Because these stories are fairly random, right? I got born this time to these people in this culture in this society. And I would have been someone different had I taken up the stories of another time, another set of parents, another region, another culture, another side of the country, speaking another language. So how much really of that is you? So why don’t we start choosing the stories that we’re going to take on? Why don’t we choose the stories that most enable and empower us to meet the fullness of our role and responsibilities as the energetic force that supports life and thriving and creativity?
Summer of Peace: Subtle Activism Summit
Interested in bridging your practice with the positive change you seek to bring about in the world?
Omega Institute: Women & Power Retreat
Be daring and challenge the status quo with Rev. angel at Omega Institute’s Women and Power conference.
Social Justice & Buddhism — an Interview with Omega Institute
An Interview With angel Kyodo williams In this interview, Zen teacher, activist, and author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace angel Kyodo williams […]
Threading Anger Through Love w/ Omega Institute – INTERVIEW
I would like to believe that if I were directly touched in a material way by these injustices, having a practice and an understanding that arises out of that practice, would enable me to root my anger in love. To anchor it and take that thread and loop it in love so that my activity would manifest as a loving expression. But I cannot imagine or speak to what it means for people that haven’t had that practice and have had that kind of injustice. I can speak from the seat of comfort and privilege, but I’m not prepared to denounce in any way what it does to the human psyche, the human heart when your humanity has been so denied.
Social Justice & Buddhism w/ Omega Institute – INTERVIEW
Each community possesses, as Gandhi offered, a piece of the truth—of Dharma. When we seek the embodiment of these truths, giving ourselves permission to be more honest, more healed, more whole, more complete—when we become radical—neither the path of solely inward-looking liberation nor the pursuit of an externalized social liberation prevails; rather a third space, as-yet-unknown, emerges. It is radical dharma. And it is ours.
The Culture of American Buddhism
Anger is capable of pointing us back to love. It arises as a result of an offense to what we love. If we can use anger to reconnect to love, then that anger—the response that we have to injustice, pain, and suffering in the world—can be a generative force rather than a destructive one. When we thread anger back through the core of what we love, the response can be fierce and powerful but not consuming. This is a very subtle point that is often not understood—that we can, in fact, have fierce responses that begin from a place of anger about injustices and pain that are greater than any person or community should have to bear.
Meditating on Love
Each hour will be dedicated to one of the following topics: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.
Beyond Idiot Compassion
Right. We live the result. And that’s very challenging for us because we’re so conditioned to misunderstand what the result is. If I go to bed each night with a sense of having appropriately used myself, then I’ve accomplished my goal for the day. And then there’s a new day and I get to apply myself anew, over and over again.