Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 227: Race is Not Tangential to Meditation | Rhonda V. Magee

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Rhonda V. Magee is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and an internationally-recognized thought and practice leader focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law and social change work. Born in North Carolina in 1967, Rhonda experienced a childhood of significant trauma and challenge. Yet, she was gifted with the insight that through a life of caring engagement, self-development, and service with others, she could find a way up and out. She has dedicated her life to healing and teaching in ways that support others in a journey to wholeness and justice. A student of a variety of Buddhist and other wisdom teachers, including Norman Fischer, Joan Halifax and Jon Kabat-Zinn, she trained as a mindfulness teacher through the Oasis Teacher Training Institute of the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. She teaches mindfulness-based interventions, awareness, and compassion practices from a range of traditions. Plug Zone Website: https://www.rhondavmagee.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Work-Racial-Justice-Transforming-ebook/dp/B07PLDQFYR Twitter: @rvmagee Show Notes Page https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/rhonda-v-magee-227 Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, of course it is great to become better at meditation on the cushion to get to, you know, to have your practice improve over time. That's not the real point. As Sharon Salzburg, the great meditation teacher has said, the point of meditation is not to become a better meditator per se, it's to become a better person,

to get better at your life. And I often, for myself, describe it as just becoming less of a moron. And so the point is to get up from meditation from one minute, two minute, five minutes, 20 minutes, whatever you're doing, and then put it to test in the real world with other human beings. How you doing at the DMV? How you doing at the office? That's why on this show, we once in a while really try to dive into

what is, in my view, one of, if not the most tricky and contentious social issues in the United States of America and in many other countries in the world, which is race. And the takeaway for me from this week's guest is that race really is not a tangential issue to your meditation practice. It is the crucible in which you can test your meditation practice. And it's not just race, it's how do you deal with difference? It can be pigmentation, it can be chromosomal,

it can be ideological, no matter how homogeneous your, you know, from a racial standpoint, your environment may be, there's difference around you all the time. And how are you dealing with that, what kind of assumptions you're bringing to the table and can meditation untangle things in a useful way for you. So Rhonda McGee is a professor of law at the University of San Francisco.

She's been on this show before if you want to hear about her fascinating upbringing. Go back and listen to episode 124. But in this show, we're gonna talk about her new book, which is called The Interwork of Racial Justice, Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities through Mindfulness. And we talk about whiteness, what it's like to sort of wake up to whiteness

both as a white person and somebody who's non-white. We talk about something that I think is fascinating to discuss, and we have discussed before in this show, the dis-utility of shame when looking at your own biases, practical ways to use meditation and mindfulness in these often incredibly painful and awkward conversations about race. We talk about some of the trickiness, even among the trickiest issues, even among people who are really committed to this work. Where is the line between political correctness and what the Buddha would call right speech? We also talk about predatory listening and cancel culture. So we really cover a whole range of hot button issues and are really thoughtful

and I find incredibly practical meaningful way. And also, Rod is just super fun and interesting. So here we go. Here's Rhonda McGee. Great to see you. Great to see you too. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. You're already laughing and smiling. We're going to be talking about tough stuff. So that's a good sign. Yeah, it's life. Yes. Yeah. That's a useful thing to say, actually. I can't believe I'm going to ask this question. I've tried never to ask this question,

because it's a cliché question, but here we go. Why did you write this book? Ah, mm. OK, I think this book actually kind of wrote me, you know, since I think I've been muck-weck working toward the content of it for many, many years. You know, this is my 21st year teaching law in San Francisco and teaching all those years I've taught, you know, traditional courses like Personal Entry Law and Insurance Law, immigration, but I've also intentionally taught courses that invite us to kind of come around,

gather around the campfire and look at how race and racism intersect with long legal history and our own lives actually. And I think in the course of that, I certainly , number one, started relying very consciously on my own inner work to support that kind of outer work. So I was very intentionally relying all those years on my own mindfulness practice. And then at a certain point, I realized I needed to try to figure out how to bring that explicitly into the classroom to be of greater support to my students. And then not just into that classroom, but just into the legal conversation more generally. And so I just began exploring with that.

And that was way back in 2003, two or three. And then I found the network of other people who both in academia generally were interested in bringing this inner and outer work together for service and work in the world for a more refined 21st century way of thinking about what it means to be an educator human being on the one hand, but also in law, in particular, because if you think about law, it's just this profound enterprise aimed at trying to, as best we can, create a structure for holding difficult conversations and dealing with difficult issues that can help the society cohere over time. It's so funny to say that

because I think of lawyers as the people who do like the annoying super detailed contractual work that I really don't wanna do and that I don't even wanna talk about with them. I understand that. And yet, the purpose of that is to kind of facilitate the work that you wanna do in the world that you know when it helps.

Right, so it's, yes, I understand that. And set the rules of the road for me and my employer about what I'm expected to do in the world that you know and they help. So it's yes, I understand that. I said the rules of the road for me and my employer about what I'm expected to do and what they and what I can expect of them. So absolutely if you widen the lens just a little bit. This is what we do. As a law professor I get to widen the lens a little bit and help, you know, help us see that the big questions and the big functions, if you will, of something that seems pretty mundane often, you know, the elements of the negligence cost of action, duty-breach causation and damages. Like how that really, that particular, as one example of what law is trying to do, is

really a way of looking at what is sort of the best we can offer as a society as a means to support resolving conflicts that just occur when somebody unintentionally injures another person. This is what we got. You know, and it's iterative. We try and you know, iterate on it over time. That's what the common law system was about changing as we need to take into consideration changes in the culture, changes in our sense of what right and wrong is, what's the right way to deal with a particular kind of suffering,

changes over time, whether or not to cognize or recognize a certain kind of suffering, changes as society does. So the beautiful thing actually about law for me is that it is this human effort and human project that is aiming toward a kind of perfection, if you will, making the best of what we have in response to conflict, which is inevitable in human community. And so for me, this book was about bringing to that conversation and to that profound human project, something of some tiny business or something of what I've been of some tiny bit or something of what I've been learning as I've been working to bring together this contemplative practice set of commitments that I call mindfulness, bringing that together with the particular part of law that works at the intersection of racism

and racial injustice. As it intersects with class and gender and sex orientation and all the other sorts of isms and schisms of our time, but for me, just working on that over time gave me a lot to do, but also gave me a certain way of holding these complexities that certainly helped me sustain in the work. Frankly, I had a moment where I was going to leave law because I felt like if I couldn't do it in a way that was much more holistic, maybe I shouldn't be doing it.

So it was partly me feeling my way to a sustainable way of doing this hard work, but also just feeling like, okay, it's helping me. I can see my students are suffering. I can see a lot of suffering in the world around this, that if it's helped me, maybe it might help somebody else around race and how we respond to racism, racial justice questions around the role of law and all of that, which has been, frankly, both perpetrator and hope, right, it holds itself out as being the pathway to some sort of resolution. But on the other hand, if we look historically at the role of law, it's been, you know, people rightly point to it as really one of the kind of core forces of oppression.

The codifying it. Codifying the injustice. Exactly. Cautifying it. Cautifying the injustice. Exactly. Cautifying race. Cautifying racial hierarchy at every level. Three fifths. Three fifths right in the Constitution. And so many it's three fifths, fugitive slave clause.

