This emotional energy has shown up in different ways. Sometimes, in my mind’s eye, it appears as a fierce, red dragon or a raging Wolverine-like character. Other times, I find myself in a repressed or depressed state where everything feels meaningless and hopeless. In these moments, I feel stuck, like an abandoned child lost in the wilderness.

Recently, during an Emotional Clearing Circle, I worked on a recurring pattern: when my friends are joyful, expressive, and taking up space, I often feel smaller, like I don’t belong. I shrink inward, like a turtle retreating into its shell. Yet, when my friends are experiencing emotional turmoil, I find it easy to show up and hold space for them. In my personal life, it seems I can only be “big” when others are “small.”

Reflecting on my childhood, I see how this pattern took root. Everyone in my family was going through intense suffering, and I made a silent pact with God to absorb the pain and avoid adding to the collective burden. I learned to “turtle” through difficult experiences, whether it was being bullied daily on the school bus or witnessing my parents fighting over finances. I coped by cutting myself off from my body and escaping into books, TV shows, the internet, and video games.

Over the years, I’ve engaged in numerous practices to reconnect with myself: Tai Chi Quan, yoga, meditation, unfolding, and emotional processing methods like Internal Family Systems (IFS), the Bio-Emotive Framework, Focusing, and Somatic Experiencing. I’ve also participated in relational practices like authentic relating and circling. Yet, despite this extensive work, I’ve noticed lingering limits on my emotional expression, particularly in relationships with others.

Despite years of community living and training, it was challenging to integrate the deep depths of repressed anger and insecure attachment with others. At MAPLE, I held top leadership positions as a Teacher and Director (aka Boss). Often, I used my existing pattern of taking ever greater responsibility and developing ever more competence to handle with frustrating situations. If some consultant or hired expert proved unreliable, well I’d just take over and do an even better job. I learned how to do nearly everything. But, I didn’t learn how to express my disappointment and hurt when I felt that others had let me down.

As the teacher and boss, I increasingly felt like I didn’t have room to maneuver or make mistakes. Most people seemed to view me either with idealistic eyes, as though I were fully enlightened, or with critical eyes, distrustful of me in a position of power. My system didn’t feel safe enough to bring forth my anger or deepest relational patterns to unfold. Living in the Dharma House this past year and working one-on-one with a very skilled healer provided the safe container I needed to explore these aspects of myself without feeling like my entire life was at stake.

The process of recognizing and working with my anger has been gradual. I’ve learned to identify the psycho-somatic markers that signal repressed anger, such as tension in my hips and pelvis. I’m discovering how to release this stuck energy through sound and movement. I’ve also begun to feel into the underlying sadness beneath the anger and to relate to it with patience, kindness, and love—qualities my younger self didn’t receive growing up.

I’m learning to advocate for myself by naming my fears and upsets to others. I’m also working on holding more energy throughout my entire body, cultivating a sense of power and self-worth that is independent of my competence, my ability to help others, or even my spirituality.

I saw it recommended in a Twitter thread by Alexandra, and I’m very grateful to have seen it.

A Lesson from Mother Teresa: Opening Our Hearts to All

One of the early chapters recounts Twist’s moving encounter with Mother Teresa in India. Twist is surrounded by orphaned babies, many with severe disabilities including lost limbs and blindness, in Mother Teresa’s orphanage. Twist is caring for these children and absolutely feeling in bliss being of service. (This surprised me since my overwhelming initial feeling just reading the passage was despair and grief of babies without arms or legs).

Later, she finally meets Teresa herself, experiencing a powerful heart connection.

Then, a wealthy couple arrives, demanding a photo with Mother Teresa, acting quite rudely. Twist finds herself consumed by anger and judgment, her feelings of love and compassion vanishing.

On her way home, consumed by guilt, she writes Mother Teresa an apology, confessing her reaction. The response she receives is stunning. Mother Teresa points out that Twist had closed her heart to the wealthy, emphasizing that they, too, suffer and need care.

This profoundly shifted Twist’s perspective. She realized the truth in Mother Teresa’s words: the wealthy often experience their own unique pain – isolation, loneliness, and the ever-present fear of scarcity, despite their material abundance.

Mother Teresa’s life reminded me as an inspiring example of truth and compassion. It’s too far common for me to get cynical and think such saints never existed. My heart feels touched remembering human goodness can reach incredible heights.

I actually closed the book for the day feeling overwhelmed at how much compassion to devote a lifetime to orphans and also have compassion for the wealthy.

Money as a River: Embracing the Flow

Another powerful story involves Twist meeting with a high-powered CEO. In a brief 15-minute meeting, he hands her a pre-printed check for $50,000. It’s clear his motive is purely PR, a way to clean up his company’s image after a recent scandal.

Later, at a fundraising event in Harlem, Twist hears a woman describe money as a river. For some, it’s a raging torrent; for others, a gentle trickle. We don’t own the money, we simply steward its flow towards what our soul values. This woman, despite having only a “trickle,” joyfully gives all the cash she has on hand – maybe $50.

Twist realizes the stark difference between these two donations. The $50, given with intention and love, felt infinitely more valuable than the $50,000 check. The next day, she returns the CEO’s check, stating she’s only seeking committed partners. (This act has a significant impact later on, but I won’t spoil that part for you!)

Three Key Takeaways (So Far!)

Just from these initial chapters, “The Soul of Money” has offered me three invaluable insights:

1. The Heights of Human Goodness: Mother Teresa’s life reminds me of the incredible potential for compassion and service within each of us.

2. Open Hearts, Even to the Wealthy: Those who seem to “have it all” often carry their own burdens. They, too, deserve our empathy and understanding.

3. Money as Flow: Instead of hoarding or obsessing over money, we can view it as a flowing resource that we steward. By consciously directing this flow towards our values, we can experience greater joy and fulfillment.

“The Soul of Money” is challenging me to rethink my relationship with money. I’m only a 1/3 finished through and already got a lot out of it.

If you look at Western history, particularly since the Renaissance, there’s been this consistent elevation of the self. The narrative often paints external connections, authorities, hierarchies, and structures as oppressive or even evil, while the individual self—the “I”—is seen as inherently good. It’s that Rousseau-inspired idea of a pure, innocent self corrupted by society, bad parenting, trauma, outdated customs, and rigid institutions like the church.

In grad school, I had an existentialism professor who traced this progression through history, starting with Copernicus, who dethroned Earth as the center of the universe. Then came Darwin, showing we’re not divinely created but evolved from apes, and Freud, revealing the unconscious forces that manipulate us. When Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” not in triumph but as a warning about the hollow world that secularization might create.

Burton takes this further, discussing how modern “remixed religions” have shifted moral imperatives. It’s no longer about following the Bible, doing good works, or serving your country and family. For many, especially the urban, educated, upper-middle-class, those traditional anchors—nation, family, neighborhood, and civic responsibility—have been stripped away.

If you’ve gone through secular schooling and absorbed the narrative of modern science, you might see emotions as random chemical reactions optimized for reproduction. What’s left is this disenchanted worldview where everything revolves around finding your “authentic” self. Humanistic psychology, influenced by thinkers like Carl Rogers, tells us to look inward, continuing a centuries-old trend from the Renaissance.

Of course, not to say all of this is bad or wrong. There’s great elements in the freedom and liberation of self from oppression. But, it’s not all black-and-white. We’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

And, now we see that’s where the trouble begins. If you’re in your 20s, unmarried, without kids, and outside the structured environment of school or college, the freedom can feel like a trap. You have time, money, and opportunities, yet there’s this gnawing emptiness. Questions like “What’s my purpose?” and “What’s my dream?” haunt you. Modern culture and advertising amplify this, spinning endless narratives about finding your true calling and overcoming external forces holding you back.

Ironically, when we strip away religion, family, and community, we don’t end up with a liberated self. Instead, we’re left with a vacuum, quickly filled by advertisers, algorithms, and capitalist systems telling us what to want and who to be.

I’ve seen many friends in their 30s and 40s find relief in relationships and, especially, parenthood. Raising a child brings daily responsibility and connection. Yes, it means trading some freedom for what might feel like a “prison” of obligations, but it also delivers value and meaning. Purpose, after all, emerges through relationships, and deep relationships require responsibility.

