EP 118: Part 2: Integral theory and overcoming systemic challenges| Diane Musho Hamilton

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Hi Fleet Maul here.

In this episode of the Radical Responsibility podcast, I'm going to have my second conversation, the second one of three with Diane Musho Hamilton, an extraordinary Zen teacher, integral theorist and teacher, award winning mediator, and extraordinary human being. So if you've ever wanted to know more about integral theory, you want to dive into this series with Diane. Mucho Hamilton. Now, if you haven't listened to the first episode yet, you might want to go back and listen to that, although you don't necessarily have to listen to them in order. But here we go. So in this episode, the Diane and I speak about how a bigger perspective can support resilience even through life's and history's darkest chapters, what she learned when her community of practitioners suspended Dharma study and practice for a year to put their energy toward understanding climate change, and what an enlightened prepper movement might look like. Okay, so extraordinary woman, extraordinary conversation. Give it a listen.

Welcome, Diane.

Hey, I'm happy to be here.

Sweet.

Thank you for having me.

It's really great to have you back.

And to be able to have this conversation today.

So I'm going to share a little bit from your bio so people really get to know about you who don't know you already. So Diane was the first director of the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolutions for the Utah Judiciary, where she established mediation programs throughout the court system. She has mediated a broad range of disputes and transactions, including divorces, probate employment contracts, multiparty negotiations. She works with consummatees in a variety of settings, including private industry, governmental agencies, and nonprofit organizations, and of course, with individuals. She's well known as an innovator in dialogues, especially conversations about culture, religion, race, and gender relations. Diana is the recipient of several prestigious awards for her work in this area, including the Peter W. Billings Award from the Utah State Bar, the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution Peacekeeper Award, and the Judicial Administrative Award and Friend of the Court, and Most recently, the 2016 Peacemaker Award from the Brigham Young University center for Conflict Resolution. Diana has been a practitioner of meditation for over 35 years. She began her studies at Naropa University in 1983 with Chogyam Chung Phramche and became a zen student in 1997. In 2003, she received ordination as a Zen monk with her husband, Michael Zimmerman, and received Dharma Transmission from kempo Roshi in 2006. For her Zen practice is a fundamental commitment to experiencing reality as it is beautiful, ungraspable, seamless. Diane facilitates Big Mind, Big Heart, a process developed to help elicit the insights of Zen and Western audiences. Diane is considered a pioneer in articulating and applying the insights of an integral life practice based on the work of ken Wilber. Since 2004, she has worked with Ken Wilber and the Interval institute in Denver, Colorado. In 2008, Diane Co founded Two Arrow Zen, a center for Zen study and practice in Salt Lake and Torrey, Utah. Diana with her husband Michael Mugaku Zimmerman. She is executive director of Two Arrow Zen & Co founder of the Integral Facilitator, a training program oriented to personal development and advanced facilitator skills. Diana is author of Everything is Workable, A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution and the Zen of you and Me, A Guide to Getting along with Just About Anyone. Very helpful. And her current book is On Compassionate how to Speak and Listen from the Heart, which was released by Shambhala Publications just last year.

Again, welcome.

Diane. Thank you very much, Fleet. It's wonderful to be.

Here. It's great to be with you and I'm grateful to have this opportunity and just in reading your bio because I've seen you in action before and you really are a consummate facilitator and just have so much skill in terms of working to create safe and creative places for listening and.

Communication. Thank.

You.

So Diane, this has been an incredibly challenging year, as we're all well aware this last 12 months or so with the pandemic and everything else going on. I mean, we could just focus on the pandemic. We could forget that we've been going through this whole reckoning with race here in the US and in the west altogether and, you know, the long overdue reaction and intolerance for these police killing tragedies and how they affect mostly people of color. And you know, we had a conversation about this last year just as this was all setting in. Right. And we probably had some ideas about how it was going to unfold and I'm curious as to how it has been for you, for your family, for your community and what you've learned and whether there's been surprises.

Here. We are a long way into it and it's not over.

Yet. Yeah, I think for me, Fleet, probably like many of the people who'll be listening to this, because I have a meditation practice and I've spent lots of many, many Hours on retreat, the kind of withdrawal part, the part of, you know.

Simplifying our social lives and retreating and being in quarantine or in lockdown or whatever, that part was not so challeng for me in the sense that I actually, particularly in the very beginning, I remember feeling some relief and enjoying the slowing down and just the sense that I could turn inward a little bit. I think for me, and maybe for many people, there's still.

