The Measure of Our Humanity: COURAGE

0:00Thank you for listening to UPAI's Dartmouth Podcast, an extraordinary series of talks from some of the finest teachers in the world. I'm Joan Halifax, founder of the UPAI's End Center, and we're happy to make these podcasts available to you. Please consider making a donation so we can offer these recordings freely. You'll find a donation but on our podcast page. And thank you so much. This is Dharma Podcast at thermaportcast.org. This is episode number 2577. It was recorded on February 1st, 2026. And it is titled The Measure of Our Humanity, Courage. The speakers for this episode are Cristiana Figueres, Rebecca Solnet, and Joan Halifax.

1:10Cristiana's pre-recorded segment begins at the end of this talk at 1 hour 32 minute and 41 second mark. Hello everyone. Welcome to The Measure of Our Humanity. Good to see you. Good to see you. I just want to see some faces if you mind when I'm turning on your camera. And we have 19 pages, so feel free to thumb through and say, how do we each other? Or I have 19 pages that are how many you might have. I saw Kathy just, Bishop just went, whoa! Thanks Kathy. Sue Moons, Willis Aesoo.

2:10I see some good friends. Well, I want to welcome you all here, especially to those of you who are listening in Portuguese. I think the our team will put it into the chat. But just if you'd like to listen in Portuguese at any time, you can click the interpretation button and switch to Portuguese. Which is always, I was like to listen sometimes and see how it sounds. We're here with, let me spotlight for us. We've got Rebecca and Rosci here with us. And Cristiana is, may or may not, Rosci, do you want to speak to that? Yeah. So Cristiana is in transit. She voted in the election, Costa Rican election this morning.

3:10And we have incredibly high winds here in Costa Rica. And as a result of that, she's a little bit delayed, but she'll be on. Just say that Rebecca and I will collaborate to jump into courage, needless to say. And also she'll be on just a little bit later. So that is the reality that we're dancing with right now. I actually, I think she's on an airplane flying into the area where we are, which does not make me that happy because of the wind conditions. But we'll hear exactly, you know, from her shortly. And oh, one other thing, you know, we knew it was going to be a little bit complicated. And so Cristiana and I did a prerecord, which we're not going to use probably live for this. We want to do this live.

4:10But we're going to put that prerecord, which is really amazing up on the resource page. Okay. No. Thank you, Roshi, Rebecca, Wendy and Cristiana in the air. May you land well and maybe election land well as well. Again, thank you all so much for joining. And of course, it is your generosity that has continued to make these kinds of programs possible. And I think we all saw in the last year. And well, since we started the socially engaged Buddhist training, these programs are really important for our time and really important for all of us to come together and listen to these great teachers speak to how we can engage our practice. And so I thank you so much for your donations that help us support our teachers and support you. And if you haven't given yet, please feel free. And as I said, actually, at the end of winter practice period, it's wonderful to make that connection, even if it's a dollar or $5.

5:18Please give something. And then we can have the spirit of generosity flow through Roshi. Thank you. You know, we began this series on social and environmental engagement in 2020 as the pandemic hit. And it was just so clear that we needed to build community and to really foster solidarity, not only globally or not only nationally, but also globally. We're all touched by the events that are happening in our individual countries. And we feel that just as in Switzerland and Italy, England, Denmark, people are coming together and as a body of protesting bodhisattvas.

6:18We feel that really we need to spread this sensibility and the sense of connection. At this time, more than probably ever in the history of humanity, really. Because one of the strategies that the authoritarian regimes engage in is to foment fear. And what fear does, it fragments us. And you know, this narrative of individualism also has been the road that has been paved through fear leading us to these authoritarian regimes. And I feel like one of the things that we have to do now is to understand that the measure of our humanity is not by what we fear or what we exclude, but actually our capacity for connection.

7:27You know, we have learned this past year that who we really are is not found in isolation. It's found in relationship. It's not found in dominance. But it's found in our experience of solidarity and a building solidarity. And it's not found in what we possess, but in how we care. Our ability to actualize our humanity is not to objectify others. But it's in our courage to recognize that human beings are not the enemy, but ignorance is. Suffering that arises from greed and hatred and delusion.

8:28So we want to begin this session with just a very short small meditation. Then after that, we're going to ask who's online as we traditionally do. And then Rebecca is going to step forth and then I will I will follow followed by Christiana. But to begin with, we are in a time of extreme disruption. As Mark Carney said at the World Economic Forum, he spoke the word rupture. And this is a time of rupture. And as I just shared, solidarity is really important as is recollection. So I want to begin in the light of what's happening in my country in, in the United States.

9:34To actually say the names of the nine people that we're aware of. Ice has killed so far since January in its beginning. I'm going to ask us to just really drop in and to take a deep breath. Alex Pretty. Renee Good. Keith Porter. Ebert Sanchez Dominguez. Victor Manuel Diaz. Pradi La.

10:39Luis Beltran Yanes Cruz. Luis Gustavo Luñez Caseris. Heraldo Lunes Campos. They all deserve remembrance. And they all deserve justice. Thank you for bearing witness to those names. And I'm going to ask you to invite our Mahasanga to connect right now to put into the chat both, you know, what by region they're in or what watershed.

11:54And also what's alive in them right now. And Wendy, if you would share some of those reflections, I'd really appreciate it. Wonderful. So good to see all of you. And not only good but important that you're here. So let's type into the chat your name where you are. And one word either what's alive for you or what's the deepest value you'd like to model right now. Let's see Jeff in Vermont. He says Sangha. Yes. Karen. Tight chest and grief. Drew and Colorado Hydro. Selflessness.

12:58Professor Gonzales. Woke. Exclamation mark. Wonderful. Kim. Peace. Sydney and DC. Love. Tracy. Heart sore and Hawaii. Kimberly. Open heart. Scroll down a bit. Mary Beth and Alaska. Sorrow and compassion. Sweet and vulnerability and beauty.

14:00Lyndon Albany, California. Tears are alive in me. Douglas and West Virginia Mountains. Equilibrium. Laura and Boulder. Transformation. Kitty. An albuquerque. Solidarity. Liz and Connecticut. Kindness and connection. Fred. Composure. Suzanne in the UK.

15:01Tears. Linda. Jessica. Gaza. And Minneapolis. Wendy, thank you. I just thank everyone for. For sharing in this way. And just to say. Rebecca and Wendy and I are actually in Costa Rica. And a place that has gone through an ecological revival. A place where medical care is free. And which has a higher rate of literacy than our country. And we're here to teach, but I feel like we're really here to learn.

16:05Wendy, I'd like to invite you to lead a short meditation. Thank you. Thank you. Let's all adjust a posture. If you can feed on the ground. If you're sitting on the ground. Let yourself feel the places that your body is connected with the earth. Let yourself be supported by the earth who's seen every kind of rupture. You can close your eyes if you'd like. Breathing together as a sangha. A community. In solidarity. And then recalling why you're here.

17:06What do you stand for? What are the values that you want to model in this world of rupture? All these beautiful words everyone has said in the chat. Recalling them as words at first. But then letting these values be reflected in our body. In our breath. You might want to sit up taller or breathe in deeper. Really feel viscerally. These values. A few more breaths together as a community.

