Joyfully Just - Sounds True

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.

Tami Simon: Hello, friends, my name’s Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Dr. Kamilah Majied. Kamilah is a mental health therapist and a tenured professor, researcher, and internationally engaged consultant on building inclusivity and equity using meditative practices. She’s currently professor of social work at California State University at Monterey Bay and, before that, taught at Howard University for 15 years. She’s the author of a new book. We’re celebrating the release of this new book at Sounds True. It’s called Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living. Kamilah, welcome.

Kamilah Majied: Hi. Thank you so much for that warm welcome and I’m so happy to be here celebrating J’S three month birthday. The book came out about 90 days ago, so it still feels very alive and fresh. I very much feel like I have a new baby. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and talk about it and put just the wonderful support I’ve had from Sounds True and

TS: Welcome to the world. JJ joyfully, just now for people who are meeting you, Kamilah for the very first time, can you give us a sense of your own journey to becoming both a therapist and a professor? How did that unfold for you?

KM: Well, it was very interesting. My mother, Laila Maje from when I was very, very young, she had a lot of spiritual grounding. We were raised Muslim and she had a sense of world citizenship that she imbued in me very early through reading. She was like, well, literacy is not a static state. Literacy is an active state of being. You’re only as literate as the number of books you’re reading right now. So she got me very excited about reading at a very young age and about writing at a very young age. I would write poetry and she would talk to me about what it means, and I’m like six and seven years old. In the book I talk about reading Maya Angelou when I was seven Reading. I Know Why The Caged Bird sings then, and she was like, well, you’re not really literate until you’ve read all the Russian classics and until you’ve read all the African diaspora literature.

So she just kept giving me the world that way and when you read that widely, you learn about suffering. She also gave me a lot of spiritual texts because even though we were being raised in the Islamic tradition, she wanted me to read the Bba Gita. She wanted me to read the Torah, she wanted me to read widely and obviously read about Buddhism, read the Shauni and Shar story and Taoism. So I just got a really wide view of the world and a good picture of human suffering. So because I was starting to get a little more roast as a young person reading doky and all of that, that’s when she started kind of steering me towards the spiritual literature to say, but the world has diverse spiritual traditions that you can also that people draw from because otherwise life would be unlivable and people would have no path through the suffering.

And then my mother introduced me to Buddhism when I was 17. We started practicing Buddhism together and just worlds and worlds opened up from that. I was even more interested in human suffering and so I studied psychology undergraduate at Mount Holyoke. I was a psych and journalism major undergrad and just trying to dig into it, why are we so miserable? Why are we so unhappy and why do we cause so much unhappiness for one another? I didn’t feel like I had a lot of, I learned the theories, you learned the theories in school and then started working as a journalist in New York City freelancing for the Village Voice and Amsterdam News and these publications. And I covered a story about, it was one of those first scandals involving the abusive children in a home, Catholic home and just listening to the young people. As I covered this story, I just was like, I want to learn more about how people can survive suffering through all different types of abuse.

So that’s what made me start to get the master’s and in the process of getting the master’s, I got interested in, okay, well what’s the relationship between? Why do women suffer from more depression? Why do Black, Latinx, Indigenous and Asian people have these disparate mental health and behavioral health outcomes? So that prompted me to do the PhD and study some of the why of that. And then I got a chance to look at how structures, institutional oppression and interpersonal and internalized oppression, racism, homophobia, all these things kind of cause suffering for people who are marginalized, but they also reflect the suffering of people who are doing the izing. So I’ve had a really interesting career as a therapist. I’ve had that opportunity to work with hate criminals, people who’ve done violence against queer people, violence against people of color. And so it’s exciting to watch people grow out of limiting biased ideas.

And I really understand more than I ever thought I could about how the isms create so much psychological and emotional limitation in the person who’s perpetrating as well as in the lives of people who suffered and how we can get free of it. So I’ve had a very interesting journey and I’m kind of bursting. This book came about because I was just bursting to talk about it all and wanted to share As much as I’ve learned about how undoing some of the injustice that we do to ourselves and that we do to others is actually one of the most joyful things we can do.

