Asian diaspora listening circle
Tuushtak, the center of the Ohlone creation myth
The jade bamboo gentles brushes the window, and waking from dream into this world of chaos, I reach for love.
In 2015, I sat a 6 week silent meditation retreat that invited the voice of the body and the land into conversation with the dominating mind. Years would follow where I spent hours a day, most of my time, in communion with the Great Earth Mother, perhaps like our indigenous ancestors did— listening, receiving, observing, and being with the desert, the mountains, the ocean, the forests, the moon, and all the beings in her care.
I have a longing to return to ancestral ways of being. And gathering a group of Asian diaspora to meet in the wild sounded as good as my mother’s northern Chinese cooking.
We met on unceded Ohlone land near the waters of the Bay within a small circle of trees. The group centered on a practice transmitted by one of my teachers, Indigenous psychologist Dr. Edurado Duran. An ancient Indigenous practice, it has allowed me to deepen my relationship to the Earth through making offerings, acknowledging the Earth as my teacher, and humbly listening, for hours, days, months, years at a time. This practice has been central in helping me to come back to myself— to the truth that I am the changing dance of elements (earth, water, fire, air, space in the Tantra tradition or wood, fire, earth, metal, and water in the Chinese tradition), and to embrace my sense of worth and belonging.
Meeting as a group of Asian diaspora outdoors to connect with the Earth filled me with hope and energy. Living during the collapse is intense in every way, and many days I would approach the group with fatigue in the body— only to feel enlivened afterwards. When we engage in practices that run like blood in our veins over hundreds of thousands of years, it reconnects us to spirit, to life, in a way that is beyond words. Each meeting, I was humbled by the unique wisdom that flows unfiltered through each being. I was reminded time and time again that each of us has an offering for life, for Earth, that each of us is urgently needed during this time. This cherishing of every being within the ecosystem— bowing to the common fly and the great falcon— is one antidote to violence of patriarchy and capitalism— which places man and men, power and control, at the apex.
Early in the group, I realized that in addition to listening and trusting the earth, the group was about falling in love with ourselves, as way of undoing the thousands year legacy of patriarchy in our ancestry. When we crown ourselves as the sovereign ruler of this earth body, we can deepen into trust and learn to surrender to the body, rather than fighting our intuition in favor of the mind. We can awaken our curiosity and pleasure as we observe the rapidly spreading nasturtium, the gentle swaying willow, the ever changing ocean.
We also engaged in a practice on longing transmitted by Donaji Lona via my friend Jesse Marshall. Starting by grounding in the back body, this practice allowed us to fully engage the sense of longing in the body, and express it through the eyes, the lips, and the arms/hands. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, the indigenous scholar and author of Hospicing Modernity, describes yearning as the earth speaking through us. Our desire is the sacred key to our singular offering. “What does life want to do through me?”, as colleague Chris Moore-Backman likes to ask. Each one of us— our medicine is needed.
As I write these words, the tiny purple mulberries are ripening one by one, the tangy magenta plums are dropping from the tallest branches, and our species is falling ever more deeply into destruction. Can the act of listening, of humbling ourselves before the great Mother, in small groups, move the powerful winds of change? The paths to liberation are full of magic and mystery; only Tuushtak knows.