Welcome to Living Dharma, a podcast from the Turga Institute. I'm Summa Kunzangpamo, here with my co-host Justin Kelly, as we explore what it means to bring Buddhist wisdom into everyday life. Each episode features conversations with practitioners, teachers, and change makers who are living the path in real, grounded, and inspiring ways. We're so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00We are so honored to have our guest with us today, uh, Roshi Joan Halifax. Um I'll say a few words, Roshi, about your extraordinary career before we get started because it really is quite inspirational for us. Um Roshi Joan is a pioneer through and through in her entire career. Um, she's a Zen teacher, a trained anthropologist, a social activist, and longtime bridge builder between contemplation and care. She's the founder and head teacher at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. She's globally recognized for transforming how we meet death and dying. Roshi Jona's work with patients, with families, clinicians, prisoners, nomadic communities across the Himalayas, with really uncommon courage and tremendous compassion. She's an award-winning author of many beloved books, and she brings clarity, warmth, and fierce kindness to life's most tender edges, inviting us to meet reality with wisdom, with heart, and with humor. So, Roshi Joan, once again, it's such a pleasure to have you here with us. Thanks for joining.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much. I uh I'm embarrassed a little bit by um your praise. But anyway, uh I think you have a question for me. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we'll we'll give you a few questions to think about, hopefully.
SPEAKER_01We certainly do. We certainly do. Thank you so much, uh Roshi Jon again for taking the time. I actually feel a tear coming to my eye as Justin was reading your bio. I mean, it's um it's just extraordinary what what you're doing in the world. So maybe this leads into our first question for you quite nicely. Um what does it mean to you to apply the dharma in daily life?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think that's where we apply the dharma, actually.
You know, I often ask myself, um, what is authentic practice? And there's really one answer. And that depends just on you. Your practice as it is, is what is authentic as it is. You know, I remember years ago uh a rather famous governor of California had come back visiting Mother Teresa in India. And um we were hosting a big retreat with TikNot Han. I think this was in the 80s, and um the governor asked Ty, well, what about the cypress tree in the courtyard, which is a very well-known ko on. And Tai said, that cypress tree is dead. And I laughed internally because so often um we rely on uh constructed content instead of the fact that we were sitting under oak trees at that very moment. So authenticity in Zen is not just a matter of things that are like robes or liturgy or hair don'ts or cross your legs and hope to die. Um though these things can be the sensory ecology that nourishes what Uchiama Roshi has called the life that is forever. But from the Zen perspective, authentic practice is your whole life. As Gary Snyder once said, um he said, you know, Zen practice is a way of using your mind, living your life, and doing it with other people. And I would say other beings because it's not simply people. But I want to just talk briefly about Zen and the Zendo, um, you know, what we call formal practice. And in Zen, um the spirit of Viria, of wholeheartedness is really quite important. It's not like we're sitting there like so many sacks of dirty laundry in the Zendo. There's a kind of powerful uprightness.
