Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, Produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon. I’m the Founder of Sounds True, and I’d Love to Take a Moment to Introduce You to the New Sound

So, take, I was old enough to have started school when virtually all of the schools in the United States were formally segregated. That’s a structure. It was not thought about, “Well, I think I’ll go to the White school today.” You know? Someone might call the police, because the police was there to enforce the laws. And when you first bump up against the structures, it’s very awkward, even more awkward than the personal things, like, “Why are you doing that?” And we see this all over.

I have a very good friend. He is African American, as I am. His son came out 10 years ago, or something, as gay. It was really hard for him. He struggled. He loved his son. He still loves his son. And at one point, he said, “You know what? I figured out the problem was not my son, the problem was me. I’m the problem.”

TS: That was a good discovery.

jp: Very good discovery. He worked it through, and with help. He had counseling. It wasn’t easy. And he was very happy to go to his son’s wedding. His son is now married to his partner. Then I was talking to him maybe two or three years ago, and it was like, “OK, I get that I was basically being an SOB around the gay and lesbian issue. But this trans issue? When does it end, john? When does it end? I’ve already….” I said, “It doesn’t.”

So, part of it is that when things change, it’s not easy, and one of the things that helped a lot in terms of the marriage equality was not just people working on a personal level, it was our leaders, our courts, our military, also doing things at a structural level. It made it harder to stand in the face of that, when you have—OK, I like my Apple watch, and Tim Cook is gay? Hmm. OK, I still like my Apple watch.

So, I think we have to do things on both levels. If we don’t do things at a structural level, the structural level will undermine what we’re doing at a personal level.

TS: In one of your presentations, you told a story about going to the University of Texas at Austin campus, and some changes they made as a result, it sounded like, from maybe some contribution that you and others made to help raise awareness around the campus. I wonder if you can tell that story, because for me, that was very illuminating.

jp: Yes. I was being recruited to come down there, and they were happy to the prospect of getting me there, and I was relatively happy about going. And I went down there. It’s a beautiful campus. It’s the flagship college in Texas, in Austin. And as we were walking around, there’s all this Confederate memorabilia. And I grew up as a kid, sort of Davy Crockett, and thinking of all the stuff down there. But anyway, as I’m walking around, I’m feeling uncomfortable, and my host I think at some point senses it, and he sort of turns to me, he says, “Don’t worry or pay attention to all of this Confederate stuff. We fought on the side of the South. We were a slave-holding state. But that’s our history.”

And I know from doing work in mind science and spiritual work that my unconscious was screaming, like, get the hell out of here. And the people were nice enough. The structures were doing some work. And I didn’t go down there, but not because of that, mainly because of my granddaughter. But later, students start talking about it, and the Black and Latino students were not doing well. And interestingly, again, it wasn’t that anyone said anything. It wasn’t that anyone did anything. It’s just, you had this constant reminder, and the people who felt a little more comfortable with it for a while couldn’t understand the discomfort. You know, what’s the big deal?

But those things actually do matter. And it’s so interesting. They matter in both directions. They matter in terms of saying to people, “You don’t belong.” But in a distorted way, they also matter in terms of showing a particular type of White identity. Now, this is tricky and hard, because when you think about, OK, what about all those Confederate monuments? Shouldn’t we just take them down?

First of all, most of them didn’t happen right after the Civil War. They happened more recently than that. But it is true, we get attached to things, and not just in, “I like them,” but on some deep level, they’re actually helping to constitute who we are. So, if I’m taking down your monument, can I have any empathy for you? Even though your monument may be disrespectful to me?

And we see this all over. OK, just one other example. In the ‘70s, when women were coming into the workplace in large numbers, they were going to the workplace, and there would be lewd, if not pornographic pictures of women all over the workplace.

