Introducing four community based online courses

July 2, 2026 | Articles, Events, Featured

by Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad

Today I am thinking of Haitian and Syrian immigrants who are under attack and no longer able to legally stay in the U.S., after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. I am thinking of Palestinians who are experiencing genocide and occupation by violent settlers and Israeli soldiers. How do we use our energy to confront such overwhelming dehumanization and force?

On Sunday, June 28th, I will be in conversation with my dear friend Kareem Ghandour, who has lifted up the importance of Buddhist practice to cultivate Sumud (steadfastness) and care for the psyche as a territory of occupation.

Please join us for the first conversation of the Sacred Mountain Sangha book club on The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.

I am also excited to announce a series of community-based courses that I will offer beginning in September 2026.  All classes will be held on Tuesdays, 12:00-1:30pmEST.

📓 The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde

A 6-week series rooted in Black Buddhist wisdom

Available Sept. 1–Oct. 6

Self-guided | Online

 

James Baldwin and Audre Lorde lived inside some of the most brutal conditions this country has produced: racism, homophobia, patriarchy, erasure. And they did not go numb. They wrote with fire. They loved fiercely. They stayed present.

This course treats them not as historical figures but as ancestors — teachers who left behind a living dharma of resilience, fortitude, presence, and joy.

We’ll read their work as spiritual practice. We’ll ask what they can offer us right now, when the conditions they wrote about haven’t gone away.

This is for people who are tired, activated, grieving — and still showing up. It’s for anyone who’s looking for a way of being in the midst of violence and chaos: steady, responsive, and capable of resting.

It is for people who seek, find and offer refuge.

Register

🧘🏾‍♀️ Buddhism and Black Liberation

A 6-week series on Black radical thought and Buddhist practice

Sundays, Oct. 11–Nov. 15 

12:00–1:30pm ET | Online

 

For too long, Buddhism in the United States has been filtered through a dominant cultural lens that has centered whiteness and sidelined the voices of people of color — including the Asian and Asian-American teachers who brought these traditions here.

Black Buddhist practitioners have always found their own way in. This course centers their interpretations.

We’ll look at how Black Buddhists have woven together the teachings of the BuddhaDharma with the Black radical tradition — not as a contradiction, but as a profound and coherent vision of freedom. Political freedom. Psychological freedom. Collective freedom.

This is for people who love the dharma and love their people. – who want both liberation and belonging.

Register

✊🏾 The Discipline of Liberation

A 6-week series with bell hooks as our guide

Sundays, Jan. 3–Feb. 7, 2027

12:00–1:30pm ET | Online

 

bell hooks said: “Feminism does not ground me. It is the discipline that comes from spiritual practice that is the foundation of my life.” And yet — feminism was everywhere in her spiritual practice. The two were never separate.

This course follows hooks into that integration. We’ll ask what it looks like to have a daily practice that isn’t just personal maintenance, but a form of resistance. To love yourself radically in a culture built on your diminishment. To refuse domination — not just out there, but in here.

This is for people who are doing the inner work and the outer work, and who are ready to stop treating them as two different projects.

Register

🧪 From Poison to Power

 

A 6-week series on community, conflict, and accountability

Sundays, Feb. 14–Mar. 21, 2027

12:00–1:30pm ET | Online

 

We all have access to something powerful — in ourselves, in our communities, in our shared practices. But conflict eats it. Harm fractures it. Unresolved tension drains people until they leave, go quiet, or burn out.

This course is about reclaiming what’s ours.

We’ll look honestly at the ways power gets poisoned inside our own communities — and we’ll build practices for addressing it. Not to avoid hard things, but to move through them without losing each other.

This includes guest speakers who are doing this work in real contexts, in real communities.

This is for activists, practitioners, and community builders who know that the internal work of a group is just as important as the external work — and who are ready to take it seriously.

Register

More from Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad

James Baldwin argued that racism is not a “Black problem” but a white fear-driven delusion that scapegoats Black people and evades interior work. Drawing on Baldwin’s essays and testimony, we discuss his critique of white moral pretentiousness, evasion, and the projection of shame and fear—especially the fear of death—onto Black bodies. We also see how Baldwin’s analysis relates to Buddhist teaching on dependent origination from the Rice Seedling Sutra.

 

In this dharma talk, we investigate the role of Sati—which is translated as knowing, awareness, presence, or mindfulness—in the writings of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, in conversation with early Buddhist writings.
In this dharma talk, we understand the weight of suffering through the eyes of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. We learn how Baldwin gleaned the difference between suffering due to the violence of racism, and suffering that is central to the human experience. We learn about Lorde’s embrace of the idea that pain can teach us something important, but that we need not suffer uselessly.

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