Commitment #2: Practices for Building Beloved Community Circles

“The path of [siblinghood] is more precious  than any ideology or religion.” 
— Thich Nhat Hanh

A Beloved Community Circle is intended, in part, to be a laboratory for living into the way we would like society and community to be.  The ways we develop and sustain our BCC will greatly affect how we show up in mindful action.  Because society and many communities are soaked in patterns of patriarchy, white supremacy, competition and individualism, a BCC needs to deliberately and diligently use group processes, community-building methods, relational skills, and mindfulness in order to counteract and transform these unwholesome social patterns.  Here are some elements that support a BCC to function in a healthy and sustainable way.  Through experience of developing BCCs, other key elements may emerge.

BCC culture-building and group process

Because we want a Beloved Community Circle (BCC) to increasingly embody what we wish to see in the wider society, conscious careful thought needs to go into the way a BCC functions. Otherwise we will most likely slip into harmful habits of normative dominant culture.  Our spirtual and ethical practices help us to be intentional in creating and maintaining an inclusive and supportive environment. While we know that each BCC will have its own unique flavor and customs, here are some elements of culture building to consider. 

• Meet in a comfortable place and time.  Even the choice of location and time of meeting matters in culture-building. Is everyone able to travel easily to the location? Is it central to most BCC folks? Are folks comfortable in the neighborhood?  Do we need to provide transportation for some members? Is there beauty in the space or can we add it while we are there? Is it possible to sit in a circle?  Is the time and day of meetings convenient for parents, workers, elders, historically excluded folks, and all?
  
   

• Begin and end on time. This is a basic respect for people’s lives. Sometimes this goes counter to some cultural habits, but in BCCs, we agree to try our best to arrange our lives to show up on time so everyone can be present for the whole meeting. And we agree to end at the designated time, to respect the other commitments of our BCC members. This needn’t be rigid but a general practice that hopefully becomes the cultural norm for the BCC.
  
   

• Begin with a mindfulness or other spiritual grounding practice.  For example, you might invite the sound of a bell, or check in with the body and relax tensions, or enjoy breathing, or notice where the mind is, or relax into silence. 
  
    

• Do a personal check-in. Have various ways for members to connect personally, like sharing something new or good that happened, using a one-word internal weather report (energized, tired, happy, frustrated, etc.). Sometimes extended sharing is needed. 
  
  

• Establish gathering agreements. Each BCC is free to establish its own guidelines as long as they are aligned with the DNA of the BCC.  Here are some examples you might consider: 

• begin and end on time; 

• value our importance to the group by attending all gatherings, and if we can’t, contact a group member to explain so the group can still hold all members in awareness; 

• turn off or put our cell phones and electronics to the side; 

• offer our full attention to what is happening; 

• be mindful not to fall into dominant, marginalizing social patterns like men doing most of the talking, or white people always running the meetings, or women serving the refreshments, and so on; 

• don’t interrupt one who is speaking; bowing in and bowing out; 

• not speaking twice until others who want to speak have spoken once; 

• using a transparent and nourishing meeting process (e.g., inclusive, safe, respectful, organized, appreciative) 

• have a clear decision-making process; 

• make agreements on how best to communicate with each other between meetings (email? text? phone call? encrypted service? other?); 

• agree on ways to resolve tensions or disharmony between members; 

• for evening meetings, ending at an early enough time for all; 

• agree on ways to debrief, unwind, have fun.  

These may evolve and change over time, so it is good to periodically revisit and refresh the agreements.

Attentiveness to patterns of oppression / inequity and practices to dismantle and counteract them

Given the aspiration that a BCC will live into ways we want the world to be, and given the pervasiveness of dominant culture patterns from all the oppression “isms,” BCC members will need to be watchful and intentional to avoid drifting into these ways of behaving.  Some suggestions:

• All BCC members agree to ongoing self-education about oppression in its many forms-- the dynamics, details, history, and current manifestations. (Some helpful resources in the Resources section.)

• White BCC members commit to onboard training in anti-racism awareness and work, and commit to continue learning and growing in this area. 

• BIPOC BCC members commit to examining and healing any internalized racism.

