 And again, I'm Ann from STAND, and our facilitator today is Todd Paulia. He is the executive director of STAND. We are an advocacy organization made up of people challenging governments and corporations to make the health of our communities, our environment, and our climate the top priority. Todd joined the organization, formerly called Forest Ethics in 1999, and Todd has played a major role in transforming the policies of multi-million dollar Fortune 500 companies including Staples, Office Depot, William Sonoma, Dell, Victoria's Secret, and many more. Todd, thank you so much for facilitating today, and I'll let you take it from here. Thank you Ann, and welcome everyone, and especially welcome to the Reverend Angel. We're going to get to her in just a quick minute. I want to introduce Angel, and welcome you all. Literally hundreds of you that are part of this webinar and discussion about this new book, Radical Dharma, that Angel and her co-authors have written. It's an incredible book, available at Amazon, by the way, and many other places. Angel and I go way back. We actually met 15 plus years ago at the Rockwood Leadership Institute year long, and our connection was first as friends, grew up at least in some of the same places, upstate New York and then New York, and our second connection was really around mindfulness, which is a deep part of Stan's culture and practice, and Reverend Angel has not only been a trainer and leader, but has helped push us and push that work internally. The third connection was around equity issues of race, and we have known each other and been friends for a long time, including she joined our board over 10 years ago, and a little over a year ago we were very honored to have Reverend Angel step in as co-chair of our board of directors, where she pushes forward all sorts of things, having to do with our programs, as well as a real focus on issues of race, equity, and mindfulness, and she also sits on our board of staff equity committee, which means regularly to address and drive forward equity issues at Stan, and I just want to say a couple of words about this book and this topic, and why a white-led, previously very environmental group would be sponsoring this webinar and trying to tackle issues of equity. We can see in our country issues of race, white privilege, white supremacy in the newspapers and on the TV every single day, and at the RNC, which is going on simultaneously, and we believe that this is a topic, maybe the topic of our day. For many of us, climate change has been the focus in really forest protection, climate change, race, white supremacy. These are all very interlinked and connected, and I don't think there's a solving any of those things without solving all of those, and that includes issues of race and white supremacy and white privilege. And as a white-led organization, I think it's our responsibility to dive into these issues because it is not a black problem and it's not a brown problem. First and foremost, it's a white problem, and I think that's part of what this book's about. It's about a lot more than that, but with that I wanted to introduce Reverend Angel. Thanks for joining us today. The book is amazing, and I'm going to hand it over to you now. Thanks for being here. All right. Thank you so much. That means a lot to me coming from Utah for sure. So I just want to talk a little bit about the evolution of the book because obviously the point is and the hope is that you all will pick the book up because in many ways this notion of dharma, universal truth, which is one of the ways in which that word is interpreted, it's also interpreted as the historic teachings of the teachings of the historic Buddha, but this idea of dharma, the way that we're holding it here, is universal truth. So it's not a Buddhist book. We speak to a Buddhist audience in some aspects of the book, but one of the things that I like to say is that it really is a love song to the Black Lives Matter movement and movements for Black liberation, and that is inclusive of all movements for liberation, and if we are looking carefully and one of the points of the book is to look at the way the issues of oppression are intersected with each other, and particularly locked in and around white supremacy. And so my sense of the work here is that it is a Todd was saying, right, it's not a book that is about dealing with a Black problem or a Brown problem, but it's actually dealing with the problem and the challenge of white supremacy. But one of the ways that we approach the book, which we'll tell you a little bit about its evolution, is that we really decided to, after putting the main piece of the book together, we like to say it's a book inside of a book, and the book inside of a book is a set of conversations that have been mashed up together. We travel to four different cities, locations we went to Atlanta, we went to Boston, we went to Berkeley, and we went to Brooklyn, and we being myself, Lama Rod Owens, who is an African-American queer man that is a teacher, he's a llama in the Tibetan tradition, the Kaguya lineage, and Dr. Yasmin Saidullah, who is a long-time practitioner and student of mine and also an academic. And so Yasmin actually facilitated the conversations in three of the four places when we went around. We then took those conversations and we mashed them up together and packaged them under these three themes of race, love, and liberation. And when we say talking, what we're pointing to is that the book is what we call a talking book. And it was inspired actually by the book called Breaking Bread that is by Cornel West and Bell Hooks. And that book for me and Rod, as we spoke about it, were amazing. It was an amazing pivotal book because it defied something of our understanding at the time because it was two black intellectuals talking to each other. And what that did is turned on its ear the idea of who is an intellectual and what does intellectual conversation actually pertain to and what does it cover when the intellectuals are black folks. And that stood out for us is that it was the same for us as Buddhist teachers. We are rare in number unfortunately at this moment in terms of being Buddhist teachers in America. And so that's actually where the book is situated and the inspiration for it. I strongly encourage people to get a hold of the book, Breaking Bread if you need to change. So we went to these cities and we went to these cities based on Buddha Dharma magazine which is a Buddhist magazine asking Rod and I to have a conversation after the non-decision to indict the officers that were responsible for the death of Eric Garner and if anyone remember Eric Garner the hashtag was I can't breathe. And there was a heaviness that said in that was beyond that sort of added to Trayvon Martin that added to all of the other things that we were seeing and what emerging into the consciousness of America. So we had this conversation and the way that I like to say is that it went as viral as anything could be considered viral in the Buddhist community and we realized that there was an openness and a receptivity to this conversation. Now the Buddhist community very much like the environmental movements and a lot of our progressive movements are overwhelmingly white and I want to say overwhelmingly and unnecessarily white and so it's signal something to see that people were responding to this conversation and out of that we decided to hold these conversations in these different cities and put together a book. We then realized that there were some other questions that should be thought of to be pointed to in terms of ourselves personally and what it took for black folks to be able to find their ground and actually create a home in an institution I would say an institution within communities that have been overwhelmingly and predominantly white in Buddhist America but also what it meant to pursue personal liberation in the face of that and to navigate this juxtaposition between being in situations that are commonly traumatizing for black folks and people of color but also to figure out how to make relationship with the reality that is