Courage Amidst Collapse with Norma Wong

Teacher, author and Zen Master, Norma Wong, is here to talk about her new book, Who we are becoming matters: the courage wisdom and aloha we need in the time of collapse. 

Norma helps us see further than we can see on our own and asks the question, who do we need to become to meet that horizon? 

• Follow Norma
• Check out her book: Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse
• Listen to her podcast The Horizon Story with Norma Wong

Transcript

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Norma Wong
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Prentis
00:00 - 00:26
Hi everyone, welcome back to Becoming the People. I'm Prentis Hemphill and I'm really happy to be with you today. I have a lot of conversations with people on this podcast and a lot of those conversations are about new ideas, innovations that people have that help us meet this moment. And some of the conversations are very explicitly about practice.

Prentis
00:27 - 00:55
And this is one of those conversations. Today, I'm talking to Norma Wong, who is a teacher, a Zen practitioner. She is the abbot of Ankoen, which is an independent branch of the Hanzen Chosen Ji, a Zen temple in Hawaii, where I have also practiced. She is a leadership guide and she's the author of a book, Who We Are Becoming Matters, The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Time of Collapse.

Prentis
00:57 - 01:19
I have sort of known Norma for years, but what I have known about Norma through people that I know in community is that she helps people see further than we could see on our own. She's looking out past the horizon and asking the question now, what do we need to do? Who do we need to become? in order to meet that horizon courageously.

Prentis
01:19 - 01:48
So of course I thought she'd be a great guest for this podcast. We talk in this conversation about this moment of collapse, and that's the word that she uses. And she doesn't use it in a dramatic way, it's not about a prediction even, but it's a description actually of the convergence of so many systems that are really kind of straining under immense pressure in this moment and the impact that it's going to have on each of us individually and collectively.

Prentis
01:50 - 02:01
We talk about technology. We talk about courage. We talk about this question, which I think is the same question at the core of this podcast. Who are we becoming?

Prentis
02:02 - 02:31
How can we become more human? How can we become deeper in our humanity? And how do we do all of that while cultivating courage? These are important ideas and I love the way Norma Wong approaches these ideas because she does so with a real commitment, a real devotion to training and to practice and invites all of us into looking at our lives with that lens.

Prentis
02:31 - 02:49
How does what we do every day impact the world that we're building and how does it help or hinder us in facing what it is that we're ultimately facing as a society and as a species? So this is a good one. It's a rich one. It's in some ways a really, it's both philosophical and practical.

Prentis
02:50 - 02:57
And I hope that you get as much out of it as I did. Thanks so much. Hi, Norma. It's so nice to see you again.

Prentis
02:58 - 03:01
I'm really happy to be in conversation with you today. Thank you for being here.

Norma
03:02 - 03:07
Oh, thanks so much, Prentis. It's been a minute. It's been a minute, it's been a minute.

Prentis
03:08 - 03:25
But I hear about you all the time. So I think that's, I feel like it's been a minute, but you're always kind of orbiting around and I get little bits of your wisdom. So I'm grateful for that. I want to, you know, just talk to you today, generally, and you have a new book out, Who We Are Becoming Matters.

Prentis
03:25 - 03:30
It's the courage, wisdom and aloha we need to be, we need in the time of collapse. Is that right?

Norma
03:30 - 03:44
Yes, yes, that is the case. Of course, who we are matters. But right now, things are moving so quickly and in such a collapse that we have to rapidly become.

Prentis
03:44 - 04:01
That's what I really want to get into. And it feels very aligned with what we're trying to do here in this space in general. And we are with this question as a community, as folks who are listening in, of how do we become the people that can meet this time? That's where the title of the podcast comes in.

Prentis
04:01 - 04:18
So when I saw the title of your book, I thought, okay, this is exactly the kind of medicine we're looking for right now. So thank you for writing it. And I want to get into, to all of it, kind of what you see in this moment and how you describe this moment. But I actually want to start somewhere.

