The Way Out Is In / Trauma and Collective Healing (Episode #92)

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

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

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And I am Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition. And before we begin today’s episode, I would like to share something very special. On September 12th, Jo and I will be recording a live episode of The Way Out Is In in London. And we’ll be joined by author and poet Ocean Vuong, who is a dear friend of mine and also admirer of our teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition. The evening will be a deep reflection on how we cultivate joy and togetherness in the midst of hardship, something we all need. And we really would like you to join us for this live event. So you can find details and tickets at plumvillage.uk/livepodcast. So please come and be there with us.

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And also just a few days before, on August the 26th, Brother Phap Huu and I will be releasing our second book, which is called Calm in the Storm, Zen Ways to Cultivate Stability in an Anxious World. It’s a companion to these uncertain times and we’re happy to share our journey with you. You can pre-order it now and it will also be available at the live event in London. We hope to see you there. So today, we have a very special guest, Jo-ann Rosen, and we are going to be talking about individual and collective trauma.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, everyone. I am Jo Confino.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu.

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And today, brother, we have a very special guest who is Jo-ann Rosen, who I would say is a bit of an expert on trauma, but look at it in a very broad sense from neuroscience and mindfulness and how those can come together to actually work on this arena of life, which is becoming so important in so many people’s lives. So Jo-ann, welcome.

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Oh, thanks.

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And Jo-ann came into contact with Thich Nhat Hanh 30 years ago. So she is an elder in this community and she’s been a Dharma teacher for the last 13 years. So Jo-ann, it’d be lovely to know about the first moment where you came in touch with Thich Nhat Hanh and then Plum Village tradition. Can you just tell us a bit more about that?

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Oh, sure. That’s an experience that is imprinted in my mind, because I was at a day of mindfulness, which I thought was a day where you just meditate all day. And I was still working on, working up to 20 minutes. And so we did the usual day of mindful things. And Thay gave a talk and he’s sitting on a kind of a makeshift stage in a big field. And then it was time for walking meditation. And he kind of floats down from the stage. And as he passes in front of me, I feel this like energy, like some big wind or some huge sound reverberating inside of me. And I go like, whoa, what was that? Because I had absolutely no spiritual or kind of woo-woo inclinations. So I had no notion of what I was experiencing. But I knew I wanted more. And so Thay was doing a retreat at a Jewish camp in the South Bay, in the Bay Area. And I signed up for that along with seven or eight friends. And that was never to return, that was a really super impactful retreat for me. I learned a lot. And I wanted to be a part of a community that wanted to be good. That was my hit on the mindfulness trainings. And from there, you know, step by step gave me a really different life than what I had expected.

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Thank you, Jo-anne. And I am personally delighted you’re here, because for a long time, I felt that trauma is such an important… it’s not even a topic, it’s an important arena that I know hasn’t been important in my life. And it’s something I think he’s talked a lot about, but often with very little understanding. And I think you bring a very fresh perspective, because not only are you a psychotherapist, but you have an understanding of neuroscience and the mindfulness practices. So I’d really like to start by just, in a sense, you’re just giving a sense of what is it that this global society is facing in terms of trauma? And why has it taken up so much of your attention?

