Rima Vesely-Flad [00:00:36] Welcome to the podcast series, Uplifting Black Nichiren Buddhist Voices. This second episode of our series centers one of the most compelling aspects of Nichiren Buddhism, the teaching that Buddha nature is inherently present in every being, regardless of their background or circumstances. Buddha nature refers to the innate potential of every person to attain enlightenment. This state of mind is also called Buddhahood. And one lineage of Buddhism, which is Soka Gakkai International, teaches that to attain a Buddhahood means using difficulties or hardships as fuel for purifying and strengthening one’s life. My guest today elaborates on this teaching beautifully. She’s a long-term practitioner of the SGI lineage. I welcome Dr. Kamilah Majied, the author of Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living, published by Sounds True in 2024. Kamilah is a consultant for contemplative justice and sustainability. She works with individuals, organizations, institutions, and communities to transform oppressive patterns and to deepen relationships towards ever-improving wellness. She is also a mental health therapist and a researcher and a professor of social work who teaches clinical practice to graduate students at California State University, Monterey Bay. Kamilah, thank you so much for being in this podcast series. This is really just such an amazing experience to meet with you – and other practitioners and writers – and to talk with you about your book, Joyfully Just. I really appreciate your presence here today.
Kamilah Majied [00:02:38] Well, thank you so much for having me and congratulations on launching this amazing podcast and on your beautiful books and just, all of your wonderful leadership. I’m really excited to be in conversation with you as a scholar activist. I don’t know if you identify as an activist, but just, your insight and commitment to wisdom and liberation are very beautiful to witness to be part of, so thank you.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:03:09] I appreciate that. And I could hear in your voice, Joy. I have been listening to your book and I think actually that’s the way to engage your book. I bought the paperback version and then I bought audio version and I love hearing the lightness and the expressiveness in your words, just as I heard it now. And I’d love to just ask what led you to write Joyfully Just and I’m especially interested in a little insert in chapter three where you talk about writing the book as your practice of joy.
Kamilah Majied [00:03:44] Yes, I mean, it’s been an amazing journey, but what really motivated me to write the book is because I really have found it to be true that the more I turn towards justice work and advancing justice for myself and for everyone else, the more joy I actually access. And also as a person who’s had the great benefit of being taught by so many joyful Black people. Both directly in my own family and communities, but also the lineages of Black joy that we see in Black music, that we see in Black poetry and literature, and that we see in Black art, that we seeing in Black movement, the communicative kinesics of Blackness, that we are just about that joy. And it’s our lineage, right? Like I’ve seen those T-shirts that say, love is our lineage. And I’ve just started to create some joyfully just t-shirts that say, joy is our lineage. Joy is so much a part of the black contemplative lineage. And a lot of people have dismissed it as saying derogatory things about us kind of just being the happy darkies, but it’s actually a practice in recognizing joy as a state that exists constantly. I think of it like enlightenment. It’s not a faraway land that needs to be reached. It’s internal terrain that we can return to anytime, right? And black people have always known that and created from the space of that trenchant non-contingent joy. And I just feel like it’s really important for people to recognize we all have that, just like we all had enlightenment. We have it and we get to engage in practices that help us to surface it because it’s something that can buoy us and guide us. Kind of shine a light on our challenges. So yeah, in the process of writing the book, it’s like all of the struggles exist from my lineage and the Nichiren lineage. We think about turning poison into medicine, turning painful situations into, like mining painful situations for the insights that you can get from them and for the insides that you’re supposed to share. Right, that your struggles are part of your karmic assignment, your karmic mission, you know, that even from the notion of voluntarily assuming the appropriate karma, that I chose these challenges so that I could demonstrate the validity of the Dharma via overcoming them. So with that awareness, it’s like, well, you’ve had all this suffering, it was for you to learn how to manifest joy despite your personal suffering and that that you’ve and that you know of in the world, and to offer people. Whatever you’ve learned about how to overcome suffering and maintain joy. So the writing of the book was a part of the fulfillment of my Bodhisattva vow. It was, it was what I, I feel like it was what I was meant to do with the insights that I have to pass them on, to encourage other people in navigating their suffering with joy and wisdom.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:07:00] That’s so profound to me, and especially because you do very explicitly draw on your Nichiren practice and you even talk about the Lotus Sutra and encourage us to chant it, which I did today in my own practice, and that was really lovely. And of course, you draw upon the Black Wisdom traditions, artists, and as you mentioned, poetry, and you talk about dance and music throughout, which is so wonderful. And I wonder for you… How you, I’m sure in your own embodied life, but also verbally and in writing, can point to a kind of seamlessness between these Black wisdom traditions that are expressed artistically. And then this other tradition arising from a very different context with, you could say, a very difference expression with how you have been able to make that seamless in your like. You talk about how you witnessed that in your mother’s life and in her communities. And I am very curious because I also hear that, especially with James Baldwin, who you quote, and Audre Lorde, who’s so seminal in terms of talking about suffering. So yes, I see that, but I have not heard that in many Dharma spaces. And yet for you, it’s a very organic connection.