The societal challenge, though, is this paradox: when everyone focuses on their own family, their own children, we’re left in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma. How do we tackle collective challenges when the system feels too large and unwieldy to change? It’s easier to retreat into personal spheres of influence.

For me, long meditation retreats and time in a monastery offered a way to step back. They revealed the emptiness of self—not as something to destroy or deny, but as something to understand. The self isn’t fixed; it’s constructed, conditioned by countless factors—family, culture, experiences, and even this very moment.

And here’s the beautiful twist: understanding the emptiness of self doesn’t negate it. It allows for its fullest actualization. We’re all part of an intricate web of connections, and there’s nothing outside that web. The path isn’t about discovering some pure, isolated essence of “me.” It’s about seeing how we fit into the larger picture, how the conditions and context of our lives continually shape and guide us.

Every moment presents an opportunity to align with our vow, our purpose—not as something external we need to chase but as something already present if we’re willing to fully be where we are. The path isn’t somewhere out there; it’s right here, unfolding with every step we take.

This post was originally audio recorded, transcribed and cleaned up with ChatGPT, and manually reviewed/edited by Mitra

I have put my most spontaneous and raw posts on my Facebook for years and gotten a lot of positive feedback about it. But it’s always felt too unpolished to make into an essay, Substack or newsletter. And too rambly to be on twitter.

And, I usually only write on FB when I am heavy with a feeling that I need to explore or put out into the world. It’s almost like a way for me to process through a challenging emotion or experience.

In addition, I’ve been talking with my friends to build a cooperative content publishing brand as opposed to doing the usual personal brand. (More to say on that later). But, all to say, the pressure is on for me to be willing to write publicly more often. And to get to the really good stuff, you need to make a lot of attempts. So, this is that.

My plan is to audio record myself throughout the day on a topic and throw it into AI to make readable and do one light edit and publish. Hopefully the whole process takes less than 30 minutes and the hardest part is not blocking myself from freely talking.

I’m tempted to also release the audios so people can also listen rather than read. But, I’d want the workflow to be relatively seamless and no cost ideally. Will see.

For this stress comes into play

in dependence on every acquisition.

With the ending of every clinging/sustenance,

there’s no stress coming into play.

Look at this world:

Beings, afflicted with thick ignorance,

are unreleased

from passion for what has come to be.

All levels of becoming,

anywhere,

in any way,

are inconstant, stressful, subject to change.

Seeing this–as it’s come to be–

with right discernment,

one abandons craving for becoming

and doesn’t delight in non-becoming.3

From the total ending of craving

comes fading & cessation without remainder:

unbinding.

For the monk unbound

through lack of clinging/sustenance,

there’s no further becoming.

He has conquered Māra,

won the battle,

having gone beyond becomings

Such.

Ud 3:10 (https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud3_10.html)

There is a paradox in the spiritual path, in the adult development path, in the life path.

We move from dependence on our caretakers to a social identity based on peers to individualization of one’s values and beliefs.

It’s a pretty huge step going independent from one’s culture, one’s family, one’s expected path.

A lot of people who come to therapy, to meditation retreats, to circling immersions, to coaching, and self-help books are trying to become better. Trying to become my ideal self.

There’s always some wound that needs healing. Some skill I need to master. Some future becoming that promises fulfillment and wholeness.

And on one hand, it is kind of true. One can and does and ought to learn more skills. To receive the needed care and nourishment they missed out on. Development is a real thing.

But, then, a decade can go by. Two decades. And it seems that this pursuit of Becoming Better is its own form of delusion and suffering.

We replaced the masters of society or family or religion or work and instead made our cravings and passions into our master.

When we see the futility of this never-ending pursuit, we drop hope/fear (longing/dejection) for the world, for a future self, for anything and instead attend to what is here right now. Rather than pursuing some ideal Becoming, we utilize a skillful form of Becoming to pay attention to our Being. This is how we enter jhana. This is how you enter presence.

This is the path of say (good) therapy, circling, meditation. Martial arts. Yoga. Qigoing. It is the opposite of say Facebook, YouTube, advertising, and most prevalent forms of entertainment, comfort, and pleasure.

