Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 386: Sitting with Chaos | Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Very few of us relish chaos and disruption, but they are facts of life, given the nonnegotiable nature of change. In this episode with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, we’re going to talk about how to tune into the value of disruption, and learn how to sit with the chaos. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an ordained Zen priest, holds a Ph.D., and worked for decades as a social science researcher and development director for non-profit organizations. She is also a prolific author.In this conversation we’ll explore: what to do with the unknown and not having any answers; the power of a “sip of silence” (her term); what she means by the phrase “death as a doorway to tenderness;” how she defines tenderness - a word that can easily get bogged down in sloppy sentimentality; and what she meant when she wrote “I'm not advocating love as an answer to all of the ills of the world. Then again, it is just that simple to be love.”Content Warning: There are brief mentions of assault; spiritual, sexual, and substance abuse; and racism, including a recent incident Zenju experienced herself. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, very few of us, I believe, relish chaos and disruption, but they are facts of life given the non-negotiable nature of change. Today we're going to talk about how to tune into the value of disruption and learn how to sit with chaos. My guest is Zenju Earthlin Manuel. She's in ordained Zen Priest. She holds a PhD. She worked for decades as a social science researcher and as a development director for nonprofits. She's also a prolific author. We'll be covering a few of

her books in today's episode. We're also going to talk about what to do with the unknown and not having any answers. The power of, and this is her term, a sip of silence. What she means by the phrase, death as a doorway to tenderness. Her extraordinary story about her unusual route to becoming a Zen priest, how she defines tenderness, a word that can easily get bogged down in sloppy sentimentality, and what she meant when she wrote the following lines. I'm not advocating love as an answer to all of the ills of the world, then again, it's

just that simple to be love. So a lot to talk about here, just a heads up. There are some mentions of assault, spiritual sexual and substance abuse, and racism, including a recent incident that Zendu experienced herself. Before we get to my chat with Zendu, one item of business, great news. If you want to hear more of Zenju, which I suspect you will after having listened to this interview, we've brought her wisdom into the 10% happier app where she has recorded her very own teacher talk.

Teacher talks are bite-sized, recorded talks about 10 minutes or less available inside the 10% happier app featuring many of the teachers that you know and love from this podcast. Download the 10% happier today and click on the Podcasts tab in the app to find Zenju's talk, which is called It's OK to be afraid. We will get started with Zenju, Earthlin, Manuel, right after this. 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 Kelli McGonicle 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. Hey y'all it's your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an

actress, singer and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family and experts the questions that are in my head. Like it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's time from my space? Listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcast Send you earthland man. Well, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon wherever you are Dan Afternoon where I am. Yes,, when I were chatting before we started the interview and we're just talking about how the world is a pretty tumultuous place

right now. And you have spoken publicly and written about the value of disruption. Can you describe what you mean by that? Yeah, I've talked about it and I also have gotten in trouble for saying it. And it gets confusing. It's like, what am I trying to say? Am I trying to get people to accept suffering in some way? And that is not really the intention of the teaching. This teaching for me of looking at disruption as valuable, meaning that it is the place in which we change and transform, that we transform in the midst of messiness.

So a lot of folks want to transform, but they want it to be nice and neat and clean and painless and all of these kinds of things. And my experience is it doesn't happen that way at all. In my life, the things that have changed have been when I've fallen off the cliff, let's say, in the quote, when I hit the ground. So I learned that, oh, I think when I was in my 20s, I began to notice that, oh, life just keeps going, trouble keeps happening. Oh, I think when I was in my 20s, I began to notice that, oh, life just keeps going, trouble keeps happening. This isn't gonna stop.

But of course, I didn't accept it. So I went about trying to change things in my own life and change things in the world, and I would get frustrated and disappointed. And sort of like these times, some people feel like we're moving backwards, our standing still, we're not moving ahead, are these kinds of things.

And so when the disruption comes, it doesn't necessarily mean that we are moving backwards, our standing still. I actually feel that there's something dynamic going on and that's why the disruption is happening. Sort of like a earthquake, right? The ground shakes. So there, some kind of dynamic movement or action in the earth that's causing an earthquake.

