The Way Out Is In / Mindful Activism: From Anxiety to Agency (Episode #57)

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Dear friends, welcome back to this latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out Is In.

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I’m Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition.

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And brother, today we are here with a very special guest, Clover Hogan, who is a very well known and rather wonderful youth activist. And we’re going to be talking about anxiety, actually. So we all have anxiety. But in this time of the emerging polycrisis, that sense of doom or sense of fear or anxiety is growing. And of course, we want to help people to go through these difficult times and to come out the other side feeling more empowered, more positive, and more able to respond to these difficult times.

00:01:17

The way out is in.

00:01:30

Hello, everyone. I’m Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

00:01:33

And as I say, we have Clover Hogan, who created an NGO called Force of Nature, which is here specifically to support young people who are seeking to turn the tide of climate change and to bring this world back to some form of sanity. So, Clover, do you want to just introduce yourself and say a bit about who you are and maybe also why you’re here today?

00:02:00

Oh, starting with the small questions.

00:02:02

Yes.

00:02:03

My name is Clover Hogan. I’m a now 24 year old climate activist. I’m almost aging out of the youth movement, but I’m also the founder of Force of Nature. I’ve been engaged in climate since I was about 11 years old. I remember learning about the climate crisis through documentaries, sitting glued to my computer screen, staring at scenes of deforestation, of ocean pollution, of mass migration caused by the climate crisis, and perhaps most pointedly, graphs projected by Al Gore that showed how quickly we were damaging the Earth and how good we were at pretending otherwise. And I remember feeling a lot of grief and a lot of anger and anxiety, even if I didn’t have those words at the time. But maybe more than anything, I remember feeling really confused because I hadn’t learned about the climate and ecological crisis at school. I hadn’t seen it on the TV, when my parents watched the news, we didn’t talk about it at the dinner table. And so I remember questioning, you know, why are we facing this climate crisis and why are the adults in my life so good at sleepwalking, even as the science shows us that we’re hurtling toward this cliff of collapse? So that, for me, was my catalyst.

00:03:33

Wow. And so you’ve made the decision to work with other young people and support them. And it would just be helpful to understand when you are going through your work, when you’re reaching out to people, when you’re working with people and you’re running workshops and training people, what is it you’re seeing in the sort of collective sort of consciousness at the moment amongst young people? And we know, of course, that there’ll be a whole diversity of views, but when you see that sort of, when you bring that all together, how would you describe what you’re seeing, how people who are involved in this movement, who are aware of the situation and want to do something about it? What are you experiencing?

00:04:18

So, for the first few years of my activism, I clung on to these feelings of kind of hope and determination. And the more outspoken I was, the more a kind of caricature of myself I created of this like young person who’s very passionate. And I get invited to speak at things, and people would be like, you know, we want you to inspire us, you know, and give us hope for the future. And so I felt this enormous pressure as an activist throughout my teens to be optimistic and determined. And it was in November of 2019 where that all came crashing down. So it was during the fires back home in Australia. And every day I would wake up to the headlines, you know, 1 billion, 2 billion animals incinerated in this inferno. I would go on Instagram and see videos from my friends of them standing on the roofs of their homes, clinging to these hoses, trying to keep the flames and embers at bay. And like I am now crying, I was crying all the time, you know, like in the shower, on my way to work, on the underground in London, much to the dismay of British society. And I was going through these motions of grief because growing up, I grew up in a bubble of climate privilege. Right? Like, climate change was something that I read about in articles. It was something that I watched in documentaries. And for the first time, it was the reason why my friends and family were fleeing their homes. It had never felt so real and literally looking at those walls of flames I’d never felt so powerless and truly felt like, you know, maybe this is too big to solve, too insurmountable. And in that kind of pit of grief, I realized that I couldn’t perform these like mental gymnastics of everything’s fine, we’re going to fix this, we’re going to save the world, you know, that kind of like savior complex. We can change everything. And I realized that the only way that I could actually travel through those feelings and not be swallowed by them whole was to talk about them. And so that’s what I started doing. I started talking about this fear, and not fear, but like terror about the future, but also about the inaction in the face of the climate crisis. And the more I started talking about it, the more other young people in particular started coming forward and saying, Yeah, we’re feeling the same thing. We’re terrified, and we also feel powerless and we feel a lot of despair in response to this widespread denial, which, you know, isn’t just reflected in the society and culture around us, which numbs us in so many ways to the to the pain that we’re inflicting to ourselves and to the Earth, but is also most reflected in people in positions of power who have every resource, who have every privilege at their disposal to take action in a really big way and to continue to see greenwashing and more money spent being seen to do the right thing than actually doing it. That has fueled a lot of despair and disillusionment in my generation. So to answer your question, I took the scenic route there. But to answer your question, I think a lot of young people feel really hopeless and at the same time, a lot of people in positions of power are clinging on to this old system, this old way of being, which has created the climate crisis, which continues to perpetuate the climate crisis. This, you know, story of separation, this global economic system of extracting nature, commodifying nature, exploiting people, they’re continuing to cling on to that system and refusing, even as the climate crisis unfolds around us, to really wake up to the climate crisis and critically to hold space for the really heavy emotions that come with the realization of what we’ve done and the communities and people that we’ve chosen to sacrifice through our inaction.

