How to Find Balance Between Struggle and Growth with Lama Rod Owens

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Lama rod Owens, a Black Buddhist Southern queen, an international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from

Harvard Divinity School. He's the author of Love and Rage, The Path of Liberation through Anger, and co author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and liberation. Lamarad's teachings center on freedom, self expression, and radical self care. Applauded for his mastery in balancing weighty topics with a sense of lightness, the Queen has been featured by various national and international

news outlets. He's highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, and his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself.

a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who was talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second, and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,

which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Or are we feeding the suffering? And it's not always the case that we're solely feeding one one of these wolves and neglecting the other. Sometimes it's we're feeding one really well and maybe leaving scraps you know for the other vice versa, you know. But for me, you know, I think about this parable and relationship to a garden, to sowing a garden, you know, planting seeds, and I think about the care that it takes to grow plants, you know, and the water, the sunlight, good soil, right,

good temperature. You know, we'll ultimately you start with good seeds, right, and that all takes a lot of work and effort that we invest into cultivating these seeds and really creating this harvest, you know, over the growing season. Sometimes we're just confused as to what we're taking care of and what we're feeding.

bad wolf, right. And for me, tending to means that I'm just really holding these other experiences of suffering with a lot of care, you know, a lot of tenderness. I am recognizing them, I'm naming them and just allowing them to be a mix experience about not reacting to them, right, And that's how I kind of tend to the good wolf or take care of my garden.

darkness is full of so much data. For me, it is a teacher because it is full of something that I being asked to be in relationship with, right, you know, to name the darkness and to hold space where the darkness means that, like, I'm consuming the darkness instead of the darkness consuming me. And if I can hold darkness like that, then I actually end up being much more truthful, right, and honest about who I am, right, And that cuts

through a lot of shame for me. Right. When I can take care of my darkness, I'm not trying to push it away or hide it for someone to find and to point out, you know, for me, right, it's like, yeah, people come to me and say, oh, yeah, Rod, like you do X, Y and Z, And I'm like, yeah, I do, you know, and I have done that in the past, right, But that's part of what it means to be human. You know, I'm not trying to become

a deity or a god. I'm trying to be human, which means that, like I am experiencing the totality of my thoughts and emotions and my sensations, right, and I'm developing a deep empathy for all other humans going through the same process. Right. So it's them, it's me, but together it's us we you know, moving through this process or trying to suffer less and trying to achieve some level of enlightenment.

this new period? And I just thought, well, I think people need a really clear guide on what it means to change right, to care about themselves, to care about the world. Right, Because a lot of folks were just like, what do I do? What do I do? You know? Some people were saying all I can do is post on social media, you know, but no, actually has to be more, right, And I also knew that my experiences

had to be the template. You know. I had to use my life as a way to create a connection to other people to say, you know what, yeah, I'm human too, right, And these are the things that I struggle with, but these are the tools them using to cultivate deeper awareness and care for myself and for others. And I just believe that this is what the saints

were basically doing. They weren't trying to be God. They were trying to help, right, And they were connected to their most authentic selves, which we may call divine or sacred. But that's the capacity that all humans have, is to connect to that kind of direct, caring expression of who we really are. And for me, that sainthood, right. And

it doesn't mean develop and awaken special abilities, right. It could mean that, but that's not what I'm talking about, right, I mean the greatest expression of a saint is to care really deeply, to love deeply, to express really profound compassion for themselves and for others around them. Right. And because that expression was so direct and simple and profound,

people said, oh, you're special, right, right. And that expression of deep care lasts, right, It's not that you know, when this person dies, that their care dies with them. Their care and printed the world, printed communities and people and influence people to do something different, right, And of course in some traditions, those are the qualifications of being

recognized as a saint. Your care endures beyond your death, and we can still rely on that example of care to create a more liberated, caring world.

