CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Theme Music]  

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs Department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit University in San Francisco. To find out more about CIIS, and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  

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Alka Arora: Dr. Ward it's such a pleasure to be able to speak with you this evening, and I so enjoyed reading your book and got so many new insights from it. And I wanted to start off our conversation this evening by asking you to speak a little bit more about the book's provocative title, America’s Racial Karma…now particularly this term Karma is an Eastern term that's found its way into the U.S. and is used all the time. People use it every day I was on Reddit the other day and I got something called Karma points [laughter] and so I  think that you know many Americans have either a distorted idea of what Karma represents, or maybe just an unclear idea, so I was wondering if you could start us off by speaking a little bit more to the concept of Karma generally and then what you mean specifically by racial Karma? 
 
Larry Ward: OK, well thank you Alka, delighted to be with you this evening. Yes, Karma is a word that is showing up in all kinds of contexts. I was buying dog food the other day and I noticed there's a Karma dog food [laughter] and or a Karma bar, or Karma this, Karma that. So that's the commercialization of everything that's part of our modern existence. For me, I understand that Karma comes from the ancient teachings of Hinduism. And what changed for me and understanding Buddhist approach to Karma and my own work and study with Karma, what I mean by Karma is that our thinking, our speech, and our physical behaviors create energy, the energy of action—which is the Sanskrit definition of Karma, just one word—action. And so, the reason I chose this title is because our actions have created our racial condition, have created our racialized consciousness, and those actions of thinking, and language, and behavior continue to carry the energy and momentum of that action forward. 
 
Alka: Hmm…thank you.  
 
Larry: So that's why I use that that term, and the other part of that term indicates from the perspective of Samsara, or the endless round of birth and death, or our experience of dissatisfaction reoccurring in our lives is a normal human experience. But I’m looking at Karma from a historical perspective of how actions of thought about race, the language about race, and the behaviors over the last 500 years around race have created the circumstances we have now. 

Alka: Hmm…so what I understand from what you're saying and also from reading the book is that we shouldn't think of Karma as just an individual thing, right, like but it's actually collective. 
 
Larry: Yes, it is collective because everything is inescapably collective in spite of our modern worship of individualism, and that actions, the energy of the actions continue. [Alka: Mhm] So, for example I didn't put this part in the book, because it’s a short book. [laughter] But, you know, the thinking and the language, and the behaviors exemplified by Hitler are still alive in people [Alka: Mm…Mhm] even though Hitler's gone. So what I’m trying to help myself, and all of us understand, is how we think about race, the language we use about one another, and the behaviors we use as we interact with one another, either heals us or creates more suffering. 
 
Alka: Hmm..Mhm…so when you talk about, like, so for instance, you know the energy of Hitler still lives in human consciousness in some ways today. So oftentimes you know when I teach, or I’m in conversations where people are talking about structural racism, or institutionalized racism you know sometimes white folks will say “but I didn't do it, I never you know lynched anybody, I never, you know… I believe all people are equal”. Is that person still implicated karmically in racism? 
 
Larry: Of course, of course because Karma's created our circumstances and that circumstance is shared whether we want to have be shared or not it's like being on a ship that starts to have engine trouble and it doesn't matter when that happens if you're on the first deck or the bottom because we have a shared contradiction. 
 
Alka: Got it…so I think what I’m getting and also from reading your book is that we can't opt out, we can't say I don't want to be part of this. 
 
Larry: No, we can't because our history is grounded in the lives, and blood, and sweat, and tears, and genius, and talent of our ancestors [Alka: Mm..Mhm] it is not an abstraction. And so Karma, also from a neurological perspective, conditions our nervous system to behave, to think, to react in certain ways…so even if I wasn't a slave, and I wasn't, the energy of that experience still lives in my body transmitted to me by my ancestors whether I wanted to have it transmitted to me or not. 
 
Alka: Wow, so Karma still lives in our nervous system…I’m going to be pondering that for a while, and I’m going to come back to that, [Larry: OK] I actually want to step back a moment and ask you to speak a little bit more about your own personal history [Larry: OK ]in your book you talk about growing up in Ohio in the 1950s and you have experienced some not, just you know, institutional racism but overt acts of racial hatred, so if you could speak a little bit about your own experience and how did it lead you to the Dharma? 

