The following resources have been recommended by community members or other meditation centers. We have separated these resources into three main areas: General Resources on Unraveling Oppression, Resources on Racial Oppression, and Resources on Gendered Oppression. An * indicates that a Common Ground teacher has found this resource quite useful.
General Resources on Unraveling Oppression
Common Ground Resources
- Two of our beloved Dharma teachers, Stacy McClendon and Ayo Yetunde, were featured recently on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast as part of a series marking the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. In their interviews you learn more about Ayo’s genius that helped to birth Buddhist Justice Reporter: The George Floyd Trials as well as Ayo and Stacy’s collaboration and friendship that was the foundation for Stacy’s brave and timely initiation of Common Ground’s Truth and Justice Vigil. Here’s Ayo’s interview: Meditation is Not Just a Solo Endeavor and Stacy’s: How to Be Courageous.
- Listen to Shelly Graf’s interview: White People, Drop the Shame and Get Curious
- Read the letter from our leaders responding to the murder of George Floyd. (Summer 2020)
- A video of a reading of the love letter CG members wrote in 2020 responding to the suffering of the pandemic and the uprising.
- BIPOC Sanghas for Direct Action is a network of people of color from Twin Cities meditation centers and circles who organized after the murder of George Floyd to participate collectively in sits at protest and memorial sites and to create space and community for healing.
- Guiding Teacher, Mark Nunberg addresses the community in a letter titled “Why Open to Experiences of Difference, Privilege, and Oppression?” (2016)
- A 2017 talk by Mark entitled “Healing the World by Understanding the Mind”.
- Video from Ruth King’s March 2019 talk at Hamline University on Transforming Racism From the Inside Out.
Talks and resources for talks given by teachers at Common Ground:
- Nils Heymann
- Talk: Letting Go
- Guided Meditation
- Kyoko Katayama
- Gabe Keller Flores
- Santikaro
- Community Conversation: The Interdependence of Social and Personal Transformation
- Arinna Weisman
- Community Conversation
- Daylong Workshop for White Practitioners: Awakening Our Hearts – Exploring Authentic Relationships Across Difference
- Notes from workshop and community conversation
- Larry Yang
- Talk: Meeting the moment for what it is
- Community Conversation:Community
- Articles: Sangha is Culture, Trainings of the Mind in Diversity (These trainings were used to guide some of the initial work of Common Ground’s Unraveling Privilege community group)
Resources from our broader mindfulness meditation community
Websites
- East Bay Meditation Center – An intentionally diverse sangha in Oakland, CA. They have collected a lot of resources around diversity and Buddhism.
Articles
- The Work of Diversity: A Deeper Engagement , an Interview with Sebene Selassie, from the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Books (many of which are in our reference library or lending library)
- Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, Sheridan Adams, Mushim Ikeda-Nash, Jeff Kitzes, Margarita Loinaz, Choyin Rangdrol, Jessica Tan, Larry Yang
Videos
Other good resources on unraveling oppression
- * Harvard Implicit Bias Test
- IMM Print – A publication about immigration detention, but not of it. Being caged does not define us, but our voices grow in a society that incarcerates more than any other on Earth. Here, we speak beyond borders and walls, we share our stories in their own right, and we shine light on a system designed to keep us in the dark.”
- The Microaggressions Project – Seeks to provide a visual representation of brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward “social others”.
Resources on Racial Oppression
Common Ground Resources
- Shelly Graf, our Associate Director, was interviewed Summer 2020 by Dan Harris, for the Ten Percent Happier Podcast. The episode was titled: White People, Drop the Shame and Get Curious and was an illuminating conversation about the intersection of Dharma practice and race especially for white people.
- Rebecca Bradshaw
- Ruth King
- Guest Teacher Talk: The Racial Awareness Rubik
- Document: Ruth’s suggested guidelines for racial affinity groups
- Terri Karis
- 3 Week Class: Understanding Our Racial Selves – Racial Moments as Spiritual Practice
- Article: Living in the Spirit: Practicing Mindfulness of Racism
- Workshop: Waking Up to Whiteness: Exploring How to Compassionately and Skillfully Address Race, Part 1 and Part 2
- Patrice Koelsch
Resources from our broader mindfulness meditation community
Talks
- Bonnie Duran, “Dukkha: Focus on People of Color” (54.20min)
- Joseph Goldstein, “Reflections on Race and Diversity” (35.31 min)
- Ruth King, “Exploring Our Belonging and Kinship” (42.13 min)
Websites
- White Awake provides resources and dharma-based support for developing a racial awareness program.
Articles
- “Facing My White Privilege” by Tara Brach
- “Healing the Broken Body of Sangha” by Ruth King
- “How Mindfulness Can Defeat Racial Bias” by Rhonda Magee
- “Why is American Buddhism so White?” from Lion’s Roar
- “Understanding Race and Racism“, written by Sebene Selassie for Insight Meditation Society
Books (many of which are in our library)
- Dharma, Color, and Culture (in Common Ground’s library), Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquin, ed.
