“Black, Baptist, and Buddhist; My Life and Engagement with Nonviolence”
Using photos and personal life history I will discuss my lifelong engagement with nonviolence.
Jan Willis (BA and MA in Philosophy from Cornell University; PhD in Indic and Buddhist Studies from Columbia University) is Professor of Religion Emerita at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland and the U.S. for five decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism for over 45 years. She is the author of six books on Buddhism and numerous articles and essays, addressing Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. In 2001, her memoir “Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey” was published, and in 2008 it was re-issued by Wisdom Publications as “Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist.”
In December 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.” In 2003, she was a recipient of Wesleyan University’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Newsweek magazine’s “Spirituality in America” issue in 2005 included a profile of Willis, and Ebony magazine in 2007 named Willis one of its “Power 150” most influential African Americans.
In 2013, she walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. In April of 2020, her book “Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra– Collected Essays by Jan Willis” was published.
- Facilitator: Sara Drew
- Musician: William Chelton