before us and I think that that pertains very much to the situation that we find ourselves in today is how do we navigate the social realities that we find ourselves in and also take care of the very real truth that the exposure and the awareness of the realities of the continued situation of racialization in America, white supremacy in America, the interlocking oppressions that result out of white supremacy and racialization are staggering and they are traumatizing especially to those of us that have felt aware of it all along but to have the actual images they also it also generates a sense of shame and frozenness and I don't know what to do and reactivity even for many activists that consider themselves allies and we saw that in a big form last year at right around this time at the Netroots Nation conference in which the Black Lives Matter activists that were there confronted Bernie Sanders around Sandra Bland and asked him to say her name and his response was I just want to say a bit lackluster but the resulting protests and actions and the conversation that it generated and that's what this is about the conversation that it generated actually caused the Democratic Party for one to turn around and actually have to navigate the conversation about racial injustice and equity in this country and including moving it into its platform albeit under the guise of criminal justice but this is a conversation that this country needs to have one of the things that I think about this is what we are confronting is the inadequacies of the civil rights movement as it were and the inadequacies of solely dealing with legislation and advocacy as a way in which to shift something that is as pernicious as racialization and white supremacy that are actually the grounding of and foundation of this country as a whole. So I just wanted to lay that down and say that what you what you're going to see in the book is this early section that talks about what we had to leave behind it's common concept in the framework of many spiritual traditions and personal liberation traditions is to think about what one has to leave behind in order to enter the path of freedom and then each of us contributed an essay also on what it is that we bring forward that is to say what are the specific arenas in which we really focus on in Rod's case that is healing he focuses quite a bit on healing in yes means case she focuses on the connection between modern day race racialization white supremacy and the abolition movement and slavery as it were that's one of the focus of her work as a as an academic and in my case I really look quite strongly at the arena of intersectionality and how intersectionality informs the next possible frontier for not only specific communities and how they relate to one another interpersonally but also transcendental movements and how transcendental movements are possible when we look at the underlying connection of all things in a woo woo way you might say that that is oneness and I like to say that that is oneness actually brought out into reality so we have and we're sitting on the precipice in many ways of both the challenge of confronting race in America but we are also looking at the very real opportunity of finally having love enter the conversation about what makes social liberation and transformation possible so I will pause there and hope that's enough fodder for everyone and let's see what kind of conversation we can all have together great thank you Angel we're going to bring Todd's webcam back let's try that again we had him for a sec there we go sorry about that Todd no worries I think I'm back now thank you Angel first of all the book you know my experience of reading it everyone who reads it will have a different experience but very deeply personal by all three authors and beautifully written and you know and painful I have a question just about how do three people even write a book let alone a book that's so personal and so painful in some ways like tell us a little bit about how this even happened as far as the process yeah so the process in a word is breakneck the last word was in terms of the main draft of the book the last word was a digital pen was put to paper on if you'll see it inside the book on February 22nd 2016 so this book moved at a breakneck pace we didn't even get our contract finalized until January and I want to say that this is a testimony to the sense that all of us as authors had as to the need of this book to be a book that is by the people and for the people and so we bypass much of the ordinary publishing process we didn't get on the usual train so to speak because we felt very strongly that the book needed to be out in time for summer needed to be out in time for Juneteenth which is a symbolic of black liberation needed to be out in time for Netroots Nation the largest of cross issue organizing conference in America it needed to be out in time for black August it needed to be out in time for youth organizing in the summer for Black Lives Matter organizing and liberation movement organizing much of which happens during the summer and so in many ways we forewent the normal path and that speaks to also our commitment we forewent the normal path of like this is how you get your book in bookstores this is how you get it in front of people we were like we don't want it in front of people we want it in front of our people we want it in front of the people and so we moved at a breakneck speed each of the authors we got together and threw ourselves into a room and we rented a place in Williamsburg actually and Brooklyn is threw ourselves in for a long weekend and just started to hash it out listening to Bish better have my money and watching the new video that was out for that and so we were like you know something to hip hop beats with all of its challenging you know issues regarding like misogynist lyrics and all of that and recognizing that we are a product of all of that complexity and intersectionality and that as black and brown people that one of the things that we are forced to do if we're choosing a path of liberation is actually to navigate the personal as political which I think it made it made for an easier process in terms of each of us writing that way because we actually have to live that we don't have as a result of race we don't have the same privilege to invisible eyes our personal experience and so I think that that's one of the things that racialization has done for and with black folks and brown folks is that we're constantly navigating our personal versus collective experience and recognizing the relationship between the two and I want to say that one of the things that we talked about in the book is that we think that it's a great loss for white skinned people that are caught within the construct of whiteness before it's deconstructed for them that they actually lose access to that in the same way either people are hyper personalized and think I'm not part of a collective you know whatever I do is of my own making and it's all about me or on the one hand or on the other hand their own personal heritage backgrounds history gets lost in this kind of like big melting pot of whiteness that we that we know the one of the results of is that people don't really have the opportunity to fully explore and navigate who they actually are what their own backgrounds and histories and upbringings are both inside and outside of whiteness as a construct. Actually it would be great um one of the things that I've experienced is that there's a lot of misunderstanding and an incredible amount of defensiveness around even from me around the term white supremacy which is you talk about throughout the book in many many different ways um but most at least most white people often think white supremacy is like that's the KKK like I'm not part of that like that's somewhere else but it actually means something very different than a lot of people think and I wanted to see if you would just talk to us about what that means to you and your other your co-authors. Yeah the way that we hold white supremacy is the centering of the cultural the cultural uh construct