Koshin Paley Ellison - Living Mindfully In Times Of Upheaval

Welcome to Untangle!

Today's guest is Koshin Paley Ellison.

Koshin is a Zen teacher,

Monk,

And author,

And he's the founder of the Zen Center for Contemplative Care in New York City.

Over the next couple of weeks,

We're asking some of our favorite experts how they're coping with the world right now.

These are,

To say the least,

Complicated times,

And many of us are dealing with difficult emotions,

Especially triggered by the U.

S.

Election and the many other events we're all experiencing.

Koshin shares some tools,

Practices,

And inner resources he's tapping into right now.

At the end of the interview,

He asks,

How do you want to live today?

How are you going to nourish your life?

And how are you going to be of service to yourself and to others?

There's a lot of practical wisdom in this interview.

Now here's Koshin.

Koshin,

I'm so happy to have you back on Untangle today.

Thanks for doing this.

I'm delighted to be with you,

PK.

Yeah.

Last time you were on the show,

We were celebrating what was then your new book,

Which has now been out for almost two years?

Yeah,

I think about a year and a half or so.

Year and a half.

How's that going?

It's beautiful because this book,

Wholehearted,

Slow Down,

Help Out,

Wake Up,

In particular,

In this time of great upheaval.

I've been getting notes from people from Brazil and Australia and Germany and a woman who lives in a farm in Finland and all these things about people really feeling like there's some good medicine in there for about how do we slow down during this time of the election.

The whole world is really impacted by the US election and also COVID and climate change and all of this time of enormous uncertainty.

So I think that's sweet and beautiful that that book continues to be medicine for people.

Yeah.

We did hear last time that a lot of people like to keep it nearby.

So I think it's great medicine,

As you say.

Talking about good medicine,

There are so many of us that are going through so much upheaval right now.

We're dealing with uncertainty.

We're having difficult conversations out in the world and sometimes in our homes as well.

What are some of the inner resources that you feel we should be tapping into right now?

One of the,

In my experience,

What I've been really,

The three things have been really important for me and to tap into is one is,

First of all,

Taking a breath and particular a breath from our soft belly and focusing on the exhale from our soft belly.

So learning how just to slow down into that and just feel our bodies,

Which we get really worried or worked up or overwhelmed just to return to that place of enormous adaptability.

So that's one.

And for me,

That's also the place where we can really have a fresh look at things.

So that's one.

And the other one is from that slowing down place,

They really,

For me,

Build on each other and we can take refuge in this kind of receptivity.

And so just saying,

Wow,

There's so many things happening.

And sometimes we can get in these times of overwhelm and great anxiety,

We can put,

As they say,

A snake in a tube and think everything is like looking through a tube.

And so coming into our breath,

For me,

Part of the receptivity is like,

Oh,

What else is true?

So just even asking ourselves that question.

All right,

I'm so anxious,

I'm so nervous,

I'm overwhelmed,

What's going to happen?

What else is true?

The third is to connect.

How do we nourish meaningful connections?

And how do we get the support that we need?

And so slowing down,

Being receptive,

And then connecting from that place of just be able to,

Sometimes we just need to vent,

Really allowing ourselves to be with people who might even be curious how we're feeling inside of ourselves and to have some fun and to have some playfulness and joy amidst all of the overwhelm.

So that a lot of things are true.

If we can take a deep breath,

Notice what else is true,

And remember some of the good things that are out there and then connect,

How is it that we can live side by side with things that we disagree with so intensely?

So I guess as you were talking,

I was thinking,

Well,

Maybe we all just need to lighten up a little bit,

Not take everything so seriously.

And yet there's a part of me that's like,

This is a really serious time.

And it's so hard not to take it seriously.

But what would you say about that?

It is a very serious time.

And I think it's also important not to be serious on top of what's serious.

I like that.

And I think that we need to have balance and to engage what we care about.

It's a time where what has always been true in the world,

Which is uncertainty,

Is now shaken the whole world.

Exactly,

Yeah.

And it provides us this opportunity to set out what is really important.

What do I truly value?

And how am I actually connecting to those things that I say I value and actually feel that I value?

And am I nourishing the ways of thinking and speaking and acting in the world that actually are resonant with basically our own morality and our own sense of what is correct and nourishing?

