The Way Out Is In / Benefitting from a Spiritual Practice: In Conversation with Tom Rivett-Carnac (Episode #37)

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Dear friends, welcome back to this latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out Is In. I’m Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk in the tradition of Plum Village under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

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And brother, we have a very good friend today, Tom Carnac. And Tom is the co-founder of Global Optimism, the presenter of the very well-known podcast series Outrage and Optimism, and also the chief political strategist working with Christiana Figueres to bring about the successful conclusion of the Paris Climate Agreement.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, dear friends, I’m Jo Confino.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu.

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And as I mentioned, we have today our friend Tom Carnac. Tom, welcome.

00:01:26

Thank you. It is absolutely delightful to be here. I’m thrilled to be seeing the inside of the machine. It’s not really a machine, it’s the organic creature that is The Way Out Is In podcast. I am delighted to be with both of you.

00:01:38

So you’re very welcome. So, Tom, today we’re going to be talking about the power of spiritual, of a spiritual grounding in supporting change in the world. And so I wanted to kick off by, first of all, getting a sense of your spiritual tradition, because many people may not know that you were a Buddhist monk early in your life. So tell us a little bit about that first.

00:02:03

Wonderful. Well, very happy to. So, first of all, thanks again for having me. We’ll get more into this. But it has been wonderful to be here for the first time ever in Plum Village, these last few days. We’re sitting, as you always do in Thay’s hut. I’m watching my 11-year-old daughter swing in Thay’s hammock just outside the window. So this is a wonderful moment for me, and thank you for having me. So, yes, I have this background in my life of having been a monk, and it feels like a long time ago now, but it still shapes my worldview and really a deep part of my sense of identity and who I am. So I grew up, as many people did, not really having a sense of the deeper elements of life. We traveled around the world. We lived in lots of countries. My father looks for oil and gas. So many of my earliest experiences were looking for oil and gas in places like Colombia, or in the Middle East. But then, towards the end of my teenage years, I began to have this sense that I didn’t have any insight into the sequence of my thoughts. And it really disturbed me. It made me question my sense of identity and who I was and where I began and this phenomenon that was my mind left off, which I didn’t seem to have any control over or connection to. So that led me in the first instance to the teaching of S.N. Goenka, the Vipassana meditation teacher. And I started doing ten day silent retreats, and the first one of which I did in Northern Ireland in a sort of old scout’s hut when I was like 19 years old. And I remember having an experience the first three days of those retreats, you just focus on your breath and you get as close as you can to the breath. And of course, most of the time my mind was somewhere else, and shouting and I’m unable to sit still. But I had a couple of experience of feeling like I was in the best place that I could be in the world. And this was the work that I wanted to do. And I realized that wasn’t an old scout site in Northern Ireland. That was somewhere in me where I could begin. So I head back into the world and carried on doing these ten day retreats which I found deeply satisfying. And then, when I completed my degree, I went to Rangoon in Burma, in Myanmar, with no particular idea as to why, but still with this nagging sense that if I was going to be of any use in the world, I first had to understand myself to a greater degree. And as can happen in life, with the serendipity of actions, Goenka himself was there, in Rangoon, and I developed a connection and a relationship with him. So we spent a few months living in Rangoon where I would talk with him and get to know him. And this was one of the deepest periods of mindfulness training and cultivation that I’ve ever experienced. And in the end, he traveled around the country and I went with him. And at the close we were at a monastery in Sagaing, in the north of the country, near to Mandalay, and he was on his way back to India. And I realized that our time together was coming to an end. He left and I stayed, and I stayed in that monastery for about six months. It was not very… the teachings were not that available to me because not many people could speak English. So I just sat in meditation and observe my breath and observe my sensations and allowed that process to deepen with those months of quiet. But in the end, it was a sort of lonely experience and I needed a sangha and others around me. So I ended up transferring to one of Ajahn Chah’s monasteries in the north east of Thailand, Wat Pah Nanachat, which is near Wat Nong Pah Pong where Ajahn Chah lived, and I spent the next two years there living in a forest kuti, meditating, listening to dharma talks. And I, again, I mean, many people may have done meditation retreats, that are listening to your podcast, of course, they have. And the first period in which you engage in something like that is, is kind of awful because your mind rebels at the absence of sensory input, whether it’s a taste or a smell or a feeling, and when all of that goes away, your mind kind of rebels against it. But then, over time, that eases, and I’m saying this to people who know this very well, that eases and you can suddenly look around and see where you are on this planet. And that, some of the most profound insights or some of the most profound experiences of just being alive come from those very quiet days sitting in my kuti, staring into the forest. So that was my life. And of course, issues come up and sometimes they pass through. And in the end, I realized that the life of a monk was very satisfying, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I felt even then, this is the late nineties, early 2000, that the climate crisis was a rapidly unfolding emergency. And I felt I wanted to leave and become more directly involved in trying to help. So I disrobed in 2002, went back to the UK, and tried to carry on my practice, and I’m sure we’ll pick this up in the story, but my sort of naive thoughts or the thoughts I had then that I would leave and manifest the practice in the world, of course, the reality of that didn’t happen in quite the way I thought. The world’s a complicated, distracting and noisy place, which is why coming here now is reminding me so much of those years.

