Join us and practice engaged mindfulness in October:
Supporting the Village of Love and Resistance in Baltimore (VOLAR)

Dear friends,

This October, our sangha will practice Engaged Mindfulness and meditate on the concept of active compassion. Engaged Mindfulness involves bringing wisdom and insights from meditation and dharma teachings into real world situations of social, political, environmental and economic suffering and injustice.

During the month of October, our sangha will explore the question of how to not “lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world,” striving instead for active compassion, or Engaged Mindfulness.

Thích Nhất Hạnh offers guidance for living with a stronger social awareness in the Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism, specifically in the Fourth Precept: Awareness of Suffering and the Thirteenth Precept: Generosity.

Practicing Engaged Mindfulness in October: Territorial Justice and the Village of Love and Resistance (VOLAR)

This month, we invite you to join us in supporting an organization in East Baltimore dedicated to building capacity for local residents to co-own and co-lead the redevelopment of their majority black and low-income neighborhoods: The Village of Love and Resistance (VOLAR).

VOLAR is a black and brown-led collective with more than 100 years of experience of living, working, worshiping, studying and playing, and praying in East Baltimore. VOLAR plans to renovate and transform a facility into a community and wellness center as well as rebuild and reinvest into the surrounding area through engagement of the people and implementing neighborhood development projects.

Through use of a community investment trust fund model to assure small-dollar investments by residents, VOLAR is working to establish a Community Hub at the abandoned Centennial Carolina Church. Their vision is for the Community Hub to become a site for community wellness, a job training and business center, a community organizing academy for all ages, and several affordable housing units. For more information, see VOLAR's newsletters.

One of VOLAR’s founders, Dr. Marisela Gomez, is a Dharma teacher who has followed Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings for the last twenty years. Dr. Gomez belongs to the Baltimore and Beyond Mindfulness Community Sangha, and has written extensively about historical and current practices of rebuilding abandoned and disinvested communities in America. Here is a document that Dr. Gomez sent to OHMC with specific details about the project’s objectives, financial processes, and needs.

Please join us and practice engaged mindfulness from Oct. 1 - Oct. 31 and, if you are moved, donate to VOLAR. You can do this by clicking below to our donation page, and your donation will go through OHMC and we will direct all donations to VOLAR. OHMC will match donations up to $500.

Your gift to OHMC is tax deductible, and if you are already making a recurring donation, it will automatically be directed to VOLAR.

With thanks and a lotus for you,

The Engaged Mindfulness Working Group (Allyne, Camille, Magda, Marie, Phyllis and Sheila)