So many different places where compromises were made right at the founding, right? So we move from the luting beautiful language of, we hold these truths, the self-evident and the declaration of independent, all men created equal. But this project of trying to expand on the promise of the declaration and the founding documents, expand on the promise that's implicit and the founding documents, expand on the promise that's implicit in all of that in ways that really include more and more again and again, more and more people. So, yeah, so there's a way that then, for me,

the struggle was, I love this work of trying to be in these rich conversations around the campfire about who we are as a society and how we resolve this or that. And really seeing how law can get, can really literally in ways that really create a lot of pain and suffering. The law itself can be that vector of oppression. And so that complexity of that seemed to me to call for a much more profound engagement with it,

not just cognitive, not just the intellectual project of, what people think of law as memorization, think like a lawyer, argue certain skills, all of that, but another level of awareness that for me, mindfulness and the allied disciplines, the study, you know, with teachers, the community of Sangha, if you will, the kind of being with other people, what we call it, Sangha not, who are also working toward being more present in their daily lives and working, living with awareness. All of these different aspects of mindfulness practice just seem so for me, critical to me being able to stay with the complexity of trying to work in law and trying to make a difference through law. I was just talking about this with your friend and colleague John Kabatzen, the legendary meditation teacher, who was talking about his own, who I was interviewing him, who's talking about his own struggles with, you know,

really waking up to whiteness. Yeah. And I had the thought that I suspect there, and we talked to him, I talked about this, I suspect there are maybe people out there, particularly white people who listen, who see, okay, we're dancing, doing another episode on race, and may scan that, it may scan to them as

Important but not necessarily central to their own meditation practice. Yeah, and that's another reason why I wrote the book Actually because my view is as I you know Listeners I was able to hear the last part of this conversation you were having with John As I said in. Yeah, it's just for the record. I just finished recording an episode with John. Rhonda was in the next room and could hear the conversations. Yeah, so, you know, definitely this piece about, on the one hand, race and racism, whiteness,

different ways of kind of being with the fact of race in our lives, can often seem like a tangent to what we think of as mindfulness. And yet for me, that in and of itself, that we think of it that way, is an indication that we're dealing with, you know, the legacies of racism, as it's shown up in what we call mindfulness, because in fact, you know, if we're talking about being aware of all that is, and we know race and racism exists, and has, you know, not been a minor factor

in the construction of what we call this American experience and all of that that and our identities, whether we are consciously thinking about that or not. If we know this and if we want to be more aware in our lives, the fact that what we call mindfulness has somehow not centered on this is an indication that it's grown up, it's through the lens of whiteness, it's grown up through the lens of a piece of racialized experience. And this is not meant to create a sense of shame

or blame or it's just to wake up to what we're looking at. And so for me, because I, you know, felt during the over the years that I've been in this beautiful conversation and community around my almost practice and working with John and others, as John was indicating in this conversation with you, I come in, racialized as an American terminology as a black woman, racialized and cisgendered black female,

grown up, born in North Carolina. And I always say it, because I think it matters in 1967. So this is my 52nd year on the planet. But born in 1967 in segregated North Carolina, where, you know, the legacies of this history that we've been talking about were just not abstractions. Right, the town was still quite segregated. My kindergarten that I school class that I went to in 1972 had not been desegregated despite the fact that I went to in 1972 had not been desegregated despite the fact that Brown versus Board of Education had come out,

you know, really by that time a generation ago you could say in the 50s. So here I, you know, for me my own experience made it very clear that, you know, race and racism and that quote unquote history was just still with us and still structuring opportunity in profound ways. My grandmother, who I think of as my first kind of contemplative teacher, by the way, born in 1906 in North Carolina, 1906, the early 20th century, such a clear period of like the re-institutionalization of, or the re-instatement of, or the restoration

of white supremacy following the Civil War and that brief moment of possibility that we call reconstruction. So from the latter part of the 19th century into the early 20th, they're really for black people like my grandmother and grandparents and the people that I, you know, sprung from in a real sense. This was a time of like profound racial oppression where, again, all of the kind of promises of the reconstruction have been pulled from the bottom of, you know, the foundation that people thought we could stand on. My grandmother was able to go to school to the second grade.

Again, very deeply in that kind of working class, almost like, you know, P&H kind of, that playing basically the same role in society that she would have under a slave society and my grandfather as well. So picking tobacco in North Carolina from much of their lives. And then by the time I come along in 1967, my grandmother is cleaning houses

or cleaning one house again and again, seven days a week. This one home, which again, you know, if we own homes or have our own home right now, we realize you don't actually need somebody to clean from nine to five every day. That's a way of maintaining this cast, this racialized cast.

So my grandmother's life then, I grew up watching her find a way to center herself before she went off to do that work. She didn't call it mindfulness, but of course it has so much in common with what we do call mindfulness. Deep commitment, discipline of becoming aware, being with oneself as a ground for how it is that one lives whatever circumstances present themselves to us, relates to whatever shows up.

So in my mind, that's one of the reasons that she could get up in the morning, do that practice, get us off to pretty school, and school wherever we needed to go at the time, and then go and do this work, but do it in a way that didn't cut off her ability to have heart, to care for even the children that she had helped raise in this one family over the years as one example. And then it also, I could see, gave her a sense of her worth such that she could go out and be a member of the community. She had been called to the ministry herself, actually.

So she's cleaning houses on the one hand. She's also helping teach and support sort of spiritual, just sort of getting by, if you will, with backs up against the wall, helping people get through difficulty. So seeing my grandmother whose whole life had been like really limited by the ceilings placed on people like me by this system of white supremacy and racial capitalism, frankly, that depended and still does on ways of systematically kind of limiting the pie, keeping certain people out so that others can have more. So because I was very, very, well, I was formed in that. Finding myself eventually fortunate to come along when I did middle of civil rights movement in a sense, therefore a beneficiary of changes in law that would enable me to be here with you. I could go to school at the University

of Virginia, which was not a place created for people like me, whether a female of any race, certainly not black female. But to go to school at the University of Virginia, take three degrees undergrad, sociology masters and law, it did serve in the military, you know, became a lieutenant in the military in the army. I did a lot of different things to kind of take advantage of opportunities that my people had not had before in my generation, frankly. And yet, it was always clear to me that in moving into these places where people like me had

previously not been invited or included or given access, in fact, had been systematically denied excluded, prevented from benefiting from. It was just sort of clear to me that in those places of opportunity, there was a kind of unawareness. There was like a, you know, it was his own kind of bubble. And so, you know, W.E.B. Du Bois, that kind of, they call him the towering, kind of social, public intellectual of the 20th century, and certainly a person whose work has helped us

over the years understand race and racism in this culture. He talked about race and the color line that line separating really whites who were systematically privileged under our system for so long, from everybody else in different ways. That would be the problem of the 20th century, the negotiation of that line, and the query rather, it's still the problem of the 21st. But really, he was also, I think, instrumental in helping us see that being embedded in context where these sorts of trainings and conditionings and barriers and opportunities are so deeply infused in the kind of, the air we're breathing, the water we're swimming in, that we almost can't

see, creates a kind of consciousness. And you know, for him, and particularly talks about the dual or double consciousness that comes when you're navigating. You're moving from one world in which is very clear that you are not in the other, but then you're moving into that other. So you're becoming kind of a code, switcher, right, to use that language, or somebody who can kind of see through different lenses. I can operate in the white dominant world.

I can operate in my community of origin. Absolutely. And exactly. And that is becomes an invitation and something in a time that I grew up in. We were sort of giving this opportunity to operate in the white world. Certainly, I wanted to take advantage of that

in a certain sense. I wanted to take advantage of that in a certain sense. I wanted to, to the degree, it would alleviate some of the basic pressure against basically being able to make a living and take care of all of that. So there was this opportunity place or dynamic around it. Like, yes, there is going to be this invitation to go into this different kind of world, succeed in that world as best as possible. We can do these things. And frankly, I think for people to succeed in America,

no matter where you're from, no matter what you're culture of origin. This has been the kind of a hidden piece of the dynamic. It's like, where did you come from? How do you fit in from wherever you came, wherever you were people came, right? Because not all of us were immigrants from somewhere, but most of us were, if we go trace it far enough back. So this process by which we find our way in the American context has for all of us actually

involved some kind of navigation around racism and race and fitting ourselves in. But if you're in the dominant kind of white racialized project, if you were a racialization project, it can be, it has become kind of hard for people to see the operation of it because it is dominant. What do you mean by racialization as a project? So, that's what you mean, but it races a construct. It's not actually a biological fact. Yeah. And it's a construct, it's being constructed in different ways

and different places in different times. And the, in sociology sometimes, forgive me for using some cliches or some, you know, some language that is more germane to these professions. But in sociology, this term racialization and thinking of it as kind of a social project by which we create race, races, the felt sense of what race is, right?