Prentis
04:18 - 04:36
I want to start kind of where you start in the book, which is this exercise of the hand clasp. And if you're willing to, I want you to describe it and describe what it means and if you can give us the meaning you make of this practice for this moment.

Norma
04:38 - 05:12
Sure. So this is something that my teacher taught me a very long time ago. And it comes from ancient wisdom with respect to observing the tendencies of people. And so, you know, sometime before the age of three, we develop a pattern in terms of where it is that we take our thinking, whether we take it through our rational mind, or we take it through our emotional frame.

Norma
05:13 - 05:43
And so if you clasp your hands, and if your right thumb is over your left thumb, like mine, then you are more likely to be thinking about things through your rational frame. And if you're left over right, you're more likely to think about it through your emotional self. So, you know, these are just tendencies we have. they're pretty well baked in.

Norma
05:45 - 06:17
And, you know, the physical aspect is interesting because if you try to reverse it, then it won't feel comfortable. So we're capable of it, but we're not comfortable with it. The important part about this is that at moments in which like this, which are moving very rapidly, in which we need to make big decisions, which we may not know what to do. We need to bring both of those in.

Norma
06:18 - 06:34
And one of those will be extremely uncomfortable for us. And it really is about going to the edge of that and understanding that both of ourselves are necessary. In other words, our whole self.

Prentis
06:37 - 06:47
Right, right, right, right. And being a bit willing to be in the discomfort a little bit, that it's actually going to require a bit of what you might call discomfort.

Norma
06:48 - 07:16
Yes, yes. It's going to require that. And we'd say it's relatively low stakes, which is to say that if you can call upon both of yourselves, both of which are present, which means that you're not calling upon somebody else that's hanging out there. You're actually calling upon both of yourselves.

Norma
07:17 - 07:26
So it's very low stakes to consider everything that you know, but are not necessarily using.

Prentis
07:28 - 07:34
This is helpful because it feels like, well, one, are you good at guessing what people's hands position?

Norma
07:37 - 07:43
Sometimes, sometimes I'm good, but we can send false signals on that one.

Prentis
07:44 - 08:06
Oh, interesting. Interesting. Well, I'm definitely a right over left is what I discovered in that. But I think this leads to a place that I want to just stop at for a minute because I know for a long time, and you probably still do, forward stance work, which in a way talks to some of the work that I've done or some of the

Prentis
08:06 - 08:25
curiosities that I have about the relationship between how we are in our bodies and with our aliveness towards how we show up in the world. And I wonder if you could just give a brief, just explain to the folks listening a little bit about that work so that we are a little bit grounded in at least some of who Norma Wong is.

Norma
08:26 - 09:17
Okay, so embodied practice is part of long traditions. And then there are also the ways in which embodied practice can be brought in into more secular spaces, spaces in which we're not requiring people to have deep spiritual practice, but that the knowledge and practice that comes with being more in your body and understanding what that body is telling you and also understanding how you can practice in your body in order to be stronger, more focused, more centered, more grounded. All of those terms, by the way, are terms of the physical, not terms of the mind.

Norma
09:18 - 09:47
So when you say to someone, well, you know, we just need to be more grounded, unless you can actually tactically feel your feet under, you know, feel your feet, feel the ground under your feet, feel yourself actually being comfortable on that ground, feeling yourself being able to move quickly on that ground, then to say, well, we just need to be more grounded in your mind isn't going to help very much at all.

Prentis
09:47 - 10:07
Yeah, it's sort of the congruence, bringing it all here. And do you, this is just a curiosity I have, but do you think it's a mistake that we make to do that practice separate from the spiritual training or practice?

Norma
10:08 - 10:21
That's an interesting question. It's a very interesting question. It's one that I've pondered over time. You know, it's like, Do you want to be responsible about bringing these practices out?

Norma
10:22 - 11:08
And I would say that the body can show people many things, but then if you don't practice on a regular basis, then that will only just be a momentary demonstration. So it has usefulness, but it doesn't mean that it will continue to grow your your congruence, right, between your body and your mind. This is one of those things where you're hoping that if people actually get a taste of it, that they will take it upon themselves. Because this kind of work, any kind of depth work, is not something that you can require people to do.