Kamilah Majied [00:08:21] It is. I mean, I was raised Muslim. My family was Muslim when I was born. So, you know, we started practicing Islam in my earliest days of life. And we also, in tandem with practicing Islam, which was a very embodied prayer. If you’ve ever witnessed Muslims praying, it’s a very embodied practice. And there are vocalizations, right? There is incantation in Arabic. You recite the Al-Fatiha and other suras. As you pray, when you pray. So the transition to chanting, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, was not so odd to me because I already understood that sometimes to experience the embodied effect of a spiritual tradition, that you get to do the incantation in the original language so that it has that particular resonance in your life. So the transmission from practicing Islam on a daily basis to chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo was seamless. And that I understood that piece about the resonance of words in spiritual words, sacred text in their original language. I understood what resonance those were supposed to have from reading the Quran as a young person and from doing Muslim prayers as a person in Arabic. So then moving to Pali and Sanskrit, chanting was not challenging. And the other like really central experience of my youth. Was that my mother exposed me to spiritual text from every spiritual tradition she could, from Jainism to Hinduism to Taoism to Buddhism, and of course, Islam and Judaism and Christianity. And so I understood these to be the ways that humans make sense of the world and their relationship to it and answer the existential questions of life. So the earth of my understanding was always broad. And endless of how people can elevate themselves spiritually and at the same time that I was reading all these spiritual texts I was also reading really great literature especially the great literature of Black people and my mother was sitting me down and playing songs like I think I’ve mentioned in Joyfully Just that there’s a whole Stevie Wonder curriculum. We just had a lot of conversations about what the songs meant and what Stevie Wonder was talking about in terms of the history of Black people, but also the history, of humanity. Songs like “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” you know, and what Laila Majeed, my mother helped me to understand, was that Black people have this kind of trenchant joy, this deep wisdom that is expressed in our songs, that is both expressed and cultivated, right? So it’s both reflected and refined in the artistic traditions. And you and I know this because when you strive to write, you reflect on what has been, but you also refine your insight to make it clearer in your writing what exactly the insight is. Because we all have insights, we all have epiphanies every day, but we don’t necessarily take the time to refine them. And what I understood from the lineage of Black writing, Black poetry, Black music, is that this is the refinements of insight. That Black people are offering us through all of these traditions, the musical traditions, the poetry traditions, the writing traditions, the movement traditions, and that if we can continue to reflect on those reflections and allow them to further refine our insight, then we are manifesting the enlightenment that is discussed in Buddhism. So to me, it’s just very connected. Like for example, if you look at blues songs, blues songs are so much about being in a companionable relationship with suffering, right? Like Billie Holiday is like, good morning, heartache, just sit down, you know, what’s new? You know, that’s such deep wisdom. To me, that, reading that with Siddhartha and the understanding the four sufferings as a young person, it’s like, yeah, this goes with this. Mom’s playing, Umi’s playing. Billie Holiday, I’m reading Siddhartha, talking about the four sufferings, these two things go together. And the same with interdependence, right, listening to Frankie Beverly sing “We Are One” and reading about the interdependent nature of reality, and this exists because of that. Yeah, these two things go together, right? So it’s to me, it’s just seamless. And that’s the beautiful thing about the Dharma, like once we elevate our life state, our life condition, our perspective enough then we can see clearly when it’s reflected in other spiritual and cultural traditions. And vice versa, once we really deepen our insight into the wisdom of Black contemplative practices, we can their reflection in the Dharma and other spiritual traditions as well.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:13:26] It makes so much sense to me. And that capacity to see clearly is something that you talk about again and again in your book, where you offer these critiques, resounding critiques of the dominant culture, but you do it also as a kind of invitation. And you have these practices spread throughout in relation to these critiques. So for me, it’s that sense of insight, seeing clearly. And then this practice of compassion, sometimes for ourselves, often as well for other people, what we call two wings of the bird and many Buddhist lineages. And I wonder if you can talk to us about that, you could say strategy or parallel approach or Buddhist and black wisdom, however you might think of it, but it’s very striking and you say over and over, let’s practice, which is really for me quite lovely. Like, let’s not just see clearly. And yet we have to see clearly at the same time.
