Minimizing Harm: An Internal and External Exploration

Harm is defined as: actual or potential ill effect or danger and to have an adverse effect on. Being of both an individual and a social body, we will inherently be the sender and the subject of harm many times in our lives. To deny the risk of this, we might bypass the ways in which we feel the adverse effects we have on others or the dangers we pose to them. We may also ignore or neglect the adverse effects others have on us - both of which cause damage to the individual(s) and the social body.

In this online guided meditation and talk we will explore using principles of harm reduction as an orientation for our personal practice and as inquiry into how our internal experience repatterns onto social systems.

Trinley Busby is a teacher in the Shambhala lineage. Her volunteer and contract work, in the area of housing and poverty activism, led her to the field of frontline social service support work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (2006). She worked with populations experiencing homelessness who live with concurrent mental health and substance abuse challenges. Since that time, Trinley has been uniting her experiences as a meditator with her work as an activist.