I'm Jacob Kyle, and this is chittheads. Once we have more of a
direct knowledge of how reality actually is, that contact with living presence, which
is what I call it, That contact with living presence is equal to the
greater embodiment of devotion and compassion suit this reality is actually made of wisdom.
For what I call wisdom virtue, I mean consciousness and energy doesn't even begin
to let us know what is really happening here. Shouldn't you having this direct
experience. It isn't an intellectual thing. When we're having that experience, We're
not being in the position of an observer or someone who's gathering facts. It's
actually catalytic. So having that experience is equal to becoming more expressive of those
wisdom virtues. So you automatically or automatically maybe become more able to access the
compassion and wisdom of the heart, the devotion of the heart, the heart
being everywhere on tikasheivism. When it comes to the war in Palestine, I
have to a that I've felt somewhat paralyzed. I've felt quite frankly afraid about
getting it wrong, about saying the wrong thing. While I've been deeply moved
privately, I've struggled with how best to communicate my support beyond my close circle
of friends, whereas others have seemed empowered to be vocally supportive one way or
another. I've personally struggled with the moral complexities of holding both an acknowledgment of
growing anti semitism in the world, with the unspeakable violence and dehumanization that is
destroying so many Palestinian lives. And so I've needed to spend some time in
study and reflection and in conversation in order to speak more confidently about perhaps the
most significant global event in recent memory. And I call this a global event
because even if we live on the other side of the planet and would rather
ignore what's going on, this catastrophe like what happened and in the wake of
nine to eleven, I believe, in many subtle and not so subtle ways,
will reshape the imagination of human beings, just as the political decisions made
after nine to eleven have shaped not just my generation, but all generations.
Whether the new imagination forged in the wake of these events becomes a wiser and
more awakened one, or whether it slips us collectively into deeper modes of ignorance
is partly I think about how we choose to understand, respond, and relate
to this moment. So unlike other political crises in recent memory, I've had
to sit with what's going on, observe and learn more by listening to others,
studying more about the history and context behind what's happening in Gaza. I've
also had to analyze and critically reflect on some assumptions that I didn't even know
I had. As a result, I feel more strongly than ever before that
the pro Palestinian and cause, one that is undoubtedly complex and multifaceted, but
the morality of which ultimately feels profoundly clear, is a worthy and important one
for spiritual leaders and practitioners to learn more about and to stand behind, rather
than to shove our heads into the sand. Shambaviy noted in private conversation with
me and publicly in one of her social media posts, that spiritual leaders have
been uniquely silent right now. By comparison to other political movements of recent years,
spiritual leaders and practitioners have been less public about support for Palestine. Why
is this? Shambavi suggested to me that the motivation behind this silence perhaps boils
down to concerns about losing money or losing followers on whatever social media platform one
uses for their business's promotion, and I'm sure there's some truth to this,
but my sense is that there is also a more complicated and understandable fear in
some people's hearts that by standing more clearly in solidarity with Palestine, one lends
an unintended energy or implicit support to the very real threat of anti Semitism,
the reality of which we've witnessed tragically evolve over the last decade. And as
someone with a great many friends who are Jewish, this emboldened hatred of the
Jewish people deeply concerns me. But as I learned while watching the documentary Israelism
after Shambavie recommended it, this argument is actually one that is often distilled into
debates as a way of silencing criticism of the actions of Israel and supporting the
false claim that one cannot be critical of Israel's actions without being an antisemite.
This conflation of supporting a global people with supporting the contingent political decisions of a
modern nation state is one way that modern Israel's conservative political propaganda operates. The
truth is that one's concerns about anti Semitism should not and cannot be confused with
the valid critiques of a modern nation state, no matter the history that it
cites as a justification for its actions. Political Zionism, a way of thinking
that operates in the background of so much of modern Israel's decisions, is a
political and ideological movement that has evolved into a form that endangers the lives of
both Jews and Palestinians and indeed the entire Middle East, if not the world.
To equate Zionism with all Jewish people is as glaring an error as mistaking
the American Christian nationalist agenda with all Christians. Now I should add that I
personally cannot defend or excuse the actions of October seven as a legitimate form of
resistance to Israel's oppression, as some of the left hevverye done. As someone
who condemns violence in all of its forms, I simply can't go there.
But I do think that we are deluding ourselves when we imagine the solution is
simply to eradicate Hamas, because Hamas did not arise in a vacuum. It
arose from circumstances of sustained oppression and occupation over nearly one hundred years. Of
course, we don't want hamass in the world. Of course we don't want
to see October seventh or any other terrorist act happen again. But we don't
create a world without political violence by doubling down on the same toxic cycle of
violence, oppression, and retribution that created the conditions for enough people to be
radicalized in the first place. Radicalization and extremism are ways that human beings,
sometimes rightly or wrongly, respond to extremism, and the historical circumstances that gave
rise to the state of Israel were extreme. There is a great deal of
historical evidence, documentaries, and perspectives of political analysis to support all of us
in coming to terms with the fact that the creation of Israel was and continues
to be a collective trauma for Palestinians. We can acknowledge the truth of that
without calling for the eradication of Israel. But if we simply write off acts
of political violence as instances of pure evil and fail to contextualize these actions within
a compassionate view of the historical record, then I think we are leaning into
a view that dehumanizes the history and experience of Palestinians. When a people are
completely oppressed and lack any kind of political leverage or power within the dominant organizational
frameworks of the world, then they will wield powers of self actualization in ways
that exceed those institutions. They will fight back in ways that are sometimes shocking
to us. So if we want to eradicate extremist violence, then I think
we need to take a long, hard look at history, at the region,
and most importantly, at ourselves. We need to own the cultural myths
and narratives that have contributed to this crisis, and to shift that narrative to
one that humanizes Palestinians and rejects the Islamophobic framework that imagines Muslims as little more
than radical extremists whose agency and freedom of self actualization is denied them. But
what does this have to do with spiritual practice and contemplative teachings. Doesn't this
fall outside the scope of what yogis and meditators should be concerned about more than
this? Isn't it quote unquote n yogic to take a particular side on anything
in the so called material world, not according to shambavill and not according to
the spiritual tradition she endorses, which is one that embraces all phenomena as waves
on the ocean of spiritual life. She reminds us in this episode that one
of the greatest spiritual tales of the Indian tradition takes place on a battlefield in
the Mahabarita. The Pundavas and the Kaudava's, essentially cousins, are at war.