of whiteness as these as supreme or superior to the cultural proclivities and desires and self-determination of essentially all other people right all black brown yellow Asian red you know red peoples so it lifts up the values of so-called white people as superior and it centers this so-called white race which we know scientifically doesn't even exist but it centers what that the values of the so-called white race as superior more uh civilized and the the the central organizing component if you will of all of society now in some ways you can say okay right like that whatever that senator was it said what have other subgroups contributed to civilization okay and on the other hand then you have to wonder that but who decided those values and how is it that german values and italian values and jewish values and irish values could possibly be the same values and scottish values and slovenian values and Czechoslovakia and like how is it that these values could be the same thing right so there's actually underneath underneath the notion of white supremacy is actually a class a ruling class or owning class holding and the delivering of one theory of togetherness in under the form of white skin that was actually designed to divide white peoples from native and black peoples in this country white went on the book it didn't exist as a as an actual legal term and a legal ideology until it got to america so there was people used to be like about where they were from an irish man an english man a scotsman as opposed to being just plain old white and so this this terminology is something that we that's homebrewed here right here in america and we've been very good at exporting it all over the world but the really key thing for us to understand about white supremacy when we get it is that it's it's constraints and it's confines and one of the main confines that i like to talk about is the politics of dis belonging which is to say that if you do not conform to whiteness if you do not conform to the notion that whiteness sits at the center of all things then you will get disbelonged from whiteness and if you get disbelonged from whiteness you are now subject to all of the lack of privilege and lack of benefit of all those brown and black and red and yellow peoples and nobody wants that the last thing i want to say about that is that when i talk about whiteness and white supremacy i don't at all mean and i want to really highlight the fact that it is very true and very real that in our modern society that black skin bodies brown skin peoples are also holding down white supremacy as a result of internalized oppression and on the other hand there are also people that are white skin people that are clear anti-racist organizers clear anti-white supremacist organizers so we're not talking about people's skin color as in automatically this is who you are if you have the skin color we're talking about something that's very complex which is what makes it all the more important that we actually navigate white supremacy very specifically and distinctly from white from racism because if we don't we will not see how white supremacy holds a patriarchy and notions of masculinity we will not see how it holds up notions of a a rabid form of capitalism we will not realize how it holds up the degradation of the planet under the framework of this man over planet and we have the right to simply use the natural and human resources as we as we wish was which is very much a part of that framework of a white supremacist thinking. I wanted to you know one of the sections in the book actually is a theme in the book that keeps sort of you know you keep all of you and you and your other authors keep revisiting it's also in the title is liberation and so talk a little bit about you know what liberation means so the thing that you know is a white male that I found to be intriguing and interesting was the idea that liberation also is about white people and that there's something there they're being deprived of in a certain way by racism white supremacy and and the whole lot of it but it's a very strong theme in the book I wanted you to speak to it if you would. Yeah liberation is an ease in a word right ease and being free from the sense of limitation and and holding back that constructs whatever those constructs are on a personal level we talk about it as a as ego right that ego is something that has been constructed and handed down to us from our parents from our family of origin from the heritage from the different ways that we've been shaped by religion by the schooling that we had by experiences that are traumatizing and and also celebratory but in many ways we get handed all of these ideas about who we are and we start living in the projection of who we are ego rather than actually being able to live in the free open liberated space of who we are and so the result of that is this kind of persistent sense of anxiety of not being enough of not constantly looking over your shoulder for what it is that other people think and the way that we speak about this I specifically speak about whiteness as a social ego so it is a social construct that has been handed to us and we don't question where did that come from why do I just buy this idea of like I'm white without deconstructing that in the same way that at some point in my life I bought this idea of who Angel was who she could be what she was permitted to do and not do what went what I could do as a as a black woman as a mixed race woman as a queer woman as a as a as a Christian right of being Baptist as a New Yorker I mean it's like all of these things right start coming into play as the as the child of a parent that didn't that didn't didn't finish high school like what did that say about me what I could earn what I could do what kind of jobs I could apply for all of that exists on a social level through whiteness so whiteness actually starts to shape what it is that we think we can and can't do in both in positive ways for white folks and also in negative ways and obviously it has negative connotations for black folks and brown folks because there is a sense of what is possible for us we kind of have been sold the myth of meritocracy that is just about what we each do but we also know things like studies of of a bias right that people have unconscious bias that there are studies in terms of when people hear a name that sounds quote unquote black that they're much less likely to give that person an interview so we have all of those things operating but I want to say more importantly that I think that one of the things that white folks lose as a result of this construct of whiteness is there is a trading of one's ability to love across lines of difference because of that dis belonging right because of that lightness that is ascribed by belonging to whiteness one cannot love freely across lines of difference one is told who should one should love and be with and be connected with in terms of one's rank in society and so the way that I say as a shortcut is that whiteness forces white people to actually trade their humanity for privilege and the privilege of having those those paths of access what does it mean if you as a white man Todd begin to stand up and talk about inequity for colored people well you're going to get some pushback and there are some doors that are actually going to close down on you and you've got to make a decision about that and that's usually happening for people unconsciously white folks just know to be quiet know not to say something they see something wrong going down it starts from very early in our childhood you see something that feels wrong it seems off and you want to say something but there is a invisible cloak of whiteness that tells you you better not say anything because something's going to happen and I think most white folks don't even challenge and deconstruct well what is that thing that's going to happen yeah well I mean you know anyone who ever speaks out you know whether it's black person brown person white person you do you do suffer the consequences and you know I've seen you suffer that and any of us who have who