Tara Brach - Conversation: Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love: Conversation between Rev Angel Kyodo Williams and Tara Brach - Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, from living from an awake, compassionate heart?  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome friends. I am really happy and excited to be joined today by Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams-Sensei and I want to introduce her and then we'll be talking. Reverend Angel is an author, a Maverick, spiritual teacher and founder of the Center for Transformation Change. And she's also, because we were just talking about it just a few moments ago, she more recently crafted a meditation training program, which you'll hear more about, which is very juicy and dynamic. So Reverend Angel is the author of two books. The first is being black, Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical

Dharma. And the second is Radical Dharma. which is Talking Race, Love and Liberation. And Radical Dharma is co-authored with Lama Rod Owens and Yasmin Shaidullah. And it's a super high recommend. I've read it and I've reread it. And it just shines this powerful, necessary light on truths that we don't often face and yet only by facing can we heal. So it's super high recommend.

And on a personal note, my own times with Reverend Angel, I just have been touched by her realness and huge caring and just her dedication to serving waking up. So yeah, so with that, welcome, my friend. I'm so glad to have you with us. Thank you. I'm so glad to be with you and have to find ourselves back together again. And this place of, you know, a kind of disparate thrown apart and away from each other. So I feel really great gratitude for being here.

Yeah. Oh, good. Oh, good. Well, I'm going to jump in. And I'm going to ask a number of my questions are kind of circling around the inspiration from radical Dharma just to begin. And this is a little bit biographical that you talk about entering a spiritual path as a leaving behind. And as a young person, I'm just curious, speak a little about what was going on in your life and, you know, the questions, the longings and really how leaving behind is meaningful to all of us, that notion. Yeah. You know, we are so shaped by our everything, right, by our culture, by time, by the era that we are born into.

by the region, by the city. And so I was, by race, by gen, you know, all of these other externally, socially constructed and yet, you know, significantly impactful, so-called identities, some of them chosen, some of them are not chosen. And yet still we have to carry them because, because to be social is to be in a dynamic

and mutual exchange. And so I was, you know, young-ish, New York City, mixed race, but identified as black and, and, um, and, uh, queer. And there's like a whole, and I played basketball and there's like a whole set of things that were kind of the, became the expectation for how you rolled and how you showed up in the world and what you participated in and what you didn't participate in. And the language and clothing and fashion, like all of these things were the kind of apparent, um, path that existed. for me, for what that identity was, was beginning to unfold. And I could see that path. And I was,

you know, firmly on that path. My friends were of a certain, you know, type and certain ways. You know, there was some ways that I, that I, that I, that I, resisted. And so I, I, I listened to Barbara Streisand and Broadway show tunes and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, necessarily do. I ate snails and things as a result of the influence from my mom who was always didn't finish, you know, didn't get, didn't finish high school because I was born, but had a very worldly sense. So I had that. And then I found the copy of Zen Mind Beginners Mind. It was actually first through art. I saw a Zen circle, you know, which in some ways is just a circle, but for me, like, hit me like a ton of bricks. It was like I could see everything in the

nothing there, in the boldness, and the simplicity. And as a result, I found the book, you know, now well known and beloved by Shunru Suzuki Roshi called Zen Mind Beginners Mind. And as I read the book, and as I felt, and I often reference, you know, this sense of the Roberta Flax's song that someone was, you know, strumming my pain with their fingers and singing my life with their words. And I felt that. And it was just like, someone knew some deep thing about inside of me, about the ways that things didn't quite align, that the path that was there for me, like, wasn't quite true, but I didn't know something else. And they were illuminating not a path, but like that there was a possibility of something else. And that's probably the most curious and potent thing about

this sense of home leaving, I didn't actually know where I was going. It wasn't like, okay, and now there's this other clear path. I just knew that there was something else for me that wasn't the path that seemed to be laid out, that I was, you know, I participated in laying out for myself, but that I knew I had to go another way. And because the path that I was already on was home, it was how I understood myself, my identity. It required a home leaving in terms of so many things. in terms of blackness and in terms of religion and spirituality and all of the things that were expected and prescribed and proscribed for me and by me, I had to leave them. I think part of the reason it was powerful to read is that I think that's probably true for all of us

on some level that there's not one identity that we have, that on some level we don't have to leave. and then we can have it be in the mix, but it's not going to define us. And I think we just have to leave behind everyone on that level, which really leads me to this next thing I wanted to ask you about, because you are known for teaching about a spiritual path that really includes all the dimensions of life, which means all the identities, all the ways we're relating, everything we're in relationship with, which is everything, you know, and that path by nature is an interweave of inner and societal transformation because it's in everything path really.

