The Tension of Emergence: Thriving in a world that remakes, not breaks

The Vowing Mind: Returning to Relational Intimacy in Times of Trouble with Joshin Byrnes

• Jennifer England • Season 4 • Episode 5

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How can you stay present to a world that breaks your heart open—without hardening or turning away? What is right action when there is no right answer?

In this episode, Jennifer talks with Joshin Byrnes—Zen teacher, former AIDS activist, and founder of Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community—for a deeply honest conversation on his evolving expressions of activism and spirituality as he wrestles with and practices ethical action in a time of trouble.  

Together, they explore:

  • Growing out of enemy oriented and dehumanizing activism
  • “Bearing witness” as essential practice in a culture of separation 
  • How letting go of fixed ideas creates healing action 
  • The Zen principle of vowing mind as a compass for ethical responsiveness.

Come join us for a slow and tender dialogue about how to deepen your relational intimacy, practice and ethical inquiry as you taste the ache of being human. 

Content Note: This episode includes a story that references suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available. Resources are included below. 

Links & resources—


Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro.

S4. Ep5 A Vowing Mind with Joshin Byrnes
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[00:00:00] 

Jennifer: What I sense right now, and I think it's always been this way, is that even if I see myself on the so-called right side of history. There's always a perception of being one up or one down, or being right or wrong, being a winner or a loser, even in the most progressive of politics.

And when I really sit with that, I understand. That the way in which I perceive differences, especially when it comes to the most important things I care about, like sustainability, human rights, gender equality, housing, making sure that everybody, no matter who they are in our community, has access to experiences, [00:01:00] care and belonging, and all the things that make us thrive as humans. And yet when I can sense that. I dig into a righteous perspective of how things should go. I can tell that I'm participating in this fueling of a division, a fueling of a binary between the winners and the losers, and participating in this fight.

To get a leg up on the perspectives or the approaches I don't agree with.

And so working with this. Recognition of myself, of how much I judge and how much I other still feels so hard to face because I can feel how I'm just rejecting this whole other way of seeing and perceiving and being in the world and of course there is harm being done in so many different ways, and I am complicit in [00:02:00] it.

It's something that my next guest describes as this ancient twisted karma, this systemic suffering that we are a part of. 

My guest today is Brian Joshin Byrnes, and he is a Zen priest, a social activist, and the founder and guiding teacher of Bread Loaf Mountain Zen community in Vermont. And his teachings focus on social action and hands-on engagement with marginalized communities. And I wanted to invite him into the heart of the question that I'm working with in this season and also in my book around how do we love and live together in this time of rupture and collapse without this rush to save or fix with an attachment to a preconditioned perspective of how our world might need our saving because maybe it doesn't. And so we move through a really [00:03:00] incredible conversation that spans through our own histories with activism the limitations of burnout and old ways of.

Participating in this winners and losers zero sum game approach. And we grapple with the concept itself of brokenness of collapse, that perhaps that's only one part of the story.

His path winds through these early days of the AIDS epidemic through fierce grief and sacred care, to the silence of retreat and the fury of the world calling us back in and together, he invites us into a potent question world isn't ours to save, what is ours to vow?

So if you are working with any version of this question, what is yours to do? I know this conversation [00:04:00] will be deeply supportive of your inquiry and your heart filled care.

And before we begin a heads up, this conversation includes a story that touches on suicide. So if that's not what you need to hear today, I invite you to pause or return to this episode when the time feels right, and if you or someone you know is struggling with suicide, support is always within reach and resources are listed in the show notes for this episode . 

Well, welcome Joshin. I'm so grateful to have you with me on the Tension of emergence. Thank you so much for joining me.

Joshin: Gosh, thanks for asking. What a lovely thing and I'm excited to talk with you. It sounds like we have some fun things in common from our pasts.

Jennifer: Yeah, we do. And I guess what I wanted to start with is kind of [00:05:00] diving right in, which is right now there's so much in my own heart I feel like I'm rejecting. I think there, there's all these things that are coming up for me again and I don't know about if it's for you. The same thing with the state of politics.

And the sheer amount of suffering not only globally, but also here in North America, turtle Island with new policies that are starting to push and create separation in a way that feels like it's intensified. And so I'm experiencing this new level of rejection, rejecting the way we're headed, so-called the way we're headed.

And so I, I wanted to start there because I feel like that's so much of where our activism comes from, is this stand against and this challenge between taking a stand against and wanting something different, but at the same time being invited to also be with it. And [00:06:00] so I'm curious how you are working with this.

Tension between rejecting, wanting things to be different, wanting to make a difference, and also needing to be with it and take a stand at the same time.

Joshin: I mean, that's the koan we're certainly living with. I think it's, to be honest, I think it's part of the perennial human experience. You know, there's often and always been suffering and conflicting views. And we seem to be deeply habituated into conflict. You know, that's always been the case, it seems to me.