And we also see people who are very committed to social liberation social change that we can often see either for their own health or the people around them may need a little more investment in their individual healthiness and freedom and liberation. How do you think about knowing when and where to invest in each or is it really a continuous investing in both all the time? Like, help me think through that, because I think this is a really nuanced point.

in the community. But then we've seen examples of people who have really done very little work for themselves, and how they end up being exposed is really violent people and creating harm, right, you know, when they're not in the public right and being seen. And so another you know, kind of teaching that I often share with the folks is that if I don't do my work, then I

become work for others as well. So I kind of like pulled all this together and said, Okay, in this text, I need to really really state the importance of individual work, right, because my individual work, you know, even more specifically, I will say that the love and care that I cultivate for myself is the love and care that I'm able to share with others, not the other way around. Right, It's not that the love and care that I cultivate for others is what I actually offer back to myself

is the reverse. Whatever you're feeling from my work and from my teaching and from just interacting with me is rooted in how I relate to myself. And this care and love that I experience for myself has come with a lot of deep individual practice away from others, right. It has come from going through periods of being really selfish. That selfishness is skillfully used to create the conditions for me to really focus on how I'm suffering and how

to reduce that suffering for myself. What I learn from the work that I do for myself is what I take and offer to others in my community. So if I'm not doing this individual work, then, like me, it gets really difficult to figure out how to show up

in a way that's helpful. Right. And if I don't do this work for myself, then I'm just putting all this work onto others, right, because they're having to do emotional labor for me, because I haven't done the work for myself to cultivate an awareness of what I need.

things to the world. So how do you think about knowing when you've got enough going on inside yourself that you have something to offer to others?

never share anything with others that I haven't practiced for myself. Right, So that doesn't mean that like I wait years and years to practice something. It means that, like, yeah, I can intensively practice something for a very short period of time and learn something really valuable, and I can share

that really valuable thing. But that's all I can share, right, So you know, for me, it's like I keep going on as I learned something and practice with it and really get a lot of data out of it, then I feel really comfortable in sharing that. So it's almost as if you're building the plane as you're flying.

got nothing right. It's not the same as two years, of course, but I do know something, a little bit of something that I can pass on and that then, of course there's that whole symbiosis of me sharing what I have with you is good for both of.

you know, well for everyone. But this guy shows up in the village and says, I can make the best soup you've ever tasted, right, And everyone was like, okay, right, so where are your ingredients? Where where you know, where are your pots and your pans? And he was like, well, I'll just have to like gather a few things from people, you know. So he gets the pot from someone, he gets someone else to fill it with water. Then he's like, oh,

does someone have an onion or two? Or does someone have some other vegetables and so forth and so on. So the whole village has gathered like to put something that they have extra up into the pot to make this soup. But he started with a stone. He was like, I have a rock, you know, And that was the first well actually he puts the rock into the pot and water first, and then people come along and say you need more than that, you know, you need more than water in a rock. I have something in my

house to throw in. And that's how he got this soup going. And the story is really about building community with the resources that people have. You know, I have an onion, but I'm not going to eat an onion. But another person has a pot, another person has some water, another person has some salt, so forth, and so on

until you build something communally together. That's really amazing, and I think we forget that sometimes, we forget that we don't have to have all the resources and all the solutions, that we pull everything together into a pot and create something that helps everyone.

suffering and discomfort. That's the freedom, you know that I'm really thinking about you know, and really have organized my whole life around as the primary focus. Right. And so when I talk about going for freedom, I'm talking about going all the way. When we establish happiness our comfort right as the goal, we practice for that goal, we may actually get there, right, but it doesn't go further

than that. Right, you can still be happy in a world that's falling apart, you know, like you can watch any reality show about very wealthy people, right, like they can navigate you know, a shortage of resources. Right. And so when I talk about letting go of happiness our comfort as the goal, I'm saying that once you go for freedom completely, all the stuff is going to happen. Like, there will be happiness and joy. There's going to be a way that we experience a lot of comfort even

as we struggle to get free. Right. And so for me, I might as well shoot for the whole thing and get everything instead of shooting for going halfway and just stopping halfway. Right. But again, you have to get clear about if you're really ready to let go of the suffering, right,

because we have definitely created identities around suffering. Suffering is who I am, right, and to let go of identifying what suffering means that I have to figure out who I am, and that can be terrifying for many of us. Right to let go of everything that I know, to shoot for this ambiguous, abstract experience of freedom. Like, that's a lot. You're putting a lot on the table. That's a huge gamble. I can only do that because I have studied with people who have gone all the way.

