Lama Rod Owens + Katie Loncke: A Dialogue
Wisdom is timeless. Yet sometimes, somehow, it arrives right on time.
We were so fortunate to have acclaimed author and Buddhist teacher Lama Rod Owens join Katie Loncke, Buddhist Peace Fellowship's Director, in dialogue on:
- self-love
- being messy yet doing the work
- struggling fruitfully with the dharma rather than merely consuming it
- trusting those who've been through some sh*t
- finding the balance between vilifying and glorifying anger, in our spiritual and activist communities.
Whether you joined us live and are back for a re-watch, or whether you're watching or listening for the first time — please enjoy.
May you find something to support your journey to freedom.
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Transcript
>> CHIKA OKOYE: All right. So welcome Lama Rod. Welcome Reverend Lien and Katie and Sophia and everyone who is joining this webinar, this public dialogue between Katie Loncke, the director of BPF and Lama Rod Owens who is a Buddhist teacher and author and activist who we're pleased to have with us. This is the first day of BPF's annual gathering, Block Build Be, and we are so excited to be together in this way where we get to create a community of spiritual seekers and political activists who are seeking to block systemic oppression and harm, build creative alternatives and beautiful communities and be in alignment with our highest and best selves. So this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to share this moment with all of you who are joining. We were originally going to gather in person at the Land of Medicine Buddha, a Buddhist retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains, the traditional lands of the Amah Mutsun band. We're also pleased to have this format where many more people can join us for this talk. We'll have Katie and Lama Rod in dialogue. Towards the end of this, we'll take a few questions, and we'll close out with a reflection by Reverend Lien Shutt, who was so gracious as to offer up this space where she was originally going to give a Dharma talk but offered to make space for a Black Buddhist teacher in this moment of uprisings to defend Black life. We're so grateful for that offering. And for everyone who is sharing their wisdom with us today, so thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to Katie and Lama Rod.
>> KATIE LONCKE: Hello. Good morning. How are you?
>> LAMA ROD OWENS: I'm good. Are you talking to me?
>> KATIE: Yeah, yeah.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: I'm sorry. I was like Katie's talking to everyone else.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: I am good. I'm good. I am just, you know, trying to be grateful right now. [Not audible] at practice today. That's where I'm at. I'm grateful for the land that I'm practicing on. I'm here on, you know the ancestral lands of the Wampanoag and Massachusetts and Nipmuk people. Just remembering my ancestors. Remembering and being in anticipation for my descendents. Yeah. And just trying to just show up to this moment, to this really important moment. I think every moment is important, but it's such an incredibly important time for us. We're giving birth right now. We're giving birth to a new age. I know -- everyone you all are like what is Lama Rod talking about? this is horrible. This is birth. We are -- these are the contractions right now. This is -- I just feel so clear about that. Like we are beginning to see our dreams come true, you know, but we have to go through this. We're so close to the beginning.
>> KATIE: Yeah. Absolutely. Wow!
Very much the same wavelength. I was thinking last night. I was like I really want to start tomorrow with gratitude for these very simple marvels, you know. Grateful for all the nurses and healthcare workers that are out there right now working so hard for us. I'm also grateful for you. I brought you these flowers from my garden.
>> LAMA ROD: Those are beautiful!
[Chuckles]
>> KATIE: We have some milkweed that the monarch butterflies lay their eggs on and some other flowers I hear they like to feed on. I don't know anything about gardening.
>> LAMA ROD: Wow!
They don't even look real. They're so vibrant and colorful. Wow!
So gorgeous.
>> KATIE: Yeah. So grateful for you and grateful for our friends who are as some say more than human. All that allows us to live. And all the humans that are cultivating and growing and shipping our food, you know, like every meal that I eat. I'm just like, wow. There's a lot at play. Maybe also inviting everyone who is joining us for over 300 people right now to share in the chat if there's anything you're feeling particularly grateful for today in this moment. We're being joined maybe also share where you're coming from. I think we have folks like from as far away as India and also all over the occupied U.S., Turtle Island. Yeah. Share where you're coming from, and maybe something that is making you feel grateful. In this moment. Whoo, yeah. It's a lot. So humbling.