TS: Yes.

jp: And women complained. And the men was like, “We’ve always had these pictures.” Well, you’ve always been a male-dominated institution. And it’s not that they weren’t nice to their wife back at home, or they were mean to their daughter, but the daughter and the wife had a place that was consigned to them. And the women were saying, “I’m coming in here, I don’t want these pictures. I don’t want to be having to face pornographic pictures all day.”

The first response was, women could put up their own pictures. If you want to put a picture of a naked man, that’s fine. If you want to show a man with his genitals, that’s fine. But interesting thing, this actually was still a male-dominated response, and that case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and a moderate Republican justice wrote the opinion, and said, no, this was a hostile workplace. And that’s where that concept came from. And they were saying like, why was it hostile? It had been there for 50, 60, 70 years. Very few men complained. But when women complained, the first response is, “What’s wrong with women?” You have to adjust.

Now, no one would even think about doing that. Or very few people, I should say. Maybe some of them would. But structures matter. Symbols matter. And while I think that decision was completely right, the men felt a loss. They felt something that they’d valued was taken away from them. And that may be still the right thing to do, but it’s also, I think, appropriate to understand that people may feel a loss for the Confederate flags, for their pornographic pictures, for their symbolism of Black statues on the front lawn.

I went to Stanford. When I went there, it was called the Stanford Indians. They finally changed it to the Stanford Cardinal. But some of the alumni who were giving money said, “I’ll never give money again. You’ve taken away my symbol.” OK, but your symbol was dehumanizing Native populations. And still, I understand, OK, you have some pain around it, but I think it was the right thing to do.

TS: I’ve noticed, I’m feeling much more invested in the belonging gain than I am whatever the losses are involved for people. That’s not—you seem much more sensitive and empathetic to the loss. I’m a little bit like, “Come on, we’ve got to go!”

jp: You’re right. Well, I think you have to do both. I gave a talk this morning. I talked about the trial in Minneapolis. Derek Chauvin was convicted, appropriately. Keith Ellison is a friend of mine. He’s the Attorney General. He’s the one who structured the trial. He’s the one who actually orchestrated it, and he was being interviewed on television, and the announcer said, “So, how do you feel about this?” And he said, “I’m not even sure we achieved justice.” He says, “The right thing to do was a step. We’re talking about a system, not just a bad individual. We’re talking about a system, the way we do not just policing. The way we make laws. The way we do courts. The way we do—it’s a whole number of things, but it’s a step in the right direction. And the verdict was the right verdict. This guy did something terrible. He has to be held accountable.”

And then he did this interesting thing. He said, “But I still feel a little bad for him.” And the interviewer said, “What do you mean, you feel a little bad for him? This guy—” Keith Ellison is African American. He had a prosecutor, was Attorney General. “What do you mean, you feel a little bad for him? This guy killed someone with people watching all over the world. And yes, he probably, maybe was a racist.” And Keith said, “I think that may be true, but he’s still a human being. He’s still a human being.”

And so, the thing that we sometimes miss, in terms of compassion, empathy, and bridging is that we think—we misunderstand it. We think it means you forgive the person, or you don’t hold the person accountable, right? You still have to hold the person accountable. In fact, some people will say that’s an act of respect, when I hold someone accountable. But you also hold on to their humanity. And if you hold onto… A lot of times, when people lose with a symbolic loss, or a more material loss, what they’re also saying is that “I’m being told I don’t count. I’m being told I’m bad. I’m being told I am less than.”

And we have to be careful, because I sometimes talk about White supremacy, and I say that the operative word is not White, it’s supremacy. What we have to be really dogged in challenging is the notion of supremacy. Any kind, whether it’s religious supremacy, gender supremacy, racial supremacy, national supremacy—all of those are problematic.

So, I think, in fact, there’s some data to suggest, people are more able to move if, when I say, “Get out of this place, but here’s another place for you to go.” Right? It’s that we still are holding on to your humanity. White man in the workplace, we recognize you have some pain. Yes, this has to change, but we recognize you have some pain, and we want to… Restorative justice, that’s partially what it’s about. And if that’s done, then the possibility of change is actually much greater. But if you say, “Not only do your statues have to go, but you have to go with them, and you’re morally bankrupt and evil and bad.” Well, no one can swallow that.

