End Police Violence
Dear Sangha,
Since the beginning of this calendar year 2023, police shootings continue against Black and Brown bodies. We are cracked open from this state violence. It’s hard to breathe. We are tired. The system that maintains misunderstanding, impatience, hatred, and separation which feeds state-sanctioned violence requires a complete overhaul.
What is the role of mindfulness in all this? The Mindfulness Trainings encourage us not to kill, to be generous with our views and actions, to find ways of connecting instead of separating, to find the truth of love and belonging, to cultivate thoughts, words, and action that deepen understanding, and to consume things that water our seeds of understanding and healing. With these Trainings as our foundation, one by one, we contribute to a collective power strong enough to shift the foundation of violence in our country. Our hearts open when we become mindful of our body, feelings, perceptions, mind and consciousness in every moment. This clarity allows us to connect with the pain fueled by this corrupt system of fear and wrong perception leading to racial violence against Keenan Anderson, Oscar Sanchez, and Takar Smith in Los Angeles, Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and Manuel (Manny) Páez Terán in Atlanta.
We call for justice from this system of racial injustice by naming and removing the racism and structural violence inherent in it. And we begin with ourselves through our mindful breath and step. We become peace so that we extend this peace into all the spaces we inhabit. We practice to see more clearly so we can act more fairly. We practice so we can remain calm in the midst of this injustice and see through the lens of compassion. As long as we have breath, we have the opportunity to practice toward justice.
We join hands and hearts with family, friends, and communities of those who recently lost their lives from police violence. We hold those lost to police violence close to us, siblings on this path of liberation. May we remember we are not separate.
In dedication to the work of justice, of an embodied loving that creates collective care,
ARISE Sangha