In a moment depicted through a portion of the Mahabarita famously known as the
Bagavadgita, Krishna joins Arjina in a silent space between the two armies. During
this exchange, Arjina speaks with God and shares his paralysis. This is his
family, after all, How can he participate in a war against his own
family amidst the dynamic unfolding of one of the world's great spiritual treatises. After
teaching Arjina about the nature of reality, the message Krishna offers is clear.
Argina's dharma is to fight now. There are countless interpretations of the Bagabaghita to
be found in the spiritual literature, and many would argue that the war between
the Pundavas and the Cautavas is an allegory for the war inside each one of
us. This is undoubtedly true, But when we use our spiritual worldview as
a container within which to bracket out the affairs of the world, are we
not simultaneously avoiding a confrontation with how the wars happening on the global stage are
in fact reflections of the wars and divisions within each of us. To take
this analogy further, to bypass the disease currently playing out on a global level
is to ignore the symptoms of disease in our very own body. If we
believe in the interconnectedness of everything, then we have to acknowledge that our global
body is in profound need of healing. So when we buy pass as the
wars outside, we bypass the war within. And in the war within,
there can be only one victor, that of wisdom for myself. To fight
on the side of wisdom means to be against ignorance, against ideological conformity,
and against worldviews that privilege one form of life over another. To be on
wisdom's side means to actively cultivate knowledge that helps me to see beyond the limiting
beliefs imposed upon me by a cultural status quo. It means seeing how organized
forces of suppression and domination shape our awareness fields in ways that cut us off
from the wellspring of love and compassion that is our true nature to build a
wiser world. Something I recently said in an interview was always at the foundation
of the embodied philosophy project is as much about building a spiritual home inside as
it is about working towards conditions of life that would support others to do the
same. After all, when a people are in flames, we are all
in flames. And if we dig deeply enough within ourselves, I think we
know this to be true. And when we know the truth, if we
listen carefully enough, we also can begin to receive insights about what to do.
Our spiritual practices offer us unique tools to access the truth, and when
we become intimate with that source of truth within ourselves, a motivating impulse of
love and compassion ignites us. But we can feel ignited, inspired, or
moved while still feeling stuck in the stories that limit our capacity for action.
One of the ways we accomplish this habit of self containment is by reciting what
I'll call the mantra of contraction. We tell ourselves that we are too small
to make a difference, that our voice doesn't matter, that it's too late
to enter the conversation, or that others are doing a better job at participating
than we could. I've told myself all of these stories recently, but my
exchanges with Shamba Ville over email, through my studies, and through this conversation
have shifted my perspective. Her most illuminative teaching for me has been to follow
how we individually feel moved to participate, beyond fear of retribution or sanction from
those who feel otherwise. Being moved to participate doesn't mean that you have to
participate in the social media storm of activity. It doesn't necessarily mean that you
have to join a demonstration or a political organization. To be moved can and
may mean any or all of these things, or it might mean something altogether
different, some form of engagement that is uniquely your own. For myself,
at this moment, I've been moved to shift the register of my conversations from
private ones to some that I can share here on the chain Head's podcast.
I feel moved to work through my own doubts and feelings of paralysis. By
learning from my studies and from individuals who have more insight than I do on
this issue. I feel moved to lay my fears aside about disappointing people who
feel otherwise or who would prefer I stick to the yoga, And perhaps most
importantly, I feel moved to work against any organized, ideological or political system
that does not speak for wisdom, that does not respect the sanctity of human
life, and that does not understand the pain we inflict upon ourselves when we
apathetically brush off as irrelevant to our comfortable lives the transparent and heartbreakingly profound injustices
being exerted upon the people of Palestine. Building a wiser world, of course,
will not happen overnight. We have to lay the foundations brick by brick.
Part of that involves cleaning house within our line, making room for that
sacred surge of compassion that will allow us to reconnect to our humanity. And
a part of that involves seeing clearly how wisdom shows up in the material world
and to lend our energy and support to its increasing manifestation. To me,
this is not a fight between good and evil. It is a fight between
wisdom and ignorance, which is a fight as equally present within us as it
is in the world around us. I suppose I'll leave it there for now.
As if that wasn't enough, let's transition now into my conversation with Shambavie.
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us. Sean Bavie, for listeners of the podcast, needs no introduction.