You might say, the side effects or the secondary complications of all of this. So for instance, my mother was in assisted living. She got Covid.

It almost killed her. So I actually put on my PPE and went in and was kind of her nurse within assisted living for about five days. And then it became clear that we just needed to get her out. So we moved her out and then eventually found her another place. But I would say from about July to October of last year, I was really dealing with the implications for me and my family around having an elderly person with COVID because her symptoms lasted for a long time. We had to move her more than once and she had brain fog and kind of a dementia kind of quality. She was very disoriented and scared. So she required just a lot more attention from me and from my siblings. And then things quieted down again. And you know, of late my son, who has down syndrome, has been in isolation and has recently started to hear voices. And I think the stress and the isolation has been really hard on him. And so now I'm working with his mental health and seeing what I can do to support him and maybe address what it is besides the.

Lockdown that's really causing that for him. So as of late I'm really in the, what I call these secondary effects, not having lost anyone to Covid, but certainly knowing people who have and feeling that loss as well. So it's been intense. It's certainly been more intense than I thought it was going to be at the beginning because I didn't think about all these additional implications. So.

Challenging. So not theoretical at all, not academic, not at.

All.

Well, like you in some aspects it has been a relief for me and that I was a complete road warrior before and I've been on like a year long retreat at home with my wife, which has been great, too much work. But we do practice a lot. It's foundational to our life and I'm a little bit of an introvert by nature, so it probably hasn't been hard on me. As my wife, Sophie, she's much more Padma, much more Extroverted, and she does miss her friends and the social interactions. But it has been really incredibly challenging. And as you know, I lost my son, not related to Covid, but.

Last.

September.

Really the aftermath of a head injury that happened 12, 14 years.

Ago, but eventually epilepsy and seizures and caused his death last.

September. So life doesn't get any easier and doesn't seem like it anyway. We may have moments of respite, but it certainly is challenging and just seems like this whole conversation on resilience is just so important. I mean, you know, personally, I've had a lot of losses in my life and I lost my. My beloved partner Denise, back in 2008. Actually, at the same time, my.

Son was going through his head injury.

Thing, and that really wiped me out. And, you know, I was a practitioner then. She was a strong practitioner then. She was able to complete her life in a beautiful.

Way. But once she was gone, I just was a.

Mess. And I really didn't want to avoid the.

Grief. But in retrospect, I feel like I kind of just collapsed and maybe.

Very understandable, but this time around, I kind of decided I'm going to use.

Everything I know and all my practices.

To try to work with this proactively.

And not avoid the grief, but also just not collapse. And.

I've really, actually through the love and support of many people, but also through my own practice and taking this proactive approach, I've actually found a lot of strength and a lot of peace, and I feel in a really good place with my son. And so, you know, I think this whole conversation about resilience is really realizing that we need to be proactive to take care of ourselves and be prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. And that these a lot of.

The skills that you and I have.

Been learning and working with in the contemplative world and the meditation and mindfulness world for so long, this stuff really does work. And it gives hope that.

We can learn to.

Maybe even thrive in the first of the kind of adversity that we've been facing.

So.

We are seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel, although it's hard to say because a lot of people are getting vaccinated. I don't know if you had a vaccination.

Yet. I've had my first.

Vaccination. Yeah, I've had my first one, too. And hopefully Sophie will get her first one next week. And I have friends that have had both. And so we're seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel. But we're still getting spikes here in the US And. And it's totally out of control in places like Brazil and other places. And so. But. But we. I think we're starting to imagine a little light at the end of the tunnel. And I. And I'm just wondering how you feel about the way we're going to come out of this. Right. You know, have we learned anything? You know, and maybe even just how you feel about your community there in Salt Lake? And Tory, whether we've learned anything or whether, you know, as soon as we can, we're just going to jump back into the old way and put the. Put down the gas pedal and go right back into all the craziness. I mean, what's your sense of whether we've learned enough or. You know, I'm sure a lot of that's going to happen, but if enough people learn something that there could be some shifts here, some real.

Shifts. What I notice is that.

