Tara Brach - Longing for Freedom: A conversation with Tara Brach and Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Longing for Freedom: A conversation with Tara Brach and Lama Rod Owens - In his recent book, The New Saints, Lama Rod Owens offers teachings and practices that awaken our longing for freedom, and help us realize the truth of who we are. This week, I sat down with Lama Rod to talk about how an authentic path of liberation must include the often unexamined layers of our personal and societal existence. Pre-order the book: The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Greetings, friends. My guest today is Lama Rod Owens, who's a friend, a teaching colleague. Lama Rod's an author, an activist, and he's an authorized Lama, which is a Buddhist teacher in the Kagu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He has a Master of Divinity and Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and it's got a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. His books include love and rage, the path of liberation through anger, and he's the co-author of Radical Dharma.

His new book is called The New Saints. So we'll be talking about his new book today, really how we can't see. separate our work for social transformation and liberation from the path of spiritual freedom. We'll talk about how freedom comes from a very courageous kind of honesty and authenticity. We'll be exploring the need to attend to our social identities if we want to find out who we really are, the power of directly longing for freedom, awakened care, the role of prayer in spiritual practice, relating to trauma on the path of liberation, forgiveness, the violence that can come from venerating others and diminishing ourselves,

and really the centering of loving our own inner life. And Lama Rod leads a beautiful meditation on receiving love. So I wanted to give you a sense of what was up and coming. It's so very rich and hope you enjoy. Okay, now for our conversation. So welcome Lama Rod. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. Well, you know, I mentioned when I emailed you that I spent a lot of last weekend with you and with your new book, The New Saints, and it's coming out this month. And so first off, what an amazing.

deep, you know, call to spirituality, the depths of spirituality and engaged caring. I just loved it. And the thing that most really struck me was your full humanness in it. It was just like you gave us this window into your own raw process of metabolizing life and waking up. So I just wanted to start in with the book. ask you a bit about, you know, your aspiration, writing it, and how it feels having it to the world. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, this is such a different book. And I think you're, like, really noticing that. I keep telling people, like, go of expectations about what you think the Dharma book is, because I just kind of do something. I just kind of, I let myself go, right? And my agenda are the ethic, rather, that I was really holding is what's telling the truth. Right.

And so many folks that I work with, you know, they're just really tired of like the bullshitting, right? They're tired of like teachers wanting to look good, but doing something really harmful, you know, when they're not public. You know, and so I said, if I'm going to write this book, I'm going to tell you. the truth, right? And even though it hurts, right? And that hurt is something that I took care of as I was writing the book, right? I have lots of support, right, when doing this kind of work. But yeah, to tell the truth, to tell the truth about the real work of waking up in the world right now. You modeled authenticity. I mean, you know, I kept feeling the, courage of that that doesn't mean there's no fear. It means there's fear. Can you take a step

anyway for the sake of truth? And I loved it. And I want to just kind of the, you know, the takeaway you make so clear right from the start is that when we talk about spirituality, when we talk about real liberation. It's inseparable. The ultimate liberation is inseparable from giving ourselves to our world, to our society, reducing harm. And so I just wanted to hear from you a little more on how that has come through for you. Yeah, to tell the truth is to really start getting free. Right. And if I don't tell the truth, and I find myself cycling in these experiences of delusion, right, that really, of course, leads to more suffering and harm against myself and harm against others, you know, but to, but to kind of like remove the mask and to say, listen, I know that you're trying to have fun,

you know, and get comfortable and have an experience in this process or in this field of spirituality, but I have to tell you for me, it's been work. It's been kind of grueling, right? It has taken a kind of labor that I didn't even think was possible, right, to develop a deeper awareness of why I suffer and the choices that I have to start to make to divest from the causes and conditions of suffering and to reinvest in wisdom. clarity, love, care, right, for myself. I just am not interested in wanting to look good anymore, right? I'm interested in telling the truth of what this work costs and what we have to commit to.

Because right now, it's, we need more than like a kind of superficial surface kind of practice. to have a really deep, durable, resilient kind of practice right now. Like we have to really get into the depth of who and what we are and start doing some real healing. And part of that real healing is doing the real grieving work, right, and doing the real holding space for trauma. Yeah. Right.

And real forgiveness. Right. And but it's also, yeah, it's also about. having fun too. Right? So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is hard. This is really hard labor. But you can also have fun with this.

