on the dharma shelf | october 2017

3 Jewels Yoga

Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed — Paulo Freire

“No, my hope is necessary. But it is not enough. Alone it does not win but without it my struggle will be weak and wobbly. We need critical hope like a fish needs unpolluted water.”

The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture — Kevin Quashie

“Resistance may be deeply resonant with black culture and history, but it is not sufficient for describing the totality of black humanity.

In humanity, quiet is our dignity. This quiet is represented by our interior…In its magnificence, quiet is an invitation to consider black cultural identity from somewhere other than the conceptual places that we have come to accept as definitive of and singular to black culture—not the “hip personality” exposed to and performed for the world, but the interior aliveness, the reservoir of human complexity that is deep inside…

It is…

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bearing witness | on the delusion of colorblindness

3 Jewels Yoga

Open ya eyes wide and see the truth of the skin I’m in. #TakeItAllIn

As a Dharma practitioner, I have cultivated Sangha on the sacred grounds of the Satipatthana Sutta (theFour Establishments of Mindfulness) and, in our gatherings, turn us again and again and again back to this foundational practice that teaches us to listen deeply,

see clearly,

and “remain established in the observation of the body in the body, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life” [Majjhima Nikaya 10, as translated in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Transformation + Healing]. So too with the observation of feelings, thoughts/mental states and perceptions of whatever is in our field of awareness as we engage the world around us.

It is a spiritual discipline to help us acknowledge, take care of, and free ourselves from our attachments…

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