Presentation by Rev. angel Kyodo williams (2016-08-05)

The Deer Park Dharmacast

2016 Mindfulness Retreat for People of Color Dear Friends, We are happy to continue sharing the Dharma talks from The Path of True Love: Healing Ourselves, our recent mindfulness retreat for People of Color. Today, Rev. angel Kyodo williams offers a presentation and reading based on the newly published book, Radical Dharma. In this sharing, Rev. angel invites us into a long overdue conversation about race alongside love and liberation. As part of this conversation, Rev. angel speaks about the social construct of whiteness, while calling us back into our humanity and to be in touch with the "thing underneath the thing." A few excerpts: "...we have the greatest potential to actually pull it up at its roots. Interestingly enough, we have that opportunity through this gift of the Dharma that actually invites us to be able to look with clear seeing eyes at things that are not real...that are figments of our imagination and figments of other people's imaginations...Race is a grand social figment." "As Dharma teachers, the way we survived the aggression and violence of a white dominant form of Dharma that was coming to us---is that we got underneath the thing. We got to the thing underneath the thing. We had to get down to who we really were. And simultaneously appreciate our teachers, our lineages, the texts as they were given but also have a fundamental trust in who we were in our basic humanity." "What does Dharma become when it's expressed through the experience of someone who lives in a Black body." --Rev. angel Kyodo williams Let us now stop, listen deeply and contemplate these teachings and sharings to cultivate our individual and collective liberation and great aspiration to strengthen the Beloved Community. To stay connected with Rev. angel, visit http://angelkyodowilliams.com.