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Enriching Our Lives with African American Contemplativ...
My lifelong aspiration–and the goal of my new book, Joyfully Just: Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living–is to support people from all spiritual traditions and cultural backgrounds in using meditative practices to reclaim joy. Our spirits, bodies, minds, and hearts need to be buoyant to navigate the unceasing waves of grief, fear, doubt, prejudice, and devaluation that we experience internally, interpersonally, and communally. Joyfully Just is about tapping into that buoyancy, that levity, with diverse meditative practices.
In particular, Joyfully Just highlights practices, teachings, and insights from Buddhism and Black contemplative traditions. Black contemplative traditions include practices that bring forth insight and joy. You may have heard the expression “Black joy” and wondered, What is that, exactly? Black joy is self-transcendence. It is embodied resistance to shame, despair, and anything else that would limit our capacity to be just towards ourselves and those around us. It is the insistence on and expression of internal freedom despite external restrictions. Black joy is resilient creativity that creatively grows more resilience.
The Black wisdom traditions I explore in Joyfully Just include those shared through music such as Gospel, Blues, Rock, Jazz, R&B, and Hip-Hop; language and dialect practices; and dance and communicative kinesic (movement and gesture) practices. The musical genres developed by Black Americans are universally embraced because they help all people engage creatively with the joys and pains of life. As such, Black music is often a contemplative practice that can ground us in empowered well-being, even amidst our worst pain. As we sing our Blues, we invigorate our lives with joy. That joy creates spaciousness around our suffering so that we can develop insight into its meaning and value. Take a moment now and see if you can think of one song from any African American musical genre that deepens your insight, helps you navigate your suffering, or expands your joy. Write it down so that you remember that it is but one example of how listening to Black music is a contemplative practice that enriches your life.
Black contemplative practices are often misunderstood—especially when they are appropriated. Sometimes they are underestimated as simply entertainment or frivolity. In Joyfully Just, I offer practices to shed light on how much insight and guidance for wise, courageous living we can–and do–receive from Black cultural traditions.
I explore Buddhism and Black wisdom together because although the spiritual and religious traditions of Black people are diverse, as are Buddhist lineages, many secular Black wisdom traditions and overarching Buddhist principles share common insights. For example, Black musical traditions illustrate the unity of suffering and joy and the possibility for self-transcendence and enlightenment in any circumstance. The creative, lively resilience of Black life shows us, in so many ways, what enlightenment looks like in daily living.
Many African cultures, including African American culture, have rituals and practices that are uniquely contemplative and seamlessly integrated into everyday life. African dance is one example of this. African dancing is listening to the body, trusting the body to tell its story. African dance teacher Wyoma speaks of it as praying with the body.
How do you avoid cultural appropriation of Black contemplative practices? It’s simple, but not easy. When you engage with Black music, dialect, dance, or other cultural practices, reiteratively reflect on how you demonstrate or could begin to demonstrate love for and solidarity with Black people.
I invite you to ask yourself:
- How is solidarity with and love for Black people already a part of my inner dialogue? Of my relationships? Of how I experience the world with joy?
- How can I strengthen my connections with Black people and Black wisdom practices?
With these as lifelong inquiries, we gain insight into how Black contemplative practices enrich our lives, actualize our interdependence, and deepen our sense of connection with ourselves and the world.
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Kamilah Majied
Dr. Kamilah Majied is a mental health therapist, clinical educator, researcher, and consultant on advancing equity and inclusion using meditative practices. Drawing from her decades of contemplative practice and leadership, Dr. Majied engages people in experiencing wonder, humor, and insight through transforming oppressive patterns and deepening relationships toward ever-improving individual, familial, organizational, and communal wellness. To find out more visit kamilahmajied.com.
Ep 4: There Is No Future if We Go Numb
We recorded this conversation just after news broke of the Biden administration’s approval of the controversial Willow Project, opening up millions of wilderness acres in Alaska to new fossil fuel drilling. Jess captured in real time how Joanna processes the fresh outrage and sorrow of this insult to the planet from the very culpable powers that be. It’s a master class in being present with these feelings—feelings that can give rise to determination, courage, and recommitment to our shared purpose.
In this episode:
- As the news of the Willow Project breaks, Joanna flows through outrage and sorrow
- The second step on the spiral: what does it mean to honor our pain, and how do we do it?
- Bonus Exercise: Breathing Through
We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.