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Maybe to go backwards instead of what are we facing? What have we got behind us? And to say that I am absolutely not an expert in trauma or in neuroscience. And that that first retreat was a real opening to me. The camp was a Jewish camp, and it had an exquisite memorial to the Holocaust. And I practiced touching the earth in that space. And all of a sudden, a whole lot of understanding came to me about my own anger and my own edginess and the trauma that my family had suffered, not from the Holocaust, that the myth in my family was that the Holocaust didn’t really affect us. Which was because most of my family was already dead from the pogroms. And so there wasn’t anybody left to be directly affected. But I had been very judgmental of myself for being wired too tight. Being too reactive. Being too much like my father. And in that moment of touching the earth, I realized that my father was just a recipient of a long line of horrible things that had happened. And that I was just the recipient in the next step. And that brought me a sense of compassion for my father and for myself. But I didn’t really encounter notions of trauma and neuroscience at that point. And I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but a number of things came together kind of simultaneously. Causes and conditions, of course. I was introduced to a healing modality called the community resiliency model. Actually, I was introduce to it the trauma resiliency model, which is a combination of understanding through neuroscience, but very simple, things that anybody, even little children, can understand. So knowing about your nervous system and then using the body to be a mindfulness practice. And I really liked this particular model because the community part was it’s very simple, once you learn it, you can teach someone else, and that person can turn around and teach someone else. And that’s what grabbed me because there is so much massive suffering in the world that I wasn’t so interested in how does one become more enlightened or more chance of being enlightened, as how does someone keep their nose above water and not drowned in the sea of suffering that isn’t just their personal suffering, but that their whole community is suffering from. So that got me interested and I started to learn more and more popular science, not deep, you know, knowing all the parts of the brain and what they do, but just to have a felt sense of what’s going on in my biology. And as I did that, a whole bunch of things fell into place for me. For instance, I could never follow my breath. And that in this model, you understand that maybe following your breath actually makes you more anxious depending upon how you put your attention. And so immediately I was like, oh, there’s nothing wrong with me. Looking at this through this lens helps me to see I’m normal under really abnormal conditions. When I say abnormal conditions, I mean that the nervous system evolves very slowly. It doesn’t change overnight. 10,000 years is nothing in terms of your nervous system changing. So this nervous system I’m running around in is evolved for a hunter-gatherer. It’s not evolved for being in a car at a stoplight or having somebody demand things of me that I’m incapable of doing. And then I start to be nervous as if I’m going to die. That’s so bewildering. So as I learned more and more about the neuroscience was like this great relief. I’m not broken. I’m okay. I don’t have to hide what I can’t do. And that we’re all suffering from the expectation that we can function in this crazy world when our nervous system is not made for unrelenting stresses. And when we have unrelenting stresses or great huge things without good social support then our nervous system is overwhelmed and it expresses that in a variety of ways. But the first line of what can this neuroscience stuff do is it can make us realize that we’re acting normally in a very tragic situation. And we’re just not made for that.

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Thank you, Jo-ann. And I’m just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how trauma operates. And also in the sense, you talked about two things there. You talked about historical trauma. And you talked current trauma. So there’s some people who have experienced collective historical trauma and are experiencing trauma in the present moment. And I just want to… sort of get a sense from you how are we all traumatized? Do we all suffer traumas? Because one of the things I’ve always felt is that traumas don’t have to be major to be a trauma. They can be small traumas that affect us and big traumas. So can you give us a sort of… pry that a little bit apart and just give a sense of how trauma is operating on a sort historical and current function. Are we all traumatized?

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Well, that’s a big word in our culture now. And everybody is perhaps clinging to, well, I have my trauma. So that’s my excuse for whatever it is I do. And it is. It’s an understanding of what I do, but of course we still need to take responsibility for it because it’s dragging us around and a lot of other people at the same time. I really shy away from the word trauma because it has a very particular spin right now. And that’s not to say that deep trauma therapists and super astute neuroscientists in labs and scanners, et cetera, aren’t making a huge contribution to the understanding of trauma. But I would like to kind of take it out and say, we’re dealing with things that we’re not built for. We’re having certain things that are overwhelming in our nervous system and that the nervous system, in a very crude way, and I think it’s good enough for this understanding, is to say we have certain states of mind that are purely well-being and we can just like savor those. And then we have certain states of minds which require more alertness and more activity in our bodies. That’s not bad. We have all the mental formations in there and that we can handle it without being carried away. And I think that one of the things that neuroscience can bring to our understanding of Thay’s teachings is like to have a little better sense of what does it mean to be carried away? How can I tell when I’m carried away? Because that’s really foundational in our practice. Do we have the capacity to put our mindfulness around our suffering and that when we do, we have all these practices to do it. But that is not right effort if we do not have the capacity. And maybe some people just don’t have a clue as to what that means. So this mindfulness state is when our nervous system can handle whatever’s happening. Maybe it gets a little more activated or a little less activated to meet the situation, but it’s, we know, of course, one perspective is not enough, but we’re able to see things more or less as they are and we can explore and be curious without being on automatic pilot. But there are times when our perception of threat is so intense that our nervous system just activates to meet the moment which is a good thing for a hunter-gatherer who has to outrun a saber-tooth tiger or play dead or to fight off some kind of snake that’s wrapping itself around your leg. But that’s an activation. It’s getting carried away by the nervous system, putting a lot of energy into our arms and legs to do what we need to do and then it’s over. And if we live through it then we can kind of shake it off and relax a little bit and have somebody go wow, I saw that and that was really hard. And I think you did a great job. Or here, let me give you a drink of water. But there are times when the stresses are unrelenting so that that adrenaline is pumping out, pumping out and it just starts to make a different default mode inside your body like you’re stuck there even when the threat is gone. So that’s what I would call trauma. And it can happen that you’re like really on high speed, lots of energy, mind going fast, not being able to think clearly feeling shaky, anger that you can’t control. It’s an automatic pilot. It’s whatever you needed to do under certain circumstances to keep yourself safe. And there are other times when your body is so depleted from all these stresses that it just like is numb or energyless or your mind is empty in a way that is not nirvana or that you feel numb, no feelings. So those are being carried away. And I would much rather talk about being carried away and to say that our practice helps us understand when we have the capacity and when we don’t. Because first foundation of mindfulness is to be aware of the body and the body is where these messages are coming from. So when we have the capacity we surround it little by little we see what it’s made of and there are ways to do that little by little that’s helpful. And when we notice that whoa, I really can’t do that anymore, then we go back to really watering those wholesome seeds finding joy, finding delight, finding safety, finding accompaniment and so that’s kind of a natural flow of energy. There are times when we’ve been watering those wholesome seeds, watering them, but stuff keeps coming up that you have no capacity to handle and it’s really interfering with your life. And then my notion of therapy is to find somebody who can hold the mindfulness for you while you are experiencing these things because you don’t have that capacity. And that’s when some kind of mental health professional or healing professional can be really helpful. So then the question is well is our practice something that will heal traumas? Well, sometimes. And sometimes not. And so they’re not an either or but what we’ve been working with is how do we help ourselves regulate our nervous systems so we can practice because practice is so much bigger than any trauma that we have.