TS: Is interesting that you brought up Maya Angelou and how reading her at a young age influenced you. Because one of the quotes I wrote down from Joyfully Just was a Maya Angelou quote about how a bird doesn’t sing because it’s giving an answer. It sings because it has a song. And I thought Joyfully Just is Kamilah’s song. This is a gorgeous song. And I want to ask you, when you think about it as a song and you think this is the song Inside of Me that just burst forward that needed to be heard, what comes up for you?

KM: What comes up when you say that is that it’s a little bit jazz. It’s got some funk in there. There’s some r and b, there’s probably a little house music in there and there’s some blues. All of chapter five where I talk about joyful grieving is the blues. Yeah, that absolutely resonates. My grandfather was a jazz blues singer and was one of the most joyful people that I knew. I actually talk about him in the book and that’s the place where I tie the wisdom of Buddhism, which has enriched my life and the wisdom of Black contemplative traditions like Black music have enriched my life because they both kind of illustrate the unity of suffering and joy, that there really isn’t a distinction between them. And that when we transmute suffering in creative ways like we’ve seen in so many genres of Black music, then we know joy because you can’t get away from it.

So you may as well transmute it and where’s the joy in this? And it’s not easy because I talk about grieving loved ones and the last thing you think when you’re going through a loss, whether it’s the loss of a loved one or a loss of your own physical health or some other kind of loss, the last thing you think is this is going to be joyful. But what if we started facing it that way and we started saying, there’s joy in this, there’s value in this. So for example, when my mother transitioned, when she passed away, I made a resolve. In Buddhism, we talk about the IES and one of the IES and Buddhism is resolved and I made a resolution that I was going to have an enlightened experience of grieving her and I continue to do practice to do so. And what that means is that in the grieving process, I experienced the joy of our continued connection and the joy of insight about the value the relationship had for me. So what if we faced grief that way and said, yeah, life is full of grief. We’re going to suffer, there’s going to be pain and I’m going to lean into it, the enlightenment for Aviv that I can taste by leaning into it, leaning into the suffering.

TS: Let’s talk more about this notion of a resolve because that’s an important principle that you introduce and Joyfully Just, and I can imagine someone listening who’s grieving and says, there’s no way I can resolve to be joyful. That’s not going to happen. That would be fake and phony and I can’t turn my emotions. That resolve won’t work for me. What kind of resolve do you think might work or what kinds of suggestions do you have so someone can find a genuine resolve in their situation?

KM: I’m glad you asked that because it was not my resolve to be joyful. It was my resolve to be wise, to experience this grief as an enlightened person, right, to have an enlightened and enlightening experience of grief. That was the, can you

TS: Tell me what you mean by that? Because some people might say, what does that mean to be? I mean, I don’t know what it means to have an enlightened view. I’m not enlightened.

KM: Sure you are. I don’t feel like enlightenment itself is a static state. I feel like it’s when we taste insight and freedom, you have those moments of epiphany and clarity about life being impermanent and that your life is part of a universal flow of eternal life force and energy, and you have a sense of your capacity, your insight and your wisdom are flowing. You feel connected to and energized by life. So that’s what I meant when I said I resolved to have an enlightened experience of grieving and I practiced. My practice is chanting. One of my core practices is chanting na, which is the title of the Lotus Sutra and the core practice for Nira and Buddhist, which is in the maana lineage. And so every morning I get up and do my chanting practice with this spiritual, emotional, cognitive resolve. Let me manifest my highest self, my greater self, my most wise, my most courageous self.

So that’s what it means to me to be enlightenment, to be brave and wise, to be free to experience that internal freedom. And I wanted to do that, not so much like this is how I want to feel. It’s like I want this to be a learning experience as opposed to a defeating experience, and I want it to bring me closer to her as opposed to, oh, I can’t stand to think about her. Oh, you know what I mean? Because you go through that in grief where it hurts. Everything hurts scrambling. Eggs used to hurt because she taught me how to cook eggs. Reading used to hurt, everything hurt. So I couldn’t turn away from everything. So I was like, what if you lean into all of this suffering as an opportunity to manifest your greater self, your courage, listening for her voice, but listening also for the voice of my own wisdom and where is the growth?

