CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land.

In this episode, 86th generation Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong is joined by CIIS Associate Professor Sonya Shah for an illuminating conversation exploring spiritual activism and how to envision co-creating new worlds from one in crisis.

They discuss Norma’s latest book, When No Thing Works, in which she inquiries into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration and explores ways we can step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 22nd, 2025. A transcript is available below. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Sonya Shah: Well, we're really excited to be here today My name is Sonya Shah and I'm here with Norma Wong And we're really, really excited to talk about this amazingly beautiful book by this incredible elder and person When No Things Work And before we get into a little bit more of a contextual introduction, I think Norma was going to start with some poem 

Norma Wong: Aloha, Sonya Thank you so much for having me And I'm so glad to be in conversation with you this evening I have two poems that I'd like to share One is by a legendary poet from about the year 700 in that region that we now call China Legendary in that it may have been one person or it might actually have been a group of poets who wrote as one person Han Shan “If you're always silent and say nothing, what stories will a younger generation have to tell? If you hide yourself away in the thickest woods, how will your wisdom's light shine through? A bag of bones is not a sturdy vessel The wind and frost do their work soon enough Plow a stone field with a clay ox and the harvest day will never come” The second poem is more modern and you may have heard this one It's also known as a Celtic prayer of approach “I honor your gods I drink at your will I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place I have no cherished outcomes I will not negotiate by withholding I am not subject to disappointment” This I pledge to you, Sonya 

Sonya: Oh, that's so beautiful And what a beautiful way to start Yeah, thank you for that So, Norma and I were talking, we talked once before this conversation and I think in both the cultures that we come from that we don't start anything without a proper introduction of who we are because we don't exist outside of the context and love and joy and labor of our ancestors and our environment and all of our relatives and who we are How we got here, who we owe it to, who we love So with that, I'm going to ask Norma if she will introduce herself and then I'll introduce myself too 

Norma: Thank you so much Thank you So, you know, I'm known familiarly as Norma Wong, although there are more names within my name That is just a familiar name that I have I am calling today from the place that I live and which for at least three generations we have lived, which is in a valley known as Kalihi on the island of Oahu and the Hawaiian Islands My ancestors are both the native people of this place, the Kanaka Maoli, the native Hawaiians, as well as Hakka And the Hakka came from that place that we now call China as contract workers to work in the plantations And in my case, those ancestors came sometime in the early or the mid 1800s is basically when they came to this place The Hakka are nomadic people They essentially refuse the homogenization into any place or any flag And to this day, they will travel great lengths, hundreds and thousands and even sometimes tens of thousands of miles within their lifetime and their peoples may take several generations to return to the same place So those are my peoples I am so glad to be here 

Sonya: Yeah, thank you So I'm known as Sonya Shah and I have no other names I have a nine letter name Sometimes I feel like I got gypped and want seven other names in my name But I was born in India My parents are from the northwestern part of India, from Gujarat All of my ancestors are And we immigrated to the US when I was a very small baby and I grew up in New York and now currently live in California with my partner and my two wonderful children and my dog and many other beautiful beings that are around me So that's a little bit about who I am So maybe we can kind of get into the book and get into you wrote this really beautiful piece of work And I think maybe before I ask you about the framework of the book and the book itself is I wanted to ask you a little bit about the process of writing, because you say in the beginning that you know you were sort of prompted to do this by your students And that it's a big shift to move from the oral to the written And I've seen, actually I’m curious about it because I've seen other elders do the same thing And so I wanted to ask you about your choice to write and also what would what was it like to actually write this book 

Norma: Yes, well, you know it took literally two years And, you know, the, the person There were various people who spoke with me that the one persistent instigator who I credit with this is Taj James, who some of your listeners may know of And, you know, he used every method that he could And then he eventually had a somber conversation with me, which is all of the traditional methods that that I would have come from, you know, the long many generations have counted on the passing of knowledge from one person to another to be a person who's actually in front of you And they would take a long time and it'd be more of an apprenticeship than anything else And that this would be the way and this would be the way that you would you would know that it isn't just about the exchange of information That it was a deeper learning that would be going on And his question to me, which he knew I would be susceptible to is that if I understand this moment as being a time-place of collapse, then will enough I be able to put myself in front of enough people long enough for there to be enough people who may be able to do something about it? And in this case, I know that he wasn't only talking about me, so he’s talking about any elder Would any elder be able to do that at this moment? And really, the answer is no So even in the accelerated way in which I teach, and which is controversial in, you know, in my lineage, right, it’s controversial my lineage So even in that accelerated way that if I could not make the leap of faith that even if this were being passed to someone that I may never meet that it would land appropriately and be used appropriately And whatever risk there may be in that regard, it is a risk that must be taken at this moment So, 