And I feel that in this world of increasing polarities and reactivity is learning how to slow down again in that and say like,

Wow,

What is the ground in which I stand on?

What is that?

And how do my thoughts,

Words,

And actions actually reflect that?

I also think it's really important to realize we're never going to be good at that,

But we can return to that and learn how to nourish ourselves by just returning to that and like,

Okay,

Now I'm back.

I just like went off on a tear or I got really overwhelmed or I hid under the covers or whatever that is and now I'm back.

And how do we do that with compassion and tenderness?

And because it is,

As you said,

It's a serious time,

But to be serious on top of it,

It's almost like putting an idea on top of an idea.

So how do we have an enlivened approach to what's happening?

Yeah.

And this idea that maybe we're never going to be great at it and it's part of what you teach in terms of impermanence.

So maybe we're not great at it,

Maybe this isn't a great time,

But it won't always be like this.

Well,

It's definitely true.

Yeah.

One of the things that's so interesting to me about this time is that I've been talking to a lot of people who have been practicing for a while and they feel like,

Oh,

We've been training for this moment.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Uncertainty for some time.

And yet most of the world is not.

And so we don't want to separate either.

The work is to keep looking at how we are functioning.

So interesting on my way to pick up my bicycle to bike downtown today,

I ran into a friend who I haven't seen in some time and we've known each other since our teenage years.

And they were sharing with me that their partner,

Which I didn't know,

Is starting to go blind.

What the partner has really discovered in this time is that they have to learn how to adapt to this ever-changing experience of their own vision.

And she was saying that what she's learned from him and what he's been teaching her is that we have to keep,

We don't know.

And she said that because they've been working with this so directly for the last couple of years,

They felt in some way strangely prepared.

Wow.

For this time of collective shaking and impermanence because they've been realizing like,

Wow,

What can you see today and what can we experience today together?

Right.

And it's brought them,

And they're not even Buddhists or meditators,

They're just wonderful people,

Like just learning how to appreciate and ground ourselves.

And we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Most of us probably are not prophets or have good access to crystal balls.

But I think that it's really important to realize what we don't know.

And what we do know is like how our feet feel on the floor,

How we can actually employ our senses to bring us back to what actually is happening.

Like right now I'm talking to you and feeling the edge of the table and there's something amazing about that.

And bringing us back to our actual experience.

So another thing I was thinking about about 10 years ago or something,

I was visiting a friend who was dying and I was in a rush a little bit.

And he said,

Oh,

What are you going to do now when you leave the hospital?

And I said,

Oh,

We'll probably get takeout Chinese or something.

He's like,

Oh,

Do they still have those boxes?

And when you lift the noodles with the chopsticks and how fun that is,

He said,

I'm going to miss that.

And I just realized I think about him so often and in that kind of way of dealing with impermanence,

Like how I get to feel the edge of this table right now as I'm talking to you.

I get to feel my feet on the wood floor and how the little ridges in the floor feel on my foot now.

And I feel like in many ways that's part of the medicine for how to be with impermanence is also to realize like,

Wow,

I can experience things right now.

And I think there's a lot of grounding and there's more ease,

At least in my own experience,

When I can just drop into what's actually happening.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about,

I mean,

This is all such great wisdom and just so excited to have some resources and some ideas for how to be different in this situation because people are so wildly.

.

.

Having a lot of feelings.

.

.

.

Triggered,

Yes,

Having a lot of feelings.

So how do you navigate?

And you've answered a lot of this just in the way that you've been talking about using the breath,

Focusing on what's good and connecting and thinking about all the other positive things that are in and around our world.

But is there any advice you have on really navigating toxicity and tumult and mistrust?

Do we just allow that to be?

I wanted to ask about that and also how can we be activists during this time without torturing ourselves?

How do we work with toxicity?

How do we work with activism?

That's a very important question and for me,

Toxicity is just part of the world.

I realize that I often bring into my practice like there's not a place in the world am I not and so that even includes toxic dumps,

Right?

That we all have parts of ourselves that have everything.

But it doesn't mean you want to move there and like build a little house in the midst of it.

And so I think really coming back to our own morality and it's very easy I found to get reactive and we feel like there's hatred and divisiveness and then we are like those people are the most horrible people that have ever lived.