So the joy comes from the inner spaciousness that grows from the endeavor. To do that, from discovering that you could do that, and honestly, I hate to say it, but you think you love somebody, but when you lose them, there’s this whole door that opens of whole different ways. You had no idea you love them that way. Whether they gave you that, you get to see things that you took for granted about the person, about the relationship once it’s gone, that if the loss kind of illuminates things, and that doesn’t have to be a source of regret, it can be a tremendous source of gratitude.

TS: I’m curious, when you had this resolve and you asked the question, where’s the growth here? And you went with that kind of direction, how did that affect the process for you? How did it unfold for you?

KM: Because what you’re resolving to do is you’re resolving to orient your mind a particular kind of way. And I’m sure we all do that to some degree. If you know you’re going to go on a long drive, you can say to yourself, oh, this is going to be hell. There’s going to be so much traffic, or you can set an intention, I’m going to enjoy this ride so that if we view our losses that way, or when I view my losses that way, when I view the journey that way, it feels less, it feels less rambling. The resolve is always where do you want to point your mind? Because the one thing that we are always until we are not right, if we develop some kind of cognitive decline and it becomes more difficult, but to the degree that we have the capacity to direct our own mental status and energy, it is an incredible freedom that we don’t want to take for granted.

And it’s the freedom to create value, to create good things out of the suffering. So I decided that all the love that I had for her and all the love that I’ve had for other people that I’ve lost was going to be poured into creative arts and creative energy that it was going to offer their beautiful lives legacy. But that emerged out of the resolve not to be defeated by grief. And maybe that’s the resolve for some days, certainly it is for me, I’m just not going to be defeated, and that means I will live today with courage. I may not be smiling every minute of it. In the book, I talk about how we greet each other and that instead of saying, I’m doing fine, when somebody asks you how you’re doing, say I’m suffering with resolve, I’m suffering with determination, or I’m suffering and determined to be victorious. Or we can just acknowledge the suffering. And it doesn’t have to necessarily open a chasm of conversation, but what if people could talk like that? It would be so honest,

TS: Very powerful. You’re very sensitive to words and you bring them forward with a lot of precision. And I wrote that down. I’m suffering with determination. And I thought that’s just such a powerful way to respond. If someone asks you, how are you doing? Instead of just saying, I’m having a hard time, what it would be like to say that. So thank you for underlying that. Now I want to read a quote and then we’ll talk about it. The resilience of Black people throughout the world is indeed deathless courage. It’s courage sustained by the resolve to not just endure, but also to rejoice in life that undefeated joy, Black joy is itself victory. I pulled that out. I’ve heard people reference Black joy, and I want to know what that means to you.

KM: I’m so glad you asked that question because I think in the book, I describe it as resilient creativity that creatively grows more resilience. And what it is, is it’s just this thing. It’s this awareness that there is an aspect of all of our being that is fundamentally free no matter how restrictive the life circumstances are. And it is a determination to manifest the joy of that fundamental, expansive inner realm that we inhabit and that we move through. So I think about Black people, for example, and the development of blues music, which grew out of the fields of enslavement. People were enslaved and creating this genre of music and also creating gospel music because they were aware that they had no matter what change, they were in the brutality of their life force, that there’s a piece of us that is unchangeable and undefeatable and that there’s a joy in life, a joy in the existence, and then the connection with the elements that cannot be destroyed.

And that’s also very, very timeless. So that’s what you see because definitely Black people still in just about every part of the world experience, disproportionate disparities, economic disparities, educational disparities, just limited opportunities, limited resource, and at the same time hyper surveilled and more subject to violence from all kinds of enforcement, whether it’s in airports or on the streets and roads. So when you live a life that is that subject to restriction and violence, it has for Black people really created a deeper awareness of, well, what is the part that cannot be taken? And then that way, Black people have done a lot of leadership and modeling, which is why people are doing in hip hop in Bangladesh and in Australia, because it’s like there’s something contagious about undefeated joy and undefeated ways creatively expressing Juan Jo iv, which Black people the world over and particularly in the United States have just become masters of. So it’s that tapping into this Black joy is tapping into the freedom that we all have. And it’s a freedom that can’t be restrained by oppressive circumstances. It can’t be touched by those.

