Book Club: The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
Key Details
This series will meet for 4 weeks on Sundays from 11.00-12:30 p.m. PT (UTC-7) beginning June 28th.
All meeting dates are: June 28th, July 5th, July 12th and July 19th 2026.
This offering is shared on a tiered based contribution scale. No one will be turned away due to financial need.
This course will be recorded and recordings will be shared with all registered participants.
Series Description
In this very special opportunity, we are honored to study and practice with the book 'The Fire Inside: the Dharma of James Baldwin and Audré Lorde', with its author Dr Rima Vesely-Flad, alongside SMS sangha leaders
Join us for an interactive book club to explore how Baldwin’s and Lorde’s lives and works illuminate the territory of suffering, liberation, and the truth of this moment. Through conversation, reflection and practice, we will uncover how Baldwin and Lorde’s ancestral wisdom reflects and expands Buddhisms most timeless truths towards justice and liberation. Collectively and experientially we will make space for their their words to open us into the dharma of our lives, and for their wisdom to guide our practice in these times.
Dr Rima will open and close the series alongside sangha leaders Kareem Ghandour, Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Lisa D Moore who will be hosting the rest of the weeks.
Week 1: The Transformation of Silence into Action.
Week 2: Chapters 2 & 3 - “Pain That Saves your Life” and “Sun in a Sunless Place”.
Week 3: Chapters 4 & 5 - “It comes from Somewhere” and “Training Anger with Accuracy".
Week 4: Chapters 6 & 7 - “Once you Have Light” and “Personal Power that Moves Us".
Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles:
Suffering as a teacher: how Baldwin and Lorde investigated suffering in their own lives—and how expanded and disrupted interpretations of the Dharma
Denial, impermanence, and death: on Baldwin’s exploration of white supremacy and fear of death and Lorde’s understanding of illness and inevitable change
Ultimate and relative reality: how honoring race, gender, sexuality, and difference lies at the heart of Buddhist liberation
Karma and not-self: how the doctrine of karma can be reclaimed to cultivate inner liberation and support activists working to dismantle oppression
Anger and compassion: how we metabolize internalized rage, reject hatred, and embrace compassion toward transformation
Erotic paths to enlightenment: on the power of sensuality and erotic energy; rejecting dominant heteronormativity; and attaining enlightenment through sexual union
Order the Book
Available from Penguin Random House in Paperback and Ebook version
Facilitators
Rima Vesely-Flad, Ph.D.,is the author of three books: The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (North Atlantic Books, 2026), Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). She is Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and a Visiting Affiliate Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion.
Dr. Vesely-Flad is former Founding Director of the Inside Out Prison Education Program, a partnership between the Swannanoa Correctional Institution for Women and Warren Wilson College, and also taught college-level courses at Sing Sing Prison in New York State. She was a Fulbright Scholar and Awardee in South Africa and Ghana.
Kareem Ghandour (he/him) is a Lebanese/Palestinian teacher, facilitator, and artist based in the UK. His teaching is inspired by contemplative creativity, ritual, and devotional practice. He has worked with youth and in mindfulness based education projects for the last decade, including serving as managing director for iBme UK. He is a member of the collaborative staff team at Sacred Mountain Sangha and a graduate of the 2 year Dharmapala training. He is a co-founder of the Sacred Justice Coalition and the SWANA+ Sangha, co-creating new dharma cultures to meet times of genocide and collapse. His most recent work is in exploring ways of bridging dharma with Palestinian liberation theology and lineages of sacred activism
Aishah Shahidah Simmons is a survivor-healer, Black feminist lesbian writer-filmmaker, and Insight Meditation Teacher whose path emerges from the meeting place of three decades of cultural production, a liberation practice, and a 2,600-year-old Buddhist tradition. A Vipassana practitioner since 2002 and currently in the 2025–2028 Spirit Rock/IMS Residential Retreat Teacher Training Program, she is also a resident teacher at Delaware Valley Insight. Her Dharma teaching arises from the same deep well that has shaped her landmark feature film NO! The Rape Documentary and her Lambda Literary Award winning anthology love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse. Both works embody her deep commitment to healing, accountability liberation, and the possibility of transformation without relying on carceral systems. Aishah's teaching is a continuation and deepening, a devotional turning toward suffering with clarity, compassion, ethical integrity, and a steadfast commitment to collective freedom. Learn more: https://aishahshahidahsimmons.com
Lisa Moore began practicing in 1998, with the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. She joined the EBMC community by participating in the first Commit2Dharma study series, where she began to deepen her practice of sangha and then later served on the programming committee. She has also received lay ordination with the Venerable Pannavati and Pannadipa, and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioner Program and the Sacred Mountain Sangha’s Dharmapala training.
She has worked to uplift grassroots approaches in harm reduction for several decades and has taught at San Francisco State University for over 30 years, supporting the next generation of public health, harm reduction and social justice advocates