And so in radical Dharma, you, I mean, part of the power of it is you point to the domains that we maybe even don't know that we're not leaving behind, that we haven't even examined, and I'll speak as a white person now, that are people. particularly uncomfortable and threatening for white people. We ignore them. Can you just speak to that a bit? Like, what are the domains we're not paying attention to? Yeah, we are not paying attention to the domains.

And I think that's for all of us, you know, that we take for granted as a result of that shaping by society, that we inherit these identities, but we also inherit all of the systemic machinations of those identities, the expectations of those identities, including what we're entitled to, what we're not entitled to, what's potentially aspirational for us, and what we're, what we have an expectation of ourselves to be able to access and to be able to leverage, as well as the things, you know, in the instance of people of color and anyone marginalized by a country and a society that has organized itself around a white supremacist ideological thinking. And I don't mean like KKK, but that white people and are the embodiment and the epitome of the

ideal of human society. And that's what we've been shaped as. And obviously, that's not something that if you happen to inherit a white body, that you want to say, yeah, I'm part of that. you know, we want to believe, especially in a place that has been told us, you know, we've been told that whatever we get is based on our own merits, that we earned it, that our families earned it, that what we have is because, you know, we, we had that coming to us. And if we, and if we, or by extension, peoples don't have things, it's because they didn't earn it and they didn't

deserve it and they didn't work hard enough. And so blowing up that myth means we have to do some real, really deeply internal interrogation about what it means to have personal identities, personal paths, aspirations, and so on. And then also to look at and say, what is it of myself that I take for granted that is actually constructed and has already been preordained for me, that has already been, you know, set up as an expectation, not because of my own effort and my own intentions and my own work and my own labor, but because of the identity that I have, the color of my skin, the gender that I have. And so that is pretty, that's an extraordinary ask to look beyond not just the way that we see ourselves,

but the way that society has already set something up for us because it upends all of our beliefs about what we earned, what we're entitled to, what our country is up to, what it stands for, what it has, what, how it came to be. And I think that that is very difficult for people that have taken, uh, conflated, uh, the, the, the culture that, you know, that I, that I call whiteness and describe as whiteness have conflated that for who, who you actually are. And so, uh, for me, that was an obvious interrogation through. through the path of Dharma. It was like, yeah, of course, you're going to question like everything, like question

everything. But if you're part of a dominant culture, one of the most extraordinary benefits is that you don't have to question everything. You can take some things for granted. And I think that that's what happens for white-bodied people in this society, in this culture, in this era, in this time. And radical Dharma is an invitation to, to, to not do something different.

People have said like, oh, you know, racial, racial justice, it doesn't belong in the Dharma. I was like, this is actually not about racial justice. This is actually about the Dharma. This is actually about doing what we set out to do, which is to interrogate everything. So I'm with you and it's remarkable to me that, you know, I started in, you know, in the Dharma, let's say I'm 68.

It started in, you know, 40-some years. years ago and it really wasn't until 15 years ago that I got it that if I can't, there's no waking up for what I call this body mind without facing the layers I haven't faced that are societal conditioning but that I got away with that many decades not and it wasn't that I didn't have a real love for truth and a love for love. And so what it makes me realize is that as a white person, we are so in the habit of being in our bubble that we're not exposed. So the suffering we're exposed to, and we might be really good at facing suffering. But the suffering's on a personal level.

And it's not our habit to feel an identification with a group that is, as a collective, been for, for sensitive. countries violating and oppressing another group. It's not our habit. It doesn't serve us to identify that because, you know, by design, the way in which the dichotomy between, you know, black Africans peoples and white body people, white Europeans has been by design, by the design of the legal structured systems and so on. To look at that is to have to interrogate where you are. And so it serves us to not look at it, right? And, you know, that's the way the personal ego works. And it's also the way that the social ego works. It totally makes sense. It's like the self is not at all interested in undoing the self. And of course, it's totally, you know,

to the benefit of white people to maintain the system as it is because we get privileged. And it's only until we in some way really register that continuing to not look causes us suffering too. And we have to actually feel the suffering. And you have a chapter, I mean, I loved a lot of the book, but there's a particular section that says, where's the love? And it's a really powerful one because we all long to belong. We all long to belong to the whole. We want to belong to our inner life and each other. And most people I know really want to love, want to be love, feel loving, and yet aren't looking at something that actually prevents us from truly having our heart free to love and feel belonging. And maybe just to ask you to speak more to that, how come seeing these layers