18:06Modeling these values in the world. Let your breath be deep in the body. Now if you have your eyes closed without opening your eyes, feeling this community out there. All together, all aspiring to model these values in this ruptured world. That you're not alone. That we're all together. Reflecting these values that are so needed. One more breath together even though we're not in the same room. We're breathing together.

19:13Thank you. Wendy. Thank you. Truly. Rebecca, I'd love for you to share some perspectives on the theme that we're working on here, which is courage. Thank you. And I wanted to shout out one more thing I saw one audience member say, which is love that neighbor. I love that that old familiar phrase is coming to have such powerful meaning in this moment. Not just meaning, but as being lived in great risk and hardship with great courage and generosity in this moment. One of the people we're here with is doing it in New Orleans. We're seeing so much of it in Minneapolis. So you know me, I wrote a little thing.

20:13At the very heart of almost dollar crises is a conflict between two world views. The world view in which everything is connected and the world of isolated individualism of social Darwinism and the war of each against each. I call the latter the ideology of isolation. This is at the heart of the opposition to climate action. Acting on climate requires, first of all, recognition that everything is connected. That truth is offensive and threatening to this world view of isolation, which we'd like to believe in the unimpeded freedom of the elite individual to do as it will be at a rich man in his jet. A landowner clear cutting her forest or a fossil fuel corporation producing and promoting this destructive material. They would sever cause from effect among the many things they would divide and sever. The burning of fossil fuel they would sever from the buildup of methane and carbon dioxide in that bar atmosphere.

21:18Several deny that it thickens the insulating blanket and generates climate chaos. Really the contemporary rate would like to divorce cause and effect from everything. There's an anti-systemic world view in which they deny that, for example, poverty and poor health are very often the result of how the system is organized rather than personal failure. So they preach personal responsibility while denying collective responsibility and their own responsibilities, deny the existence of that collective. Margaret Thatcher famously sent, there is no such thing as society, long ago at the beginning of this new radical right, this new ideology of isolation. But we now know thanks to science and traditional knowledge that societies exist even in the absence of human beings as forest ecosystems, ocean ecosystems. And the facts of climate change do threaten them directly by saying that what we do and don't do must be done in cooperation and coordination with all the rest of humanity in the service of all life on earth.

22:30But this ideology of isolation goes beyond separating humans and our actions from nature. As you can see with the current US government, it wants to separate us in a hierarchy of inequality in which straight white Christian men are at the top, in which women are separate from men and don't deserve the same rights, immigrant separate from US born white from non-white, Christian from non-Christian. It's a sad and lonely worldview and one who's most developed believers in the atmosphere of the Trump administration and right wing movements often seem miserable and angry and eager to punish and harm. They have in recent years even directly attacked the idea, the idea and value of empathy. The word empathy literally means feel into the imaginative extension of the self to reach out and connect with the other to care for and with and about the other. I believe this feeling at its best as compassion extends the boundaries of the self literally makes you bigger as it makes you more connected.

23:38The intention of feeling compassion is an extent intention of expanding relating and connecting. It's opposite withers you into the smallest version of yourself, a hard nod of ungiving. It genuinely robs you of the wealth of relationship and from that comes both the sense of poverty and then satiable hunger for more. In both assaults on immigrants and the exclamation of the crimes of Epstein's circle, we see what comes out of this worldview, how destructive, how dangerous, how ugly it can be. Adam Sirwer wrote a beautiful essay in the Atlantic last week in which he pointed out that the ideology of isolation, white nationalists in the current administration, including JD Vance, including JD Vance, that you cannot have social cohesion without social homogeneity. I hear that you cannot, so that's one of their justifications for the evil and impossible pursuit of a white America that never did exist and never will exist.

24:46What's happening in Minneapolis, he notes, undermines that worldview because thousands upon thousands of white people are demonstrating that social cohesion exists across racial and cultural diversity. It's so powerful that people are willing to risk their lives even after two of them have lost their lives in that city, to stand up for and with their neighbors, to defend them, to care for them, to care with them, to protect them, to bring them food, to drive their children to school, to try to prevent and document their arrests. These are just examples of solidarity underwritten by compassion I've ever witnessed and versions of it are happening in New Orleans and many other places right now. It's why the phrase, love thy neighbor, means something with an immediacy, an urgency, a power, a politics that we don't always feel but maybe always should. So at the heart, very heart of the conflict raging in the United States is a conflict about human nature, a deep human moral and philosophical conflict.

25:55I believe that isolationists will lose in the long run because they are not only out of step with the majority of us, but they are out of step with reality and walking away from the possibilities of love and joy and the sense of wealth from which generosity can spring when you recognize that interconnection. Because in the opposite of ideology of isolation, we recognize that everything is connected. This is the first lesson nature teaches if we listen, if we learn, though capitalism and related systems of alienation and objectification have tried hard to make us all forget it, ignore it, deny it. Nevertheless, this cosmology of interconnection has grown far more powerful and influential over the past several decades thanks to many forces seen as separate, but that all move is in the same direction towards interconnection, anti-racism, feminism, which insisted that woman should not be segregated and restricted and unequal.

26:59Gay and queer rights, which insisted that gender does not narrowly define who we can be and who and how we can love and become beloved, become family. These past 200 years have expanded the idea of universal human rights and equality, through revolutions, but also through cultural shifts which themselves can amount to slow moving, incremental subtle, and therefore often unnoticed, but nevertheless profoundly powerful revolutions. At least as important, not that I want to compare them, so let's just say also important, is the research and power of indigenous worldviews, especially in the Americas. Because although indigenous North Central and South Americans have wildly different cultures and societies, most of them insist on the inseparability of human beings from nature, on inter-connection, and on a role as stewards, caregivers of nature.

28:00In the white world, we often talk about responsibility, which is a kind of dismal burdensome, do-your-chores kind of word, I think, makes a lot of us want to share our responsibilities. So I greatly prefer the word reciprocity, which I got from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweet Gras, an indigenous writer and botanist. She talks about reciprocity, which begins by recognizing with gratitude how much we have been given by nature, and then in anything we do, we're only giving back that we begin with wealth, and then that wealth we can want to give back, so reciprocity rather than responsibility. Since the beginning of the 1990s, indigenous people have become far more powerfully visible, taken back land, language, culture, ceremony, and the leadership role they should have in this historical moment, and they've certainly become powerful leaders in the global climate movement, powerful and deeply needed leaders, because to do what we need to do for nature, we need to have a world,

29:11the worldview that they help bring us to. So they've done that first of all by correcting the story that we used to tell, that culture and nature were somehow inherently at odds. I grew up with white people, environmentalists, constantly telling that story, which you can only believe if you believe white people arrived here in 1492, or that human beings arrived here in 1492, to recognize the 10,000 and more years they were here, you recognize that human beings were part of nature, being at odds with, or at least we're not destructive of it, being at odds being destructive, strictly optional. So this indigenous resurgence of, you know, so it just happened in a thousand different ways. It's been a great revolution. I've watched with Joy Wonder and exhilaration since the early 1990s, when I first woke up to see it happening, join it with the Western Shanty Defense Project, led by the Great Matrix, Carrie and Mary Dan,