TS: You know, this whole topic that I opened up for us about the structural changes that are needed so that we can have this future of belonging, it’s so huge. It’s so huge, and I wonder, when you look at it, do you have a sense of the priorities? When you think, this is my work in the world, this is what I do, I’m on this mission, I’m the director of the Othering, here are the priorities that we have to address.

jp: Well, fortunately for us, we have a pretty decent size, and we’re working with people all over the world. I think, it’s sort of interesting, the core is recognizing that everyone counts, that everyone belongs, that everyone has a voice that can participate. But now, to make that real, it’s more than just saying that. For example, if I say everyone belongs, but you can’t vote, you can’t go to the store, you don’t have a house, you don’t have a pot to piss in, right?

There’s two political philosophers, one named John Rawls, and one that’s Amartya Sen. Amartya Sen was also an economist. He says that in any given society, there’s things you need to actually be part of it, a full member of that society. And those things will change. It could be a cell phone. If you don’t have a cell phone in some societies, you don’t belong. And what I said, and I’ve written about this myself, is that the first and most important thing is full membership. And in that full membership, you decide what those other things are and how they should be distributed.

And so, to really recognize someone’s full humanity—there have been friends sometimes who would say to me, “You’re a professor at Berkeley and look at you, you dress like a homeless person.” And I said, “Are you being disparaging toward people who are unhoused? The assumption that those people…” And we know this from the work of people like Professor, Dr. Fitz at Princeton. In our society, we don’t see homeless people as belonging. We don’t see them as human. There’s a part of the brain that lights up when we see another human being. As a collective, as a society, when we see homeless people, that part of the brain does not light up. For many Americans, a returning citizen, African American, that part of the brain does not light up.

And I’ve written about this, that it’s no way for us to get to good policy for people that we don’t see as human. So, we have to hold on to that humanity. We have to hold on to our interconnectedness. And it’s not always easy. But then, we have to make sure that our policies are right. And they’ll change. I oftentimes give the example: I’m in a wheelchair. I come to a building, and there’s no ramp. I’ve just been othered. I’ve been institutionally othered. I’ve been told, “You don’t belong here.” Even if people pick me up and take me in, I’ve still been othered.

And so, we need to actually constantly engage this. And I would say multiple levels, but it’s like, wherever you are, start there. Wherever you are. You don’t have to be someplace else. You don’t have to go across the world. Start where you are, and go as far as you can. And to me, this is actually a life journey, and it’s a beautiful part of life.

TS: One of my favorite quotes that I got from you is, “Is it the journey? Is it the destination?” You know what I’m talking about here, john? “Is it the journey? Is it the destination?” I was like, it’s definitely the journey! It’s not the destination. But then, you had the punchline.

jp: It’s the company.

TS: Yes.

jp: It’s who you’re with. You know, the people that you… The work I do is hard sometimes, but I have a really great group of people I work with. I get to meet wonderful people. And that’s what resiliency is. We sort of confuse that. We think it’s like, he’s tough. He can deal with anything. It’s like, no one’s tough in that sense. But we are, sometimes we have this community. We have this family. We have this company. And with that, you can go all the way through life, and without that company, as demonstrated with the pandemic, when we’re isolated from each other, it doesn’t matter if you have a big house and a nice car. Literally, I have a friend who’s quite wealthy. He’s rich, not even wealthy. Private jets and the whole thing. He lives in New York, and he said, “I miss seeing people on the subway. Not friends, but just, I miss human contact.”

And so, I would like to see us, and one of the things that might happen as a result of the pandemic is, here in the Bay Area, I’m sure in parts, people are out on the streets, and now restaurants have people sitting on the street, and there’s something very nice about that. Sometimes I literally just drive or walk down the street just to see other people out doing what people do.