of truth that we're talking about and loving actually can't be separated? Yeah. Well, first, I want to offer an intervention into the very, very well articulated idea that white people have privilege. And it's really an advantage, right? And I think it's just, it could be just, semantics, but those semantics make a big difference for people because when we say privilege, we suggest that all of the things are, you know, first of all, good and wanted by other people, right? Like, oh, I just want those other privileges, which reifies the power dynamic of, like, white people are on top and they have the privileges. Rather than they've just, they've been given advantage in a playing field, that that advantage did not come to them naturally.

that it was actually handed to them by the structures, by the systems, by the invisible hand of inheritance, by the invisible hand of a culture that has the very strong intention to situate some people at the top of this game. And when I say at the top, I mean for material purposes. Because that's also important as we talk about privileges and we suggest basically that material, access is the entirety of the game. And that's really what radical Dharma is about. And we talk about like, where is the love? Is that if you have this whole conversation about what is what we desire and what we need and what advantages us and what it is that we aspire to. And it's all situated in material resources, material access, then you immediately understand why we are left so

un, unhole, and unwholesome in our pursuit of a more whole truth for ourselves, that our spiritual selves, that our sense of life itself suffers, that our sense of love, that our capacity for love, that our capacity for compassion is impacted, right? So it's not just that you don't get, you know, as nice a house or a car or go to the right schools, but that actually your compassion, your capacity for compassion suffers as a result of maintaining or being complicit or hanging out in misinformation or disinformation around what has happened in society and what has situated us in the locations and the social locations that we have. If you understand that the whole of your path as a being that is

invested in truth and love and wholeness and the planet, then you know right away what great suffering you have, has beset you by not having your capacity for love as free as an open and as spacious as possible. We've told the story for a long time that the conversations about marginalized people, be they queer people, black people, you know, immigrants and so on and so forth, that those conversations about how do we help those people. And that just fools us and reifies our location of some kind of safe bubble. And it's actually a genius mechanism that continues to keep us not questioning where we are and what we are losing. So if you're in a white body, what are you losing? If I'm in an able body, what am I losing by not being able to have a sensitivity and an awareness of what it means to not have the ability of sight or move? or sound or so and so forth, that if I'm in a class privileged body, if I'm a class

advantage body, like, what do I lose by shunning or disappearing people that don't have access to class? Or what does it mean, even as a black person, to be, to have a lot of the entitlements of what it means to be an American and have no, no awareness of what it, of the fact of that so much of even what I have advantages for as being. America as being a nationalized so-called citizen, what it means that those things were taken from peoples whose lands these were originally. That diminishes me. When I recognize it, I'm like, oh, in your decades of not being aware of being in a white bubble, like I had my decades of, you know, cowboys and Indians, sure, but not really owning the fact that so much of what I,

am able to leverage and have advantage from, is because it was stolen from someone else. Yeah. And we have to really get it in our bodies in a way that our hearts actually, that we cry because of it. And, you know, it's clear when we look at, like I think if we look back and we say,

okay, can you imagine if you were living during the times when there was chattel slavery and you were watching a family being separated, can you imagine watching that and not having your heartbreak and to know that most people watched it and they didn't have their heartbreak, which means they were cut off? That's right. And yet, so it's easier to see that,

but for some reason we take it into present time and there's so much that's the same, but in a different form, it looks a little more like it's just, oh, there are these laws, but it's human being stepped on and black bodies being afraid and indigenous people being disenfranchised powerless and still suffering hugely. And we don't look at what's current and realize that that means our hearts are cut off, anything we're not willing to look at. And just to just to share and I'd like to get your input on it, my own process, because my big question is how do we motivate to look more deeply because I very much believe that unless we look and face the suffering

and the truth that we don't widen the circles. And for me, I was in a mixed race group for three years where our soul inquiry is what is it like being you, you know, and a lot from the group perspective. And for the first six months of that Reverend Angel, I was self-conscious, I was kind of frozen, I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I was just like a classic white person that just was so tense about, was I going to blow it? And when I did some inner processing, it became clear, you know, the white fragility, white guilt, and that I was hearing the daily violations experienced by friends of mine. And rather than just feeling compassion, I was feeling bad about myself because I was part of the group that had been oppressing for centuries. So it wasn't until I

got under that and felt, first of all, how cut off that made me, like that longing to belong. And then out of that, this like wide open letting my heart get that, the crushingness of the horror that's gone on. And I had to like cry and cry and cry. And this has been repeated a number of times. I mean, really heartbreak until, I mean, it was a shift from guilt to heartbreak. But then, oh my gosh, you know, these are now life friends. And it wasn't like, okay, now that I'm not feeling guilty, I'm not going to do something. It was like I felt more engaged and accountable. But that's kind of what it took. And I don't know other than being kind of close in how we let ourselves kind of break open like that.

