Transcript
Speaker: You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host, Ken Valente. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
Speaker: Hey everybody, this is Ken Belonte with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and I have Kazu Haga on the show. Today is a quick ah intro.
Speaker: I was doing some conferencing and professional development and and and really happened upon Kazu's two-day course, which honestly blew my mind about radical interpretation of of nonviolence, um of of justice, ideas of social movement, personal suffering and in and trauma.
Speaker: All of that was in there, Kazu. I told you was one of the best surprises that I've had. I wanted to thank you ah for your work and just simply welcome you onto the show initially. i appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. um There was, i you know, i i had mentioned... um or was thinking about the fact that work and social movements and um i my my encounter
Speaker: which really invigorated my brain was with ah studying Buddhism and and meditation, and I've gone in a tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and Shambhala and meditation practices. So a lot of what you had to say was this a particular resonance.
Speaker: But I wanted to read a quote, and everybody, this is from Healing Resistance, ah Kazu's book. And i want to read you a quote to like really frame up um in and in and really how much it it helped me in thinking about social movements and and and and individuals.
Speaker: On one side, many activist movements have the courage to put their bodies on the line in the militancy to shut down highways, occupy government buildings, and resist and blockade injustice in its tracks.
Speaker: Yet, I find too often that the very cycles of harm that we're trying to fight get replicated within those same movements. I've known too many people have been traumatized in one way or another in social justice spaces.
Speaker: From large organizations like Amnesty International to the smallest, most grassroots groups, people are getting harmed by a woke activist culture that has become toxic, We can bring down the entire system. We can have a worldwide revolution, but when we haven't healed our traumas and learned how to be in authentic relationship with each other.
Speaker: We'll corrupt any new system we put in its place. Um, That really moved me. ah in in in in in In my work, I've had such a sensitivity over time, ah expectations of people are going to be high ideals. um But you go deep down into a fundamental real realization, at least central to Buddhist philosophy, that there's inherently suffering in people and and and and and bad and and bad things occur or traumatic things ah occur.
Speaker: And it's implication um for for social movements. So as ah as a basic question, with having read that and how we bring ourselves as individuals to spaces,
Speaker: What is somebody supposed to do? what can they do as an individual to not? I'm trying to help and launch into places and to look to reduce suffering and to be of of of help.
Speaker: How does one comport themselves? And what are your ideas around that? Yeah, you know, i was actually just having a conversation this morning with some some family members about I don't know who said it first, but there's a a famous quote that says, wherever you go, there you are.
Speaker: And, you know, as human beings, we've all experienced suffering. As human beings, we've all experienced some sort of traumatic event that prevents us from being whole.
Speaker: And if we are not able to pause long enough to notice that and to begin to heal from some of those shadows, then we bring that trauma, we bring our shadows with us wherever we go, right? And oftentimes in social change spaces, we like to point the finger and say, oh, the problem is out there.
Speaker: Those people are the ones that are causing violence. Those people are the ones that have to change. And that's not to say there isn't truth in that. Of course, there are people out there that is abusing power in harmful ways.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, if we're not willing to look at the ways in which we've internalized a lot of that harm and internalized a lot of that violence and look at the ways that we treat each other within our own movements, look at the ways we treat each other in our own families, look at the ways that we treat ourselves, look at the ways that we treat the earth, then it doesn't matter how many pieces of legislation we get passed.
Speaker: we're still going to find some ways to find fractures with each other and to and to um create new conflicts. So I think the the one of the most important things we can do if we want to see change out there, to continue to work on the issues out there, that matters, but to also commit to a process of our own internal healing journey, because if we don't have an embodied sense of what healing feels like in our own bodies, we're never going to be able to bring healing out there in the world.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Kazu, ah in in in talking about um and and what you just mentioned, I know that you are in an intentional community. That fascinated me, a small community in Oakland. was really listening to um ah the the folks around you, the families, to kind of mutual aid and and and help that is given. Yeah.
Speaker: you know When folks start talking about that, um it's like what is you know like, what's going on? How the heck do you do this type of thing? I was fascinated by the practices that you look to build into the community in such a restoration space and things like that. And I think sometimes radical ideas, we do have this reaction to it. It's like, how the heck am I going to do that? How are we going to fix these type of things?
Speaker: Can you talk about um like within the community, that space that you've created, And the attention to to to deal with conflict that naturally arises be be between individuals like you implement and you're practical about this. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what that looks like.
