Norma Wong, WHO WE ARE BECOMING MATTERS

Zen teacher and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Norma Kawelokū Wong returns with Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse, the follow up to her bestselling book When No Things Work. Part visionary framework, part story-poem-instruction manual, Who We Are Becoming Matters invites readers into a deeper examination of how we grow, relate, and lead in times of uncertainty.

What makes us human? And why does it matter? Poetic and practical advice on who we are—and what we need to become—to move forward in togetherness and mutual responsibility in an age of uncertainty and climate chaos

With piercing clarity and poetic force, Zen teacher and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Norma Kawelokū Wong offers a profound call to reckon with what she calls the Human Quotient: 4 essential inner capacities—courage, compassion, aloha, and strategic wisdom—we must cultivate and embody to not just survive, but shepherd ourselves through an age of climate crisis, social fracture, and accelerating collapse.

Drawing on decades of Zen training, Indigenous Hawaiian knowledge, political strategy, and community practice, Wong explores the internal and collective shifts required to evolve with intention. Her teachings challenge us to release the logic of othering and splintering, to root ourselves in the mutual responsibilities of aloha and kuleana, and to step into the messy work asked of us in a timeplace of collapse.

Like the highly lauded When No Thing Works, Who We Are Becoming Matters is both balm and blueprint: it's a vital disruption of the status quo. It's a generative map for moving forward. And it's a realistic look at what it may take for humanity to evolve and embody the historic role of stewarding this urgent moment: we take the leap together, eyes wide open, and tend to the job placed before us.

Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawaiʻi. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years.

In earlier years, Wong served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She led teams to negotiate agreements on the munitions cleanup of Kahoʻolawe Island, ceded land revenue for Native Hawaiians, and the return of lands and settlement of land issues for Hawaiian Home Lands. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years.

In recent years, Wong has been called back into service to facilitate breaking the impasse and transforming policy and governance on issues of seeming contradiction. In the conflict between native culture/science and western discovery science posing as a dispute over the construction of a telescope on Maunakea, Wong was a team member narrating and facilitating a path forward through mutual stewardship. She currently serves as a community advisor on issues such as the protection of the aquifer from fuel contamination at Red Hill and the long-term response to the Lahaina wildfires.

Norma has spent many years in the applied space – the direct application of indigenous and Zen ways, values and practices to living and transformational change critical to our times. Norma is part of the Collective Acceleration community of practice. Click here to support this vital work.

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