Awareness is
Revolutionary

 

Curiosity.
Compassion.
Courage.

Awareness is Revolutionary (AIR) is an international collective of Buddhist friends committed to drawing upon the wellspring of the Buddhadharma to inspire and guide us in appropriate and effective responses to a wide range of interlocking forms of social suffering.

Our understanding of social suffering includes but is not limited to: racism, classism, casteism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia, ableism and more. Our work involves:

  • Accelerating our sensitivity to and understanding of these topics — both in their particularities and in their interconnections — and apprehending them from a Dharmic perspective.

  • Working collaboratively to manifest sanghas that deliberately foster conditions for ever greater inclusion and belonging.

  • Learning together in solidarity to interrupt and heal from the karmic momentum of social oppressions of all kinds, in service of embodied awakening.

  • Engaging in compassionate and skillful action to address social forms of suffering within our hearts, minds, relationships and within the communities we are part of.

Our primary context is the Triratna Buddhist Community, in which we are all rooted in various geographic locations. Although we draw from a robust collective experience of many years, this particular project only started in 2020. It is still very nascent and emergent. Together, we are putting one foot in front of the other, testing different types of tools and programming and dreaming new possibilities into life.

You can find out more about us here.

Inspirations

As a network of friends within the Triratna Buddhist Community, we draw particular inspiration from Urguyen Sangharakshita and from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. These remarkable ancestors, embedded in very particular social and cultural contexts, were themselves inspired by a broad range of Buddhist teachings and traditions in their respective re-articulations of the Dharma.

In our explorations of appropriate responses to social forms of suffering, we are also informed by the lived experience of many teachers and practitioners of the Triratna Buddhist community. This includes learning from our history and what it takes to create and sustain healthy and safer sanghas.

And of course, the historical Buddha and his radically inclusive sangha are guiding lights, as well as a number of other Buddhist figures who throughout history have challenged social hierarchies and oppressions in their time and context.

Practices

We are most curious about what actually works to foster greater diversity and belonging in Buddhist sanghas. What actually makes them a place of refuge— or not? For whom, and how? What practices, individual and collective, make a difference?

This is both an “inside” and an “outside” job, as we explore the co-arising of our social conditioning and our conditioned world. The work that produces actual results is often messy, nuanced and paradoxical — it is not a tidy set of coherent ideas that live only in books or essays. We privilege practice over doctrine.

We learn from each other across our global network, building a human repository of case studies. One size does not fit all! We are also learning from other Buddhist sanghas and communities of faith who have traveled on this journey. We cultivate cultural humility as an antidote to self-certitude and dogma.

Grounding in the Dharma

We try to engage issues of social oppression and othering in our world through a Dharmic lens. This is by no means “the” Dharmic lens. Our understanding is by nature incomplete and provisional, always evolving. We have no claims to have “the right approach” or the best way of thinking about the very painful and very complex issues of social oppression and othering in our world.

We ground ourselves in the system of practice of Triratna, and the teachings that undergird it. We have found certain frameworks in our tradition to be particularly helpful in our work, such as the Five Buddha Mandala, as well as teachings on conditionality, spiritual friendship, creativity and devotion.

“Awareness is revolutionary” is a much-loved aphorism of Sangharakshita. It aptly expressed what we have experienced in our own lives.

Capacity Building

We cultivate a community of solidarity and support for those on the front lines of Buddhist-informed justice and equality/equity work. This includes, for example, facilitators of racial affinity groups, trainers on issues of gender and sexuality, social and climate justice organizers, and more.

This work is slow and can be hard-going at times. We cultivate joy and connection as antidotes to exhaustion and deep sorrow. We support each other in the work of (un)learning, healing and modeling the world we seek to bring into existence.

How we do things matter, not just what we do.

“Awareness is revolutionary.”
- Urgyen Sangharakshita