00:09:21

Thank you, Clover. And, you know, we’re sitting in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Sitting Still hut in Upper Hamlet in Plum Village. And Thay’s teachings, as in Buddhism, are all about dealing with our suffering, not about avoiding. As you said, society has created a thousand ways to avoid our suffering. But the teachings are about how to go into our suffering and how to work with our suffering and to find ways out of our suffering, The Four Noble Truths. And you came to Plum Village for the first time last summer, and we’ve talked about this in other podcasts, but there was a retreat for climate leaders and activists, and you were one of the 30 who came. And now you’re back again for the Wake Up retreat, which has 700 young people who are spending the week in Plum Village. So it would be wonderful, actually, if you can just say, given all that grief, all that suffering, all that pain, that even now, you know, you’re sitting in a beautiful day in the south of France and it all looks fine, but you’re feeling this depth of emotion just coming up because it’s so heartfelt. And even in this moment, it can feel overwhelming. Tell us a bit about what happened when you were first here in Plum Village and how did Thay’s teachings have helped or if they have helped? And if so, how?

00:10:54

So we were not told anything before we came. So we went in with no expectations, which I think was a positive thing. But yeah, I was, you know, we received this email and it’s like, be here on this day at this time. And it’s like, when Christiana Figueres tells you to be somewhere, you go, you don’t ask questions. And I think coming in I wrestled with coming for a long time, actually, because I think as activists taking time off can feel very indulgent and it can surface a lot of feelings of guilt because we’re the most aware of how urgent the crisis is and so taking time for yourself, even for spiritual practice, can almost feel like at odds with what is needed. And yet, inevitably, so many of us work ourselves into this kind of state of burnout and exhaustion because we never stop. And it was really interesting timing for me when this invitation came, because it was the first time I’d kind of experienced like call-out culture in activism. So a week before I came, I talked about an event that I’d spoken at in the UK. And at this event there was a rather contentious political figure also speaking and merely by association, I received a lot of really hurtful messages from, you know, activists questioning me and telling me that my values are not in the right place and what am I doing? And I can’t actually call myself an activist and all of these things. And I’ve experienced a lot of trolling from like climate deniers and, you know, people who are maybe politically not aligned with me, but I never received those kind of messages from people within my movement, people who I consider my peers are kind of like in the same camp. And so I came here feeling very broken. And, yeah, really struggling with, well, what is my role? And frankly, if I can’t collaborate effectively with the people standing beside me, then how are we ever going to mobilize the millions upon millions of people that we need to to address the climate crisis? So that was the feeling that I entered into Plum Village with. And it became apparent really quickly that so many other people shared those same feelings. The kind of frustration at the infighting, the fact that any time you go to a climate conference like everyone has their silver bullet climate solution and they’ve perfected the elevator pitch of why this thing will solve the climate crisis and not the other thing, and a real awareness of the kind of pain and grief and inability to really hold space for those feelings. And I think a lot of the people at that event or at the retreat, rather, had kind of perfected the art of like switching off their climate emotions because it’s hard and it’s heavy and tending to yourself and tending to the suffering again can feel like a distraction almost. Which seems silly, like saying that now from this vantage point. But that’s how it felt at the time. And now I can say that Plum Village is truly my favorite place on Earth. I’d never been like, embraced into a community that felt so welcoming and so, like, safe and trusting and where I could really, really process a lot of those feelings without, like, fear of judgment. And even the very simple, like, Plum Village practice of sharing, and no one’s allowed to respond. I’d had this experience oftentimes, like particularly with the adults in my life of like trying to talk about some of these things and then trying to fix those feelings or, you know, tell me what I should do with them. And I think that’s why I’d become quite like, recalcitrant. And so, you know, having a space where you can just like put something in the circle and it’s like held in this community and that’s it. You don’t have to fix it. You’re just like tending to those feelings. That was a really profound experience for me. And my realization was having this kind of spiritual foundation, the spiritual practice is not a nice to have, it’s essential. You know, we can’t do this work without that foundation. And frankly, and part of the reason why we’re failing to genuinely respond to the climate crisis is because we’re recreating many of the same systems and patterns that created the crisis, you know, systems of disconnection and separation, of not seeing the humanity in one another. This othering and like division. And so we need to try something different and not something new, because these are very old practices. But we need a different approach. And so since coming to Plum Village that first time, I’ve been roping as many young people as possible into Plum Village.