Well, you know, that's much of the work that has come from the book, Radical Dharma, has been for me to noodle on that and say how, what is the conversation that we need to have? Like how do we get people to feel that sense of motivation, you know, to have the view, right? You can have the view, but what is the motivation to actually do something about it? And for me, it really is this reframe of understanding that you have skin in the game. that the loss is to you. I have conversations with people that really explain, you know, bit by bit how, in fact, the laws that were set up were not intended mostly to, you know, put African people down, but actually to control white-bodied people, right? To assure that white-bodied people would have exactly the experience that you talked about. And it's funny that you told that because I tell that story, and it's something that I generated in the work of radical Dharma, of what does it mean?

That was my inquiry. What does it mean? I was, I was in some southern, southern place, and I was in a square that had been like a slave market. And I was standing there and it's, you know, it's like, it was like a beautiful, like, you know, we have like public squares. It was shaped in a circle and they had markers in showing, you know, where, like this is, this is where, you know, enslaved peoples were sold and, you know, and so on. And. And. there was a little stand in this square of someone selling flowers. And I just got this whole imagery of a white woman with her baby, you know, in her, you know, stroller, whatever a stroller thing that was there, you know, a couple of extra one one with a hand, you know, holding a hand, smaller, small children, baby, you know, toddlers and bigger children, all in a kind of gathering and going around and getting, you know, flowers and bread. And right there, right there, you can see a black woman, what her baby having them being ripped apart from her hands.

And so it was really not just people, but mother to mother, right? Mother to mother, the particular bond that mothers have with their children that I think was even more potent, right, like at that time because mothers were, you know, expected to stay. home with their children and so on. So mother to mother that while your own children's hands are in your hand, that you see another mother, the only difference being that they have black skin and you see them taken part, I was just like, what could have that been? Like what could have been going on in that person's body that that could be tolerable, that they could tolerate that, that, you know, and short of, which, you know, has been a,

a concept that has been, you know, floated short of being evil, that I had to believe that there had to been some systematic intervention into that woman's natural impulse as a human being, to have care and have compassion and to have connection, that there had to be some intervention into their natural innate human abilities for them to not, for them to be able to tolerate that. And that was my inquiry that set me about on the work of radical Dharma, is to try to unpack that. Had that woman understood, not just that she was ignoring what was happening in front of her,

that her capacity for compassion was diminished as a result, that her capacity for care was diminished as a result. And contrary to popular belief, we're not nearly as compartmentalized as we believe. And so that that reduced capacity for care and compassion is expressing itself somewhere else in her life, that that as white-bodied people, as whatever people, as men, as whoever is being advantaged by these locations that require their disembodiment, that require the trading of their humanity for those advantages. for me that is the conversation that I think is a motivation. And if you're not motivated by that, I don't know what you're going to be motivated by, honestly.

Right. There's the power and the possibility of love, right, and connection that you have that as direct. But if you don't go and run out and go get some black friends all of a sudden, I trust that the deep human heart to be liberated from a place in which we're cut off from care, which we realize like, oh, I am suffering. I am suffering that I can't see humanity and the suffering of humanity.

That if that is not a motivation, then too much of your humanity has already been lost and that you should go and get that, right? Not come and fix it for me or fix it for black people or fix it for queer people, but that you fix it for yourself, that you reggae. gain what has been lost for yourself and your own humanity? Well, I'm taking that one in. It's still a quandary for me how it's possible that a whole society of people could have been and are cut off.

I think it's happened elsewhere into the ages that people unreal other in a way that in some way does compartmentalize turns it's like from way back in the days when others were really a threat to make them another less than human have you know the different names for others that made them less than human allowed us to kill others so there's something in that mechanism and it's just as you say we don't our hearts don't just open and close open and close when we we're dissociated from our bodies, when we're not tender towards suffering in one place, it's a very limited tenderness towards others. So here's one of the things I... Well, you know, what I wanted to say, and it's really important for people to understand this,

is that, you know, we are in the place of discovering that contrary to the lie that we've been sold, that we're just inclined towards this othering, uh, that we're just. that then makes us aggressive. And we're actually inclined towards collaboration. We're inclined towards connection and compassion. And that, sure, our old brains look and scan for threat and we see difference as potential threat. But as we have become more complex social creatures and live in more complex social realities, that actually we are, and that's why we have societies, that's why we have humane societies.

