Ep. 60-"How can I reach the part of them that wants to awaken?"—my conversation with Dharma teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo

In this episode, I sit down with Kaira Jewel Lingo to talk about her dedicated interweaving of mindfulness and social justice. She reflects on the influence of her parents, a black mom from Chicago's westside and a white dad from southern Texas who worked in the Civil Rights movement. She shares about her childhood years in Kenya, including the experience of living simply and how that's shaped her life as an adult. Finally, we discuss her journey meeting Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and becoming a nun. She now lives as a lay teacher of Buddhism. EARLY LIFE My lifelong journey of weaving contemplative practice with social justice started with being born into an interracial family within a residential Christian community that was focused on voluntary simplicity and service to the poor and marginalized.  NUN LIFEAs soon as I saw the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as his students call him (Vietnamese for ‘teacher’), I knew he was my teacher. The community of nuns, monks and lay practitioners was also deeply inspiring to me, living authentically what he taught. In 1999 I was ordained as a Buddhist nun at the age of 25 and spent fifteen years as a nun, engaging in a 24-hour-a-day mindfulness practice made up of daily sitting and walking meditation, eating meals in silence to be fully present for our food, dharma study and community building, leading retreats and guiding students individually.PRESENT DAYThen, in my early forties, after spending nearly my whole adult life as a nun, I made another huge shift after a long discernment process, deciding to leave monastic life to start all over. So, when many friends from my youth had already started families and spent several decades in their professions, I was learning in middle age to do the things my peers had been doing since their early twenties—using a cell phone, running a household, and paying taxes. It was a major transition on many levels: personally, socially, financially, professionally, spiritually, and culturally. In a sense, I was reinventing my whole identity. https://www.kairajewel.com