Blog | Southern Dharma Retreat Center

Community Series: Palestine/Israel

September 2, 2024 By Southern Dharma Staff

In July and August of 2024, Southern Dharma offered a series of three online programs, designed to support members of our sangha in responding to the crisis in Israel/Palestine with greater empathy, care, and grounding in our teachings and practices. We were led in our practice by Ronya Banks and Donald Rothberg, two senior teachers in our community.

Below you will find descriptions of our sessions along with recordings (video/audio as well as audio only) of the second and third sessions. The first session consisted of personal reflections from community members in small groups and was not recorded. You are welcome to share these resources as you see fit.

We are grateful for everyone that participated in these programs, especially our teachers and our hard working Southern Dharma staff. All of the sessions lasted 90 minutes and were freely offered.

Please free to to reach out to us at [email protected] if you would like further information about the series, or you may contact the teachers directly using the information provided below.

May all beings find peace.

Session 1: Listening & Sharing in Community

In this session, we had the opportunity to join together with other members of the Southern Dharma community to share and receive from the heart in relationship to our experiences related to what’s been happening in Israel/Palestine. The intention was for us all to have the opportunity to hear and be heard with kindness, empathy, and care – all of which can co-exist with disagreements. With the support of shared guidelines and shared practice, facilitators and participants co-created a listening and sharing space that honored both the diversity and the commonality of our experiences. Both small groups and large group listening and sharing opportunities were offered.

This session was not recorded.

Session 2: A Dialogue between Teachers and Friends

In session 2 of this series, Donald Rothberg and Ronya Banks engaged in dialogue around their Jewish and Palestinian identities, their family histories, and their own experiences of being Buddhist teachers navigating the complexities of the conflict in Palestine/Israel. During the course of the conversation, they offered reflections on what has been most helpful to each of them in dealing with painful truths, strong emotions, and difficult conversations.

Session 2 audio recording only (Dharma Seed)

Session 3: A Buddhist Toolkit for Skillful Response

In the final session of this series, teachers Ronya Banks and Donald Rothberg offered a number of resources that can help practitioners navigate these times through the cultivation of meditation, wisdom, and ethics.

How can we avoid reinforcing "either/or" mindsets and other binaries that create delusion and misunderstanding?

How can we draw on the teachings to strengthen our commitment to compassion for all in these difficult times?

And how can we identify and move toward skillful action, rather than being caught in a state of paralysis, frustration, and despair on the one hand, or acting out of reactivity on the other?

Together teachers and participants explored specific trauma-sensitive practices that are suitable for all practitioners.

Please note: Video recording begins 17 minutes into the start of the session. For the full content, feel free to listen to the audio only recording linked below.

Session 3 audio recording only (Dharma Seed)

About our teachers

Ronya Banks (she/her) is a Buddhist teacher of Palestinian heritage who is using her practice to process intergenerational trauma and respond to the challenges of this time while maintaining equanimity of all people affected by conflict.
Learn more about Ronya Banks.

Donald Rothberg (he/him), author of The Engaged Spiritual Life, is a longtime Southern Dharma teacher of Jewish ancestry who has taught in Israel, traveled several times to the West Bank, and supported efforts to approach the conflict based on Buddhist practice.
Learn more about Donald Rothberg.

Sourdough Dharma Practice

May 1, 2024 By Southern Dharma Staff

by Nancy Wright, Board Chair

[Three baked loaves of sourdough bread on a stainless steel table. 05.14.2022]

The jar of gooey flour and water sat on my counter with an impish grin inked on the side in black marker. “Sammy,” I pleaded, “what do you need? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Too cold? Would you enjoy a different type of flour?” Sammy the Sourdough Starter just smiled. Despite its jaunty demeanor, Sammy’s effectiveness as a starter was very questionable. The last effort at using Sammy to make bread resulted in a loaf so dense it could be used as a weapon. But was Sammy to blame? Intensive internet research, conflicting instructions from two sourdough cookbooks, and impassioned conversations at grocery checkout lines revealed almost unlimited reasons for flops: over and under proofing, using a starter too soon or too late, over and under kneading, kitchen too hot or too cold. Sourdough is an enigma.