Sonya: I really appreciate that And the sort of, you know, the faith of the unknown And there was a line that you wrote “And so I leap into the faith that something offered in the tangible realm of the written word will be received in the intangible spaces of sincere inquiry by persons I have not met and will unlikely never be with across time-space” Which is kind of like this room because you and I are the only two people who can see each other But there's some people listening and it matters and it's meaningful And so, you know, we are humbled by you taking that leap of faith In this time, which kind of leads me to that real big question So in we are two days out from a very big inauguration in the United States that came with 150 proclamations and 150 pardons And that feeling of collapse, I think, feels very real and palpable right now As it does ebbs and flows in like the way the day does or the week does So, in the first part of your book you spent a lot of time talking about the collapse So I'm wondering, you know, what I feel what I took away from looking at the framework of your book is you, you're asking us to in the urgency of all of the crisis and collapse is to stay focused on the long game What you call the far horizon Maybe I'd call it the North Star also So I'm hoping you can really for this beautiful audience that you and I cannot see into the universe Talk a little bit about this framework 

Norma: So, you know, it's a it's a framework that, you know, and I, and hopefully I didn't infer with respect to what that framework is in to obtuse a way You know, because which is to say that I think of that framework really as being an Indigenous one Indigenous in not in a political or even a cultural sense, but an Indigenous one with respect to that that which all people who are on this call and all people who are not on this call once were Which is to say all our peoples were at some time in history Written and unwritten history That we lived Indigenous lives We lived in smaller bands of people And because we believed all of our peoples believed that we were the people We were the people In other words, they were in isolation of each other That we lived essentially, essentially in relationship to each other and to the place and to the non human beings That would be the only way in which you would be able to actually to face challenges and to thrive and to create and to do all of those things that peoples might do And you would have gone for thousands of years, some for tens of thousands of years in that particular state of beingness And then your indigeneity would have been interrupted And so people who are Indigenous today would say they're Indigenous only because their indigeneity was interrupted recently And so then they could effectively claim a different and jarring state of being that is that jarringness is that their worldview is so, so different than a worldview that is not Indigenous And a big difference, really big difference besides the connectivity of humans with the earth and with non human beings is this notion that time-space is not only about the present That time-space is the present as it reveals itself as informed by your ancestors and by the responsibility of making sure that the descendants that are not yet born are the ones who will be in a place that is of your making in your present And so that that immense notion of stewardship would be something that would be held by all the peoples, not just the leaders, not just the seers, not just the holy people, not just by the elders That would be a just a worldview That would be how you would think nature is And so this this what I am and others, I am not alone in this notion is that there is a wisdom that is still there that is required in modern times If we are to get through this difficult moment And by we, I mean, not people of our own identity or ideology, but if humans are to get through this difficult moment, which may last decades may last more than 100 years If we're to get through this, then we have to relearn the muscle of that wisdom and to bring it into practical action, not just a belief system or theory or an analysis 

Sonya: So, so beautiful It's really wonderful to read what people write and then hear them talk about it I'm having my own experience of thinking about your words and pondering your words and then hearing your words You know, one thing as you talk about that muscle and remembering, you know, that wisdom of our indigeneity, something that I know that I remember of my own, let's say, indigeneity is that I come from a very collectivist culture We do everything together We share all our meals We always think about what the other person's doing And I grew up thinking a lot about the multi-generational mutuality, the interdependence that you name And when I get lost and I feel selfish, or I question my motives, because I get selfish, and sometimes I have bad motives It just takes me a little bit to remember who I am, and I have some memory because I grew up like that with my family, you know, where I can remember, oh, actually, that's not who you are That's not what you really believe That's not who you want to be in the world And I wonder, for people that might not have had the privilege or the luck to grow up in that kind of collectivist culture or have been ripped from their ancestors, have had to live a different way How do you teach that muscle? How do you teach people to have the thing that we need to get through the thing that we need to get through in the collapse? 