And conflict is really a manifestation of a lot of internal conflict, isn't it? It's like, you know, we always are making enemies of some part of ourselves,

And some part of the [00:07:00] world. And, you know, I think the, the radical view, if you will, that comes from the non-dual traditions of which Zen is, you know, one is that we saying, you know, we don't start from this place of me versus you.

And we start from a different paradigm, different basic understanding, and we have to do a lot of work. To remember this really basic truth of reality,

which is it, it starts out of something that's deeply interdependent and deeply interconnected and can only be that way. That's the way it is, you know, so I remember, this has come up actually in my own activism work over the years.

I remember [00:08:00] when I was an AIDS activist, you know, going to Washington DC and laying on the street in front of the White House and drawing a chalk circle around our bodies to depict like murder scenes, right? That the government was participating in some kind of terrible genocide really is how we thought of it by allowing the pandemic to fester the way the AIDS epidemic did, simply because it was connected to populations of people that were devalued.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Joshin: And and in my mind back then, government was the enemy and we were there to, to undermine in some ways their efforts. And there was, it was, characterized by anger and even violence, if not in action, [00:09:00] violence in my own mind and heart. Toward them. There was a kind of objectification of them as the enemy. Yeah. Then, you know, I did that for a long time. Maybe we can kind of weave back into spirituality there, but I would fast forward a few decades to some activism I did just a few years ago when it became apparent that we were caging children at the border and separating them from their families, which just seemed horrific and ethically just really wrong, and that there needed to be some dissent and disruption around that.

So here in Vermont there's a big ICE processing agency, I went with 11 other people [00:10:00] and we engaged in civil disobedience by sitting in the driveway of that ICE agency and not letting cars in and out, and we were arrested for that. But my experience of activism felt in my body and heart and mind really different this time around. As I found I wasn't conceptualizing anybody as an objective enemy, as I realized we were all caught in a pretty tangled web of suffering. We're all complicit in some way, and part of our job, part of our responsibility to each other, out of love and out of care, is to say, Hey, hold on a minute. What, what are we doing here together? Let's just disrupt the kind of [00:11:00] trance that we're in. And so I remember feeling for the hardship of the people who were being caged at the border and for the people who were processing paperwork to send people into those cages in the border. And to the police who showed up to arrest us, who I could see in their eyes were caring people with families and values, and a hope for a world,

Jennifer: Hmm.

Joshin: you know, it's like, okay, this feels different to me, to stand right in the place.

Of the convergence of all the different ways we are all including myself, complicit in human suffering here. And that just felt different to me. I still got arrested, I still [00:12:00] went through a process of restorative justice afterwards, but, but my engagement was more humanizing, certainly for me and maybe for the people I was interacting with during that activism.

So now did it solve the problem? You know, you know, there, there are no silver bullets. Sorry for the violent imagery, you know, but there just aren't quick fixes to deep systemic suffering.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Joshin: You know, it's ancient twisted karma.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: And so our job is to do the best on twisting of that ancient karma that we can and try to set some new positive karma in motion, hoping it takes root within the context of these very complex systems.

Jennifer: I love that twisted karma [00:13:00] image that that's really just feels like I can feel myself being sucked into the vortex of, you know, the current day challenges that we're all complicit. I'm curious, I wanna just contrast these two different experiences. I mean, when you were an AIDS activist, I think you were in your twenties, and then, you know, this latter experience, you know, much older.

So part of it is the evolution of the human being and how we develop and grow and become more flexible in mind and open hearted over time, potentially if we're practicing. But I'm curious how, you know, you, you've spoken about the rage and the burnout that you felt from your activism in your twenties and the deep, disillusion with, at that time, the Catholic faith, what were the constellation of factors that kind of instilled this rage and this othering of the government and, and people that you disagreed with back then? Because I'm curious of like, [00:14:00] what keeps in motion this illusion of separation and where does that come into, or an activism, at different times of our lives.

Joshin: Yeah. And of course I don't have any quick and easy answers to that because we're all products of our conditioning, right? And there are a lot of things that condition us into certain ways of seeing. So for me, I can only kinda speak for that. And I, I, I do think in conversations over the years, there's something that others, you know, have experienced around this too.

You know, I would say there was something about youthful arrogance at play in all that, which is a belief that I knew better than all these other folks who were trying to make the world, you know, a better place from their perspective. And that's certainly the case that, you know, but part of it too was waking up to [00:15:00] my own agency.

Like right, for many of us, you grow up Catholic and you don't really question it and you're kind of going through it and then you realize at some point you're part of an institution that's made up of human beings who are making choices on the direction of that institution. And for me in the early years I not only was raised Catholic, but I went to seminary and then joined a Catholic religious order and took vows in that religious order and went to theology school and studied for priesthood. And I remember being in a class in theology at one point where I, I realized I simply didn't believe some of the theological principles that I was getting trained in and had to represent. [00:16:00] And part of it was my own identity formation as a gay man. And realizing, you know, I was part of an institution that had a, you know, less than positive, I. Interpretation of what that meant. And I was also part of an institution that saw women and men as playing very different leadership roles.

