My Previous Newsletters

"There is So Much Now that Needs Protection”

February 2025

Some years ago I taught with a dear friend at Schumacher College in the UK, Sophy Banks. She offered a framework I found clarifying, about how we live in a culture in which we cannot accept weakness and vulnerability in ourselves. Thus we project our hatred and mistrust of what is weak and vulnerable in ourselves onto others, often scapegoating those who are weak and vulnerable as the “other” or “the problem” because they remind us of parts of ourselves we are unable to be with. 

There’s a similar idea in IFS, a type of psychotherapy developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1990s. It is based on family systems therapy because in many ways the mind functions like a family unit. Instead of a unified, single personality, Schwartz suggests that everyone has multiple subpersonalities, known as ‘parts’ in IFS--which are similar to mental formations in Buddhist psychology. The parts are all governed by the ‘Self’-- which is like buddha nature in Buddhism. There are no ‘bad’ parts in IFS; even if some parts do destructive things, they are all well-intentioned. It's just that some of them try to meet their needs in unhealthy ways. Learning to get to know each part can help us heal these destructive patterns and live more fulfilled lives.  

In IFS there are various ‘protector’ parts, known as firefighters and managers, and their purpose is to protect our most vulnerable parts, also called ‘exiles,’ the likely younger parts of ourselves that have been wounded and are afraid, and have had to go into hiding in a sense. Many of us have been socialized to reject these tender parts of us, or were taught they were not welcome. IFS specializes in helping us work with the protector parts so that we can get them to relax and let go of their hypervigilance or other maladaptive strategies, so that we can get to know the exiles they are protecting. Only when we can get close and intimate with our exiles can we integrate them, allowing Self, or the buddha nature, to reconnect with them and heal them. Doing this is how we become truly free, no longer pushed and controlled by unseen forces from under the surface, deep in our unconscious mind. 

When studying this dynamic, I had the insight: what if this is a metaphor for our larger society? What if the key to our collective healing is embracing our collective exiles, the tender, wounded parts of our collective psyche? Thinking back to Sophy’s work, what would it mean to stop repressing our pain in a collective sense? This feels like a key to our collective healing, just as it is the key to our individual healing. 

Kazu Haga speaks to this in an interview using the image of fractals,  “...fractals are like patterns that…repeat … over and over and over again, and no matter how small you zoom into something, or how far you step back and look at the big picture, it looks the same. And I've started to think about this idea that change is fractal in nature, that not only that what's possible at the smallest scale, as possible at the larger scale, but the same principles that guided transformation at the interpersonal level have to be used at the larger social levels, right?”  

So at this moment in time, we have a ‘strong man’ at the helm, with other (billionaire) strong men taking control, illegally gutting our federal agencies, wreaking havoc, and they glorify and reward those who act in dictatorial ways, threatening to invade--or actually invading--other nations, lying long enough and loud enough that the lies become accepted and normalized in mainstream discourse. Singling out services to rip apart that directly support those who are most vulnerable: trans people, the elderly, the poor, immigrants, children with special needs. What if all this emphasis on controlling, dominating, forcing their will on others is fundamentally about not being able to be with their own vulnerability and fear, and so projecting that onto others, making them the ‘other’ to be controlled and demonized? 

While I point out our current Republican leaders above, this dynamic is not restricted to any one political party but applies to those who hold power across the board. Many have criticized the recent Democratic party’s campaign for not feeling the pain of those who are most vulnerable in the US, not speaking up more vocally against the genocide in Gaza, being tone deaf in their messaging in the election and not listening to the real needs of many in the working class, the traditional base of the Democratic party. For instance, in the campaign there was no mention of raising the minimum wage, something that many people support across the country. A 2021 Pew Research poll found roughly 62% of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $15. So the tendency to ignore and demonize those who are struggling is there across the political spectrum. This tendency to demonize is a capacity that is there in every human heart, just as the capacity for compassion and wisdom is also there in every human heart. 

