The Lotus in the Fire

Join Kazu Haga, author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm,  and me as we delve into the nature of personal, social and ecological change, healing trauma, and the intersection of non-violent direct action and spirituality.

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Kazu Haga is the founder and coordinator of the East Point Peace Academy and is an experienced nonviolence trainer, certified in several methodologies of nonviolence and restorative justice. Having received training from elders including Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Rev. James Lawson and Joanna Macy, he teaches nonviolence, conflict reconciliation, restorative justice, organizing and mindfulness in prisons and jails, high schools and youth groups, and with activist communities around the country.

Kazu was introduced to the work of social change and nonviolence in 1998, when at the age of 17 he participated in the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage; a 6-month walking journey from Massachusetts to New Orleans to retrace the slave trade. He spent a year studying nonviolence and Buddhism while living in monasteries throughout South Asia, and returned to the US at age 19 to begin a lifelong path in social justice work.

Kazu spent 10 years in social justice philanthropy, while playing leading roles in many movements. He became an active nonviolence trainer in the global justice movement of the late 1990s, and has since led hundreds of workshops worldwide.

He is the founding board chair of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), sits on the board of Peace Workers, and is a member of the Ahimsa Collective. He is the recipient of several awards including the Martin Luther King Jr. award and the Gil Lopez Award for Peacemaking.

Kazu is an avid meditator and enjoys being in nature, particularly with his dog. He is a die-hard fan of the Boston Celtics and of mixed martial arts, the latter of which he is still sometimes conflicted about.

" If we carry intergenerational trauma, then we also carry intergenerational wisdom. By maintaining a relationship with our ancestral wisdom, we can build a truly peaceful world for future generations."

-EastPointPeaceAcademy.org

-Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harmhttps://www.parallax.org/product/healing-resistance

- Fierce Vulnerability, work in Progress

":...If in your country, all hope is lost in the heat of summer / the snows in my country help you to get it back." —Rafael Alberti

Today I'm joined on the pod by my friend and Dharma sister Mushim Ikeda, socially engaged Buddhist teacher, social justice activist, author, and diversity and inclusion facilitator. In this personal and wide ranging dialogue, we explore resources for and challenges of transformation and change, inner and outer, during these trying times. Mushim also reads and discusses her beautiful poem, The Stowaway Seeds. For more, visit MushimIkeda.com and EastPointPeace.org

I am afraid to touch the shopping cart, the bright
cool hide of the fragrant orange, the wet sand on the beach.
This pandemic virus spreads RNA
where people pass too close to one another
and gather to buy food, or crowd the ocean’s edge.
“It cannot be killed because it isn’t alive,”
my scientist brother says.

But something unknown has always contained our death,
which is why we are respectful and delicate
as we lift teacups and snow
salt crystals on grilled asparagus and touch one other
and spoons and books and the surfaces of the earth
we will one day be pressed gently between,
like book pages on the fat stems of large leaves.

Such abundant offerings – these tiny crowns
and multiplying stars, the resplendent small burrs
I found in the rough striped blanket
we took to the woods before everything shut down.
They came home with me, to seed
a new world, in which
we aren’t the most important thing.

—Mushim Ikeda

Join me as I welcome Tenzin Tethong, formerly H.H. The Dalai Lama's Special Envoy and Prime Minster of the Central Tibetan Administration. Tenzin and I discuss the critical importance of free media and the free flow of information in Tibet. He describes a new sense of identity among Tibetans: Even though Tibetans are occupied and controlled by the Chinese,  in mind, spirit and in the cultural sense, Tenzin says they cannot be controlled at all. We discuss the fascinating story of Tenzin's family art collection, a series of 84 paintings of legendary Tibetan Mahasiddhis (great beings). These were carried out of Tibet by his Grandfather, and in turn carried by Tenzin around the world. Now all 84 paintings are reproduced in and the subject of a book with commentary by the Tibetan scholar Donald Lopez. Finally, we spoke about the pathos of the increase in self-immolations in Toibet as a way to protest the occupation and plea for H.H.'s return. While they are shocking, Tenzin and other feels that their intention is pure. He showed me a book, Tibet on Fire, that he has been reading about just this. We closed by acknowledging life's 10,000 sorrows and the 10,000 joys.

In this introduction I explain why I'm making the Lotus in the Fire podcast and how it might be of benefit during these times of uprising, danger, and transformation. I lay out some compelling themes and invite you to join me, Joseph Bobrow, and my guests, for lively, in-depth personal conversations on realizing the lotus in the fire.