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All posts filed under: Social Engagement

Healing and Showing Up

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By Lama Rod Owens // When I suffered severe depression, the easiest thing to do was hide it. You become quite skilled in distracting others from focusing on you and your suffering. This is possible because most people are not interested really in how others are suffering and certainly not interested in their own suffering. There’s no judgement here. Suffering is difficult and tough. It’s complicated and very uncomfortable. Most of us master the game of distracting ourselves and avoiding vulnerability. I kept my disease to myself and found myself quietly slipping away, disappearing. Not many people noticed. Healing is movement and work toward wholeness. Healing is never a definite location but something in process. It is the basic ordinary work of staying engaged with our own hurt and limitations. Healing does not mean forgiveness either, though it is a result of it. Healing is knowing our woundedness; it is developing an intimacy with the ways in which we suffer. Healing is learning to love the wound because love draws us into relationship with it …

December 17, 2019

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Mind-Body / Social Engagement

The Social Ego

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By Rev. angel Kyodo williams // To lean into the aspiration for true liberation, you must confront the fact that “whiteness” is a social ego as void of inherent identity as the personal ego, and you have identified with it as much as your very own name, but without being willing to name it. Just as the ego-mind is a construct that constantly reinforces itself—building structures and systems of control and developing attitudes and views that maintain its primacy and sense of solidity so that it can substantiate its validity—so, too, does this construct of whiteness. One could call it the Mind of Whiteness. The construct has been designed so that white America—and by extension white teachers and practitioners—lives inside the prison of that small mind, such that without intentional intervention, you cannot see over the wall of the reinforcing perspectives that affirm and perpetuate the White Superiority Complex. The complex would disintegrate if the vastness of your own racial bias were illuminated. So you remain in ignorance, blind to the reality before you, which …

May 27, 2019

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Social Engagement

How Meditation Can Help Us Work with Issues of Diversity, Bias, and Harm

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By Jeff Scott // Jeff Scott is a teacher within the Shambhala community with a particular interest in how meditation practice can be a crucial tool for working with issues of diversity, bias, and harm. In this article, he responds to questions on this topic from SMC staff member Travis Newbill, and the resulting dialogue offers insight into the journey of personal and societal healing. Later this spring, the journey continues as Jeff leads Looking Deeply: Meditation & Diversity (May 10–12) at SMC. Travis Newbill: Shame and inadequacy seem to be common things people have to work with in meditation, and in community. One way this manifests for me – as a pretty much cis-white-hetero-male – is shame related to my lack of understanding of other people’s experience; in particular, those of less privileged identities/embodiment – and how my own lack of understanding may affect their experience in a negative way. I even feel insecure about how I’ve phrased this question – which isn’t yet a question – afraid it will further reveal my inadequacy, …

April 2, 2019

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Relationships / Social Engagement

Wisdom Rising: Fierce Dakini Power

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By Lama Tsultrim Allione // The Sanskrit word dakini in Tibetan becomes khandro, which means “sky dancer,” literally “she who moves through space.” The dakini is the most important manifestation of the feminine in Tibetan Buddhist teaching. The dakini is a messenger of spaciousness and a force of truth, presiding over the funeral of self-deception. Wherever we cling, she cuts; whatever we think we can hide, even from ourselves, she reveals. The dakini traditionally appears during transitions: moments between worlds, between life and death, in visions between sleep and waking, in cemeteries and charnel grounds. Observing my two daughters’ four labors, which produced four marvelous grandchildren, two for each daughter and remembering my own three labors, I think of the dakini in the time called “transition” during childbirth, when the cervix must open the last few centimeters for the baby’s descent into the birth canal. Transition is generally the most painful and most challenging period during labor, and during this time the woman must touch her wildness, take charge, and enter her deepest primal power. …

July 11, 2018

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Mind-Body / Social Engagement

Sharon Salzberg – Real Love and Compassion in Action

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In this video from SMC’s Reality Summit, Sharon Salzberg and Acharya Fleet Maull discuss how personal mindfulness practice can allow us to question our conditioning and open into more loving and compassionate ways of living. Shambhala Mountain Center hosts Compassion in Action with Sharon Salzberg, Acharya Fleet Maull and Rhonda Magee, August 15–19, 2018. — click here to learn more About the Authors Sharon Salzberg is a central figure in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher and NY Times bestselling author. She has played a crucial role in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the West and into mainstream culture since 1974, when she first began teaching. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA and the author of ten books including NY Times bestseller, Real Happiness, Lovingkindness and, Real Love, her newest release by Flatiron books. Acharya Fleet Maull, PhD, is an author, meditation teacher, management consultant, end-of-life care educator and social activist working for peace, prison reform and social transformation. Founder of the Prison Dharma Network and the …

