Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher and lived as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, and is now based in New York. She provides individual spiritual mentoring and leads retreats internationally, offering mindfulness programs for educators, parents and youth in schools, in addition to activists, people of color, artists and families. She mentors with the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, was lead teacher for Mindful Schools’ year long training for educators, teaches teens and adults with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, and is a guiding teacher for One Earth Sangha. She edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children and has been published in numerous other books and magazines. She explores the interweaving of art, play, ecology and embodied mindfulness practice and is an InterPlay leader. Read her recent article, In Times of Crisis Call Upon the Strength of Peace, published in Lion’s Roar magazine.
Offered on the Strength to Love retreat over the MLK holiday weekend at IMS, we explore how we can each give rise to bodhicitta, the mind of awakening and love, and support the realization of justice: the expression of love in public. Kaira Jewel first shares about the personal impact of Dr. King on her life, introducing her father, Al Lingo, who briefly offers a few stories of his time in the Civil Rights Movement working directly with Dr. King. She then explores the friendship between Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. King and their common effort to build the Beloved Community. We then look at the importance of cultivating our hearts and minds to be able to support justice in the world, and also how caring for ourselves is caring for others and vice versa. We look at how important it is to connect with our ultimate concern, because this provides an inexhaustible source of energy and confidence. We end with Dr. King's words condemning the war in Vietnam and the damaging effect of militarism on our collective health, and our current bloated military budget.
This evening's Metta chanting starts with an invitation to the Devas, followed by the Karaniya Metta Sutta in Pali and English, and the Metta practice chant.