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Thank you. Phap Huu, none of this is a surprise to you because of course this is what you also work with day in and day out when retreatants, you have thousands of people coming here every year, many of whom come feeling exactly how Jo-ann has described sort of overwhelmed, burnt out, feeling that they can’t slow down and stop. And also, in a sense, the Plum Village monastics, in a sense, are in one aspect a bit like those mental health professionals which is providing a grounding of mindfulness in which people can show up. So as you listen to Jo-ann, you know, what does that bring up for you in terms of your experience of all these thousands of people you see year in and year out. And whether that you see that almost getting worse, getting more significant in terms of people’s feeling of overwhelm.

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That’s the suffering that we all share, being overwhelmed, and when you were sharing, the first thing that came up to me what Plum Village offers, it offers a collective space of healing. And I think this is something that is also very unique in the Buddhist culture which is a sangha, a community. That our healing is not an individual journey but it needs a collective support system. It’s a technology. It’s a way of relying on other people’s mindfulness, seeing other people’s kindness, and feeling safe. And in today’s conversation I had with a friend, he just finished a retreat that Jo-ann was a part of, which is the retreat for scientists. And one of the retreatants shared to him that is the first time she’s been in a community or in a space with over 200 people on a daily basis that she feels absolutely safe and that none of her nervous systems were always active and that is very unique in today’s world because the culture that we live in now it is overstimulated. And when Jo-ann was sharing like I was agreeing to so many of the of the insights that Jo-ann was sharing and I was just nodding my head and one of it is realizing like how much of our senses that we are encountering through the news, the information, the technology. And I don’t think that we were built for this. I think as a human we are part of the cosmos ecosystem. And we have our limits and we have a capacity of deep connection to the earth, deep connection to each other, deep connection to silence, and our culture now doesn’t allow that because it tells us we’re not enough buy this, wear this, listen to this, hear this. Did you hear about that? You know, even I sometimes feel a lot of FOMO, like am I up to date? Am I up to speed with everything that is manifesting in the world? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be engaged as, you know, our tradition is to be engaged and to be aware as mindfulness is to be aware. But mindfulness is also our compass to awaken us to say that’s enough Phap Huu, take a step back and do walking meditation. And we’re in right now, as we’re recording this podcast, we’re this period of lazy days to rest after the retreat and we’re preparing for the summer opening that will be coming in just a few days. And I find myself not having anything to attend to as in a formal schedule. But there’s many little things that I can attend to and I find myself putting on headphones and listening either to a soundtrack of melodies or even if it’s a soundtrack of Thay’s Dharma talks because it really calms my nervous system to hear my teacher’s voice. But today I had a realization, I’m like, no, I need to just listen to the nature that is present. And, in a way, if we look back at many many many years ago, like even generations ago, like we know how to do that. We knew how to take refuge in the present moment, in nature, to the insects, to the little creatures that are all around us. But now because we’re not living in relationship to nature we’re living more into relation with concrete and advertisement and the nuances of our world today, we are so afraid of the natural wonders that are there. So part of the retreat, and part of our collective healing and in the later years, our teacher, he was always an environmentalist from the very get-go. Like Thay was always teaching us to be aware of how we consume, what we wear, what we choose to support, because our resources that we’re spending on something is creating a system. And so, looking back at our present moment, now I’m also like I’m so happy that Jo-ann shared this because I’m also becoming allergic to the word trauma because people are using it, I’ve heard it as an excuse. People even challenge us at the monastery that what you said was triggering. And I said, well, the Dharma could be triggering in order for you to just recognize suffering. And in this time where everything is so individualistic, it’s like me me me, like my emotion, my feelings, which is important, like it’s very important because that is the the second establishment of mindfulness is to be aware of the feelings, the mental formations, the functioning of it which turns into habits which makes us say and do things and behave and have particular attitudes. And mindfulness is to shine light to it and see, this is what I do when these seeds are touched. But now we’re also becoming afraid of our own seeds. We’re becoming afraid of also being engaged with other people’s seed, because oh, that’s triggering me. But mindfulness is very different in, well, I wouldn’t even say mindfulness as a buddhist monk. I’m entering into spaces in order to hold and to listen to suffering. And the word trigger is also something that I’m skillfully using it now more and a lot of people have overused that word, trigger, and when you overuse it without essence and without respect to it, it loses its power. There’s a story where in the Buddha’s time, there’s a gentleman who’s always lying and he likes to lie because he gets the people’s attention. And he lies about the barn being burnt and everybody comes and then actually when the barn is burnt nobody came because he’s like, this person has a habit of lying. So it’s also like when we are too quick in like jumping on our emotions and running away and telling people to not engage with us and so on, I feel we have to be more