Norma: Yes, so there's a lot of interruption that has to occur You know, a practice pathway that I have is the Zen tradition, Buddhist tradition And the Buddhist tradition is the three pillars There's the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha And, you know, and they say, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, the Sangha, the Sangha, which is to say that it doesn't matter what kind of inner self you believe that you are cultivating, the Buddha part The lessons that you're learning, the Dharma part If you are not practicing that in community, the Sangha part, then among other things, you will have no notion of what it is you're practicing for You are, you know, what my teacher would be called a garden stone Buddha You know, might as well go and buy that sculpture from the garden shop and, you know, and put it in the corner of your room because your practice is not going to be any better than that So this is part about if it is a the individualistic aspects of modern life tied to a device, you know, which is you replace every several years and in which you isolate yourself into what you think is hyper connectivity Right, but is not even a person because it is a digital representation of someone's thoughts that is even frequently not even an actual experience But a commentary on an experience And that is like takes you farther and farther away It is a paradox that people might search out meaning on social media, only to feel more isolated So it's like lifting up your head It's like seek the community table in a restaurant if you're entering it alone You know, I travel a lot for the work that I do, about fifty percent of the time And I am therefore removing myself from my own community to be in commune with others And I'm an introvert So there's nothing necessarily, you know, natural about the social aspect of community for me What is natural for me is to be in contact, not necessarily be in conversation To acknowledge the person who is sitting next to me with a nod and with an eye contact To stop when someone may be serving me in a restaurant To not treat the person who is going to clean up after me as a servant in a hotel room To notice people that I am passing as I'm walking down the street Is both for my contact as well as my safety, as well as my opportunity If I am to be of service or if I am to notice that someone may need my support If I am in need of support, I need to actually be in relationship too So there are these ways and means that effectively require us just to be with each other You know, in the work context, I'd say to people, you need critical mass, and critical mass starts with three It's like, don't try to organize some big thing unless you have three people at the center Yeah And with those three people, you want to not be in work mode You want to be in relationship with them You want to be able to know by the way in which they are looking at you that there is accord or not Not that they're hearing you Not that they're spouting the same things as you are It's If you have not shared a meal with someone that you work with How is it that you might know who it is that they are? The Chinese have a saying, they say [Chinese Language] It's like sip tea, drink tea And it says that how can we know each other unless we have actually even just drank tea with each other Eating Breathing Drinking water Are essential to life If you have not shared that moment with someone else then people become concepts So it’s that, very fundamentally, it would be stitching that It does require this interruption of habit Interruption of the technology habit But also the interruption of all the ways in which we've learned that under, if you happen to be listening and you are situated in a country called the United States, that this notion that we've learned that the American dream is about individual success Right And by the way, individual harm And that we might even do our so-called collective work thinking of ourselves as individuals And that we may look to therefore that which we do in many aspects of containers, isolated from each other The government being the only entity that is responsibility for governance So 

Sonya: That's so great I'm lost, I’m lost in your words and what you’re saying And I think what's really helpful for me, for people listening is not taking this is a big overwhelming ask It's to start with what’s simple and right in front of us Acknowledging your neighbor Sipping tea You know, those, those little things that people can really start with to move out of isolation or individualism into something that’s a little bit collective And I think that's a really helpful, very practical, way of beginning, because I think for some people, it's really hard to even think about How do I begin? How do I start? How do I change this thing called habits, which, you spend a chapter talking about, I think what I really appreciate about your book is there’s a real practicality about how to get to the far horizon, how to sort of remember what, what we need to build When you're talking about habits or strategy or choice Or practice So I'm wondering if you could walk us through that a little bit, like this sort of way that you've, you walk it through in the book, just kind of how we move from the habits to the practice to the strategies 