And both of those things combined into a place where I recognized, oh, I had a choice. I can either work within this institution and try to affect change or I can step outside of it. And for me, I just had to step outside of it. And with that, like with every decision there was something gained in, something lost, you know, and it took me a long time to kind of appreciate.

What my training gifted me with. And it [00:17:00] did gift me with some things, but I couldn't see that for a, a long time.

Jennifer: And how would you describe those gifts? What has stayed with you from that training?

Joshin: Yeah. One is it planted the seeds of contemplative practice in me.

So, you know, not just liturgy and ritual, but the real power of silence and radical inclusivity that comes about in contemplative silent practice. This notion of welcoming everything and rejecting nothing. Opening your senses, your heart, your mind, your body to simply what is, without rejecting anything. Those seeds were planted in in seminary, in contemplative practice, and in the monastery. Second I was part of progressive Catholicism, and I came out of a family situation that was pretty [00:18:00] rough and chaotic. Kind of affected a lot by working class poverty and violence and things like that.

Catholicism, or kind of helped me understand the social teachings of the church, social teachings of Jesus in a way that helped me appreciate the real work of social justice. The kind of alignment and preference for marginalized people and communities. The theological framework of liberation theology and economic injustice.

You know, those were all really important formative ideas for me that I initially rejected completely when I'd left Catholicism, because with my young, arrogant mind, it was like either all bad or all good, you know. So I went through a long period of atheism and [00:19:00] humanism, a lot of rejection of organized religion, and it was only.

When I was deep in working in the AIDS epidemic that I found I couldn't resource myself very well. And given that there were so many, many perceived enemies out there in the world, and I was there to save the whole world, that it became an impossible task. And that the only, you know, I'd kind of internalized in some ways a martyr complex, you know, which I think was part of the Christian inheritance for me.

You know, like you go and you sacrifice your own life no matter what. And, you know, I just tapped out and, and my relationships, you know, were affected. My sense of well-being was affected. I just became bitter and angry and [00:20:00] exhausted. And it affected my my relationship with my partner and our adopted kids and all those things.

And I just had to kind of face the music that something had been lost in me. And I then started to reclaim contemplative practice. 

Thanks to a wonderful therapist who said to me, you know, I think when you left Catholicism, you might have thrown out the baby with the bath water.

He said to me, you know, like you've lost connection to your inner life.

And that was very true. And so I started to kind of move back into inner contemplative practices that kind of restored a kind of resiliency or something.

Jennifer: Yeah, I, I so can connect with that experience of the youthful intensity with which you wanna change the world, and the rage that I can still access and I think healthily, you know, [00:21:00] in, in my body at this, at this time of my life. But that idea that we're to fix and solve all. The broken things is such a normal part of human development, I think, but also really, I love how you said is, is also shaped by our worldview and our religious upbringing or how we're orienting to activism.

And I wanna just double click on this idea that you said at the beginning when, at that time there was a way of seeing others as separate, whether it was the government or the enemies, and this proliferation of enemies. I mean it's incredible how it's so easy to start to interpret everyone as against you and is something that you need to lean into and fight.

And I'm wondering if you could just speak more to that experience, like what that felt like in your body. Because I think there's so many of us at this [00:22:00] moment who both feel that. This idea that we're rejecting, everything's going to shit. There's a sense of going backwards and in, and sometimes we, we absolutely need that disruption.

We need that dissent. We need resistance. But I'm paying attention to the ways in which you've engaged with dissent. And so back in that day when you were exhausted and full of rage and, and made a choice to take a break from institutional religion, how were you then orienting to enemies other, what was that experience like in your activism?

Joshin: Yeah. Well, I think I had to take a break from activism too, because there is a, a mental model out there in activism that, you know there are winners and losers and there are victims and there are perpetrators. [00:23:00] And we live in a world where of course there are victims and perpetrators. But that I, I think I had to do some work of rehumanizing the world around me, and that meant r remembering that everybody really wants what I want. Just some sense of peace, some sense of okayness that the people I love are taken care of. You know, we don't, we all want this, this is a basic human impulse. You know, we get confused in the pursuit of all that we all do. And so part of it is to open up my like, perspective on time, you know?

So it's probably no surprise that I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump, you know? But I [00:24:00] also recognize Donald Trump doesn't pop outta nowhere. Donald Trump is the result of, we'll use that image again. Ancient twisted karma. I also think I. We can very easily dehumanize someone like a Donald Trump. And that happens very quickly.

And I had to look at my own tendency of dehumanizing people, you know how much, how often, how frequently do I lock people into nothing more than a label that I've placed on them. And none of us is a label. None of us, we're all so much more complex than any label that can be put on us. So how do we come to appreciate that about each other?