00:07:50

Yeah. So you haven’t been back in a monastery for 20 years. Give us a sense of what has it been like to come back? What is it reignited for you?

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Well, what’s been interesting over the last years of my life is that because I had this very intense experience as a young adult of mindfulness cultivation, that then going back into the world with an intentionality to bring it with me and not really being successful in that because of the noise of the world, my relationship with that has become a memory of concentrated mindfulness and attention and living in the present moment. And now that I’m here, I’m aware, although I probably couldn’t put this into words at the time, that a sort of melancholy had settled on me, and the sense that I’d allowed myself to go back to sleep over those years. And coming here what’s been interesting, the sense of the place and what it invites you to do. The spirit of the people that I’ve met has meant that that’s just broken open for me again. And I’ve done things in the last… I’ve been here two days. I’ve done things in the last two days I haven’t done for 20 years. Like just sit on a log and watch the wind in the poplars for 15 minutes. And how deeply satisfying that present moment can be. I feel very grateful to find that again. And the strange thing, of course, is it was always there. I was allowing myself to develop this sense of melancholy and regret, like it was this difficult thing that I’d achieved and forgotten. And then coming back here, it actually seemed simple.

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And Brother Phap Huu, when you hear Tom say that, because Thay often talks about, he said it’s in some ways much easier to be a monk or a nun because you are constantly surrounded by this sort of atmosphere of mindfulness, of relaxation, of peace, of intentionality. And that can be much easier than living in this very, very busy world, complex world, where we are constantly bombarded with things and leading very busy lives, trying to make change, having families, trying to pay the… do our taxes, do the shopping, all the stuff we have to do. Is that your sense that people often just lose track of mindfulness in all that busyness?