She is the director of Jayakula and one of the most inspiring teachers I know,
always managing to make some of the most esoteric teachings accessible and relatable to
life in the modern world. If you have any thoughts or ideas about the
episode, please feel free to reach out to me at Chittheads at embodied philosophy
dot com. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Hi, Shamba Vie,
Welcome back to the Chittheads podcast. Thank you, Jacob. I'm happy to
be here. It's so nice to see you again. It's been a bit.
It's been a while since we did a Chittheads podcast episode. I think
the last one we did was around the beginning of the pandemic, if I'm
not mistaken. Yeah, I think it was like your hundredth or one hundredths
and eight. Yes, yes, very very auspicious. Yeah, one hundred
and eight. It was one hundred and eight episode. And you also have
one hundred and eight is I mean a auspicious of course all over the the
yoga tradition, but you have it also represented nicely in your Kindred one o
eight Dot Love, which is one of your newer offerings. Am I am,
I am I right. Yeah, it's a subset, and basically I
wanted to have a place where I could just put all of my creative output,
replicate the or demonstrate how everything can be part of your spiritual paths.
So there's poetry and music and recipes and then just like lists of things that
I've seen art and dance, and I just wanted a place where I could
give it all away not waste anything. I love that. So is it
safe to say that you were already writing this was a part of your kind
of personal practice. You were writing these kinds of reflections, and so you've
just decided to share them all on Kindred one o eight. Yeah, I
I'm kind of a mad output machine. And I'm either writing, or I'm
talking, or I'm watching cultural productions, or I'm engaging in conversations. I'm
very much a participant in that way. And there's just never enough room within
the structure of diacula or nonprofit for me to share all of that. And
I really don't like keeping anything to myself. And I'm getting older, and
so I figure, I just have this enormous backlog of all kinds of things
that I've written and produced and seen, and then things I just enjoy.
I love promoting musicians and artists and dancers. I love sharing things that my
students are doing. You know, about a quarter of our community are healthcare
providers, acupuncturists, nature paths, and all kinds of things. So I
love sharing all that stuff too with people. And Kindred one way to assist
this giant grab bag or giant landscape of all of these things that I am
sharing. Also have hundreds and hundreds of recipes. I love to cook.
Wow, I need to come over too, Yeah, come on over.
I do not like to cook. I'm glad we got a chance to just
mention Kindred one O eight because it is something that I, you know,
have been perusing recently after we were you know, interacting to talk about having
this conversation, and it really is beautiful. I mean, I've always been
a huge fan of your writing, and you've written several books which people can
check out. So it's really nice to have a place where where you can
see that ongoing writing productivity. So anybody who's listening, do check that out.
I usually mention these sorts of things at the end, but hey,
here you go Kindred one O eight dot love and we'll mention the other links
that you can find Shamba Viet later. So to get to our topic for
today, you know, I have this I guess, well, maybe it's
too early to call it a pattern, but it's the second time now that
sort of in a time of you know, crisis, as someone who is
you know, uh, you know, I really respect your position and perspective
as a teacher, and I feel like you always have really relevant insights and
wisdom to share during periods that you know are really significant. And of course
this, uh, this moment and what's going on uh in Gaza and in
Palestine and and the Israel Palestine issue is obviously a huge one. On people's
minds and has really activated a lot of people. Has really, as you
were saying an email to me, has moved the hearts of so many and
and so I wanted to begin just by talking about what you are observing in
this moment. You know, you had described it in one of our emails
as this kind of massive heart opening. And people wouldn't necessarily think, you
know, of a moment like this as a time of heart opening, right.
They think of it as a time of anger or you know, you
know, any other emotion that is that expresses outrage at the situation and wants
to be of service in some way. And so I'd just wanted to ask
you to talk a little bit about what that means for you, this this
moment of a great heart opening. Jacob. I've been involved in political movements,
liberation movements, civil rights movements since I was a little girl. My
parents were sort of leftish, and they took me to civil rights marches and
anti war, anti Vietnam War marches, and these things were talked about around
the dinner table, and I was aware of a lot of different genocides that
have happened, you know, in my childhood and later on, and then
when I became more of an adult, you know, I was employed full
time working for nonprofit organizations doing human rights and social justice work. And then
even when I was in graduate school, you know, on my way to
becoming a professor, I was still doing work for social justice and human rights
organizations. So this has just been a constant through line in my life.
And I am just seeing something now that I have never seen before. And
I can't really fully explain why that is. You know, things coalesce in
time and have infinite causes. I can, you know, given it,
opinion about some of those causes. But in any case, the thing that
has been emblematic of this for me is the chant that you hear at the
mass demonstrations in the millions and the billions, we are all Palestinians. And
I every time I say that, and every time I hear that, I
just feel this like movement in my own heart. I just feel it so
deeply. And it's been a question for me since October seventh, since I
first heard this chant. Why are people chanting this? Why this genocide,
you know, why this movement for liberation, Why this political moment or this
moment in human history, because of course, you know, when I was
growing up, I never heard anybody chanting in the millions and the billions,
we are all African Americans, the millions and the billions, we are all
Ambodians, or anything like that. You know. In fact, in more
contemporary discourse to say something like that might be considered appropriation or you know,
bring some deserved critique. But somehow, in this moment, it feels absolutely
right, and it feels like this statement of or declaration of commonality, connection
care, you know, lack of separation. Somehow, Now, how could
all of the you know, the Palestinians have been experiencing what the Israeli historian
ELM. Peppe has called an incremental genocide for at least seventy five years,
and you could say that it's actually started one hundred years ago when the first
Zionist European Jews moved to Palestine and started taking land and houses, even though
there were already Jewish people living there peacefully. The Zionist movement started a new
era of Jews in Palestine. So Ilo Pope has called this whole process of
ethnic cleansing that was part of the Zionist project from the beginning, and then
also the killing of Palestinians to take their land and resources, an incremental genocide.