30:12and just really trying to witness it and understand how transformative it is. I talked about the expansion of the ideas of rights and equality, indigenous people have brought us to expand it, not just to all human beings, but beyond, to the rights of all life, the rights of nature's the next phase, beginning to unfold from Peru, Colombia, Canada, New Zealand, from indigenous people all over, including close to Yopaya, the Colorado River, where the indigenous peoples that are seeking personhood, for this powerful, violated river right now, but this cosmology comes from many directions, as Rochino's from lived experience, since the late 1950s and 60s, Buddhism has come to the west in a powerful and transformative way, and brought as many visions of interconnection, Ticknott Han's word, being as one description, if you're hearing that whistling, it's the wind here, so we're in an inter-being with the wind right now, so Ticknott Han's inter-being is one description, dependent colorizing another Buddhist term, compassion for all beings and the bodhisattva vow, deliver it all beings, one of the central tenets of Mahayana Buddhism, which Zen is rooted in,

31:37but that's not all. Contemporary biological science is from planetary ecology to botany zoology and neuroscience, because the human brain, human consciousness is also nature, have documented that we are all independent colorizing, that we're all parts of systems and relationships, that each of us is not so much an individual, but a node on a network, a plural being whose very body is made up of billions of years ago, is made up of billions of microorganisms other than human, as well as the cells that we call human. There's a wonderful new field of biology called processual biology that looks at the world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and therefore exchanging with each other, changing into each other, a world of incessant becoming that is so aligned with Buddhism. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves, and most of what we call things as events, and I sit next to a remarkable event right there.

32:44So, after all, you yourself in this very moment, live by taking gulps of the very sky into your lungs, which your lungs will then circulate throughout your body to keep each of your cells, going to sustain your consciousness. And where does that oxygen in that sphere come from? It comes from the primordial life in the oceans that began the photosynthesis that pulled oxygen out of water and put it into the sky. It comes from the trees that are constantly taking in our carbon dioxide, we exhale and putting out more oxygen. So we are constantly, with every breath, we can only live a few minutes without in relationship to life, which is one of the beautiful things about a spiritual practice, so grounded in breath, we could not live for more than a few days without the water. That is the most magically fluid of all things on earth. We live by eating other beings because life feeds on life, which can be a terrible or a beautiful truth, depending kind of on your lunch.

33:49And so we live in profound interconnection and only by this interconnection, Buddhism gives us endless vision of an infinite net whose every intersection contains a jewel, reflecting every other jewel, science gives us another version of that world of systems, connections and relations. We live in this extraordinary transformative moment when a new vision of reality is swimming into being that in some ways is the old vision, the old story, the story indigenous earth based peoples in so many cases never forgot the stories that the new science is rediscovering and establishing. The story that I think a lot of us have actually shifted over to profoundly in all these revolutions of the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years that this phenomenal event sitting next to me has lived through and participated in whether it was feminism anti racism, the rival of Buddhism in the West, engagement and support for indigenous worldviews, human rights and all the rest.

34:59So we live in this dire struggle in which people are dying. And I think it's a struggle between those who are resisting reality itself and the return to this deepest reality and those who are embracing it and bringing it on as an operating system for a beautiful new world swimming into being. I'll end with there's a famous quote by Antonio Gramsci, an old world is dying. Now is the time of monsters, a new world is struggling to be born. You can hear a lot about the old world dying, you hear a lot about the monsters, you see them all the time, they're on TV a lot these days. But the new world is nevertheless being born and it's new and it's very, very ancient and all of us are its midwives. Thank you so much. Rebecca, I'm in awe of how he brings so many threads together to make this rich cloth.

36:06And I was reminded as you were speaking of a very powerful article by the human rights lawyer Monica Roa. And she spoke about among other things the importance of understanding what happens when the commons are destroyed. And the commons are needless to say everywhere in our society. They're are zendo, there are grocery store, there are drugstore. Also, there are classrooms, there are hospitals. They are also the political platforms that we work together with. And one of the things that she is clear about and I referenced in my opening and as well Rebecca has spoken to is that when the commons are not there where we meet each other warm hand to warm hand or we're afraid to meet each other warm hand to warm hand.

37:18No matter what the temperature is, no matter how intense the snow is. This is when authoritarianism rises. Yes, Hannah Aaron talks about that it arrives from the deep loneliness of modern times. We can look at how technology the internet has encouraged us all to withdraw into the online world. I know we're in it now, but nevertheless, but this is a commons, but this is a commons of meeting grounds. And I think out of that loneliness, out of the lack of everyday connection, we can become afraid of each other, afraid of difference. I think democracy rests on public space, the commons mingling, they're walking around, doing your banking, your shopping, your, you know, your commuting on foot or whatever being in being in public with strangers, learning that you can coexist with people who don't look like you don't necessarily speak the same language.

38:23Next up, it's one of the reasons I love, for example, being on the New York subway. And I feel like one of the messages we've gotten from the right in recent years is like, if there are lots of immigrants, lots of queer people, lots of trans people, lots of languages. Oh, my God, if that happened, it would be dangerous and frightening and chaotic. And it's like, I live in a city where all those things are deeply true. I'm a, I've been a San Francisco for 46 years. There are cities, the envy of the world, a tremendously successful city that's also the most linguistically diverse place on earth, some of the rarest languages on earth, rare because people had to become refugees because of violence at home, fled there. And so actually diversity thrives. Manyapolis, who are white, who are Christians stand up to defend their Muslims, Somali neighbors, their Hmong and Laosian neighbors. You know, there's Spanish speaking, even more Christian neighbors. And you know, one of the beautiful models, which was a model for the comments of this country that's been sort of forgotten that I've been trying to waver on a lot of epluribus unum in many one.

39:34Of course, Pete Hegseth tried to strike down the military for all its evils and problems we could talk about. The old motto that he took down was, in diversity is our strength. And I think that's true of the United States, which is the great mingling of continents of people from Asia, Africa, all throughout the Americas, whether they were here for 10,000 years or descended from people who got here 500 years ago, Europeans, and all the beautiful hybrids and mashups and creative fermentations, we've created since, and this is the sense in which I love my country, which is always brings us back as the comments does as democracy does to love thy neighbor. So thank you whoever brought that up. Well, I also want to say, love the stranger. Yeah, but often the stranger is the person who just escaped the violence, the climate chaos, the famine in their own country.

40:37I, you know, I have where I live, I have Spanish speaking neighbors on one side or two sides of me and Asian American on a third, and that's, that's my normal adult life. And before that, I was in a black community that, you know, I've lived my whole life among difference greatly nurtured by queer community and educated by it and love thy neighbor is epluribus unum. When we love and recognize the diversity, that is the modern circulating world. You know, part of that diversity, Rebecca, I reflected in a recent piece I did in lion's roar and I published a version of it in UPI's writings, and it was just a few days ago. And it was when Dynand Lau, who was online with us and my beloved student, placed on UPI's altar, not only the names of those who have been killed by eyes and harmed by eyes.