Often without acknowledging that that's what's going on, right? In fact, almost never acknowledging that that's what's going on. But just as a legacy of our culture and the ways we've been given to think about who we are, who matters, who this country, what this experiment is supposed to be about. Again, often implicit, not usually explicit, but sometimes explicit. And so the projects of racialization by which something called race has been created and maintained and giving meaning and giving life, you know, are operating on all kinds of different levels.

So again, go back to what we were already named about the kind of structural inputs, puts of this that come from law, right? The Constitution alluded to the different terms in the Constitution, but then right after the Constitution the very first immigration law, right? The 1790 immigration, the Immigration Act of 1790 in that very first immigration law whiteness is privileged like so as a basis for becoming a naturalized citizen in the US. And many of us aren't aware of that. Those of us who are aware of it haven't been given a lot of support for thinking about what that has meant historically

and what that might mean for the challenges we face today, to look at the fact that we, you know, and the one breath created this constitutional democracy that at least created a possibility of rights being expanded to all, but it was clearly not at the founding meant to extend to all of us, and to just to underscore it, like the very first Federal Immigration Act makes clear that whiteness is a prerequisite for becoming a naturalized citizen. So this is 1790. We're still in the period of slavery and enslavement.

Then we have the Civil War, of course, in the Reconstruction Amendments, right? By which we kind of remake the entire constitutional project to actually abolish slavery with the thirteenth, except, of course, if you're committed a felony, so we know we never really abolish slavery, but in a way. Because a enormous number of often black males were locked up for crimes either. They didn't commit or that maybe shouldn't have been felonies or shouldn't have had the sentences they had and then we have now the prison industrial.

Exactly. So there's a way in which we have legacies that were built into the 13th Amendment, frankly. There's a great documentary called the 13th by what is her name, the woman who directed Ava. Ava DuVernay. Yes. And it's on Netflix. Exactly.

So people want to see more about that. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Yeah. So the 13th, great, beautiful, ending, volition slavery in a way, but also not entirely. 14th Amendment, we all know. Food, the great maybe project of ongoing liberation and aspirational kind of freedom making for us, giving us the equal protection clause that is enabled everything from the women's rights movement

to the LGBTQ plus right beautiful set of rights and movement, that has come with the movement for liberation, for sexual orientation minorities. So the 14th Amendment, again, like crazy, tremendous way of sort of saying, this is kind of a different project now, at least creating the possibility for radically different levels of inclusion, happening right after the Civil War, and then the 15th Amendment, the right to vote. But of course, we all know that though all of this happened

again, 18, you know, 65 to 1877, who, or right around that time period when the reconstruction ends, those beautiful promises with these new amendments that could have re-constituted us in a certain sense. We're kind of shut down. And they were shut down kind of intentionally by the white dominant forces that continued to control the Supreme Court on the one hand, the Congress,

the executive branch on the other. And so we had to have a civil rights movement to say, come on, these amendments actually did mean to change things such that we would include more and more of us in this constitutional experience. But that's always been such a contested truth. And the dominance of whiteness and of white experience has made it all just that much harder for us to engage with because again, and this is where mindfulness can come in because if this consciousness is hidden, if the experience of the kind of racial specificity of experience is not named. If we don't see that if you know Congress is almost entirely white for most of our history, if the presidency is almost entirely white, just to speak about

the race and leave the gender aside for a minute, we're not, if we don't see the Supreme Court, right? We're not able to really think about that as a white specific view of all of these things. As opposed to a more, we've been given the think of, you know, whiteness is almost like racism. Like that's the human experience. And what we're trying to see more clearly, and what I think mindfulness can actually help us see more clearly, is that that's the confusion we've all raised, been

raised up in. It's literally confusion. It's literally a kind of ignorance to think that these kind of so-called racial institutions don't have racial specificity. Racial specificity that is born of the dominant racial identity and experience of those who succeed in those systems. So if that's been true for law and academia, as it has been, mindfulness, of course, as well. It's another institution that's kind of grown up in the society created by beautiful human beings, eye-frensing yours that we love,

but who, again, as a legacy of our time and our culture and our history have been disproportionately, the leaders of mindfulness disproportionately white. Look at the roster of mindfulness, disproportionately white. Look at the roster of guests on the show. You know, we do our best. But not good enough and it's biased a part of that. Absolutely, bias is part of the human experience. The structure, but...

It's a structure because I think we've had a structure in this culture where the luxury, what I think has been wrong, we've viewed as a luxury, in fact, is a human right to explore the mind and train the mind, has been one that was available mostly to white hole food shoppers. And again, I say that with no judgment because I like to joke, I am a white hole food shopper who lives on the upper west side. So no judgment. I think shame is a really pernicious thing to introduce into this discussion. But anyway, carry on. I do think yes, the whiteness does carry on. You were about to say, you were about to talk about the role of whiteness in the

mindfulness community. It's true, right? So thank you for just naming what're just named because again, the shame piece is part of what gets in the way of us naming what it is that might be seen here. And so it is important to kind of, this is again where mindfulness can come in, really to help us just open up and cultivate the capacity to just see what there is to be seen, putting aside judgment for the, at least for the moment, long enough so that we can really better apprehend and relate with greater purposefulness and intentionality with what is. So for me, yeah, mindfulness is an incredibly useful practice

for waking up to these realities. And again, I do think that the opportunity, if you will, to understand how deeply embedded we all are in a racialized world. It's something that mindfulness is really perfectly attuned to support us with, but it hasn't been presented that way because we've been so deeply embedded in a racialized world. We can't see it. It's often used, I think you talked about this too, the fish can't see the water.

Exactly. Just as a resource for white people, I've mentioned this before on the show. There's a podcast, it's called Scene White. It's recommended to me by a former guest on the show several. Multiple appearances on the show and also a very popular teacher on the 10% happier app, 7A, Salaci. Really recommended I listen to this podcast. If you want to find it, the podcast itself is actually called Scene, S-C-E-N-E, Scene on Radio. And so that's the name of the podcast you search for that that and up will come a

couple of series they've done one is called seeing white it's called men so the host is a man a white guy who has looked at whiteness which was naming a thing that I think most white people aren't even really aware of white because as you said before I think white people think of themselves as the absence of race not consciously but subconsciously. And then he also did something about mailness, which is both of them are excellent. It was interesting, because I think I've said this too

on the podcast, so I apologize for the repetition, but I shared it with the entire staff at nightline, and the white people on the staff were freaking, they were like, this is so good. And then my black colleagues were like, there is nothing new here, right? Of course. So, but that in and of itself is a good data point, right?

Because this is something that white people need to wake up to and why, just to get back to the beginning of the conversation, why I don't believe this is tangential to the project of waking up writ large, meditation, 10% happier, whatever you want to call it, is for all the reasons that you just pointed out, which is you're waking up to a fundamental, often unseen structure or set of structures within our society, useful because it's reality, and if we're engaged in meditation, we

purport to want to see it, it's reality and if we're engaged in meditation, we purport to want to see it, it's reality. And also because if we want to be useful and helpful in our world, if we believe in the other wing of awakening, one wing is wisdom, the other is compassion, then it's useful to see the structure so that we can be helpful. But it's also useful just at a much more down to earth moment to moment level. If you're interested in seeing all of your neuroses because that's what we do in meditation practice well try taking a look at whatever thoughts pop in your head around race and get ready to be humbled yes and this is true by the way for white people black people all of any

pigmentation in people because we're all racist because no I mean that because and this is not a kind of sounds controversial, but it isn't. If you know anything about the way we evolved, we evolved for bias. So this is why I think shame is so useless in this context because we evolved in a homogeneous environment where we're in our little villages and we needed to be able to tell the difference

between often dangerous outsiders and our own folks. And so we have bias. in our little villages and we needed to be able to tell the difference between often dangerous outsiders and our own folks. And so we have bias, we need to be able to tell the difference between a snake and a stick too. The mind is quickly sorting in an environment of lots of inputs. So go ahead and take a look at how your mind sorts. And you get ready to see all of the things you think about yourself. I'm minded and fair you are. And put that to the test by using mindfulness to see how you react. And what kind of judgments you come to upon seeing a face of a different pigmentation, whatever color you are. Anyway, I'll shut up.