00:16:22

So that’s why there are 700 people.

00:16:24

Well, a lot of our young people have participated in the online retreat Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, which I highly recommend, which you can do from the comfort of your own home. But we’ve also been, you know, doing what we can to fund young people from around the world to come to Plum Village and experience it for themselves, because it is really transformative, especially when you’re feeling that depletion and exhaustion.

00:16:50

Thank you. And when you talk about the experience of being here and the sort of community and people being held and being able to share without having to have a response. Were there any particular teachings that you received here that helped you to, you know, one of the things I think that Plum Village allows people is to see the world with or to see themselves and then the world with fresh eyes, to change their maybe their view of the way they see the world, which then changes their thoughts and their speech and then their actions. So a lot of Plum Village is about changing, changing one’s way of seeing the world. Were there any particular teachings or things that you heard here that help you to maybe see the same view you were seeing before, but from a different perspective?

00:17:48

So many. I think the first thing I would say is that oftentimes as climate communicators, we spent a lot of time articulating the problem and we spend a lot of time and energy saying, you know, this is what’s not working. This is the crisis. This is what will happen if we don’t take action. And oftentimes we forget to pause and think about, well, what are we actually working toward? What is the world that we want to create? And where are there pockets of the future already in the present? And for me, Plum Village is that place, it is that future, you know, from the respect with which everyone, you know, treats one another, but also the simple practice of like treading lightly on the Earth, like walking meditation was really profound for me, to be honest I struggle to sit still a little bit, but like really thinking about, yeah, your footprint and how you connect to nature around you. And even the fact that, you know, there is the Happy Farm here and you can genuinely… this sounds so… sorry, but you can genuinely like taste the love in every bite. Like you can taste the kind of like nurturing and nourishment. Plum Village for me is like what I want the world to look like. And so from that starting point, that was really profound because I hadn’t found that in a place or in a community. It felt like this kind of like distant utopian vision and frankly, like trying to reintegrate back into the world was quite difficult. I was like, Oh, I just want to stay. So the place itself is such a lesson in what the world can look like and how we can show up for one another. In terms of the Dharma teachings, so much. I think for one, this idea of… Oftentimes we kind of like hold on to these emotions and I think particularly like as climate activists, when we don’t see certain feelings reflected in the world around us, when we don’t see that shared anxiety or anger or grief, it almost feels like we need to like hold on to those emotions even more tightly and carry the burden of them. And so it was very powerful for me to learn how to simply greet those emotions and not try to suppress them, which has definitely been my approach in the past. And also, you know, exploring what are the stories that kind of encapsulate those emotions that we might be inadvertently feeding that are inhibiting our ability to, you know, sustain ourselves and sustain our activism and also, you know, connect with other people. And so trying to dismantle some of those stories that I’d been clinging on to around like, yeah, like the world is run by bad people and like, people in business are bad. You know, a lot of this like othering, like really examining some of those stories created the space for me to realize that, like the climate crisis is a symptom of these broken systems and you can separate out the individuals within those systems from the systems themselves that, you know, suppress us and that make us all kind of like complicit in the climate crisis. And finally, I think just like the practice of breathing, something we do every day that we take for granted. And I’ve always felt my anxiety, like in my chest. And so just the very simple practice of observing your breathing has been really, really impactful whether it’s before I walk into a boardroom with a bunch of old white men in suits, or it’s going up onto a stage or yeah, just doing anything that can bring up that kind of fear, like learning to breathe through it and feel rooted to the ground and the earth. Okay, I have one more: seeing the cloud in the cup of tea. One of my favorite things about Plum Village is like the deep ecology that supports the practice and this feeling of like interbeing and being interconnected with the abundance of life all around you. I never thought the fact that, yes, the water that goes into my cup of tea was once a cloud. It’s a very humbling thought. Yeah.