responsible as Jo-ann has shared. And responsible, oh, I’m speaking this, I don’t want to be critiquing, because I see this in me, myself, and I’m learning to be very responsible and to… It’s almost like the ultimate concern and the daily concern, like there’s some daily fears that I still have today but that is not going to stop me from engaging in daily life. Right? But mindfulness is like oh, but when I am, my well-being is not fully equipped and it’s not healthy, then I understand my limits, I understand oh, if I stay in a room where these seeds are touched all the time, I’m going to become a little bit toxic, so then I want to come and I want to take care of that. So I just bring this up because last year I was challenged by people telling me like they don’t want to be in spaces because they’re being triggered in a retreat. And I was with another brother and we listened very deeply to the sharing but then the brother shared something that was really enlightening and the rest said, well did we ever, did we write in our description of a retreat that you’re not going to be triggered? But it’s actually mindfulness engaged, mindfulness is you can be triggered but you know how to be with the emotions that are being triggered so that you can be a part of the world, engaging with the world, engaging with oneself, in oneself is the world. Right? It’s, for me, when my body is reacting I know how to come back to my body, I can use mindfulness in my palms and I can put my palm on where the muscles or the body parts that are being tensed up and we all have different reactions and we all have different elements and places in the body where get stimulated and for me this has been… I still practice the first establishment of mindfulness, coming home to the body, in the body, because that’s where I am feeling the emotions that arises and how it becomes reaction. And in a retreat I think what I enjoy in Plum Village is we are doing a lot of collective trauma healing without that language. You know, to walk together that’s very healing. To listen together, to feel safe, that’s very healing. And that is teaching our nervous system of the feeling of safety to allow us to also touch our empathy because this is what it feels to be in safety. So when we see others who are not in safety we have empathy we want to do everything in our capacity to transform that part of society. So for me I understand with the lens of Buddhism that traumas are sufferings and the first noble of truth is to understand and accept our suffering. And to accept it with a smile. And I was also very critical and judgmental of my own self and of others in the community, of my elders, I’m like, why are they still suffering? You know, they’ve had so many years with Thay, they lived next to him. How can they still be so unstable? But there’s so many layers to everyone’s story that when I can be in touch with my own sufferings I have empathy. I’m like, ah, you know what, I’m luckier than them. I didn’t have to go through the journey on a boat. I didn’t have to through refugee camp. I spoke English when I was growing up. They didn’t speak English, they were probably mocked at. And we all have our different experiences. And those who suffer from starvation, those who suffered from a broken family being on the receiving end of the bullies, and so on. So we all so many different stories and part of the collective, the power of collective sangha is…, sangha means community, dear listeners, is that we get to expand our understanding of suffering and the stories that we can tell and that we listen to it impacts us so much, it gives us empathy, it gives connection, it allows us to interbe. And just this one thing before the story I had… I was really proud of myself when I transformed or I recognized one of my sufferings as a young monk and I was so proud of it I felt like oh, my god, after four years I have deep insight. And it was just recognizing one of my fears is because I was on the end of receiving the violence and the abuse of bullies that gave me a different way of being in the community even with monastics even though they can be the kindest person I had different reactions around them. And I had stories that I would create and so on. And when I realized like oh, these are all just stories, and these are like the past becoming alive in the present. And I have now the awareness oh, my dear five-year-old, you’re very different now, you can protect yourself and let me heal you, let me take care of you. And so I go and I tell Thay in this hut, I report to him. And I’m like sitting over there and I’m like, Thay, I want to share with you this deep insight. And Thay is so compassionate listening. And after I expressed like my realization he didn’t even congratulate me. He said, that’s why we practice. And I felt so defeated by that sharing of Thay, because if anything I felt like huh, I didn’t get the approval, the validation from my teacher. But if anything, he just gave me the validation of and this is where the Dharma comes in. And I remember leaving the hut very disappointed because I thought I would have this amazing wow moment with Thay and he was such a zen master, he just looked at me, and said, and that’s why you practice. Until now I’m very grateful for those words because if he said amazing, Phap Huu, you did it, you fixed yourself, I would have been caught in that moment. And as I have also experienced and seen that suffering and pains and traumas they take time to heal and the healing that I felt 10 years ago, 15 years ago now are still in the process of healing. And my inner child it’s actually very well, but there are moments it can still come up, it can see cry very loud. But now I’m not scared of it, I don’t enter into sorrow. If anything I can trust my own capacity to water the good seeds like what Jo-ann was saying, like in Buddhist language that is right diligence to nurture our mind. How are we cultivating our daily life? What are we watering? What are we practicing? What are we watching? What are we eating? And all of this in terms of Buddhism, I see Buddhism is such a rich culture and a rich tradition because a lot of the language of trauma healing it has been there for thousands of years in Buddhism.