Speaker: Sure. Yeah. So I live in a community in Oakland, California called Canticle Farm. And it's a community of about 13-ish homes, about 45-ish people, diverse across every identity marker you can possibly imagine, from age to class to race to language to all sorts of things.
Speaker: And, you know, we we get into conflict, right? We actually, as as an introvert, it's funny that I live in a house now where probably yeah three to four times a day, people just come in unannounced.
Speaker: And they come in and start making lunch in our kitchen or they come in to hang out. They come in to bring us food. They come in to watch our kid for a little while. And I've come to love that kind of village life.
Speaker: But when you're that close to people, you bump up on people, right? We bump into each other's traumas. um One of my favorite quotes, ah I heard it from a friend of mine who was a retired marriage counselor years ago. She said when she was still in our practice, every couple she talked to the one question she would ask them is, how does your partner's trauma show up in your relationship and can you live with it?
Speaker: and I think you can extrapolate that question to any relationship. right If you're close enough to somebody, you're going to bump into each other's traumas. and Can you be with that? Can you live with it? and so When you live as close to each other as we do in our community, you keep bumping into people.
Speaker: and I've realized how much of a gift that is. Because that requires us to figure out how to work through it. It requires me to look at my own shadow and figure out how I am contributing to the conflict, how I am contributing to the shadows in our community, and and to really work on it because I care so deeply about the functioning of our communal life, right? So I'm in ah my home office right now, and literally outside my window, we have a restorative justice room in the middle of our community.
Speaker: And it's a room that you're only allowed to be in if you're working on restorative conflict engagement. That's one of the very few kind of quote unquote requirements for moving into the community is that you're committing to, if you're in a conflict with someone, you're gonna use restorative processes to to try to heal that relationship.
Speaker: And so you're only allowed to be in that room if you're working on conflict engagement and there's a huge window in that room that looks out into the middle of our community. And it has this this teaching and this idea that we should normalize the fact that we are in conflict with each other.
Speaker: And if my partner and I and are in a conflict and we're trying to hash it out, people should be able to see and celebrate that we're trying to work out a conflict. And so, you know, one of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Sabon Fusome who said,
Speaker: Conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen. And we really try to live into that teaching that every time there's a conflict in our community, it's actually an opportunity for us to deepen with ourselves and our own self-awareness and an opportunity to deepen a relationship with each other.
Speaker: Wow. it's it's it's it's It's beautiful. Thank you for thank you for ah for taking for taking us in. i um i yeah So underneath the principle, huge influence on on your learning and and teaching is the the legacy, the teachings, the life of Martin Luther King ah Jr. And another, ah and I want to say the realizations I had in contact with you in your instruction were
Speaker: something fundamental that I love where there's a and maybe ah lazy ideas that reside in my head and there's a radical reinterpretation of meaning. And like I really dove into that. And let me describe what I'm saying. right So we think about, I think a lot of times we place things um like in the dichotomy, say within African American rights, you know the Malcolm say vengeance or whatever. And then that's an early interpretation of mal Malcolm X. And ah Martin Luther King, right? I even watched the X-Men movies and Magneto is looking for justice against Magneto and Professor X. It replays itself. But what I found um so helpful for me...
Speaker: um with the fact that you're talking about, like, like let's move beyond that that simple ah understanding. And I think one of the devices you used um that's ah particular within, you know, Mahayana Buddhism, of as you described, conventional truth, that which of we live, that's in front of us, there's people around us, we conflict, we do things.
Speaker: But like, the kind of ultimate piece I think that everything points to is, you're saying out loud and and within the tradition, We are all interdependent. We are all interconnected ultimately. And you sticking that knife in somebody else is going to, it's going to be stuck into the the the body as a whole, like as an as an ultimate truth. I thought that was so profound. And I thought also in in your work, And describing the true radical nature and the necessary to to think about ah Martin Luther King of Jesus, of Buddha, of muhamd ah Muhammad, of beyond just these kind of quick views of things and seeing the compation seeing the complication of like ah how we approach things. Even the fact that you bring in ah defense or what is the last option? We are under attack. So
Speaker: There isn't this absolutism. There's a ah dynamism in in in in what you talk about. Have I done a good job of like capturing that, ah for one? And number two is, as you encounter people's up understanding, fundamental of nonviolence, how much of work are you getting to are you doing to get to like that nub, what nonviolence is?