• In a mixed race/class/gender/age BCC, members consciously ensure that traditionally marginalized voices are front and center in BCC decision-making, discussions, meeting facilitation, who speaks for the group, leadership roles, and so on. While every BCC member is valued and each has contributions to make, we ask that men be aware of how their conditioned patriarchy shows up, that white people counteract the ways white supremacy often has them take initiative, speak up, assume leadership, even with the best of intentions, thus crowding out voices of color; that folks with more wealth and class advantage work to lay back, speak last, make room for folks from less class privilege; and so on. 

• When we make mistakes, we try our best to listen, accept, learn, apologize, and change

• Include the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the BCC’s quarterly review process (see “Quarterly Review”)

• It may be important for some BIPOC or other historically excluded folks to experience their own BCC before engaging in a “mixed” BCC.
  
  

Here is a beginning list of ways to work towards greater awareness of "intersectional" issues, knowing that more will evolve as the Circles network grows and learns: 

• Incorporating basic awareness of the dynamics of oppression and conditioning around separation into the DNA of the Circles Network; 

• Provide training on racial justice, environmental racism, and climate justice in the onboarding trainings for all Circle members; 

• Find concrete ways of exploring the class and wealth status of individual Circle members and consider ways of shifting and sharing resources as appropriate.”

• Link racial and climate justice. For example, at “climate justice” actions, highlight the ways it is also a “racial justice” issue (like protesting the Line 3 Pipeline), and at “racial justice” actions, highlight the ways it is also a “climate justice” issue (like immigration at the U.S. southern border); keep connecting the dots; 

• Encouraging affinity or intersectional BCC to be both cultural sanctuaries and connected to the larger Circles Network for mutual learning and actions.  
  
  

See Resources page for helpful tools and articles for doing this work.

Cultivating a trauma-informed/healing-centered practice

                “All conflict has history. When we don’t see the history, we don’t 
               understand the conflict, and then our responses are less skillful.”        

                                        - Kazu Haga, author of "Healing Resistance"


The climate emergency has a history. Racial injustice has a history. The January 6 Insurrection has a history. As Buddhists would say, “This is because that is.” Karma is the other formulation: that we inherit the consequences of our actions (thought, word, and deed), both individually and collectively. So much of our human conflict is rooted in unhealed trauma. In our efforts to engage in mindful action, it is useful to cultivate some basic understanding of trauma, its pervasiveness, and how it is perpetuated.   

Mindfulness of the body.  The Buddha taught about the Four Establishments, sometimes called Foundations, of Mindfulness, the first establishment of which is Mindfulness of the Body.  The Buddha points us back to the body as the place we experience reality. Breathing, coming back to this body, in this moment; cultivating intimate experience with our bodies.  We have lots of body practices: deep relaxation, body scans, breathing exercises, feeling strong emotions in the body, walking, yoga, chi gong—all help us cultivate a body-centered practice.  Why is body practice crucial? Because body sensations are in the present moment. You can’t have yesterday’s toothache or tomorrow’s back pain. Mindfulness of our bodily sensations helps ground us in the present moment, where healing and transformation can truly happen. 
 

Add brain science. Modern neuroscience can help us understand the basics. Neuroscientist Dan Siegel uses the “hand brain model.” Using his hand, he asks us to imagine...

• Wrist = spinal cord. 

• Lower palm = Brain stem (reptilian) 300 million years old—flight, fight, or freeze, 

• Thumb folded across palm = Limbic brain (emotions, assesses meaning of things, also activates certain memory areas, and attachment to caregivers), 200,000 million years old

• Fingers wrapped around thumb = Neo-cortex (higher functions including reason, compassion, creativity); makes sense of outside world through our eyes, ears, tongue, nose; top front of fingers is frontal cortex = makes associations; last knuckle to finger nails is pre-frontal cortex—integrates cortex, limbic area, and brain stem, body, and social world.  The fully human brain with the neocortex was not developed until 200,000 years ago. This is a fairly new evolution.

• Sometimes, the brain gets “disintegrated,” the cortex lifts up, we can “flip our lid”; it doesn't protect the limbic and stem. Things get chaotic, out of balance.
   	