[Laughter]
>> KATIE: And Lama Rod, we were able to speak earlier, like a week ago. It was just such a joy. And like also just the more I think about you and bring you to my mind and heart, the more unreal you seem to me, to be honest. You're such an incredible being, and I mentioned that to me, you're like the Simone Biles of spiritual mastery. I mean that in a few ways. I want to break it down. Obviously, like the Black excellence, the just incredible -- she's one of the most amazing people, athletes, on this planet right now. And then, you know, her strength and her dazzle, and this thing that all gymnasts have, which is this balance, like this spectacular balance. And with you, I'm like -- and with this book Love and Rage -- you manage to strike this balance that leaves me in awe which is either glorifying nor vilifying anger. Right? And I think, like Simone Biles makes it look easy on the balance beam and uneven bars, you make it look easy, but anyone who has ever tried gymnastics and anyone who has ever tried to work with our anger knows that it is extremely difficult to neither glorify nor vilify anger. So I wanted to just start out by thanking you for that example and that model and asking you how do you feel in that balance? What does that balance feel like for you?
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah. You know, first, I want to just acknowledge my appreciation for just for you -- for you, Katie, for your work, for your presence in the world, and just for also that recognition of, you know, whatever it is that I do, you know, as well. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Actually, the past 15 minutes ago I was doing some writing, and was really like -- doing some journaling around what is it? What has been the work that has allowed me to be, you know, in this relationship with myself? Because this is what this really is at the end of the day. It's about relationship. You know, and I started like many folks, I think, maybe sharing the space today with us, I started as someone really interested in freedom, you know. I grew up in a really tough part of the United States, in the South, in north Georgia. A lot of, you know, white supremacist activity. Still is. Near one of the sites of the Trail of Tears, and the land still holds the trauma, you know, and the people hold the trauma, and I come from that trauma as well. And I've only ever wanted to be free from trauma. Like that's the only thing I've ever wanted. I couldn't name that, of course, when I was younger, growing up, but I name it now. I claim that. That has been one of the things that I have so desperately wanted was to be free from trauma. You know, to be free from the woundedness and the heartbreak and the rage, you know, the rage that utter disappointments that I seem to have been born into, that I was gifted from my ancestors. Right? This just isn't fair. And I just -- that lack of fairness is just what I was struggling with, the trauma, the lack of fairness. I was like why doesn't this make sense to me? Why does everyone else get to be okay, and I don't? Why are Black people villainized who are struggling? And that led me into Black radical thought. On my 12th birthday, my father -- I didn't grow up with my dad. I grew up with my mom. I was still connected with my dad. My dad sent me two books, Up from Slavery and The Souls of Black Folks, and at 12 years old, I was expected to read those texts.
[Laughter]
And I got those, and I had of course at 12 years old, you know, what was I supposed to do with these texts? But I read them, and I think it became a foundation for my entrance into Black radical thought in my teens and then Black radical thought was my entrance into the entrance into the Black Panthers and these parts of the civil rights movement we never talk about, my entrance into the Black Power movement and Malcolm X and Black Panthers and Haitian revolution and things we never learned. That became my extracurricular activity throughout middle school and high school. Right? And so I was trying to figure out how to get free. And then of course that led me on activism, I realized this is not enough. What else? And the door to Dharma opened. Exactly when I needed it. I was suspicious to say the least, but the door to the Dharma opened, and the invitation to actually begin to develop a relationship to the heartbrokenness and the pain and the woundedness. And then that led to a further invitation to be in relationship with my anger. At the time, I wasn't angry.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: The collective would say that I was angry at the time. It was like I didn't know what they were talking about, this anger.
>> KATIE: Yeah.
>> LAMA ROD: Because what I had done was hide my anger away, because I was trying to survive. Because I know that the anger of Black folks are deeply, extremely brutally policed. And so I figured if I just was super passive aggressive, you know, that could save my life, but it also resulted in not being a kind person. An authentically kind person. And so that early invitation to be in a relationship with the anger began. That was where this book "love and rage" began how many years ago now. Maybe almost 20 years ago. And the work, the work is the work? The work is the diligence, the effort that I'm engaging in to be in relationship to something that I would rather just run away from and not deal with.