Because maybe this constant pursuit for Becoming is based on something we absolutely do not want to feel. Based on some addiction or passion we are not conscious of. And if that’s the case then the root of the problem is not on achieving the object of our passions but rather looking at the passion itself.

How to move towards a total acceptance of what is? Of who I am? Of the multitude of what I experience and what’s happening. This itself is a type of Becoming Work to become aware and accepting enough to notice experience without getting hooked.

In meditation, the question might be, “What if this breathe however it shows up is the perfect breathe? This very breathe right now.”

In circling, the question might be, “What if the way things are right now is actually perfect?”

And in life, the question might be, “What if this was exactly what is suppose to happen?”

Some may worry that this is justifying all types of terrible things. War. Violence. Abuse.

But the point is not to become a passive witness to life. Rather, it is to stop fighting existence and instead collaborate with Life towards truth, beauty, love. If we are actually rejecting some part of what already is existence then we are already in conflict with truth. And truth always win.

Then the Buddhist form of karma where on one hand, we take full acceptance for what is AND simultaneously we take full responsibility of our response towards what will be. We are both a product of our past actions and our current response.

I see this paradox and addiction showing up for me often. I constantly am trying to make sense of what am I to become now? What is my role in this life? Seeking an identity, a location, a network to Become and thereby feel whole again. But this is a fool’s errand if I cannot first stay at the level of Being. I am not a problem to be fixed or healed or solved. Rather, this life is an unfolding in partnership with Life itself.

More Readings:

• https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/paradoxofbecoming.pdf

• Search Adult Development for Teal vs Turquiose stages

If I had to bet, I believe this is a key component across many fields:

Sexual orgasmic pleasure.
Holding anger at others.
Ability to access jhana states in meditation.
etc.

Whatever experience we cannot consciously experience gets repressed, diffused, or managed somehow. As Shinzen says, meditation is all about having a complete experience. A lot of trauma work, meditation challenges, and so on is around fully experiencing what we could not hold before and how to more fully live now. We could also say being mindful, conscious, aware, present.

Children don’t have the neurology or skills yet to process traumatic experiences which leads to all kinds of consequences. For example, my parents fighting was so intense for my child mind and also didn’t have resources or people to process with afterwards that as an adult, I’ve become a peace keeper. So much of my habits and perception and behavior is around dissipating, avoiding, de-escalating conflict. This has benefits and also obvious downsides.

Recently, I was doing a session with a friend. And I have this static image of my parents fighting. It’s behind a glass screen. I try to enter the scene. To make it live. To make it 3D and with color. I haven’t fully processed these experiences.

I do a side move. What is it about anger and fighting that’s so overwhelming? And it’s not really anger. It’s really about disagreeing with anyone on something that feels fraught or potentially a deep values or perception difference. I’m scared of being abandoned? Of the other person leaving me because we disagree on such a fundamental axiom?

But as I peer even deeper. Something bubbles up that really I’m scared of feeling disappointed. I’m scared the other person won’t see me, won’t feel me, won’t understand me and then will leave. Losing a person is terrible. But what I really don’t want to feel is the disappointment of losing faith in someone. In a relationship.

And I think back to my family and see that disagreements lead to fights which lead to unresolved scars. If there was no way to fight and heal then the best thing is to nip the root. The root of disagreeing in the first place.

Of course, disagreement is a fact of life. Relationships have to learn how to fight well. And perhaps most importantly, to not be able to share disagreements means not being fully in.

Paradoxically, the more willing and able to feel disappointment, the more deeper a relationship can be then.

I loved it. I felt the ground shifting under me each day. I saw small insights about my personality and behavior. The tensions in leadership of caring for others versus owning my desire. My love of circling and its potentials as a journey towards truth and being. I can’t put a pin quite on it, but it felt rich.

The most important aspect was that I felt excitement about my future rather than confusion and self-doubt. I came to terms with my future changes and voiced to Blas and Jordan wanting support in it. That felt good.

This weekend was also rare in that everyone participating were already experienced and advanced circlers. On the very first day, we dropped in deep and didn’t have the usual anxiety/having to teach circling/working through projections and defenses of those projections about patriarchy and colonialism and parents and shit. I mean that stuff still happens. But, each of us had enough trust and experience with the practice that we could use that all as fodder to move forward rather than get bogged down. The depths and momentum that we could go through with our group was much deeper and faster than any other circling group I’ve been a part of.