Speaker: but It's huge. that you know I've written two books on nonviolence, and it's been a very intentional and explicit choice to not use the word nonviolence in either of the books' as titles or subtitles yeah because there's so much misunderstanding about what the word nonviolence is.
Speaker: Right. One, I think nonviolence, people think that it's about being passive. It's about being weak. Um, and it's not nonviolence is one of the most courageous choices that we can make. And it's not about, it's less about not being violent. And it's more about when you see violence in the world, what are you going to do about it to transform the situation? Right. It's seeing, uh, moving through the world with the perspective that violence is the thing that we are trying to change that people are not me, that violence and injustice is the thing that we are trying to transform.
Speaker: Right. and and And in the journey towards beloved community and a journey towards building a world with less violence, like you said, i think, you know, this is my own personal perspective that nonviolence is not about absolutism. It's not about purity culture.
Speaker: It's not about casting judgments on people or communities who feel like they might need to resort to violence to keep themselves alive. Right. Violence can be very effective in protecting you and those that you love from violence.
Speaker: murder from, ah right? Like being, being destroyed, being killed. And there's value in that. But I think one thing that nonviolence is clear about is while violence can be effective in certain things, it has one significant limitation, which is that violence can never heal and strengthen relationships, right?
Speaker: And violence happens when conflict happens. Most often there's a fracture in that relationship. And you can use violence to keep yourself alive, to protect yourself temporarily. There's value in that.
Speaker: But what are you going to do about the relationship that was fractured throughout the course of that conflict, throughout the course of that violence? And so to me, nonviolence isn't just about saying you can never use violence.
Speaker: It's about saying even if you get to a point in a relationship where you have to use violence to protect yourself, what are you going to do on the other side of that to heal that relationship? Because if you don't do that, then you're not able to reconcile, you're not able to become whole again. And this is going back to some of what you were saying earlier, that in every wisdom tradition, there's some teaching that teaches us that we belong to each other, that we are an interdependent species. And not just as a species, but I've come to believe, even with some scientific understanding, that that is one of the laws of the universe.
Speaker: I think universe is woven in a way where we are deeply interdependent on each other. If you look at cosmology, if you look at quantum science, there's a lot of evidence that that suggests that we are.
Speaker: And so how do we really deepen in our understanding that Yet if I hurt somebody else, it might protect me temporarily. But ultimately, if I hurt somebody else, I am spreading more fracture, more pain, more division, more separation into the world. And at some point, if we're not doing the work to bring ourselves more whole again, then we're actually ultimately not getting any better.
Speaker: Oh, thank you. um Everybody, we're talking with Kazu Haga, author of Healing Resistance and Fierce ah Vulnerability. um You know, your personal story, you talked about you know ah difficulties when you were younger um in some of the experiences you had. And then this, I'm not trying to build it up, this glorious going to the going into the mountains and um ah monastery and ah monastic life and the the the deep power, ah it for me, the deep power and beauty.
Speaker: of the Buddhist ah tradition. How'd you end up over there? ka Like how'd you end up, how'd you end up in the mountains there? I mean, you know, like I can tell you that that like the practical steps of how it happened, but I still like on a philosophical level, ask myself that all the time. So when 17, I dropped out of high school when I was 15 and I was, you know, pretty heavily into drugs and alcohol. And I can't, there was a lot of violence and and and unresolved conflict in my home. And I was just trying to escape it.
Speaker: And i was at this place in my life where I feel like so many young people end up where like whoever found me first, whatever community gave me a sense of belonging first, whether it was a cult or a gang or a military recruiter, I would have just naturally gravitated towards.
Speaker: Luckily for me, I met a group of Buddhist monastics from a Japanese Buddhist order called Nipponzan Miohoji, which is a small offshoot of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, one of the main sects of Japanese Buddhism.
Speaker: And this was an order that was really committed to nonviolence and social change work. And they do a lot of these walking pilgrimages, and they were about to launch this thing called the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, which was a year-long journey on foot from Massachusetts to New Orleans and then down the coast of parts of Africa to retrace the slave route and to understand in this deeply embodied way the legacy that the enslavement of African people left on this country and how we are still living out the karma from that We are still living out the impact of that legacy because we experienced this thing collectively that was so deeply traumatizing to our collective body.