And I want to start right here and just send out a prayer to Haiti in the midst of the last earthquake. That's what came up for me just in the moment. So I want to do that. So as a person who was racist, disruption, you know, I was part of the Watts riot. I wasn't a person doing things. I was near it. I was living near it. So that when we went to the grocery store, there was the National Guard with their guns, and everything. That's how close we were to it. There was just always trouble.

In my school, there were riots and things around race. There was all kinds of stuff going on. I myself have been caught up in some pretty snarly incidents. And so, you know, I always wanted things to be better, like no more racism, no more oppression, no more hate, no more anything. And of course, that is always the aspiration, it's always the vow. But most important, I know that if something stops, like say, we don't have any more racism, let's just say that. We have no more of it. That means something else, it will take its place.

We don't know of it. That means something else will take its place. We don't know what it is. So there's always something. That's why we have so many movements, and I think that's wonderful, because all of these movements and climate change, movement around police brutality, movement around racism, movement around poverty, all these different areas that are happening. And we could go crazy running off trying to make sure all of that gets, you know, cleared up and taken care of. That's kind of our attitude to fix it.

But mainly I feel like disruptions are here for us to transform within and without. So that if it changes us within, it will change what's going on without. The more and more we ignore it, I think the more disruptions we will have. And sometimes I feel like I told a friend this and she felt that sounds so fatal. You know, that's fatalism and that's not what I'm saying.

It's what I see. And I think we're at a really point in the world, not only our country, where the disruptions are getting more intense and they're increasing and they're more often. Cause something really is trying to wake us up. Not us wake us up. We think we can wake ourselves up

and we can't to a certain extent. But there is a place that's unseen and uncontrollable by the human being, and we have to understand that. And then to allow things to change, the dynamic of the disruption to change us. And if we force against it, I think we keep falling back into an old place. Because the disruption becomes a wall as opposed to a more porous or malleable barrier or obstacle that we actually can go through. We can actually go through these disruptions and it doesn't feel like it often but we can. So if we're using the disruptions, if I use all that has happened to me, then I can contribute to society from

having those experiences, which most of us are doing anyway. And having come through them is where all of my poetry, all my other writings and teachings, my showing up here to talk on the podcast has to do with that at the same time everything was happening to me. There was a transformation also happening to me. So while we're in this dive, sometimes we're also in flight. But we don't know. So some people, well, I want to feel the flight.

I don't want to feel the die You know so that can cause problems too because they're both at the same time That's like if someone gives you a coin you say well, I don't really are a dollar. I don't nobody gets coins anymore Not even a dollar I don't want that that dollar, you know, but I want some money You know so it's kind of like you can't you have to take the dollar to get the money and deal with that dollar, you know, but I want some money, you know. So it's kind of like you can't, you have to take the dollar to get the money

and deal with everything involved in the dollar, everything that it's involved in attached to the dollar. So that's how I see disruption is actually, I've actually begun to, well, at a period of time, I say in my practice, I begin actually begun to, well, at a period of time, I say my practice, I begin to stop suffering, the suffering, and begin to actually enjoy it, even while I was in pain, in interiors, traumatized, and everything else. But I knew, and I knew, and I still know, because I'm still in a dive, I'm always in a dive, that something's coming through that disruption or darkness for me and for us and everyone

around me and us. So I know that that's the way change happens. That's the way transformation happens. A lot of casualties along the way, or maybe I might not make it. There'll be a dive I won't make. That's guaranteed, right? I won't make one of the dives, and I'll be gone. But all along, there'll be all these dives, all of this turmoil and suffering, and it's to be used like fodder. It's mud. We know this. It's the mud for the lotus flower. It has to have murky nutrients. And that's where our lives are.

I can imagine some people thinking, uh, we're listening, thinking, well, I don't know how to sit with this. We in this dive. I can't get comfortable with it. How do I do that? You know, this is where I have to have what's called beginner's mind, right? You've heard that. And I always tried to walk in that way of what was it like when I didn't know the Dharma, Buddhism, when I didn't know Nishra Buddhism or Zen Buddhism, just trying to like,

I'll try to flush myself away from all of that kind of conditioning, spiritual conditioning. And when that question's asked, because I know the majority of people have not been on that path, a path of Dharma Buddhism, or even meditation. So quite a few people feel in the middle of chaos, they wanna start a meditation practice. I, in some way, discourage it if it's very new to you because it's right now your system's used to dealing with chaos in the way it has, been dealing with it the moment before, the day before.

