Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris Sitting with Chaos | Zenju Earthlyn Manuel About this episode New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.
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Very few of us relish chaos and disruption, but they are facts of life, given the nonnegotiable nature of change. In this episode with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, we're going to talk about how to tune into the value of disruption, and learn how to sit with the chaos.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel https://zenju.org/ is an ordained Zen priest, holds a Ph. D., and worked for decades as a social science researcher and development director for non-profit organizations. She is also a prolific author.
In this conversation we'll explore:
what to do with the unknown and not having any answers the power of a "sip of silence" (her term) what she means by the phrase "death as a doorway to tenderness" how she defines tenderness - a word that can easily get bogged down in sloppy sentimentality and what she meant when she wrote "I'm not advocating love as an answer to all of the ills of the world. Then again, it is just that simple to be love."
Content Warning: There are brief mentions of assault; spiritual, sexual, and substance abuse; and racism, including an incident Zenju experienced herself.
Full Shownotes: www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/zenju-earthlyn-manuel-rerun http://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/zenju-earthlyn-manuel-rerun
This episode was originally published in October 2021.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Dan Harris? It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:20 Dan Harris? Hello, everybody. How we doing? Very few of us relish chaos and disruption, but they are, I'm sorry to say, brute facts of life, given the non-negotiable nature of change. Today, we're going to talk about how to tune into the value of disruption and learn how to sit with chaos. My guest is Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. She's an ordained Zen priest. She holds a PhD. She's worked for decades as a social science researcher and as a development director for nonprofit organizations, and she is a prolific author. We'll be covering a few of her books in today's episode, in fact. We also talk about what to do with
0:59 Dan Harris? the unknown and not having answers, the power of, and this is her term, "a sip of silence", what she means by the phrase "death as a doorway to tenderness", her personal story about an unusual route to becoming a Zen priest, how she defines the word "tenderness", a word that can easily get bogged down in sloppy sentimentality, and what she meant when she wrote these words. "I'm not advocating love as an answer to all the ills of the world", then again, it is just that simple to be love. Just to say, before we dive in here, we first aired this episode in 2021. We're bringing it back this week while our team takes a little time off for the holidays. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, coming right up.
1:47 Dan Harris? Real progress starts with action. As the executive director of the Honold Foundation, Emily Kitesworth works to expand access to solar energy in communities around the world, supporting locally-led projects that bring reliable power, greater independence, and opportunity where it is needed most. On the podcast Planet Visionaries, professional climber and Honold Foundation founder Alex Honold goes beyond the headlines with Emily to explore practical solutions for a more equitable future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
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3:52 Dan Harris? Send you Earthland Manuel. Welcome to the show.
3:55 Speaker 03 Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, wherever you are, Dan.
4:01 Dan Harris? Afternoon where I am, yes. You and I were chatting before we started the interview, and we're just talking about how the world is a pretty tumultuous place right now. And you have spoken publicly and written about the value of disruption. Can you describe what you mean by that?
4:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've talked about it, and I also have gotten in trouble. For saying it. And it gets confusing. It's like, what am I trying to say? Am I trying to get people to accept suffering in some way? And that is not really the intention of the teaching. This teaching for me of looking at disruption as valuable, meaning that it is the place in which we change and transform, that we transform in the midst of messiness. So a lot of folk want to transform, but they want it to be nice and neat and clean and painless and all of these kinds of things.
5:03 Speaker 03 And my experience is it doesn't happen that way at all. In my life, the things that have changed have been when I've fallen off the cliff, let's say, in the quote, when I hit the ground. So I learned that, oh, I think when I was in my twenties, I began to notice that, oh, life just keeps going. Trouble keeps happening. You know, this isn't going to stop. But of course, I didn't accept it. So I went about trying to change things in my own life and change things in the world. And I would get frustrated and disappointed. And sort of like these times, some people feel like we're moving backwards, are standing still, we're not moving ahead, are these kinds of things. And so when the disruption comes,
5:48 Speaker 03 it doesn't necessarily mean that we are moving backwards or standing still. I actually feel that there's something dynamic going on, and that's why the disruption is happening. Sort of like an earthquake, right? The ground shakes. So there's some kind of dynamic movement or action in the earth that's causing, you know, an earthquake. And I want to stop right here and just send out a prayer to Haiti in the midst of the last earthquake. That's what came up for me just in the moment. So I want to do that. So as a person who was raised in disruption, you know, I was part of the Watts riot. I wasn't a person doing things. I was near it. I was living near it.