And for me, my experience of pleasure and fun has also deeply correlated to the intensity of my work. So another way that I like to put this is that I've learned to work hard and I've learned to play hard. At the same time to balance out. you know, this work of getting free. Well, it sounds like a recipe for living it fully. You are very wholehearted.

It comes through. So I want to actually touch on each of the things you named. It means this, it means this. And to maybe begin with, part of the effort you point to, you have this phrase in there that says, that a new saint is a being in this world in a body with identities. And that part of this effort and work is embracing the complexity of our identities. And I wanted to name, and this is maybe in the spirit of authenticity,

that, I mean, those who are listening now are going to have all sorts of mixed identities, some more privileged, some dis privilege, you know, the whole thing. Right. So what I have more and more become aware of La Marad is that as a white person, as a person that is comfortable financially, class-wise, and so on, in this, I have seen people, me and people like myself, that any, downgrade the importance of tending to identity. Right.

Because, you know, it's obvious. You know, we're the ones that are privileged at the, you know, taking from others. It doesn't end up being the problem that, you know, alerts us. But what I've noticed is then in spiritual circles, the rationale is it's all just different forms of suffering. All suffering is equal. You know, we're all one. Why do we?

You know, it's hard to try to realize that. And I've just watched in my own life because you talked about effort. The place that has been the hardest and the most effort is facing the meaning of whiteness, the meaning of privilege. And finding under it what I thought wasn't a thing that mattered so much that it was the huge suffering of the way that made me say. separate. It made me smaller. It narrowed me. But it took really digging in to realize that it wasn't optional. It was an essential part. And it is, I'm saying was. It's an ongoing thing. It's like this essential effort. Keep on attending to the ways these identities surface. So I'm bringing my own example as I'm imagining you run into that a lot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for, for sharing and for being open like this, you know, because this, again, is the intention of the book is to invite people to start telling the truth and to start getting much more curious about how we show up within this kind of intersectional identity, you know. But I think it's you name something really important, you know, and I've had this. conversation before many times in the past where it's like, well, I'm not suffering. You know, I'm

good, you know, I'm enjoying this life. I've had conversations exactly like that where people have come to tell me I'm not really suffering that much, right? And I say, well, yeah, you know, in a way, you're kind of coasting above these deeper, you know, expressions of suffering. But what we're trying to do is get really curious. We're trying to, through awareness, kind of sink into and expand deeper into who and what we are. Right. And so I want to connect to my innate Buddha nature. Right.

This is our line. But what really that means is that I want to experience who I am beyond self and identity and ego. And I think that is the project of Buddhism is to help us remember who we are, right? That this world, this relative world of identity and ego is just an illusion as a distraction that we've kind of gotten wrapped up in, right? And Buddhism and Dharma is about pointing us back to who and what we are. But to get back, right, we have to unpack the ways in which we have misunderstood. identity and created meanings around identity that have created suffering for ourselves and

suffering for others, both as individual experiences as well as collective experiences as well. And it's hard to tell people who aren't connecting to that suffering initially that, oh, they're suffering. And I invite you to return back to that suffering to begin to actually figure out who you are beyond whiteness or beyond gender or class or ability and so forth. Like, who are you really? Right? Because for me, on the other hand, yes, I have been painfully aware of identities since the moment I was conscious in this world, right? Like, I've never not known that I was black. right. As I've gotten older, I always know that I'm queer. I always know that I'm fat, identified, right? All of that, you know. And so I've had, you know, what at the beginning, I felt like it was a disprilch to be so intimately connected to the suffering of these identities and the relative. But now I understand these as privileges because it has invited me to break through the suffering, disperligeness.