The reptilian brain and the limbic brain assess safety or danger, and can cause the body to react with fight, flight, or freeze. “Dangerous” means a threat, real or imagined, to the well-being of our body.  The reptilian brain send signals to limbic system, which developed over 200 million year ago in the evolution of mammals, which decides in a split second whether the signal is “safe” and sends it on to the neocortex, or whether the signal/info is dangerous, which activates a flight, fight, or freeze response.

What trauma is. The last piece of framing is to inform ourselves about trauma.  Much research has shown the following (culled from the work of Resmaa Menakem, Gabor Mate, Dan Siegel, David Treleaven):

• Trauma can be individually experienced; experienced as a group; passed from body to body.

• We can inherit historical trauma and generational trauma.

• There are several main sources of trauma:

• Experiencing trauma: violent accidents or death; repeated abuse; Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs); surprise unknown cause of disaster; poignant events like Sandy Hook; many killed as in earthquake

• Witnessing trauma: seeing rape, murder, torture; a fire, flood, terrorist attack. Called secondary trauma.

• Perpetrating trauma: inflicting suffering on another person or being—can cause what is called moral injury. Soldiers, slaughterhouse workers, gangsters, police

• Living in traumatized social structures or conditions like racism, war, poverty, brutality 

• Impact of trauma: higher rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, alcoholism, liver disease; financial stress, poor academic or work performance; attempted suicide; mental health issues.

• Biochemistry of trauma remains in the body; can become chronic—cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine; toxic if chronic. 

• Traumatized body treats all threats, real or imagined, the same: fight, flight, or freeze. Such responses override reason.  A trauma reaction de-regulates the nervous system into a zone of hyperactive, super-anxious, and hyper-alertness or numbness, apathy, and sometimes catatonia. 
  
  

Trauma is not a weakness or fault. It is a built in survival mechanism, “a highly effective tool for safety and survival,” as author and clinician, Resmaa Menakem writes in My Grandmother’s Hands.  “Trauma is a wordless story that our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat. Our rational brain can’t stop it from occurring, and it can’t talk our body out of it.” Trauma is not something one chooses. As Gabor Mate says, trauma is not what happens to someone, it's what happens inside someone. Trauma can cause us to act or think in wildly inappropriate ways, to freak out for no apparent reason, as if something were a catastrophe. It rekindles the original pain or fright that is still stuck in our body. It can put the nervous system on high alert, either always “on” or easily triggered. 

Each person with trauma in the body responds differently. Some flee from the feelings, deny, and distract themselves. Some go numb, even catatonic, frozen. Some fight back or re-enact the trauma, often on others, as an attempt to overcome or master it, and end up causing more suffering in themselves and others. Think about men who were beaten as boys. Beatings are an assault to the body, plus an emotional wound to the heart. Most boys never get an adequate chance to properly heal from the trauma of physical abuse. So when they grow up, if they are wired to act out this trauma on others, who do they take it out on?  Women and children in their lives--people who are “down the power line” from them. Abusers were abused.  This is a clinical truism which therapists call “traumatic retention,” and which if not healed, can become internalized and can be passed down from generation to generation.


The takeaway for BCCs members is to understand that trauma shows up in ourselves, in people we might consider our opponents, and in the systems trauma helps create and sustain. Unless we are informed about trauma, and until we have healed our own trauma, reactivity may result, and lead us to be less effective in our actions. 

Healing negative habit energies; building resilience, restorative capacities

Trauma is the mostly unrecognized backstory of three huge strains of emotional stressors that impact our work on racial and environmental justice: a) feelings about the immensity of the suffering that is upon us and which is increasing, which can overwhelm us and make us go numb; b) the old negative habits we bring to the work, such as feelings of insecurity, powerlessness, insufficiency, and fear, all of which makes us less effective and more hindered, and c) societal patterns of oppression that divide us against each other, keep us squabbling among ourselves and less united, and therefore less effective in change work. 

