Immediate, illuminating, and hopeful: this is the key set of talks
given by leading Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, PhD, on breaking
America's cycle of racial trauma.
I am a drop in the ocean, but I'm also the ocean. I'm a drop in America,
but I'm also America. Every pain, every confusion, every good and every
bad and ugly of America is in me. And as I transform myself and heal and
take care of myself, I'm very conscious that I'm healing and
transforming and taking care of America. I say this for American cynics,
but this is also true globally. It's for real. So says Zen Buddhist
teacher Dr. Larry Ward.
Shot at by the police as an 11-year-old child for playing baseball in
the wrong spot, as an adult, Larry Ward experienced the trauma of having
his home firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France, the
home in exile of his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher
Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Ward found a way to heal. In these short reflective
essays, he offers his insights on the effects of racial constructs and
answers the question: how do we free ourselves from our repeated cycles
of anger, denial, bitterness, pain, fear, violence? Larry Ward looks at
the causes and conditions that have led us to our current state and
finds, hidden in the crisis, a profound opportunity to reinvent what it
means to be a human being. This is an invitation to transform America's
racial karma.
