Waking Up Through Humility, Community, Intelligence, and Refusal

What do the Four Karmas--Pacifying, Enriching, Magnetizing, and Destroying--have to do with how we live our lives, how we interact with others, and how we relate with interlocking systems of oppression? In this talk, Dr. Smalls will present the Four Karmas as Humility, Community, Intelligence, and Refusal as ways to bring the ancient wisdom into our everyday lives as we wake up to our personal and societal delusions. This talk asks us all to take responsibility for our harmful behavior and our complicity in harmful systems.

Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls is a teacher and student in the Shambhala school of Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism. Dr. Smalls teaches dharma and meditation in a variety of locations including dharma centers, conferences, corporations, and colleges and universities. Shanté is focused on the healing impact of contemplation and meditation in Black communities, People of Color communities, LGBTQ+ communities, and prison and recovery communities. Shanté is an Assistant Professor of Black Literature & Culture at St. John’s University in Queens, NY, and they live in Brooklyn, NY with their dog, Drala. They will be living in Atlanta for the 2019-2020 academic year on a research fellowship at Emory University.