Note: This program is part of the Burning Refuge Summit 2025. Attendance is free, other than a refundable deposit due at registration. Refunds can be requested at check-in.
In this retreat, collaboratively-led by the Burning Refuge collective, our central goal is to explore Buddhist practices that are oriented towards social-spiritual liberation. Too often, Buddhist institutions and spaces are systematically structured to exclude Asian diaspora-BIPOC, queer/trans*, and differently-bodied peoples. A long colonial history resulting in a neocolonial present has at times made Asian American and the Asian heritage of Buddhist traditions invisible in the teaching of the dharma. This process buries and invisibilizes the material and political realities of oppression, and marginalization. With this retreat, we bring those at the margins of Buddhism to the center. Here we invite these communities and our supportive friends and allies to cultivate spiritual kinship. We remain grounded in honoring both our individual spiritual ancestry and our shared, diasporic tradition of Buddhism.
While this retreat is collaboratively-led by the Burning Refuge Collective, we root ourselves in the specificity of diaspora Buddhism. To that end, our retreat’s liturgical, ritual, and chanting practices will all be led by Venerable Deung Myoung Sunim, an ordained bhikkhu from the Jogye Order of South Korea. Korean Buddhism is often marginalized in Euro-American Buddhist spaces and is a uniquely syncretic ancestral Buddhist tradition to draw upon. While we honor the value of all Buddhist traditions, rather than attempt to bridge many liturgies, we believe that rooting in one specific ritual and liturgical lineage for the duration of this retreat will allow us to have ritual experiences of greater depth and significance. We also hope that this will allow retreatants to return to their home communities with a practiced ritual skillset they will be able to draw upon.
We are also honored to be joined by Maitriveer Nagarjuna (also known as Dr. Santosh Raut) as the guest Dhamma teacher. Maitriveer has long been a thought leader, scholar, and organizer within Asian networks of Engaged Buddhism and the Ambedkarite Buddhist movement.
The kinds of engagements and collaborations you can expect at the retreat include:
- Facilitation of synthesizing, recording, and processing our individual and community spiritual narratives
- Co-learning of non-coercive spiritual kinship building and community leadership
- Deep contemplative, ritual, and devotional practice rooted in ancestral, Asian diaspora Buddhist traditions
- Opportunities for co-creating a non-hierarchical retreat space
- Radical decentering of white, Euro-american ways of knowing and living Buddhism
- Radical centering of diasporic, BIPOC, queer/trans, and other marginalized communities’ ways of knowing, living, and imagining futures through and for Buddhism
- and more…
Program Format: This program will primarily feature relational practices, large group discussions, small group discussions, and rituals. Peer-led practices may include guided and silent meditations but meditation is not the primary focus.
For more information and to apply by December 31, 2024 at 11:59pm EST, click here.
