On Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community

Creating compassionate communities takes more than good will—it requires a dedication to respecting cultural differences while remembering the fundamental spiritual kinship that exists between all people. Activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Ayo Yetunde creatively explores ways of creating kinship and community through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels. 
 
Ayo offers a practice path that acknowledges our deep challenges—challenges that increasingly give rise to the temptation of group violence, which she calls mobbery—while showing exactly how we can still listen, learn, and heal together. Drawing inspiration from the Black liberation tradition and from stories from various religions, Ayo recasts Indra’s Net as the network in which we all have the choice, either to succumb to our impulses toward division and brutality or renew our civility and love for each other.  

In her latest book Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, Ayo shares more than 20 practices including: five commitments for healthy, nonviolent living; guided contemplation to water the seeds of your spiritual potential; "mirroring” and “twinning” other people; Tonglen (receiving and releasing); and lovingkindness meditations and affirmations. 

Join Ayo and somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez for a heartfelt conversation that is both a call and a primer for community-oriented models of well-being in our age of polarization and turmoil.


Pamela Ayo Yetunde, JD, ThD, is an activist, lay Buddhist teacher, professor, counselor, and writer. She is the coeditor of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom as well as the author of two volumes on pastoral care. She also serves as an associate editor for Lion’s Roar magazine. Ayo has been featured on NBC.com, the Tamron Hall Show, and Sisters of AARP, and she appears regularly in major online summits concerning spirituality and caregiving. A cofounder of the Center of the Heart, she lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Deanna Jimenez is a somatic/transpersonal psychotherapist whose passion is to support those dedicating their lives to transformative movements. Deanna guides clients individually and collectively in establishing a solid mental, emotional, physical and spiritual foundation as a pathway towards elevating collective consciousness. She is Assistant professor in the Somatic Psychology department at CIIS and has a private practice supporting individuals, couples and organizations. 

 
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