Over the past thirty years with the development of Western Insight Meditation communities and Vipassana practice in North America, there has been a process of collective transformation that has been both painstakingly incremental and incontrovertibly powerful. This presentation reviews some of the history and growth of multicultural mindfulness communities; personal experience of diverse practitioners; visual data about the relevance of culture and mindfulness; current cultural conditioning of North American Mindfulness; the dearth of multicultural research explorations within North American Secular Mindfulness; demographic data of Western Insight communities over the past twenty years; examples of resistance to efforts to create cultural awareness; and the current efforts to transform conditioned cultural unconsciousness and to develop diverse spiritual leadership for future generations. This presentation is not so much an information download as a historical mindfulness contemplation: learning from the past and present in order to know how to best benefit the future.
Larry Yang
Spirit Rock
Larry Yang teaches mindfulness and loving kindness retreats nationally and has a special interest in creating access to the dharma for diverse multicultural communities. Larry has practiced meditation for almost … MORE
