Radical Meditation: a practice of interbeing in times of crisis: Book Club & Guided Meditation

With Janice Lee

Sunday, February 16th, 2024
5:30-6:45PM Pacific over Zoom
(A recording will be made available to all registrants for a limited period afterwards.)

Please join us for a monthly meditation and conversation on the practice of sitting or lying in meditation in a time of political, environmental, and personal crisis, especially drawing upon practices and teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village. This series is facilitated by Touk Keo and Janice Lee.

All experience levels, backgrounds, ages are welcome.

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This month will be a special Book Club Discussion + Guided Meditation. We will be discussing Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other (Parallax Press, 2004) by Thich Nhat Hanh. You are responsible for acquiring and reading the book before our meeting, though it is not a prerequisite to have finished the book to attend. If you’ve only read a few pages, or are just interested in being part of the conversation, all are welcome. There will also be a guided meditation exploring some of the themes in the book.

If you are interested in joining & reading the book but current finances prevent you from purchasing the book, please email Janice (janice@corporealwriting.com) with your request and mailing address.

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JANICE LEE (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 8 books of fiction, creative nonfiction, & poetry: KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021), Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award, and A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima (Meekling Press, 2023). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Her next book seeks to explore ties between the Korean cultural concept of han, narratives of inherited trauma in the West, the Korean folk traditions and shamanic practices of her ancestors (especially rituals around death), the history and creation of Korean script (Hangul), and revisions of the Korean myth of Princess Bari. Lee teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, bringing together elements from several different lineages as a mesa-carrying practitioner of the Q’ero tradition of medicine work, an aspirant for the Order of Interbeing, and student of Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition of engaged Buddhism. Her Dharma name is Compassionate Heart of the Source. She also incorporates elements of ancestor work, Korean shamanic ritual (Muism), plant medicine & flower essences, card readings & divination, and interspecies communication. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is the Operational Creative Director at Corporeal Writing and an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

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Pricing:

This is a community offering and our goal is to make this as accessible as possible for all who are interested in practicing.

(Note: 100% of all donations that are received for this offering will go to our scholarship fund or to help purchase copies of the book club title for those with financial barriers.)

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This event offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$40  Partner

$20  Supporter (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this offering.)

$10  Companion

$5    Friend

$0   Community Member