Speaker: And we never talked about it. We never as ah as a body, as a collective body, tried to heal from that trauma. And so in the same way that I lived through violence as a child that my family never talked about for decades. And so I never healed from that until we started talking about it. this country experienced this collective traumatic experience. And we never talked about it as a country. We still have that.
Speaker: So we're still living out the karma from that, the trauma from that. And so I just, I was bored and I heard about it a week before it started and it sounded interesting. So I went on a whim. I told my mom I would check it out for a week and I ended up leaving home for a year and a half.
Speaker: Um, i will There's something to a couple times it's come up, like thinking about the body and embodiment, and it's a philosopher's question, but like I can say from my personal experience, like my life has been a journey to understand what my body's feeling, not my brain, what my body's feeling and what it can tell me about my experience. And I've made significant strides maybe the last few years, and I don't worry about all the other stuff when I couldn't, like but blows my mind that I feel like at sometimes like at an elementary level, like I can notice and feel my breathing, and I'm like, okay, this is, ah like, i I'm getting better at that, and I know that, and it's it's um it's pretty amazing. But it's not the easiest way maybe to approach or think about, at least not for me. or ah
Speaker: maybe male in my generation, born in the there's there's a lot of There's a lot of stuff there. um what is a practical way What is a practical way to experience what what you're talking about? Maybe the the the noticing of ah what's happening to the body, because it's been the number one key for me to express this is what I'm feeling, here's what I'm experiencing rather than I've had this thought rattle up in my brain a thousand times. Let me tell you about it, like how it feels in the body. What are what are some practical things that maybe you do to experience what's happening in your body itself?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I should just say that I went through the same journey of years ago when I went to my first ever therapy session. At the end of the session, my therapist looked at me and she goes, you don't need talk therapy. You just need to learn to be in your body more.
Speaker: And so I've been on this journey for however many years since then to really listen to the wisdom of my body and understand what it's trying to tell me. Because I think it's a cultural thing. it is a gendered thing. It's also just a modernity thing.
Speaker: that so many of us have been conditioned to try to figure everything out in our heads. In some ways, in many ways, I think the idea that if we just think long and hard enough, we can figure out the answer to all of our our life's problems is the worldview that got us as a species into the mess that we are in.
Speaker: And how do we slow down enough to listen to the wisdom of our bodies, which is the thing that connects us to the wisdom of the earth. And I think so much of it is about learning to slow down you know, i'm ah I'm a parent now, so it's it's harder to do a lot of the practices that I used to do. But obviously, meditation practice of just like learning to connect with our breath in each and every moment. And to notice like, okay, in this moment, I'm inhaling.
Speaker: How do I know that I'm inhaling? Like, what is the thing that is is is actually happening in my body that lets me know that I'm taking an inhale versus an exhale? right Or even, and I used to do this practice once a week where after I would finish work, I would turn off all my computers, I would turn off all my phones, and I wouldn't even turn on my lights. I would spend one evening a week under candlelight.
Speaker: And there's something that happens when I'm just in front of the light of a candle that allows me to only see what is directly in front of me. and it just blows my entire nervous system down.
Speaker: And I think oftentimes the wisdom of our body, it it speaks in very subtle voices. And in the culture that we live in, when we receive so many text messages and signal messages and WhatsApp messages and emails and social media notifications, and things are just moving so fast that we're not actually able to listen to what's alive in our bodies.
Speaker: You know, like 10, 15 years ago, if I was in line at a restaurant or a post office, I would just have to sit there in line with myself. And now if I even have five minutes where I'm just standing still, I'm on my phone scrolling through social media, whatever it might be. yeah and it doesn't give us time to slow down. And so I think disconnecting ourselves from all of the constant source of stimulation and giving ourselves, even if it's just a few minutes a day, just to slow down without any external stimulation, without taking in any input, I think is a really important practice for us these days.
Speaker: Yeah, it's beautiful and a great reminder. I had this like really distinct ah memory. And it was like in my body. So it this is really important. It wasn't like I thought about it, but it was in my body. I had gone i had just started doing ah yoga practice, right?
Speaker: And um I hadn't been for a little bit. I was getting used to it. And I was i work as a union rep. like I come off some calls or like conflict. like I'm freaking...