Larry: Well, I’ve spent a long life in religious studies and spiritual practice even before my 30 years or so with Thich Nhat Hahn, so I’m also an ordained Christian minister, I’ve taught and studied theology to priests and lay people around the world. Cleveland in the 50s, most African-America communities were in a pocket…in a circumscribed geophysical environment, and in that environment that I grew up in…I played, I felt safe, I had fun, I had great neighbors and…but we were always aware that it was dangerous to step outside the pocket. [Alka: Hmm] Most of the people, most of the family members I grew up with and neighbors were worked in factories, you know aluminum factories, car factories, and those were you know, adequate paying jobs so to speak for that time period…so we were able to, with all of our help, you know to get to get a house, to get a tiny little house and to care for it. I think the first time I really realized how dangerous racialized consciousness was when I was shot at by a policeman for playing baseball in the wrong place, and fortunately this person missed, but they put a hole in the hat I had on, which my mother used to keep [laughter] and by the, by on top of the refrigerator, and every time I’d leave the house, she’d say “don't forget that hat”, so be careful, be safe, and be wise. And so as then as the 60s happened, Black Nationalism happened, all that was going on in Cleveland, Martin Luther King came to my high school, a year after I graduated to give a talk et cetera. So, it was the ferment of civil rights was going on and began to really grow throughout Cleveland. And then we had riots in 1966 and then again riots again in 68 after Martin’s murder and assassination. So you know, the way I like to say is I don't have a choice about doing this work [Alka: Hmm…Mhm] my body and my skin has required I do this work in order to stay sane, in order to be kind to myself and to others. So, Cleveland was a great teaching for me in terms of recognizing people's pain, people suffering. That was the first time I really encountered groups of African Americans acknowledging the pain, acknowledging the suffering, and coming into voice. 

Alka: And I read that you were only 11 when you were shot at by the police officer, is that correct? 

Larry: Yeah, uh-huh. 

Alka: Wow, and it just makes me think how early those particularly, I think Black boys are cast in this role as you know, the stereotype or the racist concepts like thug or someone who's potentially gonna commit a violent act, [Larry: Mhm] and you have to you know, the police industrial complex kind of just comes in and starts at policing and, like you're you said your mother told you to take that cap because it's like she had to tell you that this world is not safe. 
 
Larry: Right. Yeah, and to be honest, you know there were normal socio-economic challenges in my neighborhood, as there were in most inner-city neighborhoods, [Alka: Mhm] but most of the time I felt safe unless I saw a police car. [Alka: Mm…mhm…right] I was not robbed, or mugged, or threatened by anybody in my neighborhood [Alka: Yeah] and I mean literally I wasn't. There was only one person I had a fight with, they picked on my sister, which was a bad idea. [Alka: Laughs]  

So, but other than that there was kind of a cocoon of naivete, we're OK, we're making it, we're improving. And then when the riots happen, the neighborhood I was in was also multicultural…we had neighbors from Poland, from Italy, from around the Europe and immigrants who had come after World War II. And but when the riots first happened, every everyone who could left to go live other places where they felt safer. 

Alka: So that's where you start seeing more, a different type of division happening between different ethnic groups [Larry: Yes] of ethnic immigrants, [Larry: Yes, right] and so, how again, I want to return to this question of how did you come to the Dharma because you were a Christian first? 
 
Larry: Yes, but I, all religion for me is a spiritual practice…I don't, I don't try to focus on belief systems. [Alka: Mm…Mhm] My experience and observation is belief systems can be really dangerous, and so I try to focus on my actual human experience and my spiritual practice which, is what I really appreciate about Buddhism, even though there are traditions of spiritual practice similar to Buddhism and Christianity but those traditions didn't get transmitted very well. [Alka: Mhm] You know, huge contemplative traditions, mystic traditions, but similar practices to some of the Buddhist practices but most Christians don't know…and so that is something, a rich part of Christianity that has been missed…and so I always, Thich Nhat Hahn, and I encourage people do not lose your roots whatever they are use the practice of mindfulness and meditation to open up your roots [Alka: Mmm] so you can see their genuine and lasting value. 
 
Alka: Yeah, I think Thich Nhat Hahn even wrote a book about something like Living Jesus…living…Living Buddha…? 
 
Larry: Living Buddha, Living Christ. 

Alka: Living Christ! Right…recognizing that there is that shared [Larry: Yeah] mysticism and sense of contemplation. You know, I’m really reflecting on this concept that you shared about feeling safe within the cocoon, and then recognizing that outside of that there was not safety, and having been a part of various spiritual community communities in my life, I think many people would like to think that Buddhist communities can be a sort of cocoon where folks don't have to think about racism, or sexism, or all of these -isms. But I think that the reality of it is that oftentimes, well not oftentimes, that these communities are also enmeshed in the same systems as [Larry: Of course] the general community so, I wonder if you could speak to like is racism a problem within Buddhist communities? 
 