Norma
11:09 - 11:16
This is really about people making choices, and then, you know, the dreaded D word, discipline.

Prentis
11:16 - 11:27
Oh, we're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. That is one of my favorite words, which sometimes gets me in trouble. I want to get there.

Prentis
11:27 - 12:15
And I think before we get there, you've been mentioning this word collapse, which is a very It's a specific word to talk about what's happening now. There could be any number of ways we describe it, but you say the word collapse, and I think these questions of embodiment have a particular kind of perhaps urgency when we look at, when we interpret or see the world as going through a number of collapses or crises. I guess I want you to talk about kind of what you see. And I know you from community as someone who is looked to to kind of see out a little further and reading your book, it seems like that's something that you, a gift you've had for a long time.

Prentis
12:15 - 12:22
So I wonder if you can talk a bit about what you see when you look around and kind of the use of the word collapse, what that means to you, where you think we are.

Norma
12:22 - 12:41
There are times when we are like in, I guess we call momentary trouble. I don't think that this is the time. I think that the entire world has been in some difficulty and that that difficulty actually started before I was born. And you know, Prentis, I just turned 70.

Prentis
12:42 - 12:43
Happy birthday.

Norma
12:43 - 13:19
Thank you. So I would say that civilization itself just kept building upon itself. And so we had almost a 4,000 year run in which with just a handful of situations during that time, was there a way in which there was a regression. And in all of those instances in which there was aggression, for the most part, we came back and nearly took it up almost from the same place.

Norma
13:20 - 13:46
that apparently being the human instinct, right? Which is if we're going to have trouble, what we're looking at is we're looking at the last moment in which things were going well as far as we are concerned, you know, in terms of our judgment. And we try to climb back to that last place. The thing that has actually kept moving on is technology.

Norma
13:47 - 14:53
But what technology has done, And, you know, I will say this, I hope it's an observation, but I will acknowledge that as a person who tries to keep the spirit inquiry at its center, it may very well be a judgment on my part. My observation is that technology has taken humanity farther and farther away from ready access to some of the resource that is only tangible if you put spirit at the center, and it's otherwise intangible. And so in this particular moment, we're in particular danger because over long, long decades of time, we've moved farther and farther away from our arm's length connection. In other words, we may be far away, but it's never been farther than arm's length.

Norma
14:54 - 15:13
And I think that we've drifted much farther from that. And, you know, we probably could go on and on and on as to the reasons for that. But this too is a contributor to this moment of collapse rather than regression. There are a couple of overlays.

Norma
15:13 - 15:30
One is an overlay with technology and the others overlay with the earth itself. Let me take the earth, right? So the earth is in a realignment moment. It isn't the first time that the earth has gone through this.

Norma
15:31 - 15:59
We've gone through this, right? There were humans with language and culture and community and potentially some form of governance at the end of the last ice age. They had to dig pretty deep because the Earth was going through this really big and rapid transformation moment where they would no longer be covered entirely in ice. So we've been through these moments before.

Norma
16:00 - 16:24
They don't come very often in terms of the Earth. And I would say it's only happenstance whether humans are ready or not when the Earth is doing it. We don't necessarily plan for it. Shockingly, we haven't planned for it, even though we have known this one coming for many, many, many decades.

Norma
16:25 - 16:43
So there's that. And then there's an overlay with technology in which I think that as humans, we've become less ingenious. We've become too accustomed with technology solving the many things. And along with that, the systems to take care of our problems.

Norma
16:44 - 16:58
So we've become good at the critique of that, the analysis of it, but not necessarily taking up its place if it shouldn't be there at all. This too, I believe, is contributing to this as a moment of collapse.

Prentis
17:00 - 17:32
I've been thinking about it as kind of like, this is what we might focus on in this time or something we need to build. But I also can see elements of it as a contribution to, if not collapse, a kind of inability to, for lack of a better word, unite or something like that. But it also feels like there's a collision of our myths, of our stories. and that there's that realm of being a human where we create stories that make meaning, that tie things together, that tell us who we are.