00:22:49

Brother Pha Huu, so you are the future in the present moment. How wonderful. So how does that feel, how does it feel to just hear that from Clover about how Plum Village has impacted her? Because, of course, Plum Village exists, the monks and the nuns take this vow in order to create exactly the conditions for people like Clover to come to Plum Village and to experience. So how does that feel for you just to hear that?

00:23:19

I think gratitude comes first for the founder, our teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and his… Being in Plum Village, like what Clover shared, it’s a code created from all of the mud that he went through. Right? All of the suffering that he experienced during the war, the division, also seeing the hatred in humankind. Humankind, but we’re not kind. And as a spiritual community, which we have been exploring in this podcast, is not woo woo, but is like really is about connecting. It’s about being down to earth and having a place to truly experience it for yourself, it’s the most important thing. And the Buddha always said, My teachings are not to just be followed blindly. You have to come and taste it for yourself. You have to come and experience it for yourself. So looking back at my own journey, like, that is exactly what it was, like… And this was in 1996, when Plum Village was much more rural, even poorer than today, like… And it’s not about the infrastructure, but it’s about the energy that is cultivated in the community that is around and the kindness, the love, like what Clover shared, that hospitality is not a theory here. Actually, if you don’t have those and if you’re not interested in cultivating those qualities, it’s almost like you don’t fit in Plum Village. You, I think you would kind of feel a little bit as an outcast in a way, but maybe… then it becomes a mirror. Just like, wow, this is what I’ve been lacking in my life all this time. So hearing that the present is here, the future is here, I’m very grateful and I’m happy to be a part of this legacy. And I’m happy that I made this decision to become a monk and to follow this path. And the climate movement, in a way, Thay was a climate activist for a very long time. He spoke about deep ecology, about the interbeing of all aspects in life. You know, when we eat food, we read the contemplation. This food is a gift of the whole universe, the Earth, the sky, numerous living beings, hard work and loving work. So even as a vegetarian, as a vegan, we know that there’s also numerous living beings involved and nothing is separated. So by eating and having this insight already, you’re engaged in deep ecology because suddenly you can take care of your greed. And that’s one of the contemplations, to learn to eat with moderation. And there’s a simple practice about eating, but if we learn to be moderate in the way we consume just food, that has a deep impact on how we can also look at our consumption in materialistic world, like what we wear, what we think is our comfort, what we think will make us feel happier. It’s a deep contemplation. And our practice in in Plum Village is learning to reconnect to this simple action that we’re all creating a body, speech and mind, and seeing its deep impact in the past, present and future. And this is Engaged Buddhism. And this is, I would also say, activism, because if we are acting not for oneself, then that is also deep spirituality. And I think what many of the friends who come to Plum Village, what they encounter is, the realization is that if I don’t have the insight of connection, then how can I work for a better world? Because if we’re not connected to the nature that we are learning to protect, we are learning to regenerate, to heal and allow others to wake up from. If we can’t do that, it’s very hard for others to see us and to follow in our footsteps. And that’s why I think, for myself, what’s really important and I think for all of the retreatants, I hope, like when we give teachings as monastics, we’re not talking down to people, but we’re just like it’s a shared experience, the shared insight that has been transmitted from generations. This ancient wisdom, but spoken in a newer language so that it is very applicable to what is happening in the here and now, which is also ancient wisdom, which is like we always have to come back to the present moment. And so, you know, like this retreat right now that we have 700 people is a deep joy. Like I gave the first talk and just sitting in the hall and being surrounded by hundreds of young people that want to have a new way of seeing, a new way of being and generate love in themselves, because this retreat is called love in action. And here love is a verb, right? So we have to learn to generate that love that is a seed that we all have, the beginner’s mind, the mind of love. And a part of life in society, like you shared, Jo, we found a thousand ways to run away from suffering, and we found a thousand ways to bury our deep love of connection. And this is where Plum Village retreat helps us just slowly unpack the gems that are already existing in every human being, and community is so important. Our teacher has always shared that in any community, not just spiritual, we have to invest in the brotherhood, the sisterhood, the sibling hood, because without these bonds, then we will still feel so separated. And that is why for us also in Plum Village, we do learn to share everything. Like, even if you are a leader, a CEO, or a farmer, we’re all lining up for and you are all getting muesli in the morning. And it’s this unlearning of like… those of us who are more special, and so on, those of us who are not worthy enough, because we’re all coming with different complexes. And I’ve discovered no matter who we become in this world, we’re always going to carry some complexes. And it’s so important to have a space to just recognize and smile to the complexes. And so the retreats and the lifestyle that we have devoted ourselves to is actually when we do a retreat, it’s not much work besides just gearing up for cooking for 700 people and rooming, but this is our life. Like we’re just like, Hey, okay, join us, wake up at a little bit earlier, enjoy some silent sitting, we’re all going to be a little bit uncomfortable, but it’s good for us. It’s just like medicine. Sometimes the bitter medicine is very good for us, and that stillness is what we are also offering to a lot of people so that they can also reflect themselves on what is coming up in their present moment, through body, speech and mind, emotions, feelings, and also just resting. So needed today.