In a way, it relates to resilience, you know, that there is this tendency for us to kind of want to resume what we call normalcy. More contact socially, going out, being able to fly, doing all those things that we've. And there's a way that to. To kind of bounce back, if you will, after something that's been this widespread and had so much impact all over the globe. And here in the States, we've experienced a tremendous amount of loss from it. But I do also experience something that feels a little bit like denial because it's been so politicized that where there was some opportunity to come together and work with this hardship, it turned into almost like two parts of ourselves. One part that acknowledged the fragility and adapted, and the other part that, you know, wanted to sort of overcome it in a certain way. So I feel a little bit like I see that, and I feel that in myself and also in other people where some. Some part of us just doesn't want to really relate to some of these. These challenges around being human.

You know, I think in our practice a lot of times, how to make direct contact, how to be, you know, very intimate and related to the difficulty in our lives. You know, it's High Holy Week, I know, for the. Obviously for the Catholic Church. And this week, a lot is a lot about that. You know, the story of the crucifixion and of the suffering and then of the regeneration at the end of the crucifixion. And I know in our Buddhist practice, that's a lot of what we study and work with too is how does one actually encounter pain, how does one encounter loss and setbacks and just the fact that there is birth, there's old age and there's sickness, there's also death, and that somehow having a genuine relationship to the truth of that is part of, I think what true resilience is, is like how do we make genuine relationship to our pain and work with it and, and then discover that part of us that's beyond that. So those are my thoughts. I think there's some health in how we're going to come back, and I think there's some.

Denial.

Yeah, we were talking earlier and I had the opportunity to spend all day Sunday in a retreat with my Buddhist teacher and it was really five hours of teaching on suffering, the nature of suffering, birth holdings, and how we relate with that and how we can relate with that in a dignified and transformational way rather than, you know, either.

Shifting into denial and disassociation and shutting.

Down or getting reactive and all the things we do. So, you know, with the pandemic, I've heard from a lot, especially some of our indigenous friends and elders, you know, that this is really as horrific as the pandemic has been and all the loss has been, and not to in any way be dismissive of that, but at the same time, this is a teaching and this is, you know, the earth speaking to us and that there's a message here. And you know, whether we believe that's a direct connection or we think it was random or whatever we might think. But I think it's really helpful to see it as a teaching. And for me, I'm very grateful that I'm not going back to that road warrior lifestyle. I mean, I'll travel very judiciously for very high value professional opportunities and high value professional pleasure opportunities, like traveling with my wife to Spain or something like that. But, you know, hopefully a lot of us have learned that our previous way of living on the planet is not working very well and that maybe this can wake some of us up to make the connection between the pandemic and climate change and all the rest of it. But it is difficult to make sense of all this. And you know, today is really focused on sense making and systems thinking in terms of this whole broader conversation about resilience. So we are living in a hyper complex world and all these interlocking, interdependent systems of confusion and suffering and injustice, the public health crisis with the pandemic and the natural injustices that are there, which are part of the overall still inequities that we have around race and class and all the social economic injustices and the background of the climate change and how our information ecology is broken down, being in the so called post truth era and the way people are manipulating truth and the kind of mainstream media breaking down. So how do you make sense of that? And I know you work a lot in community, you have your Zen community and work a lot with people. So what do you think about. Because we can't make sense of things, it's very hard not to just get into shutdown or denial. Right. If we can't make sense of things and find some level of confidence that we can move forward or find some way to add value or.

Contribute.

It'S kind of overwhelming when we look at the whole basket of our enormous challenges. And as you said, they're systemic and they're vast and they're complex.

I guess one of the.

Assertions from some of the developmental theorists is that.

As human beings emerge in consciousness and as we.

Start to understand at a new level, that we actually seem to be able to address the problems from earlier levels of development. But I think there is.

I guess the issue about what the relationship of technology and being human is going to be is super interesting. I mean the conversations on AI and singularity, I mean that technology in a certain way puts the whole lower right into high.

What's that word? High resolution. Yeah, because it's a lot about our systems and our systems are so highly technological now. That was one of the things that I experienced working going through the mental health system is how much I was interacting with the system and not with people and how difficult it was to actually find a genuine human being who had the right training to work. With my son, I was encountering the mental health system and the medical system and you know, from the emergency rooms to the same day clinics to trying to get in to see, you know, a psychiatric professional and the waiting list being eight months long, three months long, I mean, it was just really remarkable. So I think that I think about it in two ways to get to the heart of your question. One is.

Life itself has its own agenda. And we know that there have been five or six major.