Prentis
17:33 - 17:55
And those stories are very profound and powerful. And this, in a way, connects to Hawaii in a lot of ways for me. But I think about how we are on this world, this earth together, and we've largely been in our own stories. for good reason, because they make meaning of the world around us.

Prentis
17:56 - 18:13
And now there's this, yeah, collision of the understanding of how we impact each other and also how we're related to each other, how we've heard each other and how we've supported each other. And all of these stories are colliding. And I don't know what the story is we tell now.

Norma
18:15 - 18:53
You know, they're the stories, and then there's the ways in which we exceptionalize our existence because of those stories. And I think that that's probably the more paralyzing aspect of it, rather than hearing ourselves and other people's stories. We've become... more powerful in terms of the ways in which we speak into our truths and to broadcast them widely.

Norma
18:53 - 19:29
And less muscle has been built on the listening side of things. Muscle has been built in the absorption, I think, but not in the, you know, what we call deep listening. We're in the listening that we're able to actually both see our best selves and also see the parts of ourselves that need some pruning and then make the effort to do the pruning. And so I would say the stories have become self-absorbed and that's a really big, big problem.

Prentis
19:32 - 19:53
Thank you for that. That makes a lot of sense to me. It makes me wonder in a way about why listening is so challenging. I know you talk about courage in the book, and this is something that I think about a lot and practice with a lot, courage, moving in, allowing myself to be changed.

Prentis
19:54 - 20:16
And it feels to me like there's some relationship between courage and the ability to listen, but also courage and a lot of other things that we might need to do or might be worthwhile for us to do in this moment. I wonder if you can talk about the role of courage in this time and cultivating courage and how we even start to do that.

Norma
20:17 - 20:48
People ask me a lot these days, what do we do with fear? My guess is they're probably asking you that too, Prentis. And I try to hold for them, and then I try to have them sit in the practice of holding for themselves, that courage and fear are not oppositional to each other. But courage is what you're willing to move through in the face of fear.

Norma
20:49 - 21:29
And when you move through, you're moving through yourself in order to move towards, and so therefore, you're probably not going to have any courage at all. If there isn't something that is bigger than your fear, that is worth it. There's a part, too, where we live in such an individualized society. People believe that they have to have individual courage rather than collective courage, the kind of courage that sits in the commons and is there because people are in support of each other.

Norma
21:29 - 22:15
And although, you know, I will say to them that the formula of one and one is actually more than two, they hear that with their ears, it goes into their mind, rather than feeling it in their belly. And I'd say, nevertheless, we have Minneapolis, we have many places whose names are not spread out over the news clips, where ordinary people are just basically helping their neighbors. And they may or may not have had a thing to say about the issues that are cascading. They may or may not have agreement on those things.

Norma
22:16 - 22:43
And yet, they're just leaning in and helping their neighbors. And I would say that is courage manifested in such a way that when people arrive there, they realize, oh, this must look courageous to other people, but it just feels like water running downhill for me. It's just what was necessary. And if I didn't, I would feel the regret.

Norma
22:43 - 22:54
And it's that space we're trying to just move quickly across. So it's the thinking about it that's going to get us into more trouble than anything else.

Prentis
22:55 - 23:18
One of the big things I kind of got out of reading you was this piece around the human quotient. I want you to talk about that, but I think what it inspired in me was some of this. there's like the what we do or the talking about what we do. And then there's this other kind of qualia of experience that is just deeply human.

Prentis
23:18 - 23:25
But I wonder if you can talk about the human quotient and what it means and how you've seen it make a difference.

Norma
23:26 - 24:15
Well, you know, Prentis, I had another life before this, right, where I was deeply in the political arena. And time after time, I would see people trying to follow the strategy, which would be beautiful strategy towards beautiful ideas, and then unable to make that move that would take them into the uncomfortable ground, they got in the way of themselves. And the characteristics of a person I began to understand would be as important as any idea or any strategy that you might put together. It's like who the person is really matters.