Speaker: bouncing and bumping, I walked into that room and I felt embarrassed. I felt like I was running too fast to the room that I had busted. door I didn't do any of those things. But it felt like I had busted through the door that that I was running in there and I'm like, oh my gosh. And I had this quick realization I had that, and I think about some of the spaces that you talk about and the social movement spaces, and had a little thought about this, which really,
Speaker: ah Help me to see maybe what opportunity or what work could be done. I'm like, let's take a staff meeting and say it's a big organization of social justice, right? And everybody's popped out in the break, right? Because they got the five, 10 minutes and boom. And this person's, this is happening here and the lunch is over there and that manager's an asshole and that person pissed me off. it And then...
Speaker: we recongregate without any, and this is common, this is common. And then we we would recongregate, maybe a more agitated state, the body being more out of sorts. And it really just struck me, more of an opportunity of being like,
Speaker: What sort of basic practices can we put into place so none of us are like me like running into the yoga room? And there's no imposition on anybody. But let's say let's when we're coming in, let's take the opportunity to not all be running in and smashing against each other. It's like a very strong, ah energetic feel was when I felt that. I'm like, I'm not running in. My brain was going, you're not running in. You're not doing anything wrong. But I'm like, I feel so weird. I feel like I just blasted into this peaceful room and been like, hey, everybody. It feels like a scene from a sitcom or something. Someone just like blasting over the doors into a quiet room. of my favorite teachings is is ironically, one of my favorite quotes comes from the U.S. Navy SEALs and they say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Speaker: There's so much to do in our world. There's so much urgency. But if we're responding to the urgency coming from our own place of urgency, then we're only adding more panic to the world. And that's not skillful. And how do we remember to breathe? Bayo Komolafe has this famous quote where he says, the times are urgent and we must slow down. And he says sometimes that People push back and say, well, bio, like there's so much urgency in our world. We don't have the privilege to slow down.
Speaker: And he gave a response that I love once. He said, slowing down is not a function of speed. It's a functioning of um slowing down as a function of of ah slowing ourselves down enough to notice who's in the room.
Speaker: It's a function of setting our awareness. Right. And so even as we're responding to what oftentimes feels like a world on fire, can we do so while taking a deep breath?
Speaker: Right. So that we can respond skillfully so that the parts of our brain that can think about the like the the longest term visioning is actually still very much connected to our nervous system.
Speaker: Oh, it's so helpful. I love the I love this. And again, as a thinking, you know, with the podcast, thinking philosophy show, like I'm going to allow like some total space, like freak out in our brains, which will which we which which we're doing. um But um yeah related to the to the podcast, just a couple of curious questions. i do um ah so i So I started the podcast and ostensibly philosophy and art. Okay, that's fine. But I immediately found that my show developed into the exploration of liberation. Yeah. personal liberation, shedding things that don't belong to us, shedding art ideas that don't belong to us, sharing and like identity, finding our path, finding, i don't know fulfillment or or ah happiness. And as a big part of the show, um I explore art.
Speaker: ah And I'm just wondering, is just some of some of your thoughts about like maybe like the environment that's around in your community or your your your thoughts about art and maybe how it can contribute to some of the important discussions we're having.
Speaker: A hundred percent. So, you know, a lot of the work that I do is in social change movements. And I think we oftentimes miss the point in social change movements that um the the process of how we create the world that we want has such a deep influence in the product that we end up creating at the end. I hate to use the word product, but goal goals that we are trying to achieve. And oftentimes,
Speaker: the if you go to a demonstration, if you go to a nonviolent action, if you go to a protest, sometimes the energy of that space is really tense.
Speaker: And it is pointing out all of the things that are wrong with the world. And there is a time and a space for that, right? Like we need to be very aware about where injustice is happening and how it's impacting our communities and pointing those things out. But at the same time, I think we need to remind people how beautiful life can be.
Speaker: right And we need to give people that embodied sense of, oh, this is the kind of community, this is the kind of world that we are trying to create. And so in our demonstrations, in our protest, in our social justice places, if we are not using art, if we are not using song, if we are not using ritual to remind people of how beautiful life can be, then what are we trying to do ultimately? right We're not trying to just further fracture and we're not trying to to continue this ah this kind of like energy of we are here to battle, right? There is a battle, there is a struggle, and it's a struggle ultimately to create beauty.