Extinctions and that life has always bounced back with more complexity in the nervous system. And therefore every time there's more complexity, there's more capacity for an internal experience. So our brain and nervous system is the most complex thing that we know of and that because of it we have this incredible inner life, we have self identity, we have thoughts we have values, we have dreams, we have imagination, we have mathematics, we have music. We have all these things that were never there before. So some part of me just trusts in this tremendous unfolding. And then secondary to that, I would say that human beings seem to be able to respond to our challenges and that our ancestors had their sets of challenges, the people before that had their sets of challenges. And that because we've been given these spiritual practices, we actually have, as you, as you pointed out, you know, when your son died, which is lives at the loss of a child, as we know, the most devastating thing that anyone can experience. And yet, for whatever reason, you were able to draw on the teachings and the practices that you've been given, and you were able to grieve and also stay positive and stay in relationship to your son's memory and to his energetic imprint on you as a human being. So I have a lot of trust in that too. I have a lot of trust in these traditions and these practices. So I trust in life and I trust in my spiritual practice and, and in the communities that participate in those practices. Whenever I look at atrocities, you know, the Holocaust or the people who always seem to do the best are ones that have a bigger perspective and a bigger relationship to things.

To something beyond themselves, something greater. So that's how I derive hope, I.

Suppose. Yeah. And I think that confidence, that trust you're talking about is hard won, actually, through resilience practices and the contemplative practices. I've been going with the Zen peacemakers, Auschwitz, every year for our Bearing Witness retreat. And that's one of the reasons I go, because it just keeps expanding my mind and expanding my heart.

In order to be able to face these things and not turn away. So you mentioned the developmental perspectives, and you and I have both been involved in the integral work and integral study for a long time, and you've certainly been a teacher of it. And one of my concerns is especially with the looming or already present climate emergency, which is actually, it's hard to imagine when I first I realized, because I've been aware of the, the dangers of global warming and climate, you know, really my whole adult life of different things, but beginning to realize a few years ago the extent of this and that we're actually facing an existential threat for humanity, you know, in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children, you know, in the next several decades, like if we don't turn things around, it's just hard to imagine that it has come to that. And one of my fears is that you know, we have this ongoing, what is sometimes called the culture wars here in the US and in the west altogether. And, and you know, often it's, it's, you know, it's seen within these evolutionary stages of traditionalism, modernity and post modernity and traditionalism often associated with conservatism and tending to be hierarchical and membership oriented and major religions. And you know, that. And then, you know, modernity is the world of where things really opened up to where we got, you know, human rights and more freedom for individual pursuit and happiness. And it's the whole modern world we live in. And then, you know, the postmodernist milieu, which went back to the collective and it really kind of dominates culture and there is really dominating mainstream culture these days. And so that battle has been going on for a long time. And I think you and I see the possibility beyond that into a kind of post postmodernist or integral thinking, bigger map, bigger view thinking. But my fear is that we're going to stay preoccupied with these culture wars while the planet melts down under our feet. That if we don't find some way to come together and get out of that polarization, how are we going to come together with enough shared consensus and will to actually change our lifestyles and change the governmental policies and do what we need to do to get a carbon neutral economy, to regenerate the topsoil, to regenerate, force the plan, the things that will actually turn us around. I think your thoughts about how do we, how do we get beyond these culture wars? Because they don't seem to be slowing down anytime.

Soon. Yeah, I thought, well, the culture wars, you know, generally.

We, you know, human beings, the best way for us to solve those kinds of issues that are more ideological and identity based than they are substantive is to try to move people's attention to something that they have in common, to move our attention to something we have in common and to join around that. So looking at how Northern Ireland and Ireland worked out, some of that had to do with just simply putting their attention on projects that, I mean, the 80s, you would have never thought that their atmosphere would change there in the way that it has.

And probably a lot of it has to be local and a lot of it has to sort of within the context of the media, which of course thrives on the conflict because we're evolutionary predisposed to move towards that which is threatening. So wherever there's conflict, it tends to capture attention. Media, as we know, takes a lot of advantage of that. But hopefully around the edges and within. I mean, the fossil fuel industry knows it's over. You know, there are lots of ways. I mean, I understand that the, like, government fleet is going to move to all Electric within the next 10 or 15 years. So my hope is that there'll be so much movement that's just simply within people's work lives and within corporate lives and within just how it is we take care of business that hopefully can just happen without. There's no way that we're going to come together around our identities. And in fact, you know, protecting the planet per se doesn't. I mean.

