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.
Harvard Book Store Discussion with Dr. Tracey Hucks
🗓️ March 6th, 2026 @ 7:00pm ET
📍In-person
🗺️ 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA
Harvard Book Store welcomes Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad—Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and a Visiting Affiliate Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion—for a discussion of her new book, The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. She will be joined in conversation by Dr. Tracey Hucks—Suzanne Young Murray Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Zen Mountain Monastery Book Discussion with Shugen Roshi
🗓️ Feb 26, 2026 @ 7:00pm – 9:00pm ET
📍Online
Suggested donation – $10.00 – $75.00
What do James Baldwin and Audre Lorde teach us about how to meet this political moment? This public conversation between Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad and Shugen Roshi will illuminate the wisdom of two Black, queer luminaries through a dharmic lens, examining how Baldwin and Lorde fostered skillful approaches to suffering as they sought to dismantle harmful conditions.
Defining Your Role in the Fight Against State Violence
At the time of writing, there is great peril in our country; there is also great promise.
The level of state violence against immigrants and the protestors supporting them provokes an undeniably just rage.
As Audre Lorde taught us, it is healthy to give this rage oxygen.
It is communicating something important: an urgency, a need to stand against injustice, a need to insist upon safety and protection for all.
A public scholarship project created at the intersection of academic inquiry and community-based engagement.
Black Buddhist Studies aims to:
- Offer community-based Buddhist Studies courses that center Black social movements, Black poets, and Black Buddhist writers
- Create conversations amongst Buddhist practitioners and activists, as well as scholars of Buddhism, on how Buddhism can address racialized systemic harm in bureaucracies such as the U.S. penal system
- Think through how Buddhist-inspired anti-caste movements influence anti-racism movements, as well as speak to discrimination based on poverty, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. context
- Co-create a dialogue between Black Buddhists and Asian and Asian American Buddhists to address issues such as cultural appropriation, cultural adaptation, and internalized racism
- Publish literature that can be used for furthering academic and community dialogue that incorporates the study of Buddhism and Black Studies.
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