Dates/Times: Friday, February 21 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Saturday, February 22 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: In-Person
Instructor: Kaira Jewel Lingo
Registration Deadline: Friday, February 7th

Learn about and practice key elements of engaged Buddhism with a particular emphasis on how we can meet this moment of climate collapse and polycrisis. We will experience how a spiritual discipline grounded in compassion and the wisdom of interbeing can support us to take meaningful action and avoid burnout as we respond to the cry of the Earth and all her children. We will look deeply into the ways we reinforce—and can also learn to challenge and shift—patterns of hierarchy in thought, word and deed, among humans of different genders, races, economic backgrounds, cultures, and other identities as well as between humans and the more than human world. This is the movement from othering to belonging, releasing the idea that others are our enemies. Even as we speak out against injustice and oppression we keep our hearts open to the humanity inherent in us all and our fundamental capacity to transform. The course will be experiential with a focus on embodied practices of relaxation, nurturing joy and resilience, calling in the ancestors, relational mindfulness, movement and song, inviting in the imaginal and unseen realms, and leaning into the group body. We will ground in ceremony, creating a sacred space that allows us to grieve, forgive, connect with our deepest intentions and grow fierce compassion to engage with the full scope of our hearts in our world.

Kaira Jewel Lingo

Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in blending spirituality and meditation with social justice. Having grown up in an ecumenical Christian community where families practiced a new kind of monasticism and worked with the poor, at the age of twenty-five she entered a Buddhist monastery in the Plum Village tradition and spent fifteen years living as a nun under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh and became a Zen teacher in 2007, and is also a teacher in the Vipassana Insight lineage through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Today she sees her work as a continuation of the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as well as the work of her parents, inspired by their stories and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King Jr. on desegregating the South. In addition to writing We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption, and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation. She is also the editor of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children. Now based in New York, she teaches and leads retreats internationally, provides spiritual mentoring to groups, and interweaves art, play, nature, racial and earth justice, and embodied mindfulness practice in her teaching. She especially feels called to share the Dharma with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, as well as activists, educators, youth, artists, and families. Visit kairajewel.com to learn more.