It'S hard to present it, but there is this idea that, you know, at a. At a traditional level of development, we think in terms of us and them and the planet is separate from. Right. So the planet is always something to be acted upon. That's not true in indigenous culture, but it is true in this mythic meme, us and them. Sort of, there's us and there's the planet, and we actually outgrow that at a certain point. That's just not how people understand and see the world. And so doing environmental protection and climate work and all that just becomes much more natural when you don't see the planet as other than yourself. So my hope would be that we gradually outgrow it. But in the meantime, you know, there's just a lot of opportunity in the private sector and nonprofit sector to start doing this work. And I think a lot of work is going on, but it's slow. And there's no doubt that when you, you know, you read the climate change reports and you watch the videos from the Arctic and the Antarctic, and you really realize all that cool water is pouring into the oceans. It's very difficult to feel hopeful. I know for me it is. It's very difficult to feel hopeful. But I just try to hold the big.

Picture. Yeah, well, I've been watching a lot of those videos and exploring that a lot with my wife. So we've really been in a deep dive with all this for several years. And yet you do end up going through hopelessness and you end up going through grief and mourning. And then somehow, if you're willing to stay with that, at least I come back to a sense of hopefulness and possibility. And. Well, you mentioned there are amazing things going on in the world, really amazing things at the technological level, at the community level. And I remember there was a TED Talk quite a number of years ago. I wish I could remember the person's name, but he basically, he Said we have an overly negative view of where we're at and because we don't see what's going on. And he was connecting the dots of all these amazing projects and nonprofits. And he said if you actually connect the dots and get the gestalt of that, it's much more hopeful. And unfortunately that's not what's presented in the media often. Right. And we also have the problem that the politicized version of traditionalism tends to reside in right wing or conservative politics and often.

Demonizes even ecological concern as being some kind of liberal conspiracy or something to give away sovereignty or something. So we certainly do have our work cut out for us. But I like what you said about being local because it is kind of hard to imagine how all this is going to get fixed. You know, although there are some really interesting things happening. I've been paying a lot of attention to the, the emergence of the electric vehicle industry and self driving electric vehicles. And it's not going to be that long before the car is going to go away. There's going to be all these, we won't need cars anymore. It'll be an anachronism for somebody to have a personal car. They might have like a sport thing, a sports car or something, but. But we'll all be using self driving, public transportation. You just get on your phone and they show up at your house and pick you up. You know, I mean that's going to radically change thing. All the parking lots. The parking.

Lot. It's hard to imagine, isn't.

It? Yeah, you know, it's hard to imagine, but that's not, it's not so far away and it's going to accelerate. So there are these technological things on the horizon. But you know, I think we do. It's not going to be enough if there's not some, you know, fundamental change. And so maybe talk locally for a minute how you envision that because it seems like both we have to somehow develop the individual and collective resilience to have the will to do the things that will flatten the curve. Right. Of global warming. I saw a very hopeful film a while back. It was narrated by Woody Harrelson, I think, and it talked about how we're losing all our topsoil, which is a bad.

News. Was that on Netflix? I didn't see it, but it.

Was.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it's also talking about how we can reclaim the topsoil and that there are many people involved in regenerative farming practice and trying to shift, shift this because the Topsoil traps a tremendous amount of carbon. So the combination of getting on a more carbon neutral economy, reforestation and regenerating topsoil could the science says, actually flatten the curve and start to bring global temperature back down again. But it's going to take a lot of collective will and consensus to do that. So even at the local level, how do we, because, you know, you mentioned like having a common reference point that takes our attention off our conflicts. Right. So the pandemic, hello. You know, to what extent? I'm hopeful that it's done it for some of us, for a lot of us. But you know, also the specter of climate change, the more evident that becomes, you know, can that take our attention off of our personal conflicts?

And. Well, it's funny, you know, we talk a lot about sea rise, right. And, but I'll tell you what's already here. Those wildfires and the fires in California, in Utah, all over the west, is probably in my mind, the most dramatic evidence of climate change. And so that, you know, that's gonna light a fire under people in.

Terms of the more volatile weather, with all the terrible hurricanes and that's clearly increasing. The fires in Australia last year.