TS: As I was reading Joyfully Just, part of what overwhelmed me and I was overwhelmed with this word doesn’t sound strong enough, but my experience of it was really powerful, which is a sense of respect, the deepest kind of respect for the journey, the Black journey, the Black human journey of facing that kind of oppression and finding joy and freedom in the midst of it. And you take the reader through a series of questions and queries and reflections that I think help touch upon that respect and elicit that respect. At least it did for me, asking, who are the figures that you admire and why? And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. I’d love for our listeners to get a sense of that the way I did reading Joyfully Just

KM: Absolutely. And yes, I do love words in that particular word, respect. I talk a lot about when I am teaching and leading because it means to look again, right? The prefix re is again, and SPECT comes from the Latin spectre, which means to look. So really respecting ourselves even means looking at ourselves with kind of fresh eyes looking again, don’t look at yourself the way you looked at yourself yesterday. This is a new day and you can do new things. So respecting is that looking thing again. And I do in the book, I invite people to look again at the influence of African heritage people, particularly African-Americans, but actually it’s a global phenomena. And look at the influence of African heritage people, of Black people on your life because whatever field of endeavor you’re in, Black people again, particularly in the US, have made meaningful contributions to that field.

And it just becomes a journey of self-discovery when people decide, okay, I’m an artist. Let me learn about Black artists, or I’m a publisher. Let me learn about Black publishers and Black writers historically. Let me learn how I’m a Black or I’m a physicist. Let me learn about Black physicist, whatever your discipline is. I pause it that we don’t know our disciplines very well if we don’t know the diverse people who’ve contributed to it. If you don’t know about the Asian heritage and the indigenous heritage folks who have contributed to your particular field of endeavor, then your knowledge of your own field of work is limited by white supremacy and the sole focus on what white folks have accomplished in this field and who wants to have their knowledge of their thing, whatever you do, either for work or play limited that way. So I really, it’s an incredible journey to come into connection with the African heritage people who’ve influenced your life because that gives you insight about your life. And yes, it helps you kind of get your sense of being and interdependence a little bit more grounded. But most importantly, it’s like, oh, okay, these are the people who’ve kind of created this, who have made significant contributions to this work that I do or this thing that I enjoy. It’s a wonderful way of having self-discovery and also meaningful connection.

TS: So when you say helps our interdependence become more grounded, what you’re saying is that we’re not interdependent, but in a limited way without all of this information about, and then you introduce this phrase and Joyfully Just the people of the global majority, and I’ll let you explain that, and the role they’ve played, then our appreciation of our interdependence is a lot more accurate and intelligent. Is that

KM: What you’re saying? Yeah. And it’s grounded. It’s like, okay. So yes, Barbara Love coined the term people of the global majority. She’s a professor emeritus from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and I use the term in contemplative compute communities and meditative communities. I think for us, being able to think about language is itself a meditative practice in the eightfold path, right? Speech is right after right view. So once you see it right, you got to start saying it. And at the same time, speech is kind of dynamic and always evolving. So for example, the language of referring to people as people of color is better than some things that used to exist, but it still kind of hearkens to the ranking of people by color, which is something that the colonizers and the enslavers did. And more importantly, the reason I use the term people of the global majority is because it’s useful people to recognize that more than 80% of the people in the world are not white, are not of European descent.

And so when I say you want to be connected to the people of the global majority who’ve done your field of endeavor or who enjoy what you enjoy, I’m saying, who wants to only have less than 20% of the population influencing their life and work? And who wants to feel only connected to that small portion of the population? Not that it’s not valuable, but why not have the full experience? And when of course we wake up to that and kind of recognize, wow, why are there so many movies, for example, or why is there so much focus on the experience of white racialized people? We start to ask that question when we really sink into the awareness that that is the global minority of people that we’re focusing on when we’re focusing on people of European descent. So just language can help us change how we think can correct our cognitive distortions, because we used to use words like minorities and that had people thinking, well, it’s just a few people over there.