As I am writing, I remember several moments.

I remember connecting with Jordan and felt more like old time friends. We freestyled sang a song. And I felt a kinship around each of us wanting to support each other. We share this aspiration to ethically bring truth and love to the world at a mass level. It’s rare I meet others who are so committed to the path of truth and also willing and able to get messy with the practical aspects. ie. leadership, projects, and community and shit.

I remember we did an informal circle after-hours and the rest of the MAPLE community were invited to join, a few did. I felt a mix of pride and defensiveness initially. I wanted to show that MAPLE knows how to circle. And I also felt protective of the existing momentum the LevelUP group had already accrued and didn’t want to slow down. So, I held a much higher razor’s edge standard of presence and truth. It got edgy. And one point, one of the MAPLE folks asked me, “how come we don’t always circle like this?” I took it as an attack on me rather than an exciting call to action. Because deep down, I’m not sure it’s always possible. Isn’t this the human constant struggle? How much can life energy express without getting stepped on and hurt? How much can we let our inner light shine with others before it’s not okay? That’s the edge. Likewise, I felt a tinge of rejection that night in circling and spent the night crying and grieving deeply over my shadows and wounds. Of my childhood neglect. Of feelings of unlovability. Of inadequacy. It was painful but revelatory. It feels like I cleaned out some shadow memory of not being enough, of not feeling cared for enough in my childhood.

I also remember one of the exercises we did was new. It was around how we’re always setting context. Or our actions matter. Or karma is real.

It had three steps.

1) Noticing what is happening. (ex. I am anxious)
2) Noticing how I’m holding it (ex. I don’t like it, this isn’t okay.)
3) From that place, coaching myself to the next step. But expressing the coaching as if I was coaching the group. (ex. Sometimes, things are hard, that’s okay. Let yourself feel it.)

After several shares, I noticed I was anxious and scared and my shares were coming out aggressive and sharp. I also noticed my holdings were reactive and negative.

Another prompt for the second step was, “how would God hold me or relate to me right now?”.

So, I shifted taking a moment to move between Noticing to Holding. I could differentiate “How I was Automatically Holding” to the next step towards “How Would God (or any benevolent loving, wise figure)” hold me. And then take that on instead.

So for example, before I was saying, “I’m noticing I’m anxious and tense. I’m holding that with I fucking hate this. Stop being a wimp and surrender already.”

Now, I could go to “I’m noticing I’m anxious and tense. I don’t like it. (How would God treat me in this?) It’s okay to be tense sometimes. Allow yourself to move at the speed you need.”

It’s funny because it’s such a basic mindfulness 101 exercise. But it was so helpful to do it with another partner and felt a trippy, loving state.

Another moment, I was in a feedback circle. The person receiving feedback was transforming. A metamorphosis from a caterpillar to butterfly. I could see it in front of me. And I could witness that liminal space where all the mental models and defenses have to drop and enter the complete unknown. Shed all the old bones and skin. Become that transformative goo. And it finally dawned on me witnessing this person be so scared and fearful and nervous moving through this. Of course! I’ve been in that stage so many times and I always had this subtle judgment that I shouldn’t feel scared. One day I won’t face change and growth with so much life threatening fear. But seeing this person going through this, I instead felt compassion such that it reoriented my own beliefs. It felt like I gave myself permission to have a messy transformation because I felt compassion for my friend going through it. Of course it’d be scary. It’s healthy and normal to feel scared. The only question is completing it.

There were so many moments.

It was so amazing that six years ago I meet Blas and Jordan. And now I got to invite them to MAPLE. The different worlds of my life are cross pollinating and each world is getting stronger for it.

I first did circling back in 2015 in NYC, a weekend immersion with John, Sean, and Jordan. It was life changing for me. I started leading informal circles with friends back home. It helped me get over my self-doubts and apply to join MAPLE. Later, I started teaching it at MAPLE; it has become the most popular aspect of MAPLE, second only to the meditation interviews. I’ve spent more money invested in circling training than anything else. It’s changed my relationships, my leadership, my life in general.

