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Science with Soul Blog Posts

Living a mindful life in current times with Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D.

October 4, 2023

 
 

Embark on a deep conversation with our extraordinary guest Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D., who brings a wealth of wisdom and experience with them to the show.

This episode is a call to embrace the thought-provoking and reflective nature of the dialogues expressed in our conversation, as they have the power to awaken dormant insights within us and unveil new dimensions of understanding.

 
 

About Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., M.A., Th.D.

Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., M.A., Th.D., did her post-doctoral work at Harvard Divinity School, earned a Doctor of Theology in Pastoral Counseling from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, earned her M.A. in Culture and Spirituality from Holy Names University in Oakland, CA and her law degree from Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington.  She is a Community Dharma Leader certified by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA.

She is a pastoral counselor and the author of the new book Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, co-editor of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom and principal co-founder of Buddhist Justice Reporter. Ayo is working on a novella/film project called "Birdsong".  

 

Follow Along With The Episode Transcript

 

Dr. Lotte | Intro [00:00:00] Welcome to Dr. Lotte: Science with Soul, the podcast that transcends the boundaries between science and spirituality. I'm Dr. Lotte, your host, Physician, Medical and Psychic Medium, Ancestral Healer, Keynote Speaker and Award Winning Author of Med School After Menopause The Journey of My Soul. This podcast finds its roots in my own extraordinary life experiences through my personal odyssey. I have discovered our profound connection within a divine tapestry of existence. I have traversed the realms of illness, healing and transformation, propelled by two Near-Death Out-of-Body Experiences that bestowed upon me the extraordinary gifts of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. Guided by this sacred calling, I embraced the pursuit of medical school at the age of 54. Prepare to be uplifted, transformed, and awakened to create a path to healing your own life physically, emotionally and spiritually by bridging the gap between science and soul.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:01:20] Welcome to Dr. Lotte Science with Soul. I'm Dr. Lotte and the host of this podcast. I'm really excited to introduce my guest today who I actually discovered on the Theosophical Society where she was giving a long lecture and I was very excited to listen to her lecture and decided at that moment that I would just love to have this woman join my podcast and share her knowledge with all of you. So, Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde is a Pastoral Counselor, she's the author of the new book Casting Indra's Net Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, co-editor of Black and Buddhist What Buddhism Can Teach US About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom. And principal co-founder of Buddhist Justice Reporter. Ayo is working on a novella/film project called Birdsong. And you can learn more about Ayo at www.pamelaayoyetunde.com. So welcome Ayo. I'm really honored to have you as a guest today.