A most dramatic example: Adolf Hitler may have been the product of incest. His mother and father may have been uncle and niece or first cousins. There is also a possibility that he had a Jewish maternal grandfather. The murkiness of his ancestry may have been part of why he never felt at peace with himself and ordered investigators and genealogists to prove he was pure Aryan. It is possible that his cruelty and fanaticism were connected to his feeling haunted by the sense that he was a product of something dirty and wrong and so rather than turn toward that weakness and vulnerability in him, he projected his hatred for that part of himself onto whole groups of people, making them the ‘other,’ using the racist phrase that they ‘poisoned the blood’ of Germany. (A phrase our own president also recently used). Hitler may have felt his own blood was ‘poisoned’ and he projected his trauma and blew it through bodies of those who were most vulnerable in his society, Jews, homosexuals, Roma, the disabled. 

I have had personal experience with this. When I lived as a nun in Germany for five years, the building where we established our monastery, the European Institute for Applied Buddhism, was the site of a hospital for over 700 mentally disabled patients, most of whom were euthanized, starved, poisoned or otherwise killed during WWII. One of the most fulfilling things I did when I lived there was create the Healing Hearts exhibit, inviting sangha members from around the world to hand-sew hearts out of cloth to honor all of these disabled patients and then display them in an art installation in the lobby of our building, an area with Nazi-era mosaics still on the walls. 

If we are not working to look at and take care of the vulnerable places in us we won’t be able to accept and be with them in others, and if we hate these parts of ourselves, we will hate what we perceive as weakness in others, even if we are part of creating that weakness. As James Baldwin writes in the Fire Next Time, 

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

One of Trump’s main mentors, Roy Cohn, was a closeted gay man who built his career on prosecuting his perceived enemies, often by targeting their sexual orientation. Trump was raised by an authoritarian father, he was not allowed to be weak or admit mistakes. In the U.S. we have never collectively acknowledged the incredible harm our country was built on--attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples and mass enslavement and traficking of Africans, which included mass rape, torture and forced labor. Although the apology of President Biden, acknowledging the harm, death and trauma caused by thousands of Indian Boarding Schools that operated for over 100 years is an important departure from this collective amnesia and an important step in the right direction of truth and reconciliation. We need to deal with our pain.

One of the ways we can make sure we are not contributing to this externalizing of our own individual and collective pain is to really work with our own tendency toward ill-will or hatred. In the Discourse on the 8 Realizations of Great Beings, the Sixth Realization is, 

“the awareness that poverty creates hatred and anger, which creates a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and actions. When practicing generosity, bodhisattvas consider everyone – friends and enemies alike – to be equal. They do not condemn anyone’s past wrongdoings or hate even those presently causing harm.”

So a bodhisattva doesn’t hate anyone, even those presently causing harm. How do we practice this in times where people in power are causing a lot of harm? We can separate people from their actions and work to end the abuses without giving in to dehumanizing the other. People who cause great harm are suffering themselves. We must name their destructive actions while staying committed to loving everyone. Loretta J. Ross spoke recently about being mentored by Rev. C. T. Vivian, the great civil rights leader. He said “When you ask people to give up hate, you need to be there for them when they do.” He worked to transform white supremacists and taught Loretta Ross about how to befriend and support those who had renounced their allegiance in the KKK and other white hate groups. 

Can we be a continuation of that today? Can we become a space of welcome where others feel safe enough to examine their pain as we examine our own? As we learn to befriend our tender places, we become a safe enough place for others to do the same, transforming our inner conflicts into the energy of belonging, for both ourselves and others.
From this place, justice is no longer about separating ourselves from what we name as harmful, but about recognizing that all healing is a matter of interbeing. So that even what seems most divided can find healing and a way forward together.


So there are ways to resist. 

Here are a few I have found called to engage with lately:


I will close with this poem that has been speaking to me recently: 

In a Dangerous Time

January 19, 2025 by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I think of the bones

of the unsung rib cage,

the way they protect the heart.

How bone, too, is living,

how it constantly renews and remakes itself.

I think of how ribs engage with other ribs to expand,

to contract,

and because they do their solid work,

they allow the heart to float.

