Honoring our pain
January's rad reads & Mindful Solidarity Discussion Tonight at 6:30pm ET
Here are some resources, writing, and events that might interest you across the intersection of Buddhism and radical social change.
Toward a Socially Responsible Mindfulness by
I really appreciated this interview between Maia and Bhikkhu Bodhi on whether or not mindfulness meditation alone automatically or eventually leads to social responsibility. I’ll let you give this one a read to find Bhikkhu’s answer.
Participation is our biggest advantage in the fight against authoritarianism by Alessandra Bergamin
I’ve become a fan of ’s Substack, , and appreciate this interview with him on the importance of confronting political violence and learning from pro-democracy struggles abroad.
How do you love your neighbors when your houses are on fire? by
“I love the truth-tellers, but I also know that truth-telling, in a world of isolation and disconnection and immense need, is not enough.” Garett highlights the often unglamorous but critical aspects of organizing, and the importance of building community before a crisis.
Why The World Needs Faith by
Wayne, one the leaders of the animal liberation movement, writes about what’s possible when organized faith and movements work together. “In the years since Sunrise, I have become convinced that this kind of faith – a belief in ancient stories and values, and in future journeys together – is indispensable to not just social movements but perhaps the survival of our species.”
Open Call to Launch New Working-Class Organizing by
An awesome opportunity to fund a project to mobilize an overlooked constituency. Here's what a project lead gets: A full-time salary and benefits, a start-up budget to cover anything from travel to digital ads, support from seasoned organizers, and more. Pretty incredible, right? Applications are accepted through January 21st.
Solidarity in the Face of MAGA with David Dean | Mondays, Jan 20 - Feb 17th
Political educator, , is hosting a four week course starting the night of the inauguration. Bill Fletcher Jr. will be joining for the last call focused on helping you find a political home. If you feel overwhelmed or directionless, this might be a good place to start.
Spiritual Radicals: Saints and Bodhisattvas of the Beloved Community | Feb 5th
Kaira Jewel Lingo and Adam Bucko are hosting a speakers series on spiritual radicals (e.g. Howard Thurman, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day, and Dr. King), now kicking off on Wednesday, February 5th 7:30-9:00pm ET. I plan on attending and would love to see some of you there.
Spirituality and Solidarity Retreat | Feb 7-9th
The Palestine solidarity activism weekend retreat at the Watershed Center in Millerton, New York is still accepting applications. They have an incredible roster of participants attending and are fundraising over $36k in mutual aid for Palestinians and Lebanese people. If you’re able to go, I highly recommend attending.
Harvard’s Burning Refuge Conference | March 14-16th
The 2025 conference theme is Diaspora Buddhism. Keynote speakers include Dr. Funie Hsu, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams, and Dr. Tenzin Myingur Paldron. Papers and presentation topics include: race, white supremacy and colonialism; capitalism and labor; sex, gender, and queer/trans being; technology, AI, and meta-narratives of progress; and environmental justice, animal liberation, and deep ecology. Submissions are accepted through January 31st. In-person at Harvard Divinity with a live-stream attendance option.
A note on honoring our pain
Hi friends,
In addition to this month’s Rad Reads, I wanted to share a note regarding the LA wildfires. If you’ve also been emotionally impacted by what’s going on, I see you. The pain you’re experiencing is a normal and healthy reaction to witnessing the impacts of climate change.
In moments like this, when the scale and intensity of what’s happening almost seems too much to bear, we cultivate courage by our ability to honor, acknowledge, and give voice to our pain.
Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar and author of Active Hope, writes:
“As with grief work, facing our distress doesn’t make it disappear. Instead, when we do face it, we are able to place our distress within a larger landscape that gives it a different meaning. Rather than feeling afraid of our pain for the world, we learn to feel strengthened by it.”
This is the nature of compassion.
Because we live in a culture habituated to avoiding pain, we need to actively cultivate our capacity to stay present with distress. Compassion, which literally means “to suffer with,” allows us to remain connected to our grief without being overwhelmed by it.
As LA continues to grapple with the wildfires, Trump is inaugurated, and the challenges we face continue to unravel in the weeks ahead, I encourage you to lean on your spiritual practices, Buddhist or otherwise, that allow you to feel connected and digest your very healthy, human response to a world on fire.
For many of us that identify as activists, it’s important that we hold space for both our grief and action. Both are needed and deserve our attention.
Cultivating your ability to become intimately familiar with your pain for the world and honoring it ensures your ability to not become stuck in these emotions. It helps place grief, outrage, guilt, dread, despair, and alarm within a larger landscape. It helps us digest our pain and be transformed by them.
I’ve added a few additional resources from Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects that I think many of you might find helpful. Joanna’s work continuously helps me metabolize the emotions I rather avoid and stay connected to a wider sense of self that gives me strength and courage.
If you’d like a friend to go through some of these exercises with you, please reach out. They are powerful and worth doing.
With love,
Adriana
P.S. If you’re a paid subscriber, additional details for tonight’s Book Club discussion on Mindful Solidarity are below. I look forward to being with some of you tonight, discussing the lessons from the book, and how we can put them into action.
Grief Practices from the Work That Reconnects
Here are three practices that I’ve found incredibly helpful over the years to honor grief that feels simultaneously fresh, numb, and heavy. I recommend simply picking one that resonates with you.
Open Sentences on Concern
You can practice this aloud with another person or on your own through journaling. Offer yourself the first part of the sentences below, and then allow yourself to speak or write whatever naturally arises and follows:
What I imagine the world we will leave our children, it looks like…
One of my worst fears about the future is…
The feelings about this that I carry around with me are…
Ways I avoid these feelings include…
Some ways I can use these feelings are…
Breathing Through Practice
Joanna offers an adaptation of the Buddhist meditation practice of tonglen specifically regarding the impacts of climate change. You can listen to a version of this practice here. Tonglen is a meditation practice that we also focus on in my Engaged Buddhist mentorship program.
Personal Ceremony: A Personal Cairn of Mourning
You can offer yourself the prompt “What is being lost in our world that you mourn for?” and write what arises. Or you can practice a ritual or ceremony that holds this question within your mind and heart. This ritual can look like going out on a walk and looking for an object that represents something precious our world is losing. You can find a special place to lay this object to rest as a way of acknowledging the loss and grief you feel. You can continue to do this over time with other objects you find, symbolizing what is being lost and what you mourn for.
Engaged Dharma Book Club 📚 January 2025
Mindful Solidarity Live Zoom Discussion with author, Mike Slott
Tonight, January 16th 6:30-8:30pm ET
Here’s what you can expect for our first book club discussion: Our first hour together will consist of introductions, getting to know one another, and a guided meditation. We’ll go over some community agreements to guide discussion, and then Mike will join us for a Q&A and large group discussion. We’ll be recording the discussion portion for folks that aren’t able to attend live but would still like to listen to our conversation.
If you didn’t get the chance to read this month’s book but still want to attend the discussion, please do. My write-up linked above offers a general overview of the book’s major themes.
If you haven’t registered yet, you can find the Zoom registration link at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to attend but can’t swing the subscription, please simply send me a message.
Thank you for this roundup and for sharing these grief practices from The Work That Reconnects. When I read the prompt: “What I imagine the world we will leave our children, it looks like…” I just started sobbing which I suppose is the point and maybe a start to finding language. 💛