narratives of these identities to come into a deeper experience of who I am. So I can, I can experience these identities, but also now, because of the work that I've done to unpack the suffering, to tend to that suffering, I can also experience a lot more freedom in this body. You know, yes, systematic racism still is a thing. Yes, all this stuff is still happening. But at this point in my practice, these systems don't, they don't inform me in the same way that they used to. Another way of saying is that saying this is that, you know, they no longer, these systems no longer tell me who I am. I have a deeper experience of who I am, which is helping me to experience a lot of

fluidity and clarity right now, moving through the world, right? But again, just to reiterate, it's taken a lot of work to move through these expressions of trauma, you know, that has been so deeply related to identities of disprolige, right? To move through that, to tend to it, to let it go, right, to connect to space and emptiness and energy, right? And to begin to celebrate like who I am because ultimately we are all Buddhists. And I'm connecting to that more and more every day, which is a source of joy for me. You know, I think it's easy for people to listen and say, well, you've had to work hard because there are more kind of layers of woundedness from generations and from society. You know, if I've had more privilege, you know, maybe because there's not so much obvious wounding, I don't know. need to work so hard. And that is a delusion. Because in a way, there's identification, but because

there's not as much over-suffering, it's easier to miss it. And it's there. And that's the thing, that's the thing that really grabbed me. I didn't realize that the identity that was unconscious as a white person, as a privileged person, was actually causing suffering that I wasn't aware of. And a huge amount of opening to a very profound sense of belonging, like true belonging, when I started realizing how it had kept me apart, how it cocooned me. So I'm just taking more of what you're saying about.

that we really need to pay attention. Yeah. Well, you know, it's really interesting because in the book, you know, and also in my previous work, I've really talked about how relative identity is an expression of trauma, right? Because it takes us so, it's a misunderstanding of who we are. And we get stuck in that misunderstanding, creating meanings that come, you know, at the, this privilege, you know, and the harm and violence and manipulation of so many people,

you know, in other identity locations. But specifically, even talking about whiteness, right? Whiteness is an expression of violence that's been normalized. I only know that because I, you know, embodied as a black person, I sit at the other extreme of whiteness, you know, and I can feel the harm that whiteness has created for me and my ancestors, you know. will continue to create into the future from my descendants, right? And then you say, oh, but this is normal.

But then when you hear people say, no, actually, your normal identity location is actually supported by the violence against me and my marginalization and erasure, right? It's the same thing with being cisgender as well. Like, we think this is normal, right? And that comes at the harm of our trans community, a non-binary and gender expressive community. Right. And so, yeah, there for me is suffering and always thinking that where I've been put

is where I need to stay when, in fact, my goal is to get fluid and open. Right. And to begin to welcome who I can become when I let go of holding so desperately to someplace I've been put by systems and institutions, right? You know, what you're saying, you have a term that I've heard before, and you really bring it alive of spiritual abolitionists. Yes. Which is like all, you know, abolishing all the layers of our binds and our chains,

obviously the more overt ones, but subtler and subtler, so we're truly free. and you write beautifully about Harriet Tubman who coming into the collective consciousness more and more these days want to read you one to all those that are listening just one let me show you what I'm reading from first

this is the new saints and I just love the cover and I kind of dress to match with it. So you know it's a beautiful book So, okay, Mother Harriet, as an awakened bodhisattva, knew the real freedom is realizing the essence of everything. And to experience that realization, our abolition practice must be also a spiritual practice in which we ally with the unseen world of beings who are working alongside us to get us and everything free.

I can hear Mother Harriet now saying that if we ain't praying, we ain't serious about getting free. Yeah. Yeah, you have to name what you need. And a lot of us aren't naming that our deepest desires actually to transcend the causes and conditions of suffering. And that has to be expressed as prayer as aspiration, you know, but it has to be felt also as a deep longing. You know, for me, the longing to get free is so much a part of the spiritual abolition work, right? And my spiritual abolition work is, again, rooted in anti-slavery abolition, right? And for me, Harriet Tubman and Saternity True, Frederick Douglass, and so forth, you know,

they really embodied the spirit of spiritual abolition, you know. But I think sometimes, and this is an issue that I'm trying to uncover more and more in my work is to help people get clear about why they're practicing Dharma and meditation to begin with. I think that's really important because a lot of people are like, yeah, I just want to feel better. I just want to be more comfortable. I just want to be happy. Right. And for me, I never had those intentions. Like from the get-go,

