Larry Ward - Americas Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal

In this taut, fearless, and well-argued manifesto, Larry Ward offers us a deeply insightful analysis of Americas racial karmaof how it operates individually and collectivelyand how it can be worked with and transformed. Drawing on Buddhist psychology, trauma theory, neuroscience, and years of practicethe result is a searing, liberative, and tender work.

Jan Willis, author of Dharma Matters

An extraordinary gift of generosity. Americas Racial Karma doesnt just add to the essential conversation around race, racialization, and discrimination, but rather redefines the very conversation itself from the inside out.

Brother Phap Hai, author of Nothing to It

I know Larry Wards teachings, firsthand, to have come from his humble, dedicated, devoted, long and steady practice. Wise, clear, heartfelt, and based on his own authentic transformative experiencesure to be a classic among those who are serious about awakening.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author of The Deepest Peace

Dr. Larry Ward is an elder in American Buddhism, using his decades of heart-centered practice to guide our community into a deeper and more relevant exploration of Americas struggle with racism in order to support us in our healingan invitation to us to tend to our own hearts as we disrupt deeply ingrained thoughts and actions that have perpetuated the violence of Americas racial karma. We will all be much freer because of Dr. Wards teaching.

Lama Rod Owens, author of Love and Rage

Welcome medicine for todays generation of decolonial, spirit-led seekers and activists.

Katie Loncke, codirector of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

Buddhism is syncretic and malleable and has always mingled with whatever culture it has landed within, whether in Tibet, Japan, or China. So why not in America? More importantly for us, Larry Ward is able to relate Buddhism to the experience of people of color in America. We need this.

Rajeev Balasubramanyam, author of Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

Rich in practice in the Plum Village Buddhist tradition, Americas Racial Karma is a must-read book to understand our individual and collective legacy and to walk the long path toward reconciliation and awakening.

Valerie Brown, coauthor of The Mindful School Leader

Accessible to those experienced in meditation practices and beginners alike, Larry Wards book offers us a way to bring clear intention and compassionate action to our path of racial healing with concrete practices to help us come back again and again to healing ever-deeper layers of our embodied, psychological racial traumas. A refuge for today and future generations.

Marisela B. Gomez, MD/PhD, author of Race, Class, Power, and Organizing in East Baltimore

The living tradition of Buddhism will only progress if it reflects and includes the diversity of insight and experiences from a spectrum of teachers. Dr. Larry Ward is an important voice for our collective awakening.

Denise Nguyen, executive director of the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation

Toward the project of national healing, Larry Ward brings to bear his decades of experience to instruct us on locating the seeds of racialization within us all. Brimming with aphorisms of wisdom, Ward shows us how to build a society of belonging.

john a. powell, author of Racing to Justice

Preacher, poet, griot, and Zen Master, Larry Ward shows us how we can each manifest our inherent wholeness in the midst of the brokenness of white supremacy.

Kaira Jewel Lingo

Timely and timelesshealing and transformation from a wise elder committed to our collective liberation.

Julio Rivera, founder of the meditation app Liberate

In clear, courageous words, the author reveals Americas racial karma and its linkages to unbridled greed for wealth and power. Dr. Ward shows how Buddhist psychology can help us confront racism and heal its trauma within our own body-mind.

Robertson Work, author of A Compassionate Civilization

Also by

Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe Ward

Loves Garden:

A Guide to Mindful Relationships

Parallax Press

Berkeley, California

parallax.org

Parallax Press is the publishing division of the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, Inc.

2020 by Larry Ward

All rights reserved

Author photograph by Jovelle Tamayo, courtesy of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

The White Mans Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) by Victor Gillam, public domain

Ebook design adapted from print design by Zoe Norvell

ISBN9781946764744

Ebook ISBN9781946764751

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ward, Larry, 1948, author.

Title: Americas racial karma : an invitation to heal / Larry Ward, PhD.

Description: Berkeley, California : Parallax Press, 2020. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020025947 (print) | LCCN 2020025948 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781946764744 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781946764751 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesRace relations. | RacismUnited States. | KarmaUnited States. | BuddhismUnited States.

Classification: LCC E184.A1 W23 2020 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 305.800973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025947

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025948

a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

O ur racial suffering

is deep and wide.

It is a particular

kind of samsara.

Repeated cycles

of bitterness, pain,

and fear.

It is sustained

by our conditioning,

both individual

and collective.

It is the undercurrent

of a failed paradigm

of aggression, ownership

of peoples, and

enduring institutionalized

racism.

This failed paradigm

of views presents us

with a profound opportunity

to rebuild the shape

of our thinking, speech, and

action as we can

and must redefine

what it means to be a human being.

Introduction

Race has been a source of trouble in human

affairs since the contours of the modern ways

of thinking about it became dimly visible in

the rise of new scientific ideas about human

beings as parts of the natural world.

K WAME A NTHONY A PPIAH

My growing years took place in Cleveland, Ohio, on the East Side of the city near Lake Erie. It was a predominantly African American neighborhood in the 1950s, with a few European immigrants from Polish and Italian roots. Interactions between children and adults of different races, other than on the job or through commercial transactions, were controlled and rare. To my young eyes, members of the community moved about their days going to work, to church, and to school in a kind of stunned silence about race, as if hoping that by never acknowledging it, the bitterness just under the surface would not leak out. Even then, I sensed we were all wrapped in a blanket of fear and yearning.