Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 252: You Can't Meditate This Away (Race, Rage, and the Responsibilities of Meditators)

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

There is fury in America's streets - and we, as meditators, have the opportunity to use our practice to do the hard work of seeing things clearly (including the ugliness in our own minds), and responding wisely. I'm incredibly grateful to my guest, meditation teacher Sebene Selassie, for agreeing to come on this show on short notice (like, two hours beforehand) to discuss such a painful subject. This episode is in response to the protests that have broken out nationwide in the wake of the case of George Floyd, a black man who died after nearly nine minutes with his neck under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Our conversation is personal and raw. Most of all, we hope it is useful. Where to find Sebene online: Website: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/ Instagram @sebeneselassie // https://www.instagram.com/sebeneselassie/ Other Resources Mentioned: W. E. B. Du Bois // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR L,A Times Op-ED // https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-30/dont-understand-the-protests-what-youre-seeing-is-people-pushed-to-the-edge The 1619 Project by New York Times // https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html Seeing White - Scene on Radio // https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/ Well Read Black Girl // https://www.wellreadblackgirl.com/ Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Challenge: https://www.tenpercent.com/challenge Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Health Care Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sebene-selassie-252 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. 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, we're doing, I guess you could call it an emergency podcast. Today we're recording this on Sunday afternoon. We had a whole different episode prep to go for you, but we scrapped it given the fact that there is a lot of anger and fear and sadness coursing through America. And we're seeing demonstrations and violence in our streets all across the country. And we need to talk about this. And I think we need to talk about it as meditators

in terms of, you know, how can we surf these waves in our own mind? And then how can we, once we've taken care of ourselves engage and be helpful because this is going to require everybody leaning in. So I called up my friend, Sebenei Salassi, who by way of background as a meditation teacher and a writer, she's based as I am right here in New York City. She was born in Ethiopia, but raised in Washington, D.C. She's done nonprofit work with children and families around the world for decades, all the while becoming a leader in the American Dharma scene also by the way one of the most popular teachers on the 10% happier app. I called her up a few hours ago, just a few hours ago, and asked her if she'd

be willing to come on and have this conversation. And she thought about it for a little bit and agreed, even though things are pretty raw right now. And so we're going to structure this as more of a conversation than an interview. We're just going to kind of muddle our way through this given that Everybody's emotions are running pretty hot right now, but it doesn't doesn't feel like the right thing to do to To ignore what's happening right now. So we're going to try to lean into it. And if it's a little messy I hope you'll I'll hope you roll with that I also want to point out before I bring in Seb that, you know, I know from some of our survey data, which isn't, you know, obviously it's not going to tell the whole story, but

it definitely tells the story that this audience is primarily white. And we're going to be talking about this from the perspective of people of color. And we're going to be talking about it from the perspective of somebody like me who's white. And you know, some of our guests of color previously on the show when we've talked about issues pertaining to race, the exhortation has been that, you know, white people really need to talk to other white people about whiteness. And most white people, at least the white people I know don't really think about white people as a race. Everybody else has a race, even though race, by the way, is a completely constructed, socially

constructed concept. But so that eye tie, I take that very seriously, that white people should be talking to other white people about whiteness. And we're going to do that on this show. We're working on that. So very soon you're going to be getting content along those lines. But today it's me and Seb. So Seb and I thank you in advance for coming on.

I really, really, really appreciate it. You're welcome, Dan. And thank you for leaning in. When I was thinking about this this afternoon, you know, I was thinking about something I say a lot, which is we're not practicing to become good meditators. So often we get caught up in the practice itself, like feeling a certain way or in the practice itself, like feeling a certain way or doing something for us, but we're practicing to wake up ultimately, and waking up means leaning in and really facing reality, which is sometimes not comfortable, and right now particularly painful. So that waking up is waking up to the pain and the anger and the frustration. And that's a kind of freedom.

Because when you don't see any of that stuff, it's in there owning you. And when you do see it, you have more agency. You have more agency. You just have more wisdom because you have more perspective, more understanding. And I think there's a lot of confusion right now, especially amongst people who were surprised by the response, who were surprised by the protests and the uprisings and the anger and the violence, both systemic state violence as well as the eruptions of anger that are being displayed in the protests.

And yeah, if you're surprised, then you definitely need more perspective and to pay more attention. Let me just step back for one second because I want to pick up on what you just said, but before I do that, just let me just check in with you on how you're feeling as we dive into this conversation because I'll just say that I'm a little nervous, more than a little nervous. I don't know how you're feeling, but I'll just put that out there. Yeah, you know, I'm a little nervous. I don't know how you're feeling, but I'll just put that out there. Yeah, I'm a little nervous too. And just to say, I'm in Brooklyn, so you might hear Soak of Music or Horns or things in the background. Yeah, I'm a little nervous too.

