Black Liberation, Buddhist Liberation: Rima Vesely-Flad

Our experiences in faith communities can be as diverse and layered as the facets of our identities. 

For Rima Vesely-Flad, a visiting fellow at Princeton University, her winding journey to the Theravada Buddhist tradition has also been a path to finding a community where she feels seen and challenged to live with radical compassion. Rima is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation. 

In this conversation, Rima and Simran speak honestly about what it’s like navigating faith communities and practices as people of color and how to grapple with the tension of balancing the self and the collective. 

Resources:

 Buddhism and Black Voices

Check out Simran’s work on his website at simranjeetsingh.org.

Wisdom & Practice is produced in partnership with PRX and the Aspen Institute, with support from the John Templeton Foundation. 

Music by Raj Kanwal Singh.

This episode was produced by associate producer, Serena Chow, producer, Rithu Jagannath and senior producer, Morgan Flannery. Our project manager is Edwin Ochoa, our show is mixed by Tommy Bazarian and the executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.