Norma: So So, you know, there's this There's this way in which my teacher talked about habits that I found to be very useful, which is that a habit is strictly a repetitive action that occurs unconsciously And, you know, and we're just as humans on a behavioral basis we pick those up early and we just keep accumulating them And they're just unconscious things So Your partner is likely to know more about your habits than you are They're so unconscious Right Your partner is likely to be able to rattle them off and your partner will start with those habits that irritate your partner Right They'll know them intimately That's how unconscious they are But how influential they are And what is it you are and from a Zen perspective The practice of Zen is to interrupt those habit patterns until you return to the conscious state of who it is that you are without those habits Okay That's how I've come to know what Zen practice is about So for people who are not engaged in a practice like that To know that there are habits that you have counted on And their habits that are standing in your way And the habits that you're counting on, although they have served you are not serving you as well as they could because they're unconscious Yeah, so I don't remember if I use this example in the book or not But the one that I use frequently when I'm in front of people is, you know, most people in modern America, but not all, will brush their teeth at least once a day, okay, but what dentists will say, and remembering that many people don't go to a dentist regularly, but those who do go to a dentist have a habit pattern about going do a dentist, and they'll say that those people, among those people, about 85% of them will actually be habitually brushing their teeth in an unhelpful way. So they do it once a day but they only brush certain portions of their mouth and they neglect other portions of their mouth and on a behavioral basis they will do it for a particular set of time almost down to like five seconds so unconscious but habitual it might be. That might be five seconds too few it might be five minutes too few and then to try to break that habit it becomes very difficult. So it's like it's those patterns of behavior and to identify those becomes important and the way these habits work is once you begin interrupting a habit pattern it gives you an opening to interrupt others so I say start with the practical. Are you hydrating properly every day? Or are you in a drought and drown situation? Do you interrupt someone as you're talking all the time? Can you pause instead? Do you leap to judgment? Is that something that you are known for? Pause before you make that leap. Interrupt the judgment you are seeing to yourself because you actually haven't paused it's still going on in your mind it's just not coming out of your mouth. How do you do that? To interrupt a habit the most useful way is to return to the physical experience which is to say make sure that you're in your breath, make sure you're sitting or standing in your dignity, make sure that you can feel the ground. To be grounded is not a state of mind, it is a state of the physical being. So if you happen to be a quadriplegic what is really important is to find any part of your body that is in the lower extremity, wherever that might be which might be in your butt it might be somewhere higher than your butt that you feel some aspect of something that is associated with that. So it is not about ableness. It is about being as much physical experiences as you can, to return to that. That is the most powerful interrupter of any habit pattern if you give yourself a moment to interrupt that. Then to not replace one habit with another but to bring practice in. The practice of hydration for example is very much at the beginning something that might become a matter of paying attention in ways that are enjoyable. So do not do it in any old plastic cup. Pick something that does not have to be new and shiny but is useful and cherishable, something that you might care for not dispose of. Have you noticed what your water tastes like? Have you been paying attention to that? Do you know the source of your water? Do you know whether that water is being cared for? Who is caring for that? Are you able to drink water because that water is arriving at your tap having been diverted hundreds of miles from its source, thousands of miles from its source and are other beings being deprived of that water in order for you to have that water? Which means that you should cherish that water. You should not waste it. You should pay attention to it. You should try to use some of your muscles to figure out might there be ways for not so much water to be diverted. Can you do that in relationship to other people for whom that might be their primary lift? Can you add your lift to that? So it's tracing aspects of things back to source not to a metaphoric source but as far back as you can locate by your curiosity. Your curiosity and inquiry really important in this moment. Not just your observation and your emotional response. Okay those are like threshold things, observation and that you feel would mean that you're paying attention and that you're human. But now to move into that place of agency your curiosity is required and you need not do that in your solitary existence. To do it even with one other thought partner would mean that you would be able to be in conversation with someone and that conversation, you know, it's not so much a study buddy as much as a conversation will help to move that inquiry from your just your mind into the public square of the two of you. Okay, and to be in a way in which you can move that along and also know that one at least one other person is having that same inquiry. Sonya, an amazing thing for me that I have I would not have figured out if I hadn't written the book is that there are many, many, many, many people who believe that they are the only one who is in thinking about certain things and is suffering right now because they are, or have a notion that they can do something but are not certain about that and that that is a phenomenon that exists in the world and the only thing that keeps people isolated in that way, believing that they're only one, is that they haven't found another. So most of the rooms that I am in would feel like this room and the emergence of the moment is not about a book. It is very much about for me the hopeful aspect about that is this this phenomena that cannot be named which is this this awakening of humanity and good for us that that is the case. You know there are different ways in which plants propagate. The most frequent way is through seeds. It isn't the only way. But a seed that stays underground too long remains dormant and therefore cannot propagate.

Sonya: I feel like I'm the beneficiary of like a private lesson with you. It's like such a wonderful, I was thinking, god, how did I get so lucky? It's really wonderful and I, and yeah, absolutely I feel like talking about the book is an excuse to talk about kind of the bigger the bigger thing, the bigger awakening, the time of transformation, the thing that we want to see, the thing that we need. I had a burning kind of question for you come up while you were talking, which is, well, I think two things. One is I was curious about when you look around, like your environment, people that you're around this community and your community or communities you travel to what do you think, what are some of the most unhealthy habits that you see? 

Norma: Okay. Well, the most unhealthy habit is the habitual attraction that people have to their mobile devices. 

Sonya: Right, yes.