have spoken out suffer that what is the what does radical dharma say about that aspect of it because when you do speak out whether it's around a women's issue or race issue or what have you you do get the pushback is either silence or it's relatively fierce so what do you and your co-authors what's the advice to people who are afraid to they see it and they don't want to say it yeah I think that what I think that what's on the other side of that and this is the the truth I want to say the the dharma of all liberation is that when we move through these places of resistance and when we move through these places of fear that what we access on the other side is our own liberation we get to settle down and be more of who we are as a result of that so yeah socially there's pushback there's so-called consequences but the but the value the benefit is that we actually get more and more free and if we get more free to speak the things that are true for us we get more free to actually be who we are less and less of our lives are defined by external circumstances and conditions and the result of that on a mass level the result of that of people that are anti-racist that are progressive that believe in humanity that believe in equity for all that believe in a society that works for all yes there's going to be this period of churn just like there is and a personal liberation path where you know basically your shit is like hitting the fan and you don't know what's going on it's all kind of confusion but when you move through that what you find is that you have this sense of like ease and groundedness and presence in life that creates a space and opportunity for other people around you to have that ease and ground and presence and sense of bravery to step forth into what is often referred to as one's basic goodness you get out of the questioning mode of am i good enough am i okay enough do i have enough should i do this in order to be seen this way by that person or this group of people and you just drop into this fundamental okayness in who you are the basic goodness the the promise that every single one of us are basically good we are basically kind we want to belong we want to be connected we want to love we want to be loved and all of this anxiety that comes from this conditioning keeps us from being able to relax into that it happens on a personal level it happens on a structural and social level and liberation and to be radical to be complete about really unpacking the things that are hindering us from that kind of ease from that kind of freedom is what radical dharma is about well i want to i have one more question and then i think um and it's gonna want to turn to there's lots of questions coming in from the folks on the webinar but related to what you just spoke to um llama rod owens at one point in the book talks about encouraging people to be messy um and i forget if that was for your berkeley gathering or the boston one or atlanta which one it was but it's really scary especially in an organizational setting for things to get messy and as somebody that's that's gone through you know bringing their program into stan it's the scariest thing ever and then eventually you're you get used to real things coming up but what advice do you have and what does radical dharma tell us about getting messy like how can we in our organizations that are fighting the aggressive change actually get to the root of some of the stuff and get messy and know that it's not going to blow up and we're going to all die and be racist if we actually start addressing these issues well it actually might blow up uh so i want to just say that if they blow up but the question is like what do we want to what do we want to move forth right the idea that there's some kind of um ideal or vision that is possible without us actually manifesting that vision right here and right now is complete fantasy so we actually have to as is often attributed to gondy we have to be the change with more than that we actually have to be the transformation and transformation one of the ways that i like to talk about transformation is change is something that can be reeled back right so you have trump walking around talking about i'm going to pull back obama care or we're going to pull this back because there was change transformation is about going through that kind of a dark period in which there is a deconstruction of things as we know it of the form as we know it and it's messy on a biological level that is your that is your caterpillar inside the pupae completely going to go and so it's messy it's actually a real deconstruction of what we know but what's on the other side is the butterfly what's on the other side i like to say is the dragonfly that has the that has existed as one of the oldest creatures on the face of the planet and as a species it goes through this transformation over and over and over again so if we get at the door of that of the point at which things are going to deconstruct blow up they're going to come apart and we resist that we'll stay bigger stronger faster caterpillar pillars but we'll never get to butterflies and our species will die out as a result of that what i would suggest for organizations is that we have to do the deep work we have to recognize that for the entire structural cultural milieu to make its shift that this is actually what's going to be required but if we lock ourselves in toward to our what is priority and recognize that no matter what kind of work we're doing on the environment what kind of work we're doing on women on gender issues no matter what kind of work we're doing on food justice on environmental justice if we don't work through the issue of the underlying key to this country's interlocking oppressions we are simply not going to move any of those things forward in a meaningful and transformative way so we need to go through it by all means gird your loins and do the kind of work that is necessary to build relationship recognize that there is a diversity of opinions that will show up a diversity of styles in terms of how people will express we're on really different points of the spectrum in terms of where we are about our understanding of racialization and one of the most important things is that white folks have to do work with white folks and not get into a kumbaya frame of mind that we're all going to like get in the room and do this together because frankly a lot of colored folks like hey y'all go work that out by yourself because we've been living in this mess for 400 years and so y'all going through a little bit of mess and a little bit of disruption a little bit of you know things being blown up is actually not kind of that concerning to us and when people like get upset with black lives matter and they say hey look at what's happening with somebody you know people shooting cops and my heart goes out i'm from a civil service family my dad's a firefighter my grandpa was a firefighter my grandfather was a firefighter i've always connected with police officers and firemen uh in in the country i was going to be a corrections officer or a fire person myself so there's no um i have no loss of love for for police and black bodies are littering the ground and have been littering the ground for centuries they have been littering the ground for another 50 years after slave after civil rights 100 years after slavery ended 50 50 years so given the way that time is speeding up with technology i'm saying that let rather than 25 years we have about 12 and a half years to like work this thing out to the ground that i believe we can do we have we have a few questions lots of questions coming in um first question and i'm going to probably mispronounce your name and i apologize in advance dygan g uh and we open up that line all right can you hear you hi you did a good job of pronouncing my name uh i'm having some difficulty as a white uh practitioner and a white person who's trying to to engage in this radical dharma stuff one of the common responses that i'm getting from other particularly white practitioners is um is they often try a response to to the rhetoric of white