00:10:27

I think our language, we will say everything in needs conditions, and in a monastery such as Plum Village, the conditions are everywhere. Just like Tom has shared, it’s not just in the meditation hall, but it’s in even the energy. I know whenever I go out on a tour to give teachings in South America, in Asia, or in North America, and whenever I come back to Plum Village, especially Upper Hamlet, because that is my home, I do feel like I enter into a realm of presence, that it’s in the trees, it’s in the air, is in even the buildings. And we see that the investment that has been done in Plum Village is that the practice becomes a living organism, so it’s alive in the space. And this is a very supportive conditions for our spiritual practice. And this is why, for me, it’s so important that we need monastics in the world where there are people who will devote their whole life to continue to invest this energy of mindfulness, concentration, insight, compassion, presence. So to remind everyone that we have this already in us. So our understanding is everyone has awakened nature in them, Buddhahood in them. They do have the ability to deeply touch even enlightenment in their daily life. But they need the right conditions, they need the right environment to support them. It’s easier on the level for monastics is because this becomes our livelihood. But I just want to say that monastic life, especially in the Plum Village tradition, is not as simple as we may think, where we are not engaging to the world. If anything, the tradition of Plum Village, which Thay has founded it is deeply rooted in action. How we bring the teachings of the Buddha into daily life, which is how can we make every moment of life a moment of practice? But we need training. This is the truth is that we need training and we need support of conditions. And for us, a living community is a great support. But for us who don’t have these conditions, we can still make our life to have moments of mindfulness. I think sometimes one of the traps that can manifest when you start to practice is that you fall in love with it so much. And then you have the feeling like this is the key to happiness. And you get overambitious with trying to be super mindful in the world. But then when our own seed of mindfulness has not yet been so cultivated, we have only been able to recognize the breath, but we haven’t been able to recognize the breath when we’re angry yet. Because normally, in the retreat, we’re not triggered like that, because people who come to the retreat, their energy is very different. Their aspiration is… It’s clear that they want to cultivate inner peace for them. So we all support each other when we are in this retreat. And that’s where it creates your foundation. But what people forget is that the practice is a journey. And it’s not a one time thing. It’s not like you come to one retreat and you can have a check as one of the things you’ve done in life. And now you have spirituality. Actually, spirituality for us is the refuge within that needs to always be cultivated and to come into the world to have a spiritual practice is possible. I have met friends and people and I’m sure the two of you have also been able to select moments in daily life to make them a moment of practice. And don’t underestimate those moments, even if they’re just 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes of clarity, of peace, of stillness, will have an impact in our actions, which for us is everything. We want to be mindful of all of our actions, our thoughts, our speech, our activities, because they bear our signature. And so what we offer people in a Plum Village retreat is to experience not just sitting meditation, but even to experience the interaction and to see in this interaction what is being triggered in me and how do I still find my stability in a conversation I may be having in the retreat. Or like in the summer retreat, which is happening right here, right now. We have so many children, which is the opposite of a silent retreat. But how do you practice when you’re lining up to get food when there is a sign that says Noble Silence? Because when the kids are not here, we do serve in silence. And are you aware that you have irritation coming up? Is your anger manifesting? For me, that’s when you practice. That’s when you have to activate your spiritual practice. It’s very easy to sit on a cushion and be peaceful because nobody’s bothering you. And we need those moments in order to cultivate and to build this ability to be present and to be one with oneself. But we have to take it to the next level, which is daily life. In Plum Village, we do a lot of interactive work with one another. That’s how we get to know each other is not through the sitting is actually through the service. We cook together and, you know, the kitchen is the place where all habits come out. How you were taught to chop something from your grandmother or your mother. And suddenly now you have a brother who’s doing the total opposite. What? What comes up in you? Are you angry because they’re not chopping the carrot the way you want them to chop? And for me, that is when you have to come back to yourself and just embrace and smile to the anger, the irritation that is in you and find the peace in the difference.

00:17:59

Thank you, brother. So, Tom, bearing that in mind, you know, you talked about this sort of melancholy, of feeling that you had lost something. What’s it been like to refind it? So what has your experience been so far of being here? What does it brought up for you?

00:18:17

Well, so thank you for that, brother, what you just said, that’s wonderful. And I think what you pointed to there was about the necessary step that we all need to take, which is moving mindfulness away from being something that happens in isolation of the world to something that happens while we are in the world and that the world can become a tool for. And you gave a very beautiful Dharma Talk two days ago where you talked about many things, but one of the things you talked about was how Thay responded to the loss of some of his bodily function after he had his stroke. And you told many stories that affected me, but one of them was about how when he lost control of one side of his body, right side, and then, in the moments after that, he showed such love and compassion to his damaged body. And that really affected me, because that is something that, from the perspective of the world, is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, that you experience some kind of catastrophic physical breakdown that leads to a loss of your bodily function. And for most people, that would create enormous mental anguish. And at that moment, he was able to demonstrate you that that was then a deepening of his practice, is remarkable. So I tell that story, Jo, because you ask what it’s like to come back here. And what it has reminded me is that the practice is not something that’s separate from life. So what I think the melancholy had been about, had been about some assumptions that had been brought up in my life, that I’d had a period in which I had the conditions in which practice was possible and through lots of choices, none of which I regret, I was now in a phase of life in which practice was no longer possible. But through the stories that Brother Phap Huu has told, as well as the experience of exactly as you said, waiting in the queue while the kids are shouting and chatting to my daughter Zoe, and making sure that her time here was good, and finding the moments of practice there has reminded me that this is not about an isolated period of your life in which you try to decondition your mind and then kind of come back out. When we’re younger, we sort of think, if I look back at my younger self, I think I sort of thought, Well, I’ll go away to a monastery and sort myself out, then I’ll come back into the world and everything will be all right. And what I think these days have really demonstrated for me and have really brought up as I think what will be the theme of the next phase of my life is around integration. So I feel like I’ve spent roughly half my adult life focusing primarily on presence and spiritual development, and the other half focusing on raising a family, the problems of the world, climate change, and I feel now like the interesting work is at the intersection of those two. I don’t feel like we can really advance unless we’re able to bring those two different elements together in ourselves, in our work because we’re not really doing it at the moment. I mean, we’re sitting in Europe now where we have just suffered completely unprecedented extreme heat events. We’re looking at a situation where the political scenario in the United States, in the UK, and the EU looks like it’s breaking down. The systems and the institutions that we have relied upon to see us through this great crisis don’t look like they’re going to be capable of delivering what we want. So where’s the edge that we need to dwell with in order to move forward? I believe it’s the integration of how we’re living our lives, how we’re bringing presence and insight to our moment, to the moments of our life and the great challenges of our generation.

