What is a Beloved Community Circle?
Overview. A Beloved Community Circle (BCC) is a small group of 3-12 people, geographically local to each other, who engage in spiritual practice together, care for each other’s well-being, and participate in mindful action of the group’s choosing. Individual Beloved Community Circles are supported through trainings, resources, and being networked together to learn, inform, and encourage each other. A Beloved Community Circle provides an intimate, personalized, and collective way to engage in applying mindful practices to relieve suffering in the world. (Note: Within the Plum Village Buddhist community, a BCC is envisioned as a form that supports members of ARISE, Earth Holder Community, Wake Up, EMBRACE, other Plum Village initiatives, and sangha members who wish to organize themselves toward the Action Dimension.)
Small and personal and local. Roughly three to twelve (3-12) local folks gather to form a Beloved Community Circle. It is intended to be a small, intimate group who can go deep with each other, forge strong bonds of love and support with each other, train together, and become a dependable, reliable, courageous cohort for mindful action, socially engaged practice and action to meet the challenges of the day. (Under certain circumstances, a Beloved Community Circle might be virtual rather than local and physical. For example, there might not be a sufficient number of BIPOC practitioners in a particular town, so BIPOC from various locations might form a virtual BCC. However, most BCCs are local and in-person.)
Being small and local allows for Circle members to make decisions more efficiently, care for one another up close, engage in action together, and reduce their carbon footprint by not flying or driving long distances to meet or act.
Liberation is the overall aim and mission of the Beloved Community Circle, liberation from suffering and liberation toward a just, peaceful, harmonious, flourishing planet that has reverence and gratitude for all of life. This applies to three interconnected dimensions: individual Circle members, the Circle itself through caring for one another and building strong, resilient, effective community, and the wider collective world through engaged action. It might be visualized as three nested circles.
Three core commitments. The above aim of liberation is supported by members of a Circle making the commitment to practice mindfulness together, care about each other’s well-being, and, engage in collective action to relieve suffering in the wider world. (More below.)
Self-chosen action focus. A Circle might want to organize around a particular identity marker or vocation such as a Circle of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), a Circle of folks identifying as LGBTQ+, or a Circle of healers or artists or vegans. Alternatively a Circle can be focused more generally on social justice or be organized around the specific interests of its members. A Circle may be comprised of folks who want to work on community resilience and apply those skills to their local community, or shutting down a coal fired power plant, or support indigenous in Water Protecting, or restoring voting rights. And so on, all for the purpose of protecting and preserving all living beings and the earth in an equitable way toward all races, ethnicities and species.
Self-organized and autonomous. Each Circle is free to act on its own, organize itself, and call itself a Beloved Community Circle as long as it is in harmony with the basic what, why, and how outlined in this document. The expectation is that a Circle meets on a regular basis and practices together.
Time commitment. Ideally, each member of the Beloved Community Circle initially commits to a six month involvement for the three purposes stated above. This minimum commitment helps create consistency, stability, and trust among the members. At the end of the six months each member assesses the impact of the experience and discerns whether to continue or not, with mutual agreement among all the members of the Circle; and if so, the assessment will help illuminate what worked and how the experience might be more inclusive and effective moving forward.
Not for everyone. Being part of an ongoing Beloved Community Circle means dedicated time and effort; it means study and self-exploration, it means looking into and healing our internalized oppressions; it means sometimes moving out of one’s comfort zone in relationships or in the action domain, and so on. Therefore, we acknowledge that this level of engagement is not possible or desirable for everyone. This is fine. There are an infinite number of ways to serve and help. A BCC is just one way, and there needs to be a fit between the person and the commitment of working in this form.
Three Commitments or Core Practice Areas of a Beloved Community Circle. An Overview
The three purposes of a BCC are personal, community, and social liberation. The three commitments are to practice mindfulness, care about one another, and engage in collective action.
Mindfulness or Spiritual Practice. A Circle regularly uses mindfulness or other spiritual practices for grounding, including sitting, walking, and eating meditation; chanting, centering prayer, the teachings of impermanence and interbeing, and regular reflection on the Five Mindfulness Trainings or ethics for daily living.
Community Building. Members of a Circle intentionally build their Circle’s culture and ways of relating to each other by sharing life stories, caring for each other’s well-being, becoming aware of patterns of oppression and dominance that may be operating among them, supporting each other in personal challenges, and coming to enjoy loving relationships. This is deep sangha building. The aspiration is that each Circle creates its own mini-Beloved Community.
Collective Action. On the solid foundation of mindfulness practice and caring for one another, the Circle agrees to 12-20 days of collective action on an issue or issues of their own choosing. Practices include studying, learning, visioning, skill-building; developing an intersectionality approach; committing to nonviolence; attending to equity issues among members; engaging in periodic self-assessment of its group dynamics and functioning. (See next three "Commitment" sections of this handbook for an elaboration of these three areas of practice.)
Each member of a BCC commits to deepening their skills through training.
