In-Person and Online: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
with Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad
Friday, September 6th, 2024 | 7:00pm – 9:00pm ET
Saturday, September 7th, 2024 | 10:00am – 3:00pm ET
Join us for this special two-part retreat as we explore Black, queer writers James Baldwin and Audre Lorde as ancestors who offered an embodied dharma of resilience, fortitude, presence, and joy in a racist, patriarchal, and homophobic society.
Though raised in the Christian tradition, the essays, fiction, poetry, and interviews by these two luminary thinkers offer fresh insights into classical Buddhist teachings, particularly within the context of the United States.
We will discuss the Buddhist concept of suffering and practice the importance of honoring anger, deconstructing the delusion of white supremacy, and the necessity of attending to race, gender, and sexuality in Buddhist contexts.
The retreat will conclude with a dialogue on how Baldwin, Lorde, and the Buddhist tradition each understand power in liberatory ways.
We hope you can join us!
In-Person Registration:
Please register below. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and you will have the opportunity to donate more after the program.)
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Online Registration:
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
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Teacher(s)
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). She is currently at work on a new manuscript, The Fire Within: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. She is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. She leads retreats and classes for dharma centers throughout the U.S.