Carolina Weatherall

As part of campus celebrations of Interfaith Visibility Week, Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former Buddhist monk whose work blends spirituality and social justice, spoke in Kresge Auditorium Monday night. Lingo’s talk, titled “We Were Made for These Times,” centered on the importance of mindfulness in navigating the turbulent state of the world.

Lingo began her talk by engaging the audience in a mindfulness practice intended to calm the body. She had audience members massage their ears, cover their eyes and rest their hands on their heart, all while deeply breathing. This practice was meant to calm the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve and connects the brain and body.

Lingo wove mindfulness throughout her speech as a remedy for the heightened anxiety many feel about the state of the world.

“If we’re anxious, if we’re afraid, we can be mindful of being upset, anxious and afraid, and then we’re still safe. As long as mindfulness, as long as awareness, is there with whatever is arising, it’s like there’s … adult supervision,” Lingo said.

Lingo also advocated for fully engaging with the present moment as a grounding technique during times of uncertainty.

“I have to be fully with my breakfast, fully with my steps walking to the meditation hall, because whatever we do in the present moment creates the next moment,” Lingo said. “So in a dangerous time, if we want the next moment to be peaceful,… we need to be able to connect with love, with our own stability, with our own presence of mind.”

Lingo continued, adding the importance of finding true purpose in the search for happiness in one’s life and quoting a teaching from her time as a monk.

“Once I have a path, I have nothing more to fear,” she said.

Lingo described how her background in social justice influences her work in the spiritual realm. Lingo’s father worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in desegregating the South. She credits her father’s work as her inspiration for serving others.

Despite her hopeful message, Lingo acknowledged much of the suffering the world is facing right now.

When asked by a graduating senior at the College how to cope with the anger he feels towards the state of the world, Lingo emphasized that anger can be valuable.

“Part of anger is love. We get angry because we know things could be different, and we want them to be different. We want more people to be cared for. That’s good. That’s a wholesome part of the anger and maybe necessary. Maybe anger is necessary right now,” she said.

Oliver Goodrich, the director of the Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, explained in an interview with the Orient why Lingo was invited to speak during this week, which is celebrated in conjunction with the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, held annually during the first week of February.

“I really wanted to try to find somebody who could both address spirituality and religion in terms of Interfaith Visibility Week but also offer something about Black History Month,” Goodrich said. “She was the perfect fit to be able to think and speak to multiple identities and sets of concerns in the world.”

Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Jim Hoppe, who attended the talk, highlighted the importance of bringing different perspectives, such as Lingo’s, to campus.

“It’s part of what it means to become educated, is to be exposed to new ideas … [and] think about different perspectives,” Hoppe said. “I thought [the talk] was an interesting example, to show that there’s crossovers all over the place—there’s connections and places that we might not even think about, right? So from a big perspective, that’s pretty cool.”

Goodrich shared that Lingo’s justice-informed focus on connecting spirituality with community stood out to him.

“I appreciate that, unlike so many spiritual teachers who think of spirituality as a very personal practice, she brought in this sort of communal dimension about thinking about the ways that we’re not separate from the world,” Goodrich said. “We’re connected to the world and to each other. That feeling is important in a moment where there is division.”