My husband and I embarked on our sourdough journey cheerfully collecting too many supplies and looking forward to hearty loaves of healthy bread. Over the next six months, sourdough would test my patience and my resolve again and again. One disappointing loaf followed another, punctuated by anxious research and endless conversations about causation. As I mixed yet another batch of dough, my husband helpfully remarked, “I hope it turns out!” I broke under the weight of expectations. “It’s not about that,” I snapped. “We can only hope that we learn something from the process.” Wait, what did I just say? Breaking through my grumpy mood, I realized that this was, in fact, a pearl of wisdom. Maybe I could let go of the outcome and be curious about the living organisms that were bubbling up in Sammy.

Here’s what I have learned (so far) from sourdough:

1. Cultivate Not-Knowing. When Roshi Bernie Glassman founded the Zen Peacemakers, he articulated Three Tenets. The first is Not-Knowing or “don’t know mind.” This isn’t an invitation to stupidity, but a recognition that when we think something can be “known” through and through, we shut down our curiosity and openness to new insight.

Sourdough made it easier to give up on “knowing” because even the so-called experts often disagreed. Still, it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that I could not fix my sourdough by research and force of will. Once I took my blinders off, I became more attentive to texture, smell, temperature, and changes over time. The tension in my shoulders eased and was replaced by a feeling of contentment as I fed Sammy, measured flour, stretched and folded the dough.

2. Slow down. Buddhism is brimming with rituals and teachings designed to slow us down so that we can really be present. Sitting meditation or zazen starts with a physical deceleration (“just sit!”) so that we can have some hope of recognizing our lightning quick reactivity. I’ve come to appreciate this on the cushion, but I will admit that it is not often that I am able to bring that level of presence to my non-cushion life.

Enter sourdough. In general, it takes days to make a single loaf of bread. The wild yeast in the starter cannot be manipulated and quickened like processed yeast in packets. My efforts to speed things along always backfired. And then there’s the “feeding” of the starter. While it is in the process of becoming active, it must be “fed” once (sometimes twice) a day. Over time, I looked forward to this quiet time in the morning, stirring and measuring, tending to the tiny bacteria and yeast cells, drawing another face on the jar to gauge the rise.

Little by little, I began to learn the joy of paying attention to the small things, tending to the task before me.

3. Share the joy. I am known to overshare, particularly if there’s potential for a good story. When I eagerly began the sourdough journey, my adult children were assaulted with a running account of Sammy’s activities, or lack thereof. My son eventually told me that he was starting to think of Sammy as a new sibling, but he would be deeply concerned if he discovered that I added Sammy to my will. This is not the type of sharing that I needed to learn.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha is quoted as saying, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” By trading a mind focused on outcome for a mind focused on the life in front of me, joy followed.

Even better, I was not spreading my irritation and “fix it” mentality to the poor beings around me. For a small portion of the day, the world was made a little less sad, annoyed, or judged when I turned my attention to thoughts of tending.

And all this patience and careful attending has, in fact, resulted in actual loaves of warm, crunchy, delicious sourdough bread. The joy just keeps spreading.

Nancy lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband, Jim, and senior dog, Citta. She credits her Southern Dharma retreats as preventing her from burning out in her work as an attorney helping people with disabilities receive Medicaid services so that they can live at home. In March of 2023, Nancy received lay ordination (jukai) in the Soto Zen tradition through Upaya Zen Center. As Chair, she hopes to not get in the way of the living practice of the Dharma both on the mountain and off.

Anicca in Appalachia

November 21, 2023 By Southern Dharma Staff

by Vanessa Moss, Resident

Crumbling stone chimney in the woods — [Grass grows around panels of tin roof and the homesite chimney, where someone rested a few of the notched corner beams. 10.08.2023]

On my first retreat at Southern Dharma, I was struck by the old homesite relics punctuating the landscape, using my lunch breaks to meditate near them. Now, I’ve lived at SDRC for six weeks as a resident, affording more time to connect with this land and its history.

I sat to meditate on a moss-covered rock and the final gusts of September blew up the valley, making the leaves quiver. The creek next to me cantered, pulling water down from the mountain into Wooleyshot Branch and then on to Spring Creek, eventually joining the French Broad River at its confluence in Hot Springs. For millions of years, water has lapped away at these Appalachian hills.

A walnut fell from above, crashing through branches before cracking like a gunshot on a thin sheet of tin. The old roof lay flat, hemmed in grass. Trees had fallen through the center of a once one-room cabin, scattering its roof and log walls. The only thing semi-intact was a half-crumbled stone chimney stack. I wondered if walnuts fell on the house when it was lived in; if the sound of them crashing on the roof woke its dwellers as they slept.