00:32:32

Thank you, brother. And I just wanted to talk a bit about something you just raised briefly there about, you know, finding this sort of almost the diamonds in ourselves, the diamond, the nuggets of gold within ourselves, because a lot of people who have anxiety or these complex… often feel powerless and often feel they’re subject to, but they don’t have power themselves. One of the things I’ve noticed in the Plum Village retreats and also sort of when I coach people, is that actually all the wisdom is inside people. It’s not like Plum Village is here to give you wisdom. Plum Village is here to open up and share the wisdom it knows so that it can resonate like a tuning fork to one’s own wisdom, that actually it’s only when we’re quiet that we can listen to the quiet voice of our wisdom. And when we’re constantly busy and noisy, we can’t hear that. So it’d be nice for you to maybe just to talk a little bit about, you know, the wisdom that is deep inside of us already. That is not Plum Village actually giving people wisdom. You can’t give people wisdom. As you said earlier, Thay said you can’t sort of… you can transmit something, but you can’t tell someone how to be, they have to find it for themselves. So I’m just wondering how that sense of how Plum Village can empower people to find their own inner wisdom.

00:34:07

You know, this is the insight of the Buddha, he’s a revolutionist because he wanted to help his society, which was India, the little kingdom that he was a part of during that time. As a society in India, there’s just so much discrimination from the caste system, and that is a deep suffering, discrimination. The moment you’re born, like we are already put into a bucket, whether we’re worthy or unworthy because we are born and we can’t choose who’s our parents, right? And so the Buddha insight was, But we’re all the same in terms of we all have suffering, we all have happiness, we all bleed red, all of our tears are salty, and we’re sharing this land together, this planet together. And this insight is the key for us to slowly… I’m not the discrimination that is in all of us. And this has been transmitted from generation to generation and from society also. And, when coming to spirituality, it is like listening to a podcast, a teaching, the deepest way of listening is to be open and to see the words like rain and touching the soil, the mind soil, or the store soil, the store consciousness that has all of these insights that are contained in seeds and we all have them in our tradition, 51 Mental Formation. Seeds of love, seeds of care, seeds of happiness, and also negative seeds or seeds that can create suffering like anger, fear, anxiety. But also these seeds allow wisdoms to manifest, because the fear can tell us what it is that is allowing us to feel so crippled. So it can be a bell of mindfulness to go deeper and understand the root of our suffering. So in Buddhism, our practice is not to choose and pick what we only want to be associated with, but is to learn to embrace the whole and to smile to every seed that is present in us. And the journey begins within, because that’s the safest place to learn to love for oneself, to care for oneself, as well as when we learn to see ourselves and understand ourselves, that’s also an opportunity to be more compassionate to others. Because if we’re not perfect, we can slowly allow ourselves to be less judgmental and less harsh on others also. So these insights of like touching the wisdom within is to also empower each and every one of us, that we all have Buddha nature, and Buddha means awakening. We all have the seed of awakening. And as a monk and as leaders and as parents, as teachers, as friends, sometimes our teacher says, all we have to do is touch the seed of wisdom in others. Allow them to touch the love that exists already in them, the ability to be kind, the skillfulness that they can cultivate inside. And sometimes it’s not by words, it’s by action, by how we show up, by how we are being present for others. Because that’s also education, that’s also transmission. And I think, for myself, like having the ability to listen is a deep art and is a transmission also. We think that by not saying anything, we’re not transmitting, but actually just by listening, you’re also transmitting space for the other person to see themselves, to hear themselves. And so for us, the power of presence is very real and is not something that we have to wait 20 years, 30 years to have, but just by one breath, the wisdom of the breath can be the thread to bringing the mind home to the body so that you can truly be there for yourself, to truly be there for the ones that are around you. And by being present, you can offer so much space. And that space for me is also love, is also communication. So there’s so much to unpacked in coming home to oneself. And this is why we have so many episodes on The Way Out Is In.