- Dreaming Me: An African-American Woman’s Buddhist Journey, Janice Willis
- Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities, Sheridan Adams, Mushim Ikeda-Nash, Jeff Kitzes, Margarita Loinaz, Choyin Rangdrol, Jessica Tan, Larry Yang
- Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun, Faith Adiele
Other good resources on racial oppression
Websites
- ASDIC (Antiracism Study and DIalogue Circle) is an esteemed workshop provider based in St. Paul. Common Ground partnered with them to host a 10-week circle for 30 of our leaders in 2016.
- Colorlines is a daily news site where race matters, featuring award-winning investigative reporting and news analysis.
- Healing Minnesota Stories – Working towards understanding and healing between Native American and Non-Native peoples. Primarily for a white audience, this site contains articles and blogs that try to elevate Native American stories and educational events to contribute to understanding and healing.
- Reading for Racial Justice-University of Minnesota Press is making antiracist books available to read online for free through August 31, 2020.
- Voices for Racial Justice‘s mission is to advance racial, cultural, social, and economic justice in Minnesota through organizer and leadership training, strategic convenings and campaigns, and research and policy tools.
- Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race.
Articles
- “Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution” (pdf)
- “Dear White America,” George Yancy
- The Southern Poverty Law Center’s award-winning publication Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry illustrates how to confront bigotry effectively through what we say. Each of many situations — family, social events, work, in public — is covered in a separate article.
- “White Fragility,” Robin DiAngelo (pdf)
- “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh
- The Case for Reparations, Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
- * A Presumption of Guilt, by Bryan Stevenson
- Why People of Color Need Spaces Without White People, by Kelsey Blackwell
Books (many of which are in our library)
- A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, edited by Sun Yung Shin
- Citizen by Claudia Rankine
- My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menakem
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander. The New Press (January 2010).
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, Joe R. Feagin (this is the book we used in our ASDIC antiracism circle)
- Waking Up White, Debby Irving. Elephant Room Press (January 2014) (PDF may be available online.)
- White Birch, Red Hawthorn, A Memoir, by Nora Murphy
Video & film
- Jane Elliot’s Brown-Eye/Blue-Eye Experiment (preview)
- *13th by Ava DuVernay: Slavery. Jim Crow. Criminalization. Links in a chain of racial inequality, forged by political and economic motives. Available on Netflix. Trailer here.
- The Color of Fear (film)- view clip here
- I Am Not Your Negro
- Maya Angelou on Facing Evil (22 min)
- Race: The Power of an Illusion (California Newsreel) Highly recommended by New York Insight POC Sangha.
- Toni Morrison on the psychic toll of racism for the oppressor (3 min)
- Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North – view trailer here– we have this in CG’s reference library- let info@commongroundmeditation.org know if you’re interested in borrowing it
- *What Would You Do? (Bike thief video)
- White doll, black doll experiment
- Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses ‘White Fragility’
Podcasts
Resources on Gendered Oppression
Resources from our broader mindfulness meditation community
- Developing Trans* Competence, A short guide to improving transgender experiences at meditation and retreat centers
- * I Will Not Pass Away Until…Reinstating the Buddha’s Vision of the Fourfold Sangha, a presentation by Mindy Zlotnick on the history of female ordination in the Buddhist monastic tradition.
- transbuddhists.org – We are a small collective of Buddhist practitioners from different traditions who seek to address systemic exclusion of transgender and gender nonconforming people from Buddhist spaces.
Articles
- 160+ Examples of Male Privilege in All Areas of Life, by
- Building better men: how we can begin to redefine masculinity, Adapted from “Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All”, by Jaclyn Friedman
- *Do you go by he/him, she/her or they, ze, hir? Pronouns are evolving, by Kim Ode, April 27, 2016, StarTribune
- Gender and Sexual Orientation Terminology, Think Again Training and Consultation
- I Have a Daughter And When I’m Most Honest With Myself I’ve Been Too Much Like Trump, by Ryan Williams Virden
- I Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore. On female rage., By Leslie Jamison
- Seven questions about transgender issues you were afraid to ask by Soraya Nadia McDonald (The Washington Post, February 13, 2014)
- The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, by Audre Lorde
- The Reckoning: Teaching About the #MeToo Moment and Sexual Harassment With Resources From The New York Times, By Natalie Proulx, Christopher Pepper and Katherine Schulten
- We need to talk about sexual assault in marriage, Anonymous
- #MeToo and the Taboo Topic of Nature, by Andrew Sullivan
- Yes, You Can Be a Man or a Woman and Still Be Non-Binary, by Riley J. Dennis
Video/Audio & Film
- The Hunting Ground (on Netflix)
- Testosterone, This American Life podcast
- Being an Ally to Trans, Intersex and Two Spirit People, Youtube Video (12 min)
- Guys, We Have A Problem: How American Masculinity Creates Lonely Men, A Hidden Brain podcast – we look at what happens when half the population gets the message that needing others is a sign of weakness and that being vulnerable is unmanly.
