Activism with Heart: How Fierce Vulnerability Inspires Action
An Interview with Kazu Haga, Author of Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse
At two of the darkest moments of the past century, you may recall that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced a nonviolent brand of leadership that changed the world. As we face the seemingly insurmountable challenges of climate change, political division, racial animosity, and caustic intolerance, it goes without saying that having a similar leader step to the fore would be a godsend.
Such a leader would soothe the harm being inflicted at both the personal and systemic levels, a deeply felt pain that is exacerbated by social media’s binary “us vs. them” worldview—exactly what is NOT helpful for healing.
Grounded in Buddhist philosophy and restorative justice work, Kazu Haga recognizes that the systemic global traumas have forced us all into a state of denial—a coping mechanism that is taking a huge toll. He believes the path forward must combine science-based advances in trauma healing with Gandhi- King Jr.-inspired nonviolence. In his new book, Fierce Vulnerability, Haga expands on that understanding and imagines a “movement that recognizes injustice as a reflection of collective trauma and embraces its role as a catalyst for collective healing through transformative action.”
Intrigued with his practical yet radical ideas, we assigned one of Foreword’s most sagacious writers, Kristine Morris, to catch up with Haga for the following conversation.
Your thoughtful, provocative book emphasizes the importance of both collective and individual healing if we are to address the critical issues that threaten human and planetary survival. How has your background in nonviolence work, Buddhist spirituality, and the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired both the questions you ask and your vision for building a future characterized by peace, fairness, justice, and co-operation?
My journey started at the intersection of Buddhism and nonviolence work, having spent a year and a half living in a monastery under the guidance of Buddhists deeply committed to nonviolent social change. Then years later, I discovered the teachings of Dr. King, and for the first time understood the depths of the word “nonviolence,” particularly within a social change context. All of these things had a deep impact on me and how I view the world. They still guide the ways I try to respond to conflict—in my own heart, in my family, and in the world with broader social issues.
I think my Buddhist practice has given me a deep sense of interdependence—that this is a fundamental truth of the way our universe is structured. Nonviolence taught me the power that everyday people have to affect changes in the world. And Dr. King taught me the importance of cultivating compassion for all people as we go about doing the work of social change. He helped me to see that I will never be free until all people are free.
But at the end of the day, it feels to me like all three teachings speak to a universal truth that really emerges in all three philosophies. I have also learned about interdependence from Dr. King, the need to cultivate compassion from Buddhism, and about the need to create change from countless nonviolence teachers. It’s hard to separate out exactly what I learned from what teachings. Each one just deepened my commitment to a set of universal truths.
The thing that I have added to this foundation is an understanding of how trauma impacts us, and years of lessons from my own healing journey and supporting the healing of others. This intersection, of trauma healing, spiritual practice, and nonviolence, is what I am exploring in Fierce Vulnerability.
For those who have not yet read your book, please explain how the term “fierce vulnerability” relates to/differs from the better-known term “nonviolence.”
The term “fierce vulnerability” actually came out of a years-long conversation that my friend Chris and I had about rebranding nonviolence. The term “nonviolence” has so many misunderstandings, and many people see it as being passive or weak. So we thought that we needed a new word, and “fierce vulnerability” was a term we were discussing for a while.
We ultimately decided to continue to use the word “nonviolence” because it ties us to an important legacy. But at the same time, the term “fierce vulnerability” took on a life of its own; we developed a workshop about it, and now here we are after all these years.
For me, fierce vulnerability is just one thread in the ancient lineage of nonviolence. What it adds to it is a much better understanding of trauma. Trauma healing—our scientific understanding of trauma as well as the various modalities that exist today to heal from it—was not around back in Dr. King’s days.
For me nonviolence has always been about healing, but adding in a perspective around trauma has added so much to my understanding of how we transform violence. Violence, so often, is the result of unprocessed trauma. When someone has been hurt and their pain has not been seen, validated, and integrated, they can lash out and hurt others—which in turn can cause more trauma.
With fierce vulnerability, we are trying to take the lessons that society has learned over the last fifty years about what it takes to heal trauma at the personal levels, and scale them up to the social levels.
