Mission Statement

Heart Light Action uses mindfulness awareness meditation and other contemplative practices in community-based educational settings to help people working for a better world realize their goals.

Vision

Bringing together people from educational, activist and meditation backgrounds, Heart Light uplifts conviction in the unconditional worthiness and potential of all human beings.

This work fastens social action to the Buddhist view that all beings are fundamentally good, we all have Buddha nature. Heart Light Action projects and courses strive to promote this sense of including all people and living things under this umbrella of goodness as a starting point for working with our own minds.

We might ask, “Am I treating other people, indeed, am I treating myself, in ways that align with this idea?” At the heart of this approach is the idea that unconditional social equality is a reality. Meditation helps us connect with this truth. Working with our minds in this way, we are able to embody a way of being that naturally encourages others to see this in themselves.

We can let our heart light shine. Or as the spiritual goes, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” In this way we are allowing a power greater than ourselves into our ideas about how to repair the harm of racism, patriarchy, gay and transgender phobia, greed, economic exploitation, violence and destructiveness towards the earth.

History

Heart Light began in October of 2023. It builds on earlier projects that were developed by founder, Damita Brown including Bornworthy Arts (2008) which taught meditation, writing and leadership skills to incarcerated youth; Community Lab for Intentional Practice (2017) for community-based activists working on various issues including climate justice, anti-racism and mutual aid; Freedom Schools 360 (2018); and Abolitionist Restorative Justice Workshops (2019) which worked with hundreds of people from various backgrounds focusing on ways to identify and repair the harm institutional racism.

What People Are Saying About Heart Light Action

  • Care was taken to ensure that everyone felt heard and valued. Really enjoyed the structure of learning, contemplating and then creating. I think working on the personal poster gave me time in a more body-oriented, sensory way of letting the info I was processing sink in, Also helped relate the issues to personal experience more directly.

    Anonymous

  • I enjoyed [sic] mostly everything. I felt that many of the exercises did a very good job of giving us an experiential feeling for many truths--white privilege, white dominant society, ignorance of the structures and history of oppression of both black and indigenous peoples (past and present). I will really remember the feeling of experiencing these truths.

    Participant

  • Visual/arts based learning allows for different types of learning/integration ... I’m not sure how I will use this but I'd like to figure out how to apply similar methods (but different content) in my own teaching. The recognition of intergenerational trauma of settlers was profound - I could see the cycles that had happened in Europe repeating itself in North America... this can be used to help create connections rather than differences.

    In-person workshop participant

Heart Light Action Founder, Dr. Damita Brown

About Damita

Dr. Damita Brown specializes in practical applications of meditation practice to help people interrupt and dismantle racism and other misuses of power. As an undergraduate her scholarship focused on theories of power she worked feminist theorists Christine Distefano and Nancy Hartsock among others taking a deep interest in social change movements, Black feminist thought, postmodernism and socialism. Her decision to earn a doctorate was motivated by a desire to write about and apply her activism which began when she was teenager with her participation in a boycott of her junior high at age 13. Since then she has worked in CIvil Rights, environmental justice, LGBTQ rights, peace in the middle east, books not bars to end mass incarceration and access to health care movements. In graduate school she studied with Angela Davis, Donna Haraway, Clifford James, Cedric Robinson, Bettina Aptheker, David Anthony, June Jordan and Barbara Epstein among others. Brown holds a doctorate in History of Consciousness. She has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, Mills College and numerous community-based settings.

During the last few years of her graduate work Brown began meditating. Her studies in Buddhism include attending Dharma retreats with HH the Dalai Lama, Thich Naht Hanh, Pema Chodron, Judy Lief and others. She has been practicing within the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of Chogyam Trungpa for over 25 years.

Working within academic, non-profit, collective and co-op arenas, Dr. Brown developed and applied the contemplative social action approach at the institutional and interpersonal levels. In 2008 she shared the Born Worthy Workshop with incarcerated youth in California where she taught meditation, leadership and writing skills. In 2018 she developed the Community Lab for Intentional Practice (CLIP) which has been used in Iowa City Iowa and Madison, Wisconsin. She has applied the CLIP framework to support anti-racism among Climate Change activists and in restorative justice and abolitionist circles. In 2017/18 Brown developed Freedom School 360 which revamped that civil rights tradition invented in the 60s to address the harm of the Trump regime.

She teaches the 8-week course How to Practice Contemplative Anti-Racism online. In 2023 Brown created Heart Light Cards: Contemplation and Activities for Ending Racism in 2024 which provide a way for anyone interested in addressing how racism impacts them and taking responsibility for its impact of Black and Brown people to host anti-racism gatherings in their own homes. Currently she is working with a team of Black meditators to lead the first annual Our Power, Our Peace: Black Meditation Retreat which will be held in late April, 2026. She teaches (with a teaching team) the 8-week course How to Practice Contemplative Anti-Racism at least once a year.

Advisory Council

The advisory council makes recommendations, gives feedback that guides and supports successful outcomes for projects.

  • Laura Gray is passionate about Restorative Circles, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

    She is a product of Chicago Public Schools and has 20 years of experience in education where she has served as teacher, assistant principal, building principal and educational director. Laura is an experienced Gray Space Thinking executive coach, facilitator, motivational speaker, published author, Restorative Circle Keeper, trainer, curriculum designer, educator and consultant.

    She has a BA in English Education from Loyola University Chicago and a MA in Educational Leadership from Concordia University Chicago. She has over 300 contact hours leading and training others in restorative circles. Laura currently serves as the Executive Director of Diversity and Cultural Responsiveness for the Iowa City Community School District. She is also the founder of Restorative Community Partners, LLC, Captivate Diversity Conferences, and Cofounder of R&R Equity Concierges.

  • Nandi Seboulisa is an inspired world traveler, activist, thinker, ceramics worker, mother and longshoreman. Over the years she has been an activist in social justice movements dealing with racism, transphobia, police brutality, inequality and more. As a trauma survivor, she also leads workshops and support groups that help people find alternative coping skills in dealing with trauma and other problems. Currently she is active in her union to help overcome racism in the shipyards of the Northwest.

  • Michael Speraw is a retired entrepreneur from Long Beach, CA. I Grew up in a white suburb where until 1965 homeowners had deeds with racially restrictive covenants requiring them to sell to “Caucasian only.” In my high school of 4,000 kids, there was one or two black kids. I am interested in exploring and facing the deep and unconscious racial bias I have internalized as a result of my upbringing in a white supremacist world. Damita’s work is a great support for this exploration.

  • Emily Waters is honored to join this class as an assistant teacher. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Buddhist Studies, and has been a serious practitioner of the dharma since 2019. She is passionate about education, work, and action that bring greater compassion and sanity to the world, especially in the areas of racial justice, social justice, and climate action. Emily has been a teacher, assistant teacher, and volunteer for various Buddhist organizations including Westchester Meditation Center, Profound Treasury Retreat, and Rime Shedra NYC. She currently works as an editor and research assistant for dharma-related projects, as well as managing social media and providing transcription services for the Chögyam Trungpa Institute