RADICAL DHARMA EXPERIENCES
To inhabit radical as an ideal is to commit to going beyond one’s familiar or even chosen terrain. It avails you to what you weren’t willing to see, which is the place Truth resides - Rev. angel Kyodo williams
There are 4 types of Radical Dharma experiences and encounters you can tap into: Camps, Conversations, Circles, and Connections - check them out below! →
Radical Dharma is shaped to connect peoples already committed to implementing transformative justice + anti-oppression interventions in their circles of collective, community, identity, belief, faith, work & labor with the practices & foundation of dropping into the point of what truly matters.
CONTEMPLATIVE ACTIVATION
Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays out in society at large and Buddhist communities in particular, this urgent call to action outlines a new dharma that takes into account the ways that racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening.
REFLECTIVE PROCESS
RD Camp rigorously challenges you to be present to how systemic suffering and injustice lives in you personally and within all of us in spacious, redeeming ways that invite introspection, wonder, vulnerability, accountability, and love.
THE 5 PILLAR FRAMEWORK FOR LIBERATION
Each Radical Dharma program and all work by XC is rooted in the 5 Pillar Framework for Liberation. Adaptable to both personal and institutional contexts, the Five Pillars have been Rev. angel Kyodo williams’ response to the need for us to both wake up and grow up.
CONTEMPLATIVE APPROACH
a contemplative approach enhances your ability to meet whatever arises with presence, spaciousness, and curiosity. Contemplation supports us to find the space between experience and insight, to investigate our patterns, and to bring awareness to our practice.
EMBODIED
PRACTICE
An embodied practice is one in which we inhabit the body fully to listen and find awareness in the physical. An embodied practice is one where breath, body, heart, and mind are sources of knowledge about the way we engage with others and the world.
PROPHETIC
PRAXIS
The practice of prophetic praxis orients us to what is, invites us to see and name the now, and through this action, offers transformation. This is difficult work, but by naming what we notice, we begin to deepen into an embodied relationship with our inner observer.
LIBERATORY
PATH
A liberatory path is centered in love. It is building an awareness of the complex landscapes we have traversed to be in the present moment, it is centering in the wisdom of the diverse traditions of liberation/liberators in their complexity—including missteps, messiness, and imperfections.
COLLECTIVE
PROCESS
The collective process pushes us beyond our self-absorption to look beyond personal liberation to bringing our energies and unique gifts to collective liberation. By doing our work, by minding our inner business, we can contribute to the transformation of the spaces and communities we inhabit. Through collective process, we create opportunities for collective transformation.
RADICAL
DHARMA
HOW DO I KNOW WHICH RADICAL DHARMA SPACE TO GO TO?
Take your pick! One or two or even all four experiences may make sense for you depending on the amount of time you have available and what kind of Radical Dharma experience you are looking for! Consider where you fit in the following three areas.
EXPERIENCE: Where are you coming from? Are you engaging to deepen your own practice? Are you representing a community? OR Consider how much experience you have working towards racial justice – are you just beginning or is fighting for racial justice your life?
DURATION: Consider how much time you have to dedicate this summer – a week? a long weekend? a weekend?
CONTEXT: Where do you want to dig in? In your own community? In a community setting? At a retreat/land center?
CONNECTIONS
Experience: Entering
Duration: <1 day
Context: Community Led
Program Description Coming Soon……
CIRCLES
Experience: Entering and Broadening.
Duration: 2 day/ Weekend.
Context: Community-hosted or Land-based.
No matter what skin we are in, race has harmed us all. Radical Dharma Circles pave an on-ramp toward a different kind of “encounter” with race – confronting it right where it lives – right in the everyday dharma of our own lives. Radical Dharma Circles is a weekend-long commitment in which we offer you the building blocks of developing your awareness of race with practices for dismantling the negative impacts of racialization on our collective minds, hearts and bodies.
CONVERSATIONS
Experience: Entering, Intensive, Deepening, Institutional Leaders, Trainers
Duration: 5 day
Context: RD hosted and Land/ campus based
Get in the Conversation with this next level of practice designed to shift the effects of racialization where they live in our bodies, habits, and hearts. Healing the disconnect between our ideas about racial justice and how we work to realize those ideals starts with Centering in Presence. Over the course of this five-day next level practice of conversation Radical Dharma Conversations build personal capacity to recognize and disrupt social patterns that play a role in the shut down, fatigue, and despair that accompany our best racial justice efforts, while surfacing myths that deny the complex history and contexts of our conditioning that get in the way of our ability to confront race with skill across lines of difference.
CAMP
Experience: Committed
Duration: 4 days
Context: RD hosted and Land/campus based
The Camp is explicitly not race training 101. Its objectives are to connect peoples already committed to implementing racial justice and anti-oppression interventions in their circles of community, identity and faith and helps you define and develop a shared language for confronting racialization in your communities using the core framework and components of Radical Dharma.
Camp is a weekend long commitment in which we train you in the Radical Dharma Five, the Radical Dharma Precepts, and how to implement them into your community.