00:39:44

So many facets to explore. Clover, I want to pick up two threads that Brother Phap Huu just brought up. One is about showing up. How… that if we are a leader in some form, and you’re a leader in some form, that how you are showing up differently or how you want to show up and how that is having an impact in the people around you. And then the second part is so that’s the personal. Then in terms of, as Phap Huu says the, you know, the collective wisdom, how you are working with young people who are feeling anxious and feeling overwhelmed, feeling maybe a sense of doom or whatever, how are you working with those people to help them to feel empowered, not to help them, but to give them the opportunity to feel empowered that they can make a difference, that and how they act in these difficult times. So maybe first start with yourself. You know, what are you learning about how you show up and how you can show up?

00:40:47

Quick anecdote, or story. So COP26 in Glasgow, I had the unique opportunity of addressing world leaders on the main stage and I gave a very impassioned speech that reached a lot of people online and, you know, got lots of nice messages of support. But what people didn’t really see is what was happening behind the scenes, and behind the scenes I had taken maybe six cold and flu tablets to get me through that one engagement because it was the sixth stage I had spoken on that day. I was mentally and emotionally and physically exhausted and everything was coming from this place of urgency. And coming out of COP, I lost my voice for about a month. I couldn’t speak. I was really, really ill. And it took me a few months to recover, let alone to feel energized and enthusiastic about my work again. So that for me was quite a turning point where I realized that this is simply unsustainable. And in many ways that kind of burnout also made me resent the very thing that I love. I’ve, you know, activism has been my life for a long time. I love communicating. I love connecting with people. I love feeling that I can, you know, particularly help other young people maybe avoid the heartbreak or mistakes that, you know, I’ve made in my own journey. And so it was a very sad day to no longer feel that spark of love and joy. So I think in the wake of, you know, Plum Village and trying to maintain the practices as best possible, I am working with a lot more intentionality. I’m not saying yes to things from a place of scarcity or obligation. I’m saying yes to things where I genuinely feel like I can contribute in a meaningful way. Even the simple act of like no longer multitasking, I’d kind of perfected the art of genuinely being on a live like panel on Zoom and answering emails in the background, which sounds terrible, but I think I lost like a lot of integrity on a really personal level. I felt like there was no longer kind of integrity in what I was saying. I almost felt like I was performing or yeah, I was like I was doing the rehearsed soundbites. It was very mindless. So in the wake of Plum Village, in response to your question how I’m showing up, with a lot more presence and really reflecting on what is nurturing to me and how can I nurture the people around me. And frankly, that means like going to fewer conferences surrounded by people in suits because there’s a lot of emotional labor that goes into kind of being in those spaces and a lot more time working with our community of young people, going into schools. At Force of Nature we run our flagship program is called Anxiety to Agency. And so we, you know, teach young people about climate anxiety, about climate psychology. And it’s funny because a lot of it, you know, echoes many of the teachings around, you know, Plum Village, which is learning how to tend to those emotions, you know, respond to them without judgment. And then really critically thinking about, you know, those feelings are evidence of our humanity. Right? When we feel anxiety, it’s this internal alarm bell that tells us something is really wrong. And so instead of trying to run away from those emotions or allowing them to almost, like, ferment into despair, how do we turn them into the fuel that motivates us? How do we think about those emotions as the compass that tells us where we should be focusing our energy? So we take young people through those programs and then we run trainings with them as well around like how to engage with decision makers in business and policy, how to do public speaking, like how to communicate, and also how to facilitate these programs. So all the programs we run at Force of Nature are run by the very young people who’ve gone through our programs. So it’s very circular, it’s very communal, it’s, you know, giving back to the same community that you’ve also taken energy from. So it’s yeah, what I get to do is such a gift and I realize that genuinely to like, keep my sanity, I have to engage with these communities of young people. I think one, because I feel very held by that community. I see the same feelings reflected back at me. And two, because I’m so inspired by the creativity and ingenuity of young people. Like we, you know, work with sometimes like nine and ten year olds who can very eloquently tell you why capitalism is like a broken system. They can explain neoliberalism to you. They can explain why an LLC shareholder model is not, you know, fit for purpose within business. Like, these young people are so switched on, but they also, because they haven’t been around long enough to maybe be indoctrinated into a lot of these systems, they also have the capacity to stand outside of them and to ask the question why? Why do we have a food system that is so globalized, that is so disconnected, that exploits people? Why is it when I go to the supermarket, everything is wrapped in plastic? Why is it that there are people experiencing homelessness in my street when there are entire apartment blocks going empty for investors? You know, why is it that we’ve failed to solve the climate crisis? Right? We’re approaching COP 28. That’s 28 years of failed negotiations. So that capacity to question why, and then follow that up with the question of what if, like, what if we did things differently? For me, there is a natural propensity for young people to have that kind of like disruptive energy and to be challengers. And that’s why young people have been the beating heart of every social justice and environmental movement, whether it’s the civil rights movement or the suffragettes or the Stonewall uprising. And so helping young people to tend to that passion and often that hurt, but realize what a super power is for me, that’s how I can best show up.

