Joan Halifax is known as one of today’s most important Zen teachers, especially through her activism or what she refers to as “engaged Buddhism” and from her work in prisons, her programs on grief, death and dying, and much more.

Joan and Marc explore the way of the modern Bodhisattva, someone who maintains presence with compassion in the face of extraordinary challenges. Joan shares how her compassion for all beings is her secret for avoiding burnout, along with recognizing and shifting from the idea of “helping” or “fixing” so we instead recognize our work as an act of “service.”

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Joan Halifax is an American Zen teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. My guest today is Joan Halifax, who’s known as one of today’s most important Zen teachers, especially through her activism and engaged Buddhism.

From her work in prisons to working with death and dying and so much more. She recently returned from facilitating a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and a group of scientists. Joan is the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality and she currently serves as the abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In our conversation, she speaks about the unconventional source for radical joy as service to others, and she addresses the way of the modern bodhisattva, a person committed to serving others as well as someone who maintains presence with compassion in the face of extraordinary challenges and suffering.

She addresses the importance of shifting from helping or fixing to truly serving, and she addresses the importance of holding and cultivating an attitude of possibility, curiosity, and openness in the face of today’s challenges. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. This is Marc Lesser, Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times and I am just feeling a lot of joy here with my friend Joan Halifax. Good morning, Joan.

[00:02:08] Joan Halifax: Good morning. It’s great to see you, and I like that enso behind your head. Who did that?

[00:02:17] Marc: That’s a Kaz Tanahashi.

[00:02:19] Joan: Of course.

[00:02:22] Marc: Yes, who I might have– I don’t know if I ever shared with you the story of Kaz, out of the blue called and asked if I would be his coach. I was like, “Kaz, I’d pay to just come hang out with you.” Kaz and I had lunches together for, I don’t know, every other week for many, many years and it’s delightful too. I love this enso.

[00:02:51] Joan: He actually sat with Rohatsu Sesshin this year at Upaya. He’s 89. He sat every period doing Fusatsu, he did every [unintelligible 00:03:02] I just have to say– and he gave these wonderful very scholarly talks on the Avatamsaka Sutra from the perspective of Green Dharma, or the environmental perspective. It was a really extraordinary Rohatsu. It was the first time we allowed some guests who actually quarantined in order to be here. The outer rim of the Zendō was all full, which made me happy, it was beautiful, and everybody quarantined, which I think was very gracious of people. [chuckles]

[00:03:43] Marc: Just for people who don’t know, Kaz Tanahashi is one of the world’s leading translators of Buddhist texts, especially Dōgen, and also a calligrapher, and just an incredible human being. Joan leads a Zen Center, Upaya in New Mexico, and Rohatsu Sesshin is a traditional seven-day Zen meditation retreat that typically happens 1st to 7th all over the world, and then Buddha’s Enlightenment Day is then celebrated the following day on the 8th. It’s great.

It’s interesting, you and I, we were saying that the topic here, many, many possible topics, but the practice of joy and radical joy, and there’s something about these traditions. Also, I know that you have a lot of things going and wonder how you practice and find joy and antidotes to burnout because you are doing so many things. How do you practice with avoiding burnout and radical Joy?

[00:05:01] Joan: Well, I think that’s a wonderful question. I think first is to understand joy or happiness or that sense of fulfillment. It’s not the kind of, let’s say, conventional happiness that comes from getting a new car and you’re happy briefly, or eating a pistachio ice cream and you have this moment of happiness. It’s more this sense of fundamental well-being, even in the midst of the complexities of our world today.

How do I maintain it? I don’t always maintain it, I will honestly say, but having had big tastes of it in the course of my life, it is in a certain way a kind of reference point or a resource that I know is there even on very cloudy days, if you will. I know that above the clouds there’s clear sky, and the clouds in a certain way give me an opportunity to examine the edge that I’m on, how I’m not practicing good self stewardship.

I think it’s not to feel bad about the moments where the weather moves in, but it’s to actually use the weather as a way to say, “Ah, this is a kind of mindfulness bill,” and so on, but I want to say something more, and that is, I recently returned from Dharamshala, where I was moderating the first day of a science meeting in the living room of his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, for the Mind & Life Institute and Mind & Life Europe.

His Holiness [unintelligible 00:07:03] emphasizing a couple of things. One is that common humanity. We are all human beings and the difference is that we experience the polarization, the conflicts, and thinking about the war in Ukraine and the many conflicts in countries across the world and also the interpersonal conflicts that are in his Holiness’ awareness, and of course, certainly in mine.