Norma
24:16 - 24:35
Whether or not they will overcome their fear, whether or not they will pierce through their doubt, whether or not they'll be able to lay their suspicions down. It's a thing. Whether they're willing to actually do big things is not a matter of strategy. It really isn't.

Norma
24:36 - 25:41
there's like a part of a person's quality that makes as much of a difference as any idea or analysis or strategy or resource that you might have. You and I are pretty much these days in the increasing the people quotient part of the thing. That's a side that we are in, but you and I also understand that that has to be put together with the conscious decisions that need to be made, need to be navigated. So it's not one or the other, but I really do see the human quotient at this moment as being important because in a time of collapse and in a time of which people are taking advantage of the collapse for their own means, either for ideology or for greed.

Norma
25:42 - 25:52
It is this quality, this aspect of the picture that is going to have to be called upon almost more than anything else.

Prentis
25:55 - 26:34
There's something that's really touching me personally in thinking about this, because I just so relate to what you're saying about we can have a strategy, we can have a thing that we say we're going to do, something we really believe in on some level and from some place inside of us. And then these things that you named about, can I do a big thing? Is it inside of me and available to me in this moment to make an impact in this world and to feel my work or my effort or my love touch something and make something change?

Prentis
26:35 - 27:09
that there's actually what's inside of us either makes that more possible or makes it less possible. You said, can I pierce through my doubt? And that just feels so powerful. And I don't think we recognize as a whole how those, I don't know what you'd call them, like those capacities or skillfulness or willingness or whatever it is inside of us, that it shapes what we do and how we do it.

Prentis
27:09 - 27:44
I think we're like, well, I said I was going to do this, and I'm sort of going through the motions. But if I don't actually allow that, if that's not available, it will always circumvent and undermine. And I think this question of who we are to become right now, yeah, I'm just like, this feels like it touches, this human quotient piece touches on a place to look, a place to look for all of us as we're going about the doing. What is possible?

Norma
27:45 - 28:05
You know, there are other aspects of the human quotient as well. Do we hold on to something so tightly that we're unable to see that it's past its time? You know, that's the thing. Or we were so invested in it that we can't see that there's another way.

Norma
28:06 - 28:41
That notion of that we've gone through some training around what it means to have power, and we don't as frequently actually ask the question, for what end? Towards what purpose? So is it, there are ways in which our human characteristics end up determining what kind of strategies we're going to formulate? Not only whether we can execute them, what is it that we're able to make?

Norma
28:42 - 28:45
both creatively and as a matter of choice.

Prentis
28:45 - 29:15
Thank you for that. Yeah, that feels like a really helpful set of distinctions, I think, for us. And I don't know if you find this, but I find it challenging sometimes when I'm going out and talking to people that maybe are not as familiar with embodiment work or whatever it might be to, it's almost like something has to switch for people to go, oh, not just what, but how?

Prentis
29:15 - 29:18
Huh. Something I hadn't considered before.

Norma
29:20 - 29:41
Yes, yes. Which is sort of an amazing thing, right? And, you know, Perhaps it's because it's true. We're well past the period of human endeavor in which we think of our work as being something that we tactfully make.

Norma
29:42 - 30:03
So we're out of the agricultural period, we're out of the industrial period, and all of that. But that separation between the body and physical realities, I mean, just plain out physical realities doesn't even have to be your body. I mean, right. Right.

Norma
30:04 - 30:06
Is is quite amazing. Quite amazing.

Prentis
30:08 - 30:38
Yeah, we're really on this precipice, as you say, of, well, I guess, you know, underneath, I've sort of been asking this question to people. It feels to me in this collapse that both things not only are happening, but will happen. We will awaken in some ways to, I think, the way of being and leading that you're talking about. And we will also, go deeply to sleep and move away from physical reality.