In about two weeks, I’ll be co-leading a circling week-long retreat at MAPLE. My 9th? or something at this point.

Hope to see you at a Circle in the future.

Recently, I took lay ordination at the Monastic Academy (MAPLE) under the head teacher Soryu Forall and Shinzen Young. We took the vows in an evening ceremony lasting a little over an hour with six others taking ordination as well. Shinzen video conferenced in from his home out in Arizona.

Lay ordination means to take certain percepts as a life-guiding principle. Typically in a public ceremony within a tradition.

Beforehand, I had been asked if there was anything about the name I wanted. I said I would like a name starting with the letter “X” to fit my middle initial. However, it’s impossible to find “X” in Sanskrit or Japanese.

They gave me the name Xūramitra. Xura == hero and Mitra == friend. In Sanskrit, it’s really Sūramitra. But, they said in Chinese, the “X” is pronounced the same as the Sanskrit “S”.

One interpretation would mean “heroic friend”, I prefer “friend of heroes”.

In the past, Shinzen gives out names with the character “Shin” as the second character. In this way, it’s possible to trace lineages back countless generations as students take on the first character of their teacher’s name as their second character. So, here, many of the lay ordained have names like Tasshin, Joshin, Kaishin. But, we also have the option to get international dharma names which usually means Sanskrit names.

Everyone around here just calls me Mitra to make it simple.

My friend sent me this nice poem Mitta (Pali for Mitra):

Full of trust you left home,
and soon learned to walk the Path —
making yourself a friend to everyone
and making everyone a friend.

When the whole world is your friend,
fear will find no place to call home.

And when you make the mind your friend,
you’ll know what trust
really means.

Listen.

I have followed this Path of friend to
its end.
And I can say with absolute certainty —

it will lead you home.

Lay ordination essentially means taking on the Five Percepts and the 4 Great Vows. At the end of our ceremony, we chanted both with Shinzen leading the five percepts to not take life, not take what is not freely given, to have right relationships (no sexual misconduct), no lying, and free from intoxicants.

Personally, I felt I’ve already committed myself to these but this was a very public way to do it. Living up to my name, it was primarily one of my fellow monastic friends, Renshin, who recently said she wanted to take lay ordination with me and then told Soryu she was interested recently as well. So, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t know if I would have seriously gone through with this ceremony this year.

The new name felt auspicious as I’ve been studying a lot of leadership material especially military material like Navy Seals training and most recently Major Winters autobiography of the famed WWII Band of Brothers. The Stephen Ambrose book and film ends: “In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’ ” ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.’ “

That seems perfect. I don’t know if I would self-identify as a hero. But I’ve spent almost my entire adult life wondering about this question of how to be a good friend and how to do the right thing. More than anything, I’ve wanted to develop a company of heroes here and it feels like, with this last lay ordination, it just might be starting.

In the first post, we defined Leadership as the skill of power to bring individuals together towards a vision. We defined different forms of leadership and argued that the best leadership power involves earning the respect of your followers rather than only relying on delegated power derived from an organizational position.

In the second post, we differentiated leadership from management. Both involve power over a group of people. We used Kotter’s distinction that managers deal with complexity, on organization and optimization. Leaders, on the other hand, deal with change. 

In this third post, we will explore the question, why is leadership so hard? Why don’t we have more ethical leaders?

Talking about my experience at the Monastic Academy, a lot of people who would be attracted to hundreds of hours of silent meditation practice in rural Vermont, do not want to take full responsibility for power. To many of us, we have seen too many people of power who are unwise, uncaring. It almost seems like power equals harm. 

If we start with the premise that humans are innately selfish creatures then too much power must lead to harm and abuse of power. Therefore, there has been a movement towards decentralization, distributing power all the way back to communism and beyond. We say, “everyone is equal. We don’t need leaders.” We want to disempower traditional leaders and systems to more fairly and equally distribute power. Taken to the extreme, it is to remove the question of power altogether. We do not want to cause harm. So, it seems the best way to achieve this end would be for no one to have power over anyone else.

But, the truth is there is always power dynamic. Pretending otherwise is only to push power into the shadows. 

While this aim to distribute and empower everyone is a noble goal and aim, the way to get there requires leadership. Thereby requires power.