So we are not experiencing yet, I mean many, you know,
those of us outside of Palestine, unless we have genocide in our experience.
You know, there are people here who have in the United States, who
have experienced genocide. They're also myself on all of my ancestors are Jewish,
so there's some genocide in my ancestral line which might be having effects. But
in general, I think that what is happening is that over the past couple
of decades, in particular, there is more understanding among more people that there
is a degree of cruelty and lack of care that human beings are capable of
in lots of different areas. And our relationship to land and sea and airr
in our relationship to animals, in our relationship to people who get to find
as the other. Many of us have experiences of being the other. I
mean myself as a woman, as a queer person, as a person of
Jewish ancestry, as a person who has just had more radical views most of
her life. You know, there's many vectors along which I've experienced being othered
and have experienced violence. You know, I was raped when I was young,
and I've experienced various kinds of hate and disparagement because of various you could
call them identities. But in any case, I think there's just been this
movement toward more people realizing that, although what is happening to the Palestinians right
now is more extreme, that we are all subject to this violence, to
this aspect of human beings that doesn't care for taking care of each other or
our world. And I think there's a groundswell of people all over the world
who are feeling this very deeply. And the spectacle of this genus side happening
in real time and being reported on by the people it's happening to in real
time has just triggered something very very deep in US, or in many of
us, obviously not in all of US. And the spectacle of watching governments,
you know, in the US government, the UK, Canada, Germany
in particular, but other governments too in fact not only not doing anything to
stop this, but actually aiding and abetting this, has I think created a
moment that is really akin to what we read about in the Mahabarta. I
don't know how many off your listeners will be familiar with that. But the
Maha Parta is an Indian teaching story. It's called an epic in Western terms,
but it is a spiritual teaching story, very ancient, and it's about
two related sides of a family, one side which represents relative ignorance, cruelty,
ambition, greed, the other side that is moving more toward wisdom and
caring and open heartedness. And they're related. So this is the great theme
of the mahapart to this war which is taking place on what is explicitly called
a field of tarma. So we can't disown the cruelty, ignorance, stupidity
of the heart that we're seeing from many human beings right now. We can't
disown the madness, like through madness that has seemingly overtaken Israel and others who
are on board for this slaughter that's happening. You know, there's there's actual
madness happening, and we can't disown that. And there's just this yearning has
been unleashed, I think, to find a better way to find our better
selves and to have our better selves, our more dharmic selves be in charge,
and so this is why I've been calling this a crack in time.
The great war of the Mahabarta takes place at the change between one age and
another, and Sanskrit these are called yugas, and so it takes place in
a crack in an open space between the Treta Yuga and the Cali Yuga,
which we're said to be anow And it's literally symbolized by these two at the
beginning of the Mahabart of the not the Mahabarta, but the sort of central
teaching of the Mahabarta, which takes place in this these sections that are called
the Baghabad Ghita, which lots of people have heard of, But the Bagavad
Gita is actually part of the Mahabarta. So when the Baghavad Gita opens,
there's these two armies on this on a field called krug Scheitra, and there's
an open space in the field uh and in that open space, the great
Dharmak warrior Arjina and his charioteer who is being played by Lord Krishna come out
into the center of this open space and have a conversation. So it is
exactly telling us about this crack and time. This time between these two ages
where they're there has to be some sort of fight where there has to be
people standing up for the for wisdom to rule, to win the day.
And it's very, very explicit in the Maha Barta that although this is an
incredible tale of an external battle, but that this battle is really taking place
internally, that it's a battle that is between the wise and the ignorant parts
of ourselves. So we have both of these things. And I think that
the Palestinians themselves, for some of us, are coming to represent that wisdom,
I mean in their valor, in their adherence to their spiritual lives,
even in the midst of absolute horror, in their in how they relate to
each other other as community, how they take care of each other, how
they take care of the living, and how they take care of the dead.
If you read a social media, if you keep up you know,
say on Instagram, where a lot of the journalists and people on the ground
in GUSA are posting daily, you will be treated to many, many scenes
of community mutual care. And I really think this is just opening up this
wellspring of yearning in people's hearts, especially here in the United States, we
just are living in an extremely cruel culture where we don't have people, we
don't have a good healthcare system, we aren't taking care of our land,
sea and waters. Our education system is not great. There's just sense,
this feeling that government is not caring for us, and this is a really
insidious environment to be living in. And now it has been laid bare.
It has been laid bare. Like eighty percent of Democrats want there to be
a ceasefire and don't agree with the US policy with respect to us in Israel.
Sixty percent of all Americans don't agree and want a permanent seasfire. So
the government is doing the opposite of what the people want, you know,
the people in massive numbers, and they're you know, gaslighting us and lying
to us and trying to manipulate us and being condescending and treating, you know,
trying to preserve their power in the most obvious ways. And people are
onto them. People are just onto them, and they're sick of it.