When I started sitting meditation, I only did five minutes a day and over the decades it grew to me being able to sit at long, long retreats, you know, eight hours a day. That took decades. So starting out at five minutes is a lot, like one minute is a lot. One minute is a lot to sit still in silence or quiet just to breathe, take a breath in and out. And I would say just do that, you know, in the moment, just try to let go for a moment of all the news. You know, you're reading, I'm hearing,

to not read as much, to let go of some of the conversations that we're having just for a moment, you can always go back to the conversation. But if you take some time to just stop and just breathe in and breathe out as long as you can, even if it's a minute, that's a lot, a minute or two minutes, then when you start to engage in the world, even if it's cutting the onion, that's your next engagement, you

know, or talking to someone, a friend, or partner on the phone, it will have a different tone just with one or two minutes of sitting because you will be speaking from your heart and not with swirling in the minds. So when most of the people we hear talking, or even our other podcast, there's a lot of swirling in the mind. Even for myself, I had to come and sit and be prepared after swirling around, I had gotten lost coming here. You know, these kinds of things and I had to really work at from driving to sitting here with you to get back to sitting here with you to get back at the breath and to be able to speak from my heart. Because I have a lot of ideas. And most of us do. I'm well-read. You know, I have a PhD.

I'm a researcher, so I look up everything. So I really have to work hard to allow the body to lead me on this path of life. And what people say, what does that mean? You just react or you just respond to whatever's in your gut. No, I try to see what's in my gut. If there's fear, I don't start to analyze the fear. I just note that there's fear. And I go, oh, there's your friend fear. And then I just have a few breaths with fear.

We have, it's like having tea with fear. Few breaths and then fear goes and sits down, some play cells. And then I can go back. But then the fear comes back. It keeps coming back. That's its job to keep tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me of something about myself that's our inside myself that is bothersome. And that's kind of what sitting still does.

It lets you see what bothers you. And I know a lot of people ask me, they say, I want to be calm. Can you tell me how to be calm. And I don't have the answer to that. I really sometimes I'm joking, but you really can get some teas and herbs and extra help to calm you to help during these times. And I think there's no problem with that. If, you know, you've gotten it from someone you trust, you know, a professional herbalist or someone or a place or a doctor where you that help your nervous system, you know, slow down in this great time of trouble and turmoil.

But where I'm speaking from is not from that place because I'm not a doctor and I'm not a professional in the healing arts. I'm coming from, and it's important for you to know the context is Zazen Zen meditation and Zen meditation is very different to the all meditations. So I'm coming from that place so you can understand that when I say sit, be still, just be quiet. That's not what every tradition does. And that's not all that Zen does either. We do chant and we do walking meditation in different kinds of things. But I think I'm just offering from this base of borrowing, there's no psychological or physical problems

with you that you need to get other help for. then I am just inviting this daily sympathy, which is a sip of silence. Ever so often throughout the day, or whenever you can, just a sip of silence. You know, you can wait for those phone calls that are coming through those texts that are coming through, they can wait a minute or two.

And it's remarkable. Because then it might stretch to five or 10 minutes. And then you're like, wow, okay. You start to notice that even though there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of chaos you're creating yourself to. On top of the chaos that's being imposed, and also not to try to get out of, you know, try to fix everything to make

a paradise for us to live in or for yourself to live in. But to use the trouble of living, the trouble of life is all there is really. And if we don't use it, then we're not living. We're not even engaged. And I've done that. I've tried not to engage. And it's a weird life when you don't engage. And I don't mean you have to go and engage in movements, because now engagements all of a sudden equals go out and march.

You can do that. It's not what I'm saying. Anyone can do that. But just not what I'm saying. Anyone can do that. But just engage in the moment to be present with the pain, the suffering, just for a moment, if you can. And some people need help with that. That's why don't prescribe medication, or meditation, either one I don't prescribe, neither one, medication, or meditation, either one I don't prescribe me the one

medication or meditation. And that's because it's not for everyone. Meditation is not for it's actually for a very rare group of people, a very small and rare group of people. Those who are seeking, those who are open to a quest, an inquiry of what is this life, and how am I living it? Who am I? And getting no answer to none of it at all is just the process. Now, there's no answer to those questions. That's that rare group is willing to live in that ambiguity. But those who are using it for results, that's fine, I'm not against that. I wonder what kind of results they're getting.