Speaker: And so I think the role that artists can play, need to play on the front lines of social movement spaces is sometimes really, really undermined, I think, artists, song leaders, ceremony leaders, ritual leaders, those are the people that really need to be playing leadership roles in the front line so that we can have the the vision and the imagination of what it is that we're trying to create.
Speaker: That's ah it's really beautiful. i've I've explored just to see what other people have done and like in history of like, whether it be sign making, art build, ah color. um you know you find For me, I find that like in representing workers, when work when workers start, like you give them some space, and particularly teachers and stuff, it's like, holy crap, let's unleash everything and the color and the wit and the knowledge. and you know There's so much there. and um you know There's did this question, um you know particularly in tough times or when people feel ah tough times of you know the the potential for the idea of that art isn't as important, that that that that ah that that there's a frivolous nature to it. I just read a quote yesterday. It was like, arts are hope.
Speaker: Art's our hope. Like art is always tipping towards something that'll freak your brain or look forward or it it moves that way. So it imbues some sort of humanity and spirit, even if it's uneven or disliked or whatever it's. um So I believe i believe ah in in in the power of art, in the conversations I have with people um that that are most,
Speaker: impact me is those who are practitioners with art and they don't do as much of the like the separation out of the movement and the art and the people like there's a coherence in in in the activity and that's really helped me think about it of like how to um conduct myself i got another question of kazoo and i think yeah technically speaking ah Buddhists in general to say don't even ask it, but I need to ask you since it's the titular a question of the show, Kazoo, why is there something rather than nothing?
Speaker: That's a big question. Well, you know, again, coming from largely a Buddhist perspective, one of the central tenets in Buddhism and what I've come to understand as the central essence of the teachings of nonviolence is that we are an interdependent universe, right? In Buddhism, there's a word called anatta, which is the doctrine of no self, right? the idea that I don't exist as an individual self. I only exist because of a deep interdependence with all other phenomena.
Speaker: And that is one of the central teachings of of the Buddhist Dharma. And that also means that that time is interdependent, right? Like no moment in time exists without being in interdependence with all other moments that came before it and all other moments that will come after it.
Speaker: And that's also some of the understanding of of karma, right? Like we, this moment only exists. The possibility that you and I are talking to each other in this moment only exists because of millions and millions of causes and conditions. All of the things that happened before this moment gave rise to this moment, right? So this moment exists because my mother and father met and fell in love.
Speaker: This moment exists because my body has the blessing to be nourished by all of the food that I've eaten over the course of the last several ah weeks or however long it's been. This moment exists because of the the miracles of the technological tools that we are using. yeah These technological tools only exist because of the human exploitation and the environmental destruction that was required to create these tools.
Speaker: right? and And that is only possible because of the sacred minerals that was developed that took millions of years to develop in the earth so that it can become what it is now. And so, you know, something exists, because something happened before it, to allow that moment to come into being, right? And so I think,
Speaker: you know, both all of the pain and the exploitation and the destruction, but also all of the love and the nourishment and the beauty that came before it. We only exist because of all of those things.
Speaker: Yeah. so ah Thank you. Thank you, Kazu. I got but before before um ah we wind up here, I i wanted to say,
Speaker: I wanted to ask about your work ah within the carceral, the ah prison system. um And just for a a background, it's a topic. When I was just just years ago, I really read, studied, started to understand the scope and nature of the aspects of ah prison labor, um the amount of folks ah incarcerated or incarceration rate, um and why people were in incarcerated. And I wanted to mention, um so I had ah you know like a follower on on the show who was incarcerated, doing beautiful art and stuff.
Speaker: And I realized like I didn't have like a good idea of like, engagement and and an active relationship, because i'm like, oh like i you know grew up oh, prison's scary. like They did something wrong. like I can't communicate with them. They're going to find out where I am.
Speaker: um ah Sending art material ah ah to to my to my friend here and um just started to think about more in contact with what my confusion or failings or nervousness were about that. But you...
Speaker: If you go into do profound things or look to create change in in in healing atmospheres in a very, very, very difficult um and and environment, when you go into ah and visit those are incarcerated and work ah with those with those folks,
Speaker: What is what is your what is what is your your promise of how things can can get better and using some of the things we talked about in and in resolution and in creating a community in the system?
Speaker: um What's your experience with that? Yeah, I mean, this this could be an entire episode. Yeah, I know. um But for folks that aren't familiar, maybe I would recommend books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis to really get a sense of why I've come to the conclusion that prisons create more harm than they create safety in our lives and in our community and in our society. And i could you know i could talk for an hour about that. yeah I'll just say that working with incarcerated people has been one of the greatest privileges of my entire life.