00:47:46

And a question actually for both of you, because sometimes when you offer something like this and the way Plum Village offers this, you know, in a sense of refuge, and you both offer refuge of one sort, that that you become a lightning rod for people in pain. So I imagine, Clover, you know, Force of Nature is known for climate… helping people with climate anxiety. So you attract people who have deep anxiety. And they’re like cries for help, aren’t they? They’re like people… It’s like, I can imagine, it’s like seeing thousands of people in the water drowning who are asking to be taken out, you know, to be saved from the water. And for Plum Village on an even bigger scale, it’s, you know, your place that is here to relieve suffering. So people bring their suffering and want you to relieve their suffering. And I’m just wondering… Actually, Phap Huu, I’ll bring this to you first and then hear from Clover about how is it possible to work with so much suffering and not be overwhelmed with it, but to be able to deeply be present, to listen to the suffering, to feel it fully and not to be drowned by it?

00:49:13

I find my joy in the simple things. And that is true. We, Buddhism talks a lot about transforming suffering, and people think we only think about suffering. And that is a wrong perception. And the balance and the nutriment that helps us is we cultivate a lot of joy and happiness in our community. And this is really real. And only by joy and happiness can we have enough well-being to take care of the loads of suffering that comes. But also what we offer, I don’t think we package our community or our retreat like a fix, and we did a sharing on that. And what is so important that we always bring people to is to be alive again. And to be alive, to feel, to discover and to reconnect back to, first of all, their capacity of touching joy and happiness. And the joy and the happiness of being alive, the joy and happiness of being with the breath. And the environment here is very supportive. So having the time and space to just sit under a tree. There’s a Wake up-er, who, I’ve known her since she was three years old and she’s 18 now. And I asked her, how was your retreat? She’s like, I just am so happy to be with nature. And she’s like, already that for me, I feel is enough, but then you have everything else that comes with it. So the creation of how we are also caring for ourselves gives us the ability to take care of the difficulty, the suffering that comes also from within. And then compassion is one of our energies that we cultivate on a daily basis. And compassion has the foundation of understanding. And when we speak about mindfulness is always mindfulness of suffering first and foremost. Because when we suffer and we know how to suffer, we can suffer less. It’s like when we’re injured, and we know that we’re injured, we will know how to care for our injury. Then we don’t injure ourselves anymore. So it’s the same. But most of us, well, because of our system, our society, we have so many techniques and ways of running away from suffering and even in the looking for well-being, if we’re unskillful, it’s also a running away. And that’s why coming to our practice, this is when we say we do have to talk about suffering and we have to learn to identify and to recognize that we do have suffering inside of us. And it’s okay. It’s okay to have suffering. Buddhism and our practice, when we talk about happiness, it’s not about the extinction of suffering, then we can be happy. But it’s recognizing that even amidst the suffering that we are experiencing, there are moments and there are times in 24 hours that we do have the ability to reconnect to the wonders of life, the wonders of life within us, the wonders of life around us, and just remembering that we have those that care and love for us. That’s a gratitude. So taking care of our happiness, our teacher sometimes explained it like before you’re going to suffering, before going to surgery, you got to be well enough, you have to