You know, I come from a tradition that is based upon people going all the way to enlightenment, right, And so there's all this data and proof and personal experience, so like, I have no problem going for that. And ultimately, yeah, and I'm just tired of suffering, you know, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, as Vannie Lou Hamer once famously said. And so therefore I've put everything on the table and I'm going all the way Enlightenment a bust. That's the slogan.

I you know, that's what I'm after. And then it seems that for a lot of people, as we stay on the path longer, we begin to see further down the path and go, oh, okay, there's somewhere further to go. So we can start in a place of maybe just wanting a little happiness or a little bit of comfort. But if we're sincerely engaged in the practice, do you believe it generally will lead us forward and beyond?

really felt like. And then Buddhism was like, oh, this is freedom, right, Like, this is what you've been looking for? Is to transcend all of this right. And again, for me, it was easier because one I had a natural orientation. But secondly, I started meeting people who were much further into this work than I was, and I said, oh,

I want to be exactly like them. Like I started meeting teachers who had actualized this kind of mental and emotional freedom that I didn't even think was possible, you know, and that galvanized my work, and I just put everything on the table. I was like, this is what I'm going for, right, I can be free. I can have this level of freedom in my body in this world. Right.

And if that wasn't the case, I wouldn't be here, Like, I don't think I would have survived, yea, you know, the suffering that I was moving through.

You are not alone. And that's why I've made my free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch anytime.

don't know. I didn't understand ninety nine percent of what I was reading, but I got some intuition that what they were talking about was the ability to be okay regardless of the way my life on the outside appeared to go. And even by that age, I was pretty clearly convinced like, the world's a rough place, you know, and we don't have complete control over what circumstances show

up for us. And so I was very early I was just drawn into that idea of like, oh my goodness, there's a piece that's beyond circumstance, And to me, that's kind of what we're talking about here, right, as far as freedom goes, you said to transcend the causes and conditions of suffering. I'm wondering if we could drill down the word suffering for a minute, because different people use

this idea and this word in different ways. And you don't mean the ability to go beyond ever feeling any sort of discomfort or pain or is that what you mean? What do you mean when you say transcending or going beyond the causes and conditions of suffering? What does that look like for a human being to actually get there?

of my professors in graduate school. But you know, suffering is like cooking a really nice spaghetti dinner, you know, tomato sauce, and then taking the left over sauce, the red sauce, and putting it into a tupperware. But you can't really find a top that fits well. So you find the closest thing right, and a lid that really doesn't fit well, but it'll it'll keep the food covered, you'll keep the sauce covered when you put in the fridge.

So you put it in the fridge, and then sometime down the road you go and open the fridge and that tupperware falls out, and because the top didn't really fit the container, the red sauce spills all over your clothes, all over the floor, and you have this huge mess. And that's suffering. Right. No matter what we do in this life, will never get to a place where it feels like everything makes sense, everything's right, everything fits like this will never make sense, complete sense, no matter how

hard I try. So the first step is just recognizing that, oh, yeah, this is like this tupperware and this top do not match. And I can hold that, you know, and I can name that and proceed forward understanding that I'm not here to try to make this make sense. I'm here to figure out how to transcend my need for tupperware or anything to begin with.