00:40:04

Thank you, Brother Phap Huu. So, Jo-ann, you know, the heart of your work is about collective healing rather than just individual healing. Can you just build on what Phap Huu said from your perspective of how do you see the collective as being so important? And you have worked with a lot of marginalized communities so it’d be really wonderful if you could also share, you know, how has this suffering shown up in those communities? How is their collective response? And what difference does that make?

00:40:48

Well, Phap Huu, you said a lot of things and I can’t jump into that without responding a little bit to those things because there are some people whose natural tendency is to see the suffering, to be gung ho to, you know, hang in there no matter what, they’re going to meditate for 12 hours, they’re gonna, especially when they’re new here, they’re gonna come and they’re doing extra and they may not have the capacity to even know when they’re suffering because their style is to white-knuckle it and take their mind away or their attention away from their body so that they don’t suffer. And then there are people who go in the other direction, those people that you were saying they’re triggered and really there’s a difference between triggered and carried away and being on an automatic pilot where your nervous system is completely dysregulated and being uncomfortable and unaccustomed to handling those sensations. And I think in the first world there’s a huge push towards comfort and that comfort and safety get misunderstood, get conflated, and so learning how our minds work with little tiny issues like don’t move, don’t scratch, when you’re sitting, you will find out, you know, a huge amount if you don’t scratch. And then little by little their ability to recognize that they’re uncomfortable but they’re still safe increases and so I wouldn’t put everybody in the same category when they say they’re triggered. And we are in the business of creating resilience which is you notice the sensations in the body but those very same sensations that very same amount of sensation no longer carries you away, and that’s a very delicate and sometimes long-time project and we don’t want to encourage those who white-knuckle it to do that. And at the same time we want to encourage those people… Mindfulness makes us very sensitive, but that’s only a half of the healing it needs to make us sensitive and tolerant of those same sensations and so there needs to be an understanding of that and there are certain circumstances in which I think it’s completely appropriate that people cannot relax enough and be mindful enough in the presence of certain triggers to begin to work on that. So, you know, you give them somewhat of a safe space in terms of a cultural refuge or a place where they can relax enough and have confidence that those that they are with will not judge them or worse. And that we have human limitations but we also have extraordinary mind-boggling parts of our nervous system that we’re taking advantage of all the time that we don’t even realize. So if somebody comes up to me and they’re smiling so nicely but you don’t have a really sense that that smile is authentic, there’s no way my body relaxes. I begin to what’s called co-regulate with that person, my body is mimicking their body and when I feel that configuration around my face, I’m not feeling friendly. Maybe I’m feeling condescending or whatever but I have a sense that I am not safe with that person because they’re letting me think that they’re nice but they’re not having good feelings towards me. So I need to be in an environment where people are not judging, where people don’t have anger or preconceptions about me in order for me to share and be witnessed. So I think there are times when it’s appropriate to have some kind of refuge for our, for instance, for our Dharma sharing or for a retreat. So on a semi-collective level we have this practice of Dharma sharing and Dharma sharing is to share what’s on your heart, what you’re encountering in your practice. And to be able to share it in an environment where people are receptive, non-judgmental, mindful, caring, compassionate, and then our bodies relax as we tell about our difficulties. That’s healing. That is watering those seeds that have been wounded and making them stronger, and little by little that is fundamental healing. And sometimes, often, we can do that. But I think when we really push it, we run the risk of re-traumatizing ourselves, of being with those kinds of feelings, the mental formations, the bodily sensations, just get more. They’re giving the nervous system the message that you’re right, we’re unsafe, we need to keep doing those same habitual things. So that brings up the issue, you know, the practice has all the foundations for healing us, but we, as lay people, don’t necessarily have teachers or mentors and we’re practicing at home and so it’s important somehow to have that kind of one-on-one understanding relationship with somebody who can help guide us and help us discern when we’re overdoing it, when we are underdoing it, and to learn to be really honest with ourselves. If we tend to be somebody who really likes to hide out in the very wholesome, lovely feelings, to push ourselves, to stretch a little bit. That if we’re not stretching a little bit, we’re really not practicing, we’re not going to be able to understand on a bodily level what it is to transform our suffering. And if we’re somebody who’s constantly stretching too much, we can injure ourselves, and that we need to know the signs of that. And that that’s also something that in our offerings and embrace that we encourage people to know about but not get all uptight about, they’re not things that happen all that often.

