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Transforming Powerlessness

Let’s Bring Healing and Justice to a Suffering World

Dharma teacher John Bell, and Program Manager of Beloved Community Circles, Coryna Ogunseitan, were our featured guests for the EcoDharma Exploration on September 22, 2024. Please find the recording below and welcome your support for this program.

Ant Bridge Crossing
Igor Chuxlancev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What would we do for the healing of the world if we were not afraid? How are feelings of powerlessness hindering our climate and racial justice work? What helps us feel our power to make a difference?

Feelings of powerlessness are a pervasive and often unnamed obstacle to organizing to create the world we wish to live in. Based on the Beloved Community Circles model, this EcoDharma Exploration co-presented by John Bell and Coryna Ogunseitan offered this program to

  • Investigate ways we learn to feel powerless
  • Introduce practices to help heal those feelings
  • Explore an emerging collective action network to better fulfill our aspiration to bring healing and justice to a suffering world.

We welcome your contributions to support this donation-based program, the featured guest, and One Earth Sangha. We can’t do this without you!

 

Resources

 

Support This Program

Support John Bell and Coryna Ogunseitan: Your generosity of dana or donations is gladly accepted as a contribution to the Beloved Community Circles:

  • Checks can be sent to Beloved Community Circles, 366 Marsh St, Belmont, MA 02478
  • Online donations can be made through the website, Beloved Community Circles

 

 

 

John Bell

John Bell, True Wonderful Wisdom, (pronouns he/him) is a Plum Village Buddhist Dharma teacher who lives near Boston, MA, USA. He is a founding staff member and former vice president of YouthBuild USA, an international non-profit that provides learning, earning, and leadership opportunities to young people from low-income backgrounds. He is an author, lifelong social justice activist, international trainer facilitator, father and grandfather. He is the author of YouthBuild’s North Star, and Unbroken Wholeness: Six Pathways to the Beloved Community: Integrating Social Justice, Emotional Healing, and Spiritual Practice.

Coryna Ogunseitan

Coryna Ogunseitan (they/them and she/her) is the program manager of Beloved Community Circles, where she focuses on developing and implementing programming to support the enormously diverse group of people who comprise new and existing Circles. Coryna is also a PhD researcher in the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology, where their research focuses on the impacts of climate change on mental health and how climate change reshapes affective relationships with the natural world.

More EcoDharma Explorations

Past

A Relational Approach to Building Solidarity

What can happen when we avail ourselves to the full implications of interdependence? How can we clear the way for this challenging and yet world-shaping insight?

Past

Cultivating a Steady and Loving Presence as We Approach the US Election

One Earth Sangha's Guiding Teachers, Adam Lobel, along with our director, Kristin Barker, led a gathering to cultivate the powerful qualities that can see us through even the most challenging times.

Past

Fear and Anger as Holy Messengers

In the face of disruption and uncertainty, fear and anger often arise as habitual and instinctive reactions. Zac Ispa-Landa led this gathering on August 25 to explore how we might honor and harness these powerful emotions as we show up as agents of change.