Larry: Well I think, well part of it depends on what you mean by racism. So, one of the things I’ve noticed is in America especially how we merge language. So, racism is systemic, it's about power and then there's attitude which is more individual…prejudice, stereotyping, all of which is part of the whole system…but yes, Buddhist communities cannot escape, like no other community can escape. [Alka: Mm..Mhm] So it would be, and for me it's…I gave a short talk recently on Black Lives Matter as a door to liberation and it upset some Buddhist people, which is fine, but it struck me how could they be upset when one of the deepest teachings in Buddhism is about signlessness, and how we get confused and even a quote from the beautiful Buddha “where you see a sign, you see deception” and for me, we've made race signs of ourselves where we reify essences in ourselves based on our skin tones that don't exist like, women are like this well, that doesn't make any sense. Black men are like this, white people, I mean we have got to learn how to let go of our conditioning and I notice, it can be a complicated term, but this reification of essence where there is no essence. [Alka: Hmm] And so I think that's under, this is why Buddhist psychology is so important to me, because this is a part of what we have to unpack and release. 
 
Alka: So if I understand correctly to reify something means to make something that's not real appear real? 

Larry: Yes, so it's to place values on something, to project values on something that aren't inherently there. 

Alka: Right, just like social sciences demonstrated that race is not real, right, so it's just like elaborate fiction right, that we can't ignore because it has really it has real effects. 
 
Larry: It has profound consequences. 

Alka: Yes, and so, returning to this kind of experience that you had about talking about Black Lives Matter in a Buddhist community, I’ve been a part of Buddhist communities and other spiritual communities too where that's pushed back because they're saying “well just by talking about it you're creating divisiveness, or making it real” right? Have you heard that? [laughter] 

Larry: [laughter] Yes. I just started laughing because the first noble truth in the Buddhist tradition, in the teachings is about suffering, [Alka: Mmm] and for me to pretend there is no suffering connected to racialized consciousness is to live in an illusion. [Alka: Mm…Mhm]  

So, part of the, part of the dilemma for Buddhist communities, and I’ve studied, I continue to study Buddhist history, is the tradition of Buddhism has a tendency to stay safe in the power structure that exists. [Alka: Mhm] This is true all the way back if you go to look at Buddhism in China and other parts of the world…so there's this tendency not to upset the powers that be [Alka: Mmm] now there are parts of Buddhism in history where that, that tune didn't play well and people got really active and Thich Nhat Hahn is a great example of what it means to take the practice of mindfulness, the practice of Shamatha calming down, the practice of Vipassana, seeing and deep looking into our social fabric. [Alka: Mmm] So, for me, meditation isn't just something for my mind.  

To practice insight, what if we practice insight meditation and turned our attention to our school system? What if we practice insight, gaining wisdom into how we communicate with one another? [Alka: Mmm]  So, for me the practices of Buddhism are not separate from how I live in the real world, because there isn't some other world. [Alka: Mhm] 

Alka: Right, so this brings me to this sort of idea, and this might be different in like the Theravadin versus the Zen tradition, that I’ve also heard is that, you know our focus needs to be on our own individual liberation because Samsara, is Samsara, right? [Larry: Mhm, mhm] This this world is suffering, it is what it is, the best that we can do is try to valiantly seek our own liberation, and perhaps other ,help others with their liberation, in a spiritual way…[Larry: Mhm, mhm, yes] but leaving the social out of it. And my understanding of Thich Nhat Hahn’s work and your work is that it's saying no they're actually, we have a role to play in this world, in these systems of oppression.  
 
Larry: Well one of the reasons we do is because our systems and the world is inside of us. [Alka:Mmmm!] It is not simply outside of us. [Alka: Ahh] To describe Samsara as if it was external, Samsura's first internal, is my own internal dissatisfaction with being a human being, and that gets manifested in our social interactions, our social thinking, our social psychology, and so society lives in us, it doesn't just live outside of us. It's the same issue with the Earth. We think nature is out there, [Alka: Right] it's not - we are nature. [Alka: Yeah, OK] Becoming conscious. And so, another way I’m starting to describe this is the liberation of my heart and mind as an individual, for me is a steppingstone to the next liberation. So it is not enough, actually I gave a talk last year about being calm is not enough, being satisfied with your own feeling of wellness and peace is fundamental to our healing and transformation, but that's the first step, not the last step. [Alka: Mm…Mhm] So, for me we, we're at a point of understanding liberation beyond the personal. And that for me is the shift between the old story of liberation and the emerging new story of liberation, though they are deeply connected. 
 