I often use uh the somatic image of a strong back that is equanimity or capacity to uphold ourselves in the midst of any conditions, but flexibly and a soft front, and that is uh being permeable or having the world transparent to us or being in this state of mutuality or intersubjectivity with things exactly as they are. You know, I look on practice as an extraordinary opportunity, and it's so easy for us to squander. And yet, when we bring wholeheartedness forward, it's signaling to us and probably to others that we've turned away from the life that is lived by most people because we feel a kind of existential unease as we see that what we thought the world would be that would make us happy actually leads us to suffering. It's a kind of incredible irony. You know, I often say uh to people who come to Upai and Zen Center, they say, oh, the people who come to UPI and Zen Center, they they, you know, they're
they're suffering. And I said, yeah, but there's a difference. And that difference is they know their suffering, they recognize their suffering, they're not caught in the some saric world of dispersiveness, of having our attention divided, being in states of absolute distraction. And we understand that through practice we can discover that the instinct that so many people have to preserve and enhance this self, this need to define and defend the self, it's so powerful. And as such, it's very difficult for many people to begin living a life that isn't a prolonged strategy for self-protection and self-enhancement. That's a pretty tough assignment. You know, at the same time, uh, and I know you all are dedicated practitioners, all of us experience a kind of faith in the Dharma. A faith in the Dharma as a context where we can restore sanity and we can restore fundamental goodness. And as such, we must have the insight into the fact that our life, our whole life, not just in the Zendo, not just in the presence of a great teacher, but wherever we are in any given moment, is in fact a medium for practice, what Dogen has called continuous practice. So here we are in this place online, and you're in your home or your office or your living room. And I'd like to think as we're in this sort of modern uh virtual setting, you know, I'd like to turn my own reflection to the early practitioners of Buddhism. You know, like the Buddha who sat under the Bodhi tree for 49 days, there was a kind of incredible wholeheartedness actualized by the Buddha. And that is something that I feel uh has touched my life deeply. And we just finished Rohatsu Sashin a few days ago, which is a very uh demanding practice of uh eight days, where we mark the awakening of the Buddha, and there's a kind of poignancy in it, in the sense that um we look at our own uh awakened nature as pretty paltry, and the effort that the Buddha actualized is something that really inspires us. And then, of course, the founders and Bodhidharma, who faced the wall for nine years, sat in that cave in Shaolin. Pretty tough practice, or Tatsuvika, who cut off his arm and offered it to Bodhidharma to convince him of his sincerity, or Dovin's teacher, Rujing, who got bloody sores on his behind from sitting Zazen with so much viria, so much wholeheartedness. And I know that many of you feel that to make such a turnaround in one's life is truly, truly remarkable. And it is remarkable from my point of view because it's a manifestation of a deeper and wiser mind. In a way, it's like the Buddha awakening within us. And I'm not gonna say too much about Ehe Dogen, who's the founder of the Soto school in Japan and who went to China, met Rujing, and really, in very short shrift, um uh awakened. Uh, I'd been in Tian Tion Monastery with my good friend Kazuwaki Tanahashi, and it, I have to tell you, I think you're pretty clo clo cold up there in Wisconsin. That soto, that zendo is so icy. I thought, you know, you either awaken in this place or or you perish. Maybe also that's not so different one from the other. But in any case, there's a very famous fascicle that Dogen has written on uh the circle of the way. And he says, you know, on the great road of the Buddha ancestors, there is always unsurpassable practice. It's continuous, it's the circle of the way, and it's never cut off. So I want to just invite us to take a breath and notice where we are in this moment. The context of your lived experience, the living room, the kitchen, the office, the bedroom, wherever you might be, not separating yourself from this environment that you inter are with, that you're intersubjective with, that you're in a state of mutuality with, and it shapes your experience in this moment. So let's just take a breath and notice. Authentic practice from the Zen perspective is about relationality and it's about process. It has nothing to do with outcome, and that is one of the things that is kind of ironical about Zen practice. Suzuki Roshi called it no gaining idea. And yet there's this wholeheartedness, so there's this kind of paradox that we're living, this sort of strength of being in the present moment, and at the same time not driving toward an objective, toward an outcome. And it involves us in being um resting in the experience of our sensory ecology, and that we're kind of braided with the streams of life that actually support us. And I I like what um our