The Courage to Find What Connects Us
On the Wisdom of Equality & the Power of Kidlike Curiosity
🌑 Happy New Moon Friends!✨
This month, I’m rolling out 2 new ways to connect (see below!) AND we’re diving deeper into The Five Wisdoms—a Buddhist map of the heart-mind’s liberatory superpowers. These are innate qualities (like compassion and clarity) that get tangled up in our habits and hangups.
Our focus this month: The Wisdom of Equality — an open-hearted evenness that shines when we relax the habit of comparing and othering.
🌕 Plus! sign up for this month’s Full Moon Sit, where we’ll practice live on Zoom.
When I was a kid, people always wanted to know what I was.
My gravity-defying hair, my blue-green eyes, my olive skin—none of it fit neatly at a majority-white school in the 80s. Kids would notice my difference and ask the kinds of questions only kids feel bold enough to ask: “What do your parents look like?” “How do you brush your hair?” “What are you?”
I had a stock answer that rolled off the tongue like a reflex: “I’m mixed.” I used it a lot.
Once, after hearing me say it a dozen times, one of my best friends shyly asked, “What does ‘Nixed’ mean?” She’d misheard me for years but had been too afraid to ask.
Her curiosity finally outweighed her fear of sounding stupid.
“Mixed,” I explained, amused. “It means I have one Black parent and one white parent.”
The light flickered on behind her eyes. “Ohhh!” she said, nodding. “Cool.”
Other questions and confusions were wilder. A friend once confessed that when she first met me, she ran home to her parents and exclaimed, “Did you know Black and white people can have babies together?!” Mind. Blown.
As awkward as these moments were, they carried something profound. These weren’t questions asked to judge—they were questions asked to know. They came from openness, free of agendas, in friendships built on safety, play, and wonder.
This kind of curiosity builds bridges. It seeks connection across difference.
And it’s the seed of true equality.
Deep down, in that kidlike part that remains, we still get it. Equality isn’t about being the same—it’s about connection. It’s about seeing that all the differences between us, no matter how big or small, come from the same shared spark. The same wish to be happy. To be loved. To belong.
But somewhere along the way, we lose that openness. Instead of staying curious, we get certain. We ask questions to stick people in boxes (race, gender, nationality, politics)—or we stop asking questions at all.
Inside our groups, we build hierarchies: Who’s really one of us? Across groups, we draw hard, righteous lines: Who’s better? Who’s worse?
And when all that comparison finally exhausts us, we try to pave over discomfort with a bland, imaginary version of equality where difference disappears: “Can’t we just focus on how we’re all the same?”
Both of these tendencies—comparison and avoidance—are traps. Both keep us from actually encountering each other. And without connection, equality is impossible.
In Buddhist teachings, the Wisdom of Equality arises when we release the need to rank or compare. It doesn’t flatten difference or ignore it —it opens to it, with a genuine desire to know the other.
The insight at the heart of the Wisdom of Equality is that every difference between us comes from the same shared essence. It’s seeing that our individuality is not separate from the whole but is a unique expression of it.
I think back to my friend asking what “Nixed” meant. She could’ve stayed quiet, confused, maybe even resentful at what she didn’t understand. But her humility in asking made a space where I felt empowered, not ridiculed.
That kind of curiosity—a willingness to not know, to ask without presumption or judgment—is the vibe we need right now. It’s a way of saying, I see you, and I want to understand.
As kids, this comes naturally. As adults, it takes real courage.
It’s easy to be curious about someone we already like. It’s harder when their difference feels threatening—when their beliefs, choices, even their way of speaking sets us off. We think, There’s no common ground here. They’re just wrong.
I feel it too, scrolling past an old friend’s MAGA post, my gut gets tight with repulsion. The gap between us feels infinite. And that’s when the practice begins.
I try to soften, to feel around the edges of my judgment, to look past the words and the side-choosing. What’s underneath this? What fear? What pain? What longing? Under all the concepts, all the divisions, what are the threads that still connect us?
This practice may not change them. But it changes me. Because every time I lean into this kind of inquiry, it anchors me to what is human—the universal spark, the universal ache.
It doesn’t erase our differences. And it doesn’t excuse harm. That’s not what this practice is about. It’s about keeping my own capacity for connection alive. It’s about reclaiming my humanity from the fray.
Right now, difference is being weaponized to divide us. So the willingness to wonder, to soften, to ask—this is where the real revolution begins.
This universal thread is our common ground. It’s the ground we have to stand on, debate on, protest on, and build on.
It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. But every time we open to the infinite in another, we remember it in ourselves.
❤️ Lama Tasha
Sign up for February’s Live Meditation Session
DATE: Wednesday, Feb 12, 2025
TIME: 8-9pm EST
LOCATION: Online (Zoom link will be emailed to you on registration)
TOPIC: The Wisdom of Equality - Tonglen
We'll practice popping the bubble of Self to find connection flowing in all directions.
DANA: This session is open to all on a donation basis. If you’d like to support this work, you can donate during registration or become a paid subscriber on Substack.
PS: Two New Ways to Connect!
The community survey has spoken—you wanted more ways to connect and practice? You got it! Here’s how we’ll dive into each month’s theme together:
🌑 New Moon: A kick-off essay to spark insight and inspiration (like this one!)
🌓 Roam: A creative prompt to help you Wander! Wonder! Create!
🌕 Full Moon Sit: Join me live on Zoom for practice and connection.
🌗 Rest: A recorded meditation to relax, let go, leave be.
“This practice may not change them. But it changes me.” This has me crying this morning. Can’t wait for the full moon meditation on this one!
😭💕🙏🏼 The world is absolutely on fire and we need the equality of wisdom and curiosity now more than ever. Thank you for this! Excited for the full moon 🌕