41:44Many names, of course, could not be included, but we said all harmed and as many as we know who have been killed. Also, she placed the name of Jonathan Ross and to understand that those who have values that are really different from us, the kinds of values that we've been speaking to here, those who have harmed others in ways that are so egregious. Those who have killed others, the states of mind that people find themselves in for every kind of reason you can imagine. Those states of mind also are suffering and it is important to understand that. And I think it's one of the reasons why we have cherished the late John Lewis because he stood up in a way for not only those who are harmed by our government, by police, by military.

42:56Those who were killed by our government, by the police and the military, but he as a Christian saw clearly that it wasn't always those who were victims that perpetrators, those states of mind heart. So that's suffering and I really love what John Lewis said to us and he said, you know, that in relation to or when confronting injustice and when confronting state violence and we are seeing that to the max right now. We have a moral obligation to get into what he called good trouble, necessary trouble. You know Lewis deeply believe that when laws or systems are unjust and we are in a time when that injustice is being transmitted through iPhones all over the country.

44:08When laws and systems promote violence, then it is essential that peaceful and public resistance and civil disobedience. These are necessary at this time and we're here and we've been here for far too long. It's not as if this is just happening since the present administration got into the White House. I think it's important for us to understand the history of violence in our country and by the way, it's just our country. It's pretty deep in human history. I mean, let's not idealize or demonize. Let's face reality. There are deep roots in human history about what it means not to belong and what it means to objectify and to other.

45:13You know, let me just take a breath because Rebecca and I've been steaming her. It's the danger of putting two people like us. I don't want to say what we are next to each other. And Christiana, by the way, is circling in an airplane being buffeted by winds. I hope she's going to be able to log on. But if she doesn't, don't worry. Her pre-record because we thought this might happen. Her pre-record will be on the resource page. But anyway, I just want to take a breath right now because we've just, we've just transmitted a lot of feeling and also a lot of content. And by the way, the electricity is going on and off here. The winds are so wild. So just excuse us if there's a little blip here in the air.

46:15I have a very close colleague. Many of you know her work. She has the bunting chair at Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins medical school. She's an ethicist, a clinician, and a person who looks deeply on the value of resilience, what she has called moral resilience. And it is something that we need to look seriously at right now of how we actualize in our lived experience, moral resilience. She has a series of, what can I call them? For me, their vows. Yeah, their vows. Exactly. Rebecca.

47:15And the first one she says is it is important for us to know what we stand for. What are we standing up for? And in the second vow, she says, it is essential that we live our values. And then she calls us. It is essential that we inquire to discover what will serve. And then she goes on. We have to vow to ask the hard questions. And then she says, and to speak out for what we stand for, not to go into silence.

48:24And then she says, we have to listen to the call of conscience. And she's written so much as I have as well. When we don't listen to the call of conscience, we will experience moral suffering. And she goes on. We have to vow to be courageous, despite risks. And further she says, and we have to take principled action. And from this, the final vow to be responsible and accountable. I want to repeat this in the eye way as I statements. And maybe you can take them in as I statements.

49:32I know what I stand for. I live my values. I inquire to discover what will serve. I ask the hard questions. I speak out for what I stand for. I listen to the call of conscience. I am courageous, despite risks. I take principled action. I am responsible and accountable.

50:39So thank you for so many years at Hopkins in the the journal ground of our medical system. You know, many of you are aware that I practice for a long time with tick.hon, the late tick.hon, the wonderful tick.hon. I met Thai in the mid 60s, not person to person, I was an audience listening to him. And you know, the feeling of the times actually was not so different in certain ways than what we're going through right now. It wasn't only the civil rights movement, but it was also the anti-war movement in relation to what was happening in Vietnam. And Cambodia and Laos. And the women's movement, indigenous rights. Exactly. Farm workers, so many movements all at once for whining, inclusion, equality rights.

51:46And you know, I'm glad you said inclusion because Thai translated the word equanimity as inclusion to accept all things. I also accept all things all beings. And I'm reminded of Tartu Kus' admonition. He said equanimity means to care for all beings equally, including the ones that are perpetrating harm. It is not to say not to bring to justice, not to call for accountability, but it is this understanding that those, as I said, states of mind and heart that perpetrate harm are also suffering and must be brought to justice, those who have created harm or killed, been engaged in violence. There has to be accountability. Without that, we're betraying our values.

52:47And one of the things that Tiktot Han did was to create kind of preceptual body, a vow body. And I'm not going to get it right. Forgive me. It's off the top of my head. But the first mindfulness training or precept was, do not be bound to any doctrine theory or ideology. All these are just systems of any way. They're not absolute truth. The maps are not the territory. Yeah, the maps are not the territory. Exactly. And the ninth precept really took my breath away. And in an earlier version, it was even stronger than in the current version. But I think it's important to understand this is the precept about right speech. And he calls it the ninth mindfulness training in more regular Buddhist parlance and be right speech.

53:57Tiktot Han characterized it as truthful and loving speech. And in this, he makes it clear that we have to take a stand for justice. And that mindfulness training ends with these words. We will do our best to speak out about situations of injustice. Even though when doing so, it may make difficulties for us or threaten our safety. In a much earlier version, it was even stronger that is even if we lose our life. And honestly, I think this admonitions particularly important at this time. It comes back to the theme of our time together this morning, and it is courage.

55:03If you just think of what happened to Alex Pretti, it can make us turn away from taking a stand. He didn't realize his life would be taken from him that morning when he moved to protect that woman. But it was. And also eight other lives in January were extinguished by the violence of eyes. But now hundreds of thousands, maybe it's getting to be millions, are taking a stand at this time. Are sending their voice, are standing their values or standing up in their values as an embodied experience,

56:05who are on their bicycles like Alex Pretti, who are putting their arms around each other and raising their voices. And you are among those who are doing exactly that. And in this regard, I have to recall the words of Alexei Navalny, whose last message to us was this. You are not allowed to give up. You are not allowed to give up Rebecca. Yeah, you know, I say never, I say never surrender. And one thing when nothing else seems to keep people going is your opponents would love you to believe that you have no power that it's hopeless.

57:07Why would you give them the satisfaction of fulfilling their description of us, but also we are tremendously powerful. You study history, not of what the officially powerful prominent covered by the newspapers, people do. But what grassroots movements do, what civil society does, what we've done together on the comments, building relationships, building movements, marching for our rights, the seven million people who marched in the last no kings protests, which will maybe be larger in the next one on March 28th. If you look at the way people at the risk of their own lives, if many have died in Iran, have been standing up, stood up in Bangladesh, stood up in Indonesia, have been standing up around the world for freedom, for justice, for truth, women, freedom. God, what's the Iranian one? Women life freedom was the cry when that revolution began a couple of years ago.

58:11And so we're actually tremendously powerful. And there's that beautiful thing. I think it was Nelson Mandela, or was it just been tutu? It's a South American thing that our deepest fear is not that we're powerless. It's that we're tremendously powerful. In a sense, you could say that Saddle is with the responsibility to use that power in compassion for all beings, in love for our neighbors, whoever they may be. But, you know, so I could say it's Saddle is with the responsibility, but let's say reciprocity. And we're seeing that in action. It is so beautiful right now. And we're living in a moment of incredible beauty of the solidarity, this generosity, this courage. At the same time, we're seeing the ugliness of harm being done. Not only have nine people died, but millions of people in the United States are living in fear, afraid to leave home, to go to school, to go to work.

59:12Or can't pay rent because they can't work, you know, or having other people deliver food to them because of this and other people are delivering food. I'm very fond of the word encouragement, particularly since a writer friend of mine told me it literally means to instill courage. And if you look at the French origin of the word courage, it's courage, which comes from the heart. So it's a kind of heartfeltness that is and, you know, that your heart is committed to what you believe in, even if you're afraid, even if you're at risk. And so I want us maybe to have hope in this moment, although hope as people, a lot of people see it gets attached to outcome, but to have courage to live by vow, to live our values, as Roche said. But in a sense, I'm exhorting people to do and that's ridiculous because they're doing it by the millions from New Orleans to Minneapolis from Los Angeles to Maine.

1:00:16In this moment, we are living in a great historical moment that will be studied in a hundred years and more. We don't know what will happen because we're deciding what will happen by showing up at some climate demonstration some years ago. I used to get everyone to chant, don't ask what will happen, be what happens. And right now civil society is what's happening. And one of the things that I think is remarkable in this moment that very much flies in with all the other stuff I said is the Trump administration in invading Minneapolis and a lot of what they've done have operated on their own assumptions about human nature, which is at the heart of all this speaking of hearts. They assume that people are basically cowardly and selfish sometimes templating and on themselves sometimes because they despise us as, you know, kind of the miserable, you rabble, whatever.

1:01:18But what they're seeing, which is unanticipated, the way that their efforts are failing is they were wrong about human nature. People are so much braver, so much more altruistic, so much more generous, so much more empathic than they anticipated. They did not expect what happened first in LA and then in city after city in Chicago, which what will happen in Springfield, which I think is the next target. And I think that is that it's not unconnected to something since we already apply a Dharma talk to a kind of Buddha nature that underneath all our distractions and chaos and anxieties and fears and etc. There is something strong, there is something good, there is something powerful, and in a sense the practice is to clear away the clutter, to find that true self, that real self, that authentic self, to be who we were meant to be.

1:02:22And was just moving these so deeply over and over, as seen people be their best, their biggest selves in this moment. My wonderful friend Kanchita with Earth Justice checked in with me when it all began just about a year ago and said, how are you doing? And I said, you know, I was made for this and she said, so am I. And I think a lot of us were made for this moment, not because we want the harm to be done, but because we were made to protect, to care, to connect, to stand up. And we're seeing it, we're seeing it happen, and you know, learn from this moment, witness this moment, cherish this moment. This is who we are in our deepest and most dangerous moments, and it's so beautiful and so important to know this true self, in all of us, all of us who are awakened, all of us who are empathic, all of us who have not been somehow taken hostage by the ideology of isolation.

1:03:29You know, Rebecca, there's something, the piece that someone sent me that I really love because so often we're, we're caught as Rebecca and I have shared many of you shared in the chat by the conventions of our society. And one of the things that caused me a bit of a laugh yesterday was Rebecca and I were having a conversation and she said something like, you know, I'm not worried. And I raised my eyebrow and she said, Americans are basically insubordinate and that's what we're seeing. Yeah, the pervasiveness of insubordination at this time. So I want to just, a few more things that that want to be shared and let's just open it up and explore together.

1:04:30Someone sent me something I really loved and it's Lord, make me a channel of disturbance, which is the verse of the Saint Francis prayer. And we'll put this in the resource page two and it goes, Lord, make me a channel of disturbance, where there is apathy, let me provoke. Where there is compliance, let me bring questioning, where there is silence, may I be a voice, where there's too much comfort and too little action, grant disruption. Where there are doors closed and hearts locked, grant the willingness to listen. When laws dictate and pain is overlooked, when tradition speaks louder than need, grant that I may seek rather to do justice than to just talk about it.

1:05:46Disturb us, O Lord, to be with as well as for the alienated, to love the unlovable as well as the lovely Lord, make me a channel of disturbance. So I just got a message from our beloved Christiana and I'm going to ask she says she just got off the little plane that was circling here and I'm going to just do something which is Christiana step in if you can. Period and let's see if you can. In the meantime, what I'd like us to do is to step in Rebecca and I and you have shared so much and I think there's a lot that wants to be reflected back at this time from the Mahat community.

1:06:57And again, if Christiana can't step in and know what just keep an eye out for her stepping in, I'm going to ask Wendy and I and Rebecca to field feedback questions concerns and please raise your digital hand and go to essence. So Wendy, can you call on people please. Wonderful. Let's hear from Shogun, Jody, I'll unmute you there you are. Thank you and thank you both. I was a scary hand raise, I just want to reflect that. One thing I wanted to just add to these different versions of vow that you offered is I'm sure you both are familiar with Joe Anna Macy's five vows and one of the things that is so powerful for me is that the first vow is I vow to myself and to you to commit myself daily to the healing of the world and the welfare of all beings and for me that daily is such a potent reminder that I'm not sort of abstractly

1:08:06making these vows, but I'm making them in time and space daily here and now. I had a question for Rebecca, which is could you please say more about distinction between reciprocity and responsibility. Yeah, I just think the word responsibility sounds so like do your chores familiar phrase for my childhood like you have an obligation to this other other being other, you know, larger system, whatever. Whereas reciprocity begins in the fact that you have already received and then you want to give back so it always reminds you that you are not just giving your receiving. So you feel the generosity and the abundance in it rather than the scarcity of like, oh, I have to do my chores, but there's other things I'd rather do, you know, if you begin with the gratitude of nature has given us everything, you know, our bodies, our world, our nature, our site, the beautiful things to look upon. You know, our every nourishment, each other since we're animals in the animal kingdom dependent on all other kingdoms.

1:09:17So I feel like that that just begins in a place of abundance and gratitude and that is so different and so that's the distinction for me. I love Joanna and wish I'd connected with her more before she left us but had a wonderful visit the November before she passed this summer. But I will say daily commitment, but some of the commitment always has to be not burning out, not becoming embittered by doing nothing but facing the enemy. I wrote a book a few years ago about George Orwell prompted by the fact that unbeknownst to me until I stumbled across his actual roses outside the cottage she moved to in 1936. He was a passionate gardener and to find that the most valiant, visible, antifascist of the 20th century kept goats and chickens and was very fond of flowers and spent a great deal of time gardening.

1:10:18It felt like he knew how to take care of himself, how to kind of come back to the earth. One of his friends said he was like Anteas the Greek giant who drew strength from the earth. Hercules could only defeat by lifting him into the air and disconnecting him. So Orwell knew how to keep the connections that strengthen him. I'm here with one of the most valiant activists I know I will not unveil him without permission. And I'm so thrilled that he's here with us because I want him to decompress and recharge because he does do heroic work. And so I want that every day to mean that the vow is there in your heart, the orientation, but sometimes you're going to water the flowers because I know growing up in the left, there's often this kind of bitter exhortation that everything else is indulgence and distraction. And you should just endlessly grind and you know, fit your roses in there, whatever form they take or dancing or singing, singing.

1:11:19Yeah, it's one of the things that's happening in Minneapolis, you know, is make a joyful noise, not just an angry one. And that's happening, which I think is really important. I mean, I do get heavy doubt by all of this. And I feel the gravity of our time by the same token, I understand the value of the exhale, the preciousness of friendships. And I call for myself to be resourced so I can meet the world, not as a total angry drag, if you will. But with a sense of resilience of bounce, even in my mid 80s, it's essential that the exhale happens. Yeah, so thanks, Jodie, for stirring this up with Rebecca and me, we're trying to do a little exhale ourselves too. And it is really important, we just can't, as Rebecca said, have this kind of, it's sort of a Christian ethic, you know, that, you know, put yourself on the cross, sorry, Christians, I always raised one too.

1:12:33But actually, altruism is unselfishness toward all beings, including oneself. Yeah. So thank you so much for your question. Yeah, let's hear, let's just take a breath, you know, phew, lots. Yeah, Mary Ann. Thank you, Jodie, by the way. Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm so happy you're in warm Costa Rica. I've been New York and was on the streets yesterday, we had a huge, huge outpouring. And I was with the mom, Donnie, team, who I worked with to get him into office. And I spoke to Roshi yesterday about, I heard Chase iron eyes, I don't know if you know him.

1:13:44Yeah, Oglala attorney, say something about, it's not by chance that we're here, that we chose to be here. We are here right now. And I know Roshi John has said this so many times, many people that we were made for these times. So Chase iron eyes is there in Minneapolis, he was at Pine Ridge when it started the whole thing and he went to Minneapolis because they're also picking up native people as, as you know, and, and trying to deport them to where. They're there in detention as well, and so he's there camping out and, but yeah, the outpouring is amazing. And it's happening, it's, it's a profound energy and it's healing, and it's also important to resource.

1:14:52So I'm doing that today, actually, making a big pot of soup and, yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much, it's good to see you again. Donna is trying to log on, and we'll see, Kodo, would you keep an eye out for her, and then. And so at least. Good afternoon from the East Coast, good morning where you are, deep gratitude for the talk. And my question, I do a lot of activists work where I am outside of Boston. I was wondering how to bring some of this teaching to other people who are activists are very busy and have whatever their spiritual practices. One of the best ways, I mean, I tried last week we did an online thing after Freddie was killed.

1:15:58And I finally launched into, you know, compassionate presence to feelings, but I'm just wondering what thought you have in those settings to help people. You know, there, there's, I think many ways, but I honestly feel that no matter what the scale of your endeavor is, every action to move forward as a lived experience, courage and compassion at this time, no matter the scale. Every action is important. It counts. And I, you know, there are many examples that we could share of one person doing something that is for good. And by the way, Christiana just logged on. So I want to just say, hey, Christiana, we see your hair blowing in the wind.

1:16:59Thank you so much. I know it's been a kind of exciting morning for you. I just want to say to the person who's just on, Alyssa, don't let scale intimate scale discourage. Please. There are over 2,000 people who have registered to be, you know, access our conversation with each other. But each one of you, just touching two more people and then those two touching two, then it becomes exponential. We can do this. Christiana, thank you so much. Go for it, my dear sister. And I love the hairdo. Well, hardly. As you can tell, it's a very windy day everywhere here. So, yeah, I'm so sorry that we've had all kinds of flight issues.

1:18:02And I hope to be able to get on a flight later on. I feel totally discombobulated because I have no idea what flow you have been in. But maybe, maybe, maybe just a reflection on courage and on the importance of individual courage. Because very similar to the United States, the reason why I have to do all the logistics today is because it's election day in Costa Rica. And I wanted to make sure that I was in my voting place to vote this morning. And the very scary situation that we have to stay there. But you have been using tactics that are very, very similar to the tactics that are being used by current occupant of the White House.

1:19:11And I think the question that comes up here and that I'm sure comes up in the United States very often is, is there anything that I can do to stop this? Is there anything that I can do to improve this? And the, I think for me, the answer is no, not one person can stop on through this. But that doesn't mean that we all just sit on the sofa and twiddle our fingers. What that actually means is identifying the space, the influence area that that we have around us and be able to bring the most necessary element right now, the scaricist element, which is love and compassion. There's so much hate. There is so much division there that bringing love and compassion, just really, it makes a difference.

1:20:19I was, I was here with, with someone who was just absolutely distraught about the changes in the flights and she was just really, really upset and screaming and yelling at everyone because she was taking her husband's ashes to Nozada. And I went up to her and I said, you know, I really understand your situation. I can understand why you're so upset and just invited her to sit down and have a chat and just tell me what she was feeling. And this woman just came down from decibel, you know, three thousand seventy five just came down to decibel one and was in tears at the end and thanking me for the opportunity to be able to speak from her heart. And I thought, you know, that's, that's how we do this one person at a time. Yes, I wasn't able to be with all hundreds of you online, but I did take the opportunity to touch one person's heart today and one person who was very, very, very desperate.

1:21:33And, and those are the opportunities that we should never miss where, you know, where is there someone who's really desperate, either because of the political situation or the personal, I mean, the reasons for desperation are so abundant and so diverse. And so to, you know, to take advantage and have those eyes of the glasses of where, where can I make a difference to whom right now. If we all do that, if all of you, what 800 people online, if each of you, sorry about airport noise. If each of you touch one heart today and those eight hearts start another 800 hearts today, you know, as, as Russia was saying, it just very quickly becomes exponential. So to step out of our helplessness and to step out of our, our thinking, there's nothing that we can do.

1:22:38There's always something we can do. There's always many things that we can do. It's about putting on our glasses of where can I bring love, where can I bring joy, where can I bring a smile, where can I act with more courage. The opportunities are always there. So just to get out of this mindset of there's nothing that I can do because it is not true. It is simply a convenient excuse to not be courageous. Oh, Christiana, I really so appreciate you saying this. And I'm reminded of one of the peacemaker precepts, which is do not cultivate a mind of poverty in yourself or others, do not cultivate a mind of poverty in yourself or others. We can do this. We did this in the 60s. We did it in the 70s. Feminism has changed the profile of our world, not just of our country.

1:23:46There's another line that comes from our school of Buddhism, which is, I think, really beautiful. May we exist in muddy water with purity, like a lotus. And Tiktot Han quoted an earlier aphorism, not aphorism, but you know, phrase from early Buddhism. And he is one of his books, Lotus Blooming in a Sea of Fire. We're in a sea of fire right now. How do we not incinerate ourselves? How do we bloom in the sea of fire? Just as Rebecca or you just said, I don't know who said what we're all saying the same thing, but I feel I was born for these times. This is a time when, you know, really standing in our values will remind us of who we really are.

1:24:54Yeah, I have to laugh with deep respect, La Cristiana, because yes this morning she helped one person, but I was in Paris. I watched her get 194 nations to agree. I was joke that getting 194 nations to agree on what pizza to order would already be a miracle to agree on the Paris climate treaty was astonishing. I was attending as a journalist, but also a climate activist. And in one of the activist spaces, I was sitting on the concrete floor with my exhausted friend, Bill McKibbin, who's done more for the climate than almost anyone who hasn't brought the Paris climate treaty to a successful conclusion. And it was the first time I heard him say when somebody walked up to him and said, what's the best thing I can do as an individual? He said, stop being an individual, meaning joined something. Say that again. Hold on. You say so many profound things so quickly. Well, this is Bill. I know.

1:25:54What's the most, what's the best thing I could do as an individual in this case for the climate build just looked up from the concrete floor and said, stop being an individual, meaning joined something. This isn't a remarkable moment in the US where indivisible 50 51, all these local groups, signal chats in Wisconsin, my friends, incredible organizing in New Orleans, things happening all over the country, people are stopping being individuals and finding their presence. And with these communities, we could really kind of call sawdusts are doing the blessed work of loving thy neighbor of caring for their neighbor of welcoming the stranger, the widow and the orphan of standing up for each other and with each other in the most beautiful and powerful display of solidarity. I've seen in more than 60 years of life in this country, and I've been around for Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter and some of the earlier stuff and anti war movements and great marches.

1:27:05This is the biggest, this is an extraordinary moment, and I hope that we learn from it and remember it. First of all, I hope that we win, but then I hope we win the other thing, which is remembering this is who we were born to be, this is who we can be, this is who we are at our best when we're not in crisis. We don't have to do these things in the same way, not that I think we'll run out of crises when we take care of fascism in the US, maybe we can turn back to more climate work. We've been less for climate this in 2025 than any other year, because I felt like we had to claw away back to the democracy and that lets us do it. But there's also something, you know, there's a beautiful and profound lesson of who we can be and are and how deeply rewarding and meaningful that can be. I don't mean to go on that long, but this is at the core of my passions, my work, my writing, and I'm not even digressing more into a paradise built in hell.

1:28:05Rebecca, first of all, thank you so much for stepping in for me at such short notice or no notice whatsoever. I really appreciate that. I also just want to go back to Bill's comment, stop being an individual because it's such a profound statement that it really merits unpacking it. Bill doesn't mean turn your back on yourself, doesn't mean deny yourself or disembodied yourself. What Bill means is step into yourself, recognize yourself, know yourself, know by yourself, understand what the news items and the context is doing to you as an individual to me as an individual and then don't get absorbed and paralyzed by that. So when he says stop being an individual, he's saying don't draw the boundary around yourself and you know your miserable little self poor little me.

1:29:11What he's saying is go into your roots and go forth and do the work that has to be done together with other people rooted in yourself, but not bounded by yourself. That's what he means. So I just think it's airport is being very disruptive. Sorry, I'll mute myself again. Christian, I have to thank you. The message that you and Rebecca have shared with us today is so liberating. And in that spirit, we're right at the time of conclusion, I just want to thank all those who showed up today to show up continually wherever you can and however you can at this time. And also those who will access our conversation, which has been wild like your hair, Christiana, you're supposed to laugh.

1:30:19It's a time to be disciplined and a time to be wild. It's a time to take risks and take responsibility. And it's a time to raise your voice and to know the silence as well. And I want to just thank everybody for being here and I just encourage you as Kodo did to offer your lives to whatever you can to liberate others from suffering and in the way that we do in this time together. I'll just say the four vowels of the bodhisattvas. Creations are numberless. I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless. I vow to perceive it.

1:31:20Any awakened way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it. And I'm going to add one more bow. And it's from our good friend, Windleberry. Be joyful, though you know the facts. Thank you, everyone. And we'll gather again in this Maha community at the beginning of where February, at the beginning of March with Valerie Brown. And I just help, I ask you, how to mitigate the suffering that so many are experiencing to the greatest extent that you can knowing that scale is not what drives everything. Your heart and your courage are what drive everything that will be successful as we move through this rupture. Thank you.

1:32:25Thank you, Kodo. Thank you, Dinan. Thank you, everybody. See you next month. And Christian, would you stay on just for a minute and everybody? Thank you. Thank you so much, Rochi. And yes, today is national election day in Costa Rica. And I have gone through many different hoops to make sure that I can vote. It being actually a courageous act these days to go out and vote for leadership that is responsible. So with that, thank you to everyone for putting up with this pre-record. And yes, we are aligning many different stars so that I can join you in person a little bit later.

1:33:26So, friends, let's start here. As Rochi has already previewed for us, we are living in a time when fear, anxiety, and frankly all sorts of darkenuses are no longer occasional visitors. Knocking at the portal of thought, they have actually become a daily part of our inner world and of the emotional atmosphere that surrounds us. Now, for the purpose of today, I will subsume anxiety, anxiousness, despair, all of those emotions under the banner of fear, in full acknowledgement that there are many nuances and variations of that emotion. But it just makes it easier for the narrative to just put everything under the banner of fear for the moment.

1:34:38So, let's admit that we feel a lot of fear about the state of the United States, about the state of the world, fear for those we love, fear for those who cannot speak up. Fear that the ground beneath us, socially, ecologically, morally, that ground feels much less stable than it once did. And for many of us, this fear doesn't arrive as unexpected panic. It arrives quietly, almost surreptitiously, almost as a background hum in a nervous system, as fatigue perhaps, or as the surprisingly repetitive thought.

1:35:40But what I just cannot believe this, it has become a frequent contraction that we carry into our days, a contraction that is dangerously, slowly becoming normalized. So, it comes as no surprise to you or to me that Roshi assigned me the task of speaking about courage. I take my instructions from Roshi, assuming Roshi that you do not mean courage as heroism or as certainty, but rather courage as we understand it in the Dharma practice, especially in these times of darkness, anxiety and fear. And as all of you know, if, if I have been with you, my spiritual lineage is the teaching of Zen Master Tignat Han.

1:36:48It is a lineage from which I am still learning how to stay present with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. How to touch peace without turning away from pain, and how courage can be practiced moment by moment through mindful resolve. One of the things that I so deeply appreciate about Roshi Jones' teachings and about Upaya itself is the commitment that we share about how to stay, how to bear witness, and then to courageously act without violence toward ourselves or the world. That same commitment lives also in the work of Joanna Macy, known to all of us, who reminded us that courage is not about denying the pain of the world, but about turning toward it together, so that despair does not isolate us, and grief doesn't harden us into paralysis.

1:38:04Courage is not about restoring irresponsible comfort. It's not about helping us feel okay with what is not okay. Sometimes courage is precisely the willingness to be disturbed as in the wonderful thought piece that Roshi Jones recently sent me. It is about letting ourselves be unsettled by suffering, by injustice, by what should not be normalized. So today I would like to explore with you what I would like to call the arc of courage. A lived sequence we can mindfully move through again and again, and in the good Buddhist tradition of making lists, this arc has five steps. The first step is of course to stop, to pause.