good friend, the late Francisco Virella said, you know, we can't be separated from the context of our lived experience. You know, in Zen, we don't use um uh media, if you will, although we're uh using media right now, but we don't use media. Um, thoughts, uh, guided meditation, visualizations, uh, phrases, and so forth. There's a kind of raw and naked sitting in things just as they are. And it's pretty difficult the first 20 or 30 years because we're so uh distracted, we're so conditioned by our lives to have our attention flung here and there. And it's also to recognize, interestingly enough, that Zen is embodied, being in the body, you know, this kind of uprightness that I referenced earlier. And at the same time, it's decentered. As the practice that's uh decentered, there's a kind of um reduction in self-focus, in in self-rumination. And that's why I keep coming back again and again to the power of our lived experience in the context of where we are in this moment as it is. And our practice as such, this practice of profound uh mutuality, of non-separation, allows us um to drop into the source, which is awareness. But awareness that is fundamentally not objectifying, but is non-dual. You know, so often um we find ourselves actually toyed by the objects of our consciousness, and you know, the objects of our consciousness are simply guests in the stream of our awareness, and it's to recognize that um uh these guests are constantly showing up, and again, it's quoting Suzuki Roshi, and we're not inviting those guests to tea. They simply self-liberate in the ideal circumstance. You know, going back to this uh image of Zen, um no gaining idea. It's not something we're looking for, but it's more about letting come and letting go. There's this non-directed quality of um release that comes with every uh outbreath. And yet it's not about fostering a mind of poverty, and it's not about denying whatever is arising in our moment-to-moment
experience, it's rather about including everything into our practice, yet not clinging to what is arising and not reifying what is arising. You know, one of my favorite fascicles of Heidogen is called the Genjo Kawan. Um Kastanahashi translates that as uh actualizing the fundamental point. And this is a sort of primer, if you will, for um the unfolding of our practice through time and space. And it's such a powerful uh uh series of unfoldings. He he Dilgut wrote, he said, you know, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. Again, the context of our lived experience, where we are in this moment, we're actualized by myriad things. And then Dogen goes on to write, he says, you know, when actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. There's this experience of non-separation or of what Tiknat Han is called inter-being. And then Dogen caps this process. He says, No trace of enlightenment remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. Maybe I want to share that again with you all. To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. And when actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So, in my experience, um, I began to practice in the mid-1960s, and uh needless to say, I was very uh driven um to address the truth of my suffering as a social activist and as someone who was uh in uh the anti-war movement of the 1960s, this uh insane war um was happening in Vietnam that was basically, you know, a long history of conflicts, but we ant it up in our country and uh brought such incredible insanity and suffering um to both the north and the south in Vietnam. And we were so uh kind of dedicated to end that war. And Tai came to the United States at this time. I lived in New York City, and honestly, when I heard him talk, um, I realized that the moral outrage that I felt toward my government, which by the way has not entirely left me as of today, but also I realized, listening to Ty, that that moral outrage was suffering. And I realized that I could be both a contemplative and a social activist at the same time. And it Was in hearing Tiknat Han, this very humble, quiet monk who spoke just above a whisper at best. But the thing that I could sense with knowing nothing was the depth of his practice. He wasn't about charming us or amusing us. He just simply laid his life open to us. And it broke my heart and broke it open. And I realized I wanted to actualize a life that was grounded in the Dharma. Now, at the age of eighty-three, I still carry that sensibility. I often say in in these times, I feel like I was bored for this time. Our world is in such an incredible tangle. And yet I feel that my practice has been a resource for myself and somewhat for others, in what it means to not disengage from the social and the political and the environmental criticality that we're in at this time. You know, this practice that you're engaged in, this practice that I'm engaged in, it's possible for us, and it's important for us, to actualize the self as not localized, but as always emerging, it's always appearing, it's always also including. It's including by expanding beyond its constructed boundaries. And the craft of your practice and the craft of my practice, though
