An Invitation to heal
BY LARRY WARD PHD
With body-based reflections and meditation practices to help us move through our days, America's Racial Karma invites us to stop the cycle of trauma and transform our suffering into energy for self-love and healing.
Immediate, illuminating, and hopeful: this is the key set of talks given by leading Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, PhD, on breaking America’s cycle of racial trauma.
Our 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.
So says Zen Buddhist teacher Dr. Larry Ward.
Shot at by the police as an 11-year-old child for playing baseball in the wrong spot, as an adult, Larry Ward experienced the trauma of having his home firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France, the home in exile of his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Ward found a way to heal. In these short reflective essays, he offers his insights on the effects of racial constructs and answers the question: how do we free ourselves from our repeated cycles of anger, denial, bitterness, pain, fear, violence? Larry Ward looks at the causes and conditions that have led us to our current state and finds, hidden in the crisis, a profound opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a human being. This is an invitation to transform America’s racial karma.
Dr. Larry Ward
Get The Book
Available wherever books are sold.
Support your local and BIPOC owned booksellers!
PRAISE
LAMA ROD OWENS, AUTHOR OF LOVE AND RAGE
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 America’s struggle with racism in order to support us in our healing. Most importantly, this healing is an invitation for us to tend to our own hearts as we disrupt deeply ingrained thoughts and actions that have perpetuated the violence of America’s racial karma. This text is an important offering to the growing canon of dharma texts urging us to take our practice into the places that need light, wisdom, and love. I think we will all be much freer because of Dr. Ward’s teaching.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, author of The Deepest Peace
Having sat with this teacher at Deer Park Monastery, I know his teachings, first-hand, to have come from his humble, dedicated, devoted, long and steady practice. His teachings are wise, clear, heartfelt, and based on his own authentic transformative experience of being a Black man and one who also holds a high and honored Dharma seat in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s lineage. This jewel of a book is sure to be a classic among those who are serious about awakening.
Jan Willis, author of Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra
In this taut, fearless, and well-argued manifesto, Larry Ward offers us a deeply insightful analysis of America’s racial karma—of how it operates individually and collectively—and how it can be worked with and transformed. Drawing on Buddhist psychology, trauma theory, neuroscience, and years of practice … the result is a searing, liberative, and tender work—a book that is both urgent and necessary.
Katie Loncke, co-director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship
America’s Racial Karma rehydrates our weary bodies for the monumental journey ahead: redefining what it means to be human. Welcome medicine for today’s generation of decolonial, spirit-led seekers and activists
Valerie Brown, co-author of The Mindful School Leader
Rich in practice in the Plum Village Buddhist tradition, poetry, and history, America’s Racial Karma is a must-read book to understand the individual and collective legacy of our racial karma and to walk the long path toward reconciliation and awakening.
Marisela B. Gomez, MD/PhD, author of Race, Class, Power, and Organizing in East Baltimore
Accessible to those experienced in meditation practices and beginners alike, Larry Ward 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. America’s Racial Karma is a refuge for today and future generations.
ROBERTSON WORK, AUTHOR OF THE COMPASSIONATE CIVILIZATION, ecosystem/justice activist; former UNDP policy adviser, NYU Wagner professor, and ICA country director
America’s Racial Karma by Dr. Larry Ward has arrived at a critical moment in our nation’s history. In clear, honest, courageous words, the author identifies the depth and complexity of America’s racial karma revealing its linkages to unbridled greed for wealth and power. With touching poetry and personal stories, Dr. Ward shows how Buddhist psychology can help us both confront racism and transform individual consciousness and social systems. Larry takes the reader on a journey beginning in mid 15th century Europe up to the murder of George Floyd, showing the ‘lie’ that has perverted the sacred nature of being human. The author, however, not only exposes the depth of the problem but offers simple, profound practices for healing this illusion and trauma within our own body-mind. The book is the rarest of treasures that can help each of us transform our horrific predicament and lead us to the realization of a ‘Beloved Community’ for America and planetary society. Thank you, Larry, from the depth of my broken heart, for this gift.
Kaira Jewel Lingo, mindfulness teacher
Larry Ward shows us how we can each manifest our inherent wholeness in the midst of the brokenness of white supremacy. Please drink from the healing waters of this preacher, poet, griot and Zen Master. This book is essential medicine--a long-awaited vaccine--for these times.
jon a. powell
Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley, Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and professor of law, African American Studies, and ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, author of Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society
Toward the project of national healing, Larry Ward brings to bear his decades of experience as a spiritual guide to instruct us on locating the seeds of racialization within us all and through confrontation with those seeds, pressing forward in the realization of beloved community. Brimming with aphorisms of wisdom, Ward engages the reader directly with spiritual practice, showing us how to bridge, how to recognize the other in ourselves, and how to build a society of belonging,
JULIO RIVERA, CEO, LIBERATE MEDITATION
Larry Ward's poetic offering for the community is timely and timeless as we navigate living in bodies consumed with racialized trauma. Find guidance in healing and transformation from a wise elder committed to our collective liberation.
Denise Nguyen, Executive director of the THich Nhat Hanh Foundation
When we look at the lay Buddhist or mindfulness teachers getting the most attention in America, they are predominantly white. What is going on in the world is also going on within American Buddhism. I am extremely thankful for the wise and deep teachings from Dr. Larry Ward in his book America’s Racial Karma. He shares his actual lived experiences examining, reflecting, and healing from racism. Buddhism, and our collective consciousness, 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 continual awareness and awakening.