6:33 Speaker 03 So that when I- When we went to the grocery store, there was the National Guard with their guns and everything. That's how close we were to it. There was just always trouble. In my school, there were riots, you know, and things around race. There was all kinds of stuff going on. I myself, you know, have been caught up in some pretty snarly incidents. And so, you know, I always wanted things to be better, like no more racism, no more oppression, no more hate, no more anything. And of course, that is always the aspiration. It's always the vow. But most important, I know that if something stops, like say, we don't have any more racism,
7:18 Speaker 03 let's just say that, we have no more of it. That means something else will take its place. We don't know what it is. So there's always something. That's why we have so many movements now. I think that's wonderful because all of these movements and climate change, you know, movement around police brutality, movement around, you know, racism, movement around poverty, you know, all these different areas that are happening. And we could go crazy, running off, trying to make sure all of that gets, you know, cleared up and taken care of. That's kind of our attitude, to fix it. But mainly, I feel like disruptions are here for us to transform within and without.
8:01 Speaker 03 So that if it changes us within, it will change what's going on without. The more and more we ignore it, I think the more disruptions we will have. And sometimes I feel like I told a friend this and she felt, that sounds so fatal. You know, that's fatalism and that's not what I'm saying. It's what I see. And I think we're at a really point in the world, not only our country, where the disruptions are getting more intense and they're increasing and they're more often. Because something really is trying to wake us up. Not us wake us up. We think we can wake ourselves up and we can to a certain extent. But there is a place that's unseen and uncontrollable by the human being. And we have to understand that.
8:47 Speaker 03 And then to allow things to change, the dynamic of the disruption to change us. And if we force against it, I think we keep falling back into an old place. Because the disruption becomes a wall. As opposed to a more porous or malleable barrier or obstacle that we actually can go through. We can actually go through these disruptions. And it doesn't feel like it often, but we can. So if we're using the disruptions. If I use all that has happened to me.
9:24 Speaker 03 Then I can contribute to society from having those experiences and having, which most of us are doing anyway. And having, you know, come through them is where all of my poetry, all my other writings and teachings. My showing up here to talk on the podcast has to do with that. At the same time, everything was happening to me. There was a transformation also happening to me. So while we're in this dive, sometimes we're also in flight. And but we don't know. So some people, well, I want to feel the flight.
10:03 Speaker 03 I don't want to feel the dive. You know, so that can cause problems too, because they're both at the same time. That's like if someone gives you a coin, you say, well, I don't really are a dollar. I don't, nobody gets coins anymore. Not even a dollar. Oh, I don't want that that dollar, you know. But I want some money, you know. So it's kind of like you can't, you have to take the dollar to get the money and deal with everything involved in the dollar. Everything that is involved and attached to the dollar. So that's how I see disruption. It's actually, I've actually begun to, well, at a period of time, I say in my practice,
10:44 Speaker 03 I began to stop suffering, the suffering, and begin to actually enjoy it, even while I was in pain and in tears, traumatized and everything else. But I knew, and I knew and I still know, because I'm still in a dive, I'm always in a dive, that something's coming through that disruption or darkness for me and for us and everyone around me and us. So I know that that's the way change happens. That's the way transformation happens. Lot of casualties along the way, or maybe I might not make it. There'll be a dive I won't make.
11:29 Speaker 03 That's guaranteed, right? I won't make one of the dives and I'll be gone. But all along, there'll be all these dives, all of this turmoil, suffering. And it's to be used like fodder. It's mud. We know this. It's the mud for the lotus flower. It has to have murky nutrients. And that's the way our lives are.
11:55 Dan Harris? I can imagine some people thinking, who are listening, thinking, well, I don't know how to sit with this, I mean, this dive. I can't get comfortable with it. How do I do that?
12:06 Speaker 03 You know, this is where I have to have what's called beginner's mind, right? You've heard that.
12:10 Dan Harris? I have.
12:11 Speaker 03 And I always try to walk in that way of what was it like when I didn't know the Dharma, Buddhism, when I didn't know Nichiren Buddhism or Zen Buddhism? Just trying to like, I'll try to flush myself away from all of that kind of conditioning, spiritual conditioning. And when that question's asked, because I know the majority of people have not been on that path, a path of Dharma or Buddhism or even meditation. So quite a few people feel in the middle of chaos, they want to start a meditation practice.
12:50 Speaker 03 I, in some way, discourage it if it's very new to you. Because it's, right now, your system's used to dealing with chaos in the way it has been dealing with it the moment before, the day before. When I started sitting meditation, I only did five minutes a day. And over the decades, it grew to me being able to sit at long, long retreats, you know, eight hours a day. That took decades. So, starting out at five minutes is a lot. Like, one minute's a lot. One minute is a lot to sit still in silence or quiet, just to breathe, take a breath, in and out.