These people were neighbors to the Waldroups, if not Waldroups themselves. Perhaps this cabin was the farmhand quarters for the family, if they needed to hire people from town to help with tobacco harvest. This was the family that Elizabeth Kent and Melinda Guyol bought 135 acres from in 1978 to form the Southern Dharma Retreat Center.

These farmers were far from the first in this region. There aren’t records of any permanent Native American communities in Spring Creek, specifically, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t occupied. These hills could be hunted, and the more hospitable bottomlands of Spring Creek likely drew people to grow crops in small settlements.

The Yuchi tribe or Tsoyahá, meaning Children of the Sun, lived in current-day Greene County, Tennessee, about ten miles from Southern Dharma. From 1500-1700, their population split and relocated, changing names and locations frequently, making their history hard to trace. By 1715, they were presumably driven out of the region by European settlement pressures and conflict with the Cherokee. Come the 1830 Indian Removal Act, they were forced from the state of Tennessee and became a distinct group within the Creek Nation of Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, the Cherokee or Aniyvwiya (the “Principal People”) lived mostly in towns to the southwest of Madison County, with the nearest known settlements in Cataloochee and near Lake Junaluska. Today, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians live in the Qualla Boundary of Cherokee, about an hour and a half drive from Southern Dharma.

Both of these tribes were present in this region. And there were many tribes that pre-date them. Twenty miles northwest of SDRC is Paint Rock, where 5,000 year-old pictographs are drawn onto a cliffface. It’s thought that Paint Rock and the nearby Hot Springs was an intersection of trade and diplomacy for tribes. Spring Creek would likely have been a thoroughfare, a route to this cultural site.

Sitting by the homesite, I heard the midday birdsong slow. A tufted titmouse flew from a post oak’s branches and lighted on the uneven rock of the chimney, rising stolidly from the fallen home. The lives here had sparked, rose, and unraveled, then, like smoke, were gone.

I don’t want to think about my own death, or the way cultural changes pushed this rural farming family to abandon their valley, or the mass death and extrication of the historic tribes of these mountains. But it is the nature of our practice to bear witness. It is, in fact, what drew me to practice in the first place. To sit within the discomfort of impermanence, to reckon with the reality that all we love will be lost.

The loss of Native American life and culture in this region points to impermanence, but also the Kleshas, the poisons that Buddha taught propels beings around the cycle of samsara. It was out of greed, hatred, and delusion, the U.S. government forced more than 70,000 Native Americans from the eastern United States. Of the 17,000 Cherokee bound for Oklahoma, around 4,000 died of cold, hunger, and disease during the journey.

This region is part of that gruesome history. As practitioners, we use the present moment to observe the chain of dependent origination and recognize the interdependence of all beings. And, as in the Boddhisattva vow, to dedicate our practice to the liberation of all beings.

As I sat, looking at the lone chimney, I imagined my own home, my own family, my own land grown over and forgotten. What traces do I want to leave of myself, 200 years from now?

To plant more trees. To be more generous. To love as well as I can. To hold in compassion the mistakes of the people before me, and in compassion make changes for the future.

Anicca, impermanence, is foundational to the Buddha’s teachings. It was the Buddha’s first insight, spurring him to leave his life of palace-bound privilege and seek the path of enlightenment. It lends us a sense of urgency: “If I am, then I will one day not be.” And then we hope the urgency of our practice eventually guides us beyond the concept of “I am.”

The wind around me blew harder and a curtain of ochre leaves fell. A single maple leaf landed in a rusted-out washing bucket, another fingerprint of human existence on this land. There are many traces like this to be found. Arrowheads, if you’re lucky, but also faint overgrown carriage roads, an ancient scrap of barbed wire, a broken piece of porcelain. So many lives were lived here.

And there must have been joy. Perhaps, as the adage goes, a whole 10,000 joys–coupled, undoubtedly, by 10,000 sorrows. All of them rising and unfolding, right here in this valley.

Southern Dharma is a part of that unfolding, that experience of joy and sorrow. When we practice on this land, we must bear witness to the injustice and pain of its history. But we also have the opportunity to tap into the joys of this place, and the peace it inspires as a refuge for so many.

Vanessa Moss is a familiar face around Southern Dharma, as were her mother and grandfather before her. When she's not on retreat she keeps herself busy gardening and writing. You can read more of her work here.

Donate to the Yuchi Language Project, “to restore the vitality of the Yuchi language and create a sustainable language community where the fullness of the Yuchi worldview can thrive for future generations.”

Contribute to the Eastern Band of Cherokees Community Fund, “an unrestricted community grantmaking fund, to support local needs.”