We are trying to build movements that see injustice not as a political issue, but as a manifestation of collective trauma. Therefore, can we respond to the biggest harms with the realization that we can’t shut down injustice anymore than we can shut down trauma?
While protests and actions may still need to tactically shut down a pipeline or a train carrying coal through an impoverished neighborhood, can we engage in movements with a spirit of “opening things up?” Because in healing trauma, what we need to do is open up stories, dialogue, connection, possibilities for healing—not shut them down.
And we need to do this work in the midst of collapse, or what many people call the poly-crisis. Climate crisis, pandemics, the erosion of democracy, war, genocide, etc., etc., etc.
What does it mean to try to heal society’s wounds at a time like this? And what is the preparation that we need to do ourselves to play the roles that we are being asked to play right now? Those are some of the questions we explore in Fierce Vulnerability.
There is conversation about the negative effects patriarchy has had, and continues to have, on women, but your book brings to light some of the harm it has also done to men. Your story of what you felt when, for the first time in your life, you were able to cry in the arms of another man as you released long-held trauma and shame brought home the impact repressed trauma can have on one’s life. Please tell our readers what you have learned about patriarchy’s negative effects on men and how they might complicate efforts on behalf of peaceful solutions to individual and societal problems.
What I have learned over the years is that patriarchy—and any form of oppression—hurts everyone. Nobody is free from the negative impact of oppression. White supremacy has hurt white people in that it has separated them from their sense of belonging with the rest of humanity and given them a false sense of superiority. Similarly, patriarchy has ripped apart those of us raised as men in so many ways.
As a man, I don’t know how many times I received messaging from a young age that actually kept me from being whole. Years ago, I was at a retreat and shared a vulnerable story from childhood. It was the first time I ever talked about it, and I was surprised when I completely went into panic and broke down into tears the moment I started to talk. I could barely get a breath in, and I sobbed and sobbed as I was held in the arms of the man who was sitting next to me.
I learned two valuable lessons that day. One is how toxic the message is that “boys don’t cry.” Crying is one of the most common and supportive ways that human beings are able to release sadness and grief. If we don’t find healthy releases for those emotions, it gets stuck and bottled up—oftentimes resulting in violence towards ourselves or others. And that important medicine has been ripped away from us by this doctrine created by a patriarchal system that only gives us one rigid vision of what it means to “be strong.”
Secondly, in retrospect, I am always awed at how safe I felt in the arms of the man next to me. All my life, I was told that I could watch football games with other men, but crying in the arms of another man was not something I ever would have even considered. It made me realize how incapable we are of building authentic and intimate relationships with other men.
This is a really important thing to be speaking about now, because we are in a time of collapse. Ecological systems, economic systems, and democratic systems are in a state of collapse all over the world. Under these systems, men have been told that we need to be “strong” and “provide for our families.” Well, it is becoming harder and harder for many men to live up to these gender-roles because living into these rigid definitions relies on the systems that created them—the same systems that are in the midst of collapse.
So many men who have only heard messages of how to “be a man” from these systems are feeling like they are failing. Men are hurting. And for the most part, it has only been the right wing that has recognized that, and is speaking directly to the pain that many men are feeling. The right has been able to weaponize this pain and many young men are flocking to the right, to support men who are great at portraying the old-school “strongman” vibe—like Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
So we need to give men—particularly young men—an alternative message. That being a “man” means fully owning all aspects of what makes us fully human. That there is a way to honor masculinity that is sacred and affirms life.
What are some of the ways patriarchy inculcates boys and young men with stereotypic and outdated concepts of “manhood” and how can these be countered in the home, school, and community?
I actually think we could all benefit from bringing nuance into both “manhood” and “womanhood” as concepts. I think the reality is that the characteristics we often assign to specific genders or sexes—strength, assertiveness, competitiveness, or logic for men; nurturance, sensitivity, intuition, or empathy for women; all exist in every individual. Assigning them to one gender limits all of our abilities to be whole. In reality, all people are a complex balance of masculine and feminine traits.