Prentis
30:38 - 30:55
It seems like both of those things will and are happening. How do you hold those? I'm mostly trying to be in a place of not resignation. but being wide enough to understand that multiple things are happening.

Prentis
30:55 - 31:01
That's at least how I'm holding it. I would like another way if you have it.

Norma
31:03 - 31:50
This is definitely a both-and, and that may very well be our only possibility, which is to say the definition of breaking away means that it isn't going to be everyone. And there's that part where there are groups of people who are going to have to, it's amazing that we are having to say this, but we need groups of people to take the risk to choose humanity and then to just move towards that, even if we have that part of our muscle somewhat atrophied. And what they're going to be doing will be both, therefore, ancient and entirely new.

Norma
31:50 - 32:25
It's ancient because if you say that the muscles are atrophied, it means we indeed do have some muscle for it. We do, we just haven't used them for a long time, perhaps for generations. But cellular memory being what it is on a scientific basis means that we have the actual ability to be able to move differently in this moment to choose something different and then to go about really simple things, Prentis. I mean, we have to feed each other.

Norma
32:26 - 33:01
And if you can't count on collapsing systems to do that, then you have to stand up ways to do that. And you'd best stand them up in small groups because you don't want to replicate systems failure in a time in which all systems are struggling. You know, I think of systems failure as just a thing that is happening because everything is moving so quickly that a system by definition is incapable of morphing quickly enough. That's not what a system is supposed to do.

Norma
33:02 - 33:48
So even the ones that we set up under whatever rules of common sense or whatever are not going to hold up very well. So we have to hold our work more as almost like organisms that are able to shift quickly and move a little bit ahead of where most people are ready to move so that there is place and stuff that people need when they're ready and therefore create the human momentum. And I think of that as actually being possible and hopeful.

Prentis
33:49 - 34:16
Do you think Hawaii has examples of this? Because when you talk about this organismic way of responding and you live in Hawaii, you are Kanaka, you're native Hawaiian. And it feels to me, I mean, I know you from Chosinji, Zen temple in Kalihi Valley, where you're Roshi and where I have done some practice. I try to talk about as much as I can, just what Hawaii has taught me.

Prentis
34:16 - 35:20
And you talk about aloha a lot in this book, and I want you to speak to that. But I don't know if a lot of people know the way Hawaii has multiple, in my opinion, as a non-Hawaiian outsider who has lived there, but to see the multiple levels at which things are happening, both the culture re-embedding, coming back to land and language, meaning after so much has been lost, and to see how significantly culture can shift and people can learn to relate to each other in a different way while also the commercialization and all of that stuff and land and military and all of that is also happening. There's also this current that if you know how to feel for it is its own world and ecosystem of land projects, feeding people, It feels to me like Hawaii is a teacher for a lot of us that we may not know how to look for.

Prentis
35:20 - 35:33
We may not know how to look and see Hawaii in that way. But do you see Hawaii as an example of this multiple human, this layering of human efforts at the same time?

Norma
35:34 - 36:03
From the vantage point of this place, I know that something else is possible. and that it is possible in both small ways and in structural ways. But among the things that you would have to come to grips with is you'd have to come to grips with your work being on a much longer time horizon. So, you know, I come into groups all the time.

Norma
36:03 - 36:43
where people are defeated because they look at the course of the work of their life and they basically say, you know, we didn't get what it is that we thought we were going to get. And I have to actually check my judgment around that. And my judgment would be associated with having a much longer notion as I know many peoples here in Hawaii have. We have a multi-generational notion of not only where it is that we came from, but also how far it is that we have to go.

Norma
36:44 - 37:26
I think of this as being a more indigenous perspective. And I'm reminded that every human today has ancestry that was indigenous at some time. But the only reason you don't have that perspective is because that indigeneity was cut off a very, very long time ago. And so I've come to have a thought, Prentiss, you know, I appreciate thought partnership in this, that I think that one of the reasons why Hawaii is the place that it is in terms of like so much experimentation that goes on all the time, it goes on Between

Norma
37:26 - 38:29
cultures, although you see the strong source of the Kanaka Maoli, right, the native people, the values of the native peoples, it's almost always cross-cultural, cross-generational. They think of work as being both new and long. And I have a notion that part of the reason why this is still possible is because our indigeneity was not cut off that long ago, relatively recent in human terms. And when it was getting cut off, almost immediately, the people of that time reminded, continuously reminded, the Native people and the new people who came to Hawai'i you know, that the aspects of modernity, whatever those aspects of modernity are, which for them was arriving very quickly, right?

