Dr. Jan Willis, Race and Racism from a Buddhist Perspective

How do Buddhist principles help us to recognize racial, injustice, both within ourselves, and structurally, as a society? How can they help us to dismantle these often subtle, but deeply rooted obstacles to creating a peace and happiness accessible to all?

Please join us for this special opportunity to explore these questions and more, with long time activist, scholar, professor, and Buddhist practitioner, Dr. Jan Willis. In conversation, exercises, group activities, and meditation, we will uncover new answers that deepen our understanding, fueling enlightened activism for change at all levels, from the individual to the collective.

Also featured will be a screening of the film, “I Am Not Your Negro”, written by James Baldwin.

Jan Willis is Professor of Religious Studies Emerita at Wesleyan University and Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is one of the earliest American scholar-practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, having studied Buddhism with Tibetan teachers for more than forty years.

She discovered dharma as a path to healing the trauma of racism growing up in the segregated south, and has forged paths for the integration of Buddhism and social and political justice.

She is the author of the memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist (2001) and scholarly and popular works on Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. She has been on short lists and profiled by Time, Ebony, and Newsweek.

Registration on Brown Paper Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4304455. People of color registration opens Monday, August 5. If you are white, please wait until August 19 to register. Questions: email info@dharmafriendship.org.

Schedule: The doors will open at 8am on Saturday, October 19, for check in. Please arrive early enough to park (if driving), and find your seat before 9am when Dr. Willis will open the day’s events. We will have a flexible schedule throughout the day long program, with breaks for lunch and dinner. We will close at around 9pm.

Food options: There are food carts on the plaza offering authentic Mexican food, a Taco Chukis with indoor seating, The Station (hot drinks and some food items), and a variety of other restaurants within walking distance in the Beacon Hill area. Tables at Centilia Cultural Center will also be available for brown bag lunch and dinner.