be strong enough. So on a daily basis, our practice, meditation, our way of being is to always bring that well-being into presence. It’s not just a thought, but making it a reality. And that can be very simple. Like we’re at Thay’s hut. He has a wonderful deck. And many people just come to just sit on the deck and just to look at the scenery, or even they can feel the calmness, the stillness that has been cultivated here, that has been engraved into the hut, the trees, even the air around here. And I’m not sharing this for myself, but I hear it from a lot of people who have come and sat at the hut. So that mindfulness of learning that we have to also bring attention to the happiness and joy that we need to cultivate in our daily life is what gives us the foundation to embrace and handle suffering. And learning to say no, to say no can be a mantra. But no with intention, not of ignoring and avoiding. But no, when we know our limits, when we know if I do more, I’m just going to be angry. I’m just gonna be frustrated. And in my own practice, when I get annoyed, that’s when I’m overwhelmed. I think normally I don’t get annoyed so easily. But when I am doing so much and I don’t have enough space for myself and just a little thing can trigger me, that’s my mindfulness bell, that’s my moment of like, Oh, wow, something as simple as that is making me very upset and it’s making me anxious, it’s making me maybe having violent thought. Right? That’s when we have to be mindful. And that’s when we say, Oh, I need to take care of my well-being. I need some vitamins. And what may that be? That can be with good company, good friends, that can be enjoying a cup of tea, going for a walk, or just allowing yourself to know that you are having these emotions. As simple as that. Our teacher always advertised total relaxation. How important it is to know to just lay there and do nothing. And you can take the energy from the embrace of the earth. Even though we may not be on the grass, we can be on our sofa or on the floor in our house, but just feel the weight of the body. Learning to surrender so that we can rest. And nature teaches us that the animals, when they are hurt, they know how to rest. We’ve forgotten that art of resting. And the capacity to hold is also, collectively. I feel the only way that Plum Village can do what it does is because we do it not by one cell, but many cells of this body. And only by then can the body maybe be having pain on the left arm, but the other body is still functional. And to have that interbeing, don’t look for just full well-being, but we can still be active when there is ill being. And this is the the art of mindful living and the art of suffering. And our teacher, you know, has shared that when suffering is there, the other energy that we need to bring is light, is love, is joy. And that’s why, you know, in the Wake up retreat yesterday, we had a bonfire where we sang around the fire, we danced… And it’s maybe for those who it’s first time to a Buddhist monastery, they might be like, what the heck is going on? But this is so fun. It was almost tribal at one moment, I was I was feeling like, I was feeling like… there was a little moment, I mean, what is going on? Even for myself as a Buddhist monk, as an abbot, I’m like, okay, this is happening. But, you know, for centuries, this is what connected us. In the Upper Hamlet, for the bonfire, because we had three yesterday, Lower Hamlet and then in Son Ha. There was one moment all, all the practitioners, they joined arms into two lines and we were just singing to a few lines and going with the beat and somebody guided us in steps. And at first, like I heard laughter because some was like, This is so hippy, or This is so, I would never do this in my corporate world. You know? But then the genuine this is what it is to be alive. This is what it is to be so connected and to let go of our idea of what is being. And so all of the… We try to weave the joy into the daily life and to not forget it. And that is meditation.