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Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Ep. 628 – Fierce Vulnerability and Other Tools for Transformation with Kazu Haga

Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Be Here Now Network

Mindpod, Mindrolling, Mindrollingpodcast, Meditation, Religion, Psychedelics, News, Spirituality, Mindpodnetwork, Consciousness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7542 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author and nonviolence practitioner Kazu Haga explores why fierce vulnerability is a vital practice for inner and outer transformation.

Read an excerpt of Kazu’s book, Fierce Vulnerability, and purchase your own copy HERE.

This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and Kazu Haga chat about:

  • Kazu’s difficult upbringing and how meeting Japanese Buddhist monastics transformed his life
  • Combining social action and spirituality 
  • The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and addressing both inner violence of the spirit and outer systemic violence
  • How an “us vs. them” worldview fuels division, suffering, and ecological destruction
  • Healing childhood trauma and collective trauma by integrating the fractured parts of ourselves
  • How getting vulnerable opens up our capacity to heal 
  • The Seven Fires Prophecies from the Anishinaabe people
  • Rebuilding the world through spiritual practice rather than material accumulation
  • Remembering that personal healing is inseparable from collective healing in an interdependent world
  • Listening deeply and being comfortable with uncertainty 

Check out the book Hospicing Modernity for more powerful insights on social action

About Kazu Haga:

Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of the Ahimsa Collective and the Fierce Vulnerability Network. He is a Jam facilitator and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging from Collapse. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country. He has over 25 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA, where he lives with his family. You can find out more about his work at www.kazuhaga.com.

“The work of nonviolence has to start by looking at the ways in which we hold internal violence of the spirit, that unhealed anger, hatred, resentment, delusion, as well as our unhealed traumas, and understanding how all of that is the source of external violence in the world. Yes we need the social movements, but if we’re not grounded in some sort of inner work and introspection a lot of the violence we want to change out there gets replicated in our own work, in our own communities.”  –Kazu Haga

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, everyone, it's Raghu, and I'm back with Mind Rowley, and today I have a wonderful gentleman that I'm going to get to know along with everybody else, Kazu Haga.

0:19.8

Namaste.

0:20.1

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to have you.

0:22.6

So Kazu, he does a few different things, but he has this wonderful book, Fierce Vulnerability.

0:31.6

And I think there are some really juicy and important topics and themes here that we can get into.

0:43.1

So, you know, I'm happy that you're here.

0:44.8

Welcome.

0:45.7

Thank you.

0:48.4

Yeah, just, I think we want to, so in terms of, you know, your work and what you've been doing, you know, it's very

0:59.2

much involved with social action, way much involved with what goes behind, all of what

1:10.3

makes up

1:11.6

social action

1:13.4

in terms of actually coming to a place

1:16.9

where

1:18.0

you as an individual

1:20.3

are taking social action first

1:23.5

or alongside of social action with other people. So really powerful stuff. But tell us about you.

1:34.3

Like, how did you even come to any of this stuff? You know, I mean, where did you grow up?

1:40.8

And how did you come to this as a developing person?

2:18.9

Yeah, what's a long journey is. There's a lot of stories that I could tell, but, you know, I was born in Japan. We love stories, so please, please. Oh, I could go on. Yeah, I was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. when I was seven. And my journey into this kind of work in particular starts when I was 17 years old. I was in a place, in a pretty bad place in my life. I actually dropped out of high school when I was 15. I never went to college. I came from a household that had a lot of abuse and a lot of violence and was turning to drugs and alcohol pretty early. And when I was 17 years old, I always say that if I had met a military recruiter, I would have gone to war.

2:20.9

If I had met a gang leader, I would have joined a gang.

2:24.7

And luckily, I met a group of Japanese Buddhist monastics.

...

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