supremacists often to try to disappear difference you know the the all lives matter stuff or the i don't see color type so what would be a a useful response to that as somebody who doesn't necessarily want to argue a point or but wants to provide information but at the same time i'm really trying to unpack what what happens when erasure happens well erasure is happening and it's been happening and i think that the idea that allies want to be able to do this in a way that where they don't argue or they don't have to stand for anything uh is false and you're you're gonna have to like lean in and and put your roots in the ground of of your truth and one of the things that we talk about is that when that truth is rooted in love when that truth is rooted in love what we're doing is we're not engaging in like you know i'm arguing just my point and this is your point but rather like i'm actually in this situation i'm actually i did this book i'm having this conversation because your liberation is caught up in mine and so that's actually where i'm coming from so it's one thing if you snatch your kid up off the street because you're angry at them it's another thing if you want to save their lives from being hit by the oncoming mack truck and we're all being hit by the oncoming mack truck of white supremacy and oppression in america and we could see it and we can feel it you can have compassion for the fact that the reactivity itself is an indication of people's fear and anxiety about how to navigate these questions and their location i often tell people you know what shame is just not shame and shame and guilt are just not interesting and i'm not i'm not interested in that use of your energy but on the other hand disappearing the reality that there is a significant imbalance and a distinction in the ways in which we are seeing black men killed especially black women killed the way that we see ourselves being policed but beyond that it's not just about the policing the way it is that we have jobs the the health disparities the way in which we're able to access jobs or not access jobs to access health care historically to not access health care to access jobs in uh environment in the progressive movement these are all things that are very real their statistics if people need the statistics they can go do their homework but i think you want to invite people to consider do you want to be a part of disappearing people and disappearing the the beauty of diversity and difference because when you do that you're flattening that as well you can't have one without the other so to to and to make me invisible is to say that all of the things that are uh unique and specific about me are not useful and and valuable as well so i encourage you to simply push back and to do your to do your homework and stand your ground and and let that ground be loved thank you thank you digun and our next question is from claire g okay kimmy just a second we have a nice long list of people i'm scrolling down to claire all right all right claire it looks like you might have self-muted claire see if you can undo that we'll be able to hear you there you go okay thank you um i'm just gonna read what i wrote um but um my question is i'm wondering if you find anything inherently oppressive about traditional buddhist institutional structures especially with regard to hierarchy and student-teacher relationship um obviously white people and straight cis people need to do our own work about privilege and impression but beyond that do you think there's some kind of transformation of buddhist institutions that could be made in which we reimagine the roles of experts students beginners experts um just the concept of somebody who knows more and somebody who knows less patriarchy is baked into it you know traditional buddhist institutions and that's because patriarchy is based baked into our society i do think that that's actually one of the things that the west and it's at least a more forward movement not complete by any stretch of the imagination on gender justice has to offer uh both around you know women and and uh queer folks and trans folks and all of that but i also want to say that we don't want to get caught up in in a false flattening if i go into the Himalayas and go climb mountain i want to go with somebody that has been there before i don't want to go with someone that has a map and has looked at the map and is saying like yeah i know what this is all about i want to go with a guide that has tracked that mountain and has been up there and through there and all around and back again and i guarantee you that that is who i'm going to listen to in order to make my path forward i do not want to have this false notion of a kind of like we're all one and the same and there are no experts and end myself up sliding down the side of the mountain because i wanted everybody to be the same we're not all the same we have different gifts we want to honor the fact that teachers have many teachers have gone before us in terms of the path of liberation and at the same time we want to have discernment as students to not just throw everything you know the baby out with the bathwater in terms of our own sense of mental discernment when it comes to the fundamental goodness and compassion like the qualities of those teachers and so if you have teachers that are abusing and not actually manifesting embodying the qualities of and of compassion of wisdom of kindness uh but also fierce fierce compassion is is is all on the table because people are resistant in terms of getting to their own path of liberation so uh i want to offer that as complexity i know it doesn't it doesn't answer your question uh and what makes it more complex but i think there's real value to experts great thanks player next question is from kent a my question hello reverend angel thank you for this workshop it's quite helpful my question how does a person of color who is presently working with predominantly white social justice groups begin the conversation or conversations necessary to make the shift to discussing white supremacy without the typical white fragility that comes up yeah um you can get a case of radical dharma radical dharma was designed to do exactly that and what's one of the things that i forgot to mention earlier about radical dharma what is unique about it is that it's actually centers blackness and people of color's voice in this conversation so it's a kind of um fishbowl if you will so that is to say that white folks are not centered in the conversation they are invited to actually witness people of color if there's white people that are in the conversation and have conversations too but the black voice the of color voice the mixed race voice the queer voice are centered in this conversation and so it creates a kind of if you have ever been in the technique of fishbowl a kind of fishbowl space of i want to say relative security of bold of a bold space bold space rather than a safe space in which white folks can kind of come to learn and understand and touch into some of the things that they have historically been fragile about and just want to touch on that notion of white fragility it's kind of like a nervous system and if you have a nervous system you know when you first start to meditate and you if you go and do the whole fold your legs things you have these like really sensitive knees if you're not from an asian culture where bending your knees happens all the time so you've got these little thin blood vessels and they break and it hurts because they're right next to the nerves well what happens is as you bend them and bend them and do it again and again and you withstand that discomfort you tolerate that discomfort those capillaries actually build back again they build back stronger they build back more resilient and that fragility is reduced white folks have been fragile because they have not been confronted with racialization in the same way that people of color and black folks especially naturally have for decades and centuries in this country so it's understandable the white fragility it is not a an excuse to hide out thank you