That's why we have, you know, civilization is because we are inclined towards collaboration and connection and compassion and working with each other. So that it is a function of the powers that would have us organize ourselves for gain for those powers that subjects us to being able to subjugate our impulse for connection and care. That that is something that through the ages, is not just like it's just not in us. It is our tribal leaders. It is our governments.

It is our presidents. It is our, right? That is actually something that is stoked and it's communicated. And here's the really important point that many people don't get. It is under threat to your belonging to that society that you are commissioned to be complicit with that other. So it's not just something that happened. you know, to the other person, it is under threat. So if you don't participate, if you're not

complicit, then you are threatened to be cast out. And that's deeply human, is that our need and our desire to continue to belong. I'm with you. I mean, it feels like that is the evolutionary trajectory and hope of our evolved, integrated brain and heart, mind is that are, we have this capacity to hold hands to realize who we are beyond a separate self, to realize our belonging. And it's the only way we might save the species of the earth is if we nourish that. And it's that survival brain kicking in. And it does when there's spikes of fear. And right now around the planet, we are spiking. And the more fear, the more fundamentalism and the more dividedness and the more individualism. So I, you know, it wasn't until again the last

15, 20 years that I really started registering that the word individualism, it's not, it's, it's actually a sign of the toxicity of it's part of capitalism, which I think is a force that keeps us not going to the collaborative, but going, but being, you know, it far, the survival brain. And you call it hyper individualism and I feel like it needs attention. And a lot of people that listen to, that are with us here, a lot of people relate to Buddhism and are following and practicing Buddhist meditations and often don't realize that in Buddhism it's not about an individual self waking up. You know, it's really about and becoming a enlightened. It's really about awakening to realize there isn't that separation and that we're

really awakening together. But in the West, when Buddhism came to the West, the way it got convert, you know, the Western converts is very much an individual path. And I'm bringing this up Reverend Angel because I feel like for Western practitioners, it reinforces that bubble that that and so we're getting better and better at attending to our individual suffering. I'm better and better at sensing your suffering, but there's not a sense of the collective and opening to that level. So I just wonder if in a practical way, like in our daily life, how to see this, how to wake up from that self-focus. Well, it's important to recognize that we extrapolated concepts and,

practices in a way that suited. When I say us, I want to say, you know, white males, right, that were suited by extrapolating Buddhist concepts in this way. And so we can take anything and make it part of our incarceration. We can take anything and, you know, kind of wrangle it around. And that was the, you know, the germ for radical Dharma as a book. I was like, you know, wow, we have this profound, powerful teaching. That is exactly for that. That is a about allowing us to dissolve this hyper individualism into an awareness of the great vastness and complexity and boundlessness of what it means

to be a part of the entire sentient and insentient family of all of life. And yet we've rendered it, we've interpreted it as something that reifies not just a bubble, but a bubble, you know, know, that, you know, in practice, it reifies hyper individualism in terms of our, the theory of the practice, but in practical spaces, in terms of sangas and communities, it's actually refining white supremacy.

Actually keeping that intact, you know, and using language, including, like, right speech to keep people from talking about what is true and what they're seeing and what they're experiencing. And so distinguishing the waking up, whether it's an individual waking up or collective waking up, from the growing up to actually face, you know, the relative reality that we live in bodies every day, that we live with all of the expressions and impacts and truths of what it means to be in a white body, a black body, a Latino body, an Asian body. Like that's something that we have missed entirely in the Buddha Dharma, that we have been so. leaning towards that hyper individualist, go for self, like let's go get the, you know, the holy grail of enlightenment that it has leaned us away from, which is a reinforcing story of, you know, the, like, you know, just go across the, across the country and kill everything that exists and take it all for ourselves. Can't we hear that? Can't we hear that we are taking the Dharma, this vast and profound

teaching and, you know, threading it through this tiny, tiny space of hyper individualism, winner takes all, you know, go for self, climb the ladder of, you know, of titles and positions and locations, that all it is is just a little facet of the same story that has been the shaping of this society. And so I think that the pathway is for us. to recognize that we do have to do the social education that is necessary for us to understand our relative reality, that the Dharma is not sufficient when you exist in the dominant paradigm, that because the story has been told and the narrative has been shaped through that paradigm, right, has been, like, excluded through the paradigm of hyper-individual, of racialized capitalism,

