February is Black History Month

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MRZC offers a space for racialized folks HERE.

The Engaged Buddhist Practice Group offers the following:

  • We draw your attention to a Lion’s Roar Article titled “We Remember: Six Remarkable Black Buddhists” You can read it HERE

  • Knowledge Network is running a series of relevant programmes which you can watch HERE

  • In November 2024, East Bay Meditation Center hosted an event with Angela Davis, Lama Rod Owens, and Prentis Hemphill speaking at Love, Power, and Liberation. You can watch it on EMBC’s YouTube channel.

  • We spotlight on a forthcoming book by Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad (publish date February 2026)- The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde  >>> Here is an except from the publisher:

This book explores the writings of Audre Lord and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.

Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad, dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment with radical [noun]. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment.

This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities … that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.

Dr. Rima Vesley-Flad is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022). She leads retreats and classes for dharma centers throughout the U.S.

Local Events for Black History Month

Please click HERE to download a printable PDF of reading list of books by Black Teachers and Practitioners of the Buddha Dharma (this list is in no way exhaustive). Websites have been added by to those who have one. Compiled by Angela Kayira