angel kyodo williams - new dharma - urban peace

Spiritual Warriorship and the Way of Teaching
source: http://newdharma.com/
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ANGEL KYODO WILLIAMS - Dharma Teacher
Dubbed "the most vocal and most intriguing African-American Buddhist in America," by Library Journal, Angel Kyodo Williams is a spiritual teacher, activist, artist and founder of urbanPEACE. She is the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, which has been hailed as "a classic" by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, and "an act of love" by Alice Walker. Kyodoshi, as she is affectionately known, serves as guiding teacher of New Dharma Community and spiritual director of the Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland, CA, a training center for engaging individual, community and social transformation as spiritual practice.

A visionary thinker, Rev. Angel believes that "Faith is the Antidote to Fear" and advocates the building of a spirit-centered social change movement from the ground up as the foundation for personal freedom and healing our divisions of race, class, faith and politic. She sets forth the challenge of why authentic being, abiding love and transformation of the spirit is the only possible catalyst for lasting, revolutionary social and political change. "It is an inclusive, pluralistic, multiracial, transfaith, life-affirming decentralized coalition of people that value people that will lay claim to the values-based progressive politic that will re-capture the imagination and spirit of America. All that is required," she says, "...is faith in Fairness."

She develops accessible tools for increasing self-awareness and cultivating wholeness and integration, including Truth-Centered Coaching®, Third Self Programs® and Warrior-Spirit Trainings®. An alloy of the world's wisdom traditions, the Trainings strengthen what Williams calls the Third Self: our balance of soul and spirit, body and breath, heart and mind, and wisdom and compassion, so that we can live, love and lead from the heart.

Using awareness practices to unleash the awakened nature that is within each of us, she believes we have a better chance at "abolishing prisoners rather than prisons." She has been of service to at-risk and incarcerated youth, adults and the people that serve them as Senior Teacher for New York-based Lineage Project and as a current board member of Vision Youthz as well as board member and acting Executive Directory of Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA), both located in San Francisco.

Angel Kyodo Williams is a Spiritual Activism Fellow and graduate of the yearlong Rockwood Leading From the Inside Out training program. She diligently studies communication, ritual and the efficacy of awareness practices from a science-based perspective. In past lives, she's been a founding board member of Third Wave, opened the first black-owned, women-owned internet cafe and sat on the board of the Institute for Women, Spirituality and Justice.

Her critically-acclaimed book continues to make Universal teachings accessible to thousands of people of color and white folks equally and has inspired a conscious hiphop CD of the same name. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Ms., Essence, Village Voice and on the Oxygen Channel. She leads retreats, workshops and trainings, virtually and nationwide. www.urbanpeace.org

Angel Kyodo currently lives in intentional community at the Center in Oakland as resident teacher with 3 other New Dharma tribe members of widely varied backgrounds.