On February 1, 2026, the first day of Black History Month in the United States, I led a compassion meditation and gave a dharma talk titled, Black Liberation Ancestors Who Embodied the Four Noble Truths at Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s weekly, online BIPOC Sangha.
While not necessarily the worst of times in the herstories and histories of humankind, these are certainly intense times of suffering, perhaps the most in this chapter of my life in this lifetime. In response, I explored the Buddha’s first foundational and timeless teachings on the Four Noble Truths, interwoven into the lives of three African American liberation ancestors who illuminate the Dharma for me.
The Four Noble Truths are not abstractions.
Dukkhā -There is suffering |dissatisfactoriness.
Samudaya - There is a cause of suffering | dissatisfactoriness, and insatiable craving is at its root.
Nirodha - The cessation of suffering | dissatisfactoriness.
Magga -There is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering | dissatisfactoriness
They have been lived across generations spanning 2700 years, almost three millennia, by the Buddha and his disciples, including his stepmother Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, who led 500 women to follow the Buddha - the early Therīs, the awakened bhikkhunis (women monastics) — including Khemā, Uppalavaṇṇā, Paṭācārā, Subhā, and Sumedhā — and by countless others known and unknown.
I bow with infinite gratitude for the dāna of Asian monastics and lay ancestors and practitioners whose profound multigenerational generosity in sharing the Dharma taught by Gautama Buddha made my contemporary Buddhist practice possible. None of us who are not from Asian Buddhist lineages in the West would be practicing, alone or together in sanghas outside of the Asian continent. The first Buddhist sanghas in the world were Asian. The first Buddhist sanghas in the United States were Asian. To forget this and not name it continually is delusion that gives rise to craving for dominance, to erasure, to collective suffering
And they have been lived by ancestors who were not Buddhist but who embodied profoundly Buddhist practices:
“[…]I am not a Buddhist. And the Buddha would not have minded this in the least. He would have been happy to hear it. He was not, himself, a Buddhist. He was the thing Itself: an enlightened being. Just as Jesus Christ was not a Christian, but a Christ, an enlightened being.[…]”
--Alice Walker, excerpted from Suffering Too Insignificant for the Majority to See, in Lion’s Roar
Harriet Tubman, my North Star when cultivating courage and balance through fear, was a 19th-century Bodhisattva who was a pathbreaking abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor, who, after freeing herself from white supremacist bondage of enslavement of African people, made somewhere between 13–17 trips to free many others. Ms. Tubman embodied equanimity and collective liberation. Her lived example teaches us the truth of suffering and that liberation is possible.
Rev. Dr. Leon E. Wright1, my chosen spiritual ancestor, was a 20th-century African American Congregationalist minister and pioneering, unsung Western teacher of the Buddha-Dhamma, whose humility reveals the Second Noble Truth. He was the first documented Westerner appointed to teach Anapana Meditation in 1963 by Burmese meditation master teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin. Dr. Wright's relationship with U Ba Khin and Sayamagyi (U Ba Khin’s student and co-teacher) shows how genuine Kalyanamitta (spiritual friendship) can flourish when humility meets humility, transcending the racial and gender delusions that shaped the world around them. Dr. Wright’s lived example teaches us to see the causes of suffering, internal and structural, and to dismantle delusion.
Toni Cade Bambara, my teacher and a guiding ancestral spirit, was a 20th-century groundbreaking, award-winning Black feminist author, filmmaker, and cultural worker. Her dear sister-friend, confidante, and editor, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, called Toni “a writer’s writer.” Bambara’s wisdom mirrors the Eightfold Path. Her lived example, literary, and cinematic works teach us that there is a path of clarity, integrity, discipline, and revolutionary love.
Before the Dharma became my core refuge in my life 24 years ago in 2002, Black feminism was my refuge in the 1980s and 1990s and it still is contemporarily. Black feminism was my gateway to the dharma. This talk arose from the relationship between and intersection of Black feminist lineage and the Buddha-Dharma.
You can listen to the talk in its entirety on dharmaseed.org through this link: https://sr.dharmaseed.org/talks/95149/? (The talk begins after the compassion meditation, at around 30 minutes.)
Alternatively, you can listen below.
On Saturday, February 28, 2026, I will teach a hybrid (in-person and online) daylong of sitting, walking, chanting, and relational practice to face what’s here, in our hearts and in the world’s upheaval with wise discernment, equanimity, mettā, and compassion. Hosted by Delaware Valley Insight, “Understanding Suffering, Discovering Inner Freedom: A Four Noble Truths Daylong,” the gathering, which is open to both brand new and experienced meditators will be held from 10am -4pm ET.
May we travel this path with courage, with community, with mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (appreciative joy), and upekkhā (equanimity).
May we, through our embodiment, make liberation irresistible.
May we journey together toward freedom.
Rev. Dr. Leon Wright (1902-1976) is an almost invisible figure in the Western Insight Meditation tradition. He was appointed by Sayagyi U Ba Khin to teach ānāpāna meditation in 1963 and, in April 1969, along with Ruth Denison, Robert Hover, John Coleman, S.N. Goenka, and a few others, was appointed to teach vipassanā meditation. According to his accounts, Dr. Wright taught Buddhist meditation to over 10,000 people. While he didn’t identify as a Buddhist, it is hard not to explore the reasons for his erasure within Western Buddhist lineages. On February 4, 2023, I gave a dharma talk titled, “Remembering Rev. Dr. Leon E. Wright, Black Buddhist Meditation Teacher and Congregationalist Minister” at Elm Community Insight. The YouTube recording is available here and the SoundCloud recording is available here. In November 2023, Joah McGee, producer and host of Insight Myanmar, published his interview and conversation with me in the episode #205 Uncovering Dr. Leon Wright (available wherever you listen to podcasts). In her former role as an Associate Editor of Lion’s Roar, Pamela Ayo Yetunde published the February 2025 article, co-written by six people, “We Remember: Six Remarkable Black Buddhists.” Dr. Wright is one of the six featured.
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