Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad
Available now!
The Fire Inside:
The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment.
This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities—ones that don’t shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths; that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.
Praise for
The Fire Inside
Courses
The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
What does it mean to survive — and still be fully alive?
A 6-week series rooted in Black Buddhist wisdom.
Tuesdays, Sept. 1–Oct. 6, 2026 | 12:00–1:30pm ET | Online
Buddhism and Black Liberation
Black Buddhists have always read the dharma through the lens of liberation.
A 6-week series on Black radical thought and Buddhist practice.
Tuesdays, Oct. 20–Nov. 24, 2026 | 12:00–1:30pm ET | Online
The Discipline of Liberation
What if your spiritual practice was also your politics?
A 6-week series with bell hooks as our guide
Tuesdays, Jan. 5–Feb. 9, 2027 | 12:00–1:30pm ET | Online
From Poison to Power
What would your community be without the weight of unresolved harm?
A 6-week series on community, conflict, and accountability
Tuesdays, Mar. 2–Apr. 6, 2027 | 12:00–1:30pm ET | Online
Articles and Events
Sacred Mountain Sangha Book Club
Presented by Sacred Mountain Sangha
🗓️ Sundays, June 28th to July 18th @ 11:00 – 12:30 p.m. PT
📍Online
Join us for a contemplative journey exploring how Baldwin’s and Lorde’s lives and works illuminate the territory of suffering, liberation, and the truth of this moment.
Dr Rima will open and close the series alongside sangha leaders Kareem Ghandour, Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Lisa D Moore who will be hosting the rest of the weeks.
On Suffering
This idea that we learn to suffer skillfully might be heard as a way of accepting it. Like ‘that’s okay, it’s justifiable. It’s something that is part and parcel of what it means to be Black in this country and we’ll just go along with it.’ That’s not what James Baldwin and Audre Lorde were talking about.
Lava at the Core
Evoking the lava at the center of Mother Earth is such a significant metaphor, one that Audre Lorde too brought forth in her essay “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger.”
Lorde wrote: “My Black woman’s anger is a molten pond at the core of me, my most fiercely guarded secret. I know how much of my life as a powerful feeling woman is laced through with this net of rage … How to train that anger with accuracy rather than deny it has been one of the major tasks of my life.”