Contribute to Madison County Community Fund, “an unrestricted community grantmaking fund, to support local needs.”

Contribute to Southern Dharma Retreat Center.

On The Path: An Interview With Linsi Deyo

March 22, 2022 By Southern Dharma Staff

This is part one of three of an interview Southern Dharma Executive Director Sonia Marcus conducted with long time friend of Southern Dharma, Linsi Deyo. Linsi is the owner of Carolina Morning, a company that specializes in meditation implements, cushions, seats, furniture and other supports. You can learn more about their work at www.zafu.net

SM: Let's start out, if you don't mind, by introducing ourselves. What I know about you so far is that Carolina Morning is your business and that you used to serve on the board at Southern Dharma. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about yourself and your backgrounds.

LD: When I went to college, I was a philosophy major. And in the end, I was a philosophy major. I did a lot of switching, and I wanted to go to graduate school for Comparative Eastern and Western Philosophy. I got accepted at a school that I didn't want to go to, and I did not get accepted to the school I wanted to go to, so I decided not to go to the school I wasn't drawn to and ended up not really using my college education in the way I expected.

I was sort of trying to find myself. The closest I got to a career was my interest in therapy. I worked in mental hospitals, and I was on track to become a therapist. And inside of myself, I felt like I wasn't really ready to; I felt like I needed to heal more.

I had moved to Spring Creek—to Madison County—very close to Southern Dharma and had met Elizabeth and Melinda. I was very interested in Southern Dharma because I already considered myself a Buddhist and had done a number of retreats in the Northeast.

SM: How did you end up in Spring Creek?

LD: I hiked the Appalachian Trail.

SM: You just walked off the trail and into Spring Creek?

LD: Sort of. I hiked the whole trail. I started in Georgia and hiked all the way up to Maine with my boyfriend at that time and our dog, Otis.

SM: So it was the three of you on the AT.

LD: Yes. Otis couldn’t hike through the Smokies with us, so we boarded Otis. In the process of boarding the dog, we went through Spring Creek, and we met Pearl Goforth. Pearl lived very close to Southern Dharma, and for some reason, we stopped at Pearl's house. I think there was a dog in the road or something like that.

We pulled over. Pearl was an 80-year-old woman and we started talking to her—she was very friendly—and she said, “Dolly and Grace have that little house for sale up on the hill over there.” We looked up the hill, and she said, “If you think you like this area so much, why don't you just go ahead and buy that house?”

SM: Wow.

LD: Well we did.

SM: Talk about serendipity.

LD: I was very involved with the Tibetan Buddhist community [in Boston, where I came from]. There were very few Buddhists in Spring Creek at the time. Then, I found out about Elizabeth and Melinda and what they were doing. I'd only come to Buddhism in 1980, so I was in that ecstatic stage of having found this miraculous new way of life.

SM: What did that ecstatic stage look like? How did that manifest?

LD: This is what I consider the gem in my story related to Southern Dharma. I was very much enamored by the model of the Dharma teacher. Once I decided I wanted to be a therapist, I struggled for a long time with whether I wanted to be a Dharma teacher.

I was in my early and mid-thirties, so it's a time of life. I think we all do this in our own way. Really my lesson from Southern Dharma, by working so closely with Southern Dharma and getting to know the teachers, was realizing that the teachers were on the same path as me, and a lot of them had similar struggles to my struggles. That did draw me, and wanting to be part of bringing the Dharma to birth in that place was very exciting to me. The Dharma had, in combination with therapy, been a very powerful movement in my life and they still are. They still are.

Southern Dharma encouraged me to start Carolina Morning Designs, and Melinda and Elizabeth encouraged me to start it on my own.

SM: So it's not just that we have your cushions and zabutons here because you're a local company and you've been involved with Southern Dharma but because the whole company idea itself was born out of Southern Dharma and your experience with it.

LD: Absolutely. Elizabeth and Melinda were focused on diversity. This was the 80s and it wasn't that far away from the Women's Movement. As a kid in college, the Women's Movement was just starting at the end of the 60s and in the early 70s. Melinda, Elizabeth, and myself came out of the Women's Movement. It influenced us. As much as they wanted diversity, they wanted to empower women.

Keep an eye out for Part 2 coming soon!

