Home Is Here: Healing Harm with Compassionate Connection

What does it mean to attend to our suffering in body, heart, and mind when racism has caused such intense hurt and pain, individually and collectively?

Grounded in the Eightfold Path, this workshop offers us a journey on the Path of restoration from the results of white supremacy culture’s racism by examining deeply and fully individual and collective conditioning, questioning it in mindful and compassionate ways. With courageous honesty, we investigate how we may have been misled, misinformed, or perhaps, even colluded in perpetuating or creating hurt and harm.

We’ll engage in practices from Rev. Liên’s book Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path* which emphasizes wholeness-based interactions, or Compassionate Connections, with each other. These exercises will support and allow us to let go of old beliefs. We will learn new skills and behaviors, building confidence that we are able to heal from the hurts and harms of racism as we practice co-creating liberation for all.

To foster brave spaces, this workshop will have teachings and instructions for the full group while exercises and processing will be in BIPOC or white-identified affinity groups.  It is sponsored by SBMG and co-sponsored by the BIPOC Sangha.  Please contact the scholarship coordinator; no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

This workshop** is for anyone seeking restoration and healing from the hurts and harm of racism.

* Rev. Liên & Dawn will be in dialogue about the book at Capital Books on Saturday, 10/21, at 3 p.m. Come join us and buy your book for the workshop!

**Workshop participants are encouraged to attend SBMG’s morning program led by Rev. Liên and Dawn on Oct 22, 10 am-12 noon,  3111 Wissemann Dr, Sacramento.    

Rev. Liên Shutt (she/they) is a priest lineage holder in the Shunryu Suzuki tradition. Born to a Buddhist family in Vietnam, she received her meditation training in the Insight and Soto Zen traditions in the U.S., Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam. She was a founding member of the Buddhists of Color in 1998 and currently is the guiding teacher of Access to Zen, an inclusive, anti-oppression sangha and non-profit in the SF Bay Area. She lives on Ohlone land, currently called San Francisco, with her partner, exploring waterways and forests as often as they can. Visit AccessToZen.org for ways to connect and practice together. Her new book, Home Is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path (North Atlantic Books, pub 8/22/2023) builds on foundational Buddhist teachings – the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path — offering an intersectional framework to help us embody antiracist practices and tend to our healing and wholeness.

Dawn Haney (they/she) has been organizing, coaching, teaching, and writing for 20 years, on feminism, white anti-racism, Buddhism, leadership, and liberation. They braid together wisdom from Buddhism and social justice traditions, understanding identity, power, and change through their own experiences as a white, fat, queer, nonbinary femme, and through social movements from migrant justice to fat liberation. A dharma student since 2003, she is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program, a Community Teacher at East Bay Meditation Center and the Alphabet Sangha, and taught across the US as former Co-Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

Click here to register.