00:22:26

So, Tom, given that, there’s very few people actually who’ve had the chance to really experience a deep spiritual grounding. So we see, like in the world of politics and the world of business, there’s very, very little of that people are able to express. Even if people have a personal practice, they are not able in any shape or form to be able to express that in their work. So in other words, we, you know, we are trying to deal with problems through science, through pretty much using our mind and cleverness to get out of it. And there’s very little opportunity to express our deep wisdom, our deep knowing. So I’m just wondering, what’s, how big a gap that really is? You know, what impact, when you’ve worked in this field for so many years, what impact does that have that this is not present?

00:23:25

So that’s a very good question, and I don’t think we really know what that change would be if people were bringing a different degree of presence. But I think its absence is manifest everywhere and I think that it’s also getting worse. So the impacts that we described earlier of a heating climate with increased extreme weather, of course, are having direct impacts on the individuals that they affect, but they’re also really messing with our minds and who we are and what the future looks like and how we show up as a generation. And what I observe inside the climate movement is that there’s this like breathless urgency which is appearing in people, and it’s completely understandable. Right? They’re right to feel that. And if you look at the statistics of young people, more than 50% of people between the ages of 16 and 23 in OECD countries worry about climate change for multiple hours on a daily basis. That is a stunning statistic about the degree of anxiety that that’s inducing in our kids. So, at the moment, without the tools to really handle that reality, everybody is concluding because they don’t know what else to do, that the solution is to do more of whatever they were doing in the past. So activists are getting more angry and corporations are getting more focused on green growth and politicians are getting more in the weed of policy or the nuance of that. And as a result of that, everyone’s moving away from each other. And the camps are becoming more distant because people are deciding that the urgency means that they need to take the gloves off and really go big on whatever they were doing before. So what we’re describing here is that we’re not going to get through this unless we can find a way to come together. And that coming together requires a degree of self-reflection, presence and awareness to identify what is working, what isn’t working. Without that sense of egoic attachment to something that I’ve been doing before, it’s my solution, it’s my thing. We’re going to have to be a bit more grown up in letting go of some of those things to come together and find the solutions that collectively carry us forward. And there’s no shame in that. And it’s something that I try to practice. And it’s difficult. I’m sure I don’t have everything right myself. So the reason I’m so sure that in that practice lies some of the keys to us moving forward is because I sort of see where this is going if we don’t do it. And if we were able to do it, that I’m interested in hearing from both of you.

00:26:10

Yeah. So, Brother Phap Huu, what’s your sense of how a spiritual grounding, a sense of the collective rather than the individual, how can, for instance, Thay’s teachings serve people in this time?