Building Beloved Dharma Communities

November 10, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

By Matt Kaplan, 2021 Resident

In late June of 2021, I went to Southern Dharma to do my final project for a Masters degree in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding. I developed the project, entitled "Peace Processes for Building Beloved Community," based upon six "Peace Processes" - Listening, Emotions, Empathy, Dialogue, Critical Thinking, and Going Forth - all centered around processing content related to healing racism, aimed at building healthier communities.

This project sought to fill a gap in convert American Buddhism, partly addressed by Engaged Buddhism, emphasizing relational practices, rather than just individual meditation. This is a way to connect the "inner and outer," potentially leading to more effective peacebuilding strategies - and Sangha development. Reconciliation, which Dr. King referred to as "the aftermath of nonviolence," is both a process and a goal, like: "peace by peaceful means" (Johan Galtung); "we make the road by walking" (Myles Horton & Paulo Freire); "we build the road and the road builds us" (Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement); and "peace is every step" (Nhat Hanh). Therefore, rather than "achieving" reconciliation at some future time, we can start here and now, building more sustainable, durable, and resilient communities through relevant practices - with the help of spiritual friends (Pali: kalyana mitta).

After arriving, I had little more than a week until we would begin the project. It was good to be back, having sat a couple of retreats here before, and also a couple online - one of which took place in the spring with Donald Rothberg on "Buddhist Practice and Transforming Racism Inside and Outside." It turned out he would be leading another retreat on the same theme during the first weekend I was there, this time for the board and staff. In no way had I fully integrated all the material from the earlier retreat, so I felt really fortunate to get to participate again. That retreat served as an excellent primer for the project sessions to come. Rothberg names the "importance of community, including both smaller communities that can be supportive home bases, relatively free of 'shame and blame,' for transformative practice, and the larger, emerging 'beloved community.'" That resonated with me and was similar to what we would be trying to do later.

On July 1st, we had our first session of "Beloved Community." Our core material was a report called "Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in Our Buddhist Communities," which contained many personal statements from practitioners and teachers. Although we had a curriculum and I had a rough idea of how it would go, it turned out that all six sessions became adaptations of what was originally planned. Most of the first session focused on coming up with group agreements - basically a conversation about the type of space we would like to create, for safety and supporting each other. Next, we read about The Beloved Community, listened to part of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech (as a Dharma talk), and read about Sangha by Thich Nhat Hanh - then we envisioned our own Beloved Community. Over time, the sessions proceeded smoothly enough, touching on Peace Processes and other curriculum, including Joanna Macy's "Truth Mandala," ARISE Sangha's "Gatha for Healing Racial, Systemic, and Social Inequity," and Kingian Nonviolence, both steps and principles.

In addition to the important practice we were doing, I loved being in the mountains, with Dharma friends, connecting with nature, simpler living, and meditation. It's quite a blessing to get to experience these conditions, for the time getting to step out of a much crazier world - to then return with more clarity and energy for engagement. I believe the world needs our practices, more mindfulness and compassion for dealing with the complexity of issues, rather than full-time escape. My hope is that we can grow and develop these practices, drawing upon the energy of our time, moving us closer to Dr. King's vision of the Beloved Community.

Creating Whole and Beloved Communities does not arise just because we want them to, or because we think we deserve them, or because we think that this is the way things should be, nor does it happen overnight. It happens through the diligence and consistency of difficult work, constant compassion, and always our highest intentions embodied by Wise Effort and the entire Eightfold Path ... from all communities, to work on ourselves over time, so that we can work on ourselves together. - Larry Yang, "Sangha is Culture"

Matt Kaplan resides in the Southeast and has sat many retreats in different traditions, with affinity for Vipassana and Zen. He is completing an MA Reconciliation and Peacebuilding degree and is currently exploring restorative practices, folk schools, and critical pedagogy.

Falling Into the Sunset: An Interview with Tracey Huger, 2021 Resident

October 18, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

The following interview between Tracey Huger, 2021 Resident and Sonia Marcus, Executive Director was recorded in February 2021. Tracey describes herself this way: Tracey Huger, originally from the Bronx, continues to travel through the South in search of new unique experiences. Tracey served as a Resident for 6 non-consecutive weeks, focusing on racial awareness and equity planning. We love and miss you, Tracey!

Portrait of Tracey Huger at Southern Dharma

SM: Considering that we're a couple of people who grew up in New York City and from backgrounds that had absolutely nothing to do with Buddhism, it's kind of funny that you and I would meet here this year. So how did that happen?

TH: Yeah, it's the Universe.

SM: How did that happen to you?

TH: Well, I've had some meditation training a few years ago. I went to a 10-day course [Goenka] that was pretty intense; and after that, I really didn't practice very much.