Speaker 3 [00:14:30] Well, yes. I mean, right view is at the top of the eightfold path for a reason, because we can’t see it. We can’t transform it. But the thing about seeing clearly is that you have to hit the reset button on that, right? In fact, we have to the reset button on the resolve to see things clearly, because sometimes reality is hard to face. And if we are not resolved to face it, It’s easy to avoid it. It’s easier to distract ourselves with things. It’s even easy to deny reality. So the piece about, the reason that I keep saying let’s practice in the book, is because we have to develop the capacity to reiteratively clean our lens, right? Clean our perspective. It’s not a one-time thing, right. We see things clearly, we practice. I do my chanting practice in the morning for a half an hour or an hour. And then I have a sense of clarity. I have sense of resolve that’s informing my day. And then something happens that makes me be fuddled again, right? Like delusions arise and challenges arise that can make you question the clarity that you’re seeing or. Or in good ways, or in ways that just reflect delusion. So it’s not like you can just say, I have now established right view and shall never need to do that again, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately. It’s an iterative process. We have to, we get to keep doing it. And what’s wonderful about that is that we deepen our insight. For me, what, 43 years now of this practice every day of setting a resolve. At the altar, when I’m chanting, I resolve to face reality clearly and to engage my own enlightenment, to manifest my own enlightened, to tackle the challenges of reality with wisdom, transforming those challenges to joy. This is my daily prayer. And then I start off full of energy and enthusiasm because right view and seeing things clearly also means seeing your own capacity, our own capacity clearly. And our own is inestimable. We can do so much more. Than we imagine. We are, like our own enlightenment has so much more power than we can imagine. So the work of seeing clearly does involve practice and the practice of chanting. And also what songs help you see things clearly? What poems help you say things clearly, what embodied practices, what actions, right? Is it a jog? Is it walking in the pool? Is it a swim? What are the things that give you that embodied clarity, right? That get the neurotransmitters firing in the way that, you know, because you can feel that embodied clarity too. I know you’ve had experiences like that. So that’s what we get to do with all of these different practices is deepen and broaden insight.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:17:39] Yes, I love that you’re speaking to us about your own personal practice and how it has transformed you. The phrase that comes to mind is building muscles through these practices, and I love also that phrase you’ve used, building capacity. That’s a word that really resonates with me. What capacities do we have? And then if we feel that we don’t have great capacity, how do we actually cultivate that capacity? How do we actually invest in such a way, even if we can’t feel the results or the fruits in the short term, how do we invest in a way that we can, for example, handle conflict more readily, pause, not react, have love, even when it’s really challenging. You talked about being an auntie and just how challenging that can be, but how important that is. I really appreciate hearing about your own practice that way. And I’m really curious about what it was like to speak so directly to people who are invested in dominant culture ideologies. You can be pretty hard hitting in terms of saying directly: “Those of you who may, for example, be only attracted to people in the dominant culture or really invested in adultism and speaking down to children, I’m gonna mute you.” It strikes me, just even saying this out loud, that that’s a kind of muscle, the capacity to speak directly and not avoid hard truths.