Alka: Yeah. Wow…so something has just really been, things are really clicking for me as I’m hearing you speak. First of all, there is this concept of the first noble truth of the suffering in life right, it's like we have to recognize that there's a problem. [Larry: Mhm] So, it's like the first noble truth is also that racism is alive and well [Larry: Exactly] and is a major cause of suffering. [Larry: Yes] Yeah unless we can name it how could we ever seek to transcend it right? [Larry: Right, yeah] Or to heal from it. Yeah, and that this idea that Samsara is within us, so in order to actually, we can't, there is no individual liberation if we can't undo the way these systems live within us.  
 
Larry: I really started to understand this a long time ago when I was doing undergraduate work. I got a degree in psychology and another one in organizational behavior at the same time, and what I learned was this, the relationship between individuals and their social framework, whether that's an organization, a religious community. And what I discovered, and I did consulting with Fortune 500 companies that's a whole other thing, but what I discovered was an individual can only heal and transform as much as the social framework will allow. [Alka: Mmm] And I also discovered that when a social framework organization of whatever type begins to grow, it can also threaten individuals who have become comfortable with whatever the status quo is in their system. So, there's no… 
 
Alka: There’s no inside versus outside, it's all one. 
 
Larry: Right. Right…it’s all one yeah, that what's right. 

Alka: Right, remember when people used to argue about, do we create change from inside the system, or outside the system…? There is no outside, it’s all one. 

Larry: No there is no, it's all one, and it's grounded in our consciousness. No system comes to be by itself. You know, in Buddhism we like to talk about their causes and conditions that create things. So, one way to understand my book, is I do a little bit of explanation of the causes and conditions that created our racialized consciousness. [Alka: Mhm] Because we don't understand what caused it, and what conditioned it, we can't uncaused it, and we can't decondition it.  
 
Alka: So, of the causes and conditions of racism what is, what are one or two of the things that you think that most Americans just don't get, or don't realize as part of the causes and conditions of today's racism?  

Larry: Well one thing is to speak about trauma, and what I mean by trauma is biological, the experience of being biologically destabilized in your own nervous system, that is your sense of wellness has been lost. Your sense of wholeness, completeness has been lost, and you end up living a life full of reactivity in which you are either fighting, or fleeing, or you become numb. And so, my critique of America in general is that we are numb, [Alka: Mmm] we are disassociated, we are so disconnected from our own bodies that we literally cannot feel.  
 
Alka: It's like that Pink Floyd song I have become comfortably numb. 
 
Larry: [laughter] Exactly, and so that's one part of it, the second part is that the journey of race in America in particular, everyone has been traumatized, destabilized as victims, that's easy—well for some of us it's easy to see because we've had to live it—but also witnesses have been traumatized, so… and perpetrators have been traumatized. Nobody escapes the destabilization of harm that we do to one another. That's an illusion about being a human being, I mean what we now know about our mirror neurons, and how our brain gets shaped, and our chemicals get released. I mean, what we now know about our body systems, for me, is where we have to begin to unpack this. 
 
Alka: Got it, yeah, I think that's one of the things I was really struck by, even though it is a short book you cover so much ground including colonialism, the history of racism, neuroplasticity, Buddhist concepts. But one of the concepts that I was really struck by again is to return to what we started with of this idea of how Karmic effects live in our nervous system. And I was really struck by this time in your book you said, “hearing the word race still sends shivers up my spine and makes my stomach tighten and my mind's defense mechanisms go on high alert”. And I’m thinking about all those listening in on this call, and I imagine that you know, even though they voluntarily came to listen to this conversation, that folks might be feeling different effects in their bodies and in their nervous system from hearing these things being talked about so directly. And so, I was wondering, about if you could speak more to, how do we deal with this energy that lives in our body, right? Whether we identify as you know a person of color who's been a target of racism, or if we you know, are part of the legacy of perpetrators. What do we do with that energy? 
 
Larry: Well what I’m doing with that energy, is I decided to get myself trained in trauma resilience work. So, of course intuitively the African American community and other people of color communities have done this through our rituals, through our songs, through our dances, through our poems. You know, when I started studying trauma work, I started to realize why my mother danced at church. [Alka: laughter] She was releasing trauma, coming back into balance. The singing, the jazz, the gospel of music, all of those are forms of working through trauma, trying to stabilize your life enough, your heart and mind enough, to move forward without giving up. So, I have and continue to study different teachings about trauma and how to work with it in the body.  