We need to acknowledge development is real, development exists. People are at different developmental maturations. I hold the Metamodern idea that those who are more trustworthy ought to take on power in order to help less trustworthy people to become more trustworthy and thereby more empowered. 

At MAPLE, we have a hierarchical system of power. New apprentices just starting out are in terms of explicit power at the bottom of the hierarchy. They hold little sway in organizational decision making such as who should we accept for residency? How will we change the schedule? What amount of time will we devote to a workshop, if any at all?

But as apprentices near the end of their terms, we give them increasingly more responsibilities and thereby more power in their roles. Furthermore, residents have increasing roles and responsibilities and thereby more power in shaping the community culture and structures.

To us, this is how it ought to be. As a person matures in their wisdom and virtue, in their understanding and capacity to deal with challenges, they are given increasing complex roles of  power. With that increased power, their edge in wisdom and virtue is pushed even more. And so the cycle continues. Eventually, a resident may become a Director, a Teacher and be ultimately responsible without anyone else to fallback on.

I would argue that this queasy feeling with power means that those who don’t have these fears and worries end up taking all the power. And those with love and wisdom end up powerless. Because leadership and power are skills, practicable skills one can get better at. To step away from power and always hope that simply believing or saying nice things is enough for others with the real power to change is a delusion, is to disempower one’s self.

Thus, we come to one answer of why we do not have more ethical leaders.

Partly, it is because the zeitgeist among many spiritual folks is against the idea of leadership and power in the first place. But, why is there this aversion to leadership and power?

Because, to be a leader means to not have anyone else to fall back on. It is to develop into an adult. Particularly if you are trying to be an ethical, good leader. A leader who does right by your followers and yourself and the world. 

To be a leader with power means to sit at the crossroads of the unknown where important decisions must be made. Even indecision is still a decision with consequences. Leadership is to bear that responsibility of consequences and impact on others, on potential harm, of possibly unfulfilled good. When no one knows what is correct, when every direction has benefits and costs. Yet, as the leader, a direction must be made even if it is choosing no direction. That terrible burden of command must be accepted, embraced. For every moment is another leader movement, is another opportunity.

We don’t have more ethical leaders because many of us training to be ethical are more afraid of being perceived as harmful than we care about doing good. Because communities are unwilling or unable to support developing leaders to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. All of us seek out this unicorn perfect leader who makes no mistakes and thereby causes no harm. Due to this standard, many of us would rather avoid the burden of leadership, burden of power. 

Consider, Major Winters again talking about his leadership role:

Combat had made me tense, particularly since my decisions now meant life or death to the members of my command.  Commanding soldiers in combat requires a personal detachment from the men themselves. In a sense, command is the loneliest job in the world.

Beyond Band of Brothers

What sane person wants to feel the burden of juggling the lives of others? Fellow brothers in arms that we are deep friends with? Knowing to make a decision is going to involve the potential death of the people you are responsible for? 

There are only three options then. Either you (A) stop trying to care, become numb (this is most of the unethical leadership in the world today) (B) disempower yourself and do not be a leader, or (C) as Winters did, embrace the burden of caring and fulfilling the mission.

Let’s look to Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the need for power and why we shy from it:

…Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in to economic and political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness (That’s true) and powerlessness. (So true) Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. Now the problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say, ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.”

Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.

You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.

Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we must see as we move on.

Now what has happened is that we’ve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times…

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here

There’s a lack of wise, virtuous leaders. Too often we find wise, loving activists in the world devoid of power. They may have good ideas and good intentions, but ultimately, they achieve very little. Meanwhile, we find those with the most power often uncaring about the concerns of the wider world and other people. If these powerful people have to choose their personal profit versus protecting a rain forest, they will go for profit. 

To bring about the changes needed to bring peace and life, we need to bridge this gap. This is one of the great jobs of MAPLE in bringing leadership training integrating these three pieces of wisdom, love, and power. As MLK Jr. said, power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

In my previous post, I defined what is a leader. I said a leader is someone who uses the skill of power over others towards a vision. The key pieces here being that leadership is a skill that one can get better at. And that leadership involves power with others. We also explored how the Dao De Jing states different forms of leadership or governance and that leadership.