I found in Buddhist practices some helpful things. You know like when Donald Trump was first elected, I engaged for two years [00:25:00] a practice of imagining Donald Trump as an infant. I. And parent Donald Trump as a baby. What did that bring up for me? You know, 

Jennifer: Yeah. I'm so curious. What did it, 

Joshin: Well, yeah. Under feelings, right?

Like right to all kinds of acceptance and rejection,

you know? But it helped me in some ways place a person in a context that was more humanizing. Does that mean I rolled over and let that person do whatever they want to do in the world? No. I just, like in my own parenting experience, I would intervene on my children if I felt they were causing harm.

I. And I have, as a parent, what parent doesn't. Right? But you're doing it [00:26:00] out of care for the person

And out of care for the world,

Jennifer: Yeah, it's

Joshin: and those become indistinguishable, right?

And it's confusing because, you know how, how to deal with it. I mean, at least with a, with a child, you wanna protect your child, you can prioritize your child, you can wanna shield your child from all kinds of harm and difficulty.

You wanna kind of shortcut for them, you know, the, around all the hardships. Eventually you learn you can't. And what you can do is remember to never reject them. And it's easier with your child to remember that. It's harder. As the concentric circles go out,

it's harder and harder to do that.

So in Buddhism, we have a, a metta, a loving kindness suta that invites us to consider that every being [00:27:00] is like your child.

And in Buddhism it's often taught also that every being you meet was in some past life. Your mother,

Jennifer: Yeah. I love,

Joshin: we, we, we say this and they, those train our minds, right? That's why it's helpful to say it.

And just maybe we begin to look at each other a little different, and maybe that means we intervene on the cycles of harm

and suffering in a slightly different way.

Jennifer: Yeah. And I am appreciating so much, and I feel like. In my own life, this becomes a more subtle and subtle practice. This recognizing the judgment and all the ways that I label, even if it's not on a, an identity basis, oh, those conservatives or those Trump supporters or those red states, whoever it might be.

But it's these really subtle layers of judgment where I'm noticing, oh, it's so interesting. I'm rejecting that person for whatever reason. And [00:28:00] often if I sit with it long enough, there's a recognition that there's a hurt or there's a perceived hurt, or there's a grief or there's a loss, or there's a perception of harm in my own self that needs tending to.

And if I can tend to it then that that boundary of either or the US them. Starts to soften. But I, I love that practice of working with your own inner ways that we dehumanize each other and it feels, so that feels to me like right now, that's the work. It's relational intimacy work starting within ourselves.

Joshin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that's often bothered me about popular Buddhist narratives among Western Convert Buddhism, let me just put it in that context, you know, is that we focus a lot on our own personal psychologies, you know. [00:29:00] And that's helpful. There's a whole tradition of Buddhism that looks at the arising of mental formations and how we get trapped in them, and we should understand that.

But I also think, I want to pick up on what you said. In Buddhism, the story goes that when the Buddha so-called awakened he said, I and all being simultaneously awakened together. And I think this points to this thing you mentioned, which is it's, it's relational that fundamentally it is all relational.

We can't do inner work without the complete acknowledgement that who we are as individuals is who we are relationally,

and that we live our lives in close proximity to one another.

There is no independence. Separate me. That's, you know, removed from you or from us. That's how self is formed , and we forget that too.

You [00:30:00] know, and so one of the things I think we do in Buddhist training is we, learn to shift our perspective about who we think we are

And the more we can see ourself as other and other as ourself, then our actions emerge out of what an ancient Buddhism is called appamada OR care.

That's what that means, that our awakening happens in the context of care. I.

Care is always about our unity and our difference.

It's both things. Simultaneously.

We care because of our unified kind of experience, and we care because we are different from one another.

Jennifer: I love that so much. And I'm, I don't know why this is coming up for me, but I, I had this [00:31:00] pretty powerful moment many years ago when I was working in the downtown east side of Vancouver, and I was walking down the street and I came to a corner and I was waiting to cross the green light, and it was a pretty empty part of the inner core at that time of day.

And I stopped at the light before I crossed the street, and I looked to my right and there was a man doing a headstand on the concrete and in the midst of broken glass, there was broken glass everywhere. And my first inclination was like, he's crazy. Like what is this guy doing? He must be on something.

And he was probably in his mid sixties big hat, hat on the ground, full headstand. And. I, I could just sense this, you know, rejection of sort of this scene I was watching and then I walked a few, the light turned green and I started to walk across the street. I looked [00:32:00] back and there was, he was in front of this huge pane of glass and on the other side where these, like six kids under four, like their face pressed against the glass with these like beaming smiles and you know, excited by this clown, you know, this clown in front of them.

In that moment, I could just feel this dissolution of all my judgment, you know, just seeing this way in which humans create others so quickly, and also how quickly it can fall

Joshin: Hmm. Wonderful. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. By a shift in perspective.