Dharma promised complete liberation from suffering. And that's why I signed up. You know, it's been great, right, to feel more comfort and more belonging and more expansion and spaciousness and happiness and joy. That's absolutely happened. But my goal has always been to transcend suffering itself and return back to who and what I am,

you know, being this expression of a Buddha. right that's where i'm trying to go but that's a hard hard goal right that's that's the toughest agenda um for us to aim for but it's really the only agenda really to go for because everything else is just an illusion even comfort and happiness are fleeting the relative experiences you know so when i talk about spiritual abolition i'm talking about cutting through everything and returning back to our most fundamental direct to natures, you know, with an emptiness and space in this luminosity or energy, right? I just, I want to remember that because no one deserves to suffer, right? And that's an important part of my ethic. No one deserves to suffer, right? You know,

we're all awakened. We just forgot. So, like, why should we be suffering like this? Right. You know, And so, yeah, I'm just like, I want to go all the way. Like, I bought into it. And I'm like, I'm going to do it. Right. So part of what the takeaway on that is for me is that the real energy that liberates us is the longing to be free, that we're longing for it. It's like if we know what most matters, then we get carried to us. it, that energy carries us home. And the challenges we tend to fix on lesser outcomes, just out of

habit, we fix on more surface outcomes. So it seems like the real powerful inquiry is what most matters to your heart. Is it really that you care about? And you talk a lot about awakened care. I mean, you have a beautiful job with that. You know, how? it really has to do with de-centering the self, moving to weak, really, really caring. So I thought maybe just to ask you to speak more about that. Absolutely. Awakened care was something that I really wanted to develop as an accessible way for people to really get into what it means to really care in a really profound way. not kind of like a surface care, but a deep care, deep tending to, right?

And in general, this book is an expression of the bodhisattva tradition, which is the Buddhist saint tradition. And the Bodhita is the state, the awakened state of the Bodhi'etha, you know, the awakened heart mind, clarity, deep love, deep care, right? And as I was really moving through the book and I said, okay, these are just terms that we've used over and over and over again in Dharma books. But what is a different way? And I began to think about Bodhita.

And the first question I asked myself, how do I experience Bodhita? Like, what is it for me? And I said, oh, it's love, this deep wish for people all beings to be free, but it's also a deep, profound acceptance of everything to allow, the phenomenal world to be, and then choosing how to respond to the phenomenal world in a way that feels caring, right? So that was love. And then compassion for me is really the work of getting free from suffering, right? It's connecting to our suffering, the suffering of others and saying, okay, no more. Let's get out of here. And of course, you know, the Buddha Tara, you know,

is for me the core practice around compassion. Like in compassion, I think, it's just fierce. It's direct, right? But also, I said, there's joy in this as well. Like, I am so deeply appreciative for this opportunity to care, right, and to help people get free. And to choose a path that's helping me to get free. So I'm, like, so excited about that. There's gratitude and joy. And I use gratitude to get into joy in my practice as well.

And, of course, emptiness, right? Like this is only possible because everything is arising out of the state, you know, that's malleable and shapable and boundless, right? And that we can only get excited about liberation because it is possible to do so. You know? And so I was like, okay, all of these together combine into, yes, this profound kind of care. for ourselves and for others, but an awakened care that really takes into account that this is leading us to ultimate liberation.

And this is just, again, you know, a way that I'm just trying to, like, relinquish, you know, some of these terms to get a different lens into it, you know. And so, and I, in my practice, you know, it's about streaming. and brating all of these energies together and to begin to awaken a deep concern for everyone, including ourselves, right? And that takes us into the places that we traditionally have bypassed or run away from, you know. So this is energy. This is a state. This is like, this is what we use to take us into really hard work. And this is what I rely on, you know, as well. a wake of care.

I can't even do the hard work unless those different flavors of tenderness. Exactly. It actually softens things enough so we can begin to face and embrace what's most difficult. And I love the way you bring out the different flavors of care. It's love. It's also forgiveness and compassion and me and emptiness. So you say that the starting place or one of the, of the important starting places is that we have to be able to bring it inward to our own being.

And like you, I mean, you describe it as it starts with this unconditional acceptance. I also feel like if we can open the door only by accepting what is, and then that naturally will turn into the tenderness of love to be who we are without judging, without policing, etc. And so for so many, Lamarad, you know this as well as I do. That's the big stopping place. It's like there is so much resistance to caring for our own being. Yeah. So I kind of wanted to ask you to speak on that just a little bit and also perhaps maybe just for a couple of minutes. Just maybe guide a little bit of a practice on receiving love. Absolutely. Yeah.

