I was recently interviewed for the Huffington Post's article, "Celebrating The Diverse Spirituality And Religion Of African-Americans," and wanted to let folks see my whole offering as we were all basically edited down to a sound bite. The questions were:
1. What does being Buddhist/spiritual
mean to you? How do you practice?
2. How do you experience being a part
of both the Buddhist/meditation community and the black community? How do these
identities interact?
3. What inspires you about your faith?
We all have
within us a propensity moving us forward, upon whichever paths we choose,
toward our own liberation and spiritual awakening; this unifying integration of
heart and mind we call oneness. The
Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama called this our "Dhammoja," in the language of Pali. I’ve been training Vipassana (Insight)
meditation for the past ten years and when I first learned of this concept, it tickled
me, resonating with me on a variety of levels.
First of all, is sounds like a Pan-Africanist spiritual awakening movement,
blending the words Damu (blood), Umoja (unity), Moyo (heart and spiritual
power) Mojo (the creolization of Kikongo “moyo) and JAH (the old testament
Creator, creative power) that could have surfaced in 1972 somewhere in the
African Diaspora. It also rolls off the
tongue like the name for the Yoruba deity Yemaya, and sounds perfectly natural
in the middle of a Yoruba praise song, transporting me to a living-room in Old
Havana, Cuba where bata drums underscore chants from 50 Lukumi devotees
dancing, singing, and channeling wisdom from our ancestors. Thus by saying Dhammoja, I simultaneously
reflect on all of traditions that have instructed my path; Rastafari, Christian
Gnosticism, Kabalah, Sufism, Hiduism, Shamanism, the Yoruba and Kongolese
mystical traditions via Cuba, and Tibetan and Theravadan Buddhism, all collectively
fertilizing the soil of my heart and mind for awakening to grow.
The Buddha
spoke of the path as training and practicing. I want to be very clear that it is a training,
a repetition of coming back into mindfulness, back to awareness of the body,
awareness of the breath, refocusing awareness inwardly, moment by moment. We are training our hearts to open, training
ourselves to let go of the unwholesome and embrace that which is wholesome,
reconditioning our selves to be at peace with life as it comes. I practice sitting and standing posture for
45 minutes as many times as I can, as well as a constant coming back to being
mindful in whatever activity I’m doing, like bringing my awareness into my
hands on the steering wheel while I’m driving, or into my feet while walking or
standing on the subway. It’s this
constant letting go and letting be the rapture of thoughts that are away from
the present moment that helps me let go of that which hinders my journey on the
path, namely greed, aversion, delusion, ignorance, anxiety, laziness, and doubt.
Teaching meditation has deepened my
practice by inspiring me to investigate the Buddha’s teachings and apply them
to my own stories of insight from trials and tribulations that I have gone
through in life. I was working on a
documentary in Ethiopia, and teaching a group of teenagers Muay Thai boxing and
my student Zelalem asked me to teach him about Buddhism. I said, “Yeah, man, sure, it’s all about
oneness, and non duality, and waking up from the illusions in life…” and I
realized that I wasn’t able to explain the teachings in a clear, coherent
manner. When I returned from Ethiopia, I
started practicing more and went on a 6 day silent meditation retreat for
people of color. I experienced a deep
unraveling of the heart, reflecting on sources of dysfunction in my
relationships, wounds that I had buried and avoided by years of seeking escape
through smoking ganja and being romantic about things to a point of
delusion. I had never felt so much
clarity, and had never reached levels of concentration that united me with all
life in equanimity.
In 2010, my mentor Gina Sharpe
suggested I apply for a scholarship to the Community Dharma Leaders program at
Spirit Rock, a two and a half year teachers’ training. I didn’t feel ready to teach, but applied and
was accepted. The program empowered my
inner teacher and inspired me to instruct meditation and tai chi to incarcerated
youth through the Lineage Project. I
have worked with urban youth for many years as a teaching artist, but always
wanted to empower them with more tools that could bring balance and rooting
during the emotional rollercoaster of youth in the city. I also started teaching classes at New York
Insight Meditation Center and now lead a bimonthly meditation group that meets
at the Brooklyn Commons every 2nd and 4th Monday, called
the New York Insight People of Color and Allies Meditation Group. Western Buddhism has been very homogenous
until very recently, and though Buddhism is a practice of liberating ourselves
from toxins that cloud our interconnectedness, the People of Color movement in
Buddhism has created a gentler transition into the mainstream community where
folks don’t have to be the only person of color in the room all of the
time. When I started a sitting group
with my friend Sebene Selassie, while we were in Community Dharma Leaders together,
we wanted to create a space where everyone, especially first time meditators,
were welcome and wouldn’t feel marginalized or silenced because our group is
deliberately racially diverse, much like it was in the Buddha’s time when he
was teaching many different people from different regions, cultures, casts and
classes.
In this time of cultural narcissism,
I feel like mindfulness practice is a perfect tool for snapping us out of
self-centeredness and into interconnectivity.
Our awareness in this computerized society is constantly being pulled
into commercial media, marketing campaigns, computer games, and social media,
where we constantly construct more computerized identities to maintain. It
isn’t until we are brought back into our embodied awareness, this knowledge that
we are living in a body, that we realize that we are here in the unfolding
now. Buddhism can also be a hollow shell
and can become another garment of self-identification, which can become yet
another distraction. This is why mindfulness
is a practice, better termed, “mindfulnessing.”
My students at Elle McQueen Detention Center sometimes challenge my
closing statements that we are all interconnected as a meditating family when
we unite. They say they feel polarized by neighborhood, gang affiliation,
occasionally race (they’re predominately African American), but when I ask them
to look each other in the eyes, standing in a circle, connected knuckle to
knuckle with cross-pounds, they pause. I tell them, “I respect your power and I
honor your greatness.” My intention is
that they have the common experience of feeling seen, respected and honored in
that moment, and are interconnected by that. I’m positive that for at least
some students, the illusion that we are completely individualized islands blurs
and evaporates, even for an instant. And
this is another step towards to freedom.
May we all be free.