00:49:32

Maybe what I want to share more while listening to Jo-ann, so people don’t get a wrong perception about Plum Village and our retreats. Everything is an invitation in our retreat. Nobody is forced to do anything. If you don’t want to wake up for early meditation, go to sleep, sleep as much as you need. And if there’s an activity that we offer that is maybe challenging maybe from a religious part or from a spiritual dimension that may be very new for us, I always, in my Dharma talks, in orientation, I always say everything is an invitation. If you’re uncomfortable, you can always step out. That is true. But at the same time, part of life is also being engaged and being open to an experience, being open, like you said, to stretch to our pains. You know, like physiotherapy, most of the therapy is very painful, but if you don’t stretch there, those muscles will never be re-developed or re-healed. So that’s why it was very difficult for me to say what I wanted to say skillfully but I always respect everyone’s suffering. I respect… Actually, I’m a very sensitive person. If somebody is in pain, I even say you can leave Plum Village. Don’t suffer here, don’t create this as a prison for yourself. But it’s also like, for me, I guess what I’m learning is not to use suffering as an entitlement for people to change their reactions, their truth to life. And I had to learn to not to white-knuckle because as those who didn’t have much in life we had to white-knuckle through everything. To be seen in school, I wasn’t a white person. I wanted to be seen. I excel in math, for example, it’s a very regular stereotype of all of us, Asians, but hey, I can do some numbers. And there are moments that the white-knuckling also just led to us understanding where the harm we were doing to ourselves. And if I have never white-knuckled myself, I don’t think that I would also understand what resilience is and I wouldn’t understand the suffering of my parents, for example. And in Buddhism like the middle way is always the safest way is to dance between the extremes of both sides which is, I fully agree, there are those who don’t acknowledge their suffering. They will never grow. And I’ve seen this in my community. I’ve see this in my siblings. And it pains me sometimes when I see that they can’t touch their true suffering. One time in my room we played a card game and in the card it has questions, it says to say one good thing about your mother and one good thing about your father and one thing that your father did that hurt you and your mother did that hurt you that you’re still caring today. And this brother can only speak about his father and cannot say anything about his mother. On both sides, the good and the bad. And he’s a Dharma teacher, so over 10 years in the monastic life. And for me in that moment, of course, I don’t want to push him and I was seeing how uncomfortable it was for him, how awkward it was for him in the setting of a community. And the sensitivity around the brothers and sisters that were in the room, we were so sensitive that we didn’t want to shame him and we didn’t push it. We were all just acknowledging that there are some sufferings, that the Dharma, we’re not yet there. And we have to give the right space, the right time to it. And for me when I get to witness that I can touch interbeing, his suffering is my suffering. And I really wish that he can touch this because it will unlock something in him. And in the relations of communities and of being together, whether it’s one-on-one or even by myself, it’s important to have the ability to be kind to the feelings that we have within us. And I can say this now, but many years I couldn’t say that if anything I always wanted to white-knuckle it. And one of my causes of that was just to be seen as a person of color. And that’s a reality, that’s the truth. And maybe that is a part of me because I have fought so hard so when I see those who don’t fight I’m like, you spoiled brat, you have no idea how lucky you are. And I’m just like, please, just like don’t be so entitled though, like don’t, you know… And that’s where it’s coming from. And I just wanted to, you know, just really emphasize. Because the danger of these podcasts and of these things you only hear one story, one time, and it creates a whole truth to each and every one of us, so excuse me for jumping in so quickly, Jo, but I felt like I just that was very alive for me and I just wanted to say that.