You know, I think what keeps us from practicing this, you know, as you talk about radical acceptance, you know, is the heartbreak, right? Because once we start actually telling the truth about what's happening, then we have to cut through the narratives that have kept us safe from the deep disappointment. Right. And for me, the deep disappointment is, yeah, this isn't. what I thought it was. Like, this world that I was born into, has taken so much work to understand. Right. And I have these ideas about freedom and equality and so forth,

which seems to be so disrupted. Right. And so instead of, like, continuing to tell myself a narrative to feel good, I just say, you know what? In order to really get free from these narratives, I have to start naming them and then let my heart break, allow myself to touch into the deep disappointment.

Right. And that begins to, of course, disrupt our sense of self, right? And we begin to change, right? And that's a journey that, I mean, it may, it's the roughest journey, I would say, in my practice and experience the heartbreak, right? To let go of the narratives and just say, no, this is happening. But, you know, because I've worked with so many activists, you know, and am an activist, you know, and train as an activist, I know that I can't really create the change that I need to see if I don't tell the truth about what's actually happening. Right.

If I don't tell the truth and I'm just creating more layers of narratives that have nothing to do with really disrupting the causes and conditions of suffering, you know, both politically, socially as well as ultimately. right so love is for me like again you know so important to to work with and to embody right and so a really simple practice that I can offer in the book and I've offered many kinds of practices around love it's just learning how to open to the love of the phenomenal world including the love of people and animals I just think the phenomenal world is all always trying to love us, including the elements, including the earth and water and everything, how can I just begin to open to that unconditional acceptance and feel that really awakened, you know, within my body and my mind and just sitting with that, you know. And a story that I tell in the book, or I tell in some book, But the story that I like to tell was that my real introduction to love came with understanding that love wasn't trying to erase anything, right?

It was about holding space for everything, including the woundedness, right? And that just really transformed my relationship to love as well. So in this practice, just this short practice for a couple of minutes, you know, I always, you know, invite you to practice, you know, this first kind of love, which is care for your body. Right. So just going into practice, I just ask my body what it needs, how it needs to be right now. And just allowing myself to take up space, right? To notice any tension, any holding on in places in my physical body. And just letting it go. We can use terms like relaxing as a lot of, well, but whatever works for you.

In my practice, my personal practice, I like to relax and open, you know, but often I say come into a position that feels appropriate for you, where we're just able to hold space for both the comfort and the discomfort for this period of practice. And just offering my body this permission for me is my first experience of love happening. right? Because we have to love ourselves enough in order to do the work of getting free. Right. We have to really believe that we're valuable enough to be free, that we're important enough to be free. So this is one of the reasons why practices like just self-love, offering permission to the body, just to surrender to open is really important.

And then I just begin to reflect. And I invite you to do this as well, to begin to reflect on maybe a moment in your life or someone really offered you profound love. And particularly that moment where someone just really deeply accepted you, really saw you, really helped space for you,

wasn't critiquing you offering feedback trying to police you or anything like that they just allowed you to be they saw you they empathized

with you they held space with you and for you and this can be from a person this can be from an animal any kind of being but just remembering that experience and allowing that experience to begin to first awaken within the heart center.

And so in my heart center, just feeling how returning back to this moment of experiencing deep love and care feels like something blossoming, awakening within my heart center. And I can imagine this energy as light, as soft light that begins to radiate through my body, are its warmth, beginning to radiate through the body. Again, whatever feels appropriate to connect you is fine.

And I'm just allowing this energy of receiving love from the spinner factor to really just fill me up, radiate through my body. And the practice is just to experience this. To experience this awakening love

and to allow this awakening love to even hold experiences of discomfort as they arise and as this awakens more and more in your practice I wonder if you can connect

to other ways the phenomenal world around you is attempting to express this deep love and care for you and towards you. And so, for example, I can feel the care of my house. As I sit here, it's protecting me from the elements, right, is providing shelter, and I feel deep gratitude for that. And I just continue to allow my home in this moment to care for me. I allow the seat that I'm sitting on to care for me as it lifts to hold my body. The air that I'm breathing, the oxygen that I'm breathing is caring for my body as well.

The clothes that I'm wearing are caring for me as well. They're keeping me warm and comfortable. So just getting curious and get opening to all the ways the phenomenal world is always trying to take care of us. And just sitting within that profound care. just for another moment. And so when you're ready, I just invite you just to shift your attention to your seat and just noticing the weight of your body and the seat rising to hold you.

