Mindfulness And Race

Mindfulness embraces all experience, including the experience of implicit bias. Meditation can awaken us both to the deep connection between us and to the dominant/subordinate social and cultural structures that shape our beliefs. Mindfulness allows us to wake up to all aspects of life, hold them with care, and set our intentions with wisdom.

Transcript

And we can just as always start with a meditation and for the meditation I just encourage you to check your posture.

You can relax down your shoulders,

Maybe move your head from side to side a little bit.

You can let your head settle in a way that's fully aligned with your spine.

You're sitting tall and straight but relaxed and you can allow your eyes to close if you feel comfortable doing so.

Taking a moment initially just to sense into your body,

Just arriving fully right here.

Patching into all of the sensations in the body,

Taking a few full deep breaths,

Inhaling deeply,

Filling the lungs on the in-breath,

Relaxing,

Releasing on the out-breath.

And allowing the breath now just to be easy and flow naturally,

Conscious of the gentle rhythm of the breath,

The inflow and outflow.

You can sense the stability and the groundedness of your body.

Feel the feet planted on the floor and the weight there connecting down to the floor and through the floor down to the ground,

Touching the earth.

You might call to mind a teacher or someone you admire,

Someone who guides you,

Could be an elder,

Grandparents,

Even a religious figure,

Or simply just a dear friend,

And feel yourself sitting back to back with that person,

Leaning on one another,

Breathing in unison,

Gentle inflow and outflow of the breath together,

Feeling the kindness,

The acceptance,

The comfort of that person,

The understanding,

The care for you,

Feeling all of that as it moves through your body,

Helping to calm you with each gentle breath.

Now you can thank that companion and leave them for now and gently come back.

Open your eyes when you're ready.

Last time we talked about compassion and explored a little bit this marvelous quality where we can feel the suffering of another person in this strange,

Marvelous capacity.

I mentioned that neuroscientists are investigating these mirror neurons that fire the same areas of your brain where you're suffering something when you actually just see another person suffering,

Kind of duplicates or mirrors that experience in your own brain,

And it pointed to some kind of profound way that we are all connected.

Of course it's a theme that reoccurs over and over again and in religious and non-religious circles.

The Industrial Workers of the World at the turn of the prior century,

One of the large union organizing groups,

Had this motto of an injury to one is an injury to all.

Or I also think of the Christian sense of every person being a part of the body of Christ,

Christians call it,

And the New Testament saying that if one part of the body suffers then all parts of the body suffer at the same time.

Or this from Albert Einstein,

We are part of the whole which we call the universe but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate.

So into this reality comes the human mind and which is constantly making distinctions.

You can think of you know what's on your driver's license to describe you,

Your height and your sex and your race and your hair color,

And if we are looking to describe another person usually those are the first things we talk about.

And then too from an early age we become aware of this dynamic of there being dominant groups and subordinate groups and sometimes it's just numerically that's the fact but really more often those are associated with value judgments being superior,

Inferior,

Based on this dominance or subordinates.

And I recall the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v.

Board of Education in 1954 the NAACP lawyers submitted as evidence in the case that would eventually overturn the separate but equal doctrine for schools a study by Dr.

Kenneth Clark which took basically children ages three to seven and had set in front of the dolls,

Identical dolls except for race,

And the the children were asked these questions first of all identify like which is the black doll which is the white doll and then to be asks well which which which would you prefer to be these were all black children and they inevitably picked the white doll and they were asked which is the which is the bad doll and which is the good doll and they would pick the black doll as the bad doll.

