‘I feel what’s so powerful about Thay’s [Thich Nhat Hanh’s] teachings is the invitation and the possibility of coming home to ourselves. That has a special meaning for BIPOC folks who have often been kidnapped, and stolen from their homes. Who have been denied the right to establish a home. Who’ve been kicked out of their homes. Who’ve been redlined out of being able to purchase or live in certain places. There’s been a lot of removing BIPOC people from their homes, from their ancestral lands.
So a teaching that helps people to find our true home inside of us is very powerful. This teaching is the teaching of liberation; it’s about getting free, and that has been the deepest thirst for so many “communities of culture” as Resmaa Menakem names it. So the practice of meditation and mindfulness offers a path to liberation in terms of freedom from our suffering, hatred, and internalized violence.
It also can help us to deal with really painful emotions, and not just our own, but our ancestral inheritance that has both incredible beauty and resilience but also traumatic retention and deep suffering. So, [there is] the [Plum Village] practice of Touching the Earth, for example, very powerful practices of transforming ancestral suffering, of taking refuge in the earth. Of letting ourselves be held in something bigger than ourselves as we heal our own and our ancestral trauma, from our family, spiritual lineage and our land ancestors.’ (from an interview with Parallax Press)
Shundo David Haye 