No, no, thank you for referring on that because it's so again, bringing it down to Earth. It's in us. Peggy Macintosh who wrote a beautiful essay on white privilege, unpacking the invisible knapsack, right? So looking at whiteness and the privilege aspect of it that can come with white experience and other types of experience as well. But her essay, specifically on that, she also talks about how systems, how this is about not just about individual predilection

and individual psychology, right, which is the temptation in our culture, hyper individualizing it all. How am I? How good am I? What am I doing? And so therefore, again, to be sort of defended against the idea that we're all, that we have anything to work on because it can seem like a personal attack. And I do think it's very helpful then to think about the systemic structural pieces of this,

including whiteness as a construct and a structure, that all human beings who are brought into, let's say, this culture. I do know something about other cultures, but this is my culture. We're all invited into some kind of negotiation and relationship with whiteness, some sort of way of, so whiteness is, I think of it as not just about, a way of thinking about the identity of some racialized

people. Okay, so white identity is maybe a piece, it's a sort of venn diagram sort of thing happening here in my mind. So how one identify, if it identifies oneself through the language of race and in recognition of the fact that there's a racialization called whiteness is one piece I think of whiteness. Whiteness is also kind of this philosophical idea of who matters and who doesn't in a kind of a way, it's a legacy of white supremacy that has helped

structure notions of success, notions of productivity. That again, all of us, if we've been successful, have figured out how to navigate, even if we're not racially identified. So let me just stop you on that for a second because I think this is a lot there. First of all, I've always had some problem with the use of white supremacy as a phrase, because I hear that and I think of the people marching in Charlottesville.

Those are white supremacists. You use the term white supremacy in many academics, use the term white supremacy to talk about whiteness being the dominant culture. But I just call that out because you know, we can get into this. I think there are many reasons. What are the reasons why I can come back to shame and thinking about it in the context of political polarization and racial polarization that we're seeing in this country right now, is that shame shuts down reason, right? And disables people's ability. It seems to me based on no evidence other

than just looking at how it plays out in the larger culture and looking at how it plays on my mind. When I feel shame, I'm not defensive. And I'm looking for people to agree with me. And I'm not really thinking in the most broad, fair-minded way. And I worry that white supremacy is just like unhelpful in that context as a term. Anyway, but the point you were actually making there is that part of whiteness is this, let's succeed. I think what you're saying, I think what I hear you're saying, I want to draw you out on it. Let's succeed. It's kind of not quite satisfied with what's happening right now. I'm gonna add I need to get the next thing. That's urgency. Yes, the urgency Productivity allowed with capitalism, right? So it's kind of a but it's hard to pull that to a part. Yes

That a white thing or is that a human thing because that's a good question and and I and I because I've heard this critique of whiteness And I've always had this question of like, look, I look at the Chinese and you know, they seem pretty notwithstanding the nominally capitalist communist government, they seem to be adapting capitalism with the robustness. Is that because of colonialism or is there something innate to the human? I mean, the Buddha was talking about suffering being this, it had many facets, but one of the facets was, there's a hungry ghost in you that can never be satiated.

And he was talking about this stuff in the context of sub, in the Indians have continent, 2600 years ago, before I believe whiteness was that much of a thing in that part of the world. So I wonder about this critique. So I'll stop.. Oh, no, no, no, I love this. So I'm just going to say that we're going to in this conversation and only just be beginning to talk about all the things that we might write. I mean, we're just going to be getting to like the beginning, beginning of some juicy stuff. And because it is this rich, everything that we're talking about can be its own, you know,

seminar, you know, practice commitment. Because whether we call it whiteness or dominance, I mean it's whiteness because, in a sense, in this culture, the dominant class has been racialized as white. And all, you know, in the kind of capitalist structure, first with the clearing of the land, and on and on, all everything that we've built on top of it, has happened to benefit that dominant racial group. So yeah, I mean, it is a feature of maybe dominance, not only whiteness, but in this culture

that dominance has kind of, again, fused with this, been colored, if you will, with these notions of frankly whiteness. And so it is, I think I appreciate you kind of troubling the side, this kind of way of naming this as whiteness as such, as a kind of, because it can maybe be, it can, we might need to refine it, or we might do better with a bit more nuance around this.

But really, if we think about the patterns by which dominance constructs consciousness and recognize that that's a culturally and contextually specific set of processes and projects, we're in a culture and a context where whiteness has been white supremacy, the history of that legacy of laws and cultural commitments that said in every important institution, white matter most. That is what I mean by white

supremacy. It's like, yes, you see it in Charlottesville, but I wish we only saw it in Charlottesville. The legacies of this very deep commitment that we as a culture may, and we can point out, well, I've tried to, you know, in this conversation, we've surfaced some of the touchstones where you can say, well, here's an example of it, and there's another example, you know, in immigration law and constitutional law, and who got to go to university, Virginia, et cetera, et cetera.

There's so many ways that our culture just really gave itself over to white supremacy. And we know it. And so for me, it really is kind of useful to kind of be able to name that. And yet, as you point out, Shane, oh, again, a whole other seminar, a whole other conversation. I actually think rather than sort of, I think part of what we're up against is we don't,

we haven't really explored shame as much as we might because as you point out, anything that seems to get us anywhere near shame, threatens humiliation, threatens, all of the profound human neurobiological defenses against being rendered vulnerable to a sense that, you know, I don't matter and I'm worthless, right? All of the different ways we think about what shame does and humiliation does Come our risk Because of the way our culture has not seen the legacies of our history or has You know been resistant to just again again some of it is not conscious

I think the the resistance. But as if we don't see, as we've talked about before, the white specificity of all these things, then yes, defendiveness and defensiveness is predictable. Psychologically predictable is kind of a cognitive dissonance. Someone comes along and says, well, you know, whatever the place, University of Virginia is predominantly white and has the legacies of whiteness running all the way through it and mailness, of course, too. If you haven't been thinking about that at all, that can seem like a cognitively dissonant

thing. Why would you have been thinking about it because your whole life has been just in this, you've been in the water, you can't see it. And then somebody comes along and points it out to you, and you're like, resistant, defensive, and feeling shame, and feeling threatened, and feeling vulnerable. You don't want that.

And of course, you don't want that. But for me, really bringing mindfulness to these things we call, this complex of emotions that are touching around what we call shame is actually quite important. We could do a whole lot of work on that, and I think we should, to really be able to do this kind of work that we're talking about, really invites and calls, is calling on us as a culture, and as a mindfulness culture, to figure out how to relate to this complex

of emotions and reactivities that we call shame. How to relate to that with more skillfulness? Because for me, there's at least something to look at around neurotic shame, which is just about, anytime any of this comes up, I feel shame. It's not about me, not about what I've done, or on the one hand, I feel shame. It's not about me, not about what I've done, not about on the one hand. Versus a shame that might appropriately call forth inquiry around, what have I been not willing to see? What have I been not willing to do? Where are my responsibilities here?