not just capitalism we have. We have racialized capitalism, like racialized capitalism of, you know, of winner take all, of the white, you know, heterosexual, you know, Anglo-Saxon male Protestant as the epitome of everything and where we want to keep moving towards and that, you know, the black female is what we want to move away from, that we have this dichotomy and this great binary of of a spectrum that we're moving along and trying to get further and further away from. And what we lose is the wholeness of who we are as a human species, as a planetary species, as folks that should be stewards of the planet instead are destroying it. Why? Because if we can

destroy our sense of compassion and connection inside of ourselves with other human beings, then we just destroy our sense of compassion and connection to the planet itself. because those other beings are the planet itself. And so we're we're practicing that kind of behavior and we're seeing the results of it in, you know, I would say like hyper-technicolor, right? The impact of hundreds of years of that destruction. So I wonder, I mean, you're getting me kind of,

there's a few different directions I kind of want to go in with this one. And one is what you're saying, I'm very increasingly aware that there are caste systems in most places that ours is one of the most violent and destructive examples here in the United States of a racial caste system and that all hierarchies where there's subjugation and so on are part of the same challenge that we've got, that as long as that's ruling, for those on top, there's no incentive to challenge it and look at it. So those of us practicing the Dharma that aren't being oppressed on that caste system don't have a reason to look at it.

And we don't realize that just paying attention to our individual suffering will not free us because there's a place that we keep holding ideas and stories that separate us. And so we're not aware of that. And you referred to meritocracy, which I think is just one of those most deep unseen elements, which is that in some way, when things go well for us, we deserved it. That if we're successful, if we're on top, if we've achieved something, it's because of our efforts and are deserving. not realizing all the causes and conditions that even let us begin to move in that direction

and not even looking at that, not even looking at that. So here's what a larger question about hierarchy and that is I think a lot about speciesism and that any hierarchy where there's any above and superior and not valuing life is part of the same dynamic. And I know many black activists who are, you know, plant-based eating and so on who agree. And I also know many who have a real objection to talking about speciesism as part of the same dynamic that you and I've been talking about thus far because they feel like in some way that black people or Muslim people or whoever's lower are being compared to non-human animals. So maybe just to invite you to speak to that, like how to

bring in our human cruelty and absolutely like how can we watch an animal go through suffering and not feel? And isn't that the same cutoff on some level? level. Yeah, well, I think that the, the objection is, so first of all, let's just name this as dominance, right? Like, it's important to recognize that, you know, the thing we call white supremacy and these, the paradigm that we exist, the ideological paradigm that we exist in is, is actually one of a human arc that leads towards dominance where, we're the, the only way that we understand our sense of safety is to dominate other, other beings. other peoples, other so on.

I think the complexity in terms of the correlation is that we have seen as black people, as people, peoples that are marginalized, is that we have seen white-bodied people, in particular people that are located in dominant paradigms, use that as an excuse to then turn around and focus their attention. So now we'll go and we'll, you know, save animals and so on, but we actually don't do the more complex work of what it means to be relational sociological creatures, right? And so I think that that's, that's, it is, it is the same. And the levels of choice that exist between interspecies, right, like with intraspecies, when we're, we are of one species,

is important to acknowledge and to recognize that like you're actually doing this still to your own species, right? And so there's even less of a distinction that we can claim that we are seeing. So some people may say, well, I need to eat meat in order to survive. You know, my body doesn't survive. And so, you know, maybe I'll offer prayers and blessings over the fact of this and that, you know, many indigenous. I've had conversations with, you know, in First Nations peoples and indigenous peoples about that, about the recognition of that of that as a part of a cycle of life, right, that there are, and that you see that in nature, that there are some species that prey upon other species for the sake of their survival and that ultimately it's in balance.