Norma
38:29 - 39:00
It was arriving very quickly. And they kept reminding people, you have to be grounded in who you are. And when they were saying those things at that time, I think that they were delivering a more complex message then, oh, you have to remember that you're Hawaiian. In the songs, in the words, the speeches that were made, they were saying, you have to remember that the ocean can teach you.

Norma
39:00 - 39:25
You have to remember to take care of the land. You have to remember that your ancestors will be by your side and they're speaking to you if you can only listen. You have to remember that you have to do more than survive because Your descendants count on you. And so they were delivering these ways rather than identity messages, ways.

Norma
39:26 - 39:59
They made union with other peoples based on ways. My ancestors, both Haka Chinese and Native Hawaiian, one of the fastest combining combinations in Hawaii. because they saw such commonality, land, people, food, extended kin, to grow things, to know how to fish, to have memory of ancestors, right? They saw all these commonalities of ways rather than identity.

Norma
40:00 - 40:28
And to lean into ways, understanding that we may have many identities, that feels like the fertile ground. Now, I would say in Hawaii, we're kind of just doing it, we're not really conscious about it. But we are reaching a time where we have to be, because all the things that are happening in the world won't stop on the boundary of the ocean.

Prentis
40:31 - 40:36
And so much is happening in Hawaii right now. So much. Yeah. So much.

Prentis
40:36 - 41:11
Yeah. And I actually felt myself tearing up a little bit, because I was thinking about an ancestor now, who I consider a teacher of mine, Auntie Puanani Burgess, talking about, I feel the tears coming, but talking about when she was coming back into trying to figure out, how do I actually be a practitioner of culture? And her, Kumu, I believe, saying to her, don't you have the same arms as your ancestor?

Prentis
41:11 - 41:40
Aren't you looking at the same sky and the same ocean? Create like them. And there is something about that, especially You know, me as someone who displaced comes from displaced, kidnapped people to think about myself also as qualified. If I come humbly with that kind of curiosity and presence in my own being, that story always moved me when she would tell that story.

Prentis
41:40 - 42:00
So just feeling that kind of mandate and invitation to be creative and a creator of these practices that you're talking about. I want to move us into discipline here as we round out. And I was like, am I going to do an abrupt change into discipline? And I am, because I think that's the mood for discipline.

Prentis
42:03 - 42:28
I like discipline. And I think it's a controversial word. There can be connotations of force, of overriding, of where I come from, all the ways that I've seen generations of people forced into having their bodies do things that felt out of alignment or at least to the benefit of others. And yet I feel myself drawn.

Prentis
42:28 - 42:53
And again, I think I met you at Chosinji, Zen temple, which has no shortage of discipline. I'm drawn to those practices because of what I feel like they actually contribute to my sense of freedom. So I wonder if you can trouble a little bit the kind of common understanding of discipline and what you mean in this book by discipline and especially for now.

Norma
42:53 - 43:24
So what I would mean is that we need to lean into two things. One is interrupting our habit patterns, and the other is to have the discipline of our practices. And discipline of practice means that we have to embrace it and do it all the time, not be weakened warriors. not say, well, I'm going to be a grounded and thoughtful person when I have to be.

Norma
43:24 - 43:39
But otherwise, I'm going to be a hot mess. It's not that I'm never a hot mess. But if I have the discipline of my practice, then the hot mess will be an outlier. And I will know when it's creeping up on me.

Norma
43:40 - 43:58
And I can take measures for it to be short-lived. Practice is just done by rote. won't yield much at all. You really have to be listening carefully and to interrupt the ways in which we sort of get into a rut.