Kamilah Majied [00:19:12] Absolutely. In the book, I talk a lot about fierce compassion, this compassion that’s, that certainly compassion has a comforting aspect, right? That we can show compassion towards ourselves by getting massage and doing things that comfort us. But the colonoscopy that we get, the breast exam, very uncomfortable, but also examples of compassion. And using that analogy, let’s think about how do we need to grow emotionally? How do we need to grow? So this book is really an offering of fierce compassion to all of the readers that sure, I hope that I say things that are soothing and kind of gently encouraging to the readers. And I felt like I have to give people like a little bit of a challenge and an opportunity to grow. And some guidance of some areas where we can grow. So I feel like I was really kind of trusting and hoping that people would use some of the practices in the book to manage the feelings that come up when I’m talking about things that feel challenging, like looking at your own history of adultism and young people’s oppression and looking at how challenging it is to parents or teach without being adultist. Like I’m in it with people. And so I’m saying with all my readers, these are our challenges and let’s practice doing them together with fierce compassion. And I also talk about discomfort resilience. So if I offer, you know, I’m trying to offer what Adrienne Marie Brown describes as loving corrections to some of these dominant structures and the ways that they get internalized in our psychology, including in relationships. So like you said, for example, in the book, I’ll say to people that I’ve had the experience of working with, clients who are like: “My only partners are from this race or this ethnicity or this.” All of life I think is enriched by reflection. If there are any areas of where our lives where we can say, no, I’m not going to reflect on it, I’m not going to question it, I’m not going to accept any invitations to consider how I can build this,” then maybe we’re closing off opportunities. But the last thing I’ll say about this is that the discomfort resilience is the companion or the result of engaging in the world with fierce compassion. So even in the places where it’s uncomfortable for us to make or receive a loving correction, if we’re committed to our growth, then we see that discomfort as a growth point. And that’s my invitation to readers. So in the place is where the book gets a little, Ouch! I’m hoping that my readers get curious about what makes them uncomfortable. Like I had an African American person say to me, well, I have a white partner and I feel like they might have a hard time with this book, but they might struggle in some places. They might not know. They might feel awkward about being the term global minority, or they might feel strange about questioning how their racism shows up in the relationship. And I was like, yeah, it might feel awkward and it might feels strange, but that’s not a reason not to do it. It’s a reason to, because the awkwardness and the strangeness themselves deserve investigation. Why is this awkward? Why is the strange? Why wouldn’t I naturally look at how, since I know racism is everywhere, why wouldn’t say, okay, well, what does my racism look like, right? So it’s, there are, there are invitations and because I think that people keep thinking that all of these isms are going to go away because of some kind of legislation or some policy change. But these are internal shifts that all of us get to make to address adultism and all the other forms of oppression that we see.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:23:15] Yes, I hear that. And I have a question that has just arisen as you’ve been talking, and it’s about chanting and movement, dancing, and not conversely or as opposed to silent meditation, but the ways I’ve been trained in meditation have been much more oriented towards silence. So, like, sitting with discomfort. I’ll just go the distance. Rage, hatred. The way I have been trained to work effectively with that is to feel it in my body and to give it oxygen. And sometimes that comes out audibly. Sometimes I have to move, go running, get on my elliptical, go for a bike ride, something like that. But often, I’m working with that in silence. And I wonder about for you, coming from a tradition in which you’re chanting or all of the movement and music you point to in your book. If you also find a kind of corresponding practice with silent meditation or for you if it’s much more effective to chant or pray.
Kamilah Majied [00:24:32] That’s a really great question. And I do, I spend a great deal of time in silence. I was noticing that yesterday as I was having to do a long drive and it’s like, I didn’t want to put on music or an audio book, which is very rare because I have in many ways like I listened to audio books as meditations. Like I could probably recite a lot of beloved [books] to you.