Norma: Okay. Which accentuate a isolation and which keep people basically in a spin of their own conversation and so we are in times that can only be called traumatic and that doesn't matter where you are the ideological spectrum, by the way. I believe it's, I believe it's traumatic across the ideological spectrum. People's notion of what you do about that trauma are very different and the those differences will be about ideology also like belief systems and also about what people's notion of reality is, but trauma exists and then we're effectively putting that trauma on a stove, lighting the stove, okay and and keep on putting water into that pot as it burns low. Okay, so we're aiding and abetting, which is to say the world is traumatic in and of itself and that now and we are aiding and we're adding to our suffering okay and as we get into that state, as we move further and further into that state we move further and further into our amygdala and science, recent science has shown that when the amygdala is fully lit up the prefrontal cortex goes dark. Literally on a physiological neurological basis we lose executive function okay and how can we expect to write a world that is turned over without executive function? Executive function meaning sharp strategic decisions and actions that are followed through with commitment and awareness of the changing conditions and then shift again and shift again and shift again and to do that with both strategy and compassion. How do we expect to do that if we are keeping ourselves in a state of trauma? So it's that that you cannot divorce yourself and not have any trauma at all. That the habit patterns of of like adding fuel to that trauma is counterproductive to humanity so that is among the many habits that we might have, I would say that's I would name that because it's it's become an accelerator and a magnifier and a it's a trauma accountability partner. Am I not feeling bad enough today? Let me dial in just to make sure okay and so there's that. For myself, a five minute scan of the news three times a day will tell me everything I need to know about what's happening. I need not spend any more time knowing what's happening. So this is not about disconnecting from what's happening. Okay. It's about about putting yourself into the discipline of how all of that information comes into you and what is it that you're going to be able to do something with. And the more onslaught there is the more discipline that you need.

Sonya: Yeah makes a lot of sense yeah. I had two directions of two different questions to go, maybe we can do them both. You know, when you're, we were in the book and in what we're talking about and also in the Indigenous worldview this concept of relationship and practicing the cultivating a relationship is like of the utmost importance so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and just about relationship.

Norma: Sure so so from what I have learned of your peoples, the ways in which you have lived on a cultural basis on a social cultural basis that either the, the notion of community family extended family those are just, you and me have different words for them but the, it's, it's part of what, when you know you are home, right, when you know you are home it's when those relationships are there and those relationships are intricate which is to say that they intertwine, they’re interwoven. Now that may mean there's some pathology there too, right so we will acknowledge that that can happen especially with family, there can be unhealthy ways in which relationships are, which is also part of the challenge of consciously being in a relationship it is about continuously holding towards the thriving aspect of relationship and interrupting the aspects that can fall into trauma or disrepair. So it's a, it's not neutral in that regard. And the notion of it is to be in in hawaiian we have this word pilina, right, P I L I N A. Pilina is to be interwoven. When you have relationship that is interwoven then you will not be able to be in transaction with that person right to us like the a threshold relationship is too shallow. It's like it's just a transaction. It's what can I get from this person and so therefore what do I minimally need to know about this person? What do they minimally need to know about me? How might I say it in the right way that they might be able to respond at kind? And if you build everything you do in that way you are on less steady ground than a house of cards. Right. So to have at the core, even if it's a small number, the number of pilina relationships I have are quite small, the number of those, but because I have them when I am in relationship so for example last night two graduate students, two wonderful young women who I know are going to get their doctorates, when they were interviewing me we would have taken some time before we would be on stage together in a short time in a concentrated way to be able to have an aspect of interwovenness that we would be able to be in relationship as humans in which we would understand that culturally these are two young people and I am someone with gray hair and we would be able to not only inform be appropriate but to be gently in the relationship, an elder to younger people, that these would be two young people I be so glad to be my descendants even if I had just met them and they would be so glad for me to be an elder that they can call upon. So that notion of taking that time I will say to you that it is worth it and the most fractious campaigns that I have been in, what has allowed a bad situation to mend is if there would be people who would be able to call upon each other by virtue of interwoven relationship. 

Sonya: That makes so much sense. I think this sort of follows along this thread is that I feel like when we're as humans, when we're at our best we are doing all these things. We are minding each other, we are loving each other, we're caring for each other, we're watching each other, we're tending to each other, we're trying to build this thing and I see it in my environment I see it in my community and then I see quickly something happens and we can go to being at our worst, and at our worst we're playing identity politics and the trauma olympics and this kind of phenomena of cancel culture and throwing people away. Where we can really be bad to each other and I'm wondering, because I think there's so much striving towards this awakening you know think there’s a lot of intention and desire and even practice that people try to cultivate to this space but then right at that edge, we also have this other thing that, or we fall back into this other thing so you know, it's so alive you know, you can probably tell by my energy so I'm wondering what you, what you make of this, what you say to this how do we get out of this identity cancel culture politic?