Norma
43:59 - 44:09
So discipline is not the same thing as, okay, this is what I do. This is what I'm always going to do. This is, and I'm going to do it every day. And that's it.

Norma
44:09 - 44:33
That's my discipline. So here we're looking at a discernment that is associated with it. In the book, I just take it through what I do every day. And part of what I'm trying to demonstrate there is that it's in the ordinary things that we cultivate the discipline of ourselves.

Norma
44:33 - 44:46
And that, you know, a thing called self-care is not an indulgence. If you just have the discipline of breaking your fast, with a drink of water. Norma don't go to no spa.

Prentis
44:47 - 44:53
Prentis does. Sometimes.

Norma
44:55 - 45:07
That might just be a cultural generational thing. I just say that. I have my own indulgences, but I don't count on the indulgences for my self-care. An indulgence is an indulgence.

Norma
45:08 - 45:20
Discipline is where my care comes in. Hey, you know, Auntie Pua didn't have much discipline. I can see that. The two of us would make an interesting pair.

Norma
45:20 - 45:33
She said, basically, she'd say, she said, I'll hold the wonderment, and you hold the discipline. And together, we'll make sure that all the bases are covered.

Prentis
45:35 - 45:48
Yeah. And she did really bring that to me, that wonderment, that awe. And I can almost I can still feel the imprint of her warmth. You know, when I when I imagine her, I can still feel her that way.

Prentis
45:49 - 46:11
I want to just move us towards close. And I wonder if there's just. Anything you want to share with the folks listening and maybe an entry point, you know, you talk about, and I think you have a pillow on your couch about being a good ancestor, but how this question of how we become good ancestors leads us into the kinds of actions we might take right now.

Norma
46:12 - 46:43
So first, a little context. And I say, the context point I want people to hold is that When our ancestors were closer to their indigeneity, they didn't hold the future and the current circumstance as being binaries. What they saw the current moment as the time that you did the work that would make the future possible. So then the real question is, what is it that you see on the horizon?

Norma
46:43 - 46:59
What do you see in the future? that's going to take a long time to build, and you better start now. If you look at that, then the things that you do right now, you hold with more consequence. They need to be bigger actions, among other things, right?

Norma
47:00 - 47:14
They need to be bigger actions. The small stuff and the big stuff, by the way, takes as much effort. Might as well go for the big stuff, but how do you calibrate that? You calibrate it in the direction of your future aspiration.

Norma
47:14 - 47:16
And so therefore, hold both.

Prentis
47:20 - 47:38
That's a great place, I think, to leave us in our pondering. What are the big moves you can make. And that piece around the small and the big takes the same. So let's go big right now feels so, so, so, so, so helpful for me in particular.

Prentis
47:40 - 47:47
Norma, thank you. I'm always so appreciative of the time I get to spend with you and learn from you. I'm so, so, so grateful.

Norma
47:48 - 48:08
Thank you so much. I know that you're holding a lot and sometimes I think about the fact that we mostly circle each other across an entire continent, rather being in the same place. Perhaps something would happen strange and wonderful in the cosmos if we're both in the same place.

Prentis
48:08 - 48:18
Let's try it. Because you circle a lot too. I remember being at home in Hawaii and being like, is Norma here? And I'm like, oh, Norma's gone somewhere, so maybe we can...

Prentis
48:19 - 48:30
land in one place at the same time. I would love to to be in more personal conversation. And also, let's do something in Hawaii. You know, I love I love that place so much.

Prentis
48:30 - 48:34
It's taught me so much. So thank you. All right. Thanks so much.

Prentis
48:35 - 48:54
Thank you, Norma. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña, sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts.

Prentis
48:55 - 49:07
And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Prentis Hemphill. We are having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming the People.

Prentis
49:09 - 49:21
We're becoming the people. We're becoming the people. We're becoming the people. We're becoming the people.

Prentis
49:36 - 49:37
Doom, doom, doom.