Kaira Jewel Lingo on White Supremacy and Racial Healing (Episode #27)

Please refer to the note below this description about the choice of the title for this episode.

Welcome to episode 27 of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives.

In this episode, journalist Jo Confino is joined by much-loved international mindfulness teacher and author Kaira Jewel Lingo, to talk about her practice and community work, both as a monastic and subsequently as a lay practitioner and spiritual mentor.

Together, they further discuss the intersection of racial, climate, and social injustice; privilege; denial; white awareness; hate and embedded white supremacy; deep listening; and spiritual practices for a world in crisis.   

Kaira Jewel Lingo is a dharma teacher who has been practicing mindfulness since 1997. She lived as an ordained nun for 15 years, during which she trained closely with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Speaking five languages, she shares Buddhist meditation, secular mindfulness, and compassion practice internationally, providing spiritual mentoring to individuals and communities working at the intersection of racial, climate, and social justice. Her teaching focuses on activists, educators, artists, youth and families, BIPOC communities, and includes the interweaving of art, play, nature, ecology, and embodied mindfulness practice. She teaches in the Plum Village Zen tradition and in the Vipassana tradition. 

In this episode, Kaira Jewel expands on the journey of her name – Jewel – and her route to the Plum Village practice; being the first ordained monastic of African heritage in Plum Village; Thich Nhat Hanh’s guidance and support; embodying Thay’s teachings; learning to take care of suffering; deciding to disrobe; her mission as a lay dharma teacher; practice as a way of life; deep relationships; and her plans to open a Buddhist-Christian practice center with her partner.

She also dives more deeply into spiritual bypassing; healing racialized trauma; the importance of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) retreats and teachers; the story of the first Plum Village retreat for people of color; collective consciousness; adapting the Five Mindfulness Training to different ethnic groups; and her first book: We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption. 

The episode ends with a short meditation guided by Kaira Jewel.

[This episode was recorded on February 18, 2022, via Zoom.] 

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Note: Race is a social construct designed to divide and dehumanize, but it still has a significant impact on inequality and discrimination today. White supremacy, as used in the context of this episode, refers to the societal and structural biases that deeply influence communities and individuals of color across the world, affecting their lives in tangible wide-ranging ways – from access to everyday necessities being harder or impossible to all types of abuse (which takes an ongoing physiological and psychological toll).

This episode explores the impact of racism, emphasizing that it’s not being white-skinned that is inherently problematic, but rather how the social constructs of race are enacted in harmful ways. Given the historical contexts of colonization, slavery, and intergenerational trauma, understanding the dynamics of power and privilege in a racialized world requires a great deal of compassion, learning, unlearning, and healing, regardless of how we are categorized. 

This episode was recorded with the intention to live our ideals of non-discrimination and addressing social injustice as encouraged in the 14 Mindfulness Trainings.

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Co-produced by the Plum Village App:
https://plumvillage.app/

And Global Optimism:
https://globaloptimism.com/ 

With support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation:
https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/

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List of resources

Kaira Jewel Lingo
https://www.kairajewel.com/ 

Plum Village
https://plumvillage.org/

Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha
https://www.parallax.org/product/old-path-white-clouds-walking-in-the-footsteps-of-the-buddha/ 

Ram Dass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Dass 

Brahmavihārā
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara 

James Baldwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin 

Melina Bondy
https://www.melinabondy.com/ 

Joanna Macy
https://www.joannamacy.net/ 

Resmaa Menakem
https://www.resmaa.com/ 

The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning
https://www.harvard.com/book/the_quaking_of_america/ 

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
https://shop.harvard.com/book/9781942094470 

The Civil Rights Movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement 

We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption
https://www.parallax.org/product/we-were-made-for-these-times/ 

The Five Mindfulness Trainings
https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/ 

Deep Adaptation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation 

Schumacher College
https://campus.dartington.org/schumacher-college/ 

Buddhist-Christian Community of Meditation and Action
https://www.kairajewel.com/teaching/buddhist-christian-community-of-practice-and-action 

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Quotes

“What’s so powerful about Thay’s teaching in the community is this huge heart of inclusiveness. Thay and sangha are always reaching wider; the reach is like the brahmavihārās – the loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity. They are immeasurable minds of love.”

“Part of freeing ourself on the spiritual path is to undo and unravel these delusions and lies that our society has created, that history has wound around us, about who has value and who doesn’t – including patriarchy, or sexual orientation, or gender identity, or age; all these different ways that we are privileged or not.” 

“If you find yourself uncomfortable, or embarrassed, or triggered, or not sure what to say or do, really stay in your body and let yourself dwell in that experience of what it’s like to be uncomfortable. I think so many of our problems come from not being willing to be uncomfortable.”

“Black is beautiful.”

“James Baldwin has this quote, something like, ‘The reason why white people are so afraid to not hate, to stop hating, is that if they feel what’s beneath their hatred, it will be so uncomfortable.’ They don’t want to feel it. So the hate is a kind of protection.”

“If we can be with what is happening in the present moment, and we can, if we can not resist it, not push it away, not judge it, but embrace it with mindfulness, with kindness, with friendliness, with curiosity, with a clear mind, with presence which can be cultivated in every moment – then we have at our disposal so much more to meet the difficulties than we would if we were resisting and pushing away and fighting what is.”

“What this time calls for – with so much change, with so much disruption, with so much at risk – is more and more of us holding down the fort, who are really doing the deep spirit work of seeing interbeing. And you need to slow down to do that. You need to have less. There needs to be space for that kind of consciousness to emerge.”

“Anyone of any privilege needs to be in a space where that history is acknowledged and integrated into our practice.” 

“And if you think there’s something wrong in society, you are right. So it’s an inner and an outer affirmation of, ‘Yes, white supremacy exists and it is deadly.’ And here are dharma practices that can help us as individuals in our relationships and our families, but also in our world, in our institutions, systemically, to see that everyone is being deceived by this story.” 

“We’re all learning. White folks have a different journey than many folks of color, but we’re all learning to wake up from this and we can help each other, we can support each other, and that looks different. It doesn’t necessarily mean doing the work together, but sometimes it can. And then maybe having affinity spaces where we have a chance to speak with our own groups.”

“I feel what Thay taught is love, and he loved his disciples, every one of us, everyone who came to us; I felt he was radiating love and that’s healing. And so if you’re in a community where you are recognized for who you are, you’re not asked to be something else. And then the people there are practicing to love; it’s going to be a healing space. Love in the spiritual sense of each of us working to purify our minds and hearts, to see ourselves more clearly, to love ourselves, and then to really see each other clearly.”

“These are times no other human generation has had to face: profound structural dissolution, and, really, the last days of what Joanna Macy calls late capitalism. This isn’t going to stand for very much longer as it is. And so these are times of apocalypse, right? Where the veil gets pierced – that’s the meaning, in Greek: being able to see through an illusion into what’s more true. So these are times of a lot of potential collective awakening. And these are also times of great suffering, separation, and illusion.”

“All we have to do is be in the present. All we have to do is meet what’s happening now. We get so immobilized and drained of our energy by trying to meet what’s coming – but that’s not here yet. All we are required to do is meet what is here. And we can do that; we are all in the present moment.”