Think about this. If we are even half awake, and don’t turn away from racial or environmental suffering, we are going to feel heartbreak, deep grief, maybe loads of anger and waves of despair, and probably bouts of confusion and doubt.

How do we allow ourselves to face and feel the enormity of what is upon us?  If we don’t allow those feelings to arise and heal, we are in danger of shutting down, going numb, hardening our hearts, distracting ourselves, and playing small ball.  We would venture to say that most everyone reading this knows deep in our hearts that there is something very wrong, something fundamentally out of alignment. And because everything is interconnected, we hurt inside when we read about such things, even if they are far away, like killing ancient elephants for their ivory tusks, or the loss of another beautiful species gone forever, or the explosion of an oil rig that coats the shoreline for hundreds of miles with sludge that kills the seabirds. Our hearts break.  In the human realm too, we hurt when others are hurting, like when another unarmed Black man is killed by police, or when refugees have to flee rising sea levels, or when low income people in Louisiana’s “cancer alley” are sick from toxic fossil fuel production. During the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the black people had a chant, “An injury to one is an injury to all. An injury to one is an injury to all.”

The point is that whether or not we allow space to express the feelings connected with climate and racial suffering, those feelings are present in us. 

How do we find ways of allowing ourselves to grieve, to let our hearts break open at both the present suffering and the suffering to come? Feelings of despair, depression, and sadness are natural responses to the possibilities of extinction, but these passing states of grief needn’t be a reason to give up or not act. Life is still miraculous. Even as suffering deepens, there is still so much to love and protect. 

As noted in other places in this handbook, it’s useful to remember that the feelings of despair, fear, or powerlessness that arise about climate change or racism were there long before we ever knew anything about those things.  When we were children, we witnessed or experienced things we knew were a violation of life, but we were too small to stop them. We didn’t have the power. And unless we had a chance to heal those wounds, we internalized feelings of powerlessness and carried them into adulthood. When facing big challenges, like climate change or racism or poverty, many of us sink into those old feelings of powerlessness and say “it’s too big,” or “I’m not enough.”

Feelings are feelings. They are not the whole of reality.  Though persistent feelings can fool us into thinking “that’s how things are,” or “that’s how I am.” Such unwholesome negative thoughts signal that there are parts of ourselves that are waiting to be healed.  Such healing requires safety, courage, and intention. In our mindful practice, when we sit in silence we can notice and accept feelings as they arise, and allow healing to happen. 

If strong emotions persist, we might go to a trusted friend and ask them to listen to us. When we are listened to respectfully and warmly, and when the listener persists in offering undivided attention, often the person who is suffering can find themselves crying with grief, shaking or shivering with fear, trembling with anger, or experiencing other forms of emotional release. This is quite normal.

Along with mindfulness meditation, deep looking, and healing the inner child practices, we encourage BCC members to identify and work with a co-listening partner. You can begin by exchanging just 5-10 minutes each, and build up from there. Just a few guidelines: each person takes an equal time turn; the listener offers no advice, no comment, no judgment, no trying to fix the other person. Rather the listener simply provides a sacred space that accepts and encourages whatever feelings arise for the speaker. (See "A Process of Emotional Healing" in the Resources section for specific information about this process.)


This can also be a collective practice in BCC meetings. For example, members can break into pairs or small groups for an equal time turn to process an emotional video they just watched, or clear their thinking before an important decision, or vent their feelings about an event, or celebrate a BCC achievement or success, and so on.  Sometimes it can be useful to stay in the whole group where each BCC member has an equal turn to share what’s on their hearts.  (For more information about this method of healing, see “Mindfulness and Emotional Healing” in the "Resources" page.) 

Releasing old feelings and healing old habit energies will not in itself eliminate racism, reduce global warming, or stop environmental damage, but will allow us to think more clearly and act more boldly as we undertake these critical issues.

Support for one another through personal challenges; commitment to each other’s well-being; being there for each other and building relationships

A BCC is predicated on several ideas. One is that small group size of 3-10 or so people, not too small and not too big, helps with a sense of belonging, allows for more efficient decision-making, and supports the intimacy of knowing each other well. A second idea is that in order to engage in effective mindful action in the world, it is extremely helpful to have the steady support of a small group of equally committed friends who have our backs, whom we can count on to show up and be there for us in the midst of action and any possible conflictual situation.  To develop this tight-knit group means building trust and understanding, and committing to each other’s well-being. It means getting to know each other well, sometimes going beyond what’s comfortable and extending a helping hand when our friend is suffering or in ill health or needs our attention.   This invites awareness and effort. 

No one awakens by themselves. In the West, most of us have been soaked in the theory and practice of individualism, of going it alone, of not asking for help, of personal achievement or failure, of being the lonely hero or heroine.  Such individualism can infect our spiritual practice also.  We can get stuck in thinking that this is my path, or my practice, or my liberation.  On one level, it is only an individual who can awaken.  But no one awakens by oneself.  This is just another delusion, a version of wrong view.  For example, the Buddha didn’t awaken on his own. He had many teachers on the spiritual path, not to speak of parents and caregivers, an early life of privilege, protected learning, and freedom from material want, to mention only a few of the infinite causes and conditions that gave rise to Buddha’s enlightenment.

Thich Nhat Hanh is fond of saying that the next Buddha will be a sangha.  This has several meanings.  One is that there develops a community of such depth, integrity, caring, and skill, that it generates so much collective concentration, ethical behavior, and wisdom that awakening becomes more common.  Secondly it challenges us to develop more collective responsibility for each other, all living beings, and the earth, partly as a necessary counterweight to the rampant greed-fed individualism currently devouring the earth’s wealth, energy, and resources, and partly as a natural evolution as the awareness of interconnectedness becomes increasingly clear.

Intention. Attention. Retention.  If BCC members cultivate the Intention of care for each other’s well-being, this in itself will generate Attention to ways of doing this, which should, in turn, result in great Retention of BCC members precisely because they feel they belong, that they are respected and cared for, and that they can depend on their fellow BCC members. 

This commitment of BCC members to care for each other’s well-being is intertwined with the other two commitments:  to practice ever more deeply, and to engage in mindful action in the world. These three reinforce each other.  Here are some suggestions of ways to deepen personal relationships.

• Early on and periodically, take turns telling each other your life stories. At different times, tell it from the perspective of your race, your gender identity, your class background, or any number of your social identities.

• In one of the first sessions it can be helpful for folks to share what they need from the group to be able to show up fully and create a space that is both brave and safe.

• In all gatherings, make a habit of appreciating one another, deeply and with specifics.

• Choose an evocative book to explore together, like Fear, or Anger, or Silence or Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, all by Thich Nhat Hanh.

• Co-create a holding container for folks to be vulnerable, to express deep emotions, to explore the roots of suffering, to become comfortable with and welcoming of each other’s tears and fears and vulnerabilities. 

• Try to notice and counteract what might be called “habits of separation”—ways our conditioning has us withdraw, hold back, be inwardly critical, feel distance, keep others out, and so on.  Learn to gently welcome each other back in.

• Create effective ways of resolving inevitable relational conflicts, with compassionate dialogue, restorative circles, kind speech, checking our perceptions, listening deeply to each other, and trusting the sangha.

• Use the quarterly review (see next section) to reflect on your relationships, surfacing anything that may need to be addressed. Be sure to include appreciations of each person.

• Socialize from time to time. Enjoy dinners or tea with the whole group and one-on-one. Deliberately build relationships. To the extent possible, attend each other’s events and important milestones.

• Be as present as possible for a BCC member who has a serious illness or death in their family or other distressing event. Show up for each other in times of need.

These kinds of practices will ideally deepen trust, understanding, and love for each other.  In this way a BCC can evolve into a powerful, heartfelt, strong circle that each BCC member can turn to, depend on, contribute to, feel connected to, and gladly take bold action with. This is one small vision of what “taking refuge in the sangha” might look like.

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Quarterly Assessment. Part of building a strong and sustainable effective group is to do regular assesments of the local Circle's process, relationships, culture, functioning, and impact. This task fits under all three parts of the Core Practices. Please see the next section, "Commitment #3: Practices for Engaged Social Action" for a description of this Quarterly Assessment.