you're welcome and let me just add that the next phase for radical dharma is actually for us to build conversation guides so that we can actually create real things that people that are handed out to people but in the meantime I think the book has done pretty well for people we're getting a lot of reports back that people are able to start conversations that you just haven't been able to start and they do it by handing a book over to someone well I already ordered one during this conversation thank you great thank you so much thanks Kent next question is coming from Carl you okay give me just a second Carl and also we're going to launch a poll as as Reverend Angel just noted we want to keep dialogue going in many different ways and we're interested in who would like to be part of the an additional webinar training about this so I'm going to launch a little poll and you can let me know there if you're interested in doing that and let's pull in Carl there you go okay thanks to contextualize your comments into something I'm currently familiar with I'd like you to talk a bit about your thoughts and reactions as we watch or otherwise learn about the Republican Convention could you say more about that Carl well the reason I chose this topic for the question is because it's something where the issues of angels talking about seem to be relevant if not discussed and it's something that I'm currently familiar with so it will be a context in which your comments might be more more accessible to me or most accessible to me yep I'm not sure what you're asking me to do though I just share with us your thoughts or comments on what you see going on in the Republican Convention I you know I see the well first of all don't watch it that's what I see you know you know where pain lies and so sometimes you know we kind of like want to watch train wrecks and that's a train wreck that we knew was like on its way so I want to say that and there is some value for those of us that actually are doing actions I know there is an action that is planned to understanding and I'm really happy to have other people watch it and interpret it for me there is a reality that we are confronted with I don't think it was created at all by Trump it's simply that something that is given voice to and that should frighten the bejesus out of all of us frankly as I have said you know black and brown folks have known and red folks and and Asian folks have known this has been there all along so I think that that's really what we want to take out of it is a kind of belief in our hearts by our own witness that this is not something that people have just been making up that colored folks are not just like complaining it you know it should strike fear in our hearts that this is who the Republican Party has chosen and the sheep mindset that has brought about even in with their own reluctance to actually have this person that there is something going on of in this country in terms I want what I want to say is looking to our past and being in our now there are a lot of people that have been hoodwinked and bamboozled that as Malcolm X said said about who it is that makes up this country and who it is that has been forwarding and advancing things in this country and the economy is actually making people and having a black president and having an electorate come out and show itself on behalf of black president and black candidates and colored candidates and latinas and and and and other people's and leadership positions what is revealing is what has been true right so what has already been true is the presence of these folks and I just freak people out under educated white men are predominantly who's pushing this for Trump is because they're scared so I want to say half compassion for the fact that they are scared and we can do better on the democrat side or the progressive side in actually being willing to reach across and speak to those fears and dismantling this notion of meritocracy that doesn't allow for the fact that privilege has been always embedded in that white privilege has been embedded in that so if you got a guy a white guy that is under educated for the current since situation that we're reaching economically in which many manual labor jobs are going to the wayside computing and technology is taken over and they're like now I'm competing with these immigrants I'm competing with these black people I'm competing with these Latinos if I'm if I'm down in Texas and you know and I'm not just automatically getting the job it's like a child that has been told they are more special and better and then everyone else around them and then they hit that grade where they realize like they're one of everyone else well it's it's painful and so we need to help get them out of the cocoon that they have been in of white privilege that have said you are entitled to just move ahead based on your whiteness based on your maleness based on your heterosexuality your heterosexuality and begin to move people into a conversation that is about equity that actually lets them express more fully who they are and not simply rely on those dominant positions in society to be what it is that gets them forward the result of which is increased suicide rates increased use of opioids increased lack of faith in in a culture that was premised on a lie to begin with so I think that that's how we have to watch it we have to watch it with a sense of compassion on the one hand and also fierce accountability on the other hand will be hold responsible for their behaviors but recognize that this is the product of hundreds of years of a myth and it's time to deconstruct that myth for all of our behalf that myth is white supremacy that myth is heteropatriarchy and all of us are going to be more liberated to love not just others but we were going to be liberated to love ourselves for who we are as a result of that deconstruction great thanks for the question Carl great answer ribbon angel we have another question looks like a couple of questions coming up from Rowland G while we're getting to him I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about you know so much of this conversation out in our country right now and what it's requiring of many of us is is doing battles but you know getting in there and having messiness and having these very hard discussions at times how do you take care of yourself what's the what's the role of self-care in this particular time when we're having to really grapple with things many of us would rather not grapple with but justice requires that we do it how do we take care of ourselves how do you take care of yourself yeah I want to say that this is true just across the board for activists and also for factors whether you're white or black or brown or Asian or or red is that you know to have a practice of self-care and I'm going to go get a pedicure today but that's what I'm talking about when I say when I say self-care self-care are practices that develop our capacity for resilience that actually allow us to confront our own suffering and to be with that suffering in a very deep way and meditation has historically been my baseline practice it's more commonly known in in in our modern day is the mindfulness movement but mindfulness this kind of moment to moment attention I want to say to to shift the definition that we often hear moment to moment attention to the state of ourselves and others to the state of ourselves and others in the present moment is something that has been radically liberating for me to be able to recognize and start to sort the difference between the experience that is happening outside and the anxiety and the energy of the room as it gets going versus the experience that I'm having and being able to drop down underneath the waves of emotion the waves of discomfort the waves of you know when we talk about this stuff this comfort in this messiness it's not someone coming in you know shooting us it's actually emotional discomfort a kind of discomfort and lack of tolerance for the feeling inside our own body so to have a meditation and mindfulness practice is actually to notice the arising and falling