So how can we celebrate nurturance in little boys, and assertiveness in young girls? How can we allow all kids to explore the wholeness of their personality instead of teaching them that only certain ways of behaving are “appropriate” for them because of their assigned gender?
In our binary world, we raise boys to behave a certain way, and it cuts off an important part of who they are as humans. As bell hooks wrote, “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”
So, specifically with kids assigned as boys, it’s so important that older men learn to break down our own barriers to vulnerability and model to them expressions of a full range of emotions, and to celebrate it when it emerges from them.
What do you suggest might help men realize that they need healing, and what resources exist to help them?
I think men don’t need convincing that they need healing. I think most men know. The question is whether or not we can accept that reality, and voice out loud that we need help, that we need support, that we might be scared, or that we might need to grieve.
In the book, I talk about another incident when some strong emotions were emerging for me, and I went into the woods by myself and tried to cry, to get some release. And within seconds, I had stopped crying and found myself thinking about how Kevin Durant was going to fit with the Golden State Warriors after having just signed there. And then I started crying again, and found myself immediately wondering about what was going to happen in the next season of Game of Thrones.
I had never been so aware of how incapable I was of crying. That I had lost access to one of the most basic and critical tools that we as human beings have of healing!
I think it is so hard for many men to cry, especially in front of other men. So, creating that space is so crucial—for men to explore our pain points, which we have so many. Groups like Yes, who are now organizing Men’s jams (weeklong transformative retreats), and other men’s groups that are popping up all over the place, are doing such important work.
More and more scientific research is showing that identifiable nutritional deficiencies can result in difficulty or inability to handle emotions when triggered, increased tendencies to violence, and general physical and mental illness in human beings. This, together with lack of training in critical thinking skills, can complicate progress toward nonviolent solutions to the very real problems we see in individuals, communities, and society today. How much attention is being given to the ways nutritional deficiencies affect an individual’s ability to handle stress and emotional triggers, especially in our prison systems?
This is so important to think about not just in prisons but in most impoverished communities. Many people live in food deserts, with no easy access to the healthy foods that many of us take for granted. It’s great to see so much focus on organic food these days, but that is not accessible to countless people.
Our ability to practice nonviolence is hindered by many things. Think about the last time you went without a good night’s sleep, or were so busy that you had to skip a meal. How much more likely were you to get agitated and go into the “panic zone” where it was hard or impossible to consider someone else’s perspective, think about nuance, or have compassion? Now, think about a lifetime of stressful sleep or never getting a full healthy meal. Now, think about having to live through generations of that.
This is what systemic injustice does. It makes healing and nonviolence that much harder to access to entire communities of people.
Violence becomes much more likely when you mistreat people and don’t give them the resources that we all need to thrive. It is not a character deficiency on their part. It is the inevitable outcome of depriving people of basic needs.
You suggest that rather than using destructive, confrontational techniques in direct action, it would be better to hold ceremonies that bring people together in public spaces for nonviolent statements of grief, complaint, and demands for change. And if we do occupy a building or shut down a highway, what might be done to also open hearts on both sides of the divide?
We live in a world with such escalated forms of violence, so I believe that movements that have the courage to use nonviolent direct action are necessary in our healing journey. We will need to continue to shut down power plants and block buses deporting migrant communities, tearing families apart.
In nonviolence, we are taught that as the violence escalates, we have to escalate our nonviolent responses to that violence. So filling out a petition might be appropriate for a low-level conflict, but if we are responding to climate catastrophes or the erosion of the democratic process, we may need to occupy a government building or use our bodies to block a highway.
But I have also noticed that the more we escalate the tactics that we use, the more we escalate the binary worldview, where we are the “good” side trying to beat the “bad” side so justice can prevail. And I believe that this binary us/them, good/bad worldview is at the heart of what is destroying this planet. It is a worldview that relies on the myth of separation—that our liberation is not tied with each other.
So fierce vulnerability is about exploring what an alternative way might be to respond to some of the most escalated crises our species has ever faced. How can we mobilize the power necessary to stop injustice, while cultivating the love needed to heal it? How can we utilize nonviolent direct action as a healing modality? What would it take for us to shut down a highway yet invite the country to open up into a dialogue?