One of the so I think that there's this massive heart opening which you can
see materialized in massive demonstrations all over the world that are happening and continue to
happen you know, people are not getting tired of this. They are continuing
to demonstrate, to write to their elected officials, to talk about this,
to post about this, to feel about this. And it hasn't it hasn't
died out because it's news cycle has gone away or so, you know,
the usual thing. I think it's really turning into something that is going to
be a massive global shift. And I don't know how long it's going to
take for that to materialize into different people in charge, but I really feel
that, and I feel just incredibly moved every day. There was a scene
I wanted to just say for those maybe who haven't been watching Instagram, and
I've been trying to post as much as possible so that those who aren't watching
maybe have a chance to get a glimpse of what's happening. But there's a
young journalist's named Motaz who's become very famous worldwide. And he was twenty four
when October seventh happened. He's not twenty five, and he's in Katar now.
He had to leave because of death threats. But in any case,
he basically like did cinema verite while he was just walking the streets of Casa
as it was being bombed, and just absolutely powerful journalism. And in one
day, I was watching a live broadcast of his. He had his camera
and all of a sudden, bombs started falling very near to him and he
started running. We could see the camera up and down, and he was
talking. You could hear the fear in his voice, and I thought,
oh good, he's running away. He survives. But it turned out he
was actually running toward the bombs, and all these men, like you know,
twenty thirty men eventually could see. They were all running toward this building
that had just been bombed seconds ago, and it was like seconds after the
bombing stopped, they started digging trying to find survivors. And this is just
this is, I think, what we really want for ourselves. This is
how we want to be. This is the courage we want to see in
ourselves, the care we want to see, the love we want to see,
the concern for others we want to see in our heart of hearts,
and we want to see it in ourselves, and we want to see it
in those governing us too. Yea. And everyone is talking about this,
who's been following this, you know how unbelievably brave and selfless. The culture
of care is a these people, and I really think that that has been
cause that has been affecting the shift. So it's like, you know,
in a sense, like the Palestinians are serving the role of the Pondavas and
then the white European American powers are like the coward was. If people are
familiar with the Maha part, yeah, thank you for bringing the Mahabarata into
this Mahabareta into this conversation. I feel like that was really it's a really
powerful kind of lens that helps situate kind of the struggle and it being you
know, so explicitly about this profound war that nonetheless is you know, laced
with spiritual teachings. As you're right, it's it's incredibly useful at this moment
to think in those along the lines of the Mahabarata. And so I wanted
to ask a question related to your own kind of spiritual the spiritual context and
the view to things that you come from, because you know, as perhaps
some people know who are familiar with your work, you are a teacher of
tri Kushaivism and Jogchen, and oftentimes these are associated with non dual traditions or
they're not associated, they are non dual traditions. And you know, there's
sometimes in my experience there's sometimes a bit of a misunderstanding of how non duality
connects to ethical and moral engagement. And what I've often really appreciated about your
interpretation of reading or understanding of the traditions is that by connecting with that nondual
you know, substance consciousness, however you want to express it, there is
a natural and spontaneous arising of love and compassion for you. And so to
me, it's very clear how that then connects to and evolves and transforms into
a very engaged and nourished activism. So can you talk a little bit about
that maybe and plug in the pieces that I'm missing in terms of how how
your own spiritual practice, your own the context of your own understanding of the
tradition is actually informing and inspiring this connection and relationship with what's going on.
So before we have the kind of realization that allows us to recognize and be
in contact with an immersed in what we could call a natural state, I
don't call it non duality. And I'll explain that for minute in a minute.
But before we have that contact and immersion, it's useful to have guidelines,
you know, precepts of some sort of how to behave or what to
do and what not to do. These are functional just kind of you know,
keeping us out of the worst kind of trouble while we are doing our
practice and trying to realize more. But once we have more of a direct
knowledge of how reality actually is, that contact with living presence, which is
what I call it, That contact with living presence is equal to the greater
embodiment of devotion and compassion. So when you mentioned the word consciousness when I
was the young Ton tric pup, the nature of reality was described to me
as consciousness and energy and that's very clinical, and I had, you know,
it sounded nice, but I didn't have like a big reaction to that.
It was just kind of, look, they file that under fact,
right. But when I had been practicing more and began to have more direct
personal experience of the natural state, the biggest revelation that I had was that
this reality is actually made of wisdom. For what I call wisdom virtue,
I mean, consciousness and energy doesn't even begin to let us know what is
really happening here. So when we have that more direct experience, the I
always want to come up with this very academic word when I'm describing this go
for it imbrocation, This imprecation imbrocation, like this indistinguishability and meshing, merging
of compassion and mercy and devotion in this vast intelligence full of creativity and event
humor and hijinks, which is of course very much embodied by Krishna in the
Barton. But in any case, what you learn is that reality is made
of wisdom or what I call wisdom virtue because it's many of the things we
associate as virtuous. And having this direct experience, it isn't an intellectual thing,
so we're not when we're having that experience, we're not being in the
position of an observer or someone who's gathering facts. It's actually catalytic. So
having that experience is equal to becoming more expressive of those wisdom virtues. So
you automatically or automatically maybe become more able to access the compassion and wisdom of
the heart, the devotion of the heart, the heart being everywhere on Tchikashivism.
And it's interesting because when I first we started perceiving this. It wasn't
a teaching I had ever had. But then later I found in books that
Okay, you know, this is what other the realization that other practitioners have
come to also, So when we have that, when we have that heart,
when we open to the heart that is already there, we don't need
ethics or morality because we don't need rules. In other words, we don't
need those guide rails because we're just going to be spontaneously expressive of that.
And so in terms of political activism, are being more involved in the question
of non duality. I am doing this because I'm simply moved to do it.