I know there's a lot of scientific research going on now and they're just coming up with what we already know, which is juicy what science does. It was just good. Some people need that hardcore affirmation that's written down in words with some numbers is quantified and qualified. I was a researcher, so I understand.

You know, I did a lot of social science research. So it's important to document, but it doesn't have the answer. No one and nothing has the answer to anything. Isn't that scary? What are we left to do then? Just be with not trying to find answers and fix things, but be in the discovery of things. We are to continually discover. So when I meet, say, what if I meet you next week, I will have to rediscover you and you rediscover me. But you might come and say, well, I kind of, I know, Zenju now, we had a discussion.

I said, yeah, I know Dan, we had a really good talk together. But we don't. And so continuously, we don't. Even if I know you for 20 years, there's always something unknown and to see the beauty of that, to see the beauty and sacredness of the unknown in our lives. And so when I think I really know something because we're all very smart and I get to that place like, oh yes, I know that already. I've heard that before, you know, and Buddhism. I heard that teaching before. And then when I look at it again,

something new about it comes to mind. That's the beginner's mind. Something new about that thing, that person, that idea, that movement comes new to me. And I'm very like surprised of it. You know, I had been doing some work with someone around boundaries and it was very you know, somatic based or psychological based. And then up popped in the middle of that this idea

of spiritual boundary because I started looking at empaths because there's a lot of sensitive and empathic people, including myself, today where it's, they're more sensitive and more empathic, because there's so much going on. So I said, oh my gosh, there's that spiritual boundary as well, and all the years, I just never put it all together that way. So there's an integration that can happen in the past, and in the discovery

of things. The reason why when I really feel like I know something, I'm going to go back to that. I think about I really don't know where I came from, like period, like as a human being. And none of us know. We know, we know physiology and biology and we have all those answers. Science lets us know where we came from and how we got here, but we don't know where we came from. We don't know why we're here, but so, ever, why are we going through all of this? What is the purpose? And we don't know where we're going and we're all going, all of us. But that is amazing to me. To be based with this unknown, it could be a dilemma, a shadow following us constantly, or it could be a place of discovery,

all the way, all the way, all the way to the end, Steve Jobs, I heard that when he was dying, and I really liked that, this thing, that they said he said he was like really dying in that moment. And I know he's a researcher because of what he created and he's a visionary. So he was dying in his last moment. He said, oh wow. And I had held on to that. And I was just like, okay, I'm falling. Steve, wherever he went, you know. And he said, wow, and it was just, I felt it.

He was still in that way of being that helped him to be a visionary. He was still in that too, the moment he was dying. To me, that was his greatest moment, not when he created Apple, but when he died and said, wow, that was his greatest moment, not when he created Apple, but when he died and said, wow, that was his greatest moment to me. So like, I haven't forgotten it. Much more of my conversation with Zenju, Earthlin, Manuel, right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life.

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I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. You've written very movingly about death as a doorway to, and the word you use is tenderness. I use that word with a little bit of hesitation because it's the kind of word that, you know, a certain type of person, I'm not going to name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris. Might hear the word tenderness and like just be tempted to overlook it because it seems a bit maybe like a whole more card or something like that. However, you write very powerfully about tenderness too. So I don't know if I'm giving you a pointed question here, but I'm interested to hear more about what you said you brought up death and

how it can lead to tenderness. And what do you have in mind when you say tenderness? Death, no matter how many times I have been at the bedside of people who have taken their last breath, is a profound moment. And inside me, I feel the most authentic and the most open being that I can be. I don't even feel like I myself in the moment, myself the way I describe and define myself. I just feel like a being that could be human or anything. And I just watching the last breath and the sacredness of it

and the way I have no tension in my body at the time. And I feel very soft in the grief, in the tears. While painful, I feel very soft. Like I could be a plant energy or something. It's so soft and I don't feel myself that way every day, every moment. I feel tense, sometimes in rage, sometimes whatever. Frustrated, go watch something on TV, and then I get frustrated with what they're saying and doing all kinds of, just continues.

