Read an interview with Dawn Haney on Fat Dharma in Lion's Roar
January comes every year, filled with family and colleagues making resolutions to "eat clean" or "lose 10 pounds of holiday weight." Everywhere we turn – news, email, conversation, billboards – everything is filled with messaging about weight loss fueled by loud and aggressive rejection of fat bodies.
Tired of feeling berated amidst this self-righteous onslaught of fat shaming? We invite fat people to join us as we create a revolutionary alternate universe, using mindfulness and the dharma to connect with our bodies just as they are.
By welcoming and gathering fat-identified people into community, we hope to create new frameworks for understanding and practicing (fat) liberation. Our intention is no less than to offer a version of the Buddha’s core teachings that is free of anti-fat language and that encourages fat people to cherish our bodies, finding contentment and peace in a fat body, just as it is, in every moment, as it changes and ages. As traditionally presented in Western Buddhism, the teachings often make an example of fat bodies, both implicitly and explicitly making fat meditators feel like our bodies are evidence of moral failure, that we don’t belong. (We’re so done with ”one more scoop of ice cream” as the ubiquitous example of greed and clinging, the central “poison” to be avoided, the root of all suffering.)
We will revisit basic Buddhist concepts – the four noble truths of Buddhism; the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion; the three factors of existence of suffering, identity, and change; and the three refuges of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – dropping any interference from diet culture and drawing instead from the bramhaviharas of kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity for our embodiment, as it is. In this innovative program, we will learn collaboratively, excited and curious about what might emerge from a community of fat practitioners weaving together dharma teachings with intersectional fat liberation wisdom. As dharma practitioners who are also committed to fat liberation, we will re-construct Buddhist practices of embodiment to make sense in our own fat bodies. By offering this amidst the heights of fat shaming in January, we hope to offer an antidote, a community inoculation against fat hatred, toward body neutrality and even love of our fat bodies.
Program Format: Our format will include guided meditation, talks that weave together dharma and fat liberation, group activities and discussion. Talks and guided meditations will be recorded for participants.
