Ubuntu, Inner Work and Outer Justice on World Meditation Day
May is Mindfulness Month for many, with May 21st or May 31st being recognized by different sources as World Meditation Day.
Some activists have recognized that mindfulness and meditation practices without the deep Earth honoring of agaya and profound interconnection of ubuntu can seem self-serving. Sometimes it feels like people are using the refuge of these practices as a retreat from the work the world urgently needs us to do. In the Novasutras community, we seek instead to use the tools of mindfulness and meditation practices to make our actions more aware, more compassionate, and more just, so that we can be ever-more effective agents for agaya and ubuntu in the world.
In this video, Rhonda Magee explains how mindfulness and meditation practices can work in service to ubuntu, particularly in service to those who are most harmed by systemic injustices like racism, sexism, and hetero-normativity.
The practice of embodied mindfulness–paying attention to our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in an open, nonjudgmental way–increases our emotional resilience, helps us to recognize our unconscious bias, and gives us the space to become less reactive and to choose how we respond to injustice.
For victims of injustice, embodied mindfulness calms our fears and helps us to exercise self-compassion…
It is only by healing from injustices and dissolving our personal barriers to connection that we develop the ability to view others with compassion and to live in community with people of vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints.
Rhonda Magee, about her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness
