Living within Interbeing

Practical Nonviolence and Engaged Buddhism

A BCBS Path Program with Kaira Jewel Lingo and Erin Selover

Living within Interbeing

Kaira Jewel Lingo and Erin Selover

Program Dates: November 14, 2025 - May 24, 2026
Application Deadline: July 1, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

In this course, we intend to explore how Engaged Buddhism and the Nonviolent Global Liberation framework can be expressed in daily life, individually and collectively, to help us respond and live meaningfully as peacemakers in a world where violence and war are increasing.

Our study and practice will include the Engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh and other sacred activists and peacemakers, and our exploration of nonviolence will draw from the Nonviolent Global Liberation framework. Our intention is to weave these two paths in service of creating a culture of peace and compassion, in which the liberation of all beings is paramount.

Program Overview

Application Timeframe

Applications Close:
July 1, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

Prerequisites

Daily Meditation Practice
Attended a Buddhist or Mindfulness Retreat

Experience Level

This program is suitable for beginning and experienced practitioners.

In-Person Program Dates

Opening Retreat: November 14-19, 2025
Closing Retreat: May 19-24, 2026

Zoom Gatherings

Second Sunday of Each Month
11:30 - 1:30 PM ET

Small Group Gatherings

Participants will meet monthly with a small pod of fellow participants at a convenient time for group members.

Program Information

Program Description

In this 7-month course, we plan to guide us into an embodied insight into interbeing and our interdependent connection with all of life and to gain practical skills to apply this insight more deeply in our lives. The focus of the course is on shifting consciousness from the individual to the collective while also offering daily practices to support integrating this shift into the fullness of our being.

If we fulfill our intention, this course will be deeply challenging. We invite you to consider the following:

Am I willing to grow my heart in the imperfect and sometimes challenging space of community?
Do I already or am I seriously willing to see and hold with compassion and tenderness my limitations and others’ limitations?
Do I already or am I seriously willing to start to care for and advocate for all beings?
Do I already or am I seriously willing to start to co-create a world that works for everyone?

If the answer to these questions is a resounding yes, then we ask you to think about who else in your community, workplace, neighborhood, family, or sangha might also share a similar orientation and invite them to join you in applying for this course. This work tends to be exponentially more fruitful if you take it on with others with whom you share purpose and/or community. That said, if you cannot identify anyone, we wholeheartedly welcome you to apply and invite you to join this group of others who share your commitment.

This course will be limited to 35 people to create an intimate container to deepen this inquiry. We also hold the intention to have a diverse community that is intergenerational, with robust representation from BIPOC and LGBTQIA people, and with varied income levels.

Program Components

Participants will be supported by:

Monthly two-hour online class
Monthly 90-minute practice session with a small pod of fellow participants
Monthly readings/videos, resources, and journaling prompts
Each participant will choose an area of their lives to focus on in the course (e.g., parenting, community organizing, protesting, being a caretaker, nonviolence with yourself post-burnout). We are aware that some participants wish to be more engaged, and others will need to focus more on caring for themselves.

Time Commitment

This program acknowledges that many of us are navigating full schedules and demanding life circumstances. This program is designed to be restorative and regenerative. There will be a few required practices and reading/videos offered between sessions; however, it is designed not to be overwhelming. There will be optional assignments and readings for those participants who have more free time. This program is offered as an expression of deep feminine leadership and learning, thus emphasizing relational forms of knowing and care for our bodies and beings as we learn.

Retreat Format

Retreats will include teachings, presentations, guided and silent meditation, walking meditation, accessible movement, relational practices, large and small group discussions, ritual and ceremony, and role play.

To deepen our embodiment, we will engage in InterPlay, an improvisational practice that unlocks the wisdom and joy of the body.

We will listen deeply to the land and enjoy vegetarian meals.

The retreats will have periods of noble silence and will also have opportunities to engage in conscious community building.

Prerequisites

Applicants should have a daily meditation practice or a sincere commitment to beginning and sustaining a daily meditation practice for the duration of the program. This could include meditation in stillness or moving meditation (walking/dance/qi gong/tai chi/yoga).

Applicants should have attended at least one Buddhist or mindfulness retreat.

Program Schedule

November 14-19, 2025

In-Person Program

Opening Retreat - Meeting Fear with Love: Foundations of Engaged Buddhism & Nonviolence

“Patriarchal societies are based, at root, on loss of trust in life and turning away from life’s flow into modes of being that emerge from scarcity, function in separation, and result in powerlessness.” – Miki Kashtan

“When I was in Vietnam, so many of our villages were being bombed. Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries, or should we leave the meditation halls in order to help the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both—to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it engaged Buddhism. Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. …We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to be of help.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step

In this opening retreat, we plan to explore key aspects of Engaged Buddhism and the Nonviolent Global Liberation framework and how both can support compassion and skillful engagement in our world.

Engaged Buddhism is a contemporary movement, with many ancestors in different Buddhist traditions, that invites active participation in social, political, and environmental issues. Integrating Buddhist practices with a commitment to social action and advocacy for peace and justice, it invites us to practice: interconnectedness; mindfulness and presence; nonviolence and peace; environmental responsibility; advancing equity and structural change; living an ethical life; building community; and being part of raising awareness and educating others.