These emotions are non-stop. But in death, when I have witness death, the emotion that's there is grief, sadness, sorrow, could be despair, for some it may be even fear, but there is just this softness that I would like to hone more every day so that even when I engage in the world, I engage whatever there is to engage in my own life, that I do it from this place of gentleness and softness. Now this doesn't mean because your gentle are soft, that you can't be powerful and strong and whatever else you feel tenderness isn't.

You can't not, it doesn't mean you can't be that. It just means that when you take action, you're taking it from this very open, sacred, slow, could be gentle, could be rough too. Place that opens your heart. What is it that opens your heart? This is tenderness. What is happening now?

Many of us are going through tenderness. And the tenderness could be where you're just caught in emotion. You're just suffering. Or it could be the tenderness you're paralyzed. Some people get very paralyzed. When something makes them vulnerable, they get paralyzed. Because that's mostly from trauma and other times when they have bad pain or suffering. But then there's this very powerful liberating

tenderness where you're still feeling all the emotions. You may even have some paralysis. But there's some way in which you are still present and engaged with the tenderness. And I think Tick-Nan Han says it like this when a baby's crying how a mother is tender with that baby, or guardian or father, whoever is guarding that baby, there is this way of touching into your baby, your cry, your tenderness, your pain, and a motherly way, or fatherly way, or I'll say prayer or way,

whatever you, I think you get the idea, whether then trying to get rid of it here, you know, with different things, you know, maybe substance abuse, sexual abuse, all kinds of spiritual abuse, all kinds of things we do to come away from this thing we're feeling. So I came to this word tenderness through my name, Zenju, which is a Dharma name. My whole Dharma name is Ekai, an ocean of wisdom. And Zenju means complete or total tenderness. That's what Zenju means. So the names given in the Dharma are names that are your essence.

So it's not even, you don't even own it really. It's just an essence like you could be Zenju too. You know, it's an essence. And so the second name is the name my teacher said that you work on in your life. The first name is how they people see you and it's usually associated with nature. My teacher is now passed. That's a zinke blanch heartman and one of honor her to as I'm speaking. So when they sent my name zinju in the ceremony and they said in complete tenderness and everyone went, oh wow, that's so nice.

And then when I told people, I said the second name is what you're not. I'm not. So I didn't want to use that word Zinju. When I got it, I didn't use it. I kept trying to use Ekai. And my teacher was against it because Ekai is supposed to be informal.

And that's you use your formal, Dom or name. And these are what she had been taught. Eventually, a woman I was working with, she's a diviner actually in African, San Goma, South African, San Goma. She said, you need to use that name, Zinju. You need to start using it, because I wasn't. I like Earthlin very well. That's when my mother named me, Earthlin. I love it. And so I said, okay, I'll try using Zinju. And that was the process of tenderizing all the

oppression and woundedness and pain that I had been dealing with since I was a kid Being assaulted beat up all kinds of things have happened to me being turned away. I it's still going on I just had a recent incident right here in Albuquerque at a winery they would not serve me Why not? my appearance winery. They would not serve me. Why not? My appearance. Yeah, she said motion in my appearance. Yeah, my face. Yeah, I didn't want to serve me. Simply because you're black and a female. I had no idea. I was standing there

waiting for it was a wine tasting time. I actually was waiting for the tacos outside, but they send you went to the winery. So I went in anyway, and I was waiting there just nothing. Just me and the person, the retailer, standing there, and he just stood there, and I just stood there, and I was waiting and waiting, and that's, you know, that's usually not the case. And a winery. They even run right up to you with the glass and what do you want to taste? And I, because I've been to a lot of them, you know, living in California.

I now live in New Mexico. So I waited and I said, well, you have Sherry and I asked to taste that. And so he just grabbed the glass and he gave me about a eighth of a teaspoon of Sherry. You can't taste the Sherry in the eighth of a teaspoon. So I just said, okay, maybe that's his demeanor. So I'll just take the sherry, it was okay.

And then a whole group of people came and they were all white and he went right over to him, hello, how you doing? Welcome to body, everything. He completely not what he did with me. and he went right over to him. Hello, how you doing? Welcome to body, everything. He completely not what he did with me. Brought out all the glasses.