maybe the craft in a certain way is quite different, but it's about discovering and expressing our mutuality through the medium of our practice. And also not only our mutuality, but also our sufficiency. And this is a style of eating that um is quite interesting. Only the Japanese could figure out something as tidy and neat and sufficient as this. And um, what Orioki basically means is nothing extra. Everything is complete as it is. This moment is complete as it is. I didn't begin formal practice with Thai uh for another 20 years. I actually began to practice with a Korean teacher, Sung Song Sansanim. And I have to tell you, the Koreans are really into wholehearted practice. And I it was tough. You know, we would uh get up at 4:30 in the morning, put on our bowing clothes, we'd race to the zendo, do 108 prostrations in 15 minutes, race back, take our bowing clothes off, wipe ourselves down, put on our robes, and race back to the zendo and sit. And the the uh sessions that we did were called Yongman Jongjin, which means to leap like a tiger while sitting. I kind of feel the Korean practice came right out of the mountains of Korea. And also a long history of war. Very tough, very demanding practice. But interestingly enough, um uh my teacher wasn't so interested in the social and political dilemmas of uh the 1970s. And in this time, feminism was strong and it was growing uh in strength. And I realized that um at a certain point I needed to um actually transition out of that practice field, and I ended up encountering Tai and um in an intimate way, not just sitting in an audience and listening to him. And I was very inspired by um this early experience I had listening to Tikmat Han, where he spoke about not differentiating our work as dedicated social activists from our experience as contemplatives. That moved me so much, and I still, as you can imagine, carry that spirit because it's a spirit that is um marked by this sense of uh intimacy with things as they are, not constructed, not drawing out of you know the fabulous lists in Buddhism, which I love, I love the Pali Canon, um, because I tend to be a list maker myself, um, so pragmatic. But this sense of intimacy and immediacy that's um characterized by our practice. And I remember uh um a con that goes, uh, you know, a monk asks Dongshan, among the three bodies of the Buddha, which one does not fall into categories? Of course, he's asking about the some bogakaya, nirmanakaya, and dharmakaya. It's a trap. Probably, you know, the monk was saying in his head, ah, Dongshan is gonna say Dharmakaya. What Dongshan said is really uh, I think it was perfect. He said, I am always intimate with it. I am always intimate with it. A monk asked Dongshan of the three bodies of the Buddha, which one does not fall into categories? Dong Shan replied, I am always intimate with it. That monk must have had his mind blown. That exchange, of course, found its way into various koan collections. Koans are public cases that are, you know, almost like bestalt therapy, where you don't separate yourself from exactly every element that is in the koan itself. But they're not therapeutic, please. So I take it back. You know, another koan that I really have appreciated over the years is um case 20 from the book of equanimity. And uh the abbot of a humble monastery asked a pilgrim who was passing through, he thought, um Dizong was the abbot, and Fayang was the pilgrim actually coming to kind of challenge the people of that area of like your Buddhism is isn't that good. And Dizong asked Fayan, he says, you know, where are you going? And Fayan said, I am wandering aimlessly. Well, you know, that's a pretty arrogant thing to say. If you know the three doors of liberation, you realize that the third door is aimlessness. I mean, he's telling the abbot, you know, I am wandering aimlessly. And Dizong then said, Well, what do you think of wandering? And Feyong replied, Well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03And Dizong said, not knowing is most intimate. And of course, Faiong just popped right open right then and there.
SPEAKER_04A kind of, you know, mind that suddenly was free, not into categories, not into a plan, not even into the three doors of liberation. You know, in the more than half a century I've been doing this, and again, instead we say continuous failure. Um, you know, every time I sit, uh I have this experience of I'm failing. And it's so liberating, if you will, because it absolutely um extinguishes not your wholeheartedness, but your ambition. Just sitting, she can tasa, nothing more than just that. So I think this is also true of um your practice. You know, this practice that we do is a commitment to find your seat and to stay in it, and to be connected to, not separate from, mutual or intimate, with exactly where you are in this very moment. And in Zen, we say, once you take your seat, don't move away from yourself, don't move away from your experience, your pain, your situation, but don't dabble. Go deep again and again. I remember I was reading Shanti Deva, and he says, don't be lazy, doing things that seem important but are not. So this is also a kind of uh invitation in Zen. An invitation to right now, in this moment, find ease, find stability, touch into stillness, be with impermanence, with flow, non-separate from the field of change, just constantly percolating through our lived experience, and see if what can arise is a kind of clarity or or vividness or or joy.