But no, we’re actually talking about the majority of the world’s population. And when we think that way, it’s kind of moving us a little bit more towards adjust worldview and way of being and a sense of awareness and connection, because as you say, it’s like, yeah, I know I’m connected, but the connection feels tenuous and abstract until you start to engage in meaningful ways and reading and also music. But the one thing that I’ll say about music is that the reason that I put attention on noticing these genres as Black wisdom transmissions is because sometimes you’ll watch movies and there’s nothing in the movie, but Black music, but there are no Black people. And so that’s a way that it’s appropriated, but they miss the interdependence, they miss the intervening. So I just think there’s really exciting opportunities for growth when we wake up to our connections, particularly connections with global majority folks.

TS: So I’m not quite sure how to ask this question, but what came up for me in reading Joyfully Just and hearing your celebration of Black music, Black language, Black art, and how this deathless courage is contained and Black joy is communicated through these wisdom transmissions, I thought, okay, as someone who’s part of the global minority appreciating this language, music and art, how do I do so in a way that doesn’t claim it for my own, that’s not culturally appropriation, but yet participates and appreciates and rebels in it. Give me some help here if you could, Kamilah about how to relate with heart and respect.

KM: That’s a beautiful question. I just love that question. And you do so exactly the way that you have by backing and supporting Black people, because a lot of the times you’ll hear people using Black dialect or listening to Black music, but they’re not actually including and resourcing Black people in their lives with whatever resources any of us have. So to step out of the kind of extractive, oh, I’ll use this, and more into the, oh, how can we partner, or how can I share this? What can I offer? What can I offer from this or for this community? So in the book, I talk about something called reparative relationality because when people think about reparations, they think, oh, the government’s got to give land back to the Native American indigenous people, and the government’s got to make reparations to African heritage people for enslavement. But what I say is that we can relate to one another in ways that create repair, that repair racism, that repair sexism.

We can reach out and say, how can I support the work you’re doing as an African American person? And so that rather than just copying the music of African-Americans think about, okay, well, how do I have someone who is African-American doing music production or the sound engineering for my project so that, because a lot of the times, and you can see this very clearly in the music industry, that the people who are kind of leading and well-resourced in the music industry aren’t the African-American artists producing the music. So the way to step out of the appropriation is to think, okay, well what’s an equitable, what is a just relationship between me and this community, this art, this music that I’m sharing look like? Right? In what ways can I be thoughtful about it? And certainly, of course, the very basics is always acknowledging source. You’d be surprised, but there’s a whole movement called hashtag cite Black women, because Black women tend to be the least cited authors and speakers.

People definitely take what we say and do and they repeat it, but they don’t remember who they got it from, what they don’t remember to say. So that’s another way that people can be in what I call reparative relationality to say the names of the African American people and the people of the global majority who’ve enriched your life and saying, it is an offering to those people. Yes, but it’s also a reminder to yourself, just like when you say, I’m suffering with a determination, that’s an affirmation as much as it is a response, right? Because what you say, you are always also saying to yourself. So when we say these things, when we try to make our language more just and inclusive, and it’s also affirming, it affirms that sense of wellbeing and that sense of interdependence. It’s like, yeah, this is our connection that I’m expressing here.

TS: I want to cycle back to this saying, I’m suffering with determination because I always like to take the position of the person who’s listening to Insights at the Edge, who’s suffering and who says, I don’t know how to not just be suffering. I can say something like, I’m suffering with a determination to find something deathless that gives me a source of something transcendent, but I’m not there. It’s not real. What do I do? I want to make it. I want to find something real in there that is a source of joy, but I’m not quite sure how to get there.

KM: Maybe you’re just suffering with hope. And sometimes there’s not even that. Sometimes I’m suffering with the hope for hope. Sometimes honestly, some days when I’m chanting, I’m chanting to want to chant. I’m chanting to feel hopeful because sometimes I don’t feel like it. Sometimes I’m just like, I just want to stay in bed. I don’t want to spend an hour doing my practice. We all have these aspects of our being that kind of pull us to despair. So the piece of resistance in there where you say, yeah, okay, I see you despair, but I’m not going to spend the entirety of my time with you, even if I can only carve out a couple of moments to wriggle myself free from you, I’m going to do that. I talk about Alice Walker a bit in the book because she wrote that book, possessing the figurative joy and had a chance to talk with her.

