Talk Title: Trauma, Suffering and Liberation
Talk Summary: This talk’s title is a reflection on personal engagement with direct suffering in the world as a practice and its relation to traditional Buddhist understandings of the path to liberation. The talk will address such topics as: What is the value of our finding personal peace, equanimity and happiness in a world filled with trauma and suffering? How can this be an entry point into our being of genuine use, not only in addressing personal questions but also in response to structural violence?
Biography:
Beth Goldring, a former university humanities teacher, started her Zen practice in 1978, became a student of Maurine Stuart Roshi at Cambridge Zen Center, and worked in human rights in Palestine, primarily in the West Bank but also Gaza, from 1986 to 1994. She was ordained as a priest/nun in her name in 1995.
Beth worked with the International Network of Engaged Buddhists in Thailand for a year, then moved to Cambodia in October 1996, after participating in the 1996 Cambodian Dhammayietra (peace walk), led by the profoundly compassionate activist monk, Maha Ghosananda.
In 2000, she joined the LICADHO Human Rights organization, which became Brahmavihara Cambodia, where she worked until the end of 2016. Brahmavihara Cambodia is a small Buddhist chaplaincy program working with Cambodian AIDS, tuberculosis (tb), cancer and other patients too poor to access traditional spiritual resources, with the intention of allowing people to realize that the Buddha’s compassion is already fully present, even and especially in the midst of terminal illness, poverty, marginalization, suffering, and despair. The heart of Beth’s work remains the development of intimacy with patients in ways that allow respect both for their suffering and for the healing power of the Buddha’s teachings.
Beth continues to live in Cambodia, studying and teaching Buddhism and Meditation, with Gil Fronsdal as her primary teacher. Gil fully authorized her teaching in 2017.
Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center 