Social Justice resources

Just as we never master the practices of yoga, but always find that there’s more to experience, more to learn, and more to awaken to, the practice of learning how to live more consciously in alignment with our values is ongoing.  

“The creation of peace in the world, which so desperately needs it, is no different than the creation of peace within ourselves. ”
— Larry Yang, Awakening Together

We offer these resources toward the cultivation of skillful action in service of all beings. In today’s world, the current movement toward social justice is an active expression inviting us to honor and respect all beings. The promise of yogic practice is to live more consciously and more mindfully of others. The path is not just about personal awakening, it is about our collective journey and transformation toward a shared experience of wisdom and tenderness.  As the great civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer famously said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” To seek collective liberation with the same passion we have brought to the path of individual healing is to recognize our interdependence with all beings. 

May our practice and study be for the benefit of all.

READING

  • Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, by Paul Kivel

  • How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi

  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin Diangelo

  • Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  • So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Olua

  • Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, by Debby Irving

  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-Blindness, by Michelle Alexander

  • White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, by Tim Wise

  • Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race, by Beverly Daniel Tatum

  • Witnessing Whiteness, by Shelly Tochluk

  • killing rage: Ending Racism, by bell hooks

  • The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

  • Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America, by Rev. Thandeka

  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson

  • Many, many more here or here or here.

  • Another great, full list of Anti-Racist Resources can be found here.

 

FILM

AUDIO

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

ORGANIZATIONS

PLACES TO DONATE

  • Immediate Legal Services for Protesters

    • National Bail Out- “a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration”

    • Minnesota Freedom Fund - community-based nonprofit that pays criminal bail & immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality

    • Louisville Community Bail Fund - provides bail and post-release support for those demonstrating on behalf of Breonna Taylor

  • Cash Funds for Families

  • Organizations Addressing Police Violence

    • Black Lives Matter - Donations

    • Campaign Zero - Focuses on “data-driven policy solutions to end this violence and hold police accountable”

    • Black Visions Collective - Minnesota-based organization “dedicated to Black liberation and to collective liberation”

    • Reclaim the Block - Minneapolis community organization aiming to  divest from the “police department into other areas of the city’s budget that truly promote community health and safety”

    • Anti Police Terror Project - “Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational coalition that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color”

Recommended Organizations


Social Action and Inclusion Community Building Organizations:
East Bay Meditation Center (founded by Spirit Rock Teacher Council members Larry Yang, Spring Washam, and others) Our mission is to foster liberation, personal and interpersonal healing, social action, and inclusive community building. We offer mindfulness practices and teachings on wisdom and compassion from Buddhist and other spiritual traditions. Rooted in our commitment to diversity, we operate with transparent democratic governance, generosity-based economics, and environmental sustainability. 


Buddhist Peace Fellowship At Buddhist Peace Fellowship, we come together from multiple lineages, Buddhist and otherwise. We support bold, creative, loving actions to block systemic harm, while building collaborative tools that give us the strength to be with our suffering, in order to transform towards liberation. Buddhist Peace Fellowship 


White Awake (founded by practitioners from Insight Meditation Community of Washington.In the current historical moment, with multiple crises coming to a head, white people have a pressing need to understand our true nature and how that nature is different from who we are socialized and manipulated to be. To fully engage with the demands of social change, people who are socially categorized as “white” need an identity more substantial than capitalist consumer or prized citizens of an oppressive nation state. We need to know ourselves as children of this earth, humans among other humans, with an undeniable stake in building a just and life sustaining society that works for all. We believe that having an informed analysis and a holistic skillset to address structural racism and white supremacy is essential for engaging in multi-racial and multi-cultural collaboration, solidarity, and community-building on the planet.


Recommended Books 
Ajahn Amaro & Ajahn Pasanno, The Dhamma and the Real World (2016) The ‘system’ gains more momentum when we decide we don’t want to deal with it, that things are hopeless. With social action work, we have to be patient, discerning, equanimous. We have to be willing to try and to fail. We have to recognize that sometimes things will work and sometimes they won’t. And that they always work out in ways we may never have conceived. 


Bonnie Duran, "Race, racism and the dharma"  (2004) The Dharma is the most important source of insight and inspiration to me as I heal from racism and discrimination and as I work towards social justice. Bonnie Duran, “Race, Racism, and the Dharma” (165) 


Donald Rothberg, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World (2006) If the path of spiritual transformation is not socially informed, it too is at risk. There is the irony of attempting to overcome self-centeredness through spiritual practice while ignoring the cries of the world, of living in a protected spiritual home while the rest of the world is burning. 


Thanissara & Kitissaro, Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism (2014) 
Thanissara, Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth—The Buddha's Life and Message through Feminine Eyes (2020) An inner ethic is an evolutionary step beyond social pressure and religious morals. Once awakened, this sense of conscience will inevitably put us at odds with the exploitative paradigm of our culture. 


Larry Yang, Awakening Together: The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community (2014) Our Dharma practice invites us to stand in community, solidarity, and connection with all of our collective joys and pain, in order that we may heal and awaken together to a greater sense of freedom. 


Ruth King, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out (2018) The world’s heart is on fire, and race is at its core. What’s happening in the world today is the result of past actions. The bitter racial seeds from past beliefs and actions are blooming all around us, reflecting not only a division of the races that is rooted in ignorance and hate but also, and more sorely, a division of heart. Racism is a heart disease. How we think and respond is at the core of racial suffering and racial healing. If we cannot think clearly and respond wisely, we will continue to damage the world’s heart. 


Spring Washam, A Fierce Heart (2017) 


Sebene Selassie, You Belong: A Call for Connection (2020) Belonging includes understanding our histories, addressing our conditioning, facing our shadows, and loving ourselves, each other, everything. We belong to it all. Sometimes we cling to the harmony of belonging — to avoid the inevitable challenges and despair of belonging to each other (aka bypass), And sometimes we get lost in the complexity of belonging — sidelining the truth of our inherent interconnection for some point in time when we've finally finished grappling with our fraught past and present. This is the paradox of absolute truth (we are not separate) and relative truth (we are not the same). 


Rev. angel Kyodo Williams & Lama Rod Owens, Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (2016) We bring the integration into society, into how we inhabit the environment, into our sanghas and communities, into how we see and treat people, and into how we let ourselves be seen. If we can do that, we come back more awake. 


Lama Rod Owens, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger (2020) I am defining “anger” as the mental and physical tension we experience between being emotionally hurt and determining a strategy of self-care to tend to the hurt. From this tension, aversion and rigidity arise, resulting in the expression of aggression, whose energetic force distracts us from self-care into self-protection, often resulting in violence. Anger and rage are expressions of the same experience of being hurt, and the tension from needing to care for ourselves while also trying to figure out how to be safe. 


Lama Rod Owens, Love and Rage Rhonda Magee, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness (2019) Because there are so many rivers of pain joining and forming the ocean of racial suffering in our times, personal awareness practices are essential for racial justice work. In order for real change to occur, we must be able to examine our own experiences, discover the “situated” nature of our perspectives, and understand the ways that race and racism are mere cultural constructions.