Brother Phap Hai, senior Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and author of Nothing to It
America’s Racial Karma doesn’t just add to the essential conversation around race, racialization, and discrimination, but rather redefines the very conversation itself from the inside out. A book to treasure and to read many times over.
news, EVENTS and media
For press and media inquiries, please contact Earlita Chenault: earlita@parallax.org
Past Interviews, Media and Podcasts
7/13/21 EXTINCTION REBELLION RADIO INTERVIEW- RACE AND ITS CONNECTION WITH CLIMATE CRISIS
4/15/2021 Revolutionary Love Conference A conversation with Anu Gupta
4/6/2021 EASC GUEST SPEAKER SERIES Jessica Zu and Larry Ward ON America's Racial Karma
4/4/2021 LARRY WARD AND DUNCAN RYUKEN WILLIAMS AT USC DORNSIFE SHINSO ITO CENTER FOR JAPANESE RELIGIONS AND CULTURE
3.25/2021 Yoga HOUR PODCAST WITH Dr. Laurel Trujillo
2/04/2021 A Conversation with Larry Ward and Rhonda V. Magee at San Fransisco Book Passage
12/19/2021 A Conversation with Dr. Larry Ward and Fu Schroeder- San Fransisco Zen Center
11/9/2020 Deep Dialogues - A conversation with Stewart Pearce
10/27/20 LION’S ROAR MAGAZINE - HEALING AMERICA’S RACIAL KARMA
10/6/20 A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY WARD AND ALK ARORA- CIIS PUBLIC PROGRAMS
10/1/20 A CONVERSATION ON AMERICA’S RACIAL KARMA WITH LARRY AND KAIRA JEWEL LINGO, SPONSORED BY THE THICH NHAT HANH FOUNDATION
9/22/20 dharma talk, guided meditation, and Q&A with Larry, Video with Tricycle Magazine
9/21/2020 Interview with tricycle Magazine about America’s Racial Karma
9/15/2020 VIRTUAL EVENT WITH DR. LARRY WARD AND KAZU HAGA, author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm.
8/7/2020 THE MINDFUL SYMPOSIUM- PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH THE MINDFUL COOGS AT THE MINDFULNESS RESEARCH LAB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
6/24/20 Ten Percent Happier- Podcast interview with Dan Harris
Have you read America’s Racial Karma and wonder what’s the next step? Where do I go from here?
The Earth Gate: Somatic Liberation
Practices to help rewire your nervous system and build resiliency and vitality.
America’s Racial Karma is an invitation to heal, to realize the forces that create the cycle of socialized racism. As you accept this invitation you may recognize how far there is to go.
Since writing the book, so many people have asked me, “Larry, where do we go from here?”
I created a curriculum with The Lotus Institute to support you on this journey of healing and transformation.
It’s called, “The Four Gates,” and it’s a journey of unbinding karma, especially racialized consciousness in body and mind, through practices that empower us so that we may together breathe a new world into being. The first gate is called The Earth Gate.
Each gate represents a key piece of what in my experience is needed for us to achieve individual and collective liberation. Of course, there are many paths, many ways and teachers to help you take this journey. And, if you want to do it with us we humbly offer you some valuable tools grounded in trauma resiliency skills and mindfulness practice.
The Earth Gate:
Trauma-resiliency training from a Buddhist perspective, offering core mindfulness practices to help rewire your nervous system.
Interested in taking this course with members of your community, sangha, organization or group? We offer group discounts and free resources for how to easily structure co-facilitated and self-guided group learning.
More Background on The Four Gates
A journey of unbinding karma and generating a practice that empowers individual and collective healing, transformation and liberation.
Gate 1, The Earth Gate: Somatic Liberation- Practices to rewire your nervous system and build resiliency and vitality.
In this course you’ll explore how mindfulness practice de-conditions trauma and builds energetic resilience, making space for you to experience the realities of fear, hope, uncertainty, caring, chaos and love as we transition into a new world. It is very important at this moment in history to understand how your lived experience and the experience of your ancestors is transmitted through your body. This understanding is needed in order to build the tools to live beyond reactivity. AVAILABLE NOW
Gate 2, The Wind Gate: Decolonizing the Mind- COMING SOON- Practices to help recognize and unbind yourself from the mental habits of the colonial mind.
This gate is an invitation to deconstruct the mental formations and internal knots in your heart and mind that are conditioned by a collective colonial legacy, a legacy that serves to obscure your true presence. In this course you’ll have a chance to discover, acknowledge and embrace the powerful positive qualities of your ancestors: characteristics that are either alive or dormant within you. You will be given tools to conquer hindrances that block you, so you can be free to unbind yourself from habitual ways of being, release your energy and wisdom, and support the creation of the new society that is possible. Coming Soon
Gate 3, The Thunder Gate: Stepping Into Freedom- Practices to help recognize and celebrate our potential beyond the colonized mind.
What does release look like post colonial-conditioning? How do you recognize when you’re experiencing liberation? In this course you'll look at how to recognize the discharge of colonial impressions and hierarchies that bind you. You will identify within your own spiritual journey those liberating moments of release from the internal knots of colonized trauma, turbulent emotions and confused views. It sounds simple, but it’s truly an entire journey in and of itself.
Gate 4, The Dragon Gate: Embodying Our Powers- Practices to reclaim and embody our precious human sovereignty and power.
Ongoing release through mindful deconditioning and resilience practice frees up powerful internal resources to create new ways of being. Fresh and deep creativity, imagination and new possibilities become possible as trauma and old constricting habits and thought patterns are released. The opportunity here is for the energy and consciousness of awakening to penetrate your entire body. You will be given tools to contemplate where and how in this moment to bring your life’s evolutionary force, your gifts, your talents and your loving aspirations into our living world.