TS: Well, I just want to take a moment right now, because I feel blessed to be in your company, and I think our listeners probably feel the same way. And so, I just wanted to take a moment to underscore, thank you. Thanks for—on the journey, the journey to greater belonging, for being in our company.

Now, there’s one other big topic that I want to make sure we get to, because there’s a section of your book, Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society—this is a collection of essays that you’ve written, all in one book, and the very last section is a chapter that’s called “Lessons from Suffering: How Social Justice Informs Spirituality.” And this section was particularly meaningful to me, as someone who for 36 years now has run a publishing company all about spiritual wisdom. I immediately turned to this section, and what I got from it, a couple of things that I wanted to make sure I talked to you about. And one was this idea that you put forward that by engaging with the suffering of people, by engaging with the poor, by engaging with people who have been othered, our spiritual journey as individuals will be given an ingredient that we absolutely need. It’s critical. If we don’t do that, we’re missing something. And I wanted you to talk more about this, and how you’re so convinced this is true.

jp: That’s for the question, and it’s a delight to be in your company, be on this journey with you. I came to that, I wrote that for a couple of reasons. I feel like, having been part of spiritual communities for a good many years, oftentimes it’s the idea that people who meditate and do yoga and different spiritual practices, that they should help the activists, because activists sometimes are stressed out physically and emotionally, sometimes burning up with their own anger. It’s like, we could help, right?

But there’s oftentimes not an appreciation that people who are engaged with the suffering of others have something to teach those of us who organize around spirituality. And much of the spirituality of the West, in many respect, is quiescence. Like, I want to get away from the noise of the world. I want to go out to nature, because nature’s everywhere. I want to go out to nature, and I certainly don’t want to get involved with politics. I mean, that’s really dirty stuff.

TS: Messy.

jp: Yeah, exactly. And if you think about the lotus flower, right? And what’s the representation of the lotus flower? It’s growing out of a muddy pond, this beautiful flower. And really think about Mother Theresa, or Gandhi, or Buddha. They weren’t withdrawn from the world. And in fact, for the time Buddha was withdrawn from the world, at least by some accounts, he apologized when he came back. It’s like, “Yeah, I left my family. That was my code.”

And so, it’s so interesting, when you look at the major religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, all of them—they have these deep origin stories that very much deal with suffering, the thing that sort of drives people to religion in a way, even in quote-unquote “premodern” society, is that the suffering that comes with being alive. And we have different strategies for those. Some, it’s like, well, you can suffer now, but later you’re going to get everything you need and everything you want and you’re never going to get old and it’s going to be so cool. It’s like, OK, do I have to wait so long? Yeah, you have to wait and then you have to die and then it happens, right? But people are hungering for something.

And so, I wrote that piece for two things. One, to say that wisdom is all around us, and if we can only be wise in the peace, in the quiet sanctuary next to a stream, we’re fooling ourselves. We’re fooling ourselves. It becomes so precious that everything disturbs it. Oh, there’s a bird that’s messing up my silence. There’s a car that just went by or my kids are crying. I’m trying to be enlightened. I’m trying to be quiet. And not to knock anyone’s practice, but I feel like, as I’ve been in my own practice, things come through. I don’t necessarily have to grab onto them. It can be whatever. And I can be angry and still have joy and love.

Dr. King talked about righteous indignation. Righteous indignation. So, what is that? Well, the way he explained it, as I understand it, is that God is sometimes angry at the way we’re treating each other and nature. God is angry because we are, what I call, visiting surplus upon each other. And we should be, too. When we see how we treat kids at the border, or how we treat Asian Americans, or how we treat Muslims in China, we should be hurt and angry.

And there’s something there, and it’s not, I think, when we put things away, right? When we push the suffering away, when we push the feelings away, we’re pushing all the lessons that go with it. And so, I’m saying there’s lessons in suffering. There’s a way in which we can actually be in a relationship with suffering that teaches us. And so, it’s not just to get away from it, it’s to learn from it, and that sometimes what we think of as spiritual is really just an effort to get away. It’s close to escapism.