I might be a little less nervous than you because I've been having these conversations be a little less nervous than you because I've been having these conversations for a long time for most of my life in some way or another and definitely as a teacher trying to address some of these issues with practitioners. Yeah, I'm lucky to be more nervous in some ways. I'm lucky to have not have to have had the amount of experience with these subjects, to have had the opportunity to not be so immersed in them because of my pigmentation. I'm not required to have them as much as you've had to have them. Yeah, and that's a really interesting thing to look at because in some ways it's a sheltering and protection, right? But in other ways, it creates delusion and fragility because when we don't have to face

pain and kind of protect ourselves from the pain of others, then when we're faced with it, it can feel overwhelming. And we can feel really flooded and unable to cope. And that is partly something happening in our own systems. You know, and a practice can be really helpful for that, for kind of opening up to what's happening, creating some more space. But it's also partly because we don't have perspective, or an understanding of how we got here. If you want to think of it darmically, it's like we don't understand the karma of this.

We don't understand that there are causes and conditions that got us to this point as a country and really as a world. And there's nothing any of us can do to change that trajectory. We can't change the trajectory, but we do have some power over how we show up in the current circumstance. Right now, right. And that's why the practice of really tending to the present moment is so important. You know, when we were talking about having this conversation, I was talking about how it's kind of hard to have this conversation with meditators because we're so often tending to our inner world. And that's really important and we can see how we

hinder our own freedom and capacity for wisdom or compassion because of our tight places. But when we start talking about this stuff, the outer world, we really need to also include we really need to also include history, context, understanding how we got here. And, you know, sometimes meditators and people who are in the Dharma world kind of lean more towards the individual and the personal. And sometimes bypass, spiritual bypass can include this, like, cultural, spiritual bypass, bypass, the bigger picture.

I think that's not important. That's not necessary for our waking up or our freedom, but actually they're intertwined. Yeah, there's been, if I understand it, in communities and meditators, there's been some pushback when people try to introduce these discussions into the community. And I even know just looking at our podcast numbers, the podcast, we've done a lot on this show around race and unconscious bias. And often those episodes don't do as well.

Because I think I'm just guessing it's, people don't want their pure, beautiful, Calgon, take me away meditation, you know, dragged into the sort of messy, these messy aspects of our life. Yeah, I think people are uncomfortable with the conversation. There's also, you know, just a level of arrogance that is a big part of this dynamic that we have. So, you know, what we're witnessing is a response to systemic anti-blackness. And the whole construct of race has black people at the bottom. And to understand the whole history of that,

and some people get tired of this history because they think they understand it because they've seen a couple of movies and read a couple of books and took a class. But it is so complex, and we talked a little bit before about the unbearable complexity of all that's involved in this. But as meditators, we can also look inside to see how that works in us.

So we can see that anti-blackness is so a part of our culture and our society that we all internalize it to some extent. Because we're taught it from a young age. It's like the decades-old study of little children who are playing with dolls and even black children prefer the white dolls. And all of the studies of unconscious bias and it's not a condemnation to name this or to recognize it. It's just a clear seeing. recognize it, it's just a clear seeing. No one wants to have, most of us have conscious good values, but all of us are conditioned by society.

We all learn everything, language, ways of being, ways of understanding from the culture around us. And so we inevitably absorb these biases. So some of that bias shows up as rejecting certain teachings or teachers or conversations. So there's going to be just like there's a preference for the white dolls, there's going to be a preference for white teachers and often white male teachers. and I, having run a, a Dharma organization for a number of years, we used to track income. And

we could see exactly how income, that was the Donna or the, the, the donations that were given to teachers, just totally patterned society with white male academics getting the most and often black female non-academics getting the least. Yeah, I think for you, you talk about the word fragility. There is a term white fragility. I won't pretend to understand all of it, but I just from my own experience, I think part of it is if I look inside and see the bias,

then I feel like a bad person. As I understand your argument, or the argument that's often made by people who've done a lot of work in this area, is that that lurch into shame around I'm a bad person is actually just self-centeredness that takes you away from From just look at it's not your fault. You didn't invite the bias. It's just it's your as you like to say You're not thinking your thoughts. You're thinking the culture's thoughts And so if you can take shame out of it and see it clearly Well, then you can navigate it and deal with it

