Our Commitment to Unraveling Oppression
True North Insight seeks to be a sangha where all human beings, with no exceptions, can heal, bloom, shine and experience freedom.
Vision
The Buddha taught that the Dharma is nature -- it belongs to no one and to everyone. True North Insight seeks to be a sangha where all human beings, with no exceptions, can heal, bloom, shine and experience freedom. As we speak, we are waking-up to our responsibility to build a sangha that removes all hindrances to this vision -- including in our leadership, our teaching teams, our retreat and class schedules, our communications, and in our registration processes.
True North Insight Commits
True North Insight is committed to dismantling racism and oppression. We have made a start towards building a Sangha that reflects the aspiration of a truly inclusive Sangha, but we know that we still have a long road ahead.
Here is our update on our commitments stated earlier this year:
• We have 50% BIPOC teachers on our retreat schedule.
• We are offering a weekly BIPOC sitting group and an annual BIPOC retreat.
• Our community teacher training program is comprised of 30% BIPOC students.
• Most of TNI’s white teachers, board members, staff and facilitators are working with the book Me and White Supremacy as a collective.
• We have offered two white awareness caucus groups for our sangha, one in English with TNI facilitators Coral Short and Ryan “Twinkle” Backer, and one in French facilitated by Pascal Auclair and K Laspruce.
• We are constantly seeking to update the resource list on race and will be integrating greater aspects of equity and inclusion in time. (resources are available on our Equity & Inclusion page - see link below).
We encourage all who are able to donate to our Inclusion Scholarship fund to help the teachings and retreats be more accessible to Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, as well as other marginalized groups, and to our fund to support BIPOC initiatives to flourish. As Dharma teacher Lama Rod Owens cautioned, "if we don't do our work, then we become work for other people."
Waking up to the impacts of racism and other systemic forms of oppression, and the responsibilities that come with privilege, profoundly supports sila, the ethical action upon which the Dharma rests.
We all need the presence of many voices and perspectives in an equitable and inclusive community, because we are interdependent, and the liberation of each one of us is bound together.