away of the experience on a or across the board and very specifically the arising of falling of of uncomfortable sensations and breaking them down into like oh you know that thing that's sort of like fast hot sensation that like ran up my you know my my my head got full with with blood and my eyes started to feel like bulging it actually passed away for a moment and so the notion that I am angry dissipates and I realize that I am actually something else I'm something else that's under the anger I'm something else that's under the pain I'm something else that's under the the frustration and the the depression I'm I am something that is constantly abiding that is underneath and with all of those emotions I'm underneath the suffering so I can actually now hold the sense of my suffering the simultaneously hold always the possibility and the access to my joy in the midst of that suffering we get out of the dichotomy of either suffering or joy if I don't have stuff if I'm suffering that I don't have joy if I get joy then suffering shouldn't be happening and actually live in the complexity of life and I think that that is as valuable a skill as we can all have the other thing I do is I take breaks I wake up early while my thoughts are still my own so that I can hear myself before I have the social media popping at me or email jumping out at me I get up early so that I have like a long a long period of time we actually my thoughts in my own and and covet silence so that I can actually hear my own voice and I take naps naps are like God and goddesses and Buddha's gift to humankind and all of us should do it more often if we all took naps we would be a better moving forward I'm sure that's true so we're we're now there's so many questions we're going over time there's a couple more questions we're trying to get to and I think we should probably close it out knowing that we're going to do another session but Anne Roland G was up next great and let me also bring up bring up our slide with some links to get more information about the book to buy the book to sign up for a newsletter from Angel on the Center for Transformative Change and then I think we're going to try to get to three more questions now and then and then hold the conversation there for today let me see if we can bring Roland in good afternoon Reverend I I have a little difficulty with the term white supremacist when I hear the term white supremacist I think it's Ken Hedge I think of the John Birch Society I think of the Ku Klux Klan Martin Luther King told us that we're all one people that we should join together like I have never looked at people as people of color as people of white all of us are human beings I consider myself to be a human being and I consider you to be a human being you're a beautiful human being those guys I have too much to challenge brothers I grew up with prejudice and discrimination you know what you're talking about we all have to work together the police officers that are being shot at the police officers that are under trained and that are afraid of black people they should go out in the community they should meet with one another the only way we're going to have peace and harmony in our society is if we work together towards it and I would be more than willing throughout the community with the harmony we're getting an echo on on your line so let me try let's I think I think it might be because I'm on speaker right I have a hearing I'm a disabled okay well let's I think I think I'm that's what you said can I have you hold it there just in interest of time too and we'll have revenue angel address what you said yeah so you know I I want to appreciate that I think I'm a beautiful human being too and one of the great things that eastern traditions have in terms of a concept is this idea of relative and absolute realities and so there is an absolute reality that we are all one and in the final analysis in the book I actually talk about this fundamental oneness that can actually lead us into transit transcendental movements on the relative scheme of in the relative scheme of things though there is a reason that it is black bodies that are being shot and we are coming into awareness of this so to disappear that difference is to disappear the reality that we are confronting in our day to day so it's especially powerful to hold the sense of our oneness but I don't want you to disappear my difference I don't want you to not see me as black I am black and when you disappear my blackness you disappear all of the things that come with it that make me a unique human being and I want you to acknowledge that and I want you to see it and this dovetails right into the question of white supremacy so first of all the the turning one's attention towards the idea of white supremacy being white supremacist groups is actually intentional so that we can make the conversation about white supremacy disappear into the background and it's just the big boogeyman and the white hood but we need to front white supremacy because exactly what happens is when you have a dominant culture and you start going I don't see every other culture well some culture is going to take over some culture some way of being some idea about how we ought to be the rules the protocols the regulations the practices the way we set up our structures and societies and institutions our communities is going to dominate and white supremacy does exactly that and the more we disappear people's difference the more we allow actually for white supremacy to remain rooted in our system and that is what has happened over the course of the last 400 years so I want to honor the intention that you have and I want to tell you from my own voice from a place of appreciation of your appreciation of me as a human being that it's very dangerous and if you want to be my ally you want to go on the front lines as Lama Rod says in the book you want to go on the front lines of your own struggle as a white person and see what it is that triggers a reaction and what you have to reframe about the words white supremacy whatever you want to call it you have to understand and recognize the relative experience of disparity inequity of black people of brown people of women of trans people of Asians of Native Americans of First Nations peoples in these lands and the best thing that you can do is not tell me how much you love me for who I am but actually figure out what it is that needs to be completely loved in yourself so you can make space for the complexity and difference of all peoples great thank you for an angel and and I think we have Robert H is our last question is that right I think we're coming in let um let's see if we if I can find Robert here oh let's try to do Robert and then uh Laura asks I think here's Robert hey Robert we opened your line can you hear me yes I can thank you what's your question well both as a physician a scientist as well as a Buddhist I see color is not defining a human in fact the traditional Buddhist question in the monastery is a white horse white and the answer is no the color of a horse may be white but a white horse isn't white it doesn't define us and I'm just wondering as a Buddhist should we we be categorizing ourselves as white or black or should we be trying to uh fulfill a bodhisattva vows and and and uh and being compassionate to all beings not based on on race or even species of of being I didn't I didn't I didn't I didn't categorize myself the categorization happened uh several hundred years ago and uh we have been stuck with that racialization that's why I use the term racialization so racialization there there was a scientific uh rationale a false scientific rationale for for race so we know that it is scientifically untrue but it goes back to the question that I just responded to about absolute and relative so I'm not doing this as a Buddhist and I am uh want to be defined about how what I should and should not think or do or etc as a Buddhist I'm I'm a I'm a person of color that exists inside of a larger society that Western Buddhism is trying to take root in there is no you should think this way or you should think that