Many Buddhist practitioners can’t afford to go on retreats. Pamela Ayo Yetunde says it’s time we start thinking about how to make the practice less exclusive. I first learned about meditation retreats when I was a volunteer with Zen Hospice Project. My co-volunteers—professional financially stable white men—often talked fondly about their meditation teachers and retreat [...]
Buddhists Helping Buddhists
Pamela Ayo Yetunde reviews A Thousand Hands: A Guidebook to Caring for Your Buddhist Community, edited by Nathan Jishin Michon and Daniel Clarkson Fisher. From the Summer 2017 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly. When we cannot cope with life as it is, and when we cannot function enough to provide basic care for ourselves, it would be a great comfort to know [...]
Buddhism in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter
We need to update the traditional narrative of the Buddha’s life, says Pamela Ayo Yetunde, for people who know suffering all too well. She offers some alternative stories for the time of #BlackLivesMatter. I am a person of African descent practicing Buddhism in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. I am also trained in the Insight Meditation tradition to organize and lead Buddhist [...]
“Radical Dharma” strikes a conversation about transforming sanghas and communities
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, author of “Buddhism in the Age of #BlackLivesMatter” on the new book by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah. (You'll find an excerpt from Radical Dharma inside the coming, September 2016 Lion's Roar magazine.) African-American and queer Buddhist teachers Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Lama Rod Owens, with Professor Jasmine [...]