And if you haven't done it already I really encourage you to go online and try the the Harvard implicit bias test I've done it myself it's free it's easy well that will probably so I can send some links out after this so you see it and to to tell you the secret of the test where you take it it's you there you flat they flash picture of distinctly white or distinctly black faces on the screen and then you have a key that you press so happens quickly for good or bad and then they switch it up for you first you're supposed to associate the black face with the good and the white face with the bad and but then they reverse it and you can actually my experience is you can actually feel within your brain some of the dissonance or some of the rubbing you know as you try to do this and then they give you scores and you know I mean the results from the tests are across all groups you know they pick up this bias even the progressive white liberals all all groups you know or I would suggest this very simple exercise you have to close your eyes or anything but just for a moment you can imagine in your mind who comes to my when I just mentioned these different people so I'm just gonna I'll read off some different people you can just sort of see what picture comes to your mind right a judge someone in the kitchen in the evening preparing a meal a yoga teacher a prisoner you know Krishna Murti said that you think you are thinking your thoughts but you are not you are thinking the cultures thoughts and I think mindfulness for us offers this ability to to to take this turn this fundamental shift which is you start to develop a simple awareness of what the mind is thinking that you're not lost in the thought that you actually create a space in which you can wake up from the thought and this awareness then becomes this space in which you can hold the thoughts and make the separation that you are not your thoughts and for I think for implicit bias this is just so critical that you start to move that line that divides what's conscious and what's unconscious in your mind you start to move that line as Joseph Goldstein said if you want to understand the mind sit down and observe your mind and then with that you can start to break this identification with what the mind thinks and this you know this sounds so easy that sounds so so simple but thoughts come very fast and they're very triggering for all of us and so it really is mindfulness I think in all these situations is is really a practice that you slowly learn to move that default to the mindfulness to the spaciousness the recognition of what the mind is thinking and what's going on and you just become develop the sensitivity to those to that to that negative thinking the bias the reactivity that we all have and for me it's it's sort of developing like this early warning system I mean I still I still fall into it you know you tumble into whatever it is but at least for me as the practice develops it's a question of sort of catching it a little earlier on like seeing it coming and almost feeling it in a visceral way somatic experience of like if you feel it arising and then you're much much more able than to to then realize what's happening and respond in a much wiser way so you often say that mindfulness has these two wings and one is the wing of seeing and his insight into what's really happening and then the second is equally important which is attending to what happens and attending with with kindness and compassion this sense that the the space that opens can really hold whatever it is you know it and it could be trauma it could be pain it could be just a sense of helplessness from the dominant group of the legacy of this bias or the pain that's been caused the separation like to open the heart really the sargadatta has this quote that is the mind creates the abyss the heart crosses it and from all the neuroscience we know that with every thought we cut another groove in that brain of ours and then we can begin at any point to cut different grooves to make different pathways neural pathways if we set our intention to do so so I'm going to pause and turn to Kirsten for her reflections and I may be back at the end for another meditation Thank You Tim good afternoon everyone so I'll just start by telling you that my journey to meditation had nothing to do with race and that many people come to meditation because they're going through a challenging time in their life they have stress they're they're trying they're looking for tools to help them show up in a different way to have more feel like they have more agency over how they respond and so that was really my path also and then when the racial reckoning happened in 2020 I was beyond disappointed with the reaction of the meditation practice that I was part of in Washington DC in terms of it's a very white community and I couldn't understand why the organization wasn't imploring people to use the tools of meditation as a tool for social justice that we all know that talking about race thinking about race engaging around race triggers all kinds of emotions and it doesn't matter what race you are but you know shame blame anger guilt all of those things are attendant to a discussion about race and that is just the way that it is there's nothing you know the history in this country is such that it is that you can't sugarcoat it there's no way to sweeten it up there's no way to you know it's it's sort of like the only way through is through and if we have this amazing tool that people use for every other difficult thing why why are you not encouraging people to use it on this which you know if we keep on going away we are we're not going to have change you know we're just not in this country we're not going to change and the only way to have change is people are going to have to engage they are going to have to have discussions they're going to have to think they're going