The kind of shame that we has raised up to kind of feel like as a human being with agency and wanting to, again, as you point to do the compassionate wing of the practice, wanting to do less harm. How have I been not willing to see some things? Now, I don't mean to say that shame necessarily might attach to that, but some something, some element of quickening that says, oh, I actually have some work to do here. Maybe we want to call it shame. Whatever that word is. But so there's a way in which I think mindfulness can help us recognize the ethics of what it means to be alive. This idea of karma, I don't use that word very much. But if you read the teachings of the Buddha, this idea that our actions in the world are relevant. And to me, this is partly what we're talking about, the ethics of what it means to not

just become more aware, but to live with awareness. And to do that in a way that ideally I think minimizes suffering. That calls on us to be a little bit more robust, a little bit more, to have a little bit more what I call like fortitude or resolve or this deeper capacity, you know, when are kids anymore? To be able to turn toward things that really would otherwise trigger us, make us reactive, maybe threaten this same reactivity,

but rather than saying, okay, I can't go there, instead to say, actually, maybe I couldn't have gone there at a different point in my life, but I've been doing some work. And I probably can go, I can let a little bit more of this in, just enough to see where my own work, what my responsibility, what my right action here might be

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from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed

to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. You talk about doing the work. Yeah. And this book is not just for white people, it's for all people. It's for all of us. Right. For sure.

So what would the work look like? How does mindfulness help? Yeah. I mean, so I think it is. Just what we've been talking about as a part of it. Recognizing, accepting, investigating with as much non-attachment of just issues that rain acronym that is a famous teaching acronym in the work of mindfulness. Rain, R-A-I-N, as a way of of summarizing what it is in some sense.

Mindfulness, practice, and the allied disciplines is meant to give us in our world. The capacity to recognize, to see what's happening, to accept for the moment what it is without being at war with reality as some of our teachers have put it. Right? In other words, we might discern, it might come to some discerning judgment about what to do. But for the moment, we just wanna accept it long enough to say, this is actually a feature of this world that I might not have seen or might need to learn a little bit more about.

So recognize except I, the investigate piece. learn a little bit more about. So recognize except I, the investigate piece, pausing, taking in, expanding what might be called enough right effort to see where am I being reactive? What is, and what is the specificity of my reaction? Am I getting angry? Am I afraid? What's underneath this anger? Like what am I really feeling threatened by here? And what are the different moves I'm kind of subtly doing

that I might not have even been willing to, been able to see, or willing to see, or willing, able to name, or willing to name. What are the ways I might be not wanting to admit the kind of feeling state, the length, you know, what's happening underneath the reactivity? What's happening underneath you know, what's happening underneath the reactivity, what's happening underneath the resistance, what's happening underneath the denial. So recognize, except investigate, again, with as much compassion as possible.

All of it. Like, for me, that, who, that call toward compassion is the only really right. It seems like the only right way to be with all of this, because we didn't create this world. You know what I mean? Like we all inherited the world with all of these so-called projects going on with race and racism and sexism and right. Now, we're not responsibility for evolution.

Exactly. That too. And yet that is also, that's true, all that's true. And we do have some agency and we do do, right? So it's like this both-and. That radical complexity of it all. So to me, when you see the radical complexity of all of that, compassion is like other, you know,

others who've sat with these sorts of things over time. It's very clear to me, compassion is the only right response. Starting with ourselves. Starting with ourselves. Because of course we're going to, you know, flinch and out and feel, you know, when I see, for example, the way or have seen and do see the way that my own upbringing

train my ears for English. And so that when I moved to San Francisco from the South and suddenly found myself in the DMV or on Fillmore Street, having, you know, hearing people speaking languages that I didn't recognize in English, there was that part of me that was sort of like, you know, reactive. It felt a little bit of like, you know, is this, you know, is this okay? All of that. I'm not proud to say that those were some of the reactions I have had when thinking I was in one kind of place where one kind of language would be the What I would be what my ears would have to work with and to find myself like either having people speak a language That I don't understand and whatever can come up with that

Well, what are they talking about and are they talking about me and am I safe here? Whatever that is all of that I kind of got that honestly growing up in North Carolina and Virginia where in the particular places and that I lived at that time, we didn't hear a lot of different languages around us. My identity is tied to me feeling like I'm an open liberal, like I, you know, I don't, of course, I want to, I want to, I learned French, you know, I want to learn the languages. But am I a human being whose biology and neurobiology kind of makes me prefigure and cognitively predict what is going to be present and then react when something shows up that I'm that I didn't expect. Yeah.

So for me, the work looks like that. The work looks like recognizing, noticing. Oh, that, and it's very embodied, Dan. It's like, it's about being present to the body. Like, it's really literally a move that can happen. Like, when something shows up that we're not used to, that we weren't trained to see or trained to appreciate or trained to accept or be ready to open up to. And today, it comes up in so many different ways. It's, it's the intersection of race with gender and sex orientation and class and immigration status.

It's just, it's coming up all the time if we're willing to see it. And to see that that's what it is. We might not realize or be willing to name that. It's really kind of another legacy of being trained to, in patterns of dominance dominance and to relate to dominance and to, and I say relate to dominance again to invite inquiry around how all of us who want to succeed in this context are being invited to relate to dominance and patterns of dominance in ways

that imbibe and play it out. This is why these projects are not, the progress of racial justice, the projects of waking up to racism, the work of becoming more committed to minimizing harm in these areas is for all of us. Because again, you see it all the time. The mere fact that you hire cops of color doesn't mean you won't have not to pick on cops

but just the mere fact that you diversify any institution does not mean like by fate what we call in the diversity work, facial diversity just open the door and you look around the table and you see okay we don't have only whites here. Does that mean that the processes, policies, work of that institution will necessarily change? It's actually not that simple. We know that the system can select for people who look different but who have been trained

to succeed by imbibing and playing out practices of stuff. You're still fishing the same water. Yes. You're still in the larger cultural context. You are. And you might look a little different, but you know, the people in that place are still being rewarded for maintaining the status quo and maintaining those patterns of dominance

in oppression. But let's just, because you took us pretty far down the road in terms of, you know, where the rubber hits the road, what we can do to use our practice to explore all this. And you were talking about rain, the recognizing A is accepting or allowing, I'm investigating the N is, well, sometimes it's not identification, like, investigating the end is well sometimes it's not identification like some other words seeing that it's not you can't whatever's going on you can't really claim ownership. It's not really about you and we don't want you to make a new story like I am this whatever

I'm this white privilege I am this whatever it is. Non-identification holding it with some lightness, sometimes I'm not attachment as you sometimes, let's see, other nurturing, is another way people are thinking about the end these days. And for me, again, however you bring in that compassionate piece, I'm happy to put it there with the end, but in, right, this idea of like,

all of the rain process is to be held with a kind of commitment to being with the suffering that comes up when we have the wear with all, the steadfastness to stay in these difficult places of inquiry. So yeah, in can sometimes be about nurturing as well. So I think that's incredibly useful, but just to take even another level closer to sort of practicality, would you recommend that we, I mean, I've taken a, I took a course on race in the Derma taught in part by the aforementioned seven-day salizing.

One of the things they recommend was to sort of take a day or even a five to ten-minute section where you just really pay close attention to whatever thoughts come into your mind based on who's in front of you. Or what kind of practices that would even take this into the doable zone that you would you recommend? I love that you just name that and and you're asking me this question, because there are specific corrects, and of course that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book to help us think together about and elaborate different ways that we might wake ourselves up more to these things.

There's infinite number. Once you decide, I think the first and most important thing is to make a decision, have an intention to bring awareness to this aspect of our experience. Then there are, again, like anything else, there's so many different ways you can do it. I ask my students, for example, to take one of these implicit associations test, right, where you can look online and get at least a sense of the... Yeah, those are controversial. I know that conversation. Yeah, well aware.

