Monthly Archives: June 2020

Love and Rage: Lama Rod Owen’s Recent Book

Presented by Nalanda Institute with an excerpt by Lama Rod Owens

Lama-Rod-Owens-Love-and-Rage

Lama Rod Owens, dharma teacher, meditation and mindfulness instructor (and recent visiting faculty in our Contemplative Psychotherapy Program!) explores with grace and candor the power and uses of anger. In his just-released book, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger he shares his personal journey with rage—how, at a young age, he internalized the belief that his anger was dangerous.

In a recent press release, Lama Rod has shared an adapted excerpt entitled “Blackness and Anger” from his book which we would like to share with you. Read on….

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No permanezcas inactivo; pronúnciate: Responsabilidad espiritual tras el asesinato de George Floyd

por Joe Loizzo

Publicado originalmente en inglés el 4 de junio de 2020.

Cada año a medida que se acerca el verano me siento a escribir algo celebratorio para las graduaciones de nuestros alumnos del programa de psicoterapia contemplativa y otros programas. Pero después de ver el asesinato desgarrador de George Floyd en vídeo, celebrar se siente imposible.

Mientras el coronavirus devasta los EE. UU., impactando desproporcionadamente a nuestras comunidades negras, mulatas e indígenas y revelando disparidades inaceptables en el ámbito de la salud y desigualdades financieras que exponen el racismo estructural de nuestra nación, vemos reafirmarse a la cultura de la supremacía blanca con los asesinatos de Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, George Floyd y los tuits incendiarios de nuestro presidente.

Pero tal como nuestros líderes negros, mulatos e indígenas nos han enseñado, esta embestida aplastante no es nada nuevo. Observar cómo un policía blanco aparentemente corriente apaga fríamente la vida de George Floyd es ser testigo de la recreación de siglos de opresión a sangre fría contra los negros e indígenas de esta tierra, la repetición de un trauma colectivo tan sádico y psicópata como cualquier genocidio de la historia humana.

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Don’t Just Sit There, Take a Stand: Spiritual Accountability in the Wake of George Floyd’s Murder

by Joe Loizzo

Usually, as summer nears, I would be sitting down to write something to celebrate our recent graduates in our Contemplative Psychotherapy and other programs. But it feels impossible to celebrate anything after watching the gut-wrenching murder of George Floyd on videotape.

As the coronavirus ravages the U.S., disproportionally impacting our black, brown and indigenous communities and revealing the unconscionable health disparities and financial inequities that expose our nation’s structural racism, we see the culture of white supremacy doubling down in the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, George Floyd and in the incendiary tweets of our president.

But as our black, brown, and indigenous leaders have taught us, this crushing onslaught is anything but new. Watching George Floyd’s life be coldly snuffed out by a seemingly average white policeman is witnessing the reenactment of centuries of cold-blooded oppression against the black and indigenous people of this land, the repetition of a collective trauma as sadistic and psychopathic as any genocide in human history.

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