Last year, I took a six-week course on mindful meditation, and since then, it's been incorporated, not necessarily in formal sits, but in the way I was seeing things. The space that it created and in the attention to the now, basically.

When this opportunity [Southern Dharma Residency] arose, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty cool. I do like the outdoors." There was also a special project attached to it that I'm particularly interested in right now. All of that together made me try this out. The first couple of days here have been really interesting.

SM: Will you share more about that?

TH: It has been eye-opening; and one of those experiences that, once you absorb the space, you also really see who you are.

I learned that in my first 10-day meditation course. There, I was super defiant for absolutely no reason. I was imagining breaking out of the campus in Montreal that was in the middle of nowhere. But there was no way I would be able to get back home because they had driven me there! So, then I thought, what was I breaking out of? Nobody is keeping me here. I realized that I was defiant then.

Here what I noticed is my natural tendency to be academic and study. There's not a lot of people here because of the Covid restrictions. So, I just happened to pick up a book and began voraciously reading. That's what I needed to do.

SM: Guilty confession: Many meditation teachers at Southern Dharma will tell you not to read any books while you're on retreats, but I have read some of the best books here at Southern Dharma when I was on retreat.

TH: I was reading [Eckhart Tolle's] The Power of Now. It is all about stillness and an appreciation for now. As a New Yorker, whenever I have idle time my brain just really goes. I read 100 pages the first night. I couldn't get enough of it.

During the 10-day sit, I didn't have access to anything. I was sneaking paper to try to write in the staircase. I understand the value in that part because it gives you the separation. But there's also a stillness that allows you to deeply understand, especially if you're reading something that's a program or appropriate for your current situation.

SM: I can tell you I was the same way, and still am to some extent. I thought I would essentially cogitate my way to understanding Buddhism and meditation. The practice has also been huge but it isn't necessarily the thing I was initially drawn to. I was captivated by the concepts.

TH: I think because I had some sort of meditation experience as a child I connected to the experience of it. It overlaps with my spiritual and religious background as well. I did not have a religion as a kid, though I'd been around people who had religion. So, I had some ideas of what they kind of do.

Until I was about 12 I thought I was Christian. Then somebody told me the tenets of Christianity and I was like, "Oh, no, that's not me."

So that's been my experience with meditation, where I had already had certain experiences and I didn't have a language for it.

SM: You were telling me about when you were growing up that you had the feeling that you were meditating, but didn't know what meditating was.

TH: Yeah, a good portion of my meditation started from watching sunsets. We happened to have a fantastic view of Manhattan from where we were in the Bronx. I could see the George Washington Bridge and a little sliver of the Hudson River. It was just beautiful. Every night I would just watch the sunset.

At some point, it just became like I fell into the sunset. I really can't explain it. It was a stillness that felt like I was going into a vacuum, and from that space things were clear.

I could see the people in their apartment buildings and the people on the street. I thought, why aren't they aware of this? How could my family be doing things behind me, like watching TV, when this was happening?

I maintained [the practice] from 7 through 18, when I finally left our home. It was just like this thing that I had. It didn't really make sense to me why other people weren't tapping into that.

SM: Let's go from there to talking about the South. You're seeing the South when you come to Southern Dharma, right?

TH: I came from New York through Atlanta. Basically, when you travel, you recognize what to expect of who you are. I got a taste of what it means to be a New Yorker in other places. Some of it is language. Certain words that I say, identifying me as New Yorker that other New Yorkers gravitate towards. So we tell our stories.

SM: 'You guys. You know.' Those are the ones for me.

TH: There's that sort of being, out of knowing I'm not originally from here. But I do have some roots, my parents are Southern. I'm comfortable with the culture and certain things that I can kind of relate to. But I've never experienced rural South except for my family's farm in the plains of South Carolina.

This is very different. This is quite rural and a little... creepy. By the time I got up that interesting road, my thought was, "Well, I really hope I like these people because it's not going to be easy to get down!" Then there's a degree of commitment that's nice. Whereas if it were just across the street from a major highway, then it's like, "OK, if I don't like this then I'll just go."

But it's also really beautiful. There is a little spot here carved into this wonderful thick forest in the mountains. You're not just going up the mountain, there's a degree of leaving something behind. That's beautiful. This is a safe container, which you can use to explore various things.

SM: I remember when you arrived, you called your sister to let her know you had survived the trip.