Peter Levine, one of the pioneers in somatic experiencing suggests that the world will not really be free until most of us learn how to self-regulate. [Alka: Mm..Mhm] So most of us, so you know things still happen to me, right? Just like they happen to you, I’ve watched the news…when I wrote this book, I told my wife almost every other day and I had no idea I had so many tears. I was crying all the time, reprocessing, but I know how to reprocess. So, I’m fortunate, both through my mindfulness practices I know and through my trauma resiliency practices I know. I know how to handle my pain. I know how to handle my energy that wants to run away, or my energy that wants to fight and hurt or my energy that wants me to just go numb and go into the dark. And so, it is not just trauma the event, it is the reactivity we have developed to cope with these events. And so, we live in a society in which most of us are coping, [Alka: Right] reacting… 

Alka: And people may use alcohol, or drugs, or even just Facebook…  
 
Larry: Or anything…yeah, I mean human beings, right? Anything works for us to help us handle our suffering that we may not know how to handle. So, for me education about what it means to be traumatized, what trauma is from a biological point of view, is very important. And the skills to help our bodies come back, our minds come back into balance for me is one of the great benefits of mindfulness practice. If we actually do it grounded in our body and not just think it's something we're thinking about. 
 
Alka: Sure, yeah…so there's been a move in recent times to bring more trauma sensitivity to mindfulness practices and the sort of argument that just sometimes the traditional meditation practices can actually reactivate trauma. [Larry: That’s correct] Or are not appropriate for everyone depending on what they're going through can you speak more to that? 
 
Larry: Yes one of the things that's different in our world then was not the same in the world of the Buddha or for thousands of years after him. People had individual relationships with teachers. So people could, a student or practitioner, could come talk with you and say I’m having difficulty with this and you'd give them a meditation or other exercises they could do to help them heal and transform themselves. Now because we are in large groups, so to speak, individuals don't get the attention they need. So, I think that's part of the issue, for me. The third thing, we need education on understanding how our brains work. I’m astounded that, you know, neuroplasticity is now a very popular word. New books are out, and my dissertation was on neuroplasticity and meditation. But this is like 25-30 years old, we just discovered what was always going on, which is that our brain cells when we think about something, they talk, and our thought is not an abstraction. We have neurons communicating, this is how thoughts happen. Language, our brain cells communicate, our behaviors, our brains, and whatever we communicate in our brains the more often we do that action, the more habit is built.  

A neurological habit is built, and that habit can be both how we cope with things. And so, I think it's important that we educate ourselves as opposed to talking about what we believe. What do we know about our bodies, what is our experience, and for me this is all the first foundation of mindfulness which is the body. And I did a talk in Japan a couple years ago, you know in the Buddhist teachings on meditation there's meditations on our skeleton, there's meditations on our breath, there's meditations on all of our organs, and so all I’m trying to say is please let's include our nervous system as an object of meditation.  
 
Alka: Yeah, the thing you said about that individual relationship and how when you know you go to a meditation retreat with 100 other people, and you know, you may not be given that guidance on how to deal with your own individual trauma, and I think that may be part of the reason that there's more of a dialogue happening now between Buddhism and psychotherapy and other healing modalities, right? [Larry: Yes] Like, how do we how do we integrate all of these so that we can actually find that stability to get to those deeper states of meditation, right? 
 
Larry: And to me the integration point is the body. There isn't anything else. [Alka: Yeah] And so that has to be the place where the work is done. It's also the place that is most racialized or sexualized in terms of your area of expertise.  
 
Alka: Right, it's like when people first put you, and you know, as soon as they see you it's like OK they try to figure out what your gender is, and then it's your race, and then [Larry: Yeah] there's a whole schema around that. [Larry: Exactly, yeah] One of the other quotes I pulled out from your book was, “our bodies hold the retribution energies of America’s racial Karma”. So, I want to ask if you could speak more to your use of the term retribution? 

Larry: OK, I know some people think of retribution as vengeance, or final judgment is the language in the Christian tradition, or at the end of life you will be judged. For me retribution is present moment. Karma is present moment. So, I think it's a mistake not to understand how powerful our human experiences are. And by retribution living in the body, I mean fear. The fear I have, when you know, I spent the first 25 years of my life, literally my body would freeze when I saw a police car. The fear was just running through my veins, and over time I had the pleasure of working with a group of police officers in Miami as a consultant working on visioning work and things like that mostly in organizational work, sometimes some diversity work. But what I realized is we've not been educated to be other than what we are. We have been educated to be separate, to live separate, not to be connected, we've been punished when we tried to get connected to one another, shamed as we try to get connected. This is in our bodies.  

My grandfather, who adopted my parents, and therefore adopted me, worked for the Pennsylvania railroad for over 50 years and I used to go to work sometimes with him at four in the morning on weekends on Saturdays, of course Sunday went four o'clock prayer meeting to church. But he would tell me stories of being afraid every time a white person got out the car, he just felt it and you know no harm came to him but just the fact that it could and that it could without consequence, without accountability, is where the fear gets deeper. So, my body knows the experience of my ancestors because they live in me. I didn't just appear. 
 