And the flooding now, now we're having, I mean, it sounds really quite apocalyptic when we're talking about it, but it's just the case, you know, that's what, that's what's happening. And so, you know, our lives are always this incredible mashup of what's positive and what's negative. And that's what we mean by dualism. Right. And you know, how, how do we relate to this as an opportunity for us to grow whatever this next set of skills and attitudes and approaches are that we need collectively to deal with with climate change.

Yeah.

Yeah. How do you see this playing out even in your own Buddhist community or there locally in Utah? Because, you know, I know in some places people are starting to kind of organize locally, especially in rural areas, but developing new networks so that if big systems fall apart, they'll have, they can share resources and so forth. But it also is creating new types of community and new types of self organization because one thing is the collective will to create the momentum to do the things we need to do to slow down global warming. But the other thing is if we're not able to, then we're going to be in a survival place of how do we weather severe disruptions or even collapses. And so I'm curious as to how you see that playing out even in the reality of Your own Buddhist community and where people are, which is by, you know, by default, a fairly progressive, well educated, contemplative community. How are they relating with.

It? Well, we spent the entire year, last year we actually suspended our, our dharma study and practice for a year. And we actually spent.

12 months looking into climate change really directly on a lot of different levels. So the first was that I probably within my hour, I should say small Sangha, there are probably at least 20, 25 people who work directly in climate change. So for instance, I have a student who is involved in the Canadian government who works on Sea Rise and is literally in negotiations right now around how they're going to deal with the coast of Vancouver and BC. There's 400 years of farm, lots of farms along there. And basically they're negotiating how to help people basically give up farmland that's.

Been in their families for over 400.

Years. So very direct experience. So we basically spent the first quarter of our time actually having a presentation from everybody who's doing some kind of climate work. I have another student who's doing restoration work in the Baja who owns and helps to manage a very large reserve there. And they're working on.

Basically tree planting and regeneration of certain kinds of species that will be able to endure these kinds of changes. So that's something that's going on. I've got a couple of students who work in grassroots organization and education of people. I have another one who is an engineer in recycling heat from power plants. So there's a lot. So we just shared our experience with climate and it was really quite remarkable how many people are involved one way or the other. So that was the first quarter, the second quarter, we actually looked very directly into the literature and we shared, we talked about the three different perspectives on climate. The first person of what our own experience, direct experience is how we're impacted. The second person of what are we going to agree and how do we agree? And then the third person of the data and the science. One of the challenges is that whenever you go to kind of climate.

Organized climate and you know, climate awareness, they don't have that kind of understanding of the integral map to be able to help people with all three dimensions of their experience. And they tend to in some ways marginalize the first and second person, even though, I mean, because the data is. So what happens is that there's a lot of data dumping and then there's slideshows and there's. And then people leave both having their being individually filled with a lot of different feeling that they don't know how to work with. And then the second thing is they don't leave with any sort of. I mean, sometimes there will be, you know, efforts to get people engaged in some kind of climate action which, which can work. But we were basically talking about how do you have events and conversations that will address the whole human being and language, so, so that you're not leaving the emotional and personal.

So we spent a lot of time on that and then, then we looked at exemplars and we started to look at just people who've gone through really hard times. So people like Mandela or.

You know, we read some of Aurobindo and some of Deshardan who are evolutionary spiritual people, to talk about how we are in the process of evolving. Because the other thing is to, to look to people who can inspire you and people that have gone through hard things and can show you how to do that. So that was kind of what we did together. And now we're in the process of capturing all of those conversations and starting to build a curriculum from that that we're going to be able to basically offer to people who are trying to host climate action. So that's what we're doing. That's our individual work together. Yeah. In fact, we're just now going through the transcripts and starting to capture the.

Information. Wow, that is really, really.

Encouraging. And I mean, it's such a great example of this kind of integral intelligence, collective intelligence, and helping people, honoring the different perspectives and that multi perspectival approach. And I don't know whether you got into thinking about it in terms of the fourth person or meta perspectives, but a lot of the culture wars is all driven by people who are basically locked in first perspective and barely can do second perspective. And, and of course, I think you were pointing to another thing. When we focus totally on third perspective, you know, then we're not working, you know, we're not dealing with our emotions and our feelings. So just getting that. Any way that you can begin to build that people's capacity, our capacity for multi perspectival thinking and being and communicating. Wow, that is just so powerful. And I think that's just a great example of what can be done at a grassroots level to move us all forward in this.