You know, a friend of mine who's a um haiku poet, Clark Strand, uh, this is going back to going back to um uh the beginning question, um, Clark wrote something like, you know, where you meditate has everything to do with how useful your meditation will be. But by where, he says, I don't necessarily mean in the which rule of the house or whether you live in a quiet spot or not. And Clark says, I simply mean that you should meditate inside the life that you have. If you're an accountant, meditate inside an accountant's life. If you're a policeman, meditate inside of that. And then Clark writes, you know, when you want to illuminate your
life, meditate precisely in that spot. And so often we feel we have to go to the Zendo by the temple. And, you know, recently, I think some of you know um I had uh open heart surgery that um 12 days later I had a second open heart surgery. It's really a shocking and almost uh life-destroying situation, and yet it was so um incredible to see um uh that was the life that I had. Being in a hospital bed for a month. Um, every complication you can imagine. That was the life that I had. That was what was given to me. And it didn't mean that I crossed my legs, I could hardly sit up. I meditated in the life that was given to me in those 30 days, and then in the 30 days after, and the 30 days after, not calling it suffering per se, not having the energy to even objectify my experience, but simply being in the experience as it was. Nothing more. I couldn't take anything more and nothing less.
SPEAKER_02It was sufficient as it was, it was full, it was complete.
SPEAKER_04The late Ujiamaroshi says, you know, we practice to awaken the life that is forever. And he wrote, he says, you know, a Zen practitioner is directed by thou, not by ambition. And he teaches, you know, when you let go of ambition, the life force really begins to flow. And he had many Westerners who practiced with him, and he says, you know, Westerners place a lot of importance on living longer and giving little attention to the significance of death. And he says, you know, the miracle is not for living three or five years longer. When you meet the life that is forever, that's the miracle.
SPEAKER_02That's the miracle.
SPEAKER_00Roshi, I would love to follow up on one point from well, first of all, that it's just really profound to hear you say these words in in a time when I think it's so appropriate. And and I don't want to speak for others, but I think there's a general sense in our community that facing these like seemingly massive challenges of this era with the political currents and environmental crises and introduction of these massive technologies, it seems overwhelming and too much.
But yet you said earlier that you you feel you're born into the perfect era and it was really touching. Could you could you say more about that?
SPEAKER_04You know, I feel like we've been given something in this era that is really remarkable, and that is to have greed, hatred, and delusion amplified in a way that uh in my many years of life I've never seen anything like this. And it's an extraordinary invitation for us not to be overwhelmed, but to be curious. What can we bring to this tangle? How can we, as the Buddha said, untangle this tangle? And each of us will find the scale of doing that that is appropriate to them. Sometimes, you know, it's AOC or the incredible, ah, Bernie Sanders. You're just like a fierce warrior, these people. And sometimes it's just putting your hand on your child's head and really inviting that child into closeness with you. You know, I have many friends who have started extraordinary projects. I'm very close with Christiana Fiwedis, who was the person most responsible for the Paris Climate Accord. And I tell you that, and she's a student of TikTok Hans, unstoppable person, just so totally. This is what we've been given. It's an offering to us to really show up. And I would say the same for my close friend Rebecca Solnid. Powerful voice around justice and sanity and hope.
Because the truth of impermanence is where things are at. This will change. There's going to be a lot of damage that vulnerable and even non-vulnerable individuals and species experience. But it's an invitation for us to uphold ourselves and meet the times with strength instead of being so many bags of laundry, as I said, to really practice the way in a way that um wisdom is there. We see everything is transitory, everything's impermanent. There's this uh dumb joke that was um attributed to the Dalai Lama. I don't think it, you know, I don't think his holiness did it, but anyway, his holiness was asked, Sir, your holiness, what do you think of the French Revolution? And his holiness, apocryphal, but nonetheless, replied, it's too early to tell. You know, we draw such um fierce conclusions based on fake knowing. Instead of seeing the truth of impermanence, the truth of no self is separate from any other self. And also, you know, another piece that I think is so important has to do with the cultivation of bodhicitta. That we have dropped our defenses enough to feel our mutuality with all beings and things. And then, as such, um, our commitment is to mitigate and end suffering to the greatest degree possible. But it means that we have to actually access our motivation, which is based in our values, which often is preconscious for us. And through the medium of practice and also facing criticality, to have our values present themselves from the sort of deeper bones and marrow of our lives, and to understand that our values might not be aligned with our intention. We could say we intend to mitigate suffering, but actually our values are about earning a big living. Being caught in that. So part of the work that we do in practice and in this time of criticality is to surface our values and to align our values with our intentions. And then as such to understand what we're really committed to. And that's work. It's tough work. And it involves also something that is really tough to do, and that's atonement. It's taking responsibility for messing up in all the different ways that we do. Because honestly, our vows without atonement are shallow.