00:26:29

I think, first of all, our practice is to face the suffering and call it by his true name. And I think what Tom was referring to is if we don’t change, a collapse is coming. And this is where all of the anxiety, fear and uncertainty manifest from and is driving people to quite extremes. We have those who are living in just panic and fear and then those who are living like, Well, if we’re going to die, let’s just indulge ourselves and not care about anything. But the Buddhist teaching and the teachings of our teacher is telling us that we are so interrelated to the suffering that is happening, but it’s because we are ignoring the suffering that is why we’re not able to change our views and to have a deeper understanding. And so the first practice that we all have to cultivate is just learning to accept and embrace the present moment and taking care of our self in the here and now. It’s not as simple as it sounds. It’s a very deep, profound depths of being in the present moment is when you are in the here and now. It’s not about spiritual bypassing. It’s not just like, I’m going to feel good. I’m going to feel my breath, I’m going to have this sense of well-being. And then life continues. It’s actually, if you’re so present, you’re so aware and you’re so connected to everything you have to change. You start to see yourself is so interrelated with everything. Your way of action has an impact in daily life, impact to your child, your loved ones, your family, your community, your nation, the whole world. And then suddenly you have wisdom, mindfulness in the here and now will offer you wisdom which can lead to action, which is then what can I do to be a part of the change? And I think a lot of us, even myself, sometimes I forget I am part of the change, even though sometimes I may not see the reality that I want, I don’t underestimate my own impact that I can offer. And this is where the individual becomes the collective, and the collective is made of all of the individuals. What we need is a collective awakening. In our times, our teacher has said One Buddha is not enough anymore for our times, for our suffering, for the situations that we are facing. We need multitudes of bodhisattvas, of those who are selfless, those who know how to see the benefit of others as their own benefits, the well-being of the planet as their well-being, the well-being of those who are all the way in Africa, my well-being, even though I am not affected right now. Because there is a deep sense of interbeing when we’re in the present moment. It’s like when you hear the news of what is happening and you’re really present, it’s impossible not to suffer. If you don’t suffer, it just means you’re ignoring it and you’re running away from reality. And so our core practice is recognizing suffering, but recognizing it and being with it not to drown into the suffering, not to be a victim of the suffering, but to embrace, accept and see what to do and what not to do. And this is meditation. This is how we will integrate the spiritual dimension into the daily life is recognizing, embracing, and then see the changes that need to happen and then be the change. A lot of the times we have the tendency to want others to do it and not us to do it. So the practice of mindfulness, it brings it back to oneself. It’s like this bread in your hand is the body of the cosmos. You, a human being, is also the body of the cosmos. So how you be has a big impact on the world. And this is where the individual practice is also very important. We have to learn to listen, if we want to see the indifference, we have to listen to one another, because we don’t want to listen and we don’t know how to share compassionately and use a language instead of dividing, use a language to build bridges, build harmony, see the common purpose, but also still respect the different paths that we’re taking. And sometimes we become so one pointed view and we think this is the only way. And we’re very dogmatic about it. And this is where a lot of the suffering and separation continues to happen and where we cannot work together. So what we’ve experienced is this retreat for climate leaders. And the first three days we told them, please trust us and just invest the time to be with you. You may even feel a little bit guilty about it that I have the space and time, but it is so crucial because the actions that we want to create is based on love, based on care and healing. But if we can’t find that even inside of us, how can we offer it? How can we generate it? And that is why it’s so important to come back to oneself when we speak about coming back to one’s self in Buddhism, it’s not about taking care of the ego, but it is finding all of the beautiful conditions that we want to cultivate outside, inside of us. Then we will have the ingredients to offer to the world, to the workplace, to our families, to our loved ones. And I would say we’ve got to start with the ones we are with, start with our family, listen to our self, listen to our child, listen to our loved ones, and hear what do they need? And it’s as simple as that. Once you start to see my brother, my sister and my child, they just need my presence. Change starts to happen. Healing starts to happen. And then from that experience, you have faith because it has worked in a scale, a small scale. And then from there, you can continue to develop and continue to invest in this practice. I’ve learned to listen deeply through my twenty years of being a monk, and I’m sure at the earlier stage my capacity was very limited of how much suffering I can listen to without overreacting and without being so tense in my body. But now, my maturity of presence as well as being open has grown so much, and I can always take refuge in my breath. Even though what is being shared is so painful, and instead of drowning and being overwhelmed by the sorrow, my breathing becomes my foundation. I’m still present with the suffering, but I can guide the suffering. And this kind of inner work we believe is so necessary for everyone of today, because what we are facing will bring up a lot of emotions and feelings and even sense of despair. And we all need a place of refuge and we need communities. I truly believe that community is the way forward. We cannot do it by ourself. There’s no superman that can change the situation. We really need a collective movement, a collective awakening, a collective practice.

00:36:07

And just to add one element that you mentioned, brothers, the power of presence, because actually what you said is refuge, we all need a safe harbor in difficult times. And we say, well, who do people trust? Because there’s so much mistrust, so much misinformation, so much complexity that people are increasingly looking for individuals or communities where people can rest and be at peace and not have to question everything, but say, what is it to be in a safe place? And to be with a safe person is someone who has been able to look at their own suffering, someone has been able to work at themselves to the point where they are able to have stability, where they’re able to deeply listen, where they’re able to give compassionate speech, where they’re able to, as you say, listen to the cries for help without being overwhelmed by them. And it’s very interesting because, Tom, when we arrived here, so we are recording this episode in Thay’s Sitting Still hut in Upper Hamlet, and we’re sitting around his kitchen table. But before we started, we went into Thay’s very modest, small living room/bedroom. And Thay has not been in that room for six years, brother?