And I said, in many ways, she’s inspired me. But there’s the last line of that book, possessing the Secret of Joy. She says, resistance is the secret to joy. And she’s talking about resisting injustice. She’s talking about resisting despair. She’s talking about resisting hopeless, and it’s a fight, and sometimes you don’t have it. So sometimes all we can be suffering with is the hope for the return of our fighting spirit. I’m suffering with hope or I’m suffering with hope, for hope. When we don’t feel hope, just to kind of tug your brain, you got to kind of tug your brain and tug your emotional apparatus, your emotional affective self in the direction you want to go, because I’ve had the opportunity to work with people who are really, really deeply depressed. And one of the things I say is that the mind is like a wild elephant. You got to give it some nourishment and support and guide it in the direction you want it to go. Otherwise, it can go to some pretty frightening places.

TS: We’ve talked some about the first J in jj. Let’s talk about how you understand and define justice.

KM: Yeah, it’s interesting because I think of justice as treating yourself well and making sure that you treat other people well and that other people around you are treated well. Other people and other aspects of the natural world around you are treated well. It really is that simple, right? And recognizing that there isn’t really a big separation between you and all that is around you, and that even when we feel like, oh, I’m just going to shut out the world and ignore the injustice and just be happy and not think about any of that stuff, it still kind of seeps in. So that the whole premise, the whole idea behind Joyfully Just is that we experience more joy when we turn towards injustice, the injustice that we have experienced. Maybe we’ve experienced discrimination as women or as queer people, or as people with varied abilities and ability challenges.

There are so, unfortunately, the world has no shortage of ways to oppress people. So it’s kind of hard to get through life without experiencing any, even in the book, I talk about young people oppression, how in our early years we may have been told children should be seen and not heard, and you’ll know more when you’re older, such that even when you’re in your twenties, people are still dismissing your thinking and diminishing your voice. So we’ve all had some types of oppressive experience. So being just towards ourselves means taking that look at the interior life and mind and seeing what are some of the injustices that linger and that we kind of self perpetuate. So for example, if we were told we were too childish when we were children, as we expressed our playfulness, do we invoke that judgment on ourselves now and suppress our playful side?

If we were told we were too emotional that that’s some characteristic of women that was degraded and we were that we had that, do we still oppress ourselves in that way? Or were we told as boys that boys don’t cry and we still limit our emotionality? How it begins with examining, how do we treat ourselves badly? And then beginning to excise some of that and release some of that. So that’s what I talk about a lot in the power and playfulness chapter. What happened, even the best parents and the best teachers may not have always treated us. We were worthy of the most respect. So we may have developed some unjust ways of treating ourselves because of that. And then of course, there’s all the other variables of life, sexual orientation, ability, gender, ethnicity that can get us targeted with any of the isms, and then aging, which we’re all going to experience.

And so Joyfully Just I talk about number one, how do I not internalize that? For example, as an aging woman, how do I not internalize all the social stigma about an overvaluation of youthful types of beauty and value myself? And then how do I also do that in the world than in my relationships? So that kind of justice, when we’re just towards ourselves, we stop having mean inner conversations with ourselves and stop saying mean things to ourselves and treat ourselves better. And then when we’re just towards other people, we have the very unique joy of, it’s that empathic joy. It’s that we talk about in Buddhism of making someone else happy and resourcing their sense of internal freedom, that that’s what you get to do only when you’re working for justice. You’re resourcing internal freedom as well as social freedom for other people, and you don’t get that joy unless you do that work.

TS: It’s interesting, Kamilah, when you’re talking about justice that you started, the very first part of the definition is treating yourself well even before you go and treat other people well, and the natural environment well, I don’t think most people would include that in a definition of justice. That’s very eyeopening in and of itself. So I wonder if you can say more about that, why you think that’s an important part of justice?