be in it right. Because the deeper I get into experiencing, the less suffering actually that I go through, right, And the more I get into it, the more I'm able to just release it, to let it go, to let it pass, you know, like things just pass through. Our experienced thoughts and emotions pass through our minds through our bodies. Right, These are just energies, right, And I know that mourning right the morning that I do is just one experience that I can have because I can also experience joy

even in the midst of mourning. Right, I can struggle and still feel deep gratitude for being in the world and for going through what I'm going through. You know, we talked about being consumed by things, and I think that so much of what prevents us from experiencing a kind of fluidity and openness and spaciousness is how we get really centered into experiences of comfort or even joy

or pleasure, you know. And for me, I am practicing to hold space for everything, both the good and the bad, so to speak right, and not to just always push things away or to grab onto things, but to say everything is arising, right, and I get to choose how to tend to everything that's arising. I get to choose what to invest in and to divest from as well.

I'm talking about essentially fundamental agency to get to this point where I am choosing and complete awareness to choose what my experience will be and how to manage my experience instead of unconsciously reacting to everything that arises, which creates this experience of being overwhelmed and consumed.

you know what this is happening. The anxiety, the sadness, the despair of the hopelessness, the grief, all of that. It can arise and I can just notice it, name it, I can experience it. Right. I don't have to grab on to it, right, but I have to show up and be there with it. And that's how I tend to everything that arises. Right, I tend to everything. I take care of everything, but I don't have to respond

to everything. You know, that comes up, right, And that's how I practice a kind of a health, a mental health of physical health. But like that's how I ultimately practice self cares by getting clear about what I'm reacting to and how to respond, you know, essentially, So.

other things. But you also talk about how a new Saint also understands identity, and I assume in that sense you're using identity in the sense of you being a queer black man as an identity, right, So talk to me about how those two things kind of come together. You know, when is identity a useful idea for us and how do we use it? And when is it a constricting idea? Is for us.

to others, like it creates community. The overall identity is human, right, creates a kind of human belongingness to all humans, right, which is incredibly important. Right. Identity becomes a struggle when we start taking identity really seriously, right, and then we believe that identity means more than what it actually does. When identity becomes over meaningful, then it becomes like something solid. It solidifies, right, and it blocks us from experiencing spaciousness

and fluidity, right. It keeps us from connecting to this really translucent, illusionary quality of the phenomenal world that everything isn't so rigid, but we've made it really rigid, you know, because of our deep belief and meaning making right and of course the sense of self and ego uses identity and the meanings around identity to create hierarchy, right, And that hierarchy is really about establishing the realness of ego, like because the ego doesn't have to be high, it

can be low. Right. I can think I'm the most important person in the world, or i can think I'm the most miserable, you know, person in the world. It's both of those extremes solidified ego, an ego the sense of self that can experience these extremes. Right. And what we're trying to do in terms of this liberation work is get back into the fluidity, the illusionary quality of

all of these identities. Right. I'm not trying to actually push anything away, and that's not the goal of Buddhism is to erase ego and erase identity, but to come into a deeper awareness of what these experiences are, so we can say, yeah, these are experiences of my most

authentic nature, but this isn't who I am. If I were to say I am anything, then I would say that I am an expression of space, emptiness, energy, that my consciousness is just energy that's aware, right, not gathered around this limiting sense of self, but is spacious, open, fluid, connected, Right, That's what we're trying to get back to. And I

can do that and at the same time identify identity. Right, But you have this space where you're understanding that, yes, and this isn't who I am either, This is like drag, right, that I'm doing right, But then you start believing in the drag. Then that's when the problems start to arise. And that's the problem. We believe that this is who we are, that our race and class and sexual orientation and nationality and physical ability, all of that is who

I am. And we weaponize this false belief of these identity locations being who we are against one another and also against ourselves as well. When it doesn't allow us to feel connected and feel fluidity and spaciousness and you know, and connect us to like this experience of emptiness, then it gets in the way.

mean being able to hold both of those things. On one hand, you know, in the descriptive terms, I'm a straight white male, and I'm also, as you said empty, I'm empty of a real self and being able to move fluidly between those two me it's sort of like the absolute and the relative right, that idea of it, and being able to, at least in my traditions, then where you can move back and forth between those two things.