Please give some examples of what has been found most effective in bringing people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs together in nonviolent action for change.
I think asking questions is so important. Even at an escalated direct action when we are coming face to face with riot police, can we be grounded enough to lead with curiosity? Can we stay connected to that prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that is not only responsible for healing traumatic wounds but also for taking in new information and integrating different perspectives?
What if we were facing a row of riot police, and instead of yelling in their face or chanting about how evil they are, we shared vulnerable stories about our own heartbreaks about the issues that we care about? What if we tried asking them genuine, heartfelt questions about how they feel?
We would still be facing them and not backing down. But I wonder if we could do so with an invitational spirit? I wonder if we could sow some seeds that may make them rethink the role they may be playing to uphold injustice.
Even if this kind of action never changes the heart of one single officer, the preparation necessary to lead these kinds of actions will change us. It will change our orientation to the world, and our commitment to interdependence and Beloved Community. And if we—those of us fighting for a just world for all people—can’t model that in our struggles to create change, then we may never get there.
Training and preparation, aligning our acts with natural and spiritual laws, and creating spaces where people can express their grief, anger, rage, and other strong emotions knowing that they are heard, respected, and safe, are all important. But how might participants in direct actions on behalf of a cause be prepared and trained to respond to the actions of hostile opponents or police brutality?
As scary as these things are to think about, the likelihood of violent attacks against nonviolent protesters is increasing everyday under this current administration. It may come from the police, or it may come from counter-protesters. So this question is really important.
During the Civil Rights Movement, they constantly practiced role-plays where they would ash cigarettes on each other, pour drinks on each other’s faces, and even assault each other—all to prepare themselves for what they might face once they hit the streets.
I am not saying that every person needs to go through these kinds of intense trainings. But we do need to think long and hard about how we are preparing ourselves in these escalated times.
I think there are short-term, medium-term, and long-term practices that we need to be engaged in. These are practices that help us maintain a regulated nervous system, which is key to getting through difficult moments like police violence without the incident leaving a traumatic imprint.
In the short-term, more movements need to be practicing emotional regulation tools that people can use in-the-moment to stay grounded. Things like breathing exercises, singing songs, naming shapes and colors that you see, humming in your head. The more we practice these things—especially in community—the more useful they will become in a moment of tension.
In the medium-term, organizing more grief and rage rituals, to have space to honor, witness, and release strong emotions that, if bottled up, can become the source of new trauma. Especially after a difficult protest, space to debrief, to be held, to release any tension held in our bodies, is so crucial so it doesn’t build up. Not just after protests, but these strong emotions can build up just from reading the news everyday. And if we are not finding healthy release valves for these strong emotions, they can leak out and we can inevitably end up releasing them against our own people.
In the long-term, I encourage each person to find tools that help them work through their own trauma, and to integrate their shadows. Whether it’s therapy or meditation or group processes or time in nature, if we are not caring for ourselves, we will not be able to face what’s coming in a grounded and skillful way.
Of course it’s important to note that not everyone has access to many of these tools, largely because of injustice and inequality. Therapy or even access to nature is not an option for some people. Which is why movements need to be thinking hard about how we make them more and more accessible to people. The Healing Justice movement has done so much to open up avenues for healing to marginalized communities all over. And we need to do so much more!
As not everyone will feel called to direct action, how can the skills of healers, artists, therapists, and others be employed to best effect?
We need all hands on deck!!! Without a diverse ecosystem of movement actors, we cannot thrive.
Artists can build art for movements, singers can teach us the songs that will guide us, ceremony leaders can organize rituals for those going into or coming back from intense actions, healers can support the integration of difficulties we face in movements, mediators can support conflicts that happen within movements, journalists can use their platforms to talk about our struggles, etc.
Whatever it is that you do, whatever your vocation is, find ways to utilize it in service to the changes that need to happen in the world. Yes, we need more people in the streets. But more than that, we need people activating their skills and their gifts in service to justice.