TH: Yeah! I told her about that one lane road, but it's a two-way lane and it's very close. It's like the edge where you can totally fall off and you know, you have to go. And it's like a leap of faith.

After all that, she's like, "Why are you there? Why did you do this to yourself?" I replied, "I like adventure". I know myself. I learn about myself as much as I do about the space I enter.

SM: When we were talking when you first arrived, I was just so delighted to hear you comparing it to a couple of other experiences you had of being in the Adirondacks and the Australian Outback. But this is your country. And it's not just your country, it's the region where your parents were born and raised, you know what I mean?

TH: Totally. But what I did in the Adirondacks and the Outback felt more akin to this. I went to the Adirondacks from the city by going that far north. That was just incredible and beautiful. But it has a different feel. This feels more rustic. I don't think "downhome", because that sounds derogatory, but it really is. It feels less manufactured in some ways.

Then when I was in Australia, we traveled through serious outback. There's nobody for days and you're on a dirt country road with big dust storms. You need to make sure you have all your supplies because nobody's going to help you if you break down and don't have water.

So that's what I meant when I compared the experiences. And in some ways, that's scary. But for me, it was sort of like you get a sense of your humanity. It's the limits of being human and the need to really rely on others in certain ways and also prepare. And that's the feeling I got, even though there are resources available. There's a seriousness about this that is different from those other experiences.

SM: Another difference with outback Australia is here you're driving past houses that have Confederate flags flying on them.

TH: As an African American, there's always the fear that big cities are a little bit safer than other areas. But I try my best not to make assumptions because there's a cultural difference.

In New York, I used to say to Jewish people I would encounter - and I hope this isn't offensive - "Are you a practicing Jew or a cultural Jew?" There are practicing conservative and orthodox Jewish people. Then there are a lot of people who are what I would call culturally Jewish - they don't have a history of practicing, but they still identify as Jewish.

That's kind of the South as well. There are people who see the Confederate flag as part of the culture in the South. That could mean sort of like "rebel", or it's tied to their culture. And then there are those who take it as White Supremacy.

How you approach and identify them - you can't bring your assumptions there because you may get a response that's not reflective of who they are. If you encounter a white supremacist, most of them are not going to bother you. You can identify those who don't really want to be in your presence. You just leave it. What if you offer an openness? If they're not that type of person, they'll appreciate it. That's really beautiful. It's likely you'll find some sort of common ground and you'll leave there knowing that everyone within that situation is not what you think. They'll get some sort of appreciation of where you are, who you are, because they've had a real experience. I'm open to that. I've heard lots of stories, but I know how to approach people. You give them a chance.

SM: So you trust in your open heart on some level? That you'll connect with other open hearts and that ultimately trumps everything else?

TH: Yeah, it really does. You have to give it a chance because if you approach them with this sense that that's not going to happen, then it probably won't.

What was more sort of strange to me were all the Trump signs. That's more of an association. I thought that was interesting and wondered how they relate to me. Once again, there's various reasons why one would affiliate with one [political] party.

SM: Talk to me about coming to meditation from a different background than many others.

TH: From an African American experience, although I don't represent all African Americans, my experience in my culture is that meditation, yoga, all those sorts of practices are not celebrated. They're not well known from our perspective. We haven't adopted it. Therefore, there's a distance there.

Then there's expectations. Sometimes when you go into [meditation groups], not only are you not necessarily represented, but it also doesn't feel like it reflects you in a lot of ways. Once you enter that space, depending on how welcoming it is, you can go beyond that. It becomes a part of what's available to you as opposed to a cultural difference.

You're entering the culture of that space. You can adopt it and find a way that's very personal. I found that here. Definitely. I've noticed there are certain spaces that are so warm within its community, within meditation and yoga. They are naturally warm. Everyone is accepted.

When you think about it too much, you're separating in a way that's not necessary. You end up taking an idea that's from a white dominant culture and you should be accepted in every space. It changes to mean you're accepted because of your culture. I don't have that expectation. It's almost like the white bar that just gets dipped in chocolate. Now it's black. Yeah. That's not true understanding.

SM: That's right. Because that's not inclusion.

TH: No, that's not inclusion. It's nice to come into these very warm spaces where it's not just Black or White. We're dealing on a different level.

SM: I'm glad you felt that way while you were here. Let's come back to something you were saying to me about how, in African-American culture, things like yoga and meditation or maybe other types of alternative wellness or spiritual alternatives are not necessarily part of the landscape. It's that there's a certain level of distrust, right?

TH: Absolutely.