And yet, I think it's even with the controversy. We're looking at worth being in that conversation, being in the conversation around how pervasive bias is and how we how again our brains are structured for bias as you put it before and how therefore as best as we try to become aware, it's a challenge for us as you know. It's an onion and it may make you cry. So different ways of really looking at bias and figuring out as best we can where we are biased. Practice for recognizing stories, telling stories, I think is very, very important in this book is very much about that actually. It's about normalizing a kind of contemplative story,

telling as part of the practice. So, does that mean like opening up about moments where you had a thought? You like it, like I just did, about like I'm on the streets of or I'm at the DMV and I hear all these languages and I'm like whoa, that's a kind of a rate, what I call a race story. That can be a... I'll give you one. Yeah. I don't know if I've told the story in the podcast before I may have but I last year I took my son to see Frozen yes that Norwegians yes largely I mean I think I'm gonna see the play thank you

for letting me know I'm like who else okay yeah so I took him to see the play I he'd already seen the movie with my wife and I took him to see the play. I had already seen the movie, but my wife and I took him to see the play. I worked for Disney. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a must. And in the play, in the first scene or something like that, or one of the first scenes, Elsa and Anna are prancing around the stage and then their parents come on. And the play, the parents are black. And my first thought was, who are these people? play, the parents are black. And my first thought was, who are these people? You're right. Yeah, what? Well, I don't, I couldn welcoming of it. And so yeah, the shame was all there. It's like how you told by yourself a bunch of stories about how racist I was. But that was like, it's interesting. I didn't invite that thought.

Right. So where does that come from? Right. And there's a quote actually that I'm talking a lot about, but was I think the automatic footer on her emails for a while, which is something like you're not thinking your thoughts, you're thinking the culture's thoughts, which is a quote from somebody,

who's named I can't remember right now. But I was like, yes, somewhere. Yes. That got embedded. Obviously, it's just confusing that, whatever raised their parents would have been if they weren't white, it would take you a minute. It's taking a minute.

But nonetheless, I went quickly to, they're definitely not the parents. Right, who are these people? Yes. So yeah, I mean, it's embarrassing, but it's also like, it happened. It happens a lot. It happens. I mean, and a version of what you just described can happen in a given day in America somewhere, where for example, a group of four people might show up, or even a couple couple for a reservation, but they happen to be of different races at a restaurant. So show up at the reservation desk, as has happened to me. As part of a group that is not monoracial, it can happen that the person behind a desk will look down and look up call for the party

You're here. We're here. They look down and look. They're still waiting looking for the party The party if it does not show up in that monoracial what I've been trained what the culture has trained me to see as the two people at a Top of table top right or the group before they're all looking for all walks of life is gonna happen It just takes a minute for people to realize these four people will be seated together and have dinner together, despite the fact that they're coming from these radically. So again, yeah, mindfulness is bringing awareness, creating some space for looking at what we know in our bones about how we are in this all the time. We are in these systems and the systems are in us as Peggy McIntosh did say, we are in these systems and they are in us.

So yes, these thoughts are coming up, unbidden. And again, what was the like in the body? That moment, that moment when they showed up on stage or that moment when, you know, we hear some language in beer like, wait, I don't know about this. I'm just using this as one example. Looking back in, what is happening in the body? Is important. It's such an important kind of source.

I've got it, folks, in doing these kinds of reflections, telling these kinds of race-story moments, you know. And creating more spaciousness around it, noticing if there's a bit of that shame, complex coming in, or whatever it is, recognizing, accepting, let's just create space where we can name that we know something about this. And through that, dissipate some of the kind of resistances

and kind of places where we get stuck and hooked and shut down and confused and willing to say ignorant. I'm thinking about a workshop where I was in conversation and inviting this kind of reflection. Often what I'll do is ask people, you know, what comes up for you when you're invited to look at race and mixed company, for example. Or to look at a resume. Think about the last time you saw a resume. Did you make any assumptions based on the name you saw?

Or when the email comes in? Or did you have a moment when you had a notion that this person was of one background and you learned that they weren't and what was going on there. So back, this is a way of also answering your question. What are the many different ways that we can sort of challenge ourselves to kind of break us out of the trance, if you will will of the culture's training about these things Invite that kind of challenge So in this one in session, which I was inviting that for the group had a young white man say I'm noticing here for the first time

That whereas up until this moment if somebody had asked me What it comes up for me when I see racism or think about race, I would have said, I don't see race. And I don't know anything about it. I haven't. White racialized man in his 30s. His report in that moment was, he was in the practice, the practice of the spacious, compassionate space for just looking at the very subtle ways that when this topic comes up, things start to happen inside.

Even if the face doesn't change, something is going on. What he was able to see in name was that whereas he traditionally said, I haven't seen it, I don't know, there was a movement in the direction of not seeing and not wanting to know, avoidance, which he hadn't really slowed down enough and given himself enough space to name and recognize. To me, on the one hand, that's like a very subtle thing. It's not like he's going out and changing the world. Right? He's not rewriting law, but that level of awareness and to be able to have us someplace where you can say,

this is true in my life, that most of my life I've said, I don't know anything about race is something I guess I got to turn and learn from other people in this moment. I realize I actively have avoided this conversation when it comes up I actively clench and move away To me to see that is an opening that is that can change a trajectory We don't know what follows from that. And so that, to me, is really how mindfulness can support us in the work. What about speech?

Yeah. So I think a lot about political correctness. Yeah. And I think there are really compelling arguments on both sides. How do you think about political correctness as it relates to the Buddhist concept of right speech, which is often described as, you know, say that which is true. And which is useful at the right time. Exactly. Good question.

I think you bring me the good questions here. I'd say them all for you. Thank you, Dan. Oh, I mean, every moment of this kind of work is an opportunity to be reflecting in a certain sense on what this means actually as a lived thing and living in some sense like whatever compromise, whatever way we're trying to make this real. Absolutely what you just described in terms of, you know, really trying to speak the truth and trying to speak in a way that, I mean often this idea of like not being

disagreeable is what can get into the conversation around. Is it right speech to kind of call us into conversation about these things? If it, well, this, again, specifically, you're talking about the intersection between political correctness, political correctness, this sort of way we have in this culture, sought to heighten our awareness of how language can do harm by almost sort of creating these codes of what we can say and what we can't.

And then on the other hand, right speech, which is a kind of a, I think, a more radical invitation to trying to be present with what is and speak the truth as best as possible. And sometimes that aligns with what we call political correctness and sometimes it may not. You know, it's more than I can really unpack in this moment, but what I can say is I do think that for me, everything comes back to, what am I doing this moment to seek to act and speak from the ground of being as clear as I can and seeking to minimize harm at the same time?

Or not to do no harm, as best I can. I want to be clear, I don't want to do harm. I might do harm, I know this. To live in the world is to do some harm. You destroy things, put our foot down somewhere, we're crushing the world. So, I mean, you know, there's got to be radical humility around it. Or else we can't do anything. We're gonna make mistakes. We're going to say things that will ruffle feathers, et cetera, et cetera.

But if we are, you know are willing to acknowledge when what we have tried and put into the world as best we can, from the place of wanting to speak the truth and not to hurt, sometimes it does, recognizing the difference between intent and impact, again, such an important feature of this work of justice. There is a difference between, I've tried, speaking the truth, I'm trying to speak rightly. Whew, somebody heard something in that that was hurtful. Humility and compassion for myself and for the other person

invites being able to hear, you know, and to create a space where we can reflect on what just happened there. What just happened there? And really, again, there's a whole set of teachings I write about them to some degree here around mindful communication because it's right speech and it's right reception or if you will. There's a piece of it that's about how we create some spaciousness around this beautiful but challenging project of human communication. It's like, you get, I often say you just have one person there that does a whole radical

opportunity for disagreement, but certainly any two people. The fact of our very different positionality, the frantically, I mean, it's like almost mind blowing the different paths that you and I, for example, have walked to this moment. I mean, I know that without knowing your whole story, you know that without knowing mine is true for any two people. And yet nevertheless, we come together, we use our words, we speak the same language, and we, in a way that to me is very point in and beautiful this effort to communicate and connect across these radically different bases of lived experience. I'd like to name that whenever I try to bring people together

for communication around anything. And so it does touch and concern this conversation about political correctness. To me, it's really just about, you know, the language has gotten caught up in the discourse around politics. But if you just kind of unpack what's going on there, it's an invitation to be intentional, and to be in an intentional and dynamic conversation, and a mindful conversation, a meta conversation about how we're gonna be with each other. It's always gotta have for me some element of that compassion.

