Conversations on Compassion

This brief grounding, centering practice can be used anytime to slow down, be present, and reset. Shared as an offering for our Meditation Mondays community, and all others who may find it beneficial!

Musician EastForest shares the inspiration, process and magic of working with Ram Dass in the last year of his life to set his inimitable teaching style, full of humor, wisdom and grace, to music; a modern way to share Ram Dass' wisdom with a new generation. The result being the EastForest X RamDass project. Samples from this beautiful collaboration are woven through this conversation, courtesy of EastForest.

Trauma therapist and author of 'My Grandmother's Hands' talks honestly and directly about the historical and current traumatic impacts of racism in the U.S., and the necessity for us all to recognize this trauma, metabolize it, work through it, and grow up out of it. Only in this way will we at last heal our bodies, our families, and the social body of our nation.

The process differs for African-American, European American, and police bodies. But all of us need to heal our racialized trauma—and, with the right guidance, all of us can.

In this conversation, we are talking about LOVE. Love in its many forms, and in particular, through the lens of the beauty of Islamic Mysticism, and the words of Rumi, Hafez, and the Q'uran. Omid Safi is Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University specializing in contemporary Islamic thought and spirituality. He is a leading Muslim public intellectual who is committed to the intersection of spirituality and social justice. He has been invited by the family of Dr. King to speak at Ebenezer Church on the relevance of Dr. King for today’s America. His most recent book is Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (published by Yale). Omid often appears as an expert on Islam in the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC, BBC, CNN and other outlets . He is a recent columnist for On Being, and now has a podcast at Be Here Now.

What happens when 3 college students develop a meditation and yoga practice, and inspired by their teacher, use it to change the world after graduation? The answer is the Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, MD. In this conversation, co-founder Andy Gonzalez shares his inspiration, the key elements of bringing mindfulness in schools effectively, and how he, Atman Smith and Ali Smith decided in 2001 to dedicate their lives to healing their community and the larger world in service to their teacher. Pure joy and inspiration - enjoy!

Tiffany Cruikshank is an internationally celebrated yoga teacher, author, acupuncturist, and founder of YogaMedicine, an advanced training program in yoga therapy and anatomy for yoga teachers. She's also a former student of the U. of Arizona. In this conversation, we talk about her early yoga and meditation practice in college, her early career training with Frank Lipman, MD, her time at Nike HQ as the company's yoga instructor and acupuncturist, and her latest endeavor, YogaMedicine. Tiffany shares what sustains her as a healer, and opens up about how yoga became a calling to help bring healing and compassion to communities.

Lama Rod Owens is known for his deep wisdom and willingness to have conversations about things that we're scared to talk about: race, gender, sexuality, identity, and his ability to hold these conversations with love. In this conversation, we get clear about the difference between diversity and inclusivity, what it means to create inclusive spaces of practice, the responsibility we have now as 'ancestors-in-training', and much more. Lama Rod is co-author of the book 'Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation'.

Many of us are seeking community, places to be accepted for who we are, and safe places to explore and express what we're experiencing and feeling in these times, in a fully conscious way. In this conversation, we explore the practice of mindful dance/movement and its power to uncover feelings of deep joy, release feelings of stuck suffering, and fully experience the beauty of human embodiment.

How do we leverage the contemplative community into justice and liberation for all, not just the pursuit of liberation for ourselves individually? In this conversation, we explore issues around uncomfortable topics - race, systems of white dominance and our collective embedded-ness in these systems. We also explore how contemplative practices must look at the suffering created by these systems in order to change them, and how Courage of Care Coalition is engaged in leading workshops, intensives and retreats to help bring us to these difficult and necessary conversations, and the sustained engaged practices of care.

In this conversation, we talk about the beginnings of meditation research in the United States, Al’s courage and pioneering role in leading meditation research in the southwest at the University of Arizona long before it was mainstream, and what we’ve learned about meditation through research so far. We also explore Al’s path of practice in the Zen Buddhist tradition, the role of technology and apps to make meditation accessible, and his ‘second post-academic career’ as a meditation teacher in the Zen tradition.