>> KATIE: You're taking me on a whole emotional journey right now. Thank you. Thank you. And I said before, and I'll say again. Your book is so generous and the ways in which you share are so generous, and generative, which feels to me like exactly what we need in this moment of birth that you're talking about, because I mean, we can't trust anyone who has not lived through this to make commentary about these moments of choosing between the passive aggression that we feel has been keeping us safe and keeping us alive versus trying to become an authentically kind or free person. Right? It takes a very generous person like you to be able to share stories like that. And we're grateful, lucky, for the 10,000 Buddhas in the many directions of different cultures and faith traditions, and Buddhism doesn't have a monopoly on this. Our society vilifies and criminalizes Black anger, right, as you mentioned. It becomes very unsafe for Black people to express anger or woundedness. Right? Which you describe in your book. And therefore, I feel like there's a move to almost overcorrect or like, swing the pendulum all the way over and say oh, you don't want to be angry. Okay. Insurrectionary! And then just almost this rehydration of learning Black history, militancy, radicalism, you know, you mentioned that mainstream education downplays and whitewashes and erases. But then, right, we don't actually want revolutionaries who don't know how to be authentically kind people!
[Laughter]
>> KATIE: That is very challenging. And so, but we also don't need to be “perfect” or some kind of like perfectly-healed person before we can take action.
>> LAMA ROD: Exactly.
>> KATIE: Our spiritual spaces at the same time are vilifying anger from a different angle, which is like oh, if you're angry, then your spiritual practice is immature or insufficiently developed, or if you knew how to really accept things as they are and be equanimous, then you would have this kind of smile on your face all the time.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: Yeah. So I mean that all-consuming rage I have felt on meditation retreats, too, it's like -- and as you said it, your ancestors have gifted it. It really transcends this particular body and this particular life. So I want to ask you about, you know, what do you say or how do you hold the conversations with people who are rightfully skeptical about vilifying anger? And then maybe we'll move to the issues of glorifying anger, but let's start with the issues with vilifying anger.
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah.
>> KATIE: People who are like anger is just trapping yourself. It's just harming yourself.
>> LAMA ROD: Right. Yeah. And I want to say something really quickly before I get into that question, something you said, you offered, Katie, that’s really important to point out for folks. We talk about, who do we learn from. Who are our teachers? And I just wanted to highlight that, because I think for me, I just wanted to add that like for me, I can't -- it's hard for me to trust you if you're not struggling, with me. If you're not struggling in your Dharma and your teaching, it's something I get really weird around. You know, I can't get with teachers who present this perfection of Dharma. To me, because it becomes judgment. It becomes an act of judgment actually. For me, I receive it as, well, there's something wrong with you if you're not perfectly peaceful, if you're not perfectly compassionate, if you haven't embraced, you know, fully what we would say the four boundless qualities or the four Brahmaviharas. Like if you haven't really done that, then there's something wrong with you. So you need to work on that. And I just get turned off by that. That comes from teachers who themselves have not done the work of allowing Dharma to be a partner to struggle with. You know? I don't just consume Dharma. I struggle with Dharma. That's important for us to point out. If you want me to learn from you, you have to show me where your edges are. That's going to show me how to work through my edges. This is the point. I need to see you doing this work in real time, you know. Because for me, I have to see things.
Don't tell me. Let me see it from you, you know. And I want you to be messy. I need you to be messy about that. Because I'm messy. I need everyone to know that -- I need everyone in the space to know I'm actually really messy. In my life, and because I choose to struggle. I choose to stay at the edges of the Dharma.
>> KATIE: And that's honesty. And that's impermanence. That's one of the foundational truths of Buddhism. We can't be on all the time or unmessy all the time. No one can.
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah. I think like that emphasis on being perfect and being well put together is just another expression of white supremacy.
>> KATIE: Mmm hmm.