13:35 Speaker 03 And I would say, just do that, you know? In the moments, just try to let go for a moment of all the news, you know, you're reading or hearing, to not read as much, to let go of some of the conversations that we're having, just for a moment. You can always go back to the conversation. But if you take some time to just stop and just breathe in and breathe out as long as you can, even if it's a minute, that's a lot, a minute or two minutes. Then, when you start to engage in the world, even if it's cutting the onion, that's your next engagement, you know?
14:19 Speaker 03 Or talking to someone, a friend or a partner on the phone, it will have a different tone, just with one or two minutes of sitting. Because you will be speaking from your heart and not with swirling in the minds. So, when, most of the people we hear talking, or even on other podcasts, there's a lot of swirling in the mind. Even for myself, I had to come and sit and be prepared. After swirling around, I had gotten lost coming here, you know? And these kinds of things. And I had to really work at, from driving to sitting here with you, to get back at
15:03 Speaker 03 the breath and to be able to speak from my heart. Because I have a lot of ideas, and most of us do. I'm well-read.
15:14 Speaker 03 You know, I have a PhD. I'm a researcher, so I look up everything. So I really have to work hard to allow the body to lead me on this path of life.
15:27 Speaker 03 And when people say, well, what does that mean? You just react or you just respond to whatever's in your gut? No, I try to see what's in my gut. If there's fear, I don't start to analyze the fear. I just note that there's fear. And I go, oh, there's, there's your friend, fear. And then I just have a few breaths with fear. We have, it's like having tea with fear. Few breaths and then fear goes and sits down someplace else. And then I can go back. But then the fear comes back. It keeps coming back. That's its job to keep tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me of something about myself that's our inside myself that is bothersome, you know?
16:12 Speaker 03 And that's kind of what sitting still does. It lets you see what bothers you. And I know a lot of people ask me, you know, they say, I want to be calm. Can you tell me how to be calm? And I don't have the answer to that. I really, sometimes I'm joking, but you really can get some teas and herbs and extra help to calm you, to help during these times. And I think there's no problem with that if, you know, you, you've gotten it from someone you trust, you know, a professional herbalist or someone, our place, or a doctor where you, that help your nervous system, you know, slow down in this great time of trouble and turmoil.
16:54 Speaker 03 But where I'm speaking from is not from that place because I'm not a doctor and I'm not a professional in the healing arts. I'm coming from, and it's important for you to know, the context is zazen, zen, meditation. And zen meditation is very different too than all meditations. So I'm coming from that place so you can understand that when I say, sit, be still, just be quiet, that's not what every...
17:22 Speaker 03 Tradition does. And that's not all that Zen does either. We do chant and we do walking meditation and different kinds of things. But I think I'm just offering from this base of barring there's no psychological or physical problems with you that you need to get other help for, then I am just inviting this daily sip of tea, which is a sip of silence, ever so often throughout the day or whenever you can, just a sip of silence. You know, you can wait for those phone calls that are coming through, those texts that are coming through. They can wait a minute or two.
18:03 Speaker 03 And it's remarkable because then it might stretch to five or 10 minutes. And then you're like, wow, okay. You start to notice that even though there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of chaos you're creating yourself too, on top of the chaos that's being imposed. And also not to try to get out of, you know, try to fix everything, to make a paradise for us to live in or for yourself to live in. But to use the trouble of living. The trouble of life is all there is, really. And if we don't use it, then we're not living. We're not even engaged. And I've done that. I've tried not to engage.
18:47 Speaker 03 And it's a weird life when you don't engage. And I don't mean you have to go and engage in movements because now engagement's all of a sudden equals go out and march. You can do that. It's not what I'm saying. Anyone can do that. But just engage in the moment, to be present with the pain, the suffering, just for a moment, if you can. And some people need help with that. That's why I don't prescribe medication or meditation, either one. I don't prescribe neither one, medication or meditation.
19:26 Speaker 03 And that's because it's not for everyone. Meditation is not. It's actually for a very rare group of people. A very small and rare group of people. Those who are seeking, those who are open to a quest, an inquiry of what is this life? And how am I living it? Who am I? And getting no answer to none of it at all. It's just the process. No, there's no answer to those questions. That's that rare group is willing to live in that ambiguity. But those who are using it for results, that's fine. I'm not against that. I wonder what kind of results they're getting.
