get back to the place that deep down I don't know. You know, I may know that love is the way, but I don't know the particulars of the steps. I don't know how this all can, this trauma, this play out of generations and centuries of trauma, how it can unwind itself. We're just living into it with as much awareness as possible. And if I meet you or another from that don't know mine, there's a lot more space for, genuine listening because I can't listen when I know and and and honest connecting. So I feel like all of us have to get more humble together on that front.

I think our mutual fragility and vulnerability is actually a strength because it's connecting us to the truth of things. And it gives us strength. And indeed if someone says, how can you talk about another way of doing things. I mean, one of the things that I talk about is the fact that this is the fourth or fifth time that there's been a war with Gaza. And it shows it hasn't worked. There's not, it shows that this, this, the failure to find another way. If the cycle repeats itself every few years, it shows that something wasn't done. And I very much feel when people say, challenge me about this, I said, we're talking about paths that were not taken, roads that were not taken. There's so many opportunities for changing in a hundred years, nearly, a changing

the situation that was not taken, and the reactivity keeps winning. But if they ask me exactly, what do you think you should do? I'm not Prime Minister, but I mean, there are things that there is another way. There's always another way, and many ways, and it depends on our wisdom, and our heart. And sometimes in the kind of political arena, wisdom and heart is in short supply. Yes. Yes. Stephen, let's get down a little bit more weedy here. And you have been, for decades now, you have been working actively for peace and fostering dialogue and connection. And I just would love you to share with me and with all of us, just a little bit of what has gone on in the past.

We know right now channels are pretty closed down, but there was a lot, there's been a lot going on. So let us know a little about that. Yeah, indeed. There are a very large number of peace-oriented groups that are doing, I would say, heroic work in times of great stress and difficulty and often violence. And I can talk about the organization I started called Middle Way.

And we were going to the Palestinian areas when the army says you can't go, nobody was going, it was forbidden area. And we felt the fear going there, but bringing groups of Israelis, to meet groups of Palestinians, feeling really this was a sacred act, like Shanti Deva said, to go into the shoes of the other, to listen to the other. We felt this was a sacred act, and we kept doing it year after year after year. And indeed, we met sometimes Palestinians who were very full of rage and anger and wanted, said to other Palestinians, how is it you can invite Israelis?

but always the result was a radical shift and it was amazing to see in two days of, I would say, using tools of the Dharma but not calling it Dharma and not calling it Buddhist tools at all, creating in two days a total shift of people ending up being, feeling like brothers and sisters,

Palestinians and Israelis, even Israeli soldiers and Palestinian kind of street fighters and kind of in two days shifting totally. So it gave us a very strong sense that peace is possible. It's not so difficult. And it just needs the will and the readiness. And we were doing also peace walks all over Israel for years and years with Israelis and Palestinians

and Jews and Arabs just showing. look, here's Jews and Arabs together quietly, steadily, friendly, sending out kindness to everybody in the street, even if they shout at us, and giving a model of how things can be different. So all of these are happening and are still happening, but they're very small voices, and they didn't make a major difference. The Palestinian Authority, in the end, said, you didn't make a change. You didn't make peace to our group, to Middle Way. And we said, that's not what we're doing. We're doing more of an education so that a teacher knows to use a different language to his students, a Palestinian teacher, Israeli teacher.

We're doing a kind of peace education. We're not trying to do politics. We're giving a language. we're giving people that we're listening. There's something different. But it's hardgoing. And as I say, I use the image that we need to keep a small candle burning. It's like a pilot light that when karma and the situation allows,

at least there's a small light which will hopefully light a bigger flame. So we just keep that image in mind of keeping. not losing totally the sense is possible. It's like you said. Do you have Palestinian friends that have been

working with you over the years on this or that you're in touch with right now? Yes, we do have Palestinian friends. I'm in touch here and there with Palestinians. in the last two weeks, I haven't, I've only been in touch with one or two Palestinians, but we do have, we do keep contact, yes. What has that been like in these last two weeks? Just, I mean, because there's so much that's gone on and I could imagine it would be so much harder to be in touch. And how was it to have communication in these two weeks?