00:55:36

Thank you, Brother Phap Huu. And, you know, coming up for me is just this is such sensitive territory because there’s sort of, you know, in my life there’s the collective trauma of the Holocaust and of however many thousands of years of Jewish history and there’s my own individual suffering. And in a sense I feel this is a lifelong journey, it’s not something that is going to happen today or tomorrow, it’s something that is there and and present and there’s something for me about just giving it time and space and love and tenderness and not to fall a victim to it, but not to feel the need to solve. It’s just to be present for it and as long as it needs to be there. Jo-ann, and I just want to come back to collective side of things, because you had a beautiful politician’s answer saying I will answer that but actually first of all I think it’s relevant to say that…

00:56:44

She’s gonna do it again. Yes, I love this.

00:56:47

I’m not gonna let you get it over with this time.

00:56:51

It’s an invitation, right?

00:56:53

Yes, everything is an invitation.

00:56:56

So my invitation to you is to come back to this idea of collective healing as opposed to individual healing, because, in a sense, that, you know, Plum Village is collective healing, it’s bringing together, it’s not someone on their own doing it, it’s a community that is itself healing and inviting people in to heal. And as I mentioned earlier, you’ve worked with marginalized communities, so you’ve seen a lot of collective suffering held and also worked with groups, so I just want to, in a sense, explore how you see collective healing or collective whatever word you choose to use for it. And you can say something else first. If you need to.

00:57:53

Maybe a little collage of things. One is I really resonated with the wanting to be seen and especially a person of color in an all-white space and the sense of entitlement that some people have and how that can be a button and to say that that’s also common to me. And most people who suffer traumatic circumstances that create this locked-upness in the body eventually work through it enough to have what’s called post-traumatic growth and like the vast majority of people at least up until the point where they did this study, of course, now we have such snowballing of trauma situations, but when the whole community is traumatized all at once there grows both a resilience of people helping each other and going beyond their personal needs to give a hand to each other. And that every group that suffers a group trauma, that becomes part of their culture whatever the resilience is and also whatever the cautions are so that culture really is a collage of the collective trauma and the collective resilience of a people. And so often we only experience our own personal rendition of the collective trauma and we think oh, it’s me, and I’m the only one, and that there’s a shame, so we hide it, or at least we think we hide, we often do things that make it worse, but that it keeps us with this illusion of separateness and of it’s my fault, I’m damaged, I need, if I want to be a part of the group, I have to hide it. And that that destroys any possibility of healing, especially when it’s a collective trauma. And that when people can come together and share their individual experience and discover, oh, I feel that way too, there’s a power that’s released. And if it’s held in a space that’s non-judging, that’s calm enough, so that people aren’t co-regulating and getting carried away, and that that happens in a sangha, and it happens over a period of time, and often there are sanghas that are just all people of color, or all people who are dealing with a physical challeng, or people who, whatever. And that that creates enough safety to begin, and then little by little they have more and more capacity to do that same thing in mixed spaces, which I think is really important. But what do you have in mind exactly when you want me to talk about collective healing?