Jennifer: by shift in perspective. Yeah. And I think that for me, as, as a Zen practitioner, I think has been so helpful because Zen has taught me, I think, as somebody who is long involved in human rights activism, that this deep acceptance [00:33:00] of what is, is always available to us if we can include a flexibility of the mind, a flexibility of perspective, you know, which feels like a reverberation of a soft heart.

You know, it's, it's it's been a real gift to me

Joshin: yeah. 

yeah. I'm totally kind of vibing with you on that. You know opening perspective is a lot of what Zen is about. You know, it's not about applying a dogma or set of rules or belief system. It's training the mind. To widen its view, to take in more and more and more. So in the zen peacemaker tradition, we kind of capture that in these three tenets.

The first tenet of the practice is to practice not knowing or letting [00:34:00] go of fixed ideas. And it's not letting go of our ideas, it's letting go of how fixed they are,

Jennifer: That's a key distinction.

Joshin: really important, right? It's just realized we've rigidly held on to a view, and we have to plunge into situations that shake us out of that view.

Like, walk down the block, turn around again, take another look, you know? And then guy doing the handstand looks a little different, 

There's a different, we

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: call that bearing witness, like. You let go of these fixed ideas so you can let in more of the situation.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Joshin: And you are one with that situation.

You know, you are it and it is you perspective is what tells the story of what's going on here.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm.

Joshin: And we trust that this process of letting go of fixed ideas, of letting it all in [00:35:00] naturally leads to caring, healing action because you no longer are separated from this. So that's what we're plunging into all the time, you know?

And it's not that there's just observation. No. The complete practice results in it is healing action,

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: you know? Buddo Buddha action. That's what the whole practice is. It's conduct, it's how we conduct ourselves.

So our perspective, shapes how we conduct ourselves. You know, so I, I, I have a street retreat practice, you know, so I, 

Jennifer: Great. I love it. 

Joshin: , I live voluntarily for periods of time on the streets. And for me, this, I, I quite intentionally practiced that. Like, notice the story I'm telling about the people and the places and the things that I [00:36:00] encounter intentionally opened my perspective to take in more, to feel the sidewalk on my body to s get through a night, to feel the weather, to eat, the food, to smell.

To, you know, go through the whole thing to notice who walks by me and gives money, who walks by me and ignores me who I ignore my privilege in my view, you know, all that stuff to just take time to see all of those habit energies,

Jennifer: I wanna pick up on something I'm really feeling into is that, you know, for, in my experience with Zen, and I think sometimes this is a myth for those who are outside Buddhist practice, is that it is only about mind training.

And what I'm hearing you say and what, in my experience, it's a full bodied, if you think about mind, it's a full bodied mind. [00:37:00] Because bearing witness isn't just seen, it's, it's your proximity of your body in the full sensory experience of being human. That that's what's creating the awakeness.

That's what's requiring you to fully step into the moment. And I love that your street practice is about the body. It's a fully embodied practice of being with. And so, I dunno if that resonates for you. 

Joshin: Yeah.

Jennifer: bring the body in. 'cause I think that's a myth sometimes.

Joshin: Yeah. Again, I think a lot of people who exist in the class structure of our society in the same place. I do, you know, pretty well educated, pretty privileged worldly that a lot of that experience goes up into our heads, you know, and [00:38:00] we become very theoretical. We think mind and brain are the same, and that the intellect is what saves us.

You know, we, we tend to, now, I don't want to dis the intellect, you know, it's really important to understand things and to study in ways that help us understand complexity and all that kind of stuff. But I also think that our practice is sometimes I describe Zen as a one body practice, is that it's part of this perspective shifting is to see us as an organism. What if we were one organism? What if, you know, just like the liver and the heart function separately. They are part of the one body and the right hand. And the left hand can do different things at different times, but they're part of the one body. And if the [00:39:00] left hand gets hurt, the right hand will apply the healing to it.

It doesn't just say, oh, too bad left hand, you're hurt. No. It recognizes through a, a kind of deeply embodied intelligence that the right hand and the left hand depend on each other. And so that's why embodied practice is so important because we're taking this experience of having this little skin bag experience that we've got and we're expanding it to say, well, okay, there's this skin bag, but then there's this room I'm sitting in.

And there's this community that I live in and there's this world that I'm a part of. What if all of that is my body? And I think we practice that quite physically. It's why [00:40:00] in Zen we do prostrations. It's why in Zen we have rituals and liturgies that repeated 10,000 times. It's not just because we're all anal retentive people who want to, you know, get everything perfect.

It's that we're practicing with our body. What is it to experience world as body and body as world? 

. 