Well, it's what I was saying at the beginning. It's just holding their pain. Yeah. It's just about, okay, I am with you. And they still ask because the whole, you know, should we say a lot of the population, some of the people who are kind of rather peace-oriented have been pushed by the extreme of violence that happened in the South, have been pushed into a reactive, angry and revengeful place. So they check with me, are you still with us? even now and they check with others.

Are you still with us? You're still, your heart is still for peace even now because they're not sure. So basically we hold their pain and we give the message we're still with you. There's something here which is being a human being which is deeper than the violence. And that's, let me say that our,

village in the north, and maybe people don't know that, your listeners don't know that, but in the north of Israel, in the Galilee, Jews and Arabs have been living together happily for the last 50 years. And in daily life contact all the time, we have Arab kids playing in our, in our, with the Jewish kids in the playground, they're coming to the kindergarten, all the time there's interaction, There's peace between Arabs and Jews in the northern Israel, and there has been for a long time. I wouldn't say equality, but a sense that Jews and Arabs both say we cannot live anymore under conflict and the kind of hidden agreement that says we need to live together and it works. So here's a model that it shows it's possible.

I wonder, you talked about that when you'd get together, you'd hold a space and feel the pain, their pain. And I wonder if it was a mutual process because there's pain all over the place. And it's almost like to be really equals and to have compassion be truly a mature compassion. it's not your pain, it's our pain, and that if your eyes into eyes with your Palestinian friend, they would be feeling yours and you'd be feeling theirs, because, you know, there are literally centuries of trauma that have, or the background to what's going on. So it needs careful, it needs careful, it needs to,

basic friendliness, firstly, to sense that there is really no difference between us. We're human beings together here, trying to solve something which is bigger than us. And so basic friendliness is a place of where we, Israelis and Palestinians, could somehow relax together and feel kind of a little bit kindness and caring as human. beings. But the heart of the workshops that we did was the one-to-one Palestinian-Israeli for one hour in dialogue and looking at each other's pain and listening to each other's life and each other's struggle. And it's true that the Palestinian had far more daily life struggle and pain than the Israelis.

The Israelis coming, you know, from Tel Aviv, they're sitting in coffee houses and so on. They're in another place altogether. Palestinians, every family has someone in prison. Every family has someone killed. However, that asymmetry was also a sense that there's a suffering there that is not in our hands. The asymmetry itself is suffering and a cause of compassion. and a cause of sympathy. Yes, there's asymmetry.

We didn't design that, but we're together now. So we kind of bringing us two together, including the asymmetry, on the basis of the transformation of suffering. It really was based on the fact that suffering, when it's met fully with heart and mind, not necessarily dumber people, ordinary people saying let's work with the suffering rather than drown under it and I think in this time if someone asks me you know what is there some light at the end of

the tunnel it is possible that this crisis could create opportunities and if we have that mind that the crisis is a source of opportunity or change maybe something maybe it gives a bit of hope here. Thank you. And I'm going to come back to hope because I want to talk more about where's the hope. I want to just pause with something. I feel like it's really important what you said about including the asymmetry because it's so easy to say, well, we're all suffering, you know, and not get that there really is a hierarchy of privilege and power.

and that we're all suffering and that hierarchy is the cause and it makes all of us suffer, but there are much more immediate raw sufferings and that that needs to be honored. So I really appreciate the honesty of that. That applies to trying to work with bridge the divides with racism and with everything. So thank you for that. I just wanted to hear a little more about you talked about how the darn community is really, really active right now in terms of all the levels of first aid and maybe just give us some examples of what's going on. So we who aren't there can feel like how are people

extending to each other right now? Yeah, I have to say that the Dharma community in Israel is very alive. It's very dynamic. It has a relatively young age in terms of the average age. because we have a big Dharma retreat center which is based entirely on Dana and everything is based on Dana and somehow that's helped to reduce the age so we have a lot of young people including soldiers and who are Dharma students