This is important in my job as a leader. At the Monastic Academy (MAPLE), our training aims to develop trustworthy leaders through the integration of Wisdom, Love (Virtue), and Power. As the Executive Director, I hold the pole of Power in the organization leadership most strongly. 

The view in East Asian Buddhism and Daoism is that one indicator for a trustworthy person to have power is that they are the ones who least want it. Power is a resource, is a skill, is a means to achieve particular ends. But, when power becomes its own end then we have a lot of problems. Just as money, fame, or health as its own ends can become unhealthy so can power. A healthy integration is possible. We can use money, power, fame as a conditional means to achieve a higher aim such as wisdom and compassion for all beings.

So far, we have established a leader is one who holds power over people. They direct a group of people towards a vision, they provide direction. At MAPLE, we train trustworthy leaders who can wield power responsibly with wisdom and virtue such that power never becomes its own end but rather a means to greater good.

However, I did not address that there are different forms of power over others. Leadership is one specific form. But what about a teacher with students? What about a manager?

Reading this article in the Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership, What Leaders Really Do, they differentiate between a manager and a leader. Both hold power. Both work with groups. Both are needed to run effective organizations and causes. But, there is a difference. As John P. Kotter writes:

LEADERSHIP IS DIFFERENT FROM MANAGEMENT, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having “charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment….

…Management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are largely a response to one of the most significant developments of the twentieth century: the emergence of large organizations. Without good management, complex enterprises tend to become chaotic in ways that threaten their very existence. Good management brings a degree of order and consistency to key dimensions like the quality and profitability of products. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more volatile…The net result is that doing what was done yesterday, or doing it 5% better, is no longer a formula for success. Major changes are more and more necessary to survive and compete effectively in this new environment. More change always demands more leadership….

…Since change is the function of leadership, being able to generate highly energized behavior is important for coping with the inevitable barriers to change. Just as direction setting identifies an appropriate path for movement and just as effective alignment gets people moving down that path, successful motivation ensures that they will have the energy to overcome obstacles. According to the logic of management, control mechanisms compare system behavior with the plan and take action when a deviation is detected. In a well-managed factory, for example, this means the planning process establishes sensible quality targets, the organizing process builds an organization that can achieve those targets, and a control process makes sure that quality lapses are spotted immediately, not in 30 or 60 days, and corrected. For some of the same reasons that control is so central to management, highly motivated or inspired behavior is almost irrelevant. Managerial processes must be as close as possible to fail-safe and risk-free. That means they cannot be dependent on the unusual or hard to obtain. The whole purpose of systems and structures is to help normal people who behave in normal ways to complete routine jobs successfully, day after day. It’s not exciting or glamorous…Leadership is different. Achieving grand visions always requires a burst of energy. Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one’s life, and the ability to live up to one’s ideals.
(bolding is mine)

Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership

Thus, a leader deals even more in the uncertainty of change and newness. A leader is precisely the leader because that’s the person everyone turns to when it’s not clear what to do anymore. 

A manager “manages”. They make sure everything is on schedule, on track with plans. 

A leader “leads”. They are the ones who set the direction, who set the vision of where the group is going in the first place before any plans are made. A leader is the one who clarifies what and why we are doing anything.

Both managers and leaders deal with power in a group. While there are many managers out there, there are less true leaders. 

If I reflect on my own life, I would say I had a lot of self-leadership and was a manager in previous jobs, but it’s only at MAPLE that I truly started growing to become a leader of a group. As long as we are not the ones setting the vision, setting the direction, as long as we’re operating within pre-existing norms and systems then we are not a leader but rather a manager. To be sure, being a good manager is very difficult and needed in groups too. But, these days, and Kotter would agree, most organizations are “over-managed and underled”.

While Kotter is talking about the business and corporate world, leadership is important for everyone’s life. Especially in society today as the rate of global change accelerates. It is more important than ever to cultivate leadership qualities and not depend on the collapsing systems of what has worked before. As we face more uncertainty with each growing year, the necessity for strong, good leaders grows as well. 

In future posts, given the need for leaders and the countless “leadership development” programs out there, we will explore why don’t we have more good leaders? What are the blocks?