Alka: Right. And it's because of the ways these fear and traumas live in in differently racialized bodies that we see these ongoing problems with police brutality and the over-incarceration of people of color. [Larry: Yes] And so you talked about like in your own life recognizing that the way you needed to shift what was happening was through trauma resilience practices and mindfulness. When we come together in communities, or in you know different systems, whether it be prison, or the schools, how do we start to collectively shift, to shift the collective body? 
 
Larry: Well for me, and other people have written about this, especially recently, but to me creating an environment of safety. We cannot heal if we don't feel safe. If we don't feel safe individually, and if we don't feel safe together. So, learning how to create safety together in the presence of one another is how we begin to shift this. [Alka: Mmm] But safety is not order, this is one of my critiques about colonial, the colonial mind that still lives in America's soul. Order is not harmony [Alka: Right] and we somehow can condition ourselves to think that we have laws and then we have order to make sure people obey those laws. But what I’m trying to say in my experience, order turned out to be brutality. 
 
Alka: It's repression. 
 
Larry: Yes, it's subjugation, it's repression, it is not harmony. And back to my Cleveland growing up, you know there were some problems, and there was a small gang that emerged in high school, but nothing too dangerous…they were mostly boys with nothing else to do. And so, I think learning how to create safe environments in which we live, and work, and interact is the foundation for healing our trauma. [Alka: Mm…Mhm] Actually, a friend of mine is a therapist, and she comes from a Jewish heritage and she shared with me a paper recently on how important safety is in healing trauma. And the research concludes that there is no healing of trauma without the experience of safety coming first. So, without safety we can't acknowledge, we can't release, the parts of us that are in pain.  
 
Alka: And that makes me think of the Buddhist concept of the Sangha, right, like the religious community. [Larry: Yes] And how much that's like Dr. Martin Luther King’s beloved community. [Larry: Yes] Right, like we need this community of practitioners who are together practicing anti-racism, and practicing trauma release, and practicing how we learn how to self-regulate in community, right…our nervous systems, and heal our systems. 

Larry: And the next step beyond self-regulation is self-enhancement. We now also need not only to learn to regulate our nervous systems, but to enhance it so that it becomes capable of sustaining a planetary life. [Alka: Mm…Mhm] Right now our nervous systems are coded, and trained, and conditioned to be little cells, or cities, or towns, or states, or nations. But our nervous system is yet not grown to be capable of holding the whole Earth. And for me this is what the work is beyond self-regulation, beyond learning how to be calm, and practice Shamatha deeply. The thing about Shamatha, I think is important to say is the Shamatha practice, when it is fully realized for me what is there is a state of equanimity, an evenness of mind. It doesn't mean you put up with anything, it does mean you're capable of holding your own suffering. 
 
Alka: It doesn't mean you're apathetic. 

Larry: No, it doesn't mean you're apathetic. It means you're capable of being clear, open-hearted, and holding your own suffering in a way that you can transform it without it leaking out on your kitchen table, on your son or your daughter, or your partner, or your neighbor. Equanimity is not absence [Alka: Right] it is full presence of wholeness and spaciousness.  
 
Alka: Yeah so, you're not contributing you're not contributing to the cycles of violence and the chaos [Larry: Right, exactly] and the justice harmony…yeah so is that is that the work of the Lotus Institute? Can you speak a little bit more about what you and your partner do at the Lotus Institute? 
 
Larry: Well our team at Lotus, well I’ll describe it this way we've created…we do retreats, online retreats live retreats, we teach around the world, we have a virtual retreat coming up in Japan with colleagues and students and friends…this coming Saturday for example. But what we do at Lotus our theme, is whatever teachings we do, whatever spiritual practices we do, we want to do them deeply. We want to be non-superficial in our work and in our practice and then we want to go even deeper so that we actually get a sense of what, what is this? What is underneath this? What is at the root of our suffering? What is at the root of our healing? And then deeper still is our third category, this is embodying our own healing. Embodying our own transformation, which we don't actually have to talk about necessarily. We have to be present with it, with our kindness, with our generosity, with our insight, with our fierce love, with our demand for...I was asked by someone in Atlanta a few weeks ago about equality and I said you know actually I’m not interested in being equal. I’m not interested in being superior, I’m not interested in being less than…I am interested in being Larry! I am, I’m interested in being a human being who has a precious life.  

