As members of the Insight Dialogue Community Anti-Racism Education and Action Team (AREA), we are committed to support our community to become an antiracist, multicultural organization. As an evolving global community dedicated to spiritual freedom and ethical action, we see that our freedom is linked to the freedom of all beings.
With this intention, we commit to evolving antiracist practices across our community, including all sangha gatherings, Insight Dialogue retreats, and in our organizational structures. In each newsletter issue, we will invite you to engage in reading, reflection, and contemplation about issues of white supremacy that may be alive and thriving internally and externally in our biases, our privileges, and our conditioning.
In our previous newsletter, we continued our exploration with further inquiry questions posed by Ruth King in her book, Mindful of Race.
We offer the article “Erased No More,” by Insight Dialogue Teacher Yenkuei Chuang. You can access here: https://www.lionsroar.com/erased-no-more/
In this article, Yenkuei raises significant issues of the harm of racial and cultural erasure for all of us to turn towards in our Sanghas, with the intention to understand, repair, and heal. We turn towards deep respect for the ancestral cultures from which Buddhist teachings emerged, as well as undoing Asian racial stereotypes.
We invite you once again to find time to practice Insight Dialogue using these deep questions as contemplations – with a meditation partner, or partners, and with your own conditioning.
Before engaging this inquiry, we suggest you bring in the Guidelines PAUSE – to restore a sense of mindful presence; and RELAX (Receive, Accept, Allow as best one can) – to bring ease to any racial tension that exists or arises.
Reflection Questions:
– What was noticed in the body/heart/mind, reading Yenkuei’s experience of erasure and harm – both from white Sangha members, and teachers?
– What truth might be known and spoken as you hold this experience, and reflect on what is present or absent for BIPOC community members in your own Sanghas or retreat centers?
As you reflect on what arises in the body and the mind with these questions, we invite you to contact a spiritual friend and engage the following contemplation:
OPEN. What is noticed internally, externally, and both, about what is present in sensation and thought forms?
LISTEN DEEPLY. What did you notice arising in the body and the mind as you explore each question?
SPEAK the TRUTH. Discomfort, unease, resistance, shame, anger, numbness, and disinterest are human responses to societal conditioning.
How might the voice and presence of another help us find ways to hold our experience in compassion, kindness, and resolve?
With care,
Anita Bermont, Beth Faria, Holly Nelson-Johnson, Judy Bernstein, Mary Burns, Patricia Fontaine, Ruby Phillips, Susie Clarion, Nancy Zegarchuk
The AREA Team is a group of Insight Dialogue Community members currently located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Global South. The team has a culture of consensus and spiritual friendship, and we incorporate Insight Dialogue practice into our meetings. We are actively engaged in this important work and welcome new voices and perspectives. If you are interested in joining us, please email info@3.wilder.one.