And then we just basically engage that same energy,

That same toxicity energy.

We feel dehumanized and so then we dehumanize.

And there's that habit that it's so easy to fall into and for Homo sapiens have been doing that for 40,

000 years,

Following the other people over the head who they don't agree with.

So we've been doing that a long time and I think what's amazing is learning how to do something different.

And of course,

I tend to like extremes.

I find a lot of teachings in the depth and in the spaces of polarity.

So as I think we've talked about before,

You and I,

But that has gone on to a white supremacist website almost every morning and read a little bit.

And I noticed almost immediately that my first thought still after almost two years is I feel a similar kind of toxicity arise to myself immediately.

And so what my work is to how do I work with that energy and take responsibility for that?

It's also a way to build a bridge of compassion and connection to realize that people can do monstrous things but are not monsters and that they are totally responsible for their actions and how do we learn how to be loving?

That's a hard one.

So is your practice to be loving to a white supremacist?

I feel like that is part of my karmic conditioning to learn,

Yes.

I'm not saying that I've arrived there at all.

I feel like part of my learning because I really know the harm that comes out of separation and hatred and we all have that in us.

And so I often think of that amazing Buddhist monk from Cambodia in the midst of the killing fields and I think about him so often,

Mahakos Ananda.

And he was a nonviolent advocate and activist and a monk.

And so in the camps of in the killing fields,

They weren't allowed to practice Buddhism and he decided that they had to all have a ritual.

And so he invited people and just word of mouth in the camp that they would gather the next day and do a loving kindness ritual and knowing that they could all die and be killed for it and as they had all witnessed such brutal murders of their families and their villages and etc.

And the next day,

Mahakos Ananda had a little tiny platform and he went out and sat there and he just began doing this chant that comes from the early Buddhist teachings of that hatred never ceases by hatred but love alone is the world healed.

So the midst of the killing fields,

There's this person who's witnessed such horror and cruelty and you can say even evil or toxicity to be almost like a little too pale.

You call it that.

Atrocities and knowing in the midst of that that he was willing to risk his life,

Lay his everything down for this teaching that hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is the world healed.

And so he started chanting this again and again and then slowly a few people came out and started to join him and then more and more and then there were 10,

000 people all chanting this.

The guards apparently were so moved that even though they were supposed to murder them for if they did that,

That they just allowed it.

Right.

You're like that we don't ever change things by needing the same energy with the same energy and how do we change things is to be willing to do something different instead of engaging the same toxicity with toxicity.

Yeah.

And that's the challenge.

That is the challenge.

What practice do you do to,

I'm thinking it's an inquiry process of some sort where you tap into that part of you that has the capacity to do that?

The practice that I do is mainly Sazen and which is a meditation.

And one of the things that I love about this practice is that it's deceptively simple.

All you have to do is be where you are and keep returning to the breath in your heart or that place in your lower belly.

And as we all know or anyone who's attempted that,

We realize that we have at least a wild horse in our mind and it's usually running off somewhere immediately.

And so the practice to come back,

That is actually the practice of compassion.

Realize that we're all in nature to run around and scatter and we can keep coming back and collecting ourselves into this moment and to feel the tenderness of this moment.

And the main practice is noticing that I'm not here and coming back and noticing I'm not here and coming back.

Just to do that is the way of cultivating compassion.

And actually part of my activism these days is being available as a monk and as a teacher and a practitioner to support people in many ways to remind them of the teachings that have been passed to me and I'm just passing them to others.

I feel like I've been given a gift of this medicine that is not my creation,

But it's from the tradition and the lineage and to pass it along feels like being,

I feel like a field medic.

That's what I've been kind of feeling.

Well,

You're also a therapist and are you seeing a lot of your patients now and what kinds of things are you seeing in other people?

In my students,

I think everyone is struggling and people are struggling in really different ways.

And some people feel resilient and adaptable and other people feel like I want it.

I feel like the people who are suffering the most in a way are the people who are still holding on to how it was before.

I want it when we meet in person,

Almost like pounding their fists.

I don't want this happening.

And I feel like that's the most heartbreaking.

When you push it away,

It's like resisting pain.

Yeah,

It's also like resisting what's actually happening.

