Interview with Sarah Tulivu on Evolve Magazine

Activism and Spiritual Practice

Elisabeth Debold: At a young age, you had a strong impulse to engage in humanitarian aid. Can you say more about that? 

Sarah Tulivu: I always had a calling towards these directions, even as a teenager. For example I would go to demonstrations almost weekly, motivated much by the belief that we can make things better. When I was 17, I travelled to East Africa, where I lived for about a year, working with street kids. After some time in Kenya, a local war begun. Before that I had only ever seen such realities in television, with the news being about explosions, weapons, and mostly political propaganda, but when you are in there, in the daily life of people, it’s very different.
In these times there is an extreme sense of division, towards the current chosen “enemy”, but also an as equally strong and inspiring sense of community and mutual support.

It shook everything up in me. I had just turned 18 at that point.

One day, we received a message from the Italian embassy telling us they were organising expatriation flights, to keep the nationals safe. But I had a strong feeling of staying, the street kids were now my friends, they were so dear to me, and it became very dangerous on the streets, so now more than ever there was a need for the project. So us volunteers stayed. And I experienced how it was to be in a conflict area for a while. I got very inspired to do more of this, so I signed up to some courses for nonviolent presence in conflict areas, and spent the next couple of years in areas of crisis.

e: What was the nature of your inspiration?

ST: Looking back it was communion. The street kids were not much younger than me, we became friends. It was clear that we are here in this life together, this evolved into a calling of being at service, but it wasn’t so much about me-helping-them or reaching outward. It was more a coming together. — That way it felt very meaningful and true. I had this search for meaning and I found it in the love we shared with them.

e: It sounds like the love may have been very much a part of the meaning.

ST: Absolutely. It always comes back to that in my experience. 

e: People can become cynical in these desperate situations were there seems no end to conflict.

ST: Yes, it’s painful to feel. So, we close off and that’s where the cynicism comes about. But that’s also where spiritual practice became very important to my being able to be in these places. Training our capacity to be with discomfort, with sorrow, with grief. As I moved through different conflict areas, I started seeing that there was always the same history repeating, the same patterns at work. And I was seeing how these patterns were even running in our NGOs, and in me. We were also playing a part in the war.

e: Can you say more about what those patterns are?

ST: At the source, it’s a belief of separation. And from there, there’s a movement of pushing away and holding on. To maintain the sense of separation there needs to be the struggle of resistance and attachment. Conflict, division. Then, our inner condition manifests in the larger society. 

Identifying with a separate sense of self we’ll inevitably believe we have enemies. In the NGOs we were speaking about peace and had good intentions, but while doing it we were also making enemies. There was still a sense of separation in our approach. I found that the enemy was first to be resolved within myself, in my own false beliefs. My sense of identity needed healing. It needed to be remembered back into wholeness. 

e: Is that what motivated you to find a practice that would engage at that level?

ST: For the first years of my journey I was only involved in the humanitarian and activism work, I hadn’t encountered those practices really yet. Over time I stopped finding the same amount of meaning in the work that I was doing. Perhaps I started identifying with too many ideas. So, I started moving by land through the Middle East, living day by day, moment by moment, with the driving question: What does it mean to be really of service? Which soon evolved into: What does it mean to love? It was like a burning fire within me. It was a powerful question, it meant being available to look at all the horror and all the pain of the world. I had all my belongings in a very small bag, and I generally didn’t quite know what I would do the next day. I was going with the flow of life, I eventually ended up in the north of India, in the Himalayas. There I heard about Buddhist practices. 

When I came down from the Himalayas, I had a heart awakening. For about three days my mind went quiet. It thought very few thoughts, and they were efficient, simple, and they were at service. It felt like they were just doing what they were supposed to do. They weren’t repeating over and over the same thoughts of comparison, insecurity, fear, and so on. The mind was at peace and there was so much love. I was absolutely in love with everything and everyone I met. It wasn’t personal, yet it was the most personal thing of all. Really, it was simply a recognition of our shared being.

I experienced a very different way of being alive in this body. And this can’t be forgotten. Santa doesn’t exist: the separate self isn’t actually real.  After three days the mind started going back more into what they call “monkey mind”, but the heart stayed open for years after. Through this experience, I started seeing how I lived and in what condition my mind was. I never truly noticed it before because I had nothing to compare it to. It was normalized. And the people around me live in that state, too.

Suddenly I saw another way of being. That’s when my motivation to practice began. I felt like I didn’t need to go anywhere else outside anymore, just inside. So I rented a small hut below the mountains in Nepal, and stayed there for almost two years, much of the time by myself. 

e: And did you create your own practice then?

ST: No, I was very lucky to find Vipassana Buddhist meditation. They try to build their centers in quieter more remote areas, and I found out after a few days I moved into my hut that there was a center only a 20 minutes walk away. I followed soley that method, till I found the Taoist arts, Tai Chi, Qigong, a couple of years later.

e: Were you searching for something in addition to Vipassana?

