Here is the full transcript for this episode! Ava: Interestingly too, as you were talking about your journey finding these, like, religious shoes or spiritual shoes that fit your practice. What was coming to mind is like the journey of understanding your sexuality, where it's like first you understand how you feel, and then you find the names that makes sense for that based on the names that exist. Jasper: Yeah. I'm kind of blown away. You used the word shoes, and I was like, I have two feet, so I need two shoes. My left shoe could be Buddhism and my right shoe could be witchcraft. –Don’t Fear the Mystery– Jasper: Hey, queer witches, my name is Jasper Joy. I'm a poet, tarot professional and Buddhist witch. I am white and identify as gender queer and neurodivergent. My pronouns are they and he Ava: And this is Ava. My pronouns are they, he, and she. And I'm a white gender fluid and neuro queerer artist, channeler and spiritual realmist. Jasper: And we are the Queer Conure Podcast. Together, aligned with our spirit guides and ancestors, we tend to various pathways towards queer magical liberation. We do this with deep gratitude. Ava: Listeners can expect interviews, deep dives into our passions and intuitions, witchy practices, and more. Jasper: Stay connected to us by taking a moment, right now, and click the Substack link in the show notes. You can subscribe for free and stay up to date with all of the magical creations we have to offer. Ava: Before we begin a content notification. We are going to be sharing a wide spectrum of experiences ranging from community pleasure and personal joy to structural harm and Interpersonal suffering. We are embracing the shadows as well as the light. We will include specific trigger warnings in the episode descriptions for the heavier topics. Jasper: So get your cauldron, baby, because here we go. –Don’t Fear the Mystery– Hailey: Hi, it’s me Hailey! In this episode Ava and Jasper nerd out about the intersections and compatibility of Buddhism and witchcraft. And Jasper shares some of their spiritual origin story. An editor’s note, some of our audio is a little rough around the edges in this episode. With the help of our paid subscribers we are upgrading our software and mics. So if you appreciate this podcast and want to support our thriving, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on our Substack. The link to that is in the show notes below! –Mystery– Jasper: Queer Conjure has been given permission to use any names or private information that might happen to be in this podcast about other people. Jasper: I had so much fun doing that Nerd Out about Dragon Dreaming episode and we've talked about doing another one about being a Buddhist witch. We were talking about it, and I was like, what do we call that? Like, what's the mashup? And I think we said something like Buddhichism. Ava: Yeah. Jasper: I think what I want to say first is that I was unclear about whether or not Buddhism was a tradition that I had permission to practice or was it going to be appropriating from a culture that I had no right, you know. And that's one of the things at Queer Conjure that we really pay attention to is whether or not we are culturally appropriating and to try to you know. As white people, as like Western European white people, no matter what we do we’re going to be appropriating some s**t, like we can do our best. Ava: Yeah, especially living in the states or having been raised in the states, you know. We have created this idea that we were here the whole time kind of thing. So, the idea of appropriation is huge in our… spawning as a country. And also within spirituality, especially as people talk about like new age spirituality, a lot of people do just borrow symbols and important cultural things from certain religions. And yeah, I think there definitely is a huge difference though, between practicing a religion and being like, I'm going to wear my 'Om', my Hamsa. I'm going to wear, I'm just going to have Hamsa in the house. Jasper: So what I want to say about that is that in this moment, I describe myself as a Buddhist witch. And I guess my permission slip to call myself that was written by Thich Nhat Hanh. My permission slip was signed by Thich Nhat Hanh. Ava: Have a Hall Pass. Jasper: (laughs) Anyway and I want to say that. He passed away in 2022 at the age of like, mid nineties, I think. Yeah. So, the way I practice Buddhism right now, I am actively practicing Zen Buddhism, specifically the Plum Village tradition of Zen Buddhism. So I actually want to pause a moment here and, and just name one of my complicated feelings about Plum Village tradition. Every single time Thich Nhat Hanh is spoken about, it's in this very saintly way and it bothers me because I have yet to hear a story of Thich Nhat Hanh being a flawed human being. It's probably out there somewhere, like if I dug around I'd probably find them. But within this tradition that I've been practicing