KM: Yeah, I mean, well, I’ve worked as a therapist for a really long time, and it is just very clear to me how people kind of internalize oppression. They internalize limiting ideas about themselves based on all the isms. Oh, I’m an old woman. I’m never going to do this. Or, I’m an old man, I can’t have this, or I’m queer. So these are the limitations that we just kind of accept and we don’t always realize that we’re doing it. And also, honestly, there’s two ways to internalize oppression, and one is to kind of totally believe the oppressive idea. And then the other is to fight so hard against it that you’re doing things that are self-destructive. So for example, I’ve worked with folks who are aging, who as in the therapeutic role as some people were just getting very depressed about being older, about losing physical appearance, and maybe about developing some health challenges and feeling so much shame about that.

Because again, in a world that is very ableist and ageist, you can start to internalize that and feel like, wow, I can’t even get to the bathroom anymore. I have to use these diapers. My life is worth nothing. I’m only 50, but I have to use these diapers, for example. And to really work with people on the ways that they’ve internalized the world’s view about what kind of life has value, and to work towards recognizing all the other wonderful aspects of your being that still exist. And that bladder is a tiny muscle. You don’t have to give up your self work because it doesn’t work the way it used to, that you actually get to have enough self mastery that it doesn’t defeat you or whatever the physical or the emotional or social loss that we’re experiencing is. So I just see it so clearly, and I see it over and over again.

More often than not, people who have a lot of anxiety or a lot of depression, it’s some form of social oppression that they’ve internalized and are regularly perpetrating against themselves. And it’s not easy to riggle free from it. It is something that requires some support, but once you get free of it, you’re really free. And it’s like, oh, okay. And then because I’ve seen so many people kind of become advocates around their issue, I’m thinking of one person in particular who’s a staunch advocate around resources for institutions to have more services for people, kind of bathroom provisions for people who suffer with incontinence. So it’s like, what if the world, when we begin to see, okay, I deserve every resource and support, then we begin to think about, okay, how can the institutions of our world support that? So it has to begin internally. You have to feel worthy, you have to. And because when you start to feel your own worthiness, then you see your capacity to change things in the world. And I think a lot of times people join justice movements or justice activities without doing that step, and then they get burned out because they’re not doing the internal work of resourcing and being just towards themselves.

TS: In your own experience, your own life, would you be willing to share with us one of the ways you needed to increase your attention on being just towards yourself and what enabled you to make the shift?

KM: Wow, there’s so many to choose from. Yeah, I think when I think about, there’s two that are competing in my mind. So one was when I was having a mobility challenge as really suffering with my knee and really needing to sometimes use a cane and not using the cane because I was like, oh God, I don’t want to use a cane. Having all those feelings internalized ableism, what does it mean? And if you use a cane, does that mean you’re disabled? And what does even the word disabled mean? And I was like, Camilla, this is ableism. This is internalized ableism. You know what this is? And I was like, yeah, alright, so I have to chant about this. And then I started chanting like, okay, what if I myself decided that I deserve all the support I need literally, and this cane is going to help me walk better until I don’t need it anymore.

And if I need it forever, that it doesn’t change the value and worth and the liveliness of my person and my being. And I just really had to work with myself and my practice every day with it because it was like, oh my God, I really hate using this thing. I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it makes me feel. But what I was really wrestling with was my internalized ableism. And once I got comfortable with it, I was able to also kind of be more just in the world and help people think about it more justly. And so when people would ask me, what’s going on? What happened? And I was like, oh, four sufferings. I wouldn’t feel the need to tell the whole story. I would actually, if someone knew me, well then I might explain what happened. But what you’ll find is if you show up with a cast or a patch on your eye tomorrow or something like that, that a lot of people will ask almost with a terror in their voice, what happened to you?

So I started to respond to those like, oh, just aging illness, the poor sufferings, so that people could stop thinking that it’s such a thing to freak out about, that we will appear in different states throughout our existence, and most of us will experience some type of disability before we experience death. So in the book I talk about moving from the notion of disability to disability, which is recognizing that all ability is impermanent, that whatever you can do today, there’s no guarantee that the brain, the body parts, the hands are going to be functioning at that level tomorrow. So that rather than putting ourselves in these separate categories of able bodied and disabled, that we can notice that all we have is this ability, the abilities of this moment. And so all of that though grew out of my own experience of trying to be good to myself and not go down a shame hole about having to use a cane and how it made me look.