But if you're if the move is to go into guilt or shame, well that that's just making it about you is to go into guilt or shame, well that's just making it about you. Right, so bias doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you a human person. We all have various biases across many different differences and realities. And this anti-black bias is so ingrained in our society. and such a shameful part of our culture and our history that a lot of us turn away from really looking at it. And I can speak from my own experience that even as a black person, I grew up in in myself and this the great African-American scholar W.A.B. Du Bois calls it double consciousness. So, when you're in a black body, you can have this double consciousness of seeing the

messages from society and having them discordant with your reality and desire for like all of us to feel good about ourselves. So for me, my anti-blackness is a rejection of black culture, preferring of white culture. I really had to contend with that as I came into my young adulthood

and could start to more consciously understand how this was happening. And I had to consciously unlearn it, which meant that I read a lot. I studied a lot. I took classes. I really wanted to see in myself how this happened by understanding the history of how this happens

to all of us to some extent, and particularly for those of us who are non-black, which includes non-black people of color, who often are put in the position of the model minority, sort of gaining favor to not be at the bottom of the heap. Where are you now with the internalized anti-blackness? You know, it's a process definitely and very much beyond where I was, as a teenager and as a young person

and really have worked on accepting all the parts of myself. So accepting also the white culture that's within me, as part of me. So, you know, grew up listening to rock music and different kinds of white music and not to have to reject that, but recognizing that's also a part of me. Another thing that I think I struggled with

is my partner is white, my husband is white and really looking at, is there a part of me that sought out a white partner in a rejection of myself? But in a full love of myself as who I am today is loving all the parts of me and everything that got me here to this moment. So loving Frederick as a part of my love allows me to get beyond this idea of not black enough for,

you know, that I have to be a certain way or perform a certain way to be black, has been part of kind of me decolonizing my own mind. De-colonizing your own mind is a pretty powerful expression. colonizing your own mind is pretty powerful expression. Yeah, I think we all, again, that quote from Krishna Murty, we're thinking the culture's thoughts, you know, we, we can take our thoughts so personally. And think we own them, we invented them. But really, there's so much that we've just absorbed kind of like oxygen from the air.

And so parsing out what's true, what's not, what's, you know, internalized oppression or internalized ideas about dominance. It takes time and that's where the practice really helps. But you know, this wasn't supposed to be an interview and I really would love to hear about your process because I know you've done so much work around this in the past few years and you know, how are you kind of approaching what's happening now and how to meet it?

Well, I don't want to overstate how much work I've done. I took a class with you that you ran through the Barry Center for Buddha's Studies. We do work internally at 10% happier around diversity issues, quite a bit of work, but, and also have a lot of guests on this show who then become friends who I talked to on the show and then off the show. So it's not nothing, but it's not, you know, I don't wanna present myself as somebody who's done all the work, there's a lot, a lot,

a lot left to do. I'll tell you, there was a moment that was really humbling with you. I was mentioning this to you on the phone earlier today. I saw you on Friday for TPH Live, the daily live meditations we do on YouTube in 15 minutes before we go live on YouTube, we connect on Skype and Chitchat before we actually do the thing. And I'm in the middle of whatever all the normal BS that I do work to, you know, take and care of my family, we're about to move. And so I'm barreling forward with my day, thinking about my own stuff as I normally do.

And I look at you on the video screen and I say, how are you? And you looked pretty glum, uncharacteristically glum. And you said, oh, you know, with I'm just, you know, with everything that's going on in the world, I'm feeling, and I'm okay. And then I realized, oh, yeah. Of course, I know what's going on in the world, but it's not as salient for me. I was reading a column today, actually, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbarra wrote, I think, in the LA Times, to their Washington Post. I can't remember who wrote a column. I'm going to talk about it.

If you're a white person, you look at what happened to Mr. Floyd. You say, oh, that is awful. I am, you know, you're horrified. But if you're a black person, he said, you get up and throw something and maybe want to kick something. It's just a whole, it's an order of magnitude. Different. And I just realized that, yeah,

I had the luxury of viewing that as a horrible thing that happened in the world, but I didn't take it that personally. And that's, yeah, I can feel the move internally to go to shame with that. But then I remember what a conversation I had a few weeks ago with the Reverend Angel Kioto Williams, and we were talking about shame and guilt guilt and she was pointing out, well, that's just something, that's just you're making it about you. And so then I try to go to, well, that's interesting.

That's the way my mind works. Yeah, then there's Shane that comes in and then I try to see the Shane and then go back to the curiosity and interest. And then hopefully once you see that, you can make different decisions. You can, as you said, use the phrase at the top of the show, lean in. And so I think that's how it works in my mind.

