In this excerpt from her talk at the 2015 Wisdom in Action conference at Shambhala Mountain Center, Rev. angel Kyodo williams discusses the responsibility we all have to examine our privilege, and how wisdom teachings hold the potential for personal and social transformation. Donate to Rev. angel Kyodo williams here. Join Rev. angel for Radical Dharma Camp this August: About Rev. angel Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei is a maverick dharma teacher, author, and founder of Center for Transformative Change. She applies wisdom teaching to social issues at the intersections of racial, economic and climate justice. Rev. angel notes, “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” // angelkyodowilliams.com

By Rev. angel Kyodo williams // To lean into the aspiration for true liberation, you must confront the fact that “whiteness” is a social ego as void of inherent identity as the personal ego, and you have identified with it as much as your very own name, but without being willing to name it. Just as the ego-mind is a construct that constantly reinforces itself—building structures and systems of control and developing attitudes and views that maintain its primacy and sense of solidity so that it can substantiate its validity—so, too, does this construct of whiteness. One could call it the Mind of Whiteness. The construct has been designed so that white America—and by extension white teachers and practitioners—lives inside the prison of that small mind, such that without intentional intervention, you cannot see over the wall of the reinforcing perspectives that affirm and perpetuate the White Superiority Complex. The complex would disintegrate if the vastness of your own racial bias were illuminated. So you remain in ignorance, blind to the reality before you, which …