1:39:09At times of fear, our first impulse is either to deny and squelch, pretend like it never happened or has nothing to do with us to hide under the blanket, or the other impulse can be to move quickly into fixing, usually my go to, trying to rescue or resolve with a certain automation, without contemplating the root of the challenge. But in the plum village tradition and here at Upaya, courage is neither of those two impulses. It begins somewhere else. It begins ironically perhaps with mindful, thoughtful stopping, stopping long enough to truly feel what is actually here. Stopping long enough to notice what is happening in my body and where in my body.

1:40:13Stopping long enough to let ourselves be touched by the painful reality rather than rushing past it. In and of itself, stopping is already an act of courage because to stop in a fearful world means we're willing to face fear directly, without numbing, without hardening, without turning away. In a culture that rewards speed, outrage and instant opinion, stopping is a radical interruption. It quietly says, I will not look away. I will not go unconscious. I will not outsource my moral attention. Stopping does not mean withdrawing from the world. It means refusing to be swept away by my own habitual energies.

1:41:19And I'm reminded of a recent podcast recording where we started the recording. And my go-ho says, so Cristiano, what do you think about the latest news from the Trump administration? And out of my habitual energy, I went like, what the hell? So those are the proofs of habitual energies that are so important to pay attention to and not be swept by it. Joanna Macy calls this the practice of honoring the pain of the world, not fixing it, not explaining it away, but allowing it to be felt so that it can move and not stagnate inside of us. Second step is to embrace the fear. I think we can all quickly agree that fear has a very bad reputation, but fear is not the enemy. Fear is a messenger.

1:42:29Fear tells us that something we love is at risk. To embrace fear is to step out of the illusion of comfort, the fantasy, that we just manage things well enough or better than we have up until now. Nothing will touch us. Not quite very realistic. What we would like to do is actually invite it in and say silently and courageously, hello, my fear. I know you're here. But let's note fear does not ask us to calm down. Given where we are today on so many challenges, fear asks us to acknowledge it and to wake up, to roll up our sleeves.

1:43:35When fear arises in response to suffering, fear for those who cannot speak, fear for the earth, for the erosion of dignity and institutionality, the question of courage is not, how do I sue this for me and for others? The courageous question is, what is this fear asking of me? As Pema children so memorably says, courage is the opposite of cozy. So as I'm sharing this with you now, I just invite you just for a moment to notice where fear or anxiety is living in your body today. Not yesterday's fear and our memory of it, not the world's fear that is linked to ours and larger, but just your fear right now, right here.

1:44:42There's no need to analyze it, just notice it. This willingness to stay present with fear, without ignoring it or being swallowed by it, that is precisely the beginning of courage. When we return to the body, to the breath, to the present moment, instead of arguing with fear we can gently ask, what is actually happening right now in this breath, in this body? On this little patch of earth beneath my feet, it's not about solving anything, it's not about facing or embracing. It is about moving with self-compassion. The third step is to mindfully choose our response, and that is the turning point.

1:45:43Between fear and action, there is a moment that is easy to miss, a moment so fleeting that we often rush past it and find ourselves going down the wrong fork in the road. When we embrace fear, we discover that there is a moment of choice. We may not be able to choose when or whether fear arises, but we can choose how we respond to it. And that is one of the most radical teachings of the Dharma. We have a choice, and we can train our mind to recognize that choice and make room for it. Because courage lives in this choice, not once, but again, and again, and again, sometimes in fact many times in a single day.

1:46:49And every moment of fear, if we make space for it, asks us a quiet and powerful question. Will I choose comfort or conscience? Will I choose silence or presence? Will I choose to talk about justice or will I choose to practice it, to stand up for it, to speak up for it, in the big or even in the small, but all unusually inconvenient ways available to me right now? Joanna Macy would say that this is where agency is born, not as control, but as conscious, active, participation. Then comes the fourth step, right thinking. One of the teachings of Thai, Tik Nhat An, that has been shaping my life over the past years is the teaching of the two dimensions of reality.

1:48:06We have an experience on a daily basis in our daily life, the historical dimension, the world of birth and death, injustice and loss, uncertainty and urgency, everything that is part of our daily life. And there is the ultimate dimension, the dimension of interbeing, where nothing is separate, where there is no coming and going. Our practice is not to try to escape the historical dimension. Our practice is to learn to hold both dimensions at the same time in equal standing, because when we touch the ultimate dimension, even briefly, something inside of us studies. We remember that we belong to something much larger than this moment in history. And that puts firm ground under our feet and gets us ready for right action.

1:49:18And right action is the fifth step. It is arguably the most important step, because right action is what differentiates courage from spiritual bypassing. If we try to meet fear only with our question, we contribute very little. Courage in right action comes in many shapes, sizes and colors. It starts with the question, what action can I take right now that uses suffering, my suffering and the suffering of others? Sometimes it is a small, self-identified act of courage, a conversation we've been avoiding, studiously avoiding, a boundary that we finally identify and name.

1:50:18A truth that we speak gently but clearly. Sometimes courage is a caring but firm refusal, a refusal to comply with dehumanization, a refusal to accept policies, narratives or norms that ask us to close our hearts in the name of order, efficiency or realism. Sometimes courage is straight, not reacting in the traffic jam, not forcing clarity where none yet exists in the group discussion. These days very often courage is not acting directly out of fear when we read the news. But rather intentionally identify where I can make a difference in this moment right here, right now.

1:51:24Which life can I touch with kindness right now? What decision can I take to make love more expansive? What injustice can I soften right now and how? Where can I speak up, not with violence but with firmness? These days there seem to be many opportunities to practice courage and seen from the long term knowing that we're in a life marathon and not a sprint. Every act of courage, small or large, is an opportunity to strengthen that muscle. Let me close by quoting a recent article written by my friend, Wanjira Matai. She's not a Dharma teacher.

1:52:24She participates in our plum village retreats for climate activism leaders. But she would not recognize herself as a Buddhist, certainly not as a Dharma teacher. She is an African activist and leader, one of the most respected names in the continent of Africa. When Jira Matai, you may recognize her last name, she is the daughter of one Gary Matai. Now in this recent article that she sent me and remember, she's not a Dharma teacher, but here's what she wrote. I know the world feels like it is spinning out of control with geopolitics in turmoil, interlational law frame, and the global order shaken. But come closer, especially you, my fellow Africans, and hear the ancestral call because we simply do not have the luxury of despair.

1:53:34The challenges before us are immense, climate chaos, economic instability, health crises, and security threats that test the resilience of nations and communities alike. Yet these challenges are not insurmountable. What is required is courage. The courage to resist despair, to reject isolationism, and to embrace solidarity as the foundation of our collective future. One Jira Matai. So my friends, as we come to the close, I invite us into a very brief practice. If you will, close your eyes and allow the breath to arrive naturally.

1:54:37Breathing in, I know fear, anxiety, worry, despair is here. Breathing out, I offer it compassion, and I bring courage. May my courage be gentle. May it be strong. May it serve this suffering world by allowing me to stay awake and us to pull together in resolve with grit, with wisdom, and with care. Namaste.