Does that all sound right to you? Yeah, I think it's really so crucial to see that guilt and shame is centering and really centering whiteness, when actually the challenge is continuing to pay attention to what's happening to black people on a daily basis. So, George Floyd's death and Breonna Taylor's were kind of flash points, but they're revealing something that's been here throughout this country's history in different forms. And the horror of that continued oppression of people based on the color of their skin

is what causes that sense of outrage and upset in black people, because there's a perspective of understanding the depth of this horror. When you're only paying attention to these incidents that sort of arise from time to time in the dominant consciousness, there isn't that perspective of understanding the depth of the systemic brutality and oppression. And recently, there's been some studies coming out about black mortality rates because of COVID's kind of revealing this pattern.

So it's not because of COVID, but it's because there are these huge differences in health caused by inequities and injustice. And I was reflecting on something that came out recently about mortality, life expectancies. And just by the span of a few miles, a black baby and a white baby can have up almost 30 years difference in mortality rate. So just because they're born in different parts of the city. I was thinking 30 years, for me, that's 0 to 30 or 10 to 40 or I'm going to be 50 years this year, 20 to 50. It's a huge expanse in my life. That is gone just because of the hospital I'm born in. More 10% happier after this.

Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here

by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy

during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. The point you're making about mortality is an incredibly powerful one. And I, for somebody like me who's white and lucky and hasn't had to deal with a lot of,

and by the way, there are plenty of people who are white and have massive poverty and abuse in their families, just because your white doesn't mean you have a blessed life. I'm white and have had a blessed life. I just find it so useful to try to lean in and remind myself, to jar myself out of the self-centered tendencies that we all have so that I can be in touch with it. And it got me thinking when you were talking about how for white people or non-black people it's easy to just see these incidents like

George Floyd as a blip and then another blip happens later and you see them sequentially but not looking at what's beneath the iceberg. One thing that's helpful for me as a practice is to volunteer in a way that you're encountering people from different walks of life has been useful for me. But another thing is compassion practice. You know, not just, we talk a lot on the show about loving kindness practice, where you're generating a sense of friendliness for other people, may you be happy, may you be safe.

But instead, especially during COVID times, I've been really trying to envision people were suffering. Doctors and nurses in hard-hit hospitals, patients in hard-hit neighborhoods, people who are on food lines, etc etc and consciously bringing That image to mind and saying maybe free from suffering maybe free from fear may be free from physical Distress etc etc that I find I find is really useful for me because I'd rather lean into the pain than

I find it really useful for me because I'd rather lean into the pain than have it in the back of my consciousness and haunting me from there unseen or to be just so stuck in my own self-centeredness in ways that don't feel good either. It's really important because we don't find freedom and joy despite or to spite pain and suffering. We find freedom and joy because we open to all of life and that includes the pain and suffering. And sometimes I think that besides the condition sort of anti-blackness or condition bias that we absorb from society, some of us who are separated whether by race or class from the deep suffering

of particular communities, we don't want to pay attention to it because it's painful. It's actually painful to absorb. And there's been a critique of the consumption of black culture, but the lack of attention to black people actually. And it's much easier to absorb jazz or rap music or whatever movie or star, Beyonce, than it is to actually pay attention to where all of that culture is coming from.

But when we do, there's actually a deeper appreciation for all of the beauty and joy that comes alongside of the pain and suffering and that's just called being human. Yes and I just just to just to re-emphasize it. I find that being in touch just just just made end of ones of you guys can just totally ignore me but I find that it feels better to be in touch with the pain of the world than it does to be stuck in thinking about myself all the time. And I think for me, what that points to is it feels better because it's actually more liberated, right? How do you, when you say liberated, what do you mean by that?

You know, I kind of always an image I have of suffering is this image of clinging and tightness. So I think of a tight fist. So whether we're pushing something away with our fist or punching something away or like trying to hold on to something there's a constriction. And when I'm focused on just myself, there is a constriction. But when I open up to actually being able to see clearly, there's a sense of freedom and Sharon Salzburg has that phrase, a heart, as wide as the world. When we're actually able to open up, not fearing, you know, our fragility and incapacity to look at

something clearly, but really recognizing our inherent power and resilience and capacity to be with things, which we all have, that's human. I really witnessed that working in refugee camps in my early 30s and the resilience of people who've gone through really unspeakable horror is one of the most inspiring things. And I think one of the things that helped me get through three cancer diagnoses is I got diagnosed about a year after the camp. I was working in the camps and you know really the generosity, the love, the compassion, the clear seeing of people who lost everything, you know, had family members tortured or killed in front of them.