So I look at this time as completely horrendous as it is. My heart, mind turns to Gaza or to Myanmar, where Buddhists are dropping bombs on a hospital just the past 24 hours in Myanmar. What? Or what's happening in Sudan? Not to turn away from that suffering. Not to hold others accountable. But to understand we are not separate from Gaza nor from Israel. Nor from the crazy Buddhists in Yanmar. Or the Rohingya that are fleeing genocide. It's an invitation for resilience, for standing up, taking a stand, standing in our deeper values. That's why I say there's I was born for this job. Not seeking entertainment, but turning a mind and heart toward the truth of what is happening environmentally, politically, and socially at this time. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I hope it gives some kind of feeling for um what I feel is important.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Roshajan. Um I'd like to also pick up on something that you shared earlier about contemplative and being a contemplative and at the same time an activist, and these two really coming together. Um could you say a little bit more about how you personally balance this inner contemplative life with the demands that come from outer surface from leadership, your activist work? How do you how do you really balance these two?
SPEAKER_04Well, I don't see them as two, actually. Um you know, when I was working in the prison system on death row and maximum security, we had men who had murdered children, their parents, friends, strangers, and so on. I didn't see which was social service in this case, not about addressing issues related to structural violence, but the carcerel system is an environment of structural and institutional violence. And I realized how I was there in that system was not as a kind of dreamy contemplative, but looking in a very uh raw way, very open way, at this institution that was a kind of machine for rage. And to look in a way that allowed me to see whether it was correctional officers or those who were guessed in the carceral system, to see they shared a sense of mutual helplessness. And out of that compassion arises. Um I I really found uh this person pretty repugnant. And um I actually didn't like how I felt toward this man. And I would sit with this man in a certain way as a teacher for me. Part of me just wished he would die, and he did recently die, by the way. Boy, he sure went at 180 before he died. That was interesting about the truth of impermanence. But I focused on him at a time where his decisions were causing great suffering for many, and um I decided to see him as a baby, just helpless, in a kind of experiment, and then I decided to see him as a dying man, and I asked myself, would I, if I were asked to come by and sit by his bedside, would I do that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, of course I would. Of course.
SPEAKER_04I mean, part of the work is to not separate ourselves and say, this is the kind of suffering that I feel connected to, um, is worthy of my engagement. Again, it's like Tik Nathan, he came to the US shortly after Rodney King had been beaten insensate by the police in Los Angeles. And Ty said, I didn't want to come to your country. I can understand that. But lots of people don't want to come to our country right now. Lots of people are leaving our country. But then Ty made the point that he was not separate from Rodney King or from the police who were beating Rodney King. And I honestly think now is the time that we are being called to sit in the chart and grounds. What my teacher, Glassman Roshi, did in so many ways. Those charnal grounds, whether they are the charnel grounds of the carceral system, the charnel grounds of war, the charnal grounds of what's happening to our very environment, to our medical system, to our educational system, to our capitalist economy causing insane suffering for so many, not only in this country, but other countries.
We're being called to sit there with what Glasman Roshi, my last teacher, with not knowing what I spoke about earlier, and bearing witness, not separating from. And out of not knowing and bearing witness, compassionate action can arise. So I don't see social action as separate from contemplation. But I see the opportunity now of what it is presenting to us to sit in these churnal grounds and not turn away from the opportunity to practice in the midst of not only our suffering, but the suffering in this world and how important it is to do right now.