It doesn't in a certain way matter our opinion about whether what's happening is happening.

It's about how we're going to participate in what is happening.

I feel that of course we all have that.

I have that too in myself.

I really miss sitting with other people.

And so I can understand the feeling of that by getting caught in it,

Building this big resentment almost like a cost against the whole world.

It's like,

I've been wrong.

It's like Job railing against God in the bottom of my eyes to me.

But I think what's interesting too is that in my work in the hospital as a chaplain,

You really hear the most popular response to illness or change is,

Why me?

So it's not just COVID or this election or climate change.

There's this habit of all of us,

It seems as homosapiens to think like that these things shouldn't really be happening to us.

We should have some more idyllic kind of life.

I feel like we get into enormous trouble when we go down that path.

It's Tara Brach who says,

This belongs,

This belongs.

Whatever it is that's happening,

This belongs.

So what is it that we are learning?

What is it that we need to cultivate?

And it is interesting because I think so many people to your point do go into a why me kind of victim mentality.

But I also think it's really hard,

Even for people who have studied Buddhism,

Even for your students to cultivate this feeling of equanimity at the same time that you want to take some action for change.

How do you balance these things out?

We balance it moment by moment and to be able to actually be in this room and notice some things maybe that I haven't noticed.

I feel like that's actually the antidote to keep grounding ourselves.

And I feel that,

And lately I've been just appreciating when you become a teacher in our tradition,

There's a phrase that said that you're inheriting the family shame because you have to talk about what is really obvious and yet is so almost impossible to manifest,

Which is just like being where you are.

And I feel like that is really,

It's so good to actually feel textures and to taste things and to feel things and to feel our feelings without becoming our feelings.

But all of these really grounding practices,

I think,

Are,

At least in my experience,

Extremely helpful.

It's kind of like enough is enough a little bit.

And when is it enough?

It's like keep doing the same thing and expecting.

That's like one of the definitions of insanity,

Right?

And also we're all a little insane in that we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

And this person I was thinking of was like,

I can't believe this is happening.

I want before COVID.

It's been such an interesting year between COVID and race issues and the election and then individual things that just continue to happen to people.

You get diagnosed with a condition you don't want.

There are things that impact us in quote unquote normal life.

So the year just feels so amplified with all of these things that are going on outside of us.

So I think to your point,

Being able to cultivate what is calm deep down inside of us is more important now than ever because it's all that we can control.

Any other bits of advice or any other thoughts that you have around this that will help us to cope over the next several months?

Well,

How I've been thinking about it lately is that this is a marathon.

This is not a sprint.

So if you thought like,

Okay,

I made it through seven months,

Eight months,

Whatever that is,

This is gonna be a while and we don't know how it's gonna go.

And so how do we each slow down into,

Okay,

This is what is happening and we don't know when this is going to end.

I was talking with my friend today about this on the corner and she was saying,

Oh,

The worst part of things is in a way is hope.

And I reminded her of like one of the things that I've always loved about the myth of Pandora and her box of all the terrible things that are unleashed on the world.

And just as she was about to close it,

Hope snuck out as a plague.

And I feel that in a way,

Like what would it be like if you don't hope for what's gonna be like after COVID or after the election or after whatever,

But actually say like,

Oh,

Instead of hoping for something,

Just like how do you wanna live today?

And I think of Toni Morrison,

This one of her amazing,

She's such an amazing woman.

And her teaching of the why is just hard and we have to take refuge in how.

So how do you take refuge in how you're living your life today?

And I feel that that is really from Toni Morrison to us.

What an amazing gift and teaching for us to really think about why is this happening?

It's just too hard.

Who knows?

We don't know why in a way,

Or we could have lots of theories.

But how do you wanna live today?

How are you going to nourish your life?

How are you gonna nourish the relationships that you need?

How are you going to leave the house of sorrow and suffering so that you can be of service in the world and have an aliveness and a morality that feel attuned and perhaps even have no regrets?

I love that question.

If we could only ask ourselves that every morning,

How do you want to live today?

Because that is the only question we really have some control over.

Given our world today,

How do you choose to be?

I think that's really great wisdom,

Koshin.

Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom and inner beauty.

So glad you could be with us today.

Loving you,

PK.

We will see you next week.