This podcast is part of the Money Reckoning series.

THE IMPACT. Kazu Haga:

• Is a trainer, educator, student and practitioner with over 25 years of experience in nonviolence and restorative justice.

• Weaves in lessons from decades of Buddhist practice and trauma healing work to advance social change and collective healing.

• Is a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a founding member of the Ahimsa Collective, a Jam facilitator and author of the books Healing Resistance and Fierce Vulnerability.

• Teaches nonviolence, conflict reconciliation, restorative justice, organizing and mindfulness in prisons and jails, schools, faith communities and activist movements.

• Has worked on the gift economy for over 15 years. I particularly recommend his Substack, and the article about how the “gift economy is not free.”

THE JOURNEY. In our conversation, we explore:

Early influences

”Depending on the causes and conditions in our lives, we could be so many different people. We could be Trump supporters, we could be prison guards, we could be an incarcerated person… just based on just the factors in our lives.“

Big questions

“The point isn't to figure it out. The point is to just be with the question, and have faith that at some point, if we listen deep enough, we'll be guided to the most skillful next step. And that's perhaps all we need to know.”

The healing work of nonviolence

“ What would happen if, in a nonviolent direct action, instead of yelling and chanting, we held a public grief ritual for everyone to witness? What would happen if, instead of leading with our anger, we led with our heartbreak?”

Fierce vulnerability

“Can we have the spiritual maturity and the capacity to really see the world for what it is and to not collapse under the weight of it?”

“The amount of spiritual energy that it takes to constantly suppress a deeper truth that I think all of us are feeling that something is so deeply wrong with our society … it is sapping us. You see the impact, the mental health epidemics, the depression, the sense of isolation. We're constantly using our energy to, to live in this delusion of everything's fine. Don't look, don't look.”

Spaces safe enough to look at the reality of this moment

“ In a lot of the spaces that I facilitate, we do this activity where we do like check-ins and the first prompt is, how are you doing? And then the second prompt is, how are you really doing? And then the third prompt is, how are you really, really doing? We so rarely have an opportunity to slow down enough, just to say, how am I actually doing, in the midst of post pandemic and war and genocide and polarization and the rise of authoritarianism, and ecological collapse?”

Reckoning with capitalism

 ”People are slowly realizing more and more how unsustainable the capitalist system is. Those are scary moments. Because capitalism is all we've ever known. A lot of us believe that if capitalism fails, there'll be complete lawlessness. So just to create space for people to be with that fear, let them know that the fear is real, it's legitimate. And at some point I think there'll be openness to hear that there are other ways that we can organize society.”

The gift economy

“The gift economy is one way to really imagine: how do we share resources, distribute resources, manage our shared resources in a way that understands that we are a communal species. It's not through individualism and competition and hoarding that we thrive. We are at our best when we are communal.”

“It’s  not about how do I make more money so that I can thrive, but how do I make less money so that I have time to invest in the relationships that will really help me thrive?”

Running an organization on the gift economy

“ I started a nonprofit. We barely did any fundraising. We barely worked with foundations and somehow managed to become sustainable. Partly because we're committed to simple living. But so many things happened that gave me a sense this could work.”