Nonviolent Global Liberation, NGL, is a community of practitioners engaging in rigorous experimentation with the NGL framework. Throughout the course we plan to engage with NGL’s foundational teachings and practices, including: the capacity lens; purpose-based discernment; impact sharing; how to orient to vision while staying rigorously within capacity; power and privilege analysis; mourning as a liberatory practice; and the practice of needs choreography to weave togetherness (see the NGL website for detailed description of the NGL Framework and principles and the learning packets for deep dives into the content of the framework).

During this retreat, our intention is to attend to internalized states of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness that can lead to coercive behaviors such as othering, blaming, and “should-ing.” Applying the Buddha’s foundational teaching on the Four Noble Truths, we want to look at modern social and economic systems that reinforce scarcity to support a deeper willingness and ability to co-create alternatives to these systems. The lens of the Four Noble Truths can also help us turn towards our painful habits of othering with compassion and tenderness. Through connecting more deeply with these mind states of separation, which are key roots of violence, we can set a strong intention individually and as a community to embody and act from a love that is stronger than fear.

Zoom Group Sessions

Sunday, December 14, 2025 (11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET)
Sunday, January 11, 2026 (11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET)
Sunday, February 8, 2026 (11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET)
Sunday,March 8, 2026 (11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET)
Sunday, April 12, 2026 (11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET)

May 19-24, 2026

In-Person Program

Closing Retreat - Shifting from I to We: Building the Beloved Community

In this closing retreat we plan to look into what it means to embody the vision of a Beloved Community. Articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Howard Thurman, it is a vision of liberation for all beings. The work of Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy, Day, and others, was to nurture a loving and nonviolent movement to realize this healing and liberating vision.

Shifting from I to we, we learn to see ourselves as always part of a larger whole to which we are oriented, the community within which we make choices rooted in deep interdependence, where we also understand that our happiness and suffering is fully intertwined with the happiness and suffering of others. We will offer methodologies for building and healing the Beloved Community developed by Engaged Buddhist pioneers like Thich Nhat Hanh, including practices like Beginning Anew, Touching the Earth, Lazy Days, and Deep Relaxation. We also intend to continue to deepen in the liberatory framework and practices used within NGL. With mindfulness and clarity, we hope to cultivate capacities to liberate our own minds and hearts so that we might better learn to do our own work in service of collective liberation and respond with wise, compassionate, and courageous action in the world.

Application Information

Residential Pricing:

Includes lodging and meals at BCBS during the in-person programs. Click the Pricing Notes tab to learn about Tier Pricing and Financial Assistance.

Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Benefactor
$2,240	$1,840	$1,440	$3,040

Commuter Pricing:

Includes meals without lodging during the in-person programs.

Standard

$950

Program Fees: Program fees include both residential and online components of the program. The first half is due upon registration, and the second half is due three weeks before the first retreat.

Accessibility: BCBS keeps prices as affordable as possible and offers Tier Pricing and Financial Assistance options to keep programs accessible:

Tier Pricing: You may choose a tier and pay according to your means. Tier 1 covers the actual cost of the program. Tiers 2 and 3 are subsidized rates made possible through the generosity of donors. The Benefactor rate enables you to offer additional, tax-deductible support to BCBS and fellow program participants. Please select the highest tier that fits your budget to help keep BCBS programs accessible.

Financial Assistance: If needed, you may request additional financial assistance on the registration page.

Teacher Dāna/Generosity: Program fees do not include payments to teachers. Please consider supporting Kaira and Erin with dāna (generosity) during your program.

Cancellation Policy: We understand that personal circumstances may require you to cancel your registration. In these cases, please contact us right away. If you cancel more than eight weeks before the program starts, you are eligible for a full refund minus a $100 administrative fee. If you cancel between three and eight weeks before the program starts, you are eligible for a 50% refund of the deposit. Registration fees are nonrefundable less than three weeks before the program starts.

Applications Open: Currently Open

Applications Close: July 1, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

Initial Accepted Applicants Notified: August 1, 2025

Payment Due: First half of the course fee is due within two weeks of the date of acceptance. The second half is due three weeks before the first retreat.

Program Starts: November 14, 2025

Guiding Teachers

Kaira Jewel Lingo

Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in spirituality and social justice. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, and she draws inspiration from her parents’ lives of service and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, at the intersection of racial, climate and social justice with a focus on activists, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, artists, educators, families, and youth. Based in New York, she offers spiritual mentoring to groups and is author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation. Her teachings and writings can be found at www.kairajewel.com.

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Erin Selover

Erin Selover is a Dharma teacher with over 20 years of Buddhist training and serves as a residential retreat teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She currently works as a Spiritual Strategist with individuals and is a Somatic-Based Marriage and Family Therapist. Since 2018, her passion has been distributive governance and needs-based gift economics. She has complemented her Buddhist practice and studies with studying and experimenting with Miki Kashtan and the Nonviolent Global Liberation community. As a white settler of Irish descent on Indigenous lands, she’s in ongoing inquiry about how power and privilege functions within modernity and the complex history of her ancestors. Drawing from these threads, she co-stewards a meditation community integrating the Celtic Wheel of the Year and Buddhism within needs-based gift economics and distributive governance. She completed Spirit Rock and IMS residential retreat teacher training program in 2016 alongside mentorship from Phillip Moffitt. Her website is www.erinselover.com.

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