Because if I'm not trying to belong to see myself and others, then I'm actually kind of solidifying the sense of self, you know, the sense of self gets real because I'm special and I don't belong in terms of community. I'm not a part of this human community. I'm actually quite special, and we have to disrupt that, you know,

So we bring these extreme teachings together. I am and I'm not, and that is an experience that disrupts a lot of fixation, you know, and a real kind of like result of that, that kind of practice is that you just feel the spaciousness you feel you can say I am you can say I am a man, right, and you can actually connect to what that has meant individually and systematically, what that has meant historically, right, And you can say, and this is just an experience of

who I am, right, and that experience frees us from this intense self identification. It says, yeah, being a man is just an experience, Like it's not inherently who I am, right, you know, but when I say I am a man, this is who I am, I'm fixed it becomes a kind of rigidity. Of course, that rigidity is where you know,

relative patriarchy springs from right. You know, I've trapped myself in this identity of location and there's nowhere else to go, right, And that's real violence for against ourselves and against countless people right who are situated outside of this rigid space that we've locked ourselves into.

that's a ton tric principle. What is tontric principle says that when we talk about care and love, we're talking about caring and loving all phenomena, you know, not just living our conscious phenomena, but like ananimate phenomena, like everything that arises, Like I care about and that helps me to stay present and aware to what's happening. Right. But you know when we talk about caring, yes, it's like, yeah, they're suffering, and I want to be free from that suffering.

And if I want to be free from that suffering, it seems like everyone else does. Right, And then you figure out like what the work is, like, how do you disrupt suffering? What's your path? What's your modality? Like? What are you reading, who are you studying with, who are your communities that's helping you to do this work right? And then you do it right and it's hard. Sometimes I say, it's like going to the front lines of

your work. You go to your front lines, right. You don't get behind someone else, right, Like no one's front line is being behind someone else you know and encouraging them on. And it's like, oh, yeah, you can do it, you can do it. It's not to be a cheerleader, but to go to where your front line is and to stand there and to do your work no matter how hard it is, right. And so once you get there, you keep reminding yourself, no, this is where I'm at.

So you keep returning over and over and over again. That doesn't mean that you don't get to take a break, right, like we all need a break, right. But once you take a break, which I call self care in the book, once you do that care, you return back over and over and over again. And if everyone is doing that, then we will see, you know, the awakening of this

much more liberated future. Right. But I think that's really the hard piece here, is figuring out what your work is and doing it because it may not look so glamorous as other people's work, right, that's really hard. So sometimes our work is really invisible, you know, like our

work may not be applauded. I read so many stories about these different kinds of like situations, wars and so forth, where people were actively disrupting the impact of wars, like you know, I've been reading stories about the Holocaust, you know, and how people and countries that the Nazis were invading they would do whatever they could to support you know, Jewish you know, families and individuals and really put their lives on the line. That's going to your front line,

you know. And we may not know all of these people who are doing the subversive work of keeping people safe, but they did, right, and that's what we do. You know, we'll be doing all kinds of work that will not be applauded, that won't be awarded. I also say that not all of us are going to be like doctor King, you know, are these great change makers that we all know and love. But that's okay because that was their work, and we have the great opportunity to figure out what our work is and do it.

where we're going to be recognized. Like so much of this gets derilled when we want to be applauded for the work instead of understanding that this is essentially what we should be doing. Period. This isn't finding your work, shouldn't be extraordinary. It should just be what we do

as humans. You know, in my ethical framework based in Buddhism, like I'm here to help we should be helping each other, you know, I don't need to be applauded to do that, I'm just fulfilling my role in my path, you know. But I just really think that, like when you just look around you, who are you living with, who's your family? Tell me about your family, how you're showing up in

your family right now? To reduce suffering, to support your family, like it's not glamorous, is really hard, but that's important to do. Look at the suffering of the people around you first, and then you build from that if you need to. Right, But again, like I talk with folks who are doing all kinds of work and they're like, this isn't important. You know, I'm just a stay at home parent, or I work for a bank, are you know? I just serve at a restaurant. Right They're like, how