and it's been amazingly active so they've gone for example a lot of the people from the Kibbutzim Moshevim around Aza that were really traumatized have gone to hotels

in the Dead Sea area and Dharma people have gone there to sit with them to talk to them to give a little bit of meditation practice as much as as possible

to give psychological help we've supported psychologists who themselves are struggling to receive that amount of trauma. And the psychologists themselves are exhausted very often, and they're going. So the Dharma people have been able to kind of support the therapist as well as. Then there's, there's been many, many groups and Zoom meetings with hundreds, maybe thousands of people. The Dharma people have been running constantly.

every day with different populations. What happens in those groups? If you're, let's say, in an online Zoom group with a number of people who are just living with the immediacy of the trauma, how do you work those? What creates the safety? How does it bring some healing?

Well, I think that they need to be heard. There is a quality of anything should you say non-judgment your emotional life the anger and the fear and the pain you feel is honest legitimate held and we are with you and at the same time though giving voice for others to give another way of looking at things because it's not every Zoom group there's only maybe a certain relative small number of people who are

directly affected and then there's a large number of people who are indirectly affected and some of them will come with a really different view for example someone came in that Zoom group I did a couple of days ago a woman came and said she's helping others

in a center cooking bringing food to people who have kind of fled from the south of the country and who was helping her was an older woman who was an Arab and the the older woman said how do you look at me now

the Arab woman and the Jewish also elder the woman said Ochti and Ochti is the Arab word for my sister and then she said if I was from Gaza would you say the same Ochti and she said absolutely

and they altogether I have to that the Dama can also affected by confusion because

because either life connection, the body, the breath, the trees, and the Dharma, and then along comes the violence and the military and they don't fit together. They somehow one can interfere with the other. So in relating to that quite a bit inside groups, which I would say really the kind of dialogue between Buddha nature and human nature. So allowing the human nature, which is the trauma and the pain, and yes, and the anger, human nature, and allowing the Buddha nature, which is a big word, but it really means the place in us, which is our more open, less personal, less subjective, interconnected place, which is there, it hasn't been lost. So it's kind of allowing that dialogue between the Buddha nature and human nature.

And a lot of what I'm doing with groups is to remind people about refuge. A refuge in, again, non-Buddhist way, but a sense that there is a shelter. People going in and out of shelters when the rockets come. But they go in a shelter and then come out of a shelter after 10 minutes when the sirens stop. but I kind of help, try to help people, say, it's a shelter within us that you don't need to leave. It's there all the time. And it's a sense of our big space,

our openness, our steadiness, that we're there in facing the mystery of life. And we can be held by that. So that sense of awareness and big heart and mind, really noticing it as a reference. that we can acknowledge. The Buddha said that be an island to yourself. And he was saying it in relation to not getting swept away

by the consensus and by other difficulties and pain, but finding your ground. And then when asked how to do that, he basically said, find refuge in your inner truth. What is happening right now? Where is my life right now? How do I experience my life right now?

I'm settled in this moment of my inner truth. And it's a very kind of very inspiring answer. So I feel like what you're speaking to now, Stephen is kind of right at the heart of where all the healing lies and that is that we all have some refuge some sense of belonging to something larger that our world isn't identified with this threatened ego self but that there is something larger some mystery awareness there's so many words love buddha nature god something larger and that is what saves us. And as you say, you know, if we're talking about the pathway to refuge,

a key pathway is presence, is, okay, write this moment what's true. Another key pathway, as we will know, is to turn towards love. And if it doesn't feel like it's there to ask for love, to pray for love, to notice where the field of connectedness is, because in the moment that you and I know that we're holding hands that we're both loving this life, we both care. In that shared sense, there's refuge. So it's a little misleading to say it's within us as an island because it's actually an island that's completely connected underground with all other islands, you know,