And not to romanticize or, you know, fetishize their pain, but really the human, all of our human capacity for resilience when we're able to draw on something that's deeper, whatever spiritual tradition or meditation practice or inner work that you are called to, but that faith that we have that capacity is what is gonna get us through all of it. So what is your capacity now to open up to and really for taking all of the pain we're seeing, not only in that unbelievable video of George Floyd, but what's playing out in the streets

across America, how is all of this sitting with you? You know, when we spoke on Friday, I'd spent Wednesday, pretty much in tears the whole day. I was in a training program online, so it's kind of going in and out of Zoom calls. But really allowing myself to feel that, not thinking that those feelings or that experience was a mistake, but really with the practice, and there are many, many ways to practice, and the app talks about many, and you have many episodes talking, so we don't need to go into what the practices are exactly,

but having that capacity to allow your feelings. As Pemma Chaudhous says, feel your feelings and drop the story. So rather than continuing to circle and the images that I saw or the stories I heard, like really allowing myself to feel what was happening is important. And I would say, I balance that with making sure that the news and social media are not dictating my feelings to me. It's important for me to stay informed and understand what's happening. I think that's my responsibility as a citizen and as a human being. But it's also my responsibility to understand, okay, what's my particular calling?

And I'm not hardcore activist. I have immune issues. I'm not going to go out in the streets right now, I need to take care of myself. But I do teach and I do hold space for people. And in order to do that, I actually need to take care of myself. And that means resting, eating well, exercising, meditating, reading things that are inspiring and help me with perspective and how I want to articulate things journaling, you know, all the things that allow me to show up in the ways that I need to show up to be of service in this time. And for each of us that will be different.

I saw you put something on a Twitter about, I think it was directed at black people about how to take care of yourself right now, to love yourself right now as a way to survive what's happening. Maybe it's worth expanding on that. Yeah, I think that story you mentioned of Kreme Abdul-Jabar, there is a certain impact of what's happening right now on Black and brown bodies in terms of the feeling of it. It is, it's like receiving impact after impact and that includes what we see around us. So, you know, just a couple of weeks ago,

I was walking with Frederick in our neighborhood. It was just a primarily historically black neighborhood and we went to the park and there were a lot of people in the park, white people, black people, brown people, and there were a lot of people, not social distancing, but they, some cops went running after one black team. And the violence that ensued from that, like how many cops came and threw him to the ground and violently handcuffed him. None of them wearing masks. Then another teen was upset about this and yelling at the cops and then they arrested him as well in the most just upsetting way, just

the force that was used unnecessarily. So, you know, when you're witnessing, and that's not the first time I've seen, or we live in a heavily police neighborhood, it's not the first time I've seen police forced use in that way. So when you're witnessing these types of things, not to mention the poverty and the trauma,

the self-care has to be up to really important and high levels in my experience. And that's where allyship is really important. So it's been really wonderful to see all the white people who are showing up for protests and not instigating violence, but actually being there in support of Black bodies, so creating barriers between Black people and the police, and the self-care that's needed is kind of deep soul work to recognize that sort of always being on the front lines and putting that energy out there is really exhausting. And there is activist burnout, there is teacher burnout, there's leader burnout. And it's really encouraging actually to see how much more emphasis there is on self-care in a lot of marginalized communities.

And that's gonna look like different things for different people in terms of the amount of time and energy and resources you need to put into that. You talked about allyship. It seems to me like there are ways to do allyship wrong or foe allyship. One of the things I've seen that has been dismaying to me and some of the group work I've done around diversity issues is a kind of and probably I do this to this is probably a reason why there's I have a negative reaction to it because I'm seeing something in myself that I don't like so let me just say that just get that out front here but there's a kind of performative guilt and grief that I see acted out by white people. And I've been, I saw some

interesting tweets today from black people about like, don't feel the need to act at all out with me right now. And I think the quote was, don't make me fight for liberation while swimming in your tears. So I thought that was both sharp and funny. I don't know any thoughts on any of that. Yeah, you know, this is a little bit to what you were speaking to at the beginning of the show that there's a need for white people to do their work together that really protects people of color from having to always be educating, consoling, you know, comforting, taking care of. And at the same time, people of color and for what we're speaking about today, black people have usually a deeper understanding, more knowledge, more context. And that can

knowledge, more context. And that can be uncomfortable because, as we were pointing to before, white people don't necessarily want to listen to black people as experts. That's kind of an internalized superiority or arrogance that is, again, conditioned. It's just part of the culture of anti-blackness that absorbed. So it's both.