>> LAMA ROD: So we just have to call that out, you know, because this is one of the reasons many of us don't feel welcomed and included in Dharma spaces. And yoga spaces as well. Yoga, even in some cases more extent because of the body and the presence of the body and the presentation of the body. And white supremacy and capitalism, how that all comes together in yoga spaces. Which is why I became a yoga teacher, actually to disrupt that narrative that one has to have a certain body.
>> KATIE: Yes.
>> LAMA ROD: To practice yoga. That's not the case.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: You know? I always hang out at the edges of my practice because that's where I grew up. I don't mind letting people see the edges. Getting to the work around vilifying anger, right? Yeah. When we don't have a rep to our anger, of course we're going to vilify it. You know, because anger isn't the issue. It's our relationship to anger that's the issue. Our relationship to anger dictates how we choose -- how we are reacting to anger and how we're channelling anger.
>> KATIE: Right.
>> LAMA ROD: And so when you get into the relationship, then that's where the liberation starts. Oh, I have been habitually reacting to this. If I can get into my practice and get into holding space and understanding the hurt beneath the anger, then actually, my relationship is going to transform. I get agency. I started getting agency over the anger, and that's the transforming. That's the transformation we begin to see.
>> KATIE: Right.
>> LAMA ROD: The space is so much part of that transformation. There's no such thing as liberation without spaciousness. You can't get free tied and bound to something. You get free by having the ability to make a choice to walk away.
>> KATIE: Right.
>> LAMA ROD:
>> KATIE: To me that's such a core of your message. Like.
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah.
>> KATIE: It's not about being perfect. It's not about being even being right all the time. Being free requires neither of those things. Right? And so yeah. Whether it's in the yoga community or healthism in any way, right, the idea of build the perfect diet to the perfect body that's so filled with fat vilifying and ablism and if we could build our body into perfection and into happiness. You're saying if what we're really after is freedom, we need the spaciousness of agency in response to our anger and in response to all things.
>> LAMA ROD: All things.
>> KATIE: And it's a very nuanced process, I think, because especially for those of us who have been shamed for our anger or in society that basically constantly gives us messages that we are worthless or helpless, which to me is basically -- my root of most of my wounded feeling is either feelings of worthlessness or feelings of helplessness. Even right now, like today, just to lift up the annexation of Palestine by Israel.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: Ooh, it's so heavy. And it makes one feel very helpless.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: Sometimes.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: So in political spaces that I've been in, and I've so appreciated you speaking to this in your book, as a response to those feelings of helplessness or worthlessness, if we cling to anger as our shield and our protection, we don't actually develop the agency necessary for freedom.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: It feels like anger is the way we can become powerful again.
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah. And if we cling to anger like that, then we also lose sensitivity. We lose -- when I say sensitivity, I mean also empathy, more precisely. We lose that empathy, because anger can block a lot of what we're able to see and experience, you know? And so when we have the space around the anger, then we get really sensitive. We get really impacted, and that's when we start getting creative as well. Maybe I can't -- maybe there's some brick wall right in front of me, and like maybe because I was so pissed off, I was trying to hurl my body against the brick wall to knock it down. Maybe if I could just take a break, do some practice, get some space around the anger, maybe I'll begin to understand another way to get around the wall. Maybe I have to climb up over the wall or dig a hole under it.
>> KATIE: Yes. You're in tune with reality.
>> LAMA ROD: Yeah. Or maybe I organize a crew of people and we get together as a collective and then we start planning how do we get this wall down. What do we need to build in order to like ram this wall down? That's the creativity. Where are the solutions? Instead of being super helpless, let's start getting creative. Then the other alternative that we also have to hold space for is this: We won't always be able to see the change that we most want to see.
>> KATIE: Not in this lifetime anyways.
>> LAMA ROD: Right. And you have to mourn that. Like so much of my relationship with my anger has been about really to mourn, learning to mourn the grief, that grief that absence and disappointment. I have to be in touch with that. And that's one of the things that my ancestors taught me. That's a practice of my ancestors and a practice from my community.
>> KATIE: Yeah.