That's what we're doing. And it happens in the minutia of washing your dishes and washing your bowl and taking care of your body all the way through how we live in our communities.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: As a one body awareness practice, you know,

Jennifer: Yeah. I, I love that so much and I am, I'm curious if you could share a story from a recent street retreat where you were really challenged feeling maybe the separation or your desire for comfort or however, mentally or emotionally or physically, and you, you experienced this bearing witness and a [00:41:00] shift and a softening of your heart.

Wonder if you have a story that. You could share,

Joshin: there are a number I've probably done about 30 or 40 street retreats at this point. So you know, each one has its own kind story to it or flavor or whatever. I don't know what. But as you were asking the question, I thought of two different things. They're a little heartbreaking, if that's okay.

One was in San Francisco street retreat. was sleeping, we're not really sleeping, spending the night, I should say on, on a sidewalk. And this man came by many, many times back and forth and back and forth, and he seemed troubled or worked up or something. And, I was afraid at first, I [00:42:00] kind of had a, a story going on that maybe that person was there to.

Get something from me or, or hurt me or wasn't terribly trustworthy or, and of course you have to have your smarts about you. It's not about putting that aside. It's about just checking how much of the story I'm telling right now. Can I rely on, you know, really? And what, is there anything here I can let go of? And so in that context, I decided to let go of a little something and I got up of my cardboard and hovered near this guy and we wound up chatting. We wound up having a wonderful conversation and eventually he sat down next to me and he told me a whole story of, you know. [00:43:00] Sorrows rejection of him as a gay person growing up in some other part of the country where he had to leave home early.

You know, kind of that set of experiences that some people have had and it led him into a life of working in the sex industry and substance youth, you know, kind of pretty tragic tale. And we sat next to each other and eventually he fell asleep on me, on my arm. This is where the Catholic church pops in suddenly.

So we were right across the street from a church called Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro, and the priest from that church must have been watching this out the window. Because he came outside with cups of coffee, like delicious coffee and breakfast for both of [00:44:00] us. And suddenly there was some kind of healing there.

This man resting on me both of us on cardboard, this priest from the church coming and sitting down and having coffee and I don't know, something got liberated there. It's a little bit of liberation, you know? So, you know, I, I don't know. That stays with me. Something about that encounter shifts my view or per perspective of who belongs to me.

Who do I reject? Who do I accept you know, what happens when we just allow each other into our lives in a way that's unique to that particular moment of encounter, so that's one little story. The other little story has kind of a tragic ending, [00:45:00] sadly. We were in Washington, DC and we were out on the streets and we noticed a, a woman who was wearing a very short skirt and nice shoes, but that had been beaten up.

And she was a younger woman with blonde hair, very quiet, and we do street retreats in small groups, and somehow she figured out that our group might be a group that she should stay close to. So she was barely saying a word. She was not very verbal. I suspect that a clinician would say she was dealing with some kind of paranoid schizophrenia or something like that.

She was, I think, afraid of being out there. So she stayed with us for four or five days. We barely got to know anything about her. But we were all very curious. We learned that she was from Australia. That's all we had [00:46:00] heard. But we'd get food together, she'd sleep near us.

We'd walk together. And one of the hardest things on Street Retreat is the ending of a street retreat because then you have to also tell this other part of the truth, which is that you get to go home. And you leave people behind, and that's very hard and very painful. So we left her behind, but one of the people on the retreat thought, you know, there's something not right with this.

And she did a big search. And we found out by looking on Facebook, that this woman, her name was Megan, was a missing person from Australia. And her family was searching for her. And so through this we decided to try to reach out to the family, through the police and some other folks to say, we think we've seen this person.

We know where she is. And so they identified that it was her, the family [00:47:00] decided to come from Australia to the United States to to get her and bring her home. And it's true that she had suffered from schizophrenia pretty severely somehow. She got a plane ticket to come to the United States, but in the end, tragically this is the, the dilemma of these things.

She had learned that her family was coming to get her because we had planted all these, like people around the city saying, you know, her family's coming. We got the police involved. We got all these officials, social workers, and these. Troy trying to kind of track her down. And as her family got closer to getting her, this woman committed suicide.

Of course, we were devastated, just devastated and confused. Did we cause harm here? You know, did we. Do this. It was so difficult. [00:48:00] And we still sit with the, a kind of residual of that in many ways. But what also happened is her family connected to our community and asked us to do her funeral, which we did.

And we raised the money to send her body home. And her family and our family have stayed connected now all this time. And I don't know what to make of that story. You know, I don't know what to make of it. I just know that we're all somehow tied up in the love and the care and the tragedy of that human experience. And somehow all of that is part of our awakening to the oneness of life. It stands out there as a, [00:49:00] as a koan in a way. What is this? What

is 

this? 

Jennifer: Thank you for sharing. As you share, my heart is just all. Like, I feel a heat in my chest as you share my, my shoulders tense, tensed up. Just feeling into that dilemma of what's, what's the right action? What's the right thing to do? And that coming back to, we started talking about we wanna fix, we wanna save, we wanna support, we wanna care.