Kamilah Majied [00:24:59] There is so much insight in these. So I do listen to music books a lot. And obviously I listen to the music a lot, but silence is just a sacred space for me also. As a teacher, as a therapist, as someone who does a lot of public speaking, when I could close my mouth for several hours, it is a very joyful, it’s a very playful thing. And also having the opportunity to sit with and be guided by excellent meditation teachers. Including, and I’ll say even especially, those Black teachers from the Insight tradition, teachers like Reverend angel [Kyodo williams], teachers like yourself. There are so many wonderful Black teachers who I’ve had a chance to kind of sit with and be taught by. Reverend Dr. Larry Ward. I consider him a teacher, and he led an amazing series of meditations throughout the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute last summer. And just, I engage with his sessions and teachings often and I often attend retreats and other traditions as well because silence is a really valuable space of creativity. Also, you know, like it’s a place where some generative work of creativity happens. However, chanting for me allows an embodied release. Like I can tell by the way I’m chanting. How I’m feeling energetically and emotionally. Like if I’m exhausted, I may be chanting a lot slower and softer. And if my energy level is higher, I can chant a little bit louder and a little faster. So chanting, similar to the other contemplative traditions I’ve been talking about, chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo allows me to both reflect on and refine my life state, my energetic life state. The state of my life force. I can notice, oh wow, I’m sagging today and see if what’s needed to bolster it. Maybe I do need to chant a little bit silently, right? Which I do sometimes, like sometimes I’m moving around or I’m between places and I can’t do a loud invocation. So you chant inside, you chant in your mind. Sometimes I’m chanting while I’m driving. I’ll pass an animal that’s been killed on the road and I’ll chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for their existence. So it’s a practice that’s very portable and very mutable to the different situations. And I also include silence as part of my practice.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:27:35] Yes, thank you for that. I would love if you could tell us more about the Lotus Sutra and why it’s so central to nature and practitioners. I can hear how alive you are as you talk about that. I mean, I just love that.
Kamilah Majied [00:27:49] Everything about it. You see, I have a logo with a lotus flower and a Senkofa bird on top of it because what’s so beautiful about the Lotus Sutra, the lotus flower, like even from the title of it, like the wisdom of calling this particular really vital sutra that’s in my understanding compilation of the Buddhist clearest insights are in the Lotus Sutras. I understand the Lotus sutra to be the culminating teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha. And in the Lotus Sutra, he talks specifically… One of the quotes is, “honestly discarding the provisional teachings.” So what he’s saying is that the provisional teachings, the teachings that I’ve offered before were expedient means. Shakyamuni describes them as expedient means of helping people to enter the path. And then he describes chanting the title of the Lotus Sutra, which is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as the practice for manifesting enlightenment. And it made a lot of sense to me when I was a teenager starting my Buddhist practice that the Lotus Sutra, the way the Lotus Sutra describes suffering is the fuel. You use this fuel to power your enlightenment that the suffering has meaning and value. If you use it this way, all suffering has meaning and value. No suffering needs to be wasted. No triggers need to be wasted. You can use them all, including using them to learn how to reduce sad sufferings in the world. So it’s not like you’re just on some suffering treadmill where it’s like, okay, give me another one, I’ll transform that. No, you’re actually also learning how to reduce suffering in your life. And I think this is particularly valuable to Black people because some of it is second arrow, some of that is internalized racism in ways that we kind of injure ourselves in response to the oppression that we’re experiencing. Or the sufferings that we’re experiencing disproportionately. And I think this is also true for other marginalized people. And my own research as a scholar has focused on racism and homophobia as they impact LGBTQ people of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian descent. That was my doctoral research. And then in my research as faculty member, I took that study internationally and looked specifically at the lives of Black queer folks in Africa, in the Caribbean, in UK, in US, and asked questions about racism and homophobia and how people stayed well and to what extent we were able to stay well and they used a lot of psychometrics. And the most important finding from both my domestic and international research is that when we resist injustice and don’t internalize the oppressive ideas, our mental health and behavioral health are better. And so again, from that, and just from witnessing and listening to people tell me