It's really important for white people to listen to people of color and read books and articles, follow people of color on social media, and you know, support people of color who are academics and teachers and that they learn from. and in processing this stuff, it's important to do that with white people, exactly for those reasons, so that people of color are not necessarily having to tend to or kind of mami, white discomfort. So what does that look like?

Just means, like for me, it would be make instigating conversations, I would be making instigating conversations. I don't mean instigating in the pejorative, but let's start in conversations with my wife, who's white, and my friends, and making it a consistent habit to process these issues with the people I know who are white. Yeah, and beginning to notice it around you,

in our conversation before we were talking about how it starts to reveal so much that you don't normally see. And that's, there's so many great resources now. I mean, we're really living in a time of a lot of research and understanding. And the 1619 project by The New York Times, which came out last year. There's just so much there that reveals how our whole country and society is structured around racial inequality. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's like the matrix.

Yes, yes. So I want to mention another thing you turned me on to, which was the podcast, Seeing White. It's actually a series called Seeing White produced by a podcast called Scene on Radio. I'll try to remember to put a link in the show notes. But if you search for a podcast called S-C-E-N-E on Radio, Scene on Radio, it's excellent. They've done a number of series.

I think the season two was called Seeing White and was all about, the host is a white guy and talks all about whiteness, which was just a huge revelation to me because he points out what I talked, I basically stole from him what I said at the top of the show about how I think white people don't think of themselves as racialized.

But of course, yes, first thing to understand is that race is a social construct, but once you understand that, that everybody's a part of race and whiteness is a race and we have our own things that we're worth looking at. So I found that podcast to be incredibly interesting, highly recommended to everybody. And two things to say about it. One is I sent it out to the entire staff at Nightline. All the white people were like, oh my god, this is incredible. And all the black people were like, there is nothing new here, which struck me.

It's a pretty diverse staff, Nightline. The second thing to say is, you said, you can't unsee it. And I just noticed how easy it is for me just to slide right back into delusion and denial. I see it, I get, you know, I consume something like the 1619 podcast, which I know it's much more than a podcast, but I thought the podcast was in a work of brilliance.

I consume something like seeing white and I'm on fire, but then I'm back in my own, like, I don't know, I'm just back in my own junk. So I don't know, I guess I slightly question the, you can't unsee it part because we're just filled program for denial. That's a really good point. And, you know, maybe I'm overestimating you, Dan. Easy to do. Yeah. You know, it's true. Our conditioning runs deep and we see that in just our practice,

right? That our habits of mind and our patterning just doesn't disappear because we want it to or we decide it should. And, you know, that brings us back to the start that these are conditioned things that we've absorbed, that we've learned, that we can also perpetuate by not continually investigating and interrogating them. And to me, it really points to those deeper Dharma truths that our freedom is right here if we allow it, but we kind of have to unshackle ourselves or unburden ourselves from all of this conditioning. And often we only look at that conditioning on a very personal, habitual, almost personality level, but that conditioning

is social, it's cultural, it's racial, it's based on gender, it's based on class, there are so many layers to our conditioning. And often, if we are sort of in the center rather than the margins, we have less perspective. It's only by starting to absorb perspectives of the margins going out of the center of the circle, though we start to see how much more there is that's going on. And, you know, that's been studied too, that our perspectives can be really limited by our position and society. So maybe take a look at your social media feeds, and if it's all white people, you might want to examine that, take a look at your social media feeds and if it's all white people, you might want to

examine that, take a look at the media you're consuming generally and if it's all white, you might want to consider that. Yeah, I'm my friend Elaine who's a Dharma teacher. She's in her 60s, a white lesbian, Jewish. And at one point we were meeting pretty regularly, we were teaching together a lot. And every time I asked her which was reading, she would mention a black novel. And the first couple of times I just was like, okay, how's that book, blah, blah. And then I was like, Elaine, what are you doing? Why every time I talk to you, you mention a black novel, it's so interesting. And she said, oh, I just went to Well-Red Black Girl and I just copied the reading list. And I'm going through it. You know,, oh, I just went to well-read Black girl. And I just copied their reading list. And I'm going through it. You know, I have 60 years of conditioning to undo.