ST: I wasn’t, but it came to me when I met a friend that I was practicing with. I found that the processes and the unravelling that were happening through the sitting practice found new depths with moving meditation, with Taichi and Qigong. I loved how the method brought together stillness into movement, teaching me how to begin to carry meditation into the different directions that life takes, feeling the energetic aspects on my body system and that of others more, improved my health, and more. So I delved intensively in the Taiji Tao approach, for 12 years now.

e: How has that changed your activism?

ST: Now when I go to these areas, there is less attachment to results and less expectation of things going a certain direction. Yet the direction is till there.  Like a direction of wellbeing and harmony for the greater whole.

e: But it’s not coming from you.

ST: It’s less from preference, it’s more from the calling. I guess it comes like a natural consequence of embodying more and more the understanding that our being is shared. Then the actions seem to want to be more and more of service. They want to reflect that understanding.

e: Because if you recognize the being that we share and are not fixed in your identity around certain outcomes or who you are in it, it creates a space where the life impulse can unfold in the space between which gives direction. 

ST: Yes, and it’s much more creative. 

e: And much more alive.

ST: And simple :).

e: And then you started to teach Tai Chi?

ST: Yes, I share the practice in retreats mostly these days. And when I go and work in refugee camps in the Middle East, I also share the practice with people, and with those work in the NGO to support their work and make it a bit more sustainable by exploring and learning together how to be with what’s there and carry presence in the work that we do. It’s revolutionary.

e: Why is caring presence in that way revolutionary?

ST: Because it’s not taking part in the war anymore. We are no longer in fight, pushing away and holding on. Then we are peace spreaders. It’s never limited to us because we’re not separate. Everything is always affecting and being affected. This understanding will inevitably bring us to the question: How do I want to effect our greater body? That’s why I can’t separate the outer work from the inner work. I find that periods of retreat and intensive practice are helpful for periods, perhaps essential, to go deeper, and establish oneself in the method. But we are not without the world, spiritual practice and action in the world for me go hand in hand. 

e: From you experience, what do you see as the importance of committed intensive spiritual practice in relationship to the time that we’re in? 

ST: If we don’t work on ourselves, we’ll be carrying with us, constantly participating in, and ensuring the continuation of the same systems that we would like to change. Without working on ourselves and the imprints that this society has had in us, we cannot transform. We created this system, but it’s also creating us, because it’s all one interwoven, interdependent, inter-being. As far as I can tell, healing starts within us. With coming back to the present moment and starting to take responsibility for our effect on the situation of the world. If we want to see a kinder more loving world, it starts with how we treat ourselves and those close to us. And if we don’t see the patterns that are running us, they will continue to run us. These practices help us to see them, and also hopefully will give us good tools with which to meet what encounter.

e: What attitude and posture is necessary for the kind of transformation that you’re pointing to? 

ST: I would start with kindness and coming in touch with our tender selves. That will make for an integrity and a sense of justice that doesn’t become hard and rigid. And for the physical posture, head upright, shoulders released, a softness in the eyes and chest area, the breath invited deeper, feet grounded and relaxed. That already makes such an impact on the way the mind works and how we meet the other, and life’s next step.

I found that the way I meet myself is mirroring the way I will meet the other. So,when I notice thoughts that I prefer not to be there, I practice meeting them with kindness, with that same care that I wish to meet the other with. Of course, I often forget. Let’s start with that, then come into the formal training and learn the method. And then we throw also the method out of the window. And we just come back to the simple, underlying space that is there underneath and between these words. 

May I suggest that when reading this magazine, now, you take a sacred pause and put down the magazine, take a moment, go to the window, breathe, look at the sky, listen, feel the body, the earth holding us, let yourself smile.

Here’s your pause.

There are many ways we can remind ourselves of our wholeness, of our interconnection. This gets us out of our limited self. Like noticing the smell of the grass, the sound of the bird, the leaves moving. Nature is one of those powerful reminders. Without connecting to nature, it’s hard to make the right choices.

Through the alarming situation of global warming going mainstream for example, I find many people are developing a more whole understanding of life — it’s showing us as a collective culture that what we do is affecting the earth and the earth is affecting us. Our existence is inseparable from this earth. Something is changing in our understanding, more and more of us are remembering things that we still find in the indigenous traditions and people. In small groups popping up around the world I see a gradual coming back to that wisdom. I also see many aspects of our culture moving further away from that understanding of course.

e: I want to touch back on what you were saying about kindness to oneself. I think that’s often one of the more difficult parts of spiritual life –  being big hearted with oneself. Because we have so many ideas of how we should be and how things should be.

ST: That’s the egoic, separating mind. We are not our thoughts, we are not those judgements, or the judgements of our judgements. We are the quiet space which notices the idea about the idea about the idea. We are the vastness which notices our struggle, our achievements, our personal biographies, we are the life that lives us. Perhaps it’s time we give ourselves a break. Time we give everything a break, and let life breathe, and unfold, and love itself.

e: What are some of the important things in developing a serious practice?