You suggested that there is a deep spiritual cost to denying humanity’s part in “the extinction of countless species, the destruction of unimaginable beauty, and the devastation of our one and only home.” But accepting responsibility for the frightful consequences of our actions—and our inaction—may be too much to bear, especially when we feel so powerless to make a real difference. What might you say to help those on the cusp of giving up?
I write about how my friend Chris has talked for years about writing an article called “Climate Honesty as Spiritual Practice.” Because to fully embrace the reality of the climate crisis—not only intellectually but in our bodies—takes a certain depth of emotional capacity. And given that we are in the midst of the polycrisis, we don’t have a ton of emotional capacity to spare.
I think that as beings of this earth, each human being can feel deep down that something is off. That we are in the midst of massive transitions. And this can bring up immense grief, fear, confusion, and loss. And because those things are so scary, we pretend that everything is okay. And that delusion is exhausting. There is a deep cost to continuing to deny a truth that we know in our bodies.
That’s why it is so important for movements to create spaces for collective grief. Those emotions are oftentimes too scary to feel alone. They need strong containers so that they can be skillfully brought up to the surface, be expressed, witnessed, and released. It needs to be seen in community, so that we know that we are not alone.
In the absence of that, we repress these feelings and they become stuck in our bodies. We tighten, our breathing becomes more shallow, and our capacity to be with reality as it is diminishes. And if we are not able to face reality as it is, if we are not able to accept things for how they truly are—not just intellectually but in our bodies—we will not be able to have the presence, faith, and creativity necessary to respond skillfully to this moment.
Healing, whether personal or societal, takes time, and it feels as though we are running out of time on so many issues, from climate change and ecological collapse to the decline of belief in democratic values to rampant greed and the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. How do you maintain hope? What most inspires you to keep going?
There is such a sense of urgency today. And, if we are responding to this moment from our own sense of urgency, we are only adding more urgency, more panic to the world. Meeting urgency with urgency, panic with panic, does not create a space that is conducive to healing.
One of my favorite quotes right now ironically comes from the US Navy Seals, who teach their soldiers that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” In the ultimate reality, time does not move in a linear way, and the more we can slow ourselves down, the more efficient we can be in responding to these crises.
I take inspiration in the moments throughout my day that I can slow down. One practice that has surprisingly become a deep spiritual practice for me is hanging my clothes out to dry in the sun. What started as a small attempt to lower my carbon footprint has become a source of inspiration about how I move through the world.
There is something about feeling the weight of the wet clothes in my hands and the warmth of the sun on my back that connects me to simpler times. To remember that my ancestors have been making these same exact motions for countless generations to wash and dry their clothes. It connects me with them, and somehow makes me feel more human.
We live in times of non-dual truths. Two contradicting truths can both be 100 percent true at the same time. On the one hand, we need large, powerful movements to respond to the urgency of this moment. And at the same time, an acorn falling off of a tree can cause an avalanche. Perhaps us slowing down throughout the day and remembering what it means to be human, to connect to the earth, to remember our ancestral ways, will have a cascading impact that we can’t even imagine.
So as we prepare to engage in large scale movements, take time to notice your child’s smile. Feel the gentle breeze across your face. Slow down to appreciate the taste of an orange touching your tongue.
What books or projects do you have underway now?
I am supporting building up the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a decentralized network of activists around the country who want to build a powerful movement that can respond to the heightened crises that we find ourselves in with the groundedness that we need to move towards healing.
I am also hoping to start working on my next book, which will be about the Gift Economy—an alternative to the current market based system of economics. The Gift is a way of managing resources that is modeled after natural ecosystems, and relies on our generosity, rather than our self-interest, to create a system where all people can thrive.
I also have the privilege to be a resident of the Canticle Farm community in Oakland, California. We are a community of forty-ish people who live together across differences in age, race, class, sexuality, gender, and every identity marker you can think of, trying to figure out how to heal our traumas and create a village in the midst of what Joanna Macy calls the “Great Turning.” It is an ongoing experiment, and one that I am so grateful that I get to raise my child in.
And I’m raising a child! They are the most amazing source of inspiration in my life!
Kristine Morris