20:11 Speaker 03 I know there's a lot of scientific research going on now, and they're just coming up with what we already know, which is usually what science does. It, you know, which is good. Some people need that hardcore affirmation that's written down in words with some numbers that's quantified and qualified. I was a researcher, so I understand. You know, I did a lot of social science research. So it's important to document, but it doesn't have the answer. No one and nothing has the answer to anything. Isn't that scary?
20:46 Dan Harris? So what are we left to do then?
20:51 Speaker 03 Just be with not trying to find answers and fix things, but be in the discovery of things. We are to continually discover. So when I meet, say, what if I meet you next week? I will have to rediscover you and you rediscover me. But you might come and say, well, I kind of, I know Zenju now, we had a discussion. I say, yeah, I know, Dan, we had a really good talk together, but we don't. And so continuously, we don't, even if I've known you for 20 years. There's always something unknown. And to see the beauty of that, to see the beauty and sacredness of the unknown in our lives. And so when I think I really know something,
21:35 Speaker 03 because we're all very smart. And I get to that place like, oh, yes, I know that. I already, I've heard that before, you know, in Buddhism, I heard that teaching before. And then when I look at it again, something new about it comes to mind. That's the beginner's mind. Something new about that thing, that person, that idea, that movement comes new to me. And I'm very like surprised of it. You know, I had been doing some work with someone around boundaries. And it was very, you know, somatic based or psychological based. And then up popped in the middle of that, this idea of spiritual boundary. Because I started looking at empaths.
22:18 Speaker 03 Because there's a lot of sensitive and empathic people, including myself today, where it's, they're more sensitive and more empathic. Because there's so much going on. So I said, oh, my gosh, there's that spiritual boundary as well. And in all the years, I just never put it all together that way. So there's an integration that can happen in the pause and in the discovery of things. The reason why, when I really feel like I know something, I'm going to go back to that. I think about, I really don't know where I came from. Like, period, like, as a human being. And none of us know. We know, we know physiology and biology, and we have all those answers.
23:01 Speaker 03 Science lets us know where we came from and how we got here. But we don't know where we came from. We don't know why we're here whatsoever. Why are we going through all of this? What is the purpose? And we don't know where we're going. And we're all going, all of us. But that is amazing to me. To be faced with this unknown. It could be a dilemma.
23:25 Speaker 03 A shadow following us constantly, or it could be a place of discovery. All the way, all the way, all the way to the end. Steve Jobs, I heard that when he was dying, and I really liked that, you know, this thing that they said he said, he was like really dying in that moment. And I know he's a researcher because of what he created, and he's a visionary. So he was dying, and in his last moment, he said, "Oh, wow." And I have held on to that. And I was just like, okay, I'm following Steve wherever he went, you know? And he said, "Wow." And it was just, I felt it.
24:08 Speaker 03 He was still in that way of being that helped him to be a visionary. He was still in that to the moment he was dying. To me, that was his greatest moment. Not when he created Apple, but when he died and said, "Wow." That was his greatest moment to me. So like, I haven't forgotten it.
24:30 Dan Harris? Much more of my conversation with Zenju Earthland Manuel right after this.
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25:36 Dan Harris? You've written very movingly about death
25:41 Dan Harris? as a doorway to, and the word you use is tenderness. I use that word with a little bit of hesitation because it's the kind of word that, you know, a certain type of person, I'm not going to name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris, might hear the word tenderness and like just be tempted to overlook it. Because it seems a bit maybe like a Hallmark card or something like that.
26:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:05 Dan Harris? However, you write very powerfully about tenderness too. So I don't know if I'm giving you a pointed question here, but I'm interested to hear more about you, since you brought up death and how it can lead to tenderness. And what do you have in mind when you say tenderness?
26:20 Speaker 03 Death, no matter how many times I have been at the bedside of people who have taken their last breath. It's a profound moment and inside me, I feel the most authentic and the most open being that I can be. I don't even feel like I'm myself in the moment, myself, the way I describe and define myself. I just feel like a being that could be human or anything. And I just watching the last breath and the sacredness of it and the way I have no tension in my body at the time.
27:03 Speaker 03 And I feel very soft in the grief, in the tears. While painful,
27:12 Speaker 03 I feel very soft, like I could be a plant energy or something. It's so soft and I don't feel myself that way every day, every moment, you know? I feel tense, sometimes enraged, sometimes whatever, frustrated.
27:28 Speaker 03 Go watch something on TV and then I get frustrated with what they're saying and doing. All kinds of, you know, just continues, these emotions are nonstop. But in death, when I have witnessed death, the emotion that's there is grief, sadness, sorrow. It could be despair for some, it may be even fear. But there's this, just this softness that I would like to hone more every day. So that even when I engage in the world, I engage whatever there is to engage in my own life, that I do it from this place of gentleness and softness.
