Sacred Mountain Sangha Book Club

June 23, 2026 | Events

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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.

Through conversation, reflection and practice, we will uncover how Baldwin and Lorde’s ancestral wisdom reflects and expands Buddhisms most timeless truths towards justice and liberation. Collectively and experientially we will make space for their their words to open us into the dharma of our lives, and for their wisdom to guide our practice in these times.

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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