Working for Freedom on All Fronts: The Radical Dharma Framework for Liberation Part 7

Dropping into the truth of our own experience of the world as it is, this daylong with the authors of Radical Dharma: Talking Race Love & Liberation, Dr. Jasmine Syedullah, Lama Rod Owens, and Rev. angel Kyodo williams invites participants into a step-by-step integrated cumulative contemplative approach to collective embodied liberation, The Radical Dharma Framework for Liberation (lovingly called the RD5), a five-pillar strategy for social justice movement.

Being fully present to what the world needs now and leaning into relationship with our highest selves, each other, the earth, with ancestors, and all the teacher preacher spirit angel guides we can call on for guidance through the uncertainty of this moment, we all sense that how we shape the future matters, not just for us, but for future generations. In preparation for election season, this special day-long program is designed to move conversation about our collective futures beyond partisan debate so that no matter who wins we can more readily move towards a collective conversation about race and how/why/and to what end we all have skin in the game of transforming the realities of racism now – one vote, one conversation, one community at a time. 

Jasmine Syedullah is a black feminist political theorist of abolition. She holds the first Assistant Professor line in Vassar College’s Africana Studies Program, celebrating its 51st anniversary this year. Her current research centers the fugitive writings of formerly enslaved mother Harriet Jacobs’s and her abolitionist vision of freedom. Before joining the faculty at Vassar, Syedullah taught at the University of San Francisco and the University of California Santa Cruz where she completed her PhD in Politics with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness. Jasmine is a core member of the Radical Dharma Movement Project bringing embodied practices of liberation to spaces of social justice, community organizing, and institutional change.

Rev. angel Kyodo williams also is speaking at Stanford on Oct. 1.  Register here. She is called “the most intriguing African-American Buddhist” by Library Journal, angel Kyodo williams was made for these times. She has been bridging the worlds of transformation and justice since her critically acclaimed book, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace was hailed as “an act of love” by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, and “a classic” by Buddhist pioneer Jack Kornfield.

Lama Rod Owens  was officially recognized by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism after receiving his teaching authorization from his teacher the Venerable Lama Norlha Rinpoche when he completed the 3-year silent retreat program at Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery. During this retreat, he dealt with years of past pain and trauma and found forgiveness and compassion for himself, which he views as a critical step before truly being able to help others.