So it does for me anyway, invite both intentionality and agency and recognizing there's some work for me to do to try to minimize harm in the way that I speak with others about these things. And in relationship with you and with others, I'm going to, you know, know that I might make mistakes. I'm going to ask for your holding of my imperfection, you know, with some kindness. And I'm going to be willing to offer that to you so that this can be a more robust space where you know You can mess up. I can mess up and Though we might need to do some work to repair

We can apprehend doing work to repair I mean, I do think that's there's a lot of brittleness That is like a legacy of some really well-intended, social justice work around these topics. A lot of righteous and self-righteousness, right? And it's both, I think. It's both, right, yeah. And for me, this is again,

why mindfulness and the broader project of, let's say contemplative, if not Buddhist, to speak to the traditions that I draw on most frequently in nowadays. The broader invitation is ultimately about freedom. And that for me includes freedom from even my own self-identified ways of seeing my wounds and seeing your relationship to me. Right?

I mean, it's like to begin a conversation about racial race and racialization is also to begin an opportunity for waking up and for a deeper human connection and for letting some things go actually and some healing and beginning again. And so for me there's a flow to that. There's an equanimity to that. There's loving, you know, there's all of the different, there's sympathetic joy. Right, all of the different abodes, if you will,

that are the kind of core teachings about what mindfulness might, how that might live in our lives. You know, we want, in a certain sense, everything that I write about in the field of racial justice and identity-based work around mindfulness is a pathway to waking up and a pathway to freedom and joy and equanimity and and love frankly so Yeah, that's really what it is and it that isn't about polyanna that isn't about bypassing It's and I smile sometimes when I say this people might hear this while sometime It is for me recognizing that and I would be remiss I would feel remiss if I didn't say this part

You know every minute that we're alive is a kind of gift. And yeah, we're gonna turn towards some of the harder, uglier, the stuff that can invite some shame in this conversation and gets us to, and my goodness, it could be otherwise. We could not have the privilege of having this breath. And on this earth, this radically beautiful planet, right? It's all there.

And to me, I don't, in the work that I do, it is an invitation to go into these hard conversations, but stay in those conversations from a place of opening up to the mystery of what it means to be alive, and to the responsibility we have to help each other walk each other back, you know, home when we get kind of lost and stuck in these more limited senses of what's here and what's now. I asked you a question and you answered it and then elevated it to a different place. I'm going to just go back down into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go down into it. Okay, it's in that political correctness. So I don't know that I have a view. I've done enough work to really know that I have a view, but I have just some shreds of shards of thoughts. So the best arguments I've heard for political pregnancy you kind of

articulated it's like this is what happens when the culture gets more heterogeneous and groups that it was easy to be rude to or dismissive of are saying no you can't call me that name out it's yes so yeah i mean that's right means i i see the validity to that argument and i also see the validity to the you know i don't have it forgive me everybody if i've got the poll numbers wrong here but i think that i

saw poll number something around like eighty percent of americans think political correctness has gone too far. And it touches on the sort of shame thing that it shuts down the more constructive parts of our brain. You know, once you activate the reptile fear-based part of the brain, the higher order of functioning of the brain, the rationalist, the rational component, the reasoning part

of the brain, just doesn't operate as well. And so, if we're in an environment where many of us are made to feel like we're just incorrigible, then it becomes hard to engage. And I think we're seeing that play out in our politics. I think you're seeing that play out in our politics and i think you're right and and so i do know people who worry that too much political correctness just

correct well the intention is is i think really a positive one i think it can have really negative outcomes and yet i still see the reason for to be careful uh... and so it so it's tricky.

It's really tricky. And then the one thing I'd say is that I really like what you talked about, the sort of common denominator here being used a big grandiose word, but it actually doesn't have to be used the word love, but love can be just defined in a very down to earth matter, which is wanting the best for, having basic good will for any other sentient being, right? So for example, like if you're in a situation where I was listening to a Dharma talk the other night from a great teacher named Winnie Nuzarko, who's a meditation teacher in the inside community, who's got a background

in social justice work. She and I don't know each other, but I was listening to the talk, shout out to you, Winnie. And she had done a lot of sort of social justice work. She was a community organizer. Sounded a little bit Obama, that's the pair. And she talked about some of her, I took from her talk, and I apologize,

Winnie, if I'm mischaracterizing it, but I took from her talk in parts, some misgivings about the current environment on the left. And she talked about this concept of predatory listening where I'm just listening to you to mess up so that I can shame you. And so I worry about that too. So I see the complexity.

I see, I think I see at least a fraction of the complexity listed. Oh yeah. I see, I think I see at least a fraction of the complexity, let's just say. Oh, yeah. And it's hard for me to really come to reckon with, really? Oh, thank you so much. I, you know, and maybe this is why I do, you heard me do it, you were kind, to sort of characterize it as like elevating.

I kind of shift a little bit off of the specific language of political correctness. I certainly understand what people mean when they talk about the problem of quote unquote cancel culture, which is another way of thinking about this kind of predatory listening thing. It's like I'm listening and in the cancel pieces, the minute you say it, and I'm no longer, or the minute, you know, I see this in you, then you are no longer acceptable in some way. Yeah, you were gonna organize a Twitter mob, and then you were gonna be de-platformed.

And that, or we're not gonna disinvite you because, you know, you were in the military. Which happened to me. Really? Yes, a university school, a group, at a law school in San Francisco, a left-leaning law group. Literally, someone saw on the resume that I had been an officer in the military

and decided to disinvite me because of that. So yes, I completely think that there is a way that the social justice left culture, you know, I wrote this book for that group too. I often use mindful communication as an alternative way of talking about this specifically for this reason. You know, the temptation to self aggrandize and to harden another kind of identity around our, our awakenings, our wokeness, whatever, right, is, is his own, it's his own bait that of our time, a bait for getting hooked, a bait for getting stuck, a bait for being caught

in ways that, you know, the teachings of the Buddha invite us to become more aware of. That's true for all of us. None of us is giving a pass, giving a pass on this, in my view, my humble view. And in particular, I do think this book and what my work has been about has been about inviting all of us from wherever we enter, whatever door we come in, to kind of come into that same room of reflection of ethical engagement with how we want to be with each other.

I use a phrase personal justice for this part, personal and interpersonal. In other words, justice to me is, there's a kind of an ecology of what we mean by justice. It apprehends work that we do within ourselves and for ourselves and within for each other on a one-to-one. So that, to me, calls forth a commitment to the right speech, yes, but also as best I can right listening.

And responding to the things that someone says it might make me flinch a little bit and wonder, wait a minute, was that a micro question? To try to choose, recognize the reactivity and choose to respond. This is not tone policing. There's so many different ways that people dismiss everything I'm saying is not being sharp enough, like fierce enough for the time. Right now, we need to really push back in all these ways.

