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

Dismantling Racism in Our Minds and Hearts

With Nina La Rosa recorded on July 15, 2017.

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

If one lives as a human on this earth one is affected by racism. Power and privilege have been unfairly awarded throughout history to certain groups of people based on race while disempowering others.

These systems function on a systemic and cultural level, but also within each of us individually when we unconsciously internalize messages about each other, ourselves, and about race. Simply growing up in a racist world causes subtle and not so subtle habits of mind and heart to take on racist patterns.

Mindfulness meditation can help one to observe preconceptions as they arise in the mind, providing space for cultivating kindness and care. Mindfulness can illuminate implicit bias, the usually unconscious prejudices that color so much of our mind’s judging nature. Uncovering these habits of mind with a generous heart can cut through the guilt, shame, hatred, and fear that cause so much contraction and suffering in us and in our relationships around race. Observing these habits of mind with wisdom can allow a healthy transcendence of self to arise that does not bypass individual and racial differences, but includes them.

This session is for you, no matter the color of your skin, if you’re interested in investigating more deeply how racism in the world has impacted your mind and heart. We practice ways to undo racism in our lives and uncover a generous, spacious heart that has room for differences and the universal.

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Dharma, Sex, Intimacy and Covid

    We are more physically isolated during these days of Covid. Less physical contact, less access even to each others smiles beneath the masks we wear to care for each others’ health. Contact and intimacy are deeply important to humans, and in this session Sangha Live founding and guiding teacher Martin Aylward explores different forms of…

    Read More

  • Akincano M. Weber

    On Meeting Conflict and the Incompatible

    “When you can’t go forward, when you can’t go back, and when you can’t stand still – where do you go? This is your place of non-abiding. The things you love and the things you hate: these are your teachers.” – Ajahn Chah How do we perceive conflict? We often see it as disturbing, but…

    Read More

  • Beyond Mindfulness: The Fullness of Insight Meditation

    Mindfulness is the engine of meditation practice, and it tends to get all the press. But is mindfulness sufficient to transform our hearts, minds and lives? In this session, we’ll explore some of the other qualities and cultivations that are essential to deep on the spiritual path.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings with Nathan Glyde – Week of January 29, 2024

    This week’s topic is “Getting A Feel For Feeling”. As we perceive, we add a feeling (vedanā) to our experience. When we are unaware of this process and react to the projected feeling, it causes unnecessary suffering (dukkha). However, understanding this process and responding skilfully leads to one of the deepest senses of freedom available. Let’s explore this freedom through our daily meditations this week.

    Read More