Then that meeting was very powerful because it looked at some of the psychosocial causes of unhappiness, of burnout and so forth. Then in a second meeting of young compassionate leaders, and these were young people from around the world who are social activists including the former head of Extinction Rebellion from Ireland and other just extraordinary young people.

I would just say, the common theme that these young people shared in the preparatory meetings was this sense of burnout, of futility. They’re all doing good work and yet they’re anticipating a not healthy future, and also, they just see the magnitude or the scale of the problems in the world ramping up on their watch. His Holiness heard what they were saying in his way, and his Holiness emphasized again and again, and I know this to be the case, he said, “You know, the cure for futility, the cure for burnout, in fact, is altruism. An altruistic heart.”

I think this is the case, that what we know from the research in compassion is there are three balances that receive benefit. One of those is, of course, the person who receives compassion. Another is those who witness compassion, but most interestingly, those who are compassionate, and I speak about compassion in a very particular way, receive enormous benefit.

Whether your compassion is just on the micro level, taking care of your little friend next to you, your little child, your little plot of earth that you walk upon, or whether it’s like the compassion of my good friend, Christiana Figueres, who I was meeting with yesterday, who is the architect of the Paris Climate Accord, her compassion is just boundless, and her energy is just boundless. It is because her values are very much aligned with this experience of caring deeply for the world. I don’t do it to feel better. I don’t do what I do to feel better.

I just do what I do because that’s what’s before me. It’s not like a pill that one takes and gets the benefit. After so many decades of doing a good thing here and there, I think that I’ve reached my ninth decade, in a way, like Joanna Macy, with a sense of joy that is underneath all of the weather.

[00:10:55] Marc: I think of it as a somewhat well-known quote. Someone asked, “Suzuki, why do we practice Zen?” He’s given many answers to that, but one is so we can be happy in our old age. There’s something about what you’re saying that I think it can easily escape the importance of it or the profoundness of something about altruism, making our offering as an approach to our lives. Very different than somehow trying to find safety or be someone. It completely turns the tables on an approach to how we live our lives.

How do you get that across to young people who are seeing all of the warning signs around not only climate change, but all of the other challenges and divisiveness and difficulties that we’re seeing? How do you teach that, how do you make that shift in way of being?

[00:12:13] Joan: I think this is a great question. It’s something that’s very much in my foreground all the time because we have so many young people at Upaya. I don’t think you can teach it. I think you have to be it. Being it is just in the ordinary acts of your daily life.

I love Norman’s vision of the Bodhisattva attitude. The Bodhisattva attitude is not something you acquire, so to speak. It’s something I believe, and I think Norman also, it arises out of living to whatever degree that you can, an authentic life, and others who happen to be in the field of an authentic life, which includes moments, naturally, of inauthenticity, of scrappling around, and so on.

Those who are in the field of it feel this benefit of having, for example, a generous mind, the first Pāramitā, or a mind that’s cool and peaceful and stable, and wholeheartedness. Manifesting the Bodhisattva attitude in the way that Roshi Norman Fischer has written about it and lives is something that I think comes out of first having a practice that is scrupulous, having a sangha that allows for the kind of trust for feedback, course correction, for all of us in the community of practice, and also doing a good thing in the world. It’s not bad, I have to tell you. [laughs]

[00:14:10] Marc: I want to again, just unpack. The word Bodhisattva is a person who lives for the benefit of others. I think of the prime vows or promises, approaches, beings are numberless. I vow to be of benefit. I vow to awaken them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. There’s something about the Bodhisattva approach to life of the practice of our own awakening and helping, benefiting, benefiting others. Again, the core.

It’s interesting. I also think of that, you were talking about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who again somewhat famously said, “If you want to benefit others, practice compassion. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

[00:15:12] Joan: That’s his message.

[00:15:13] Marc: It’s something about the unintended consequences of the Bodhisattva life or altruism is this kind of radical approach to our own well-being, our own sense of joy.

[00:15:30] Joan: I don’t think you and I can emphasize enough how– well, I can’t speak for you, Marc, but I fall over the edge all the time. This is why I say a community of practice where there’s support for feedback is really important because correcting course is part of the work that we do in the experience of practice.

I wrote this book, Standing at the Edge, where I was looking at altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement and burnout. These five areas, the antidote to going over the edge in terms of experiencing pathological altruism and empathic distress and moral suffering and disrespect and burnout is compassion. I would not know all this had I not been over all of those edges myself. [laughs]

[00:16:36] Marc: Yes. I’ve been lately calling that edge or going over the edge, getting in touch with my inner Homer Simpson, especially the, “Why does everything have to be so hard?” Yes, whether in my inner grump, but there is something about then returning to, “How can I help? What is it?” There’s no shortage of need for help, whether it’s in my own household or out in the world.