Experiencing that anchoring, I now invite you just to bring some movements back into the body, some stretching, a few deep cleansing breaths. And just coming back into the moment. And so thank you so much for your practice. Thank you. That was, yeah, that was beautiful.

I was, I was feeling completely what you were inviting forward. And also knowing there are times that, you know, I'll be for myself but with others. And it's like there are no, there's this cutoff. from any sense of anything in the world, caring and loving, you know. And I know when that happens, what I'll do is feel the yearning to let in love and literally express it as a prayer. Like, please love the universe. And there's something about even when we're caught off,

if we can feel the longing for love, that is love in us calling out. and it helps to bring us home. And Lomrod, you speak beautifully about prayer. I mean, you've gone deep into prayer. Maybe just a little bit of, you know, any guidance you want to give those who might want to deepen in that practice. Absolutely. Yes, yeah, prayer is something that I've often struggled with and pushed away, you know.

And so I think in New Saints, it's been an invitation. for me to return back to why prayer is so important. But for me, prayer is about longing. And I just started really connecting to what I want to happen. Right. Like, what is it that I'm, like, engaging in prayer for? And so the energy of longing is now what drives my prayer. You know, like, we have to want something, right?

Of course, ultimately wanting to get free is a really, you know, great, great, you know, ultimate goal. But like, you just have to want things. We want people to be happy. We want people to be safe. And those are deep longings for me, you know. So I begin to feel that longing in my body. Like, and that longing isn't suffering. It's actually, it feels like something that's propelling me somewhere.

Like, it feels like energy is being shifted and directed, right? And the object of prayer, like, who are we praying to? Well, ultimately, we're praying into emptiness itself, right? We're shaping the phenomenal world around deep longing, and that's always what's happening, you know? And sometimes people are longing for harm and violence for others, and that's what's happened, you know? But when we start longing for people to get free, that really resonates, like, with the phenomenon, with emptiness itself. emptiness is trying to invite us back into relationship. So prayer moves us, you know, prayer towards emptiness, a longing for everyone to be free

moves us into a direct relationship with emptiness and things. And the universe and the phenomenal world begins to shape itself around liberation, yes, getting free. That's such a powerful, just right there, that thing, that when we're in touch with the pure intensity of what we long for, that energy actually shapes the world. And one of the things I notice more and more is that I don't think of suffering as a bad thing. I think of suffering as a message or a flag that in some way we are forgetting who we are. Absolutely. Absolutely. So suffering is part of our kind of evolutionary equipment to deepen attention. And then what you just described, we deepen attention. What are we longing for under that suffering? You know, it's like you can

use the word freedom and sometimes the mind can glaze over with the word freedom. There's some very deep yearning to be who we can be, to inhabit that wholeness, that emptiness, that love. And it's like when suffering drops us in, go right into the center of the longing. And it's utterly transformational. And one of the things that you have so many spots in this book, I really wanted to, you know, invite you to dive into. But one of them is the suffering of trauma and in your own unwinding, you dove right into the heart of trauma. and in your own unwinding, you dove right into the heart of trauma and you actually into the heart of generational collective trauma.

And you have a description of returning to the middle passage that was the most compelling story. And I wonder if you can speak to that just a bit to give a sense what it means to really dive right into the heart of the trauma. Yeah, absolutely. you know, in many ways it's like going to hell. You know, whatever hell is for us. Like the one experience that we're always running away from, always avoiding, that one kind of deep hurt, right, that has shifted everything else since then, you know.

And for me, you know, the middle passage from my ancestors really were, was the, the, the first woundedness from which, you know, trans-historable trauma for a lot of black folks, um, descendant from enslaved people really, that's what our trauma is really rooted in the middle passage. Um, and the, the capture and the subjugation of Africans within vessels, right, packed away like cargo, sailed across these, you know, the oceans. going to different countries, islands, and so forth, for perhaps Monson ends. And what was that like, right? And so with the support of ayahuasca, the plant medicine, ayahuasca, it really helped me to go back into this experience and to really metabolize both my personal trauma and collective trauma.

And I didn't, of course, metabolize all the collective trauma because that's something we all have to do. But I was able to move through the trauma that I was holding on and self-identifying with. Right. I talk about this in New Saints. I also talk about it in a collection called Black and Buddhist, which was, I think, released about two years ago now. And I talk more in more detail in my essay in that anthology. But yeah, for me, it's like we have to figure out where the root of trauma is and we have to return back. And we return back to figure out who we were before the trauma.