Each Circle will receive initial onboarding training or orientation about the values, principles, equity concerns, and commitments—the “DNA” of a Circle, in order to generate common understanding and basic agreements. After that, and concurrent with other BCC activities, members are invited to expand their skills by participating in further trainings. Over time trainings could include skill development in nurturing a strong community, climate justice, transforming white supremacy, nonviolent mindful action, trauma healing and resiliency, and deep listening partnerships, nonviolent communication skills, awareness and healing around racial and social inequities, applied ethics, and mindful action pathways. Such training bolsters our mindfulness skills with other effective skills and methods. Most trainings are online for ease of access, though some in-person trainings may emerge. Trainings are to be offered at no cost and supported by a “gift economy” process below.
A training menu invites the expertise from various backgrounds, e.g., Kingian Nonviolence (Fierce Vulnerability Network), RACE—A Dharma Door (ARISE); Mindfulness through a Trauma-informed lens (EMBRACE), Community Resiliency Model (CRM), Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Healing America’s Racial Trauma (The Lotus Institute), The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy), Re-evaluation Counseling (RC), Somatic Experiencing (SE), Block, Build, Be (Buddhist Peace Fellowship), Fierce Vulnerability, Equity and Resource Distribution (Fierce Vulnerability Network); Restorative Practices (East Bay Meditation Center)
Individual members of the BCC Network.
There are some individuals who are aligned with the values and purposes of the Beloved Community Circles but who are unable to be part of a local Circle for various reasons. Maybe they are in an isolated location with few other practitioners nearby, or perhaps their health or work or family obligations prevent them from participating in a Circle. Nonetheless, they are welcome to become a BCC Member-at-Large as long as they are aligned with BCC principles and practices.
Such folks could contribute in many ways like (locally) providing services for Circle members like babysitting during meetings or actions, massages, meals, promotional help, action day support, website design or help, financial support. This list is infinite.
This allows people who agree with the intent of the BCC but due to life conditions do not have the bandwidth, health, time, or capacity to make the commitments expected of Circle members. Yet their contributions can be welcomed and important.
BCCs informed by diverse perspectives
The Beloved Community Circles are deliberately positioned at the intersection of racial and climate justice, understanding that these are inseparable. However, without care and deliberate action, we can predict that at least for the foreseeable future, most BCCs will be composed predominantly of white practitioners as team members. We hope to use this dilemma as an opportunity for growth.
Therefore, members of the Beloved Community Circles are asked to deliberately work to create belonging and the Beloved Community so that they do not slip into recreating dominant culture inequities. As part of this process, to date the development of the Beloved Community Circles has been informed and shaped by diverse voices, including BIPOC, young people in Wake Up, monastic and lay teachers, Order of Interbeing members, the Earth Holder Community Care Taking Council, and more. An advisory group composed of majority BIPOC and younger people is being developed and will provides the BCC with feedback, guidance, advice, challenge, and support periodically or as needed. This arrangement helps provide the BCC Network with a diversity of views that will strengthen the evolution of the project, some accountability for the collective wisdom, and concrete help to improve local BCCs.
In addition to informal advisors, there is a Beloved Community Circles Caretaking Council which is intentionally majority BIPOC and young that provides some guidance and coordination across the network.
Network Councils
As the number of local Beloved Community Circles increases, there may arise the need for coherence, coordination, decision-making, and problem-solving across the network of BCCs.
A few initial Councils have been identified as important for the Circles network as it evolves:
Onboarding & Training Council—to design and implement the orientation of new Circles and ongoing trainings for Circle members
Bridging and Belonging Council—to keep a focus on identifying, interrupting, and dismantling white supremacist culture, the centering of marginalized voices, while welcoming all people in nurturing Beloved Community
Coaching Council–to provide support, guidance, coaching for emerging Circles
Harmony Council—to help resolve conflicts, repair relationships, and restore harmony
Care Taking Council—representing all Councils, charged with responsibility of making network-wide decisions.
As of now, only the Care Taking Council exists. Other councils will likely prove helpful. Circle members are encouraged to create them as the need emerges.
Electronic and virtual communications platforms
In addition to a training menu, the network is linked together through various electronic platforms available for BCC members for sharing resources, experiences, questions, and problem-solving. In this way, we can connect across BCCs to inspire each other with our mindful actions, propose a call for action or request for help with a collective effort. (Note: For practitioners from the Plum Village tradition, we hope the networking can serve, support, and be informed by the efforts of ARISE, EMBRACE, Earth Holders, Wake Up, and other existing Plum Village initiatives.) We cannot predict what might emerge from this cross fertilization but we are confident that many gifts and benefits will emerge from the collective.
A “gift economy” model for sustaining the network
The BCC network will require a certain level of funds and other resources to function well. For example, there will be funds needed to support trainers for developing and facilitating trainings, to provide financial assistance to retreats and trainings for members who need it, to cover costs of electronic platforms, to resource an “equity fund” to provide assistance to attend trainings or events and to cover the wages of a possible part time BCC coordinator in the future. We aspire to live into a “gift economy model,” trusting each Circle member or Circle supporter will offer what they can from their wallets, resources, and hearts in a collective experiment of mutual support. We have been inspired to use a “gift economics” model adapted by the East Point Peace Academy in Oakland, CA. With their permission, we have adopted their approach and include their description in the Resources section because we think it is an important practice to incorporate.