[00:17:15] Joan: Actually, I try not to use the word help. I’m sure you remember these words from Rachel Naomi Remen, the physician philosopher. She says, “Helping, fixing, and serving are three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see it as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole.” I always keep that feeling. Her words really have meant a lot to me over the years because I definitely was a helper and fixer. Every time I hear help, I think, “Oh, no, no, no, no, we’re talking about how do we serve a situation.”

[00:18:03] Marc: Yes. No, thank you for pointing that out. I love also, “What can I offer? What’s my offer? What’s my offering? How can I–” Even in leadership, in leadership service, being of service as a leader. You are an amazing– I don’t know if you think of yourself as a leader. Again, it’s one of those– can be as many, many– It’s funny, I tend to think– People ask me about what’s the distinction between emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and leadership? I tend to say, “I think they’re all kind of the same thing. They’re just different flavors of–” and in some way, it’s different flavors of Bodhisattva practice or the practice of radical joy or the practice of radical service, using the word you just used.

[00:19:13] Joan: I think I’ve failed continually as a leader. It’s a constant learning process. It’s also an incredible opportunity for growth, for development, because how do you actualize support for others growing into the best of who they are, on one hand, and also recognizing issues related to accountability? In an organization, and ours is a very complex and dynamic organization, with all the problems that any institutional organization has, how do you actually have these two valences in a healthy relationship?

That’s been a big learning, I think, for all of us and an important one as we work together, is to see each other’s gifts as clearly as possible and to create the circumstances that avoid failure, but to also know the value of challenge and failure [chuckles] in an organizational structure where we are all just human beings. How do we work it relationally and in the field of practice, and aspirationally, knowing that we are here for one reason, which is, how can we serve others? Leadership is a great area for growth, so to speak. [laughs]

[00:21:02] Marc: Yes. I think, keep coming back in a way to, how can we create, and live, and embody in this field of practice? How do we create a field of practice? Because the field of practice, the field of service, there’s something that– joy seems to arise there. Joy or meaning, satisfaction, something that is filled with possibility as opposed to– there’s something opening about it.

[00:21:42] Joan: Kaz talks about joy density, which I think is a really beautiful concept. I will also say, Marc, seeking Joy, I think is not going to produce joy, number one. Number two, there’s a lot of grief in the world today. Of course, I work with people every day, who are very discouraged, or who have grave physical illnesses, where joy is not present, and where conventional joy would be an assault in a certain way.

I want to just also say that, when you’re working in weather zones, if you will, where suffering is really acute, pasted on joy is a toxin. Toxic positivity, so to speak. [chuckles] I really respect people suffering, knowing that there are profound opportunities for realization, for learning in the journey of suffering. People like you and I, we had to go through it. This is, in part, about the development of our own character. For me, it’s not just being happy, happy. [chuckles]

[00:23:12] Marc: Yes. If we’re going to talk about radical joy and radical well-being, we can’t leave out suffering. It’s all part of the package.

[00:23:26] Joan: It is. The four noble truths or the four important learnings is connect with the truth of suffering. This is charnel ground practice, whether it’s our personal charnel ground or the world charnel ground, and look deeply to see why is this suffering in our world today? Because we really can’t transform suffering if we don’t understand deeply the roots of it. Having that taste that allows us to know who we really are, which is at the base, at our very foundation, our basic goodness, the very core of our character is, we’re free. We’re out of the box, if you will, of suffering. Then of course, I love the path. That’s our practice.

[00:24:24] Marc: Again, just a note for anyone that might not be aware of this, this word that gets thrown around a lot, mindfulness. One of the first teachings of the historical Buddha. The four foundations of mindfulness, and the first is mindfulness of the body. In that teaching, there’s a large– in fact, it might be the largest teaching in there, is the charnel ground meditations, is to actually visualize or actually go. This was originally in India, to go to the places where dead bodies were being burned. Cremation ceremony, so mindfulness. Mindfulness of impermanence as a starting point.

[00:25:15] Joan: This is such an interesting question. This charnel ground practice, I hadn’t really identified myself in that area until I began to work closely with Glassman Roshi. Kaz and I went to Auschwitz, doing the bearing witness retreats. We went several times, and I really understood what [unintelligible 00:25:43] [chuckles] The importance of Bernie’s work and how to maintain a good heart in the midst of extraordinary suffering, whether it was the charnel ground of Auschwitz, or whether it’s the work that I did in the prison system for six years as a volunteer working on death row and maximum security, or whether it’s working with people who have catastrophic illness, or people working in the medical system, who are so discouraged and burned-out.