ST: Regularity is one, a consistency. We found it more beneficial to do many short practices than just one long practice once in a while. If you can get the long practice periods, that’s good too of course! I would advise many small reminders that bring us back to the practice, back to the present moment, back to the body. A Sangha is also extremely helpful, a community of other people that are prioritizing the same. “Friends along the way” as they say in Taoism. Also, we need patience. We think we can outsmart life and speed things up, but things have their divine timing. And courage, it takes great courage to do this work, we are going out of our comfort zone.

e: What kind of courage is that?

ST: When we do the practice, we have to look at our minds and for that we need courage. If we are using the practice just to find our comfort zone and it is only pleasant, then we may be deceiving ourselves, and merely using the practice to play out the usual patterns under spiritual names. Now, the practice can be also pleasant, it’s like half/half in my experience. It can be extremely blissful. There will be times of great presence, stillness, depth, clarity, freedom from fear, inlove-ment with the world. But in the process of unveiling and unfolding of our Nature Self, of our real Self, you find all the things that stand in the way of that peace, wisdom, freedom and love. And the things that stand in the way can be uncomfortable to look at and to experience. 

When I sit or Taiji flow through the periods of practice, I meet my inadequacies, my pains, trauma patterns, insecurities. I see the ways in which I escape from the present moment and from being with what’s there. The practice is to stay with it. And it requires courage to stay with the discomfort, to allow what’s there to be there exactly as it is. It’s a soft courage that I find works best, a compassionate courage. See it, holding it gently, with open hands. My teacher, Master Waysun Liao, always reminds us of the quote: “Too much is like too little”. Being able to stay with what’s there is important, but not being forceful, pushy, narrow, or rigid. We are staying with it in a gentle, loving, available and curious manner, also without it getting dispersed or lazy. Finding that middle way of being with what is arising.

e: You just mentioned your teacher. Your teacher wanted you to go back to the world after being in the temple for some time. How did you understand what he was asking from you?

ST: It was me who inquired about it first. I went back to visit family in Italy for the first time in five years, and experienced so much change from just meeting the world outside the temple. I was so sensitive and I hadn’t trained my capacity to manage that sensitivity yet. And being in the world and with people, the physical contact of the Italians, and all the movements in the city, I needed to put into practice these tools that I was developing in the formal practice during these years of monastic training and refine them. I tested out what works, what doesn’t work, I stumbled, fell and got up again, fell again.

It was an incredible training. Over the following year I did some more trips and found so much benefit from it. So, I inquired about this and Master Liao said, “Actually, you should have left a year and a half ago!”. But he was waiting for me to inquire. He said: “Go in the world, make the world your temple. Get a job, get an apartment, wear normal clothes. Go and live life.” 

e: You did a good bit of sitting meditation and then felt a need to do something that expressed meditation in motion with movement and embodiment. What components of a life practice do you feel are important? What different aspects of our humanity do you feel we need to practice in a different way? 

ST: I find a practice that includes the body, an embodiment practice, to be very important and helpful. When we do our retreats for example, we have times of sitting, times of standing, times of flowing through the Taiji forms, with more movement. In the times of sitting sometimes we focus on different things in each session too. Sometimes for example we merely work with having a light touch and being gentle and kind in our approach within ourselves. Some other times we focus on being able to concentrate and simply learning how to stay with one point or area equanimously. We have periods of only standing and releasing within alignment. And times where we work on opening and strengthening a bit the body. And so on. We work on all these different aspects and then let them all seep in together over time. 

When people start to feel the the inner flow, there start to be a whole other layer of things that we work with.

We also have times of celebration and togetherness. The first half of the day is spent in silence, we also have about 2 days of silence per week. I like to keep parts of the day without the silence to learn how to carry that silence into talking, into doing and into relation. In the retreats, we also bring in the aspect of service to others. Doing work for the sake of serving the larger community. 

Also, we have house tasks, like cooking, cleaning, cutting wood, that we do when we live together in the longer retreats of 40, 30, or 20 days. So, we are really living together. So it’s easier to remember: how can I carry the practice into making the cup of tea? And then you make it also for someone else. Because, like my friend Nipun Mehta says: the power of small acts of kindness goes viral. It’s soon spreading throughout the space and our retreat home becomes this beautiful fertile soil for growth and for the courage needed to look at oneself and share our vulnerabilities. And as we experience it in the retreat setting, we get inspired to carry it out in our daily life. I believe in the power of many small groups that spread the practice in this way.

e: And you feel that it’s important to do this in community, even if that community last for a month. 

ST: We’re not here alone. The ego wants to believe we are. Living in community is constantly unmasking that false belief.

e: How do you think people can deepen their practice?

ST: Practice is always available for all of us at all times. We don’t have to wait to go somewhere or meet someone or find the perfect method and tradition. It’s here now. Let the mind go quiet and come back over and over again. Slowly, gradually we remember the pathways back home. We are clearing the path. 

We tend to add so many stories. I would keep wary of all the spiritual ideas and stories that we are gathering on this path. Just drop the next thought, breathe, be. What we need is already here.