Way? Yeah, so we're kind of, in some ways, the last book, I'll just hold it up for your audience. But Compassionate Conversations was really kind of based on how to have conversations that include things like hidden bias or social privilege or power relationships. But we were also thinking about climate in the sense that I think that we can do a much better job of helping engage the whole person so that we're supporting people in being able to.

I mean, Joanna Macy's been a great activist in the way. I mean, she's been doing that kind of work for so long. Her council, grief councils and those kinds of things. She's really helped people work with the emotions and taken a very strong stem as an activist over the years. So she's another example that we look to in terms of how do we do this? You know, what is it we need to be able to do and not to be overcome by the challenge, but just realize that, you know, it's something that we have to do together. You know, there's that old adage from Tibetan Buddhism, never transfer the load of an ox to a cow. You know, and I think that that's one of the problems we have is we think about these things by ourselves and we need to be engaged in our communities, as you said, with our sanghas and with like minded people, you know, and then we feel the strength to make the.

Changes. No, that's really beautiful. Yes. Joanna Macy's work's been so important.

And that deep dive that Sophie had been on, Joanna comes to me all the time and mine is helping me be willing to realize on the other side of that deep sense of despair and hopelessness and grieving, that on the other side of that is the energy for.

Transformation. So really, really important.

Work. So.

You know, a little bit tongue in cheek, but not really. Are there any preppers in your community? Well, the other side of this is, you know, things do collapse, you know, how do we.

Survive? I mean, we're tiny preppers, you know, we have a small food supply and we have our Zen center in southern Utah. And.

You know, the problem is, is that, you know, kind of classic prepping in some way doesn't work when the climate is so disrupted. You know, that's part of what we're discouraged by is that where our zendo is in southern Utah, the rain has suddenly started to dry out. So we don't have, even though we have gardens and you know, that it's a rural community where there's lots of access to agriculture and to animals and that kind of stuff. It's like all of a sudden the climate changing. So now the place where we've invested all this time and energy, we don't even know if it's going to.

Be a good place to.

Be. So that's part of the challenge and maybe we have to be light on our feet, you know, I'm not sure. Well, I don't mean what are you doing? I'm curious what you're.

Doing. Well, we're, you know, for, on a local level here, you know, we put solar on the house, we got a wood stove. We're trying to get completely off fossil fuels. We put a garden in. I've had gardens before, but first time here at this home with Sophie. We had a great garden last year. And so we're doing all those things to try to get off the grid as much as we can to be more self sufficient. We're building relationships with our neighbors. We've looked around at the possibility of getting a little lot somewhere out in the poonies or having a little, you know, and having our bug out bag ready. But, but somebody goes, I don't know about that. I think I'm going to make my stand right here. I love my house, you know, but you know, I don't mean to make light of that, but you know, and I know, you know, Jamie wheel and you know, he kind of takes us to a high form maybe, but there is something, you know, we, the kind of shadowy prepper movement used to be called the survivalist, right. You know, when you've got your, your capable, you know, guns and all that kind of thing and. But there's a more, I think, enlightened prepper movement going on now probably. But there's something about it that is also about being self sufficient, like learning the skills of self sufficiency I think is the enlightened side of the prepper thing. Like, you know, we've all lived, you know, we live in a world that's so complex and the complexity creates fragility and we're so dependent on that and many of us couldn't survive out in the wild for, you know, a minute, you know, barely. Right. And so, you know, starting to learn skills of self sufficiency even in an urban area. It's one thing I've loved about doing the Zen peacemaker street retreats. All these years I've been on, you know, I don't know, probably 15 street retreats led many of them in urban centers around the country. And you know, I don't want to end up homeless, but if I did, I know how to live in that world. I know how to navigate it. I know how to get my needs met. I know how to, you know, stay safe. I know how to get something to eat, I know how to.

Survive. In that world, I'll just hang out with you.

Fleet.

Well, it does give me kind of a baseline.

Confidence. You know, it's harder when you're.

Older. Yeah, I'm older. Well, I haven't been on one for a while, but when we get beyond the pandemic, I'm committed to doing another one with my friend Genre. We're going to go out and do one. So we'll see how this 70 year old body, 71 year old body does on the.

Concrete. But.

Yeah.

But I do think that there's something about all of us becoming more localized and more self sustained fish in some way without getting into, you know, going it alone.

Right. Well, you know what? You know who has the biggest food storage in the entire country is the entire state of Utah. Because the Mormons are basically encouraged to have a two year supply of.