way quote unquote as a Buddhist but all of that said and done I did not define myself but I choose now to identify as an active resistance in blackness as a way of recognizing that there are cultural distinctions and differences that exist amongst people of different uh ethno ethnotype ethnotypic phenotypic appearances so we have phenotypic appearances that have been categorized as race and and we know that underneath that scientifically that's not true but there are distinctions in our phenotypic appearances and as a result of our geographic histories and locations and cultures we show up as different peoples and so no race doesn't exist uh but I didn't create that but I'm also not going to deny the reality of distinctions that once again as I said before allows a dominant culture to then take root if we don't allow for the differences and if we don't create space for the differences and we want to default and dumb down to we're all the same under a Buddhist mantle or a progressive mantle or a I'm just a humanist mantle what we do is we actually maintain white supremacy in its founding and it's in its rooted place in the founding of this country because we what racism is is the belief in race plus power so people of color native americans first nation peoples uh all the so-called minorities all the people that are not in positions of power do not have the ability and the power to actually assert their cultures and have their cultures be respected when there's a dominant paradigm and so we have to actually create room for those the multiplicity of peoples and ways whether you categorize it as race should we be calling ourselves male or female I don't I don't know uh should we be calling ourselves by these the binaries of gender of male and female I don't I don't I don't know but those binaries exist and so now we're pushing back against the binaries should we be inside the binaries of merely heterosexuality or homosexuality there's a great spectrum in between but these binaries that exist we have to look at them and deconstruct them we can't simply disappear them because they are embedded in the structures of our society they are having effect on lives they are making uh tacit decisions about who dies who lives who thrives and who does not so the question for me has become a moot question that distracts us from the realities that we're confronting on the streets and in people's lives every day thanks revan angel and we have one last question and it's from laura s all right look all right um go ahead sorry go ahead okay thank you so much for this discussion I really love the book I'm I'm rereading it for the second time um one thing that I'm kind of at a loss about is I I noticed from my own uh my own journey through my growth as a as a social activist as a um that it's made a huge difference for me in terms of the energy and commitment I'm able to have that I've come to a place where I am very aware as a white person of how equity is for my benefit as well as for the benefit of people who are not treated equally but I'm kind of at a loss as to how to broach that subject with other people who are not familiar with Buddhist philosophy in a way that appreciates the complexity of it without turning it into a thing about white people um saying you know you're a white person and this is good for you and then it all becomes about well I'm a white person and this is good for me so I should do it yeah I don't think I actually um try not to you know merely approach it out of a perspective of a Buddhist philosophy I mean that's that's a part of my grounding I really come out of the from a perspective of love and liberation and that's why we say we're talking love race love and liberation use some of the Buddhist frameworks to actually speak to things because it's useful because Buddhism I I think deals with identity and the notions of identity and the constructs of ego more directly than most other so-called religions and philosophies and so that's part of the reason that we approach it from that lens and obviously we also share that lens in terms of who we are as individuals but really the lens that I'm looking at is to is to stand in the space of prophetic the prophetic wisdom of what it means to actually approach the realities that we're navigating from a place of love and to have people begin to look at and just be inquire into like what has this identity done to serve me how have I used it and not not used it what has it done to be of what is it done in turn in service in our society and how has it been used as benefit in benefit to some people and as a detriment to other people so it really is about the question of are you interested in navigate in in uh investigating the society and the reality that we live in especially given what we're seeing happen on the streets every day but what is this about so it's about an existential question of like what is this about what is this society what has happened or do we just hire bad people that become police somehow no what has this society done to produce this kind of animosity and strife within within institutions of power that are supposed to actually protect us what is it that this society has done in this notion of race done that has created this health disparity amongst people of no no actual scientific difference right but yet in a society in which people are on the low end of the totem pole if you would excuse the expression of the of the social structures so it's really about are you in are you interested in a society that works for all and this society clearly does not work for all so it's not about you doing it because you're a white person actually we can go back to oneness and say you can go back and say you want to deconstruct this idea of whiteness because you want to understand your humanity underneath any kind of construct as it would be whether that construct is whiteness whether that construct is gender whether that construct is uh you know rank in society class in society we want to do it for that reason because we believe in love and we believe in liberation so you don't have to approach it from all i think ultimately we all want to actually be free thank you angel and we're going to close it off there but there's much more to do thank you so much for being with us today i want to hold up the book make sure you all see it radical dharma yeah it's an incredibly yeah there's lots of swag also to be had and you know don't just take it from me alice walker one of the greatest living authors in the us and anywhere says a book to grow on to deepen over to partner with we are on a magnificent journey of liberation every moment we are alive in this odd place that has yet to awaken to itself and we are always generation to generation ready to travel how cool is this very cool get it we're going to be doing more on this thank you again for an angel photo of yourself with your copy of radical dharma when you get it when we find the hashtag so hashtag to get your swag when we find the hashtag will enter into a drawing with t-shirts sweatshirts stickers tank tops are coming uh all kind of radical dharma thing i've even been thinking about getting the radical dharma logo on the on mugs i want to really be clear and just close with this uh radical dharma is a gift and an offering to our society to our society of people of all skin colors of all ethnicities of all so-called races and heritages is really an offering to humanity for us to get free for us to step into the leadership that we should be stepping into as a society on the planet that wants to move forward and create a create a place and society that works for all um i harbor no resentment i har in fact i harbor great love for white skin people white heritage people however you want to call it i harbor love and the desire for liberation on all of our behalf so i hope that you can hear that and if you don't maybe you'll hear it in the book and i'm looking forward to being in connection with you on social media through our website and thank you so much for this time thank you Todd thank you Ann and thank you stand thank you Reverend Angel thanks everybody more soon