because it's really a belonging to the whole. And I love the word refuge, the way, I think it's beautiful the way you put it, that you can take it a refuge in the midst of a siren and go into your shelter. And there's an ongoing shelter in any moment that we say what's true or we turn towards love, we can find it again. And it takes practice and training. It does. I mean, the Buddha used the word upamada more than he used, and being more important than the word sati, which is mindfulness and upamada, is caring awareness. It's an awareness that is caring, that is appropriate, that brings healing. And he said it's the

biggest tool in the Buddhist toolbox. I have to say that I think in the Western world, mindfulness has been a little bit misunderstood or has been kind of co-opted or hijacked a little bit by Western culture, which is mind culture. And I see, first of all, I don't really like the word mindfulness too much anymore. My book is used the word a root in Hebrew, which is, awakened or a wakefulness or presence. I think inside mindfulness, love is inherent. Mindfulness cannot work without it, because just giving attention,

just giving attention is already putting the heart where the attention goes. You give your attention to this hand right now. I'm giving my attention to this hand. The heart is right behind there. It cannot be anywhere else. So of course I do retreats on meta and more formal practice, but I'm also very, very clear saying you don't need to do anything formal. Right inside the sense of presence is heart.

Heartfulness is right there at the core because you can't see anything without it. You can't, the mind doesn't go anywhere without the heart behind it. the meeting place of our awareness with the world is a meeting place that has inherent love in it. Yeah, it's like in Asia the scripts, heart mind are not separated, and heart presence is one of the most beautiful descriptions of mindfulness. I know, and like you, I always feel that there's some deep misunderstanding when mindfulness is interpreted in that more narrow way. One thing that a lot of people find, though,

is that when they pay attention, and attention is the most fundamental expression of love, I think that's a very powerful understanding. It doesn't feel like love right away. Initially, when we pay attention, we might encounter the kind of tensions or dissociations or tightness that make our hearts still feel contracted. But what I've found is that if we can accept, no matter what it is,

if we can say yes to what we're paying attention to, just agree to be with it, acceptance is the gateway to that loving. Acceptance opens us up to that loving, which is, as you say, embedded in attention. It's just not always immediately accessible or, recognizable. Absolutely. You know, love is very basic.

We have to love ourselves, although we couldn't live. So if you're paying attention to your breathing, you're naturally close, interested, embracing the breath of life. and I agree with you sometimes it needs reminders because of habit energy that has resistance or has distance and so on but quite easily if you feel that mindful awareness and shall we say meditation practice

is connecting is closeness is deep meeting allowing as you say, allowing something to be what it is, allowing this hand to say, I'm here with a hand, with touch, with presence, that sense of listening, I'm here, says the whole body mind. I'm here, says all the voices we're listening to. I'm here, says the trees and the sky above and the earth underneath. And that's enough. That's it. It just kind of make that switch. So, you know, resistance can be, I think, quite easily overcome by that kind of readiness to see we already have it. It's already there. Yeah, beautiful.

Always already here. And so maybe as a final kind of reflection for us, here we are in a time where as a species, it's a very traumatized time around the planet. Right now, a lot of eyes are focused on the middle. Italy East, but oh my gosh, you know, 500,000 refugees from Darfur, you know, and the Rohingya. And it's just all over the planet we have enormity of trauma. And trauma is cutoff. Trauma means rather than sensing the am here and that connectedness with our body, heart, mind,

there's really a cutoff. And we're going to have to endure and be very tender. towards that cutoffness that is around us. As you said, initially when you're working with somebody who's traumatized, you don't say, we'll sit down and meditate for 45 minutes because it may retramatize them. So given that, I'd like to ask you, given the situation, in particular, Palestine's, Israelis, where for you, what gives you the most hope, what is it that you hold open to with possibility that keeps you energized and knowing you can take the next step?

