This article was originally printed in the April 2023 print edition.
Kaira Jewel Lingo, a Dharma teacher with a focus on spirituality and social justice, presented a Presidential Colloquium on April 3, 2023. She discussed finding purpose and happiness in life as well as the necessity of being grounded and present in difficult moments and in the face of the current crises like rising violence, a smaller job market and political polarization.
“When I was in college, I remember going to a talk by the teacher Ram Dass, who had also been a college professor … one of the things he said was, ‘You learn a lot here, but you don’t learn how to be happy,’” said Lingo. “That really landed for me, and I decided I wanted to learn how to be happy, and so I went to Plum Village and looked for a spiritual teacher, looking for a spiritual community.”
Lingo spent 15 years in Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in Loubès-Bernac, France, as a nun learning from the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She has a focus on opening doors of the Dharma to BIPOC people, as well as offering support and contemplative grounding to social movements. Since leaving the monastery, she continues to teach and lead retreats internationally in the Plum Village and Vipassana traditions. She recently released her book “We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption.”
Lingo began her talk by leading attendees in an exercise to relax the Vagus nerve, the main nerves in the parasympathetic nervous system: “If we can help care for that nerve, and tone it, resource it, it is very helpful in providing a buffer for us when we meet challenges, so we can bounce back more easily, more quickly.” She guided people to begin by massaging around the outside of their ears, then covering their eyes with their hands, holding their cheeks in their hands, placing the hands on the chest and breathing deeply, placing the hands on the stomach below the belly button and finally, resting with their palms turned towards the ceiling.
Following the exercise, Lingo began to talk about finding purpose and various practices that can help with this. She mentioned the ignatian practice of imaging yourself on your deathbed and the Buddha’s five daily remembrances. In doing so, Lingo said, one can focus themselves on the present, and how to live each day in a way that recognizes one’s purpose and how they want to live.
“We get so easily caught up in the superficial things, but we really want to be asking ourselves ‘what is my ultimate concern?’ Because when we live from that place, we have a lot of freedom, we have a lot of clarity, and we have a lot of courage,” said Lingo.
Later in the colloquium, Lingo discussed the current “polycrisis” facing the world and the “intersecting strings of emergency” of shaky economic systems, increasing violence,mass shootings, political divisions and more.
“One response to this kind of unraveling is to panic, withdraw, or give up. But there are other ways to meet this moment which have to do with coming from our purpose, coming from our place of groundedness,” said Lingo. “Precisely when we feel we need to speed up, when we’re being fueled by reactivity, what can be helpful is to pause, to slow down, to feel. We want to be our full selves when things are difficult, we don’t want to be acting from the unresourced parts of ourselves.”
This Presidential Colloquium was co-presented by the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life and the Jandon Center for Community Engagement. While introducing Kaira Jewel Lingo, President Kathleen McCartney said, “I know that we will be uplifted by her advice on how to cultivate equanimity and joy in the face of uncertainty.”
“Part of learning how to be happy is learning how to care for our suffering, turning towards difficult and exiled places within us,” said Lingo. “Not just on an individual level, but also collectively.”