All charnel grounds in our external world, but we have our own inner charnel grounds. [chuckles] Being able to sit in the midst of our own confusion, anger, anguish, blame, self righteousness, and to wake up in those charnel grounds. Those charnel grounds are essential for us to actually connect with and learn from.

[00:26:45] Marc: Yes. I miss Bernie. Joan was referring to one of her teachers, Bernie Glassman, amazing person, social activist, and the work that he did taking people to Auschwitz to bear witness. This bearing witness practice, very powerful. Well, you have things you have to do. Anything that you’d like to offer as a way of closing here around this bearing witness, making one’s offering, radical joy, anything at all that you’d like to say?

[00:27:32] Joan: I’m curious about your perspective on the charnel ground of Silicon Valley and the business world and the Bitcoin world. [chuckles] I mean, just watching what’s happening on Twitter, where I’m very active, on that social platform, network platform and so on. I’m just curious of your take.

[00:28:03] Marc: My take, Joan, is that greed, hate, and delusion have been very popular for thousands of years, and that there are– it’s easy, I think, to fall into. I’m saddened that Effective Altruism has now gotten such a bad name. A crazy idea, I think, especially one interpretation about amassing a lot of wealth in order to do good things, as opposed to doing– there’s something– It’s fine to amass wealth through doing good things, I think would be much more sane than somehow that separation.

[00:28:50] Joan: Well, it’s not just the Effective Altruism issue. Actually I think amassing wealth is not a good thing. Sorry. [laughs]

[00:28:58] Marc: Yes.

[00:28:59] Joan: I think as you amass wealth and get rid of it. I think also billionaires should have the heck taxed out of them. I think our economic structure is way off. I don’t think the Buddha criticized wealth per se, but the suffering that arises as it relates to the 1%. I’m glad Warren Buffett and Gates do their work, but also they deploy a huge amount of– versus toward their own real estate endeavors and so on. [laughs]

[00:29:39] Marc: I thought it was brilliant, Anand, in the book Winners Take All, who describes the policies, financial policies of the last 40 years as a crime scene and how it’s contributed. I think it contributes to a divisiveness. It’s the opposite of altruism. It’s supporting divisiveness and greed, which are in so many ways, I think, the opposite of living a life of the Bodhisattva path or the life of service and life of offering, and clearly don’t lead to well-being.

[00:30:25] Joan: Well, and it’s contributed to the climate catastrophe and the cascade of effects from what we’re facing now in terms of the climate. We’re in overshoot right now, and we’re not going to be out of it without a huge modification of the deployment of our so-called fiscal resources and the ending of the extraction of our natural resources. Anyway, don’t get me going, but I think you get my point. Greed, hatred, and delusion. [chuckles]

[00:31:00] Marc: Like something you said earlier, we’re all human beings. I’m often amazed when I find myself in Silicon Valley, in the hallways of Google or Facebook or Apple. It’s human beings who are, in many ways, many good people, the policies are in need of real fixing. Again, I don’t know. [laughs] It’s hard to be optimistic. Yet in the long run, I think people doing good will more and more have a positive effect.

[00:31:51] Joan: Good. Wonderful. I’m curious, I’m open, and also I’m concerned. I’m really concerned. I’m in my ninth decade, so I’m not going to be around much longer, relatively speaking. Who knows? Today might be the end or 20 years, but interacting with so many young people, which has been grace in my life in the past few decades. I feel a commitment to do whatever I can to a sense of love and responsibility for people, so we can meet a world where flexibility and adaptivity are important, because we are going to have to adapt even further to circumstances which we did not ever know would be unfolding, at least I didn’t, in our lifetimes. Very interesting time. I’m not hopeful. I’m curious, actually.

[laughs]

[00:33:07] Joan: Or I’m not optimistic, I’m hopeful, so I make a distinction between optimism and hope. This is, again, going back to Roshi Norman Fischer’s Bodhisattva attitude, holding that attitude of possibility is, I think, our work. Curiosity, openness.

[00:33:33] Marc: I come back to one of my favorite quotes by Wendell Berry who says, “Be joyful though you’ve considered all the facts.”

[00:33:42] Joan: Yes. That’s it. Beautiful, Marc. It’s just been a pleasure meeting with you this morning, and-

[00:33:49] Marc: Yes, thank you.

[00:33:51] Joan: -may you enjoy the rest of your day. [laughs]

[00:33:54] Marc: Thank you so much for all of your great service and offerings and your being a model. A model of radical well-being in the world, so thank you.

[00:34:07] Joan: Of continuous failure.

[00:34:10] Marc: Continuous failure, one failure after another. Yes. Thank you.

[00:34:13] Joan: Exactly. Thank you so much.

[music]

[00:34:20] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:34:45] [END OF AUDIO]