Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Post-election trauma: embracing fear, extending love.

With Brian Dean Williams recorded on November 27, 2016.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

It has been a distressing and disorienting time for many of us, and to different degrees. Following recent political events in the US and Western Europe our practice is being challenged in new ways. Spurred by a Trump victory, violent attacks on individuals in marginalized groups are on the rise. The three poisons of Greed, Hatred, and Delusion are increasingly infecting political discourse and behavior.

What relevance can a Buddhist practice possibly have in this context? How can we work together to protect the most vulnerable in our sanghas and broader communities – including people of colour, immigrants, our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters, and LGBTQ folks? How can we open to and work with the reasonable fear, anger, and grief that is arising for many of us? How might we embrace fear and extend love to one another as a guiding ethic?

In this session, Brian helps us to navigate this terrain towards Love, with an ancient map – the Noble Eightfold Path. We explore the relevance of this tradition for the unprecedented terrain in which we find ourselves, and how it might help us to work together to alleviate the suffering that we and many others are struggling with right now. Brian speaks as a white cisgender male with layers of privilege, and will address how to deconstruct, be accountable for, and leverage privilege for the benefit of others.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Diana Winston

    Love & Boundaries

    Our practice cultivates qualities of boundless love, whether through loving kindness practice, or opening to the love inherent in deep states of awareness. But can we really love everyone boundlessly? What about political leaders who may be causing tremendous suffering? Or when our boundaries get crossed in any way—personally, at work, in our families, or…

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    Compassion is a Political Act

    This session is invitation for white practitioners and others to join Vimalasara in a discussion on the theme of liberation, the central tenet of Buddhist teachings. No one is liberated until we are all liberated. What if we made explicit that Black Lives Matter was part of the Bodhisattva vow? How would that impact our…

    Read More

  • Brian Dean Williams

    Change the story, change your life

    We live our lives through stories – about the world, and about ourselves. You may have noticed these stories surfacing in awareness in your meditation practice. We often cling to these stories as being “true”, yet holding this wrong view conceals that these stories are impermanent, cause suffering, and ultimately, are not personal. In this…

    Read More

  • Deborah Eden Tull - Senior Dharma Teacher

    Endarkenment: Embracing the Medicine of Light and Dark

    As we enter the darker months of the year, consider the profound restoration and healing that darkness offers us— both physically and symbolically. Darkness is often considered the absence of light, but it is actually a vital and regenerative essence of nature and consciousness. This session is an experiential exploration of the interplay of light…

    Read More