with, I don't hear those stories. Like the worst thing I've heard about Thich Nhat Hanh so far is he liked French fries. Ava: Cancelable right there. Jasper: Canceled! No, if we're going to cancel people for liking French fries, I’m fucked. (Ava laughs) Yeah, so a couple months ago, I listened to this interview that was back in 1995. From… I don't remember the name of the radio station but the interviewer asked Thich Nhat Hanh about this phenomenon of Christian Buddhists. Like how can you be a Christian Buddhist at the same time? And Thich Nhat Hanh said this really wonderful thing about one of the foundational beliefs of Buddhism is that everybody has a Buddha body within them. That we all have Buddha within us. Like Buddha is not a person. Buddha is a state of being so you don't actually have to relinquish or abandon anything about yourself in order to practice Buddhism. It's not a matter of converting. And I think that's especially true with Zen Buddhism because my understanding of Zen. It is like, the main focus is on practicing meditation with the intention of embodying compassion, understanding self awareness, and then self being this misnomer because there is really no self because every self is just a variation of the universe and interconnectedness. And that's when it starts weaving into witchcraft for me, because, like the way I just described Zen is also the way I would describe my witchcraft practices. Like I am not like this unique individual that is like in a box operating on my own. I'm actually… There's this song that in a minute I'm going to look up the name of the person singing it, but I've been listening to it on repeat. And the, the refrain is 'I am made of all the same stuff that makes the seasons what they are. I am made of dirt and stardust.' And that, that is my witchcraft and my Buddhism. So I also know of Christian witches, like Catholic witches, Christian witches. So I'm like, if a Christian gets to be a witch or a Buddhist, what's stopping me from being a Buddhist witch, you know? So Thich Nhat Hanh said that in the 1995 interview and you know, Thich Nhat Hanh brought Buddhism to France during his exile from Vietnam. And, from there he, he built a place, co-built a place called the Plum Village Tradition. And it was called that because the person who gave them the property, the property was a plum farm. So there were all these plum trees and that's why it was named the Plum Village Tradition. They honored the land they were on by naming their practice the Plum Village Tradition. Ava: But yeah, like, perhaps the, the practice, or definitely the practice was inspired and was able to grow because of what they were surrounded by and who else was there other than humans. Jasper: Yeah! So, nature was like, it, you know, it was a part of who they were and they had deep connections with their land. They have deep connections with their land. Buddhism also talks about mother nature a lot. They use the word ‘Mother Earth, Mother Nature’ a lot. I feel like I'm bouncing all around cause I have, like, I'm so excited to talk about all the things at the same time. Ava: But I'm taking it all in, I think that when you're talking about one's practice as it relates to spirituality in general, to try to explain a linear timeline, I don't think that's kind of possible. Jasper: Ooh, that's a good point. Thank you for that. So Plum Village has international online sanghas several times a week and it's amazing because that means I am pract… Oh, I'm sorry, sangha simply means like the community that you practice Buddhism with. Specifically the people you practice meditation and Dharma talk with. So it's been lovely because I have been practicing Buddhism with people in Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, South America, Spain. My understanding of Zen is embodying compassion, understanding, awareness. And using that to lessen the suffering of others, what we usually say is, 'may the merit of my practice benefit all beings', like may the merit of my practice lessen the suffering and increase the joy of all beings. I lost my train of thought. Why was I explaining that? Ava: Well, I think you're talking about why it's important to you that your sangha is all across the world. Jasper: Yeah. Yeah. Like in the last sangha I was in, it was a book study sangha. And before we began, there was kind of like this little show and tell moment and somebody was sitting on this really lovely patio. So, the person showed us all the things that are blooming in their courtyard and we oooh’d and awed at this palm tree that was in their courtyard. That struck me as so beautiful we had this like show and tell check in and this person was like we all need to have reverence for this f*****g palm tree because it's amazing and it's here with us right now. Yeah, so that is one of the reasons that I keep returning to the Plum Village Tradition. I also, you know, they really emphasize interbeing, like thi