>> LAMA ROD: Back home, it's like, you know, sometimes you have to cry. You have to let go. You have to -- you give up, but you don't forget, but you realize that yeah, not right now. Maybe not this life. And I don't want us to be disappointed by that, you know, because there's so much more that we can do, but sometimes we get so fixated on one outcome. We absolutely have to see something ended. We have to see something changed. And then we get really disappointed by that. And we struggle to see that there are other things that we can really impact around us. That can actually build maybe a momentum to actually impact this one thing we want to see changed. Maybe I have to begin doing the groundwork for something that my descendents will come along and continuing to work with. Isn't that the case? Isn't exactly what we're doing anyway. Didn't our ancestors begin the freedom struggle? Didn't our Native and Black and the enslaved ancestors in this country begin this work? Then you know, our Asian ancestors, then our Jewish ancestors. The folks who were most marginalized coming into this context begin to create something that their descendents continued?
>> KATIE: This is why Fred ham den is a bodhisattva saying you can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution. Our people have had to know this in the most brutal of ways. You don't always get to see the results of what your fighting for. Fannie Lou Hamer was like, “I might fall working for Black freedom. If I do, I'll fall 5'4" forward in the struggle.” So just when that realization hits, then I think we tap into a whole new level of power. It's not the power of giving up.
It's not giving up. It's recognizing our interconnectedness across time, and that the energy we put forward toward liberation is never wasted, because it continues.
>> LAMA ROD: Yes.
>> KATIE: I so appreciate you. You're always reminding us of these -- of whether it's Guanyin or the earth mother, the huge vast places of aid for our struggles, right, that we're not in this alone. We're not doing it alone. I see you in relationship to your teachers, your mentors, your guides, you know, and it's so encouraging and inspiring, and I'm just so thankful to you.
>> LAMA ROD: Thank you. Thank you. We need a container for our anger. And these sources of refuge become the container. My ancestors are containers. We talk about transhistorical trauma and rage in the book. They're coming through my ancestral bine line but also joy and resilience and celebration and fierceness and creativity and sassiness. All that also is coming through my ancestry. Right? And we work as a team, you know. I am an expression of their aspirations. This body, this mind, this manifestation of Rod in this life, I am my ancestors' aspiration.
>> KATIE: Yes.
>> LAMA ROD: We enter into contracts. My relationship with my ancestors, there's a formal contract. We're helping each other. I'm continuing the work they want to see done, and they're helping me to do that work. They're doing things for me that I can't do myself.
>> KATIE: Absolutely.
>> LAMA ROD: And this is why ancestor practice, this is why I'm like so adamant about the embracing of ancestor practice in Dharma spaces, because we need to be reconnected, you know, and we need to be reconnected. It doesn't matter who we are. Some people come up to me. Mostly white-identified folks come up and say my ancestors were racists and you know what. You're responsible for them as well.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: You know? Welcome to the war of being in world of being relationship in ancestors. I'm really actually tired of that statement. I'm also tired of the ways in which western American Buddhism disconnects us from totality of who we are. I’m not just this I'm not just this being that's alone and separate, I'm part of this continuum. I'm an expression of the continuum, and I'm at the same time doing the work of continuing that continuum into the future. Through my descendents. Like we have to be connected. We have to be part of something. This is about what it means to be in community and collective, right? We have to -- we're a part of something. When I think about gratitude practice, I'm thinking about -- I can't be here without other people. I can't be here without other beings. I can't be here without Tara. As you saw beautifully pointed out, I can't eat without other people.
>> KATIE: Right.
>> LAMA ROD: But we're just told, part of like that white supremacist conditioning is to believe we're not a part of it, and we're separate. We're alone. If we want to really claim our liberation and really get into our movement work, we need to be a part of something. Everyone -- we need to get into the habit of inviting all of our sources of refuge. We need to call the earth. We need to call the ancestors and the mothers and the fathers and the elders and the grandmas. We have to call our communities and call in our descendents. Our descendents, yeah, maybe are not born yet. But they're waiting. They can still get involved right now as they're doing the work to get into this continuum. We have to get creative, and this is what the spaces allow me to do is to see all this other stuff that's happening. I'm like oh, I don't have to do this alone. I don't have to carry the rage alone.
>> KATIE: Yeah.