And that that doesn't exist in the, for amongst the human species, that that's not necessary other than for the purposes of material gain. And that's where we're back at the conversation of, you know, to what end? You know, to what end do we have this our form of dominance? And so, yes, it's happened throughout, you know, time and history and towards what end. And so if we are willing to see that the form of dominance that we have, you know, through white supremacy, that the form of capitalism that we have, it is, is for the purposes of, you know, nothing else than to, you know, than to maintain power and control. Then we're in a different conversation rather than, like,

this is just what happens when human beings have fear of each other. Okay, so we can create like different locations and reservations and areas that we say and we say, you have your line and I have my line. But actually what we're doing is we are making human beings resources. We are making animals resources. And so I think that the dividing, line for me is not, or is not so much that are these different conversations, but what aspect of

this conversation are we, are we talking about a survival conversation? Are we talking about a power conversation? Are we talking about a, this is, this is something that is part of the cycle of life. And so as a result of that, yeah, there are people that eat that eat meat. I'm not one of them, but there are people that eat meat and see that as part of something that's necessary. I've, as I said, you know, I've really spoken to particularly a friend that is an Alaska native and said, like, you know, if he was going to survive on just plants, like, you know, his people wouldn't survive. And then that sort of becomes part of the culture.

And maybe it's different for them now, but it's part of their culture. And it's in balance versus is this for the purpose of selfish, self-oriented accumulation of resources for no other. reason than for greed and hatred and ignorance. And that is really what we talk about in the Dharma. And so we can see that there is a distinction between whether one agrees with it or not people that really believe that they're eating meat or their use of animal products and so on as part of the cycle of life and for survival versus this is so that I can accumulate and dominate and have control over people and self-aggrandize and so on.

And so I think that those are different conversations. Marginalized people are sensitive to it because you will very quickly get white folks that will be like, yeah, I want to go and save people in Africa, but I don't want to deal with the black people that are right there in my own country and my county in my neighborhood and see the suffering that is there. You know, Tara, for me, the question is, are you willing to meet suffering, you know, as it is, as you see it? and allow it to enter into your heart. And if you're not, that is your loss. That means that you have suffered a significant break in your own human development. And that it's not merely a social justice issue,

that it is a human right issue. It's your right to be human. And if you're not willing to reclaim your own right to be human, to at least interrogate it, not for my sake, but for your own sake. That's something that you have to live with as an understanding. But I do think we have to educate people about what is being traded. I think we have to get people off of the idea that material resources,

the material realm is the only realm in which we are navigating our existence as a human species. And when we realize the great spiritual loss, the great loss of what it means to be a whole human being in balance with all of creation, with all that all that exists. My deep, not only my belief, but my witness is that most human beings want to be free. They want to be, they want to have choice. And most of what we're involved in, I like to say we have signed bad faith contracts. We didn't know what we were giving up in exchange for the resources, in exchange for the access. And some people do know, and they're comfortable with that. And that's not my business. Those people are not my business,

but I don't think that that's the great masses of people. I think that most of the people that are listening to you that are invested in the truth of their own heart and seeking becoming more whole and more sense of belonging to themselves and as a result of that belonging to all of life. are inclined when they hear and can receive that they are in a part of a system that is corrupt, that is complicit in great suffering, and that they have been engaged with it and involved with it, not by their own choice, that at the very least they want to have choice. You know, what you're facing towards, I think, is where the hope is. and when you say, you know, not everybody, but there are a substantial number of people

and it keeps evolving that really care about freedom, about having that choice, and that when catch on to, oh, I'm not, I'm cut off from my wholeness, get interested, get passionate, get dedicated to finding out. I think that is where the hope is. And maybe just if you have any other words about that, like where, what are you seeing? What are you seeing now that's inspiring you that gives some sense that this is our possibility? What I see is, first of all, it's the great massive number of people. I share this idea about some people have been seduced into systems of domination. Some people have been induced.

And that's the great number of people. And then, of course, there are people that are reduced by these systems. The number of people that are seduced, meaning that are overtly saying, like, oh, I gain something. I know what it's costing. I know that I am, you know, part of, you know,

danger and destruction of humanity. Like, those people, you just, you've got to, like, right, let them go because they know what they're in for. And we can't control human beings. but the vast number of people by far. I would say that some kind of like very small percentage, five percent maybe, five percent.

The vast number of people have been induced by all sorts of forms of inducement. You know right from the beginning, you can't be a citizen if you don't separate yourself from black people. You can't have own land. If you marry black people, if you have your children will be subject

to not being able to inherit the things that you worked for if your children. children are black. So there have been systematic legal inductions into the participation with a system of domination of jobs and so on and so forth. You know, y'all go 1619 project, go and check it out and like look up your history. And then of course the people that are reduced and left in a place in which they question their own sense of value and worth inside of that system. But all inside of both the inducement, what I have found, and people have been reduced.