their stories and focus groups all over the world, it’s like, yeah, people maintain joy through resisting being unjust towards themselves and resisting injustice in the world. So that to me is a real insight that relates directly to the Dharma because the Dharma is about emancipation from delusions. Delusions that diminish our enlightenment. And our understanding of our inestimable capacity of ourselves as Buddhists. The other thing about the Lotus Sutra that’s so magnificent is that it articulates that everybody is inherently a Buddha. It’s not like a destination that you’ll get to later. It’s a capacity that exists in your interior life that you can practice to manifest now. And that I love, that it’s not like you got to wait till you get to heaven or some other time, you know, that your Buddhahood is available to you. It’s just about how you practice to manifest it. I love that. And I love seeing Black people manifest it for like the first four years of my practice. I was in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in Mount Holyoke, which was rich in its own way because the local members in Springfield and in that area would come and chant with me and take me to meetings. But then I moved to Harlem in 1986, four years into my practice. And for 10 years was surrounded by black Buddhist artists and practiced with Ron Shannon Jackson and, you know, met Buster Williams and Herbie Hancock and, having the opportunity to, and not just them, like literally hundreds of artists and actors and people who were using their Buddhist practice to tap into their creativity as black people and express that in the world. So very early in my practice, I came to understand the creative alchemy of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and how you just get ideas. Like you chant with your eyes open. We can try it if you’d like to chant a little bit together if you want to do it for like 10 seconds or 30 seconds. But you chant your eyes opened. Sometimes you can close your eyes or drop your gaze if it helps. But we’re looking at a mandala. It’s called the Gohonzon. And it’s really a depiction of your own enlightenment. It’s a reflection of your enlightenment. The Gohonzon has the words Nam-myoho-renge-kyo down the center. It’s signed by Nichiren Daishonin, and depicted on the mandala are all the phenomena in their universe, but they are in perfect alignment. So it’s like a depiction of an enlightened life. So as you chant to the Gohonzon, you are envisioning manifesting your own most enlightened mind and life. And seeing what that looks like with the current challenges that you’re negotiating, it’s not like it’s so ethereal that it’s not related to the challenges of the day and then the moment. And it’s kind of a creative envisioning, okay, what am I going to do and how am I?
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:33:44] I would love to chant together and also hear you chant, but yes, I’d love to chant together.
Kamilah Majied [00:33:50] Okay, so why don’t I do it for about 10 seconds and then you come in whenever you’re ready. And I’ll start us off a little slow and then maybe we’ll pick it up. Let’s see how it goes. Okay, I like that.
Kamilah Majied [00:34:26] Nam-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo
Kamilah Majied and Rima Vesely-Flad [00:34:36] Nam-yo-ho-ren-ge-kyo, nam-yo ho-ren ge-kyyo, nam yo ho-re-ne-ge kyo, nam yo-ho re-ne ge kyo. Thank you. Yes, it’s quite beautiful.
Kamilah Majied [00:34:50] To listen to you do it also. Yeah, there’s this, I don’t even know how to describe that, but it’s very beautiful to listen to you chant as well. It’s almost like hearing the Buddha sing. It is, it is. No. It’s hearing the Buddhist, chant the Buddha’s name, right? Chant the Buddha song. So yes, that’s really, really beautiful. And when I just so that our listeners know. I was chanting for all of your happiness and all of you sufferings to be transformed into wisdom, that that was what was in my mind as I was chanting. And I invite you to try it, listeners, with your vision in mind, with the vision of, okay, what does my enlightenment look like today? Okay, what’s the enlightened way to take my kids to school? What’s the enlightened way to have this meeting at work, right? If we do that, there’s a lot of joy in it because it’s a kind of creative way to live. You’re not just trying to get through the day, you’re trying to do it from an enlightened way. And then you can be playful, right, and invites almost a little experimental playfulness into our moment to moment existence, right. So what if we did that?
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:36:06] Oh, I love that so much. Cutting through the exhaustion in the same way that we attempt to cut through delusion. Thank you. What beautiful, beautiful practice and wisdom. Thank you so much, Kamilah Majied. You’re just such a profound teacher and I really am so grateful for you.
Kamilah Majied [00:36:25] I am grateful for you too, Rima, thank you so much. And thank you to your team and everyone who supported this beautiful work that you’re doing. And thank to everyone within the reach of our voices. May you be well, may you transform all suffering into joy and may we continue to be connected in the effort to enrich our lives and the lives of everyone around us with wisdom.
Rima Vesely-Flad [00:36:49] Ashé.