A compassionate and awakened world where all beings are cared for, supported, and safe.
Mission SFDC creates a welcoming and inclusive space for meditation, community, and awakening through diverse teachings and practices.
History In the fall of 2018, the San Francisco Dharma Collective was created out of a desire to share power among the sangha to reduce the potential of causing harm that has become all too common in hierarchical spiritual organizations. We are volunteer led, with no guiding teacher, pan-buddhist, and supported by the generous donations of our sangha. We exist to serve our community. It has been a challenging and rewarding endeavor. We have been able to stay open, support our teachers, and provide our community with a safe and welcoming place to practice, connect, and heal.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) The San Francisco Dharma Collective is committed to applying the Dharma teachings of compassion, love, wisdom, and interdependence into our relationships and practice path.
At SFDC, we acknowledge the long history of white supremacy in this country. The violence, injustice, oppression, and racism are deeply rooted in our institutions and in our minds. Therefore, we intend to create a community rooted in nonviolence, equity, acceptance, mutual respect, and personal transformative change. We acknowledge the long history of underrepresentation of certain social groups within the Dharma. We recognize that awareness around cultural appropriation and religion has evolved over the years. These issues need to be handled with extreme care and sensitivity. As Dharma practitioners, we are committed to uprooting our ignorance and biases, including those based on race, class, caste, gender and gender expression, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, religion, age, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status, income level, or current or former incarceration, so we can support the dismantling of oppression and colonization. We understand that we will be perfectly imperfect in this endeavor and we are open to feedback when we stumbleOur goal is to show up with curiosity, humility, integrity, and compassion. We know that making change is more than a statement of intention; we commit to taking concrete steps to make progress on these intentions, steps we will continuously review, reflect on and revisit. The great master Padmasambhava said, “Even if my view is higher than the sky, The attention I pay to my actions and their effects is finer than flour.”Guided by the Six Paramitas: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, and wisdom, we commit, together, to creating the conditions for everyone to be welcomed in our sangha.
Our Commitments Creating a core committee of people to come up with a comprehensive DEI plan to keep this work at the forefront of our organization as an important aspect of who we areContinually examining our practices and structures to question the ways in which they promote or dismantle white supremacy culture by offering classes, trainings and workshops to our Board, staff, teachers and community membersSupporting our teachers in creating more inclusive and accessible classes for all, including closed captioning for the hearing impaired, easy access, comfortable seating, and accommodating different postures while meditatingRecruiting and financially supporting teachers of color from diverse backgrounds Financially supporting affinity groups - including an SFDC BIPOC Sangha and Spanish Language Sangha Programming classes that give white people opportunities to investigate their own racial conditioning and white privilege, that often, through ignorance, rise up and cause collective harmProviding annual updates to our sangha about our work in this areaRecruiting new board members who are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusionEngaging with, learning more from, and responding to feedback from our community members and teachersIncreasing our outreach to the diverse communities in the Bay Area and around the worldCollaborating with organizations focused on providing aid to marginalized communities We want to be held accountable. Please provide us with feedback when you feel we have acted unskillfully or feel you have been harmed in some way in this community by emailing us at the sfdharmacollective@gmail.com .
Land Acknowledgment We sit on the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone (pronounced Rah-my-toosh O-lone-ee), land and they have never ceded, lost or forgotten. The San Francisco Dharma Collective recognizes, appreciates, and honors the Ramaytush Ohlone people alive today living in the Bay Area, their ancestors, their culture, and this land they have cared for for thousands and thousands of years, despite centuries of colonization, subjugation, ethnic cleansing, human hunting, slavery, rape, removal, and genocide. We acknowledge this gruesome history and the ongoing effects it has on the local and greater Native American communities. Our practice encourages compassion and continued mindfulness of the ways in which we are participating in this tragic reality. We commit to educating ourselves, building relationships with, and supporting Indigenous groups in the Bay Area. We offer our space as a resource to elevate the voices of Indigenous people.
Affinity & Study Group Policy The SF Dharma Collective makes a continuing effort to establish programming for groups outside the dominant culture who might otherwise not assume that their needs are seen or their selves are welcome. The SFDC invites affinity groups that wish to meet for the purpose of community, meditation, and studying dharma. Study groups formed for the purpose of examining privilege or unlearning bias through dharma-based practices are also welcomed here. Groups are open to self-identified members of the population for whom they are intended as well as supportive individuals (allies).
Leadership The San Francisco Dharma Collective is a sangha-led dharma community. Our leadership includes a board of directors and a number of committees. Programming, Marketing, Finance and Development, Access and Community, and Facilities . We welcome volunteers to join committees. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact sfdcvolunteers@gmail.com. If you are interested in attending a board meeting, please contact sfdharmacollective@gmail.com . We meet on Monday evenings in San Francisco.
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