Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners
Welcome to "Opening Dharma Access," a podcast where we hear stories from BIPOC teachers & practitioners about their Dharma experiences and practice, and how those inform the ways they are sharing & practicing the Dharma today.
Season 3 & 4 description: Hosted by Rev. Liên Shutt & Rev. Dana Takagi
This season, we will have a new focus: Uplifting and Forwarding Asian American/Asian Diasporic Buddhist Experiences in the West.
With our guests and audience, we will explore the specificities of Asian American/Asian Diasporic experiences. We take it as given that there are generational differences (hence the historical moment matters!) and we hope to also delve into Asian family norms and values, our inchoate understanding of ancestor worship, issues of identity, representation, stereotypes about sexuality and sexual identity, and Asian American depression.
A theme we'll be using to help guide our conversations is The Disquiet - a term we are adapting from writer/poet Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet) -- which, in our view, signals a complex recognition of self, mind, and body. The evidence for the foregoing includes scholarly research indexed in aggregate statistics on depression, youth suicide, and other issues in immigrant or first-generation families. While Asian Americans are not alone in experiencing trauma, the racial languages and discourses of othering are different for us than for other groups.
What do we hope is the outcome of this podcast? Our first aim is to give voice to the range and depth of Buddhism in Asian and Asian American generations. We hope, in doing so, we help to shine a light on the limited or myopic envisioning of race in primarily white sanghas. Asian and Asian American diasporic truths about practice are a teaching for contemporary dharma organizations and centers. We recognize the depth and range of Asian and Asian Diasporic Buddhists as a wisdom mirror for organized Buddhism in the West.
Thank you to the Hemera Foundation for their generous support of Season 3 & 4!
Contact us at: Info.Access2Zen@gmail.com
Further Info at: AccessToZen.org
Opening Dharma Access: Listening to BIPOC Teachers & Practitioners
Rahil Rojiani and Practicing in Our Stretch Zones with the 5th Precept of Non-Intoxication
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this mindful dharma talk, Rahil invites us all to feel into our bodies and stay with our experience as we contemplate the 5th Precept: Non-intoxication or Clear Heart-Mind. Rahil talks about his own initial aversion to speaking on the Precepts, and the beauty of relating to this framework and tradition of guidance as a path toward deepening our presence to our lives. Rather than seeing them as strict rules that demand perfection and immediate change, Rahil encourages us to allow for authentic growth and evolution that begins in our stretch zones.
Guest
RAHIL ROJIANI, MD (they/them) is a queer, genderfluid, South Asian Ismaili Muslim, and an abolitionist trauma-focused psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance / Harvard Medical School. Rahil’s contemplative practices are informed by their Muslim faith, secular mindfulness traditions, and multiple Buddhist lineages. Rahil has conducted several years of research on the neuroscience of meditation, and they have been facilitating and teaching meditation since 2014— particularly for healthcare professionals, BIPOC, and community organizers.
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