And I was so moved by that that there was this really conscious decision to change her consumptive habits of information so that she could start to widen her perspective and understanding. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. I know you said before that, we've gone through the meditative techniques

for what the practice is and how we can bring it to bear on race and we've done that in other podcasts, we've done it on the app, et cetera, et cetera. But actually, if you don't mind, it might be worth given everything I've said about the power, we all have to slide back into denial et cetera, et cetera. But actually, if you don't mind, it might be worth giving everything I've said about the power we all have to slide back into denial to dwell a little bit on the nuts and bolts. Would that be cool with you? Sure. I think for me, practice begins in the body.

And we hear meditations, teachers say this over and over again. It took me years to really hear it understand how the body is a place that does not exist in the past or the future, can't take us into stories. But it's where we can actually experience the present moment. And that's not because we want to fetishize the present moment as some special, magical place that releases from everything,

but it helps to stabilize us and to ground us. So we're not flooded by our usual patterning of thoughts and emotions and stories and habituated ways of thinking. And when we start to pay attention to the body and be able to notice our experience without being drawn away, then we're more able to see the patterns of thought without believing them. So for me, that's where it always starts. Because then, we can start to slow down and notice our habituated conditioning. So one of the meditations and kind of teachings I explore is starting to notice our unconscious biases.

And that, for me, is really powerful to do in the world, which is a little harder to do now, because many of us are not going outside. But we can notice it with how we look at social media or how we look at the news. And notice who we're paying attention to, what we're agreeing with, even where our attention is drawn. Outside, it can look like noticing what the first thought is about someone and just looking at them. There can be stereotype replacement

to start to question why we might have an assumption about someone. There's so many stories of people going to buildings and people of color and door-man assuming that they're there to deliver packages or I have plenty of stories of bias that I've encountered when I've been in leadership role. And so start to notice when we do that ourselves. A big one for me recently in the past few years, I've been learning a lot from teachers, but also from some students who've opened me up to this as my fat phobia. So just noticing the assumptions I make about bigger bodies and bigger people, and also the turning

away that happens from that, right? I'm drawn to people who look a certain way and whose bodies look a certain way, and what is that about? And that's also been a process of learning history for me because I had to really start to read and learn about all of these assumptions we make about fat bodies and their health that are actually not true, which can parallel other histories like the assumptions we make about black communities

or black people that are based on historical inequalities and not the truth of their being. So we start to be able to use the practice when we have settled the mind beyond its habituated tendencies. We start to be able to use the practice to see how the mind tells these stories that are actually the culture stories out in the world and we can make different choices. And that's the freedom. That's the freedom you've referenced, the liberation is seeing clearly what's happening right now without being owned by it and then having the freedom to make a different choice. Yeah, you might notice I see a black person, a whole story comes up. I see a black guy who's a birder in the park and I'm tempted to call the cops on him,

but I don't act it out. That's the freedom. Yes. Yes. freedom. Yes, yes. And that freedom is really imbued with compassion and love. Because ultimately, on the deepest level of this practice, teaches us that there's no separation. that everything, not just humans, but all beings and this planet is connected. And this ancient wisdom says that, and modern science says it. There's no separation. We're all connected. And that's why our liberation is dependent on other people's liberation. So we can gain some measure of maybe less stress and

less tension in our lives, but we won't be truly free until everyone is free. You used to phrase when we were talking earlier on the phone before this, before this podcast. So you just finished talking about how meditation can be so helpful when it comes to these issues, but you used to phrase earlier, you can't meditate this away. Yeah. And, you know, we can't meditate away the injustice, the oppression. We can't meditate away the pain and the suffering within us and outside of us, but we can have

some measure of perspective and grounding and balance so that we can respond from clarity, really, and kindness. The leaning in that you described right at the top of the show. Right. So our meditation rectus is really important. But again, in order to see clearly, we can't only look inside. We have to be willing to really see what's in front of us. When you look around, and I'm sorry, I know that I'm interviewing you more than you want. So you could push me back and ask me whatever you want,

but so I can't help it. I've been doing this for 30 years, interviewing people, and you're really interesting, and I haven't many questions for you. So with those apologies, I'll ask you another question, which is when you look around at the world, are you, I know you've felt a lot of sadness you've described and other difficult emotions do you feel any hope? I do feel hope because things are being revealed. So right now it doesn't feel like progress because it's like a wound being cleaned out.