And, and yet this teaching around not being attached to outcome because we are in a dance of so much complexity and we can think we're doing our best to support. And it may not be. And there's something around what I appreciating, I think this is the challenge for me is like, when we want a certain outcome, we want someone to be [00:50:00] better.

We wanna fix a community, we wanna support our loved one who's struggling, wanna help her fix ourselves. Sometimes it's it's just not. Gonna turn out the way that you desire it to turn out. And yet that doesn't mean you stop trying or you stop loving or you stop caring or you stop. So there's this interesting, I think, juncture people get stuck in.

It's like, it's so complex. I'm gonna check out dissociate, numb out, not engage or if I can't do it right, whatever right means to align with identity politics or be as sensitive politically or whatever. I'm also gonna not act. And I, I feel like this has caught us in this double bind 

Joshin: yeah. 

Jennifer: so there's, I think it was Roshi Halifax who said in a beautiful Ted Talk, something around the incomprehensible [00:51:00] dilemma of being human.

Something like that. It's just, this is it.

Joshin: Yes, yes,

that's right. 

Jennifer: And what I feel from you and I deeply respect is that your, deep commitment to going there over and over and over again, the 10,000 times, you know, bowing in front of life. Hmm.

Joshin: Yeah. You know, I think there's a lovely little phrase in Japanese Zen called the slender sadness. You know, that no matter what we do, there's always the slender sadness, the remainder, the moral remainder. It's the question you know, it's, it's the, it's the perpetual imperfection

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: that exists in every moment.

That is the place of practice, that that's where we step in. You know, that's the teacher [00:52:00] and that's the teaching. And so this notion of outcome, you know, it's not that we say I'm not attached to outcome. It's can I not get too committed to a specific outcome, to a fixed outcome. There will always be outcome. There's always outcome. Every breath has an outcome

to it. Can I see? Can I do my best? Right? That's, that's all we can do, which is I want to relieve suffering. I, I want my next action to provide a little bit of relief somehow. Then we see what happens, that there is the remainder of this effort, there's the flourishing aspect of it, the [00:53:00] wonderful thing that emerges.

There's also the suffering aspect of it that's slender sadness. And so we bow to the flourishing and we turn into the suffering, and we take another step because every moment creates new moments. It's a new universe and every step. And so it's not about outcome in that sense, right? It's about staying with life

Jennifer: Mm.

Joshin: in all of its complexity, in all of its impossibility.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Joshin: You just stay with it and you appreciate it. Even the sorrows, you appreciate it all. 

You know, because that's what gives us the opportunity to open up into care, open up into love right. That's the opportunity.

Jennifer: Yeah. I love [00:54:00] that. And I, I wanna quote something you've said. Maybe as a, a way of closing in a Dharma talk, you introduced the idea of the vowing mind. From Kozei, who is a 12th century Japanese monk. And you said quote to take vows is not a smart goal on your grant application. I'm going to achieve it. Check it off the list. I've lived my vow. You said actually these vows are much more dynamic complex than that. Really the way to live with vows is to have a vowing mind. And so I wanted to end with this concept because for me, it feels so freeing and also at the same time a really robust commitment that can feel like we're pinned in and yet i'm curious what you'd say is, how does the vowing mind invite us into in terms of [00:55:00] new form of relationality at this time of collapse,

Joshin: Hmm. Well this could be a whole nother conversation, but,

Jennifer: I.

Joshin: Yeah, part two, I would say something like this, maybe like the vowing mind is a mind that doesn't limit what's happening to a time of collapse. Yes, collapse is happening, and yes, rebirth is happening. The vowing mind is to meet all of it with love, right?

With this deep, this Ada, this care. Things fall apart, things come back together, things fall apart and come together simultaneously. That's the nature of an ever-changing impermanent world. And [00:56:00] so how do we meet it with care? And I think that's the vowing mind. So I would say we we're careful about telling a single story about what's going on here.

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, that's, that is a beautiful way to, to close our conversation because even if your, your story about your friend from Australia. There's a way in which I feel your heart opening up to the shearing comprehensibility of it all and the deep love and the mystery of New friendship, new community that was born with and through her story with you.

And so I think this reminder that narratives of collapse or narratives of endings at this time, narratives of [00:57:00] polarization, even, , I mean, yes, we can feel those elements, but what else gets not seen when we fixate on that story, I think is a teaching that I'm taking from this conversation.

Joshin: Yeah. Yeah. 

I think of Frank Otaki. I don't know if you've ever seen his book called The Five Invitations. He did a lot of death and dying work. But one of the things he says in that book is a mantra he often says to himself when he's in impossible situations, which is, what else is here, what else is here?

And I have relied on that a lot. That's a mantra I use when I walk on the Streets and Street Retreat when I'm at our gather space, day in and day out, and meeting people who come, who are experiencing loneliness or addiction or mental health challenges. You know, what else is here than the story I've been willing to tell about this situation?