00:37:41

Since 2016.

00:37:44

Right.

00:37:45

Yeah.

00:37:46

So six years. So, Tom, what was your experience of walking into that space? Because in a sense, even though Thay has not been here for six years, there was a presence in that room. And I’m just really interested in you… What was it feeling like? Because it’s not a presence, it’s not just someone in their life, but actually presence is the emanation, is the… is what keeps going, the ripples that continue after someone has passed.

00:38:15

I mean, I think that goes back to what you were saying earlier, brother, about the way that the practice becomes infused in the place, in the trees and in the landscape. And the role of monastics that you thought, spoke about that I thought was so beautiful in our collective human family to play the role of demonstrating that it is possible to live this life in which you focus primarily on what you so beautifully just described, which is placing faith and confidence in presence and the qualities that it develops, and finding connection. And walking through that door, the huge privilege to walk into Thay’s room where he lived, it’s immediately apparent. You can feel it in the atmosphere. And it’s overwhelming. Right? If you go somewhere like that where you experience what presence has done to a location, particularly, I think for the first time for me coming here, remembering that. You know, my daughter was there and she fell silent and then looked at me, there’s something about this place, even though she can’t put her words to it. But to just come back to what you just said, brother, something struck me as you were speaking, which is that we have allowed ourselves in today’s opinionated and noisy world to believe that a close and safe community is one that shares our views on something, that has the same intellectual thoughts about a particular thing. And that’s true of us, writ large, as a culture, and also as we’re talking about the climate movement, it’s safe if you’re an activist. There’s a lot of purity testing amongst these different subgroups of do you really think that the fossil fuel companies are evil or do you really think… And everybody does that to each other all the time to work out the safety and the purity of a particular movement as to become close to that ideology. And we think of that as safe because it’s constructed a wall around us that has excluded others. But what you just described as a coming home, a safety and presence is a safety in how you live, in a manner of acceptance and a way of experiencing the present moment that is invitational to others, which, to me, feels obviously and evidently fundamentally different. And that was sort of an insight to me in where we came at the beginning, that these groups are moving away from each other at the moment. We’re not going to get them all to agree on the content. You know, if we say they all have to agree on every little step and we negotiate the document and it just won’t work, it will end up either becoming partizan and fractional or everybody will become unhappy. The way, the only way in which we have a sense of collective purpose is unity of how we direct our attention towards the present moment, towards the world that we’re living in, that we’re all working to protect, but the busyness of that activity is preventing us from seeing.

00:41:27

So, Tom, thank you for that. And you know, Phap Huu mentioned this climate leaders retreat we had a few weeks ago, and that was exactly the purpose of the retreat. We had 30 leaders from across the spectrum, from oil and gas companies to youth activists. And the first, as brother said, the first three and a half days, there was no agenda sent out, there was no one knew who else was coming. The first three and a half days were pure Plum Village practices, people coming back to themselves, people sort of deeply listening to each other. And then only at the end were people given the opportunity to share their perspectives, because by that time, people had recognized that they needed to let go of This is my idea, and this idea is better than any other idea. And what was so interesting was everyone who came here felt misunderstood. That people said, as soon as I open my mouth with what I’m doing, people already got a view on it, people already got a response to it. And actually, what I think the biggest change people got from being here was just saying, actually, I’m just going to listen and I’m going to be open because actually we all have a common purpose and we don’t all have to be doing the same thing or agreeing with each other because actually it’s in the diversity of change that we are most likely to create the change we need. So we have really a strong sort of experience of that here and that people went away recognizing that actually there was another way of seeing the world. And I think we all get locked in a particular way of seeing the world and then we end up defending it, justifying it, and we feel that’s us. And so this is, as we’re talking here, the letting go of this individual need to show up. This is me, this is my idea, this is the best idea. And it’s actually we find the best answers in the collective. And Brother Phap Huu, we just did the last episode we recorded was on right view, that everyone sort of thinks their idea is the best, but actually it’s only by letting go of our views that we are open to new ideas, to new ways of seeing the world.