What I have found is that when people touch into it deeply and they realize that the result of being in this place in which you're trading, your own humanity is that you don't have a fundamental sense of belonging, that you are always operating under threat, that if you do this wrong, and if you don't control these people, that if you don't keep climbing and getting ahead and getting, you know, this title or this, location or like this entry into this school, that people feel the grind of that.

That if they don't, that if they want some ease in their life, right, that they're that they're very belonging to their families, right, to their clubs, to their churches, to their congregations is under threat. And to realize that is to come into, to come to terms with the fact that. your belonging is not guaranteed unless you are part of a system of suffering and a system of destruction. And to make the decision whether that is what you want to, how you want to continue to exist, I know most of us are exhausted and we feel that exhaustion. And that's why I worked on the audio program with Sounds True, called belonging. Because what we have found is that so many of the

people that are saying like, okay, well, let me question it. Is they realize like, oh, it's not just the black people under threat or queer people under threat. It's that I'm under threat. That this whole system has been set up to keep me, you know, in the grind, in the churning, in the fear that if I don't participate in this way, that if I relax, that I won't belong, that my, that my location, that my wealth, that all the things that I have told myself or he's been told to me that I earned for myself that they will be taken away just like that.

And that has been powerful motivation for people. And that's what I have seen. And so I don't think that the masses of people that we're seeing in race trainings, that we're seeing in conversations about what it means to be racialized that we're seeing in radical Dharma, I don't think that they suddenly went out and got a bunch of black friends. I think that they saw that their own, that they have skin in the game, that their own existence, that their own sense of belonging has been undermined and that they don't actually know who they are and that as long as they're participating in this system blindly, that they will never know who they are, that they will never know their sense of a belonging that is fundamental, that goes beyond the material acquisitions and social

location and what that affords you and advantages you to. I think most people we want to know ourselves when we want to be whole. So what I'm hearing from you, and there is a call to action, but the call to action really has to do with commit to questioning. Like every day, we're very committed to looking at what's going on inside me right now and what might be going inside you, but also commit to questioning what are we inside in terms of a societal sphere that just maintains a system that hurts others. like what are we inside and and it really i can speak for myself it has to be super intentional

because we get lulled really easily i mean that's the power of the system we get lulled so um i want to the question is who are you actually i mean for me it's like it's not just what you know what's happening inside but who are you do you know yourself separate from the idea of your racial identity of and all of the advantages that are afforded to that that racial identity? Do you know yourself separate from, you know, a constant grind to try to get ahead and get on top? Do you know yourself? Do you know who you are when you are not subject to participating in a culture of dominance? That is the real question. Is who are you? And do you know who you really are? And do you want to know? If you want to know, then you have to start asking those

questions. And if you ask those questions, it will lead you to these other places. You don't have to suddenly have a great, you know, care or desire to, you know, be friendly with black people or, you know, fix their issues or social. That's great. And that's good for the polling boxes and so on. But if you're on a spiritual journey of being a whole human being, the question always has been, who are you? and can you get underneath that into that inquiry beyond the social identities that you've been taking for granted? That is really the question. Can you get underneath the things that you've been taken for granted and ask yourself who

you are beyond those social identities? Beautiful. And I feel like that circles us in a very powerful way back to leaving behind because if we can get under it, we can leave it behind and become who we really are in the wholeness of it. So bless you dear, that's wow. Yeah, I want to thank you, Reverend Angel. I want to thank all of you who are here listening. Just to say that if you want to engage more, find out more, radical Dharma is a powerful tool for asking the Who Am I question and including all the social narratives that we might not be seeing. And also, Reverend Angels crafted a meditation

training program. And I know people in it. It's awesome. It's powerful. It's, as with everything, goes at all levels of who we are to wake up. And so I want to highly recommend that. You'll get the link from us. And again, deep bow, my friend. Yeah. Pleasure to be with you. Please connect with us. connect with the work. And really, you know, Tara, I think one of the things I really want to say is that because of the way that I entered the Dharma, that I took it to heart, I didn't have the entitlement to take some of the things for granted. And because I took it to heart, what became clear to me is that I had to ask all of the questions, all of the questions. And that's, that's what made a difference for me, is the willingness to say, not I'm committed to, you know,

we have the bodhisattva vows and the liberation to save all beings. And honestly, altruism will only get you so far. But I was deeply committed to my own liberation. And so that's my inquiry and my invitation to every single person that is listening to be so committed to your liberation that you're willing to see all of the things as they are. Thank you. Thank you so much. talk some meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.