What do you want to drink? What do you want? Let me know, man. And I was still standing there waiting for him to get the sharia, ask him to buy. He didn't even want to make the sale. That's how bad it was. So I could take that in and I used to take those kind of things in and crumble,

succumb to them. I could take action toward the winery, bring all my friends down and take you. But I did write a letter, so I did not do anything. And I sent them a picture of me and my Zen ropes. That's all. It's just like a very quiet passive, I guess, protests. I did tell them what happened, exactly how it happened. I didn't add anything to it. I just said exactly how it happened.

Did they get back to you? No. No. No one. I'm sorry, I'm sorry that happened. That sounds... No one has gotten back. and there's nothing to be done But I wanted to let them know and I did say I hope this is not all your employees

You know, I don't want to blame all of them, but that one person definitely was representing you So I think these kinds of things can make you tender emotionally and in the moment I wasn't I didn't have time to make you tender emotionally. And in the moment, I wasn't. I didn't have time to process it in that moment. Really, I wanted to get my tacos, which was the reason why I came, because they had this new truck out there. And they were having these really wonderful different kinds of tacos. And I wanted to try it. Taco Tuesday. And that's all I was there for. And every time I feel my stomach flop or my heart jump in those kinds of experiences, because like I said, it was very in the body, wasn't in the mind. I couldn't think it out or anything. But when I feel that in my body, I just feel that sensation and I allow it to process itself

in my body. I don't take it to my mind. So I didn't go right away and write the letter because that would take it up there. Do my head. So I just stayed with it in the body. I know how to breathe with it though. So that it's not harmful now. I know how to breathe with it and allow the sensation that's happening that is older than me. It's ancestral. And then

it came into me too. As I grew up, as who I am, and it happened, it's been happening, and it's going to continue to happen, even if racism is taken away and something else comes into play. Let's say now I become the superior being on the planet. There's something with that as well. There's a sensation in the body that's got to be, not feel good. And so I think that I just over time, that kind of thing would apparelize me,

but I was still tender, but still able to engage and take action and not be pulled over to the curb by it, murdered by it. I took care of my body in it because I knew it was affecting my body with breath and stillness and breath and stillness and I actually went and I didn't even leave the winery. I sat down right there. That's how I was able to watch him with the other group. I just sat there, but I wasn't watching him. I was watching me. I didn't run out either.

I wanted so bad to hold onto this because it's that very thing that I am healing. But if I keep running away from that thing inside me that I'm healing, I if I keep writing away from that thing inside me that I'm healing, I will continue to let it be about other people, why people, blue people, purple people. It would just be like that all the time. So in order to deal with my own tenderness and to transform that tenderness,

the same thing I was talking about in the beginning, you know, having that dive and then lift and flight at the same time, I allow that to happen. And so confusing for the mind. So you can't draw the mind into it because the mind going, am I up or am I down? Am I up? You know, the mind gets to involved in what you're trying to feel. So tenderness has been a journey for me. and now have I accomplished it? No, that for found liberating, you know, tenderness that I would like to have. And my teacher let me know, you have to do this ceremony. It was so funny. It's called she's so like you're a head student.

And you have to do this questioning kind of ceremony in the end of your service as a head student. And when I got to the end of your service as a student. And when I got to the end, she said, I don't think you're tender enough, yeah. In front of like 200 people. And I thought it was good because she knows me. She knew that I wanted to accomplish tenderness. I'm going to accomplish this name.

I'm going to become this name. I'm going to become completely tender, totally tender in a powerful, liberating way where that when I express myself, you will feel it. You will know it. They will know it. Folks will see it. That's external. But I know that within me that process is still going on and will till the day I die. I know that she set me on a course of Zenju, on a path of that. And for her to set a person who is black and queer and has a experience of pressing all over her life every day was profound for her to invite tenderness into my life as a path of liberation, not as a wounding or an apparelized place or an emotional place.

And I just really have been still sitting with it and will still sit with it. A lot of people say, well, I don't want to be tender, so I'm not reading your book. And that's fine, because I know that they're the very ones that are not able to use their own tenderness, and they're afraid of it. We're afraid to be that way, to be vulnerable. It takes a particular person and path and development,

I think, to do it. I don't think everyone can, and development, I think to do it. I don't think everyone can. And I don't suggest it for everyone, but I do present it as a possibility, that there is a possibility in everyone's life to have a liberatory and full life, not dictated and legislated and given, but one that is nurtured and grows within you

with your meditation, with your prayer, no matter who you are. You know, I feel like I have had a lot of training and suffering, public at home and in the world, and there's no way to get away from that other than to get away from people or die. And I chose to be with people. I'm glad you made that choice personally. You've made a few references to some of the difficulties you've experienced during the course of your life. Only if you're comfortable with it, I'd be interested to hear more about that and how it ultimately led you to Zen Buddhism.

Being led to Zen Buddhism, I would have to say had nothing to do with Zen or Buddhism, or Buddha, or any of the terminology around it, because the same thing, I was very much a Christian and I still feel it in my blood. And I went to church into my 30s. I was very much not a not a evangelical Christian. I was erased in a church of Christ. It has that aspect in it. But I was always curious about life and death. And I think the things that happened to me And I think the things that happened to me were so many places in which I almost died. Like, I have a lot of near-death experiences. I think more than I should have. But to be up on death so much, you know, so close all the time in my life, I think helps one develop a strong sense of tenderness as a powerful medicine

and not as something that is to be ignored or is for weak people. How would you define tenderness? I know how it feels. So that always comes up first. It feels very vulnerable. I want to use the word open, but that's always so general to me. Like, what is that? And I feel like it's being completely engaged with one's heart in the moment, where one is in the moment, where the heart is. So a lot of people say, well, what if you're

in rage, that's not the heart, that's the mind. If I'm in rage, it's the mind. I know that. I was in rage so much that in my beginning years of teaching, I remember being in rage, and I talk about in my song, I remember, I suspended myself from the song. I said, I can't. I got to go. I'm not going back. We're low wow. Because I knew if I stayed, I would hurt them. Even if I was speaking nicely, something would hurt. And maybe a half because of my enragement.

You know, it's because it's like you can see it in people's face. And then I can see their rage because they have hurt me too. It has been mutual. I can see their rage. So I really studied it. And I'm still studying rage. When I say that, I'm not reading books. I'm allowing that I don't really know what it is. I speak the word. So I don't really know what tenderness is.

I can just say, I know I'm in my heart. It's a state of being in my heart. And that heart is some people say heart mind or heart consciousness. So each part of our senses, right, is a consciousness. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose, all of our senses have a consciousness and the heart does too. And so I'm working a heart consciousness all the time. I feel like I'm much better at it because I'm able to bring myself through breath, through song, through meditation, through chanting, through stillness back to the heart and to stay close to the earth. The deepest piece was my kind of journey

with the earth, that book that I wrote that came out December 2020. And I wrote that book in a way that people would experience tenderness. You could say, it pieces part of it. I didn't want people actually to walk away with like they could actually quote me or gang knowledge that it wasn't a book of knowledge and quoting me as they did with the way attendance are sanctuary those other two books. And I was wondering if anybody

would pick it up at all. Cause it had to me that touch of tenderness in it. And at a time when everyone is feeling completely the opposite, if not intensified rage. So if they see the word piece, they might not want that. But the piece I'm not talking about is where you still engage, you still have your rage, you still have whatever as a human being.

You might still be part of movements, but at the same time, there's this poetry of life. Much more of my conversation with Zenju Earthland Manuel right after this. Well, let me throw a question at you and we'll see what happens. I'm a little worried just because it's a big question, but we'll see what happens. Okay, I'll try. Let's do some. With apologies, there's a sentence or two that you wrote, two sentences that just caught my attention. Here it is. I'm not advocating love as an answer to all

of the ills of the world. Then again, it is just that simple to be love. Yes. I have a little pamphlet and it's free on Almanza called Be Love. And I have, I think the poems in there too, being being love. And it was part of the tenderness journey without naming love, but having experience where I have felt love, instead of trying to capture that and give it as a thing, our object, our take taking away with draw it from people. I wondered what the experience would be to be love and what that would look like. I think be love has sold more books maybe just because it's free, but that's been downloaded from Amazon more than anything I've written. And I was exploring our kind of, like love as a deep desire, how we feel like it's outside

or we have to do something to receive it, or that we think that our hearts can be closed. And we can close off to people and things in places, but our hearts don't close. They never close. So even in our thinking we're closing off this feeling of love, we can call it love, even in that we have the maybe anger and rage or dislike of someone even to spend time to have that, there's love in it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have anything.