TS: What capacity do you think it takes to be with suffering, and to not just be like, “Please get me away from this ASAP, thank you very much.”

jp: I think it helps… We all, everybody needs somebody. And sometimes suffering is personal, right? It’s like, something happened to me. And sometimes it’s collective. There’s very good data showing that when a Black person is killed, the Black community in the immediate area of that whole country goes into trauma. But part of, from my perspective, part of the family, part of loved ones, part of the spiritual community, is to help us get to that. So, we help each other, and that’s what I mean by our resiliency, is the collective support.

I remember going to talk to my dad, and it was one of those days when I was feeling burdened and overwhelmed, and I said to my dad, “I just can’t do this by myself.” And my dad’s response was, “You’re never called to do anything by yourself. God is with you.” And he’s a theist and a Christian minister, but still, that was very comforting to me through it all. I said, yes, I was closed to my own little circle, and I maybe had some hubris, thinking I had to do it by myself, and recognizing that there are other people, some of them I know, and some I don’t know, who are on the same journey. Somehow that was very helpful for me. And so I try to remind myself that, is that there are people, things larger than us that are engaged in the suffering. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but there are a lot of people, a lot of energy, a lot of life that’s leaning in the right direction.

And so, before we close, though, you said when you were growing up, like, you didn’t belong. I wonder, if you feel like you belong now, what happened to change it, if you do feel like it?

TS: Yes. I’m happy to share that with you, john, and then I’m going to ask a challenging question. Not challenging you; challenging me and our listeners. But to answer your question, I think when I discovered meditation, and I started feeling like I could inhabit my body, and I could handle intense, painful emotional states, and I started developing a real relationship with the Earth and my very own body as being part of the Earth, I started feeling like it was OK to be here, even if it hurt a lot.

jp: That’s great. That’s beautiful.

TS: Now, here’s my question. In my own life experience, and in the experience of plenty of people I know, through spiritual practice, there’s been a recognition of our interdependence. You could say that I’m here because you’re there. The tree doesn’t exist without the soil and the sun and the water. Everything’s connected. You watched a spider for an hour and a half. The web of life. I get that. Yet, for many people, it hasn’t been necessarily an intuitive leap to engage in all of the structural ways we other. It’s been like, yeah, I get it in my meditation. It’s a cosmic web of life. But that hasn’t translated into being a belonging activist. What do you think has been the gap there?

jp: That’s a great question. I think there are a couple. One, I think for many of us… I spent a lot of time, I lived in India for a while, I lived in Africa. I spent a lot of time in Latin America. And I think the individual ideology in the West, particularly the United States, even when we engage a spiritual practice, is very strong. It’s like bodhisattva—we’re not bodhisattvas, right? We want to be enlightened. We don’t want to be bodhisattvas. I get, bodhisattva is like, I could be enlightened, but I’m going to stay here until everyone’s suffering is relieved. I take that on. It’s like, nope. I want to get rid of my suffering, and I’m done with it, I’m out of here. I care about other people, but…

And I think the ideology of individuality as separate sneaks in in really insidious ways. I’ll give you just one example. It’s like, how do you know if something is true? I feel it, right? The source is still hyper focused on the “I.” And I think that’s hard to break. And so, I don’t think there are many… There are growing examples. There’s like peace fellowship. And I read a lot about Buddhism and other religious expressions. Almost all of them have the danger of being captured by the dominant society. The Samurai, the warriors, but they were also religious. So, what happens in different countries when the Buddhists attack the Muslims, and Muslims attack the Buddhists?

And so, I think there’s something that’s easy to sort of veer off into. Into myself, whatever that is, or into my tribe, whatever that is. So, I think it’s hard. I don’t think there are many—there’s some—but many powerful lessons. And we’re constantly… There’s this story that’s supposedly true, where a holy man in India