Speaker: because i get to go in and witness people who have not only like caused a lot of harm, but who have lived through more violence in their lives than is is like it's hard to imagine.
Speaker: I've heard so hundreds of stories of incarcerated people tell their stories and the stories of of all the violence and the trauma that they've lived through their entire lives. And i'm just I'm shocked that they're still even alive to tell the story And then to find out on the other end of having experienced and survived so much harm and in so many cases perpetrated some of the greatest harms that we can ever commit against each other as human beings, and then come out on the other side of it as some of the most compassionate, dedicated peacemakers i have ever met in my entire life, has shown me what we are capable of as a species, right? Has shown me the resilience that we have as a species because There's nothing special about any one individual human being, right? Like we are all made of the same matter. yeah
Speaker: And to witness so many people time and time again live through so much and become the most dedicated, amazing human beings I've ever met renews my faith in humanity. And so it has been one of the the greatest gifts to be able to go in there. Like I didn't know what words like accountability meant.
Speaker: until I had the privilege to witness so many incarcerated people move through the process of accountability, um, to become who they are. Yeah. Thank you, Kazu. I, yeah, I know it's a much larger and but bigger question. I, ah um, I interviewed, uh, um, ah ah professor, ah Calvin John, uh, smiling, who's doing work in this series out of Hunter college. And, uh,
Speaker: in New York City, I'm gonna have him back on the show again. And and listeners, that's episode 300, that great conversation. So it's a space i've've I've been moving into because,
Speaker: I think there's a the tendency of fear of moving away of, you know, oh they're over there and they're disappeared. But there's a basic humanity question at play, particularly when we have the highest incarceration rate. There's the greater propensity, particularly in some communities, to have a relative, to have a friend, to have to have somebody who's been impacted.
Speaker: um by that system. And I i just wanted to say, i I appreciate everything you've had to say about that experience. And it it like I said, I'm like not fully formed. I'm having a greater understanding of the scope of of what's going on there. But I think for me, it's like,
Speaker: where you see hope and you see possibility or you see the radical transformations, like the the radical transformations that you talk about, you then start to realize that human beings are capable are capable of what is seemingly impossible. And I don't know, it's like there's there's magic in that. Not to be, you know, some Pollyannish about like, ah but just like at its core that um there is There is hope. um ah Kazu, ah I was so ah happy to hear that the community was in Oakland. I love Oakland, haven't been there enough. ah It's one of my favorite places to go to And everybody it knows me say, what, Oakland? I say, yeah, Oakland. um ah Great to hear that you're there. um yeah But um I was wondering ah for the for the listeners, you
Speaker: ah talking about ah where to find your books, um ah various, whatever you'd like to to offer or how people can encounter you in in the work that you do and if people want some more information about the projects and the deep work you do yeah and i appreciate it so my website is just kazuhaga.com k-a-z-u-h-a-g-a dot com k a z u h a g a folks can find my books through then through through that website i would invite people to not buy the books on amazon if you can help it uh support your independent booksellers my publisher parallax press you can buy the books directly from them and they're ah independent uh non-profit mission-driven buddhist publication
Speaker: um But yeah, and and you know you can find me on social media. I try not to use social media, but I am on Instagram, Kazu underscore Haga, I think, Facebook, Kazu Haga. um And yeah, just i you know I do a lot of trainings and talks and things, so I hope to see folks in the real world as well.
Speaker: Yeah. um Again, Kazu, I really want to thank you. um you know ah Encountering you and encountering your experience and and journey. and my my Some of my experience just kind of popping in like They there were just vital questions. like I didn't expect it, but they were just vital questions that I that i that i think about. and um i but i i I bless the the universe for us coming in contact with each other and for you doing um this interview. I've been like super excited, patient in the background. um Really appreciate um the the time what you you spent with us and um really thank you for you know conveying your experience and and then the learnings the learnings. I'm a a philosophy guy, intellectual. like the The learnings that are there too, but thinking about
Speaker: ah Like you said, um ah the body and ways of of of moving through the world. So deep thanks, Kazu. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks so much. This was fun.
Speaker: Yeah. Have a great day. All
Speaker: right. This is something rather than nothing.