TS: Kamilah, I noticed in this conversation that there’s a bubbly joy mixed with a type of fierce intelligence, but a joy in you. And I wonder right here in our conversation what you experience as that source of joy, that being inspired by joy. What is that like for you right here as we’re talking

KM: You? It’s a really deep awareness of ancestral lineage. My mother’s life force, my grandfather’s life force, my grand aunt’s life force. I feel them flowing within me. And that’s another thing that I talk about in terms of allowing our lives to be porous enough to recognize the deep ways that the entire universe, I mean, even the fact that we can breathe and that the earth is holding us in this perfect gravitational embrace, it’s gorgeous. And that if our lives are porous and open in our awareness is attuned, then we’re feeling like, wow, this is air and it’s exciting because I can breathe it. Right? And if you’ve ever had a cold, you know what it is to celebrate the air, right? Again, loss showing us how valuable something is. But what if we were awakened to the incredible joy of breathing without having to have had a stuffy head?

The morning before we began, I lit three candles, one for my mother, Viola Ji, one for my grandfather James Haynes, and one for my Aunt Essie Williams. And they’re just ancestral forces that are always with me and whose light always shines within me. So I invite people to do that. I invite the folks listening in to think about, especially in hard times, think about the let your life be porous enough to be open enough to be resourced by the people who have loved you through all time, and then extend that porousness and that openness to notice that the embrace of the earth and the air just notice it. And from that joy arises no matter what you’re suffering, it’s the wonder of deep awareness.

TS: You mentioned your Buddhist practice of chanting Na. What happens when you chant? What goes on for you?

KM: Well, all the things that happen when you meditate, my mind wanders. I think about when I’m going to cook, I get hungry, I fidget all the things, and it’s an opportunity because I’ve been doing it for 40 plus years now. I notice my mind, I witnessed what’s happening in the mind and in the body, and I set my resolve. And then I noticed that tug the tug away from your resolve. Right? Okay. Because even while I’m chanting to have the resolve to do some writing today, to get my exercise in, to live with the most wisdom and courage I can, and I actually envision the day ahead often too. Like, okay, who I’m going to be interacting with? Which am I teaching today? What’s, who are the participants I’m going to be engaging with or the students or the clients I’m going to be engaging with? And really wrapping them in my chanting practice to really chanting about how I can most resource their wisdom and their courage, whomever I encounter in that day. So that’s what’s happening, and then I’m getting distracted and I’m returning to resolve. That’s probably what happens in your practice too, right?

TS: Some simpatico version to end. I think it would be terrific. You talk about with this notion of resolve a type of new moment. This is a new moment practice that we can do. Maybe you could lead us through that as a way to end our conversation for people listening. What do you think?

KM: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I talk about making a new moment resolution. So just ground yourself, maybe notice your feet on the ground if you’re sitting, and if you’re in the bed, then notice your back being supported, of course, by whatever you’re lying on the floor or the bed. But also, we’re all just always supported. Just notice the beauty of this gravitational embrace that we’re being held by right now. And then long luxurious inhalation and a slow language exhalation. Noticing the singular moment of your life in unity with the world that is sustaining your wellbeing, and ask yourself, what do you resolve? Maybe finishing the sentence I resolve. Maybe I resolve too. I resolve to suffer with hope. I resolve to seek wisdom and courage in myself. I resolve to be just towards myself. I resolve to be just towards all beings. Thank you.

TS: I’ve been speaking with Dr. Kamilah Majied. She’s the author of a gorgeous new book, Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living. Kamilah, so wonderful to have this conversation with you and congratulation on Joyfully Just’s entrance into the world. It is a Black wisdom transmission, reading joyfully, just it’s a gorgeous offering. Thank you.

KM: Thank you. And thank you so much for supporting it. I’m so happy to have collaborated with Sounds True on This.

TS: And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after-show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.