Dear all,

Thanks for staying on the journey :) I just returned from 12 days in Japan ... had a great time, riding the bullet and local trains, seeing the fall colors, visiting friends, and being immersed in an interdependent culture. Perhaps it was because the relatively homogenous culture is a bit more curious about me as a brown man (and I perhaps a bit curious about them), but I felt a subtle awareness and acknowledgment of my presence. Occasionally, eyes would meet. Sometimes, there would be a slight nod of the head as I passed. But somehow I felt people just knew I was there, in the space. And there was a depth of emotional resonance. We met a Korean woman with her 95 year old mother in Tokyo. She, like my mother, had lost her father when she was young. "Sadness is such a beautiful emotion," she said, reflectively. 

When I returned to Fillmore Street, I felt an abrupt dropoff in this sense of subtle awareness. People on the SF streets just seemed a little more in their own worlds, a little more avoidant and isolated. But returning had its own delights. I had an anticipatory trauma of being hassled at the border of Trump's America, imagining being questioned in a hostile and skeptical way, questioning my uprightness and acceptability. That has happened to me before. But this time, the first TSA person I saw in SF was a Muslim woman in a hijab, and 90% of the rest were people of color. This was my America, after all. Still, I was glad to be away from the barrage of news. I certainly hope that 'conduct unbecoming the presidency' is among the Articles of Impeachment. When you're away from America, you especially realize how much psychological stress DJT's tweets and bluster produce, not to mention the very real impact of his policies, from White Nationalist advisors to reality-denying supporters.

All this changed the direction of my life in the last few years. I am offering the Compassion Cultivation Training 8-week workshop series in January - February. You can still feel free to take advantage of early bird pricing, by sending the $295 registration (or whatever is affordable to you) to ravi.chandra@PROTECTED on PayPal. This course was transformative for me when I took it, and I absolutely thing we have to deepen our reservoir of compassion to overcome the propensity to abusive power that our age of individualism and narcissism has unleashed. Please sign up, and spread the word to your communities. I'm also available to teach lunchtime seminars and 3 hour workshops for compassion and self-compassion.

You can also view my Fall 2019 lectures on these topics (and Asian American men's and women's psychology, narcissism and the American psyche, internet addiction, and cyberbullying on my YouTube channel. There is also a podcast for just the audio.

Latest from Psychology Today:

Narcissism: A Central Danger for the American Psyche - my take on the psychological import of our moment.

Compassion is how we do human!

Even if you can't make it to a compassion class, you can support the cause by purchasing an umami t-shirt! Just like Umami is the fifth flavor that makes food tasty and delicious, friendliness and compassion are the extra flavor that makes our inner lives and relatedness more tasty and delicious! Remind yourself and everyone to add some umami to whatever we are experiencing, and provide support for my sliding scale and free classes for the community.

For further reading:

I managed to read 5 (well 4.5) books on my trip. I highly recommend THE CULT OF TRUMP (nonfiction by cult and mind control expert Steven Hassan), TAWNY GRAMMAR (short, pithy essays by poet Gary Snyder), 21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (by superstar Yuval Noah Harari - the first third is a bit science fictioney and overblown, but I really liked the rest), CHERISHMENT (a bit overloaded on psychoanalytic jargon, but a good introduction to what the Japanese call amaeru, or the wish to be loved and cared for), and THERE THERE (a Pulitzer Prize finalist by Tommy Orange, about the urban Native/Indian experience in Oakland). I heard Tommy Orange recently at LitQuake, and he was really tremendous, in creating space for the Native experience with honesty and without compromise.

Have a Happy Holiday Season!

Warmly,

Ravi

Representing Elizabeth Warren at TeamLabs Planets, in Tokyo :)

A fantastic vegan obento lunch at Ain Soph Ginza in Tokyo!

Followed by a Tuna Steak at Tsujiki fish market :)

Dining with the birds on a riverbank in Osaka

Try! In Oita, Miyazaki Prefecture. Or is it "do or do not?" :) See you at the new Star Wars flick :)