to reflect they're gonna have to learn and so part of what I am encouraging people to do is to normalize this you know to normalize having discussions of our own race if you want to truly be anti would try to be anti-racist to embody it and incorporate it into your life you've got to normalize it and it's similar I feel like when I first started meditating I it was sort of like and maybe people can relate to this it was sort of like I could use meditation when I was meditating you know I could use mindfulness when I was meditating but but then like out in my rest of my life I wasn't using it and then suddenly it was like I kind of got it like I was like oh my gosh this you guys I've been uses all the time you know like this applies all the time why am I not using it all the time and so it's sort of like that it's like I want people to welcome you know anti-racism or whatever you want to call it it's it's an everyday thing it's not it's not today because I'm going to a training it's not right now because I'm reading this book it's it's a way of being it's an ideology it's a way you frame you know the world you live in and and and you know so encouraging people to normalize it to bring that to their everyday and Tim talked about you know bias and the truth is that you know Americans have so just to forewarn you so you don't freak out when you do your your test Americans have 77% of Americans have implicit anti black pro white bias and percentage for explicit bias is 31% anti black pro white bias and as Tim mentioned it's not just white look you know it's everybody it's black people have internalized racism we've all been part of this culture in the system that tells us that black is everything negative and white is everything good and that's just the truth um so knowing that going in and and I'll tell you that I learned that statistic because of a study that was done about teachers some researchers wanted to know oh maybe teachers in America are different and no they're not the the article is like teachers are human too and basically we all everybody falls into this category so it's important just to know that so that you don't freak out when you when you see it but also remembering that you can use meditation and mindfulness to disrupt that bias the point is that not like identifying you have it to be like oh my gosh I'm a terrible person no it's so you can be aware of it and then you know as as you mentioned you know studying your mind so when you notice I had that thought you notice I had that thought and then you can decide um no I'm not gonna clutch my purse I'm using an example you know I'm not gonna you know my neighbor asked me if I was an Amazon delivery person I have lived in this block for 20 almost 20 years okay and let me just tell you I didn't have an Amazon truck with me in case you're wondering and I was not wearing an Amazon shirt um but you know things like that to really just check yourself think you know think about it um and I also wanted to mention to you know also there's there are there are tons of studies that show you know we have this in-group bias and so just kind of knowing that if that helps you wrestle with whatever your results are that we're kind of hardwired that way and so that's why it's just important for us to know recognize and try to change going forward and then the last thing I just wanted to point out is Tim because Tim brought up the Brown versus Board of Education decision and one thing that's that's people don't recognize or talk about much it's because it was not part of the decision is that that study also reported on the effects on white children and it's always a focus on the negative outcome for black children and the the study was looking at what are the effects on white children growing up in a segregated society and it was lack of empathy it's a false sense of their of themselves in the world um you know so it's not these issues that we're talking about you're not just going out to try to save black people or other people of color this is we're all connected which brings back to what Tim started with in the beginning we all are interconnected and you can't have putting down one group what happens to the people who are not the people who are being put down you know why is it if if I'm in the bottom group and I could have internalized racism what do you think the people on the other side are getting there's a there's a converse so um you know I just think that thank you for being here it's black history month but you know black history is American history and I would just encourage people to continue learning and to really try to bring these tools you know to bear when you have a racial encounter incident and and just you know study it and practice and and I think the whole thing with meditation what I'm saying also anti-racism is a practice all of this is a practice it takes it takes work we have to work at it all the time and to give ourself grace to know we're not gonna get it right every time but you know all we can do is is try so thank you thank you so much Kristen just take a moment go back inside for a minute just gently feel back into your breath one more time you might breathe in some of the suffering that you might be aware of or the injury or the separation and and then breathe out the tenderness the care the protection I'll breathe in a little bit of the isolation or the loneliness and and breathe out the compassion the kindness connectedness of us all just staying connected with your body and the breath opening more and more to what's here resting in that fast space that holds everything that heart space gently coming back opening the eyes when you feel comfortable a debt of gratitude to all of you for for being part of this and being with us today and to Kirsten and look forward to seeing you for the next round and enjoy this day it's beautiful day we've been given all right thanks all