So, we have designed an online course called the Earth Gate at Lotus, which for us is the first stage of doing the resilience, trauma, mindfulness of the body work. So that we get basic tools to learn how to handle our traumatic experience, which is activated daily of course. And then our next gate is called the Wind Gate, the one we're working on now to come out early next year, it's about decolonializing our minds. We have so many impressions and thought forms and values that we've inherited…let's just take beauty, what the colonial tradition taught us about who's beautiful, what's beautiful. Or let's take purpose of life…what we learned from the colonial period it’s about accomplishment, and acquisition, and acquiring. Is that so? Because my experience with people who've been very accomplished is, they still suffer. [Alka: Absolutely] And I’ve had people one on one, some very successful people tell me about their suffering. But they don't feel safe telling anybody else, in their outside of their field, outside of their constituents, outside of their comrades, or whatever the case may be, people they work with neighbors, friends, and family. This is difficult in a society that individualizes everything. So, I don't want to be a racist, I’m a good person, right? And without understanding the systemic nature of that thought. 

Alka: There's so much that I could, like ask you to expand upon and everything you said there's so many  concepts [laughter] but the one that I want to ask you to say a little bit more about is this concept of equality, right, because this is a term in the western liberal tradition, right…that women's rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights have all been framed by this language of equality and you explain in your book that the Buddha actually said not only should we not think of, we shouldn't get into this trap of thinking of ourselves as better, equal, or less than. And I think many people would say yeah of course we shouldn't think of ourselves as better or less than, but we shouldn't think of ourselves as equal than? So I thought that was very thought-provoking and if you could just elaborate on that in the context of you know, our social justice language. 
 
Larry: Well for me, you know the language that we have now of justice is not that old, several hundred years old, came out of the Catholic church. And so, for me our whole framework for justice is still a colonial model. It places me in a position of asking for something, you know Malcolm X talked about it…it places me in a position for begging for my life. And so no I don't want equality, I want genuineness, I want respect, kindness, creativity. And so, the reason I say what I say about equality is because each one of us is such a mystery, how could it be in some box? 

Alka: Because it's like trying to flatten us all, as if we're all the same. 
 
Larry: Yeah, we're not thank goodness we're not, I mean what we're missing in one another is just profound to me. The talents and genius that has been pressed down or cut off. And so, equality it depends on the context in which you refer to it. If you're referring to it as a political framework, in my view, you're mistaken. Because the current political framework doesn't know how to do that, right? If it did, we wouldn't be having these conversations. So, to me that's, we need a consciousness, which is growing, which is emerging that can help us redefine what it means to be in relationship to one another. And for me that's about harmony, that's about wellness, and by harmony I don't mean there's no conflicts, I mean we know how to handle our conflicts without hurting one another. So, this is why I go back to training and education applied, not sitting through a classroom where everybody sitting there goes “God how soon can I get out of this?” That's not training. So, for me equality, spiritually all of us are so absolutely full of mystery depth and greatness how could, how could, how could that be equal? There's no way to measure that vastness that each human being is. So that's why I have say what I say about equality even though it's based on the Buddhist concept of what Thich Nhat Hahn calls and other Buddhist traditions call the self, self-aggrandizement in some ways. 

Alka: The conceits.  

Larry: Yeah, the self-conceit, the self-delusion. 

Alka: I’m going to be chewing on this one for some time [Larry: Good] thank you…know I mean, there's always new things to learn, you know there's like sometimes there's just that one concept or that new term that you might have seen before, but it doesn't really hit you until someone explains it in a new way, so I really want to thank you for that. I am going to ask you in a moment to read some of your poetry. Before I do that, I want to say, you know for folks who are listening and who are reflecting on all the traumas and stressors that people are under…be it COVID-19, and the elections, and the ongoing police brutality and institutionalized racism, which you know, we know has been going on for a long, long time, but some folks, particularly white folks are just now  beginning to have it more in their consciousness…is there a message that you want people to walk away with as they think about you know how do I become part of creating a world of more harmony rather than perpetuating these systems? 

Larry: Well first, and by harmony I don't mean some exotic state of abstract peacefulness. By harmony I mean the living presence of the processes that keep us alive. That keep us caring for one another that allow us to grow and allows our planet to recover from what we've done to it. So that's that. I think the core practices of mindfulness still play a very important role here. Every day I try to keep in touch with my feet as I walk, and touch the earth so I don't forget where I am. [laughter] I don't forget where I live… it's so easy we're so in our heads that coming back to our bodies, we've been conditioned not to be in our bodies in America. We've been conditioned to live from the neck up. And so, this is one of the dilemmas we have around race. If you're not in your body, you can't feel somebody else's suffering, you can't identify with someone else's pain. And what I’ve learned is when I can identify with someone else's pain I am accessing my own pain. I’m learning how to handle my own pain without being a victim to it. But if we go along as we have and you know it's easy in this society for many of us to pretend because we're going through the motions of our lives, we're doing OK, we're not particularly suffering but that's because we don't know how to think of ourselves as collective.  