28:08 Speaker 03 Now, doesn't mean because you're gentle or soft, that you can't be powerful and strong and whatever else you feel tenderness isn't. You cannot, it doesn't mean you can't be that. It just means that when you take action, you're taking it from this very open, sacred, slow, could be gentle, could be rough too, place that opens your heart. What is it that opens your heart? This is tenderness. What is happening now, many of us are going through tenderness. And the tenderness could be where you're just caught in emotion. You're just suffering.
28:52 Speaker 03 Or it could be the tenderness, you're paralyzed. Some people get very paralyzed when something makes them vulnerable. They get paralyzed because that's mostly from trauma and other times when they have had pain or suffering. But then there's this very powerful liberating tenderness where you're still feeling all the emotions. You may even have some paralysis. But there's some way in which you are still present and engaged with the tenderness. And I think Thich Nhat Hanh says it like this, when a baby's crying, how a mother is tender with that baby, our guardian, our father, whoever is guarding that baby.
29:32 Speaker 03 There is this way of touching into the, your, your baby, your cry, your tenderness, your pain, in a motherly way or a fatherly way, or I'll say parent way, whatever. I think you get the idea, whether than. Trying to get rid of it here, you know, with different things, you know, maybe substance abuse, sexual abuse, all kinds of spiritual abuse, all kinds of things we do to come away from this thing we're feeling. So I came to this word tenderness through my name, Zenju, which is a Dharma name. My whole Dharma name is Ekai, an ocean of wisdom.
30:17 Speaker 03 And Zenju means complete or total tenderness. That's what Zenju means. So the names given in the Dharma are names that are your essence. So it's not, you don't even own it, really. It's just an essence. Like, you could be Zenju too. You know, it's an essence. And so the second name is the name, my teacher said, that you work on in your life. The first name is how people see you. And it's usually associated with nature. My teacher is now passed. That's Zenju Blanch Hartman. I want to honor her too, as I'm speaking. So when they said my name Zenju in the ceremony, and they said,
31:02 Speaker 03 in complete tenderness, and everyone went, oh, wow, that's so nice. And then when I told people, I said, the second name is what you're not.
31:16 Speaker 03 I'm not.
31:19 Speaker 03 So I didn't want to use that word Zenju. When I got it, I didn't use it. I kept trying to use Ekai. And my teacher was against it because Ekai is supposed to be informal. And that's, you use your formal Dharma name. And these are what she had been taught. Eventually, a woman I was working with, she's a diviner, actually, an African Sangoma, South African Sangoma. She said, you need to use that name Zenju. You need to start using it. Because I wasn't. I like Earthlyn very well. That's what my mother named me, Earthlyn. I love it. And so I said, okay, I'll try using Zenju. And that was the process of like, tenderizing all the oppression and woundedness and pain that I had been dealing with
32:03 Speaker 03 since I was a kid. Being assaulted, beat up. All kinds of things have happened to me. Being turned away. It's still going on. I just had a recent incident right here in Albuquerque at a winery. They would not serve me.
32:21 Dan Harris? Why not?
32:23 Speaker 03 My appearance.
32:25 Dan Harris? Yeah, she's.
32:26 Speaker 03 Motioning about my appearance and my face. They didn't want to serve me.
32:31 Dan Harris? Simply because you're black and a female?
32:34 Speaker 03 I had no idea. I was standing there waiting for, it was a wine tasting time. I actually was waiting for the tacos outside, but they send you into the winery. So I went in anyway, and I was waiting there, just nothing, just me and the person, the retailer, standing there, and he just stood there, and I just stood there, and I was waiting and waiting, and that's, you know, that's usually not the case at a winery. They even run right up to you with a glass and what do you want to taste? And I, because I've been to a lot of them, you know, living in California. I now live in New Mexico. So I waited and I said, well, you have sherry, and I asked to taste that.
33:16 Speaker 03 And so he just grabbed a glass and he gave me about an eighth of a teaspoon of sherry. You can't taste the sherry in an eighth of a teaspoon. So I just said, okay, maybe that's his demeanor. So I'll just take the sherry. It was okay. And then a whole group of people came, and they were all white. And he went right over to them, hello, how you doing? Welcome to Blah, everything, completely not what he did with me. Brought out all the glasses, what do you want to drink? What do you want? Let me know. And I was still standing there, waiting for him to get the sherry I asked him to buy. He didn't even want to make the sale. That's how bad it was.
