BOOK GROUP—Home is Here: Practicing Antiracism with the Engaged Eightfold Path

KCC Book Group meets the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Tuesdays of the month
9:30 to 11:00 a.m. at KCC Portland Center (No Zoom)
Everyone is welcome
Interested? Contact  if you have questions.

“As a Vietnamese American adoptee, 1.5 generation, immigrant, cisgender female, gender-nonconforming, lesbian, Soto Zen priest, and in the late mid-years of a chronological life, I am often located by others, as I don’t always present or behave in ways people believe my social locations to be.”

Reverend Liên Shutt inspires us to move towards fulfilling the Bodhisattva Vow:

Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
Buddha’s Way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.

Some tidbits from the book itself:

First Noble Truth: Harm and harming are present.

The author says, “The first Noble Truth is the hardest to be with. Mostly we spend our energy trying to ignore harm and harming in our lives…” For example, racism impacts us “whether we are people of color or white identified.” Yet how many of us talk about these experiences?

Shutt insists on our fundamental wholeness and frames “working to address oppressions” as “a reclaiming of our inherent wholeness…it’s not about what is lacking in us.” We all have Buddha nature which remains unblemished even when we are harmed or have caused harm.

The Second Noble Truth: Understand fully the causes and conditions for harm and harming. 

Shutt suggests, “so much of dharma practice is to learn to broaden our view so that we are looking at the context and not just the content.” “Racism is not a one-time event;…racism is a system of oppression…but conditions change.” She asks us to consider what habits and beliefs we may want to discard as we learn more.