This is what I want to do:

to be a rib in this body of our country,

to make a safe space for love.

There is so much now that needs protection.

I want to be that flexible,

that committed to what’s vital,

that unwilling to yield.

May we be the ribs in this body of our country, making a safe space for love, and for all that now needs protection,

Kaira Jewel Lingo

February 2025

"Trust Life”

January 2025

Dear friends,

Wishing you all the blessings of health, happiness and peace in the new year.

I enjoyed some quiet time recently where I looked back on the past year. I went month by month, writing down the important events, accomplishments or highlights. Then I made lists to try to gather up all those data points to make sense of the year as a whole. Here are some of the highlights and accomplishments I'm most jazzed about and grateful for from 2024:
 

  • Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation was published in February by Parallax Press

  • Adam and I assumed stewardship of The Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery in upstate New York and we raised the money (thanks to all of you!) to pay the previous property taxes as well as later receiving several grants for renovations. We also found a wonderful architect!

  • I mentored several groups of people (about 40 people altogether) meeting monthly throughout the year, I co-taught retreats and multi-year dharma trainings for hundreds of people, gave in-person and online talks, keynotes, podcast interviews and days of practice that thousands of people participated in

  • We became fully vegan/ whole foods plant based in April (while I was vegan as a nun, we were vegetarian and 80-90% vegan already for many years)

  • I completed a home self-retreat for the month of September, a first! This included many days of nature practice at a nearby arboretum.

  • I completed the Nature Dharma Training, which included a two-week silent camping retreat in Oregon this July, and a 3-day solo retreat, the longest I've ever been 'by myself' in the wild, which allowed for a transformative conversation with a tree.

  • Restorative downtime, from joyful and enriching trips and holidays with Adam and visits with family, to several vacations providing true quality time and fun with dear friends, and numerous meaningful times of connection with new and old friends


In addition to the highlights, I also made lists of what was challenging, what I learned, where I grew. I also enjoyed coming up with different ways to articulate the essence of the year. Here are a few:

~ Sum up 2024 in 3 words:

Fulfillment, Stewardship, Growth

Other contenders:

Love this Earth

Live Deeply Now

Dreams Coming True
 

~ If my 2024 were a book, what would its title be?

Trust Life
 

~ If you could give any experience from 2024 to someone, what would it be, and to whom would you give it?

The experience of connecting deeply with the pine tree on the 3-day solo (more here) and I’d give it to any and all who would like to experience slowing down enough, getting quiet enough to hear themselves and deeply hear other beings. Especially those who do not have access to these kinds of experiences.

I'm still completing my visioning for the new year, and here are some things I'm looking forward to in 2025:

  • Working with our architect to start renovations/building on the monastery land (and possibly hosting some of you for outdoor activities there!)

  • A 3-month sabbatical Adam and I will take this summer

  • Mentoring groups and co-leading retreats, courses and training programs

  • Being responsive, in community, to the challenges of this new administration and being in solidarity with those who are most vulnerable 

  • Staying joyfully active in gym classes, more dancing and hiking

  • Getting even better at organizing home life

  • Regular daily examen--reflecting on the gifts and learnings of the day, and creating space for reflecting at the end of each month so I can take these learnings into the new month

  • Visioning--getting clearer about what is mine to do and paring down what is not mine

  • Working on the organizational infrastructure of the monastery

  • Continuing to befriend and care for this aging body 


Doing this reflecting on the year past and the year to come reminded me of how our ancestors navigated by stars, wind, waves, bird flight paths, and other sea animals, constantly looking to the world around them to assess where they were, so they could know where they needed to go. I am so grateful for the space to pause and take stock otherwise we can easily lose our way. (I'm grateful to my friend and associate, Dorothy Imagire, for sharing this account of ancient Hawaiian star navigation. And my dear friend, Valerie Brown, leads an annual end of year reflection based on YearCompass, a rich resource). 

 With deep gratitude for you and our journeying together, and may we open to trust life together,

Kaira Jewel