34:01 Speaker 03 So I could take that in, and I used to take those kind of things in and crumble, succumb to them. I could take action toward the winery. Bring all my friends down and tell you. But I did write a letter, so I did not do anything. And I sent them a picture of me and my zen ropes. That's all. It's just like a very quiet passive, I guess, protest. I did tell them what happened, exactly how it happened. I didn't add anything to it. I just said exactly how it happened.
34:35 Dan Harris? Did they get back to you?
34:36 Speaker 03 No.
34:37 Dan Harris? No?
34:38 Speaker 03 No one.
34:39 Dan Harris? I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened. That sounds...
34:42 Speaker 03 No one has gotten back, and there's nothing to be done, but I wanted to let them know. And I did say, I hope this is not all your employees. You know, I didn't want to blame all of them, but that one person definitely was representing you. So I think these kinds of things can make you tender emotionally. And in the moment, I wasn't. I didn't have time to process it in that moment, really. I wanted to get my tacos, which was the reason why I came. Because they had this new truck out there, and they were having these really wonderful, different kinds of tacos. And I wanted to try it, Taco Tuesday, and that's all I was there for. And every time I feel my stomach flop or my heart jump in those kinds of experiences,
35:27 Speaker 03 because like I said, it was very in the body, it wasn't in the mind. I couldn't think it out or anything. But when I feel that in my body, I just feel that sensation, and I allow it to process itself in my body. I don't take it to my mind. So I didn't go right away and write the letter, because that would take it up there to my head. So I just stayed with it in the body. I know how to breathe with it, though, so that it's not harmful now. I know how to breathe with it and to allow this sensation that's happening that is older than me.
36:05 Speaker 03 It's ancestral, and then it came into me too as I grew up, is who I am. And it happened, it's been happening, and it's going to continue to happen, even if racism is taken away and something else comes into play. Let's say now I become the superior being on the planet. There's something with that as well. There's a sensation in the body that's got to be not feel good. And so I think that I just, over time...
36:39 Speaker 03 That kind of thing would have paralyzed me. But I was still tender, but still able to engage and take action and not be pulled over to the curb by it, murdered by it. I took care of my body in it because I knew it was affecting my body with breath and stillness and breath and stillness. And I actually went and I didn't even leave the winery. I sat down right there. That's how I was able to watch him with the other group. I just sat there, but I wasn't watching him. I was watching me.
37:13 Speaker 03 I didn't run out either. I wanted so bad to hold on to this because it's that very thing that I am healing. But if I keep running away from that thing inside me that I'm healing, I will continue to let it be about other people, white people, blue people, purple people. It would just be like that all the time. So in order to deal with my own tenderness and to transform that tenderness, the same thing I was talking about in the beginning, you know, having that dive and then lift and flight at the same time, I allow that to happen. And it's so confusing for the mind. So you can't draw the mind into it because the mind going, am I up or am I down? Am I up? You know, the mind gets too involved in what you're trying to feel.
37:58 Speaker 03 So tenderness has been a journey for me. And now have I accomplished it? No. That profound liberating, you know, tenderness that I would like to have. And my teacher let me know. You have to do this ceremony. It was so funny. It's caused you so, like you're a head student and you have to do this questioning kind of ceremony in the end of your service as a head student. And when I got to the end, she said, I don't think you're tender enough yet in front of like, you know, 200 people.
38:34 Speaker 03 And I thought it was good because she knows me. She knew that I wanted to accomplish tenderness. I'm going to accomplish this name. I'm going to become completely tender, totally tender in a powerful liberating way. Where that when I express myself, you will feel it. You will know it. They will know it. Folks will see it. That's external. But I know that in, within me, that process is still going on and will till the day I die. I know that she set me on a course of Zenju, on a path of that.
39:12 Speaker 03 And for her to set a person who is black and queer and has experienced oppression all over her life, every day, was profound for her to invite tenderness into my life as a path of liberation, not as a wounding or in a paralyzed place or an emotional place. And I just really have been still sitting with it and will still sit with it. A lot of people say, well, I don't want to be tender, so I'm not reading your book. And, and that's fine because I know that they're the very ones that are not able to use their own tenderness and they're afraid of it.
39:55 Speaker 03 We're afraid to be that way, to be vulnerable. It takes a particular person and path and development, I think, to do it. I don't think everyone can. And I don't suggest it for everyone. But I do present it as a possibility, that there is a possibility in everyone's life to have a liberatory in full life, not dictated and legislated and given, but one that is nurtured and grows within you with your meditation, with your prayer, no matter who you are. You know, I feel like I have had a lot of training and suffering, public, at home and in the world.