For me and for others that are perhaps more deeply engaged in, I would say the in-world or inner practice, it's the sense of interrelation and interbeing or interbeing or in that there's something to all of us that is connected already and all of us can feel it as being a kind of just a love for our children, for the land,

for the... So there's something fundamental which is... needs to be touched and it's about as I say interbeing. I'll just give you a small story. My granddaughter, one of my granddaughters, used to be really upset by the state of the world at the age of 13. Now she's 16, and the other day I met her, and she was kind of very happy,

and we talked about global warming, and the climate disaster, and she was quite happy. I said, you're not the same as you were a few years ago when we talked about it. She said, no, because I know that life knows what to do, and the planet knows what to do, and humans can screw things up but life is bigger than us and I trust life

to know what's needed life will carry on I trust life and it was like whoa how big mind there but it's our I think our sense that there is something bigger

that's holding all of us and that gives support in any way that we can feel it so even in a local sense So he say here in the Galilee, with the Arabs and the Jews together, an Arab kid can say, actually, it's so good that I can tell you my story and you can tell me your story. And we can sit together with a cup of coffee. And I can see the way I can come to your weddings and your celebrations and your funerals. And you can come to ours. And it's kind of the sense of being together is so powerful that it makes. It has a very strong voice. I agree with you. The trauma, when it's big,

it's almost unagestable. It's not something that we can really hold. It will take its own path. I feel, like you, a huge amount of suffering and pain in the world. But there is this one place that we just have to hold on to as much as we can and experience as much as we can and give it as much as we can to others.

And I think you're doing that and I'm doing that and others doing that saying there is a place of being, connecting bigger circles, connecting with the world, which is bigger than us. And it's not about me. And that sustains us in a way it's a compassionate heart. It stains that it's sustained us with huge energy. people who are really connected with a compassionate heart they don't get tired it's like the body sat for

doesn't say oh well I've had enough now I can't be bothered I'll do it tomorrow I'll help others tomorrow it's not it's not possible

but the compassionate heart which is the heart that knows interrelation is a huge source of energy and a huge source of hope. But the rest we have to let go. Karma is bigger than us. Just like my granddaughter said, karma is bigger than us. We can't hold that all of that. The karma has to do what it can do. We can contribute. The whole thing is bigger than we can't control. I want to say that your granddaughter gives me hope, that there be that wisdom

in that young person and your words. There's so much truth that if we can know our belonging to something larger, there is infinite flow of energy, of intelligence and love that comes through that belonging. And so that is where the hope is. And yes, we're hugely caused. in energies of separation and we don't know how it's going to play out, but we do know there's a refuge that we can keep on waking up to. So thank you for what you're doing. Anything else you'd like to say, please feel free. Well, one small image, which comes from the Psalms in the Bible,

which is an image of refuge that I like to share, which says the refuge is, the refuge is sheltering under the wings of the goddess. And that's a small sentence from one of the Psalms. And I kind of it, it has a lot of resonance for me. And one other thing that is important locally and in the, in the whole picture, because people really don't know way to go from here as a community. And one of the places is the sense of the interrelation of everything

makes it more important to say, I will sow the seeds that I can sow. And I think it's right for all of you in America who are listening because there's conflict in America and there's conflict in your street and there's conflict, every and division everywhere. to really look at the seeds that we sow and say, I can sow seeds that feel right that will make change. And that's the best I can do,

and I'm going to go home and sleep well at night. And just to remember that we have the capacity, because everything is so dynamic and flexible and fluid, karma is not made of stone. It's bigger than us, but it's not, you know, absolute. We can change things. And the sense that I can plant seeds and so can you. This conversation is planting seeds.

We don't know where it's going to go. We don't know the waves that will come from this. But all of us and each of us can plant seeds of change. And then we say, that's what we can do. And I'm going home and resting now. Thank you, my friend. Tara, thank you so much. And I'm really delighted it.

a wonderful inspiring conversation for me. No, don't hang up yet. I just want to add. And I want to thank all of you who are listening. We will give information on Stephen's really wonderful

book when we put out this talk. But please remember just those last words. Each of us can sow seeds and then we can rest. It can be okay. Yeah.