[00:58:00] What else is here? And I think that's a vowing mind, and I think that's, I. A practice, you know?

Jennifer: Yeah. Beautiful. And I, I was gonna end with a question about, you know, what practice is changing you in in this moment? And so perhaps it's just that, or perhaps there's another practice that you wanna highlight, but I am curious at this time where you're feeling this kind of stretch in our global community yet so deeply embodied and grounded in your day-to-day life serving.

And caring and loving.

Joshin: Yeah.

Jennifer: What's a practice that's changing you?

Joshin: Well, you know, I think what I'm practicing with is also like what is ethical, responsiveness to the realities of harm that are going on now. So I am thinking about how to be clearer about my opinion [00:59:00] about what should happen, and also to listen deeper to people who have a very different perspective.

So I don't wanna slip into a kind of s everything's gonna be all right mind. 'cause I don't know that everything will be all right and we can never know that everything will be all right. My job is to meet suffering and there is suffering in the world. And how do I meet it with a kind of wise compassion and clarity that doesn't tip into violence and, and rage. And greater division. And that's the real koan of my practice at this point. And I think for me, it happens by being in very close proximity with [01:00:00] a wide range of people consistently. Like I think we have to move away from the once and done one-off kind of way of engaging. Like, I'm gonna go to that one dialogue, or I'm gonna go to that one meeting space.

Actually discipline ourselves like we do in zen monasteries to show up day after day after day in the practices of coming together and listening to one another, learning how to be with other people. So that's really at the core of my practice these days. How do I be with other people? Day after day,

Jennifer: Beautiful. I love, we can hear a little laughter in the background, which I, I, I think that's, that's so beautiful that, yeah. What can come from that willingness to be deeply present and so willing to be uncomfortable and to be changed and to [01:01:00] step outside the circles you know, concentric circles of our families and our people who think like us.

And I just wanna say thank you so much for your practice and for your commitment and your embodied vow and what you're showing and revealing by example to deeply care for all people, no matter how deep the pain is as you live your own koan,

Joshin: well, thank you. This has been a really lovely and free kind of floating and deep conversation, so I'm really grateful that this is your practice. I hope we get to do more of it.

Jennifer: Yeah. Thank you so much, Joshin.

So here's the essence of what I'm taking from this conversation with Joshin. 

That if we're not going to contribute to more ancient twisted karma, that the [01:02:00] invitation to responsivity to right response. It can't continue this dualism between winners and losers. It can't reproduce the zero sum game that we continue to play. Even inadvertently, there's something that's asking us to join with, especially those that we consider separate or other.

And like Joshin reminds us. This is a practice. It is a practice to go into the places that scare us, that challenge us, that interrupt our set stories about who we think other people are, and especially when those have less privilege or economic means. Than we do,

That is where some of the hardest and most liberating practice happens. And I love how he said this is [01:03:00] not a one time engagement or experience, but if we listen really closely, it's something we can tend to. Our whole life, whether that's even in our families Thanksgiving dinners and family gatherings where there's enough difference and challenge and separation.

That can be a site of practice, whether it's within a tense period at work where there's a lot of tension and difference in grating conflict. So it doesn't have to be a street retreat, but it can be in any areas of our life where the invitation is not to see ourselves as separate, but to see ourselves as deeply interconnected and in some aspect the same. I also love that Joshin brought this idea of slender sadness. I'd never heard it before, this idea that no matter what we do, that there's a remainder, no matter how much we [01:04:00] hope to solve or resolve or soothe or try to alleviate suffering,

there's always a perpetual imperfection, and that's the slender sadness. And that reminds me so much of a line, of a friend, an old professor George Love, who said, this world is so beautiful, it hurts.

And then finally, I love that he reminds me, and this has been helpful, that perhaps collapse and rupture are not the only story that in collapse, there's also rebirth, there's also new life, and these two things are not necessarily. Opposites, but they're co entanglements of our lives, and so there's something deeply human about this conversation, and it feels like the belly of me has settled [01:05:00] into an appreciation of just how messy this world is and yet how much we are invited to respond regardless. So thank you so much for listening to this conversation with Joe Shin. You can find resources and links from this episode in our show notes to learn more about Joe Shin and the amazing work he's doing in community.

And if you'd like to stay in touch with me. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter. You can find me on substack@jengland.substack.com and be sure to follow this show because coming up is a micro episode that offers you a practice inspired by my conversation with Joshin that you can take into the field of your own life.

Practice is something that helps you slow down and. Till the ideas that you've heard on this episode into the soil of your body and your life, so they can stretch and grow and challenge you. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would so [01:06:00] appreciate if you share it, share it with a friend, share it with your community, share it with colleagues who might appreciate this slower audio sanctuary to accompany their days of summer or winter if you're in the Southern Hemisphere.

So with that, thank you for being here. I'm Jennifer England. Catch you next time.