SPEAKER_02Does that make sense to you?
SPEAKER_00It's very profound, Roshi. And you know, many of our students, and and Kumzangla and myself included, our primary entrance into the Dharma and relationship with the Dharmas through the Tibetan lens. And oftentimes there can be a lot of a lot of images and iconography and symbolism. And there's a there's a real uh rawness to what you're saying, to use your word from earlier. Um and so, yeah, it certainly makes sense. It's very inspiring. And I wonder, we we don't want to keep you too long, Roshi, um, but I wonder if we could ask one more question about your work with with death and dying.
So many of us are struggling, right? Losing loved ones and and going through that process and and witnessing many of the atrocities that you mentioned in Sudan and and Raza and Myanmar and elsewhere. Could you could you speak a little bit about your work with death and dying and how you how you bring your practice to that specific space?
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, that work really opened up for me when I um returned from Africa where I was doing field work. Among the Dugon people who have I write a passage that happens once every 53 to 60 years. And I saw, looking back at my own country, that we didn't really have those rites of renewal that allowed us to meet death in a way that was sane. And I went to work as a medical anthropologist at the University of my School of Medicine, and I saw that the most marginalized people in the medical system were dying people. There just was, Kuba Ross was doing her work, but she was way on the edge of the conventional medicine. But I felt I wanted to do this work, come alongside the dying. And I ended up marrying Stanislav Grof, the psychiatrist who did uh incredible work with dying people. We wrote a book together, The Human Encounter with Death. And it was so uh powerful to sit with people in the latter stages of uh their cancer diagnosis who were going to die in a very short period of time. Where, you know, taking this mind-manifesting substance LSD, and to um realize that we had barely uh access or understood the human unconscious. And it blew my mind, literally. And I realized then that I wanted to do this work. This was, you know, in the mid-1970s, and I continue it to this day. It's coming alongside dying people, really being in the truth of their mortality, but your mortality as well. You know, I mentioned this surgery or surgeries that I had um in June, where I was just one breath away from dying. And I honestly say every dying person that I've sat with over the decades was with me in those days. It is grace, a teaching, a miracle, a kind of revelation, and it is messy. Dying is a messy process for most. It's not to romanticize it,
but it's to be with the truth of what is happening and to be able to come alongside or to hold steady in the truth of mortality that will eventually take you. I look on it really as one of the most important practices that we can do, come alongside our parents, volunteer at the hospice, sit with our dying teacher, not turning away, but coming into this experience of intimacy with things just as they are. I I look on these years, decades now, more than half a century, sitting with dying people. It's a true gift, but also it's as I said, often very messy, not to be idealized. It takes groundedness, it takes resolve, it takes care, it takes compassion.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Roshi. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01June, thank you, thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts. It's been uh extraordinary to listen to you. It just feels like the Dharma has has flowed from your mouth like uh like petals uh coming out. It um everything that you've shared is is clearly so rooted and embodied in the Dharma. Um yeah, thank you for being such an incredible role model and such an incredible inspiration for us all. Um, so many gems of wisdom that you've shared with us here today. Yeah. Thank you, Joan. Thank you very much for your life of practice and for taking the time to meet with us today.
Yes, thank you so much, Roshi John. We wish you great health, continued teaching, and may all your activities be fruitful.
SPEAKER_04Wonderful, wonderful. So thank you so much, and um, I feel just grateful. And I'd like to kind of finish this with um a rendering of the four vows of the bodhisattva, actually originally uh crafted by Qi Yi in China and uh also reflecting the four noble truths and ghosts' creations are numberless. I vowed to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to transform them. Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it. The awakened way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to this edition of Living Dharma. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd be grateful if you left a review, subscribed to the channel, or shared it with somebody that you love. As a 501c3, the Turga Institute relies on your generosity to continue offering transformational programs rooted in Vajrayana Buddhism. To support our work and explore our course offerings, visit us at Turka Institute.org. Until next time, may your awareness be steady, may your heart be open, and may your wisdom be ever present.