And I do think oppression is so real. And it has hurt so many people that there's reasons why people are feeling like, I don't have, why is the black woman, I can hear the criticism, why is the black woman counseling compassion? Why are we always the ones who have to go the extra mile? You don't. It's a question of how you want to live. You know, yes, we have been, you know, we are up against some things in our time and place

and we're free and we're free. Yeah, I mean, I really hear what you're saying and I think I really hear what you're saying that. But I don't, my area of my thinking about this is definitely nebulous at early stage, but I don't think I have a problem with ferocity or strength or calling things out as you see them. I think it goes back to what you said before,

like where is that coming from? And having some humility and some clarity via mindfulness to, like, what is motivating you, you know, where is that coming from? And yeah, there are a lot of things that there's a lot of injustice out there. And I think that ferocity and volume makes a lot of sense. I think there are a lot of... but it gets... I just keep coming back to this great expression from... I don't know if you do know Ruth King? Okay, so Ruth's been on the show. She has... I tried to get her to call her last book this, but she ignored me. But it's a phrase she uses about this work, which is messy at best. Yeah, exactly.

And that's where I kind of land with all this, because I almost every argument on every side, I see the validity. Yeah. And again, the need for so much more nuance. That's sad. I don't see the validity of the argument that the people in Charlottesville are making just really clear.

But that's what I mean, like, you know, because literally what this can be about is about actual vulnerability to violence and trying to protect us from the actual physical violence on the one hand, but then there are degrees verbal value. Right. So nuance. And needing to be fierce when we need to be fierce

is not an excuse for, right? You have a bazooka. Everything is the arrayed army. In other words, you have a hammer, everything's a nail. No, it's, mindfulness is about really developing over the course of our humble lifetimes as best we can, no one we're always going to fail. This kind of capacity to, you know, act from a place of what's called for here now, and to have that kind of skillful means engagement with what's up. And that's, again, you know, our culture doesn't necessarily do nuance that well.

So this, and this is why I've been drawn, and so it feels so, just feel like right at home actually, And so it feels so, just feel like right at home actually, in this place of inviting for myself and with the folks out privileged to work with this deeper capacity to just, yeah, be messy, is necessary, be fierce when you need to be, be quiet when you need to be, ask for forgiveness when you need to, ask for permission maybe, like just because being in human community is hard. It's harder than it's advertised. You

know, we call ourselves the diverse nation and we do all these things where we bring people together. It's never been easy. It probably never will be. And so again, a legacy of dominant culture is like, nobody messes up. There's no conflict. Yeah, we mess up in this conflict. And we keep staying in the conversation. That's. Yeah. And I will also say just in my experiences, messy as it can be at times, and as much pain as I have experienced, which is just a tiny bit of pain as I've experienced having these conversations. Life's more interesting and better with the different people around the table. There's joy for me, there's a way again, I smile, because that's life. It's the aliveness that I don't want.

I personally don't want to miss on this, whatever happens, what passes I have around the sun, on this beautiful planet. Last question, which is, can you just plug the book, please? Okay, the book is called the inner work of racial justice, healing ourselves and transforming our communities through mindfulness. And it is an invitation to take any piece of that title and critically sit with it and reflect on it and challenge me and others about it,

but to come into the conversation and to bring what you bring because I do think all of us, every single one of us, every single person within the scope of the hearing of this, has something unique, some teaching that we all need to hear from your own particular experience. And we can all learn from somebody else.

And so, yeah, thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about. And do you have a website? I do have a website now. And it is just rondavmigay.com. And I'd love to see folks joining me there and elsewhere. I'll be teaching at Spirit Rock and Omega and Estell in different places this year. So I'm around and I'd love to be in conversation with anybody who resonates with this. Awesome.

Great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Again, big thanks to Ronda. Always great to see her. All right. We got one voicemail this week. Here we go. Hi, my name is Jonathan Rusbatton, calling from Queen New York.

I just finished listening to the recent podcast you had with John Kabatzen. And I feel like it's the first time I heard a white man who has success in the Western world with meditation and mindfulness, talk about white privilege and social injustice. And so I found there's quite a, you know, there's a contrast with the, you talked a lot at the beginning about not doing versus doing in regards to meditation and like having a practice. And at the end, John talked about turning towards it with integrity, and I'm curious, how does

social justice fit into this? And I find that a lot of white, privileged people, talent, meditation, and this ability to be inactive and to do nothing. And as we learn more about white privilege and what it means to be anti-racist and to take action and to not be a part of the oppressor, I just am hungry for more conversation about that and for people to be courageous and brave and like really dive in there. So I just want more. If you can do more, that would be great. Thank you so much. Great question. I'm really glad you asked it. I'm going to take a shot at answering it because

I think it's so important. But because I think it's so important, I also just want to give the caveat that this is something I've thought about, but not so deeply that I would hold myself as any up as any sort of expert. There is a rich tradition of, I think it's called socially engaged Buddhism. Bikubodi is a leader in this area. There's another group called the Zen Peace Makers. Sharon Salzburg has a book coming out about engaging in sort of activism

and how to keep your head while doing that work. So there are people who know much, much more than I do. And we'll have Sharon come on to talk about her book and we'll get at this very issue. But let me give you this sort of cheapo version just from me a little bit off the cuff. So I see an immense value in non-doing or doing nothing. But I don't think you wanna live forever

in a state of meditation where you're doing nothing. I just think that the not doing informs the rest of your life, which is mostly doing or sleeping, in really profound ways and makes you more effective. So I don't, I didn't read John Kabat's ins comments as, hey, you shouldn't do anything ever. I read it as periods of time where you are sitting and watching your own mind, aka, non-doing, watching the mind instead of getting involved in the mind to the best of your ability, because

you're going to get caught up in your thoughts, et cetera, et cetera. But to the best of your ability sitting there and watching your mind, that can really transform the way you are in the world. A couple of things can happen. One is you're less sucked in by your habitual stories and dramas so that when you're out in the world doing hopefully important work, you're less reactive, you're more effective, you're better able to tune in and listen to other people. Another thing that can happen in my experience as a consequence of not doing anything, of doing this non-doing, is that when you see how crazy you are, you understand that this is universal. We all have this mind, and depending on the conditions in which we've lived our lives,

an enormous range of results can come out of that. So you get a sense, it might explain to me to just a little bit less judgmental. I'm still judgmental, I wish I was less judgmental, but I noticed that it's taken the edge off because I know what it's like now in my own head in a little bit more with more intimacy and hopefully with more of a sense of humor. And therefore, I'm able to not judge people and have some compassion and empathy when I'm seeing other people losing it. As it happens, just totally serendipitously, I was a more devout Buddhist, I would maybe call it karma. As I was thinking about how I was going to answer your question this morning,

earlier this morning, as before I recorded this answer. And in the interim, after having thought about it a little bit, I was then eating breakfast and listening to a dharma talk by Joseph Goldstein. And he started talking about the very same thing. And he quoted a dauest expression, which is non-action is not in action. That you can respond better out in the world if you have a clearer view, not only of your own mind, but perhaps as a consequence of having a clearer view of your mind, a clearer view of the overall situation, which then allows you to respond wisely instead of reacting blindly. As I said, there are many people who know much more about this issue than I do, and I'd

recommend you check them out. But hopefully that provides a little bit of clarity. I really appreciate the question. And while I'm on the subject of appreciation, let me just appreciate the folks who do this podcast, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartsock, Tiffany O'Mohundro, Layton is operating the boards right now. And I do want to say, you know, podcasters at this point in the show

are often saying, hey, you know, mention us on Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm going to say something like that, which is that if this show or any other show is useful to you personally, to the extent that you can share it, and it really doesn't have to be on Twitter, or wherever, even if it's just one on one,

or if you're at the office talking about your favorite shows and podcasts with people, a conversation that happens all the time, a conversation I love to be part of. If you happen to just drop our name, the 10% happier podcast into that conversation, that's just really helpful to us. It helps us grow and ensures that we're gonna be, that my team and I can continue to do this work

for a long period of time, which would be great because we all love doing it. So thank you for that. And thanks to our podcast Insiders who give us incredible useful feedback every week. That's also amazingly helpful. And I'll see you next week with a new episode. Hey, hey, prime members.

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