SM: I was wondering if you could say a little more about that.

TH: Well, within our cultural traditions, Christianity plays a huge part. There's a sense of a direct [spiritual] connection within the yoga and meditation traditions that make them feel very different [from the belief in Jesus]. Like, it may not be something that can be adopted and still maintain one's Christianity - which is not true. It's not a dogma. It's a perspective that actually weaves well into Christianity and other sorts of religions but it must be embraced as such before one can see that.

Then there's the way it's been marketed as sort of an elitist practice or for a particular type of person. If one doesn't want to be that, that can feel like a barrier. In work and academic spaces we often find ourselves not being the dominant group or in small numbers, but we can pretend those spaces are neutral by focusing on the work, the knowledge or our performance. Yet, in the yoga and meditation space the practice itself can feel like a cultural experience, and we're not necessarily going to want to adopt a different culture. Once again, if one gets past that first layer, the actual practice itself is available to everyone; but one has to want to, and feel one can, make that jump. It's like the knowledge in the classroom that is available to everyone, if one gets past the artifice of elitism that exists around it. Those barriers or limited access points, they're not really necessary.

SM: I always think of it as the packaging that goes around it. It's like the practice itself is just light. That's all, just light. It doesn't have any cultural dimension or real religious dogma, necessarily. Some can put this box around it that says that it's for these people and it's done this way. But once you break that open, it's just the light that's shining.

TH: Yeah, and we focus on the package so much.

That's how I can speak to that Southern person with the Confederate flag and find common ground. I'm waiting to find out what's cool and neat about them. It's like a beauty. Once I find that, I'm super excited because it's like, "Oh, I have that, too! Ok, now we're going to speak on that shared level."

Then, it becomes clear because I've gone through the steps of kind of understanding who they are. The language - I already know it. It's not like I'm trying to translate it. We're both speaking the same language. Even if I stumbled a bit, we already broke through the barriers and vice versa. I know we're trying to work on this level, so, I will say, "I don't agree with this or that; but we're both still here." I love that!

SM: I think that's the heart of the South.

TH: Yeah, it is.

SM: Tracey, you applied for a residency with us and you expressed a particular interest in working with us on anti-racism work, racial diversity, inclusion and equity. Say more about that.

TH: Well, 2020 has been an interesting year and the summer was definitely racially charged. There was sort of an awakening, an opportunity for people to really think about how to deal with racism in this country. As a result of that, I was getting so much information, a lot of it from social media, and I felt disheartened by it. At the same time, my white friends were approaching me and wanting all this information.

I noticed there were a lot of books and these beautiful reading and watch lists. But, for me, it was slightly overwhelming. I couldn't imagine feeling a sense of urgency and being directed to read a list of books. So, I developed a website [studentsneedteachers.com] with the hopes of encouraging others to feel the pain of racism. I want people to feel it and understand that that feeling is what will drive their curiosity because they'll have a more innate knowledge of it.

The site starts with short, powerful videos. The first talks about the history of racism and systematic oppression by Kimberly Jones. She does this analogy to Monopoly that's just beautiful. The next one is a young man, who looks like a child, talking about a list that his mother gave him and he's been forced to learn. Not every kid has to do that but Black people are burdened with adjusting to unfair systems. The last video poses the question of complicity. An educator, Jane Elliott, makes an audience aware of a difference in treatment that can't be denied, and suggests it is now their responsibility to do something about it. She broke it down so beautifully. This is the problem, and we have to move forward because inaction is consent. So this was my mindset. After George Floyd, we're all aware there is a bad situation. I was gathering all this information with the hopes of helping others gain a way into the issue.

When I saw the Residency, I thought I might be able to combine the spirit of my meditative practice, with a taste of the interesting culture that exists here, while learning how cultural awareness could be incorporated into it. I could get information about the needs of the community and what it feels is lacking, because it's not about pushing out information. It's seeing where curiosity is, what gaps in information there are, and how we can make the experience personal - because that's important.

SM: What are the key things that you're taking with you from this experience that started with driving up into the mountains and going up the crazy gravel one way road?

TH: Well, I am aware that I am definitely from the city. (laughs)

Mostly, I felt the importance of not erasing our differences in the service of peace. Also, if I continue to explore anti-racism, my meditative practices can inform it. However, to be effective, I'll also have to confront and explore my own racial traumas.

SM: Thank you, Tracey. It was a nice conversation to have with you. I'm looking forward to delight in your ongoing journey and your insights. Thank you for letting us share Southern Dharma with you.