can I possibly be doing the work? And I say, well, you know, the kindness that you're offering to the people you're caring for actually can really impact people, you know, in ways that you can and even imagine. You know, I've been all of these. I haven't been a stay at home parent, you know, but I've had a lot of mundane jobs while I've been like this is pointless, this is useful, but I've challenged myself to show up and to really take care of people in the work

that I'm doing, and that impacts people. Someone may come into a restaurant and just be having the worst day and then they're taking care of by a server who's just really kind, really present, and that changes people. And the change that they experience with this interaction with the server may actually inspire them to go out and to change different relationships that they're struggling in. You can't ever know,

of course. I think parenting and caretaking kids or just one of the most important things that we could be doing, right, and just the work that you're doing instilling into children, just this path of caring for themselves for others, like it will impact the world in ways that you can't even imagine. Right, Raising children children who are just like connected, they're present, they're choosing their joy, they're being fluid and open, and they just they have a sense that like they

have agency in their lives. That's what we need from our young people. Yeah, right, And for caretakers who are really invested in that work. And I am very fortunate all of my friends who are parenting are really deeply involved in that kind of caretaking. Like, they're very aware that they're raising kids that will one day really like be supporting the collective, you know, so they're instilling into their kids everything that our generation struggled, you know, to cultivate.

And that's not to blame our parents, right, right, but to recognize the difficulty and the challenges, you know, of figuring out what your work is, you know, in doing it.

don't want to struggle. This isn't helpful for me, as you know talk about in the book, Struggle for me is how I'm shaped right, Like it really struggle has really helped me to learn what to divest from because part of the struggle is that the struggle is actually reflecting back to me what I shouldn't be doing sometimes right, but also struggle also can reflect back to me what I need to cultivate and awaken and really train in right, to develop a deeper competency and capacity to do right

because my struggle is sometimes not having what I need to do the work that I'm presented with, right. I think a lot of people are just tired right now and they want to practice that's easy. And I just have never been that interested and easy. Like I have a personality that's like, let's just do it the hard way, like literally, because I know what the hard way is, you know. But I think maybe I over value struggle, you know, in a way that other people, you know,

are undervaluing it. But I just come from a community or culture where struggle has deeply defined our capacity to experience joy and community.

the writing the teaching. This is the only thing that I want to do, and it's also a struggle, yep right, And some days I don't want to do shit, yep right, And it's okay. So I know that my love and my purpose will always bring me back to the work. So for me complaining, it's just a way that I'm like recognizing that that this is difficult, Yeah, and to

honor resistance. Instead of letting it consume me or letting it become something I'm pushing away, I just center it and say, yeah, like this is real work, and I gratefully do this, you know.

I didn't sleep real well last night, so you know what, writing that three paragraphs today just really kind of sucks because I'm really tired. You know, another day I might really like writing it. But that, you know, for me has been a learning of like, you know, I can love what I do and it's still be really hard sometimes and still really not want to do it some of the time. And that's not a sign that I've doing the wrong thing. Now. It can be a sign of that, but that's not the only thing.

the case. No, we can be kind of mediocre, right, but it's still what we should be doing, right, And of course what is mediocre or not just very subjective offering, you know. But yeah, and so like the love, yeah, the love for the work right is a motivation that keeps me moving through the struggling of the work itself.

from me thirty minutes of email. So I'm going to do thirty minutes of emails, but I'm going to balance that with thirty minutes or forty five minutes of taking a walk outside or sitting outside yep, right, and I just I go back and forth like that because even that contracting work is being asked to be cared for, and that care is pairing it with something that feels

expansive and opening and RESTful. Right, Instead of just spending hours and hours a day doing things that I don't want to do, I intersperse that world with things that open and expand and allow me to feel rested and restore it.

so much. It's really been a pleasure talking with you, and I'm so glad I got to do it.

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