>> LAMA ROD: And this is -- I say this, and again, it sounds like I have all this figured out, and I don't, because every single day, I have to get up and remind myself that I'm not alone. I have to call my ancestors. I have to remember my teachers and my lineage and pray to the mother and do this every single day. I'm reminded by my mentors every day. I just sat with one of my mentors this morning. Yeah, you have to do this work every day. You can't forget. When you forget, that's when you get lost.
>> KATIE: Right. That's why you favor Simone Biles. Do you think she doesn't practice every day? It takes work! Speaking of bringing in others, and being part of a collective, we have so many beautiful, 350 people joining us today, and we have some questions, and I'd love to hear from these lovely folks who are all gathered here today. Chika, can you share some of those questions wiht us?
>> CHIKA: Yes. Thank you very much for this conversation and we've had amazing questions in the chat and Q&A and want to pick up on this idea of practicing every day that you were talking about and lift up this question about how do you build a self-love practice, especially when feeling drained and exhausted?
>> LAMA ROD: Uh-huh. Just hold space for that for a moment. That's such an important question for us in our liberation. I think it's the key. It's at the heart of so much. I want to honor that question. And actually, self-love is something I'm writing about in my next book, and I think self-love -- for me, love is about acceptance. You know, and for me, it's about how do I get to this place where I'm allowing myself to be in a way that I’m not just judging myself, criticizing myself, you know, but just allowing myself to be, and I know that from my practice, to do that, I also have to be really open to doing the work of mourning, you know, all of the conditions that have taught me not to be okay. With how I show up with who I am, with my body, with whatever. It is about me that I can't really be well. Just to hold a space for that discomfort, that pain, that heartbrokenness. And then as I lean into that, as I lean into that discomfort, I am actually calling to the space my sources of support and refuge. So I can call on the earth. I can literally say please, earth, please help me, hold me, as I'm moving and leaning into this discomfort. I call on my ancestors. You can say the ancestors, my ancestors are who about supporting me, loving me, helping me to be free, I call you here to hold me. I call, you know, I call the Mother. I'm a devotee to the Mother. I call the Mother in and say please, please, please hold me. Take care of me. As I sit in this really intense discomfort, this heartbrokenness. They help me to hold the pain. I can actually imagine just offering, like the pain, the heart brokenness and trauma and giving it to them. One of the things we like to say in my lineage is you offer it to the feet of the Mother. You offer it at the feet of the Mother. Let the Mother hold it. And then over time, you get closer and closer and closer to really being with yourself in a way that where you're just like okay, here I am. You know, here I am. It's not a judgment. Yeah, this is who I am. I sit in my fatness, right, which is like that was a whole thing in itself for me in my practice, just to -- like okay.
[Laughter]
Like okay, big Rod, here we go. I am okay, and this word "okay" is like -- it's not, for me, the word "okay" is like a mantra. It's one of the most powerful things. Being okay is like -- yeah, it's okay. It's okay. That's another practice I offer you. When you feel the pain coming up, you just say you know, it's okay. It's supposed to hurt. It's okay. My heart is supposed to be broken. It's okay. I'm not the only one in the world, and it's okay. It's okay. And for me, it's like a parent taking care of a child. That the love of taking care of your beloved. Like I am my most beloved. I am the beloved actually. I am the beloved. And it feels really exposed. When you start really doing it, it feels really vulnerable, really exposing, and even then, you say, you know, even that's okay. That's okay. We're okay. I'm okay. You're okay. And let the heart soften. Let the heart soften. When I say softening, there's a rigidity. I can get really rigid. I get armed up in my heart. Then you start cussing people out and reading people. I do go there. I do. I'll start reading people in the metta, you know. My heart just shuts down. And I'm like okay, it's time to go read people. Let's do it. But I have to let that go sometimes. Not all the time. But often, I have to let that go and just soften that, because what I'm trying to do is protect my pain. But I’m not trying to protect my pain, I'm trying to give it air and space. I'm not trying to shut it down and press it and compact it inside. Some of us have been so hurt by the world, so brutalized by the world. Some of us are barely surviving the world. And I just want to acknowledge that. Like we're surviving. We're doing the work of surviving. And I'm there with you. So these practices, they sound so contradictory. It's like I have to soften my heart, but the world is kicking my ass at the same time. So what's up with that? I actually have been thinking on my next book to really actually write a book about contradictions. You know?
