Support for Tara Mandala and Our Current Initiatives

Dear Tara Mandala Community,

We are deeply grateful for your generosity and patronage. Thanks to you, so far this fall, we’ve raised $42,000 or about 21% towards our fundraising goal of $200,000 to reconcile the financial shortfall we’re facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We send a heartfelt Thank You to those who have donated so far!

Please consider making a donation to Tara Mandala today to support our goals – Click here.

As this year comes to a close, we reflect upon the initiatives and the ways we’ve come together as a sangha to activate ourselves to make a difference in the world and our local communities. As Co-Directors of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiative, Dorje Lopön Chandra and I would like to share some important updates that have deep meaning for us and Tara Mandala as a whole.

If our goal is to expand access to Dharma to all those who seek it, our EDI initiative is of utmost importance. We recognize that we must actively engage in dismantling white supremacy within ourselves and our sangha in order to fulfill our bodhicitta intention to become liberated from all forms of ignorance and to help others do the same. For this reason, Tara Mandala Leadership has made this work a priority.

The EDI Council that was established in 2015 to address issues of racism, privilege, and oppression in the Dharma and at Tara Mandala, continues to work toward promoting cultural literacy in our sangha, looking deeply at the ways in which we unconsciously perpetuate systems of oppression as individuals and in our communities.

In 2020, the EDI Council expanded and strengthened the resources available to our staff, teachers and our broader Sangha, in an effort to cultivate EDI educational opportunities in our community at large. These initiatives have included the following:

Offering the BBIPOC (Black, Brown, and Indigenous People of Color) Meditation Sangha to practice meditation and engage in fellowship. This group has been meeting since 2019.
Starting this year the Severing Attachment to White Supremacy (SAWS) Sangha, with about 125 participants in the first cohort!
Planning and coordination of a LGBTQIA+ and Asian American Affinity Sangha, which we hope will be able to launch soon.
Continuing to strengthen funding of our EDI Scholarship Fund. During 2020 to date, we have given out 26 EDI scholarships.
Supporting organizations that are tackling racism and white supremacy and the policies that sustain them so they can continue their important work (White Awake, Black Lives Matter, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship). We strongly encourage you to support organizations doing this important work that resonate with you.

From our EDI Consultant, Maggie Potapchuck:

“The journey is about building individual will and confidence to do the heavy lift of disrupting and transforming the organization’s current policies/practices/culture, leaning into learning and discomfort, being willing to take risks to act and support others to collectively create traction in moving towards racial justice.” – From Maggie Potapchuk’s article, Operationalizing Racial Justice

As Dharma practitioners, we are committed to a journey of discovering and uprooting our ignorance and unconscious bias regarding issues of racism, sexism, and heterosexism, among other forms of bias. We hold the aspiration that through this work, which includes spaces for the white-identified, privileged sangha to do its own exploration as well as future spaces in which the whole inclusive sangha can work together, we can learn to more effectively address issues of power, privilege and violent oppression within the sangha body and in the world.

How You Can Help

Please consider offering a gift of $350 or more to help support our ongoing EDI initiatives and cover our operational shortfall brought on by COVID-19. Your generous donation today will go a long way to help address our financial hardship and support this impactful work.

Anyone giving $350 or more will be gifted with a special three layer French Tibetan Mandala mask approved as effective by the French government against viral transmission.

There are several ways that you can give:

Make a one-time $350 or more donation to our Annual Fund
Give $30 a month and contribute over the next year as a Sustaining Sangha Member, which comes with various benefits, and discounts.
Increase your current Sustaining Sangha membership by $350 per year.

We deeply appreciate your support of Tara Mandala’s EDI initiatives and your commitment to your own practice of dismantling white supremacy within your communities. It is an honor to serve everyone in our sangha, to the best of our abilities and with a heart of genuine care, through initiatives like our EDI work in order to do the anti-racism work that is imperative in our country and around the world. Please let us know if you have questions or other ideas to help sustain our work at Tara Mandala. If you have questions, please reach out to Joanne Brion here.

With love and appreciation,