40:40 Speaker 03 And, and there's no way to get away from that other than to get away from people or die. And I chose to be with people.
40:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:50 Dan Harris? I'm glad you made that choice personally. You've made a few references to some of the difficulties you've experienced during the course of your life. Only if you're comfortable with it, I'd be interested to hear more about that and how it ultimately led you to Zen Buddhism.
41:04 Speaker 03 Being led to Zen Buddhism, I would have to say, had nothing to do with Zen or Buddhism or Buddha or any of the terminology around it. Because the same thing, I was very much a Christian and I still feel it in my blood. And I, I went to church into my 30s. I was very much not, not an evangelical Christian. I was raised in a Church of Christ, which has that aspect in it. But I was always curious about life and death. And I think the things that happened to me were so many places in which I almost died.
41:48 Speaker 03 Like, I have a lot of near-death experiences. I think more than I should have. But to be up on death so much, you know, so close all the time in my life, I think helps one develop a strong sense of tenderness as a powerful medicine and not as something that is to be ignored or for weak people.
42:12 Dan Harris? How would you define tenderness?
42:14 Speaker 03 I know how it feels. So that always comes up first. It feels very vulnerable. I want to use the word open, but that's always so general to me. Like, what is that? And I feel like it's being completely engaged with one's heart in the moment, where one is in the moment, where the heart is. So a lot of people say, well, what if you're enraged? That's not the heart, that's the mind. If I'm enraged, it's the mind. I know that. I was enraged so much that in my beginning years of teaching, I remember being enraged. And I talk about, in my Sangha remembers, I suspended myself from the Sangha.
43:01 Speaker 03 I said, I can't, I gotta go. I said, I'm not coming back for a little while because I knew if I stay, I would hurt them. Even if I was speaking nicely, something would hurt. Or, and maybe I have because of my enragement. You know, it's because it's like you can see it in people's face. And then I could see their rage because they have hurt me too. It has been mutual. I can see their rage. So I really studied it and I'm still studying rage. When I say that, I'm not reading books. I'm, I'm allowing that I don't really know what it is. I speak the word, so I don't really know what tenderness is. I can just say, I know I'm in my heart.
43:46 Speaker 03 It's a state of being in my heart. And that heart is, some people say heart mind or heart consciousness. So each part of our senses, right, is a consciousness. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose. All of our senses have a consciousness and the heart does too. And so I'm working on heart consciousness all the time. I'm much, I feel like I'm much better at it because I'm able to bring myself through breath, through song, through meditation, through chanting, through stillness, back to the heart. And to stay close to the earth. The deepest peace was my kind of journey with the earth, that book that I wrote
44:30 Speaker 03 that came out December 2020. And I wrote that book in a way that people would experience tenderness. You could say if peace is part of it. I didn't want people to actually to walk away with, like they could actually quote me or gain knowledge that it wasn't a book of knowledge in quoting me as they did with the way of tenderness or sanctuary, those other two books. And I was wondering if anybody would pick it up at all.
45:04 Speaker 03 Because it had to me that touch of tenderness in it. And at a time when everyone is feeling completely the opposite, if not intensified rage. So if they see the word peace, they might not want that. But the peace I'm not talking about is where you still engage, you still have your rage, you still have whatever. As a human being, you might still be part of movements, but at the same time, there's this poetry of life.
45:34 Dan Harris? Much more of my conversation with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel right after this.
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46:11 Dan Harris? Well, let me throw a question at you and we'll see what happens. I'm a little worried just because it's a big question, but we'll see what happens.
46:18 Speaker 03 Okay, I'll try. It's new.
46:21 Dan Harris? With apologies, there's a sentence or two that you wrote, two sentences, that just caught my attention. Here it is. "I'm not advocating love as an answer to all of the ills of the world. Then again, it is just that simple to be love."
46:40 Speaker 03 Yes. I have a little pamphlet and it's free on Amazon called Be Love. And I have, I think the poem's in there too, on being, being love. And it was part of the tenderness journey, without naming love, but having experienced where I have felt love. Instead of trying to capture that and give it as a thing or object or take it away, withdraw it from people, I wondered what the experience would be to be love and what that would look like. I think Be Love has sold more books, maybe just because it's free, but has been downloaded
47:25 Speaker 03 from Amazon more than anything I've written. And I was exploring our kind of like love as a deep desire, how we feel like it's outside, or we have to do something to receive it, or that we think that our hearts can be closed. And we can close off to people and things and places, but our hearts don't close. They never close. So even in our thinking we're closing off, this feeling of love, we can call it love, even in that we have the maybe anger and rage or dislike of someone,
48:07 Speaker 03 even to spend time to have that, there's love in it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have anything. You would just be numb. Love is, I think about babies, and I write about that coming into the world, and I think they come to teach us love. We don't teach them. They show it. The soonest they're born, everybody's all over that baby, mostly. Even if their parents aren't, somebody's all over that baby. Somebody in the world. And that baby, unconditionally, without a word, just its being, its essence, its being born, is teaching us love. The baby teaches the parents love.