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: To make you really uncomfortable and confused, but how do I fall into that? To soften the heart means that like I'm just in touch with my emotions, and it doesn't mean that I let go of my boundaries. I don't want to get hardened and shut down and arm myself. I'm going to be boundaried. That's different. For me, getting armed up is like very close and personal. It's very related to like armor. Like there’s an armor that's touching my skin. I'm wearing armor. But boundary means that there is this space, this field around me that I work on maintaining, but I have this space behind the shield, this force field, to move, to stretch. That's what I want. That's the difference. You know? That's the difference. And my heart can be tender within this boundaried experience. But it can't be tender if that armor is something that I'm wearing that's constricting me. That's a lot.
>> CHIKA: That is a lot. You touched on a number of questions that were coming up for folks in the chat and in the Q&A around how to practice with anger and you know, what does it look like, and I hear you saying it's this being aware of the tenderness and feelings that are being felt and wanting to be held rather than compressed and packed down and protected. And I wonder if you want to say anything more about in a moment of a conversation or an interaction where there's a lot of pain being triggered by that interaction. Somebody was asking about dealing with racism in an interpersonal setting and another person was asking about how do you do in the moment? I think you've touched on it. If you want to add on if you want to.
>> LAMA ROD: Thank you so much for that. I come back to a basic question. And the basic question is how do I take care of myself in the moment. And I think some of us, we have these experiences where we feel as if it is our responsibility to have this conversation, to have this interaction in the moment. You know, and it's our job, and we have to step up, and before we do that, I wonder if we can just -- if we could just take a second in that moment to say do you know what? Am I resourced enough to do this? Because I'm in that boat too, because I hear something. I'm like I need to get on top of this. You know? Right? I had a situation, you know, actually a couple of weeks ago. The same thing happened. I was like, I need to get on top of this. I don't know if I was resourced enough, but I did it. And it was a lot of emotional labor. But again, you ask yourself, am I ready to do this? Am I resourced enough to have this conversation in the moment? And if I am, okay, how do I move forward into this conversation? How do I move forward into this conversation keeping a really strong awareness of the anger, because as soon as the anger becomes -- as soon as it slips out the consciousness, out of awareness, then that's when we start reacting to it. And that's when we potentially move into the space of creating more harm. Like you can read people. You can read people to filth. But does that reading -- is that reading come out of love? Uh-oh, I just offered another contradiction. We can read people in a loving way? Yes, you can. Because love can be an expression of letting people know what's up. Sometimes, you know, when we don't love people, we're just like whatever. I'm not even going to go there. We're not invested in their happiness or how they're showing up. We'll just be like, they can do whatever they want. They are not my job. You know? But when we love someone, sometimes it's like okay, you need to be shown what's up. You know? And I need to tell you something that's going to maybe hurt your feelings. I’m going to have to get real direct with you. You don't have to become like -- you don't have to become like Electra. You don’t have to become Electra Abundance. That moment, but like you can still let people know from a place of love, not from a place of anger. The anger is informing. Definitely how we show up. I could ride -- as long as I'm aware of my anger, I can ride the anger and feel that energy and keep a lot of space for the love as I'm interacting in a situation. But that's practice. That's like -- y'all are not going to do this after this session. Don't go out and try to pick fights and be like Lama Rod said as long as I have some awareness of this anger, I can read everyone to filth. That's not what I said.
[Laughter]
>> LAMA ROD: Love also is about discernment. Again, we're saying okay, do I really need to read someone to filth? Sometimes it's the best thing. Sometimes it isn't. If I'm lost in the anger, I'm just going to read everyone to filth regardless of its effectiveness or not.
>> CHIKA: Lama Rod, thank you so much for these comments and wisdom. It's a beautiful offering. And unfortunately, we are coming up so close against our time bracket. We're going to have --
>> LAMA ROD: Oh, no. I want you all to know I'm going to reference Pose in every way possible for the rest of my life.