Right. Like it's like you have to get an experience of who you are outside of the experience. Right. And then you're like, oh, that's where I'm trying to get back to. like this trauma state has been normalized right and now and now I know that there's a different way of being and that's what I'm going to work for now you know um you're just that teaching alone of in order to know who you are beyond the trauma you have to go into the trauma and you're very very you hold it with a lot of compassion because you don't just say okay so just divert in your

trauma. I mean, obviously you have to create the containers of safety and sanity that allow us to do it in a transformational way. You have to train. Like this is like real training, right? And I think that's something that we have to take more seriously. You know, it's taken me many years of training to be able to finally have that experience where, yes, it was the worst experience. You know, it was the worst experience I've ever had in my life. Like it was the toughest thing that I've ever moved through. But I have the training. I had the support.

I have the container. I had so many resources and that's why it happened because I was ready, you know. And I had to call upon a deep, deep courage, right, to move through it. And that's, that courage is there for all of us, right? You know? Often people approach me. They're like, oh, Rod, you're so, you're so fearless. You're so courageous.

And I tell people, well, I just don't give myself a choice anymore. Like, I really have worked hard to gather the resources that I need to do this work. And I rely on those resources, right? And then I just call the courage. It's just a reliance on all the resources that I've gathered. The love and compassion of countless beings. You know, the care of my ancestors, the support of teachers and communities, right? My training and meditation and other parts of practice really just come together and I have what I need.

I just have to hold space for the suffering that arises and to understand that this is helping all of us get free. What you're saying in a way points to trust. Your training has given you enough trust in who you are and in what's possible when you open to. reality. Like, you know unequivocally that opening to reality is the way to go beyond the suffering. That is the way. And so that knowing, that trust gives rise to courage. And I think it's parallel to the process of forgiveness. Right. Or also, you have to go right into opening into the heart to have the heart soften and open so the armoring starts to dissolve. And you are one of the most brilliant people I know in guiding in the steps of forgiveness.

You have, in a very discerning way, created a sequence of steps that to me is psychologically and spiritually, deeply wise. So I want to again invite people who are listening. You'll find it in the new saints sequence. And just to, I'll just read one line that I think is. So kind of captures it. What is forgiveness? I want more than to move past being harmed. I want the offender to be resourced,

which means I want them to experience care and have what they need to be well. If they had what they needed, then maybe they would have had the capacity to hold space for themselves and others, reducing their potential to enact harm. So it's not just, you know, the letting go of, you know, the armoring. It's really caring about the offender.

It's a big definition. So maybe just speak a little on that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, that's come out of like many years of contemplation around forgiveness. And I talk about this in the book, you know, particularly about how, you know, we get pressure to forgive, like, because that's how we perform goodness. If we can just turn the other cheek, then we look really good, right? So in that way, I just felt like forgiveness

is really determined by the offender. It's about, like, making the offender feel comfortable, you know, instead of actually asking the real question, which is what do I need to do in order to heal, you know, and my first thing isn't to forgive, right? It's to ask myself what I need now, you know, how do I need to get safe? How do I need to resource myself? Who do I need to ask for help, right? Also, how can I forgive myself for being a victim? You know, like, self-forgiveness when you've been harmed, I think, is really new for a lot of folks. But I really just I found that over and over and over again in my personal practice that I just felt so much shame for being a victim, for being hurt. And I knew, I know that those are just messages, these cultural

messages from systems about how, you know, I'm supposed to be strong. I'm a cisgender man. I don't, I'm not supposed to be weak, blah, blah, blah. And I have to cut through that through self-forgiveness. It's okay. I'm human, right? We all hurt each other, right? And so taking care of myself and coming back into a space where I'm like, okay, now I have a space to actually consider the experience of the person who hurt me. And for me, the completion of forgiveness is the reinstatement of love for the person who hurt me. You know, I want them to have what they need. That doesn't mean that, like, people aren't held accountable,

but it means that, like, in the accountability, people are resourced, right? resourcefulness comes from being held accountable. But as an offender, right, we also have to choose accountability as well. You know, and that's a part of the healing process that we can't control, right? It's like, I don't know if the person who hurt me will take accountability, will choose that. But I want them to choose that in order so that they may actually feel care and restoration. right so they can reduce the harm and the violence that they experience for themselves and that they enact on others what you do in this to me points to like the most common bypass i ever see which is some idea of either