You know, it's kind of pussy and messy and maybe it stinks. But to clean the infection out, we've got to get it out. So all these patterns that are being revealed, all these things we're seeing that cannot be argued away, cannot be denied, cannot be rationalized, allows more of us to see clearly. And it's that seeing clearly that liberates. We get George Floyd, we get the Cooper's in the park, we get Ahmad Arbery, we get all that on top of a pandemic that is completely exposing the fishers in our society and revealing the disproportionate impact. And then on top of that, maybe we get to see all of that throwing

it to Stark relief the 400 years that preceded it. And so yes, we see all of that. And then I do feel this desire to agree with you in your hope. But then I also see that we've had these national reckoning before. And yet here we are again. And we've had riots, we've had assassinations, we've had major legislation, we've had a black president for two terms. And I don't know, maybe just progress is slow. And that's the source of hope. Or I don't know, maybe just progress is slow and that's the source of hope or I don't know sometimes I fall back into a little bit more something closer to despair. And you know, we don't push away the despair either. We don't wallow in it, but we allow it to motivate us because I have also, I'm also

seeing it from the meditation and dharma side of it. And as you well know, it's really well before we went into quarantine, it was really hard to get into retreats. Like every retreat had a waiting list and there's so many more people training to teach meditation. There's so much consciousness growing. I mean, this is an ABC news podcast and you get pretty woo-woo on here sometimes. So there's a lot of personal, social, cultural growth. And that's not disconnected from what's happening in society. So the hope I see is not only in terms

of the political spectrum or what's happening socially or in Washington and things are extremely polarized and there's a lot of tension, but there's also a lot of change happening. And as we were talking about a little bit before we started, you know, America is an incredible place. It's the most multicultural society I know of. I don't think that there's a city that's more diverse than New York City. And that's a huge social experiment. It's never happened

throughout human history. And there are some harsh consequences from that. And that's a huge social experiment. It's never happened throughout human history. And there are some harsh consequences from that. And then there's amazing possibilities. But there's no going back. We're not going to undo the fact that the world is becoming more complex and more connected. And we're reckoning with that. Well said. Are there areas that I should have steered this conversation but failed to? Things that are worth exploring before I let you go on with your day? Um, you know, just really encouraging people who don't have maybe a deep understanding of some of these issues to really allow yourself the time to learn more. You're not going to figure it out by having listened this far into a conversation.

If you made it this far, you're not going to figure it out by reading one book. It's really a process and to allow yourself to be a beginner in something if you are, and to continue to deepen our understanding, all of us, in the various ways that are needed in our end outer. What do you say to people? Because I mentioned at the beginning that I had a lot of fear going into this conversation, there are a few things that are worse, few worse epithets than racist. And I do find that I worry. Am I going to say something stupid and then be publicly

humiliated? And what do you say to white people, or even non-black people who are worried about having these conversations? Because they're worried they're going to say something stupid and be punished. You know, again, you're not thinking your thoughts and that racism that we all internalize because it's the culture we swim in, that's not it because you're a bad person, it's because you're a human person who's learned from the culture.

I hope no one is that's listening to this is actively racist or consciously racist, but to deny that we all have absorbed unconsciously or passively that racism is to really be in contention with reality. And again, you can see this in a warm, open way through meditation practice and then back to that freedom, which is to make different choices. And as Ruth King, previous guest on the show, likes to say the process is going to be messy at best. And I'll just say, from my own experience, better to engage in that messiness than to try to push it all away all the time. Yeah, we have no choice because otherwise, you know, we're not

cleaning out the infection. We're just allowing it to fester and continue to harm us all. And we then we see what we're seeing right now on our TVs. I really appreciate you doing this. I know it was a big ask on an extremely short notice to ask you to come on to talk about something that's really raw on a Sunday afternoon. But I'm very grateful to that you did. Thank you, Dan. I hope it's useful for folks and, you know, just really encourage all of us to keep doing our work.

As well as thanking Seb. Well, I'm here. I also just want to thank all the people who work really hard on the show. Samuel Johns is our lead producer. Our sound designers are Matt Boing and Hanya Sheshik who are going to work really hard all Sunday night to clean up this audio and post it so you have it in your feed Monday morning. They're from ultraviolet audio. Maria Wartell is our production coordinator. We get an enormous amount of really helpful input from TPH colleagues like Jen Poient, Natobi Ben Rubin, Liz Levin, and then of course my guys at ABC Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We're going to be on this subject for a little while here because there's a lot more to say, in particular as I mentioned at the beginning, we want to model having conversations among white people

about these issues. So you're going to hear that in this feed soon. And you'll also hear people of color coming on. We are at a moment of history in America and I do think people with meditation practice, well everybody can play a positive role, but I think people with the meditation practice can play a really positive role. So let's do it together. So, thank you again. You're welcome, Dan. Let's see you Wednesday, guys. Hey, hey, prime members.

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