I have no other reason. I'm not doing it because it's the right
thing to do, or the ethical thing to do, or the moral thing
to do. I don't have an argument about it about that. I am
simply moved and I am letting myself be moved. Now, we all express
being moved in different ways. But if you are really moved by that primordial
compassion and devotion to everything, it could whatever you do is going to be
expressive of that and effective. So I don't think that everybody has to be
engaged in the same way. But I've always been involved politically, and I
took ten years off for because I read in a book that my sach guru
said that Sanyasen shouldn't be engaged politically. So I thought, I'm going to
try that and see how that fsh So for ten years, I didn't say
anything online, I didn't vote, I just didn't get involved. And that
was kind of an interesting experiment. But that at the end of that,
I was like, Okay, that's that doesn't feel like it, there's any
point to that anymore, and I kind of got back to my more natural
way of being in the world. But you know, somebody else's a natural
way of being. The world could be different. But the thing is that
what I mean of a group just said about the realized state. And I'm
not claiming to be realized to any great degree, but I do have some
realization enough to know and to be able to understand what it really is about.
But what he said is that the realize state is being all for others.
There's no self referentiality left that takes from others. Everything is always giving,
like the fountain that's in the middle of the heart, and so whatever
you're doing however you're showing up. Whether it looks like political activism or something
entirely different, it is just naturally going to be all for others. That
is really the hallmark in terms of non duality. People who think that we're
sort of ascending from a dualistic experience to nondual are in a different tradition.
This is not the teaching of Trikishivism orso chin So. The teaching of these
traditions is that the dualistic experience, or the play of this dualistic experience,
is the self expression of this aliva warre reality. It is often describes in
terms like it's the ornament of God, or the glamor of God, or
the magicy of God or the artistry of God. And it's described that way
in other traditions too, like ramak Krishna called our experience of everyday life the
mansion of fun. Yeah, there's this sense that we that we get more
contact with the natural state, which is, you know, non duality in
some way. But I would argue that it's that those concepts are useless after
a time, and then we turn around and we enjoy what's here. There's
another teacher who coined a phrase I really love about our experience here. He
called it a theater of communication. This is the place where this alive,
where reality. You could call it shivashakti, you could call it God,
you could call it the natural state, you could call it whatever you want,
gets to come and express itself and enjoy its own self expressions. So
there's absolutely no sense in these kinds of tradition since that we are transcending dualistic
experience. What we are leaving behind is the idea that it has the kind
of objective reality that we often think it does when we don't have experience of
the natural state. So it has its own reality, but it isn't objective.
It's subjective. It is the product of a subjective Thank you. That
was a beautiful explanation. So I want to now talk a little bit about
what you have been talking about already, which is this kind of movement.
I really love the way that you put it. How you know you're not
doing this out of some kind of sense of moral obligation, you know,
at least if we're talking sort of abstractly, you know what moral guidelines mean.
But rather you're doing this because you feel moved to which is connected to
this kind of you know, being I don't know, on the way of
that shivashakti as it were, for lack of a better expression. So,
you know, there are others who are perhaps feeling moved but blocked in some
way by either what they sense is a mode of engagement on social media that
they perhaps feel is a little too hot for them to participate in without getting
in trouble with one side or another, or perhaps they feel that you know,
they're they're they're not online, they're not in on social media, so
they don't have a platform with which to kind of, you know, talk
about these things. So I'm just wondering if you can speak a little bit
to the obstacles to you know, those that are feeling that, I guess
the bit the what happens between feeling moved and motivated and actually then participating in
some way that feels express of that movement, and what we should do about
feeling perhaps caught up or you know or I don't know, or like we
should or should not participate in a particular way that we don't feel moved to.
There's so many things that could be said about that, and so many
different stories happening. Yeah, one story is that I don't know what to
do and everything seems like pointless or ineffectual. I've heard people have written to
me like that, you know. I've posted online, I've written to my
elected officials, I've marched around, I've boycotted, but none of it seems
to be having a big effect. And this is really an aspect of supremacist
culture, this attitude that everything we do has to have a big effect or
we're not going to be set right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
I would say to anybody who's in that position, just do your small,
humble part right, because we're just each doing our little part and it is
adding up to something. Absolutely, there are real world effects of this mass
movement that's happening worldwide. The recent food drops in GUSA, the sort of
holding back of the Israeli government from full on invading RUFA. These are all
absolutely because of the protests and the various things that are going on with pro
Poustinian movements. So you may not individually be able to appoint to an effect
you're having, but that is totally fine. You can just join in with
the rest of us gloves and do your little part. The other thing is
people who are free to participate. So what you know, you said it
seems daunting in some way, and I think there's a lot around that.