>> KATIE: The Lama Rod reviews. Reviews of Pose. I want the Netflix watch party with you. Any way that you want.
>> LAMA ROD: Well, yeah. I'm trying to get -- y'all may be a little closer to this. We need to get Angelica Ross involved. She's a practitioner. She's been reviewing Buddha's books as well on her social media. I'm just saying. You know.
[Laughter]
>> CHIKA: Suggesting part two this conversation about the Dharma of Pose.
>> LAMA ROD: We need to do it.
>> CHIKA: I love it. Thank you so much. I'm going to at this point introduce Reverend Lien who is going to offer us a reflection to help us close out this time together.
>> REV. LIÊN SHUTT: Can everyone hear me? All right. Thank you, Rod. Nice to see you again.
>> LAMA ROD: Thank you, Reverend Lien. I want to publicly say how appreciative for this offering that you made. I just wanted to say that. Thank you so much. It was good to see you.
>> REV. LIÊN: Thank you for sharing your wisdom and Dharma with us and yourself, your presence. I actually have some tears in my eyes acknowledging that. I'm practicing with my emoji. So there's one. All right. Okay. We have five minutes. Is that correct?
>> KATIE: We have a little less than five minutes because we want to ask people to also give, to support two areas of Black trans power before we close.
>> REV. LIÊN: Let's do a really brief, one of the things that I heard Lama Rod say was a container. So the body is the container, and the body holds so much of our experience. So I'm going to ring the bell three times, and I'd like everyone to settle into your body however that works for you. If you notice my position has changed, I went on the cushion because that's the position that works for me when I want to be in my body. So I invite all those listening to find that and I'm going to ring the bell three times. In those three sounds, just arrive in this container. Of the body. In the tradition I practice in, Soto Zen, we say that the postured self is Buddha. Opening up to our experience, be it love, rage, whatever you can connect to as your experience right now. See if you can hold it in a loving manner, in a kind manner, however that is. I want to invite you to use your body in that, like is it to shift so that you feel your sitting bones if you're on the seat. Is it to squeeze your toes? Is it to look up? Whatever it is, yeah. Is it to wiggle a little bit? Whatever it is. How are you going to care for it and tend to it? That's what we're doing. And maybe it's some head rolls. Let yourself connect and give yourself permission, gift, to tend to any emotion, thoughts that's coming up in response to what you've heard. And if it's useful to touch your heart as the Buddha touched the ground, to verify his enlightenment. Verify yourself. Verify this experience in this moment. Perhaps some deep breaths with that. And as I ring the bell just once to come out, maybe you can rest. See if you can rest in the knowledge of verifying with kindness, with grace this moment.
[Bell dinging]
>> REV. LIÊN: At your own pace, come back into the room. Thank you.
>> CHIKA: Thank you so much for that space of reflection and confirmation and holding of our own container. It's very beautiful. I think that's a wonderful way for us to close today. And we wanted to share for folks who may be wishing to share a donation or dana, the Buddhist practice of generosity, for this talk, for this space, for this momentary community, beauty and Dharma, then we would like to offer -- we love donations to BPF. But in this particular moment, we would like to lift up two projects that are supporting Black trans people to have more power, to have more self-possession and more material and spiritual resources. So we have a screen that we can share to show you these projects, to check out. So one is called the Black Trans Prayer Book [theblacktransprayerbook.org], and it's something you can preorder in this moment to support this beautiful project of blocking systemic harm and oppression from the awful narratives of our culture. People are fighting back by creating their own community and being really with spirit, full of spirit, and we think this is such a beautiful reflection of our own values. And the other is to support Miss Major [fundly.com/missmajor] -- a Black trans elder who has done incredible work for the trans community, for the Black community, and for all of our liberation. So please support these causes if you're able to, and we are so grateful for any and all of your generosity in this regard. And I think that does it for us today. So thank you all so much. So grateful for this. We have recorded this, and we'll be sharing it out shortly. Take care, everyone.
>> KATIE: Thank you, Lama Rod. Thank you, everyone. Thank you Reverend Lien and Chika and our captioner for today, Lisa, and to all of you for being here. See you next time!