May 29, 2018

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Social Engagement

Rhonda Magee – Learning to Be Socially Engaged

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Rhonda Magee, MA (Sociology), JD, speaks about the inherent interconnectedness of human society and how that interconnected stretches across every dimension of our experience. As mindfulness practitioners, it is our role to recognize this interconnectedness and avoid the conventional barriers that keep us from engaging in the social needs that on a surface level may seem unrelated to us. Mindfulness practice, Rhonda says, allows us to truly be engaged in our communities. Shambhala Mountain Center hosts Compassion in Action with Sharon Salzberg, Acharya Fleet Maull and Rhonda Magee, August 15–19, 2018. — click here to learn more About the Author Rhonda Magee, MA (Sociology), JD, is Professor of Law and former Co-Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of San Francisco. She is also Chair of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a member of the Project for the Integration of Spirituality, Law and Politics, and a contributor to Mindful.org. At USF, she teaches Contemplative Lawyering, Immigration Law, Insurance Law, Race Law and Policy, and Torts. She is …

May 29, 2018

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Social Engagement

Fleet Maull – Not Turning Away

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Acharya Fleet Maull talks about how mindfulness can train us in the resilience we need to not turn away from social need and teach us the courage to start to make the changes that are needed. Shambhala Mountain Center hosts Compassion in Action with Sharon Salzberg, Acharya Fleet Maull and Rhonda Magee, August 15–19, 2018. — click here to learn more About the Author Acharya Fleet Maull, PhD, is an author, meditation teacher, management consultant, end-of-life care educator and social activist working for peace, prison reform and social transformation. Founder of the Prison Dharma Network and the Colorado Peacemaker Institute, he is also a fully empowered sensei and senior priest in the Zen Peacemaker Sangha and the Soto Zen Lineage of Maezumi Roshi.

May 12, 2018

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Social Engagement

Benefit of a Doubt

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By Katharine Kaufman // At Pella Crossing there are extra police cars and rangers. There are dogs and horses, people walking, and fishing in waders. There’s a great blue heron standing fluffed with her neck tucked. A ranger says white powder was found on a trail. Does he mean scattered about or in a bag? There is a car left for a few days he’s suspicious of. You should be able to do exactly what you usually do, he says, except the hound dog might bark at your dogs. Chloe hides in tall grasses and willows when anyone walks past. Every 20 inches or so, a grasshopper jumps. Jake pounces, then lies down and paws the grasshopper (as I’m untangling Chloe I hear crunch, crunch). We hear the hound bark and howl, probably over by the three lakes, West of 75th. When we are farthest from the parking lot, where the water goes into the fields, by the biggest cottonwood, a man walks out of the brush. He’s bald and has an open face, surprised. …

October 17, 2017

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Creative Expression / Social Engagement

Rev. angel Kyodo williams: Examine Your Privilege

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In this excerpt from her talk at the 2015 Wisdom in Action conference at Shambhala Mountain Center, Rev. angel Kyodo williams discusses the responsibility we all have to examine our privilege, and how wisdom teachings hold the potential for personal and social transformation. 2019 Radical Dharma Programs at SMC: Radical Dharma Conversation Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah August 4–8 // click here to learn more Radical Dharma Camp: Bringing the Truth Home Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah August 8–11 // click here to learn more Click here for Radical Dharma Conversation & Camp Combined Registration About the Author Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei is a maverick dharma teacher, author, and founder of Center for Transformative Change. She applies wisdom teaching to social issues at the intersections of racial, economic and climate justice. Rev. angel notes, “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” // angelkyodowilliams.com

June 27, 2017

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Social Engagement

Lama Rod Owens: Prayer, Grief, and Activism

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This community dharma talk offered by Lama Rod Owens to the Radical Dharma Boston Collective explores the practices of prayer, community grieving, and open awareness meditation in dialogue with our work as activists. SMC hosts Living Radical Dharma with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Lama Rod Owens July 26–30, 2017—click here to learn more About the Author Lama Rod Owens is an activist, poet, and authorized Lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He is a core teacher with Natural Dharma Fellowship in Cambridge, MA and will complete a Master of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School in May where he has been focusing on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. www.lamarod.com

June 27, 2017

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Social Engagement

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