I suspect, given how few of my fellow spiritual teachers are coming out and
saying anything about this at all, that they are afraid of losing money or
of somehow being or you know, taken to task by their own students and
losing reputation or losing students or something like that. And I just think in
general that to express to embody the wisdom of the heart, regardless of the
loss, as our job, like in any sphere, not just the sphere
we are as teachers, I think, bound to do our utmost, to
be following the wisdom of the heart wherever it leads us and whatever it prompts
us to do, regardless of what the cost might be, even the cost
of our own lives. So all, you know, if it's if someone
feels moved to do something, especially spiritual teachers or leaders of some sort,
but then they feel anxiety because they're worried about what they might lose, I
would say you have some deep self investigation needs to happen, and maybe recalibration
of what's actually important. So you know, then there's just the general anxiety
that infects the online scene. And you know, for a lot of people,
which is what does everyone think of me? You know, how is
this going to be received? And I would just say to those people again,
this is a very extreme moment in human history, and you will not
like it. If you look back and you didn't participate because you were afraid
of pushback from your friends, you will not feel good about yourself. So
if you want to participate but you're holding back because you're afraid of what someone
else might think of you, or you're afraid that you don't know enough to
say something, anybody can say ceasefire. You don't need to know anything to
say that other than that tens of thousands of people are getting slaughtered. I
you don't need a single other historical fact. Ugh, So you know,
just think about what you're going to feel in a few years if you haven't
expressed what you want to express right now. And then there's I would say
another category of people, which is people of Jewish ancestry. And for those
people the question is much much much more complicated. There is one thing I
discovered, which I actually didn't know until after October seventh, was the degree
to which the Jewish education in the United States, and I'm assuming elsewhere outside
of Israel indoctrinates people into Zionism, and the degree to which that has been
purposefully knit into religious views and has created vectors for relationships and a sense of
community. So it takes a lot of courage to see that, and it
takes a lot of courage to even allow yourself to look at the resources that
would give you more clarity around that. I mean, I've had some students
of mine who have been very courageous in, you know, kind of unpacking
that edge ucation that they've had and read and learning new ways of looking at
things and more clear ways of looking at things. I've had other students and
colleagues of the spiritual teachers who absolutely refute Jewish people who absolutely refuse to even
look at or read anything that contradicts the education, and I would say,
the manipulation that they've grown up with. So you know, they're so scared
they won't even do that because it's like a house of cards, and I
think somewhere in them they recognize that. But you know, there is the
very good chance that there will be a loss of relationship, of breaks and
communication, maybe even loss of community. There are also some students in my
community that have been dealing with this for a long time, you know,
that have this It didn't just start on October seventh, you know, they
had other experiences earlier on that kind of undermine the view that they'd been brought
up with about Palestine and Palestinians and Israel. And they've been working through this
stuff for years and years and years. This is like a process of de
indoctrination. It's like coming out of a cult that involves all your friends and
all your family, right, So it's almost like this totalizing form of life
that you have to come out of in order to just let in the actual
history, the historical facts which haven't been available to a lot of people with
what has come to be a traditional Jewish education. So there's many, many
things happening out there, And I would just say that as practitioners, I'll
just speak to anyone who's doing any spiritual practitioner of practice of any sort,
you know, whether it's what I'm doing, or whether it's Jewish practice or
any other practice. Clarity is an honesty are indispensable for getting closer to God.
You cannot do without clarity and honesty. It just doesn't fly. And
so as practitioners, as spiritual people or religious people, however you want it,
define yourself, or just people trying to find out about reality, we
have to dig in and find the courage to get the information we need and
the honesty to look at how we've been operating with what kinds of concepts and
suppositions. Well, that's a good way to segue into the last kind of
topic that I wanted to speak to you about, which well we've already been
speaking about it a little bit. But essentially the distinction between conception rule versus
heart based ways of participating politically. You know, you've been saying a lot
about, you know, being moved by the heart, but of course there
could be others who feel that they are being motivated by the heart and it's
leading them in a totally different direction. And so there's this the reality of
the way in which whether it's ideology or manipulation or certain narratives that are you
know, particularly salient in a culture, you know, construe the feelings of
the heart. In a particular way. So what is the role of of
what is the distinction being made here for you between conceptual and heart based ways
of participating? And then what is kind of the role again of of of
of harnessing concepts in a way that will guide the heart to perhaps a more
just conclusion. So when I say the heart, I wasn't talking about like
ordinary emotional heart. I wasn't talking about the heart and the way we talk
about it in popular culture. So of course I can feel lots of things
and say, you know, my heart is telling me that he's not really
a stalker. I should give him another cha. You know, there's all
kinds of things that we can talk ourselves into as being like this my truth
or something like that, which are really just our karmic habit patterns. Right,
when I talk about the heart, I'm talking about the advent of contact
with that primordial wisdom. So I was really talking about it only in the
context of this tradition and how it look uses the heart as a symbol for
the base the nature of reality, and that absolutely clear was and devotion that
comes through when we encounter that. So I just want to make that clear.
But and I also want to make clear that there's there's room for concepts
and intellect guiding us when we don't have as much access to that direct wisdom.
So one of the things that I learned as someone who's been involved in
political movements all the time for most of my life is that we want to
listen to the people who are being most harved and try to be allies to
them by doing what they want us to do. I mean, that's a
precept, you could almost say, right, And so what Palestinians are asking
us to do is to keep their situation in the public eye. They are
begging us to re post their posts on social media, to like them,
to elevate them. So, because you know, given the absence of any
support and the actual positive harm that's being done by governments and the lassitude of
organizations like the UN, they see the public that activated public as their main
vehicle for change at the moment. So they are asking us to maintain the
visibility of what's happening in Palestine by posting, by talking about it, by
demonstrating, et cetera. So, if we want a precept to follower or
concept to follow, it would be to do what is being asked of us
by the people that are being lost harmed. So that was really beautiful Chambavie.
And there's been and I feel like a lot of really relevant considerations reflections.
You you know, you directly speak to certain fears and anxieties and thoughts
that people are having and things that you've heard coming from other people. And
I've that was really one of my primary goals of having this conversation today was
to speak to some of those you know, internal monologues that people have that
are that are limiting them and to help motivate them. But you know,
just very practically speaking, what are some ways that people can get involved that
perhaps don't you know, what are some I guess resources that you would you
would recommend in also some ways that you would recommend or suggest people get involved.