00:43:49

And just one thought on that, because I think and I sadly couldn’t come to climat retreat for other reasons, but I’ve met enough people to know it was a truly transformative experience. So I think it was an amazing thing to offer to the world. The point that you just made there, Jo, I think is the critical thing that we need to now come back to because this isn’t going to get any easier. Right? The thing about climate change is it’s possible to be too late and we almost are. And now what we’re finding is that people are thinking and feeling, you know, now it’s getting this bad, now the gloves are off. Now I’m really going big on my previous views and thoughts about what is needed in the world, and now I’m going to really insist on them. And we should have a lot of compassion for that perspective because that’s done out of love for the world and out of the realization of the difficult place we’re in. But viewed out from the perspective of this conversation, the net effect of everybody doing that is not going to bring us together in the way that we need to. So, I mean, I love Thay’s very famous saying of ‘Don’t just do something, sit there.’ And there’s some element of that in this, which is as the crisis accelerates away from us, we need to do something different. And that requires a lot of courage to not be so fixated, all of us, with our views and opinions, to meet the present moment with as much presence as we can, and find our collective way forward with compassion for each other because we know where it’s leading otherwise.

00:45:23

So, Tom, with that in mind, because it’s very easy to talk about the world and harder sometimes to talk about our own transformation. So, I know you and I have been talking quite a lot about integration, and you mentioned this at the beginning, that you have a very strong spiritual practice and tradition we can maybe say. And you also are working in the very busy world, trying to work with all sorts of groups, organizations, movements, projects, trying to create this change we so badly need. And you talked about the fact that, in a sense, they’ve been separate.

00:46:00

Yeah.

00:46:00

And I think that’s been very true for most people in the world. And it’s that old thing, isn’t it? You leave your self at the door when you go to work because you don’t take yourself to work. And I think that’s very much true in terms of a spiritual tradition, that it hasn’t been welcomed in the corridors of power, it hasn’t been welcomed in the parliaments of the world, hasn’t been welcome in the boardrooms, hasn’t been welcomed anywhere, in a sense that that this enriches life, it creates better decisions, allows more cohesion, more understanding, it allows better decisions to be made. So you said yourself that you are now recognizing that what our first half of your life very much about the spiritual tradition, second half about the busyness and the living in the world and the cognitive work that needs to be done. So how are you thinking about or not thinking, feeling and thinking about how this integration can happen? Because, of course, what we want in the world, we have to do ourselves first. So I’m just wondering where you are at with that? And now that you’re here and you’re re-energized to being able to sort of experience that deep sense, that deep well of wisdom, well-being, peace, understanding, quiet. How can you connect that to the work?

00:47:30

Well, first of all, I thought the deal of coming on this podcast was you were going to answer that for me. So I don’t like that you’ve asked me that question. So I will give you a very short answer, and then I would like to invite you to respond to that question.

00:47:41

And then we will ask you again. This is our podcast.

00:47:47

I’m going to ask if you’re outraged or optimistic, if you’re not careful. So I seriously would like to hear your answer in particular to that, Phap Huu, but the only response that I could give off-the-cuff is that it is so difficult not to reapproach that with the same kind of thinking that created the problem. Right? Because it would be very easy to say, you know, I’ve spent ten years following my spiritual pursuits and 15 years working in the climate movement. Now I want to integrate them, I need to go away and think up a plan and come up with an ideology and a view that is one of integration. You know, and all we will have done is add to the number of ideologies and views out there. So a part of that has to be about creating an intentionality and a presence and a space from which something can emerge. And that process can probably neither be hurried nor slowed down, but can’t be born unless it has space to breathe.

00:48:48

And before we go to Phap Huu for the answer, while we drown in the sea, while he looks at us with compassion. I’m wondering, Tom, if you were, let’s say, from tomorrow, to turn up to all your meetings and all the work you do in your full self, you know, showing up your full presence and to really just do it, just that there would be no separation between your spiritual nature and your work nature.

00:49:20

Yeah.

00:49:20

What’s the fear of what would happen?

00:49:25

So I don’t actually have a fear of that. And I’ve got enough experience of people who do that to a deep and impressive degree to know that probably what would happen is relationships would improve, outcomes would become clearer, and the work would become more integral and more intentional. The problem is I don’t seem to be capable of doing it because the world is complicated and I will leave here on Friday with an intentionality to do that. And I mean, never say never, but history suggests that, you know, and I’m sure many of your listeners have had this experience that two, three, four weeks later, you know, kids, bills, work, whatever else it might be, travel, it will be hard to maintain that same sense of presence that I ultimately know is the quality that allows all the other relationships to improve and move forward. So it’s not a fear. It’s more of a practical problem.