well i've already forgiven that person or they don't deserve forgiveness or in some way keeping the attention on someone else when the most difficult thing to do is to come into the reality of our own feelings of hurt and woundedness and hold a space of kindness for what's here, as you say, self-forgiveness, the self-compassion. People often skip that step. And without it, there are actually authentic forgiveness as possible until we have taken care of the wounded place. And so I think of it as it's unfair to think we should be able to forgive others because until we have had that kind of inner healing, our heart space can't really see clearly the other as another being who is suffering. When people are suffering, typically they're

suffering. We can't see that really. So I really appreciate how you put those steps together. And it kind of leads to the next, this is something I've been really wanting to talk with you about. There's right at the beginning a place in the book where you talk about the problem with veneration. And I feel like it's a very brilliant analysis of the violence of Christianity that people venerated Jesus and in so doing separated themselves from Jesus. Jesus was elevated and that put us low. that means there's self-hate for our imperfections. We project the self-hate on others and violence. And you have encountered your own experiences of what happens when there's veneration.

So you talk a lot about, well, just what a call to mind is this Serbian phrase that goes, be humble, you're made of earth, be no from the stars, you know. And it's like we forget that all beings are from the earth and that there's no inequality really. So when we put people above us, we cause trouble. And so I'd love for you to share your own experience with that and what you've learned. Absolutely. And I, you know, there's a lot of theology, you know, in the book. And for me, it's, you know, theology, Christianity is a root.

tradition for me. But I wanted to be very specific about how I talked about theology because I really wanted to start poking holes into or disrupting this experience of Christian nationalism. That's really, you know, it's like a tide, a tidal wave that's really like all over us right now, right? And to really get into the heart of that, you know, to get into this idea that like some how there's been this separation between me and the divide. And because I don't know how to deal with that, it turns into a real kind of self-hate. Right, like that I will never be good enough.

Right. And that self-hate is weaponized. So I see that so much, you know, in the world and our politics and all the anti-trans legislation, you know, the reversal of Roe versus Wade, all of this, everything that's happening is this comes out of this weaponizing of self-hate, you know, instead of doing the work of healing for myself, I'm just going to erase everyone and everything that reminds me that there's a freer way of being, right? So for me, that is how I had to heal from the years of growing up Christian and, you know, and it really started to inform how I returned back to a deeper relationship

with Jesus, with the Christian saints, you know, into my understanding of God as well that I offer in the book. As well, I just wanted to be free, you know, and I found my freedom and peace with Christianity through this process. And this is one of the reasons I went to Divinity School as well is I really wanted to study, like, the violence around religion, you know, and spirituality. Where did that come from?

And what can I do to continue my healing? And how bubbles to heal from this? You know. One of the most powerful elements of your book is you basically keep coming back to over and over again that, whether you call it divinity or essence, it is living through, shining through the source of all of us. It's not out there. Violence happens when we think that that beauty and that sacredness. is other than what we are. And then when we praise and venerated in another and then feel more diminished in ourselves. So you're, even the title, the new saints, it's really all of us.

We realize that. And so maybe as we're closing, I just sense if there's anything else you want to say about this whole process of realizing our potential as new sense. You know, I would say that for me, as we move forward into this period of apocalypse, and for me, apocalypse is about coming back into balance. We're severely out of balance. And so it's painful to come back, right? And so this is how I understand this period. But we have to really develop a new ethic right now, and that ethic is really about freedom,

Not necessarily reforming old systems, not trying to find comfort and systems that are crumbling, but to really start dreaming into a liberated future. What does that mean to live with people where our essential labor is just loving, you know, and being loved and resting, you know, and taking care of ourselves and practicing collective care with one another, you know, and for ourselves? Like that's the future that I am working towards, and I think that's the kind of future that Dharma is pointing us towards as well.

So we have to really become these new kinds of saints, where that is the goal of our work. It's this liberated future. That's a beautiful note to end on. And I again want to showcase the book because you're going to sing it on the shelves. And thank you, Lama Rod. It's, this is not the first time. You're one of the only person, I think I've yet had two conversations with on this podcast. And it's always really a pleasure.

So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.