You would just be numb. Love is, I think about babies, and I write about that coming into the world. And I think they come to teach us love. We don't teach them. They show it as soon as they're born, everybody's all over that baby, mostly. Even if their parents aren't, somebody's all over that baby, somebody in the world. And that baby unconditionally without a word, just its being, its essence, its being born, is teaching us love. The baby teaches the parents love and if the parents are unable to learn it then there's trouble. And that's how I try to be love is to remember that experience

I've been around a lot of babies. I've been around a lot of people have died. I'm went in and I've been around a lot of babies. I love being around children. I love children. I love them all the way up to when they're sassy, you know, teenagers. I love the sassy. Actually, teenagers more, but I love them. And what they teach us, you know, they're so profound

in their language and they're being even when they're angry and ugly and having a fit, you know, they're so profound in their language and they're being even when they're angry and ugly. And having a fit, you know, I just, there's just something about them that cannot be ignored. So, B-Love is to be in just in that direct experience of being in the world every moment without judgment, of being in the world every moment without judgment, without being an expert, without making a project to fix something, but just being, you know, not knowing. Baby doesn't know which ones the mother or the father. They're just looking.

There's a practice in Buddhism of watching people die, but I think it's a great practice to watch babies. And watch them look around, and see if you can develop that kind of scene. Just looking. No judgment, no nothing. Not knowing nothing. You hear a voice, you hear, you see a person,

just being like that, which will allow space for hopefully an experience of love. Whatever that is, not love itself, but an experience of love because we don't know that either, really. We're just here practicing every minute. It's been really nice to sit with you for this time today. I really appreciate your time. In just in closing, you mentioned a few of the names of your books, but can you just list them off again for folks who want to dive in and maybe anything that any other resources

you have out there that people might want to access? Yeah. I think if you're a beginner around Buddhism, I have a book called Tell Me Something About Buddhism. But it's very different. All my books are different than what the title says. So you're not going to get the same answers as you may get in other books.

Because I do use my life experience, even my experience in being in church. What God means to me and Jesus, it's all in there. It's all in. Tell me something about Buddhism is a Q&A kind of book with illustrations that I did. There is the way of tenderness, awakening through race, sexuality, engender, and I always tell people, you know, if you get that book, I didn't write a book about Dharma and race, whereas some books are that way. I wrote a book about awakening

and race and sexual and gender were gateways. So everyone has a gateway, find your gateway, read the book, find your gateway. Could be illness, could be death, could be anything. It's not a book on race or sexuality or gender. And then there's sanctuary, a meditation on home and homelessness, of course, in a spiritual sense. And then I wrote a book on, let's see after that, okay, the deepest piece just came out December 2020, deepest piece, contemplations from a season of stillness. And I actually wrote

most of that here in New Mexico. On February the 8th, we'll come the book called The Shamanic Bones of Zen. And it's the ancestral looking at the ancestral spirit and mystical heart of a sacred tradition. And what I'm trying to do is bring, I really could say Buddhism, but I haven't studied all Buddhism. So I just said Zen. But I'm trying to bring back our, you know, focus on the the sacred rituals and ceremonies of Buddhism and how I feel we only have a tiny baby finger nail of transmission that there's so much missing, you know, because it is ritual and ceremony and it's very hard to transmit and transmit that to, make it a transmission to the world.

So I feel like we're missing a lot and I talk about how a colonialism affected the Buddhism we practice and how it affected the indigenous Japanese religions and traditions, spiritual traditions, Buddhism impacted them a lot. And then I have a novel coming out next year called the The Waters of Les Bois and it takes place in Haiti. That one is a spiritual, spiritual, magical, historical fiction. You're a busy Buddhist. I love it. Thank you again for doing this. It was great to meet you if only virtually and I really appreciate your time. Thank you again for inviting me and what we stay connected. Likewise, likewise. Thanks again to Zenju, great to meet her. This show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman,

DJ Cashmere, Justine Davy, Kim Baikamom, Maria Wartelle, and Jen Poient with audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all Wednesday for a brand new episode with Matthew Hepburn. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

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