Intersection of Dhamma & Race: Episode #1

This is a very different kind of show than any previous episode we’ve brought you on the Insight Myanmar Podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few months ago, we interrupted our usual run of sit-down interviews to produce a special series on the coronavirus pandemic in Myanmar. In these episodes, we checked in with a number of monastics and practitioners, and inquired how they as meditators were coping with the world shutting down. As we were working to respond to the relevancy of that moment— itself no easy task for a skeleton crew volunteer team— another historic moment engulfed the United States and resonated with people around the world: the Black Lives Matter protests over of the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police.

We feel the need is just as compelling to meet the demands of this moment as our recent podcast series, and so we are creating a new collection of episodes called “the Intersection of Dhamma & Race.” In this series, we are widening the scope of our usual programming to examine the overlapping lines of Dhamma practice, racism and social justice. Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a long-term Black American vipassana meditator formerly in the S.N. Goenka tradition and an award-winning cultural worker, joins our volunteer team as co-producer of this series.

The United States has been witnessing an explosion of multiracial bravery inspired and led by Black individuals speaking truth to power, standing up against racism and for social justice, and within many different social and economic institutions, from well-known sports franchises to giant corporations. While these acts may at times be confrontational, they highlight uncomfortable and too-long-ignored truths that societies must finally face, both people as individuals, and collectively.

In this same spirit, we hope that the following episode can be a platform for bringing a similar sort of conversation about entrenched biases, practices and attitudes within the vipassana and mindfulness communities. The guests include:

·     Victoria Robertson is the first Black American appointed Senior Assistant Teacher under S. N. Goenka. She speaks about her time attending and conducting vipassana courses in this tradition; how she learned to develop empathy for others; her observation that the White vipassana teachers were equipped to teach meditation, but weren’t able to apply those meditation practices to address racism; her leadership role in creating the one and only Global African Heritage course to date in this tradition, and the organization’s unwillingness to support her attempts to bring Dhamma to Black communities in inner cities. She is no longer a teacher in this tradition.

·     Joshua Bee Alafia is a Taoist and Insight Meditation Teacher, as well as an author and film director. He notes how the mindfulness community naturally mirrors the issues and complexes, including racism, that American society at large struggles with. He believes we will look back at this current time as the “Great Awakening” in American society, and that compassion and inner reflection are now sorely needed, because it takes courage to heal as individuals and by extension a society.

·     Wayne Smith is a professional cellist and a long-course vipassana student in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. Determined not to become bitter as a result of racism, his early meditation experiences brought him in touch with the ill will building up inside nonetheless—and taught him how it could be observed and let go of. He feels it is critical for White people to look clearly at their own white privilege and identify their involvement in perpetuating a racist system even by just passively participating in it. He finds meditation a valuable tool for this effort, as well as engaging in conversation and interaction across communities.

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