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| "All lives CAN'T matter until Black Lives Matter" movement tee-shirt. |
This is a very different kind of show than any previous episode by the Insight Myanmar Podcast. This is the
AUDIO.
The usual run of sit-down interviews was interrupted to produce a special series on corona Burma, on how monastics and practitioners were responding to the pandemic, highlighting meditators dealing with the world shutting down.
Another historic moment engulfed the United States and resonated with people around the world: the
Black Lives Matter demonstrations over the police-murder of George Floyd.
The following is the first episode is a new series called the “Intersection of Dharma and Race,” widening the scope of programming to examine the intersecting lines of Dharma practice, racism, and social justice.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a long-term Black American insight (vipassana) meditator formerly in the tradition of S.N. Goenka and an award-winning cultural worker, joins the volunteer team as co-producer of this series.
With the impetus of recent events and growing appreciation of the Black Lives Matter Movement, many people, as well as social and cultural institutions, are starting to seriously examine themselves for implicit bias and whether they may be unintentionally contributing to the perpetuation of social inequities.
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| The first voice: Victoria Robertson |
May this be a platform for exploring the American mindfulness and vipassana communities.
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 advocating for social justice, from well-known sports franchises to giant corporations.
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| Second voice: Joshua Bee Alafia |
While these acts may at times be confrontational and even put an individual’s job security in jeopardy, they highlight uncomfortable and too-long-ignored truths that societies must finally face, both people as individuals, and collectively.
The nature of these challenges to power and the status quo was at times uncomfortable to hear, but mostly they were offered in the spirit of positive change, to push the needle towards initiating — at long last — an honest and open dialog about has been avoided or unseen for far too many years.
In this same spirit, even if some of the interviews that follow may provoke discomfort or unease, it is hoped that this series can be a platform for bringing a similar sort of conversation about entrenched practices, protocols, and attitudes within the
vipassana and mindfulness communities.
More + AUDIO
Prince Siddhartha Gautama renounced the throne and the world to become a wandering ascetic, a shramana or "shaman."
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