We think we do by calling ourselves a nation, America, we still don't know how to be together. And part of the reason is we have been trained not to be together. That's what segregation was all about. That's what the prison system…it’s just, I mean the focus on wealth building as the only meaning of being human is at the core of this ugliness. If we go back to the doctrine of discovery the 15th century we will see the conquistadors, and the soldiers that went out, went out for wealth and power. With the church's permission, both the Catholic church and the Protestant church, and so we're having to unpack this heritage because it's in us. I had a conversation with my father one day at the kitchen table and I had a friend come by and he didn't like her hair. And he said to me he didn't like her hair why don't you say something to her about her hair. And I said are you crazy, you don't tell other people how to be themselves. Her hair, is like my hair, if I had any, it is my business [laughter] and but this is this is the legacies we have, but what I’m talking about is the patriarchy you know because the white supremacy model is based on the latter of racial skin tones and superiority down the inferiority that's one piece the hierarchy of value based on skin tone. Another piece is patriarchy, and the other piece is extraction of wealth. So, these three things come together that keep the system of white supremacy in place. [Alka: Mhm] But again, this didn't come from nowhere, people created it and so for me once we understand what we create, we can uncreate it if we have the courage and are willing to do the work and retrain ourselves so we can. 

Alka: So, what I, what I’m hearing you say is that…one of the things that folks may need to really think about in order to dismantle racism is to work on un-numbing ourselves. 

Larry: I think that's, in America, I think that's fundamental, fundamental. I can't tell you how many people I have met who can't feel. [Alka: Mhm…yeah] And you don't want to feel if you're not in a safe environment. [Alka: Right, right…yeah] Which is part of our political catastrophe at this moment…we keep trying to communicate to ourselves how unsafe we are…which… 

Alka: Perpetuates it. 
 
Larry: Perpetuates it.  
Alka: Yeah…I want to share that I think one of the ways in which we can also access our bodily experience and something beneath that numbness is through the arts. [Larry: Yes] Is through dance, and poetry, and ritual…and you know as soon as I talked with you the other day I said you know, what really struck me from your book that initially was the poetry that you shared. So I was wondering as a gift to our audience, if you would mind sharing one of your poems with us as a way of closing. 
 
Larry: OK…yes…to follow up on your comment we cannot think ourselves through this we have to feel our way through this. [Alka: Mm..Mhm] So, let's see I have one here… 
 
The morning mist hides the mountain's majesty, but the mountain is still there. It comes and goes nowhere. I too remain solid and unafraid. Fierce winds rage in the mind streams of those caught in the suffering of extremes. Our mindful energies echo sounds of kindness and sincerity in the air. Offering fresh balance, soulful depths, and the energy of new sanity. I hear the sacred gate opening, revealing the middle way, always present, silent now…All is still, rising feminine within and without…now. 

Alka: Thank you that was beautiful. [Larry: Sure] Do you have plans to publish a book of poetry next? 
 
Larry: I do, yeah, I had some of my friends and students have been collecting poems from retreats and other things over the years and so, yes…they put together a collection I have…once this, once all this is over with, I’ll sit with and then do final edits and etc. [Alka: Laughs…yeah] A great quote I heard about this, and it's not so much about my poetry, but any poetry is, I don't know who the author was, but it was…something like our societies would be much better off if we listen to our poets instead of our politicians.  

Alka: [Laughter] Mm…Mhm…What an idea! 
 
Larry: What an idea. 

Alka: Maybe we can all try that for a week! [Larry: Yeah!]  Listen to the poets! [Laughter]  

Larry: So, I listen, I read poetry all the time, I study every morning myself on my own as I meditate because I keep academically connected to what people are writing across disciplines. Because this is the other thing, I think so important that we learn how to think beyond one discipline, which I know you do. 
 
Alka: Absolutely. Thank you.  
 
Larry: Sure. 

Alka: Wow thank you, Dr. Ward [Larry: Sure, thank you] It's been such an honor to speak with you and I’ve, you’ve given me so much to chew on and contemplate and I know I’m going to be digesting these ideas for a long time, [Larry: Me too] as most of our listeners [laughter] will be as well! [Larry: Continuous learning] [Both Laugh] Thank you, it's been such a pleasure.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect.  

The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliot, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  

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