48:52 Speaker 03 And if the parents are unable to learn it, then there's trouble. And that's how I try to be love, is to remember that experience. I've been around a lot of babies. Been around, people have died. I've been around a lot of babies. I love being around children. I love children. I love them. All the way up to when they're sassy, you know, teenagers. I love them. I love the sassy, actually, teenagers more. But I love them. And what they teach us. You know, they're so profound in their language and their being, even when they're angry and ugly. And having a fit, you know.
49:35 Speaker 03 I just, there's just something about them that cannot be ignored. So be love is to be in just in that direct experience of being in the world every moment without judgment, without being an expert, without making a project to fix something, but just being, you know, not knowing. Baby doesn't know which one's the mother or the father.
50:05 Speaker 03 They're just looking. There's a practice in Buddhism of watching people die, but I think it's a great practice to watch babies.
50:14 Speaker 03 And watch them look around and see if you can develop that kind of scene. Just looking, no judgment, no nothing. Not knowing nothing. You hear a voice, you hear, you see a person, just being like that, which will allow space for hopefully an experience of love, whatever that is. Not love itself, but an experience of love, because we don't know that either, really. We're just here practicing every minute.
50:49 Dan Harris? It's been really nice to sit with you for this time today. I really appreciate your time. And just in closing, you mentioned a few of the names of your books, but can you just list them off again for folks who want to, who want to dive in and, and maybe anything that, any other resources you have out there that people might want to access?
51:08 Speaker 03 Yeah. I think if you're a beginner around Buddhism, I have a book called Tell Me Something About Buddhism, but it's, it's very different. All my books are different than what the title says, so you're not going to get the same answers as you may get in other books, because I do use my life experience, even my experience in being in church, what God means to me and Jesus, it's all in there. It's all in Tell Me Something About Buddhism. It's a Q and A kind of book with illustrations that I did. There is The Way of Tenderness, Awakening Through Race, Sexuality and Gender. And I always tell people, you know, if you get that book, I didn't write a book about
51:52 Speaker 03 Dharma and race, whereas some books are that way. I wrote a book about awakening. And race and sexuality and gender were gateways. So everyone has a gateway. Find your gateway. Read the book, find your gateway. Could be illness, could be death, could be anything. It's not a book on race or sexuality or gender. And then there's sanctuary, a meditation on home and homelessness, of course, in a spiritual sense. And then I wrote a book on, let's see, after that, okay, The Deepest Peace, just came out, December 2020.
52:33 Speaker 03 Deepest Peace, Contemplations From A Season of Stillness. And I actually wrote most of that here in New Mexico. On February the 8th will come the book called The Shamanic Bones of Zen. And it's the ancestral, looking at the ancestral spirit and mystical heart of a sacred tradition. And what I'm trying to do is bring, I really could say Buddhism, but I haven't studied all Buddhism, so I just said Zen. But I'm trying to bring back our, you know, focus on the sacred rituals and ceremonies of Buddhism and how I feel we only have a tiny baby fingernail of transmission, that
53:18 Speaker 03 there's so much missing, you know, because it is ritual and ceremony and it's very hard to transmit and transmit that to, make it a transmission to the world. So I feel like we're missing a lot. And I talk about how colonialism affected the Buddhism we practice and how it affected the indigenous Japanese religions and traditions, spiritual traditions. Buddhism impacted them a lot. And then I have a novel coming out next year called The Waters of Les Bois, and it takes place in Haiti. That one is spiritual, spiritual, magical, historical fiction.
54:01 Dan Harris? You're a busy Buddhist. I love it. Thank you again for doing this. It was great to meet you, if only virtually, and I really appreciate your time.
54:11 Speaker 03 Thank you again for inviting me and hope we stay connected.
54:16 Dan Harris? Likewise, likewise. Thanks again to Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. If you want.
54:25 Dan Harris? Want to learn more about her, her books and her teaching, you can go to her website, Zenju, Z E N J U dot org. One last thing to say before I go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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