Dear Friends,
This week Annie will facilitate.
With so much conversation around racial and social justice, how do we work with these issues through the lens of the mindfulness and Buddhist practice, and specifically through the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh?
Within the larger Thich Nhat Hanh community, a few years ago, a small group of practitioners came together to create the international ARISE sangha. ARISE - Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity - is made of practitioners and monastics who came together to heal the wounds of racial injustice and social inequity, beginning with looking deeply within ourselves and using the energy of compassion, understanding, and love in action. Part of their mission is to guide those of us in the larger community in how to do this work as well.
In November, ARISE offered their first webinar (click here to access a recording of the webinar.) On Monday, we will watch or listen to a portion of the webinar. (Please feel free to watch the entire webinar before Monday to enrich our discussion.)
One of my guidelines for social justice and the sangha is the tenth of the fourteen mindfulness trainings, which says:
Aware that the essence and aim of a Sangha is the practice of understanding and compassion, we are determined not to use the Buddhist community for personal gain or profit or transform our community into a political instrument. A spiritual community should, however, take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and should strive to change the situation without engaging in partisan conflicts.
After our meditation period we will listen to the webinar excerpt and then have time to share our reflections on what we heard. We might also want to consider the following questions: How does racial and social equity fit into our spiritual practice? What is our community's role in healing racial and social injustice?
Below are three additional resources. (1) A quote from Thich Nhat Hanh during his interview with bell hooks from several years ago; (2) the ARISE mission; and (3) the Gatha for Healing that ARISE reads before every meeting.
I look forward to our time together on Monday evening.
with love,
annie.
"When we have anger in us, we suffer. When we have discrimination in us, we suffer. When we have the complex of superiority, we suffer. When we have the complex of inferiority, we suffer also. So when we are capable of transforming these negative things in us, we are free and happiness is possible.
If the people who hurt us have that kind of energy within them, like anger or desperation, then they suffer. When you see that someone suffers, you might be motivated by a desire to help him not to suffer anymore. That is love also, and love doesn’t have any color. Other people may discriminate against us, but what is more important is whether we discriminate against them. If we don’t do that, we are a happier person, and as a happier person, we are in a position to help." -- Thich Nhat Hanh
The mission of ARISE:
Following the guidance Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to build and nourish Beloved Community, we seek to encourage the Manyfold Sangha to:
- Look deeply and explore the roots of suffering caused by racial injustice and social inequity
- Listen deeply and with compassion to oneself and to others to gain understanding of the causes and conditions that give rise to racial injustice and social inequity
- Explore the inter-connectedness of systemic racial, ethnic, gender, and economic inequity within our sangha and society at large
- Explore ancestral healing and its relatedness to reach understanding in ourselves and in others
- Transform patterns of exclusiveness regarding power, inequity in resources, implicit bias, and disparities in privilege
- Study and utilize available resources to deepen understanding of racial justice and social inequity in conjunction with mindful practices
- Engage in a process of understanding and building Beloved Community by:
-Creating safe and loving spaces for people of color to heal from the trauma of racial injustice
-Creating safe and loving spaces for white allies to look deeply, understand, and heal from implicit bias and other forms of discrimination
-Creating safe and loving spaces for white allies to understand the systemic legacy of racial inequity and to provide opportunities for learning and practice
-Creating safe and loving spaces for people of color and white allies to come together to look deeply and engage in healing together
-Looking deeply at and addressing the under-representation of people of color and low-income people in our individual sanghas and the collective community
We encourage our fellow practitioners all over the world to embark upon these efforts in a spirit of community, trust, understanding, love, and patience – knowing that this is a life’s work, motivated by bodhicitta. We should take on these efforts in ways that are consistent with the example and teachings of Thay and the Five and Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, and in a manner that reflects a one-step, one-breath, deeply present approach to each task and to everyday life.
The ARISE Gatha for Healing:
Aware of the suffering caused by racial, systemic, and social inequities, we commit ourselves, individually and as a community, to understanding the roots of these inequities, and to transforming this suffering into compassion, understanding and love in action. As a global community of practitioners, we are aware of the disproportionate racial violence and oppression committed by institutions and by individuals, whether consciously or unconsciously, against African Americans, Indigenous peoples and people of color across the United States and beyond. We know that by looking deeply as individuals and as a community, we can engage the collective wisdom and energy of the Sangha to be our foundation for Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Mindfulness, and Right Insight. These are the practices leading to nondiscrimination, non-harming, and non-self which heal ourselves and the world.