Food. Yeah, they're the ultimate supper.

Right? Yeah. It's kind of amazing. And they do it.

Too. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's been fascinating, I think, some of the things you've pointed to. And I know that your community and you've held a lot of dialogue not only around climate change, but have been holding safe spaces for dialogues around race and some of these other issues that drive the culture wars. And it's really important work because I think I'm involved in working with others to try to work through a kind of organizational conflict right now. And what we're seeing is people are not talking. And if we can just get people talking to each other again. When human beings rub shoulders and talk to each other, good things happen. If you can create a safe space for that. I know that's, that's a specialty of.

Yours. Thank you.

Yeah. So I'm wondering if you would just lead us in a brief meditation or resilience exercise or some from your Zen background and so forth, if you'd be.

Sure. Yeah. How much time would you like me to.

Take? You know, three to five minutes, something like that? Whatever you feel is necessary to actually have us have a real.

Experience. Okay.

Great. So I would like to invite.

Everybody just to, to find your SITS bones and maybe move side to side on your SITS bones. Just connecting with gravity and allowing your awareness to drop more deeply into your abdomen, back and.

Forth.

Then if you'd like to just.

Circle around on your SITS bones and just feel as you do, a kind of buoyancy.

Gravity and buoyancy together.

And you can come to stillness.

And as you connect to gravity, if you would take a moment just.

To feel the part of you that.

Is connected and held by the dynamic tension of gravity. And then experience that miracle of the spine moving upright.

In relationship to that dynamic tension. And I'm always deeply fascinated by.

The fact that humans were once on.

All fours and that at a certain point in evolutionary history, we actually moved against gravity and became upright and exposed, if you will, our soft side to the world.

Just feel the length of your spine.

Through the top of your neck and maybe through the top of your head, about five, six inches.

So we're both grounded and evolving.

Moving in a direction of more goodness, truth and beauty.

Allow yourself to simply breathe.

Not interfering with the breath or manipulating the breath.

But allowing the breath to become deeper and fuller as you inhale.

And allowing the breath to lengthen as you exhale.

And marveling for just a moment about just how exquisitely incredible evolution is. How did we become these oxygen breathing creatures of consciousness?

And as you breathe and relax, relax behind your eyes.

That'S where the amygdala is located and where that signaling system is that alerts our brain that there's a threat. And the brain, as we know, secretes our fight or flight hormones. So just feel relaxation behind the eyes.

And marvel for a moment that we have this age old alert system that lets us know whenever we're in danger.

How incredible that is.

Bring your attention to your heart center for manual place.

Letting yourself inhale and expand.

And on the exhale, let go.

And notice whatever it is that you feel in your heart center for just a moment.

And since we're marveling at what remarkable creatures we are, take a moment to marvel at the intelligence of your heart center.

That unlike the mind, is very capable of accommodating everything in your experience that is painful.

That is untenable.

Or disturbing.

And just notice that there's a place for it in the human heart.

It's traditional that on the inhale we can create a space for our pain.

And our uncertainty.

And our grief.

And our outrage.

And on the out breath, we can notice a tremendous sense of well being.

Possibility.

Openness.

And availability that the human heart has the capacity to accommodate our entire experience.

For better and for worse.

And that when we rest in our heart center and we acknowledge the innate intelligence of the heart.

That all of our challenges and all of the unknowns that we're facing together feel workable.

As Trungpa Rinpoche said, this is the fearless proclamation of the lion's roar.

Everything's workable.

Thank you for your time everyone, and thank you for joining.

Wow. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I love your use of the word marvel. That's absolutely wonderful.

Yeah. Wow.

That was good. Thank you so much, Diane. So, Diane Mosho Hamilton, really grateful for everything you're bringing to the world and so grateful that you were willing to be part of our summit and such a rich discussion today. And really some.

The love the work you've been doing with your community. I just really love that, really.

On the.

Ground.

Collective self education process and experience, learning how to move between these different perspectives around an issue like climate, as well as some of the other issues. I think it just really models something that is encouraging for all of.

Us. Thank.

You. I'll share. When we were just beginning the process of synthesizing all that work that we did, so when it gets to.

A point where it's a little bit.

More processed, I'll be sure to share it with.

You. Great. Wonderful. Okay. So be well, stay safe and.

Healthy, and thank you again so.

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