Rupert Spira: The Quiet Joy of Being
What is the treasure that we all seek? What is it that we are looking for above all else? Contemporary spiritual teacher and author Rupert Spira believes that it’s the feeling of sufficiency, of ease, of peace—or the realization of our innermost nature as being. In this podcast that is at once expansive and experiential, Tami Simon speaks with Rupert about his book You Are the Happiness You Seek and the insights he has gleaned through a lifetime of spiritual exploration and practice.
Tune in for a liberating conversation covering the practice of pausing or “going back to being”; letting go of resistance and turning toward our unhappiness; bringing a complete “yes” to your current experience; the inquiry, who is the one that’s experiencing?; the pure “I Am”; the original ADD: Awareness Deficit Disorder; the problem with the word “enlightenment”; recognizing the gaps between our thoughts and feelings; why what happens to the body doesn’t happen to our being; the absolute level and the relative level; the practical implications of deepening our recognition of being; love: the felt sense of our shared being; freedom from “the tyranny of ego”; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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Becoming Who You Are Meant to Be
Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, is a Jungian analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. An internationally renowned lecturer and workshop leader, she is author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Close to the Bone, Like a Tree, and more. She is also a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and a past chairperson of the Council of National Affairs of the APA.
In this podcast, Dr. Bolen joins Sounds True founder Tami Simon to reflect on her many years as a writer, teacher, and activist, and how doing our “soul work” becomes the path to self-actualization, connection, and contribution throughout our lives. They also discuss our innate capacity for love and awe; becoming a whole-brain person; speaking up as a key aspect of individuation; gratitude and appreciation; the dandelion effect, or how seeds of beneficial ideas are carried to fertile ground; navigating liminal times; the predicament of “just doing time” with our lives; connecting with loved ones we’ve lost; becoming more familiar with your “dark side of the moon”; the metaphor of the millionth circle; and more.
Making the darkness conscious
Much is being said these days about spiritual awakening, and the causeless joy, clarity, and peace that are inevitable milestones of the inner journey. Not all that much is mentioned, however, about the disappointment of awakening, or of the ways it can break our hearts, cracking us open to the reality of the crucifixion, the resurrection, *and* the transfiguration we are likely to encounter along the way. In the full embrace of life—right inside the yucky, messy, shadowy nether regions of the heart—we are invited to meet the wholeness of what we are, which includes the dark *and* the light, the movement of separation *and* union, and the entirety of what it means to be an embodied human being.
As Carl Jung so poignantly reminds us, we do not become enlightened by “imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” He went on to say that the integral journey of the dark *and* the light is one that is often “disagreeable” and thus would never be popular. I believe Jung is offering very important guidance for us and the voyage of the heart in contemporary times.
The ancient path of love may never conform to our hopes, fears, dreams, and fantasies, for it is emerging in the here and now as an emissary of the unknown itself. Let us rest in the aching truth that one of the primary roles of the beloved is to seed deflation in the field of separation. Yes, awakening may always be a disappointment, from the perspective of egoic organization. In this sense, the journey is eternally hopeless, but it is in the creation of a home for our hopelessness—and allowing it to be illuminated within us—that we are finally able to step into a world beyond our wildest imagination.
As we journey together as fellow travelers, let us find a way to embrace both the joy *and* the heartbreak of spiritual awakening, and bear witness to the wisdom shining out of our immediate experience, whether it appears as sadness, bliss, despair, or great joy. It is true that grace will appear in both sweet *and* fierce forms, but regardless of its particular manifestation, it is still grace, sent from beyond to open us to the radiant fullness of being.
– Matt Licata, from the Preface to the forthcoming, It’s Okay to Be Broken: Embracing the Joy and Heartbreak of Spiritual Awakening.
James Finley: Breathing God
Tami Simon speaks with Jim Finley, a master of the Christian contemplative way and a renowned retreat leader. Jim left home at the age of 18 and studied at the Abbey of Gethsemani with Thomas Merton for six years. He’s a clinical psychologist in Santa Monica, California, and the author of Christian Meditation and the book The Contemplative Heart, as well as the Sounds True audio learning programs Christian Meditation, Thomas Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere, and along with medical intuitive Caroline Myss, the audio program Transforming Trauma. Jim discusses embracing our brokenness and the attitude of nonjudgmental compassion, the value of spontaneous moments of meditative awareness, and false perceptions about the practice of meditation. (56 minutes)