Norma: So it's, it's a so, you know, speaking from my own experience it can be jarring to get on a plane from Hawai’i which by virtue of, you know, we are one of the states of the United States but by virtue of our distance and by virtue of the fact that the last time we had any people who were of one race who were in the majority is when they were native hawaiians, okay so we have never had a white majority in this place called Hawai’i, which is one of the 50 states and that has had its own way in which it has come into modernity. So I can get on a plane and it's very jarring to get off plane on the other side and it's like, I'm in a different world.

Sonya: You are.

Norma: Okay right, and I am. Okay. And people will look at me differently than in Hawai’i where, by the way, we are we see each other but we actually are not like overly obvious about our curiosity because there's nothing special about being the people who we are and therefore we are all special, right, so but they're going to look at me differently when I step off the plane. The question is whether I will look at them differently, not whether or not they will look at me differently. Okay so I can the I can maintain my core by behaving in the same way as I would behave if I were home. Okay now I know it's different territory but no different than if I go to Wai’anae on the other side of the island, or if I go to Kailua on the other side of the island, or if I go to another island, I go to Maui or I go to the big island of Hawai’i or Kauai. Right right it's that to be in relationship with people to be observant of their ways but not to change who it is that I am, the center of my values and all of that so which is to say it's a matrix moment and I choose the reality to be the one of interdependence. That that is reality and the world that is a delusion is the one that is not. Okay and if I am interdependent with people who are choosing not to be interdependent with me, right, I will at least be able to navigate that ground with less harm. Okay, right, I might not be seen as as powerful by them, but their view of me does not define who it is that I am. I am not subject to their affirmation and so therefore why would I be subject to their de-affirmation? Okay. Now that requires having a place to return to which is why even though I do a lot of work outside of Hawai'i I choose to commute home, but a thing that has happened is that by doing work elsewhere that we are able to actually create small communities of people by the way who have never lived in Hawai'i who are earnestly practicing being in interdependence with each other and that's how, if bad viruses can infect the world, good viruses should be able to do so as well.

Sonya: Absolutely yeah, I love that. What a wonderful way to sort of end we're coming to our end so I just wanted to one, just ask if well, first of all, thank you for this incredibly rich very intimate conversation and just to see if you have any closing thoughts that you want to share.

Norma: I hadn't planned on this, Sonya, I will reveal that I hadn’t planned on it, but recently I found a poem that I wrote in 2017 that I thought that I made a copy of and I put it in my book because it spoke to my, to me again and I would like to share it and I do this I do this with you and the humans on this call that I do not have the privilege of seeing. It's called Ha'aha'a, and Ha'aha'a in Hawaiian means humility. Okay. “Where some bask in the glow there is only Ha'aha'a. Welling and threatening to spill over. Who can know for certainty that good will arise? Certainly not I just a wandering monk stopping from time to time and drawn to breath, to commune in the fields where people labor, the determined the fearful, the fiercely good hearted. These people, my friends, my relatives, becoming human beings and struggling to be strong and free. For there are no certainties of this I am certain. Only the [Hawaiian Language] – discipline of work – a well worn path and friend to clear the rubbish of unworthy thoughts. Only summer's heat after bracingly cold spring that bloomed suddenly at the end of a too dark winter careening upon when falls dreams were not looking past the relief of summer’s heat. Of this the universe is certain. The deep knowing the certainty that across the chasm of our fears, our doubts, our suspicions, and our glorious delusions across the crevasse await all who dare believe, waiting. So when a smile, a tear, nay a flood of gratitude and love, in hopeful embrace and yearning for all that may be, can be, will be, knowing into the unknown. We must not fail to act for fear that we may fail. When the rain falls and meets the enduring wind that is the wandering monk only ha'aha'a and sacred kuleana – sacred responsibility – sit. [Hawaiian Language] Yes, understood. Thank you so much, Sonya.

Sonya: Thank you so much, Norma.

Norma: You know, I was afraid of being in this space where I would only see one other being, but having one other being counted so thank you so much.

Sonya: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Yeah. Have a beautiful evening. 

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

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