So there have been various lists published on social media by Palestinian activists in
GUSA and Palestine in general and also in the diaspora about what we should do,
and you know, some of them are kind of ordered in like levels
of deepening engagement. The number one thing on all of those lists is learn
more about the history of Palisa in the situation in Palestine. I know that
when October seventh happened, some students I have demanded that I condemn Hamas.
I didn't even know who Humas was. So I said, you know,
I need to learn more. You need to back off. So I said,
you know, if you asked me before October seventh who Hamas was,
I wouldn't have been able to answer. So I've basically gotten, you know,
the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in one year of a master's degree.
Since October seventh, I basically knew that there was apartheid in Palestine, but
I didn't really know much more. And I knew there had been uprisings and
things like that, but I had to learn all this myself. So the
number one thing on those lists is to learn to link the facts, and
there's many many resources out there that you can use. One of the best
resources is Jewish Voice for Peace. Their website has a lot of learning tools
on it that you can look to. There is a really wonderful history if
you're into reading a slightly more academic book called The One hundred Years War on
Palestine by Rashik Khaladi, a Palestinian historian. That book just blew my mind
when I read read it, even the first couple chapters, the early history
of Zionism. If you don't know about it, it is mind blowing.
And you're seeing that the colonial project, the project of ethnic cleansing, was
built into Zionism from its inception. I had no idea about that. So
that's really worth looking into, even if you only read the first couple chapters.
And then there are news outlets where you can get better analysis of what's
happening, and my favorite is really the Electronic Antifada. They've been around for
a long time. They have a very unique style of reporting, and they
put reports out nearly every day, and they're really, you know, kind
of participant analysts. They are so vulnerable online and expressing their emotions and their
relations to things in a very very beautiful way, and yet they're doing this
really hard hitting investigative reporting. So I would recommend the Electronic Antifada and Nadie.
Most importantly is to be following people on Instagram who are reporting from the
ground in Gussa and from the diaspora. There are also some wonderful, wonderful
documentaries that I saw that also really open my eyes. One of them is
called Tantura. It's an investigation by an Israeli fil filmmaker of one of the
villages that was taken by sort of the proto Israeli army in nineteen forty eight
during the beginning of the Nakba, with the catastrophe the Palestinian Holocaust. There's
also another incredible documentary called Five Broken Cameras that is by a Palestinian documentarian and
it refers to the five cameras that got broken by Israeli forces when he was
trying to film what was happening in his village. And it's about the story
of one village's fight against encroachment from an illegal Israeli settlement. And then there's
the new film Israelism. It's a documentary about American Jewish people who are just
discovering all this stuff too and having to sort of reinvent themselves in the face
of all of this new knowledge. So there's a lot of things out there.
I put together a reading list for people like myself who started out not
knowing enough. It's really like a reading list for beginners with which with all
of these resources on it, and I can send that to you. Jacob
at the end the link to that. Yeah, that would be great,
we could have that on here. So learning is always the first step,
and then the second step is like discussing with other people, uh you know,
people in your circle to enhance them deep in that learning, and then
uh you know, learning online, but also then calling our elected officials might
be a next step, or going finding out what people are boycotting in order
to apply economic pressure. And then of course things that are more engaged would
be demonstrating and and getting involved in more mass movement types of things. So
there's really you know, and oh, I'm sorry I left out like posting,
reposting, elevating Palestinian voices, et cetera. So there's like a gradation
of things one can do very very practically, but I think learning the facts
is important. Yeah to all of that, Thank you, Schanbavie. There's
so much really timely and important reflections in here, and I know that people
are going to get a lot out of it, So thank you so much
for spending some time with me. Before you go. Would you like to
share a little bit about where people can find you. We already mentioned Kindred
one O eight dot Love, but you are also you know, you're the
director of Jayakula, So wherever people can get a hold of you and perhaps
share a little bit about what's coming up for you. If there's any songs
or any events that you're holding sure. So our main nonprofit is Jacula dot
org and we are located in Portland, Oregon, and we also live stream
a lot of stuff since the pandemic started. So we have sots on every
Sunday afternoon at three thirty pm Pacific. You can come live in Portland or
you can live stream and we post the zoom link on a private Facebook page
called Jai Koola News. You can request to be in that and we'll send
you the link or you'll get the link on that page. I have a
Facebook page where I'm very active, and we have an Instagram. My Facebook
pages these days is almost entirely stuff about Palestine, so warning, and our
Instagram page is a little more varied. But we do have a major retreat
coming up for Mahashibaratri. It starts on March seventh. It's a four day
retreat focusing on healing for our world. So we're going to do sod in
us. We're going to do lots of sod in our spiritual practice with the
intent of giving to others through sad enough, so healing through sod enough for
others. And we also have our in the middle of that retreat, our
annual Mahashavaratri Puja. We do offerings to eleven shivellingams and that's open to the
public, so you can come in Portland, Org. And that will also
be live stream on my Facebook page and on our YouTube channel. Excellent.
Wow, well you heard it. It is Jaikula dot org. And well
I'll just let the listeners rewind to hear all of them again. But Shamba
Vi, it has been such a pleasure chatting. It's so nice to see
you, and thank you for being so engaged and spreading the word so much
and elevating the voices right now when people need it most. So thank you
so much for the work that you're doing. Thanks for letting me talk about it.