Jan Willis: "A Community of 'Neighbors': A Baptist-Buddhist Reflects on the Common Ground of Love

Abstract:

An exploration of the parallel values, advocated by both Christian and Buddhist doctrines, of love, non-violence, interconnectedness, and social activism.  Drawing from the sermons of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the teachings of the Buddha, this talk focuses on race/racism, on the concept of love, and the exhortation of both traditions to work for the benefit of all others. 

Speaker's Bio:

Jan Willis (BA and MA in Philosophy, Cornell University; PhD in Indic and Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, 1976) is Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.  She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland and the U.S. for over four decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism for thirty-nine years.  She is the author of The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1972), On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi (1979), Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (1995); and the editor of Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989). Additionally, Willis has published a number of articles and essays on various topics in Buddhism—Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race.  In 2001, she authored the memoir, Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey (re-issued October 1, 2008 by Wisdom Publications as Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist—One Woman’s Spiritual Journey).  In December of 2000, Time magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.”  In 2003, she was a recipient of Wesleyan University’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.  Newsweek magazine’s “Spirituality in America” issue in September of 2005 included a profile of her and, in its May 2007 edition Ebony magazine named Willis one of its “Power 150” most influential African Americans.