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:02:29] Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lotte.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:02:32] So you have had such an interesting life and reading about you on your website and all the different journeys that you have taken through life and how your life began in childhood and how it led you on so many different paths and degrees along the way. So could you give us a 10 - 15 minute summary of starting in childhood and how you ended up in Africa, how you ended up in the Netherlands, and how it led you to go to school and obtain various degrees. And I also know that you had this revelation about God, which then later on led you to study divinity. So could you just give us a summary of of where it all began and how you ended up on this path?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:03:24] Yes. Well, just feeling so grateful to have this time with you, and also Dr. Lotte, I just want to say you're an amazing person, someone who I read went for your dreams in menopause after menopause, this kind of thing just went for it. And so I want to applaud you and everybody else who's listening, who's later in life is thinking, you know, I want to do something I've never done before. And we are two people who did that. So thank you for for this time. So I was born in 1961 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to parents who in some respects were part of the Great Migration from the South. My mother, my mother's family was from Arkansas, and my father's family was from Kentucky. And they were of, I guess you can say middle means meager. Meager to middle means. I remember being younger than five and living in an apartment, and then my parents were able to purchase a small home in a neighborhood in Indianapolis that was experiencing white flight. The last family, the white the last white family to leave the neighborhood happened to be our next door neighbors. So in some ways one could say I lived in an integrated neighborhood that was turning black. And so I did not have the experience of hearing that, or I should say the lived experience of coming to believe that we could not live as neighbors to each other. On the other hand, I did recognize that Indianapolis was a very conventional place at that time. Conventional thinking, conventional being. Rarely did I see anyone who was not considered black or white. And I began to wonder about that. So, and I got bored by it. Put it that way. So like many black people at the time, I was told that the way to succeed in life was to go to college. That that was education was not something that any one could take away from you. So I went to college in Indiana. I didn't want to be far away from my mother. While in college, one of my professors said, I'm giving you the shorter version, that that I had been over institutionalized because I was sleeping in his class and that I needed to go out and see the world. No one had ever said that I needed to go out and see the world. So like, okay, I don't have a better plan. Go out and see the world. So he suggested I go to the continent of Africa with an organization called Operation Crossroads Africa, and we went to Zimbabwe. We were there for six weeks. I came back to Indiana and said, That's it. I cannot live like this anymore. There is a world out there. I know nothing. My my knowledge base had been so limited, so shaped by my mother and my neighbors that I felt I was missing out on some things. So. Apply to go into the Peace Corps, but didn't have the technical skills that that they needed at the time to return to the African continent. So I said, Well, there must be other organizations that I can that I can leave this country through, because I have got to get out of this country. Ended up going to the Netherlands, which obviously was not on my list of places to go, but ended up going to the Netherlands with an organization called Brethren Volunteer Service, which is part of the Church of the Brethren, which was my bit my introduction to the Anabaptist tradition. I grew up in the United Methodist Church and lived in the Netherlands, in the Hague for two years, which was an extraordinary experience in just being out of my comfort zone, being out of my cultural zones, being out of my language zone, just being out out of the zone, being away from everyone I knew and having to make my way in a community of strangers. While there, though, I was able to visit other European countries. I also went to Nigeria and learned about, the tensions in the world. I would say my big take away was, people on the African continent have been at war with each other. That, people travel hundreds and hundreds of miles by foot for safety because they are refugees and political refugees, and I had never seen a refugee camp until I was in Zimbabwe. One of my revelations about God, since you asked that question was having grown up in the United Methodist Church. One of my revelations was that suffering is massive and that God does not intervene to protect groups of people from harm. And that therefore it's our responsibility to do that. So, I don't know where that takes us, only takes us up to the maybe age 30 and I'm 61 now, so I'll be quiet now and and see what else we might what other trouble we might get into together.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:09:38] So then you, you studied divinity and you studied law?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:09:44] Yes.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:09:45] So in which order did you do that? Did you go to law school first?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:09:49] I did. I went to law school and graduated in 1992. And then, quote unquote, after menopause, I pursued a doctorate of theology in pastoral counseling. So that was in 2011.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:10:07] Yeah. So that one is more recent. And how did you get into Buddhism? How did you find that path?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:10:14] I found that path. I wasn't looking for it, but I was in an airport in Tucson, Arizona, on the day the World Trade Centers were bombed, what we call now September 11th, 9/11. And the anxiety in the airport was, in the stratosphere. It was beyond anything I had ever experienced before. Lots of chaos, confusion. We were in shock, really. A whole group of people were in shock because we were watching it on TV, as it was happening. When I got home, I was planning my 40th birthday party and thinking about, oh, things sure have changed. They've changed. I've changed. And I still want to celebrate my 40th birthday party, but I don't want anyone to bring me anything. I don't need anything. But what I need is peace of mind, because I knew we were also going to retaliate that had been announced. So a friend gave me the birthday gift of Thich Nhat Hanh's book called Touching Peace. And I read it and I was fascinated by it, and I began to practice the guided visualizations in that book and found it to be efficacious. That's the word that's going. It's like it's working. Immediate effects. And then also, shortly thereafter, I began volunteering with Zen Hospice Project, now called Zen Caregiving Project in San Francisco. So that was the combination of like my introduction to Buddhism.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:12:12] Such a fascinating journey and how you now you just came out with a book, Casting Indra's Net Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community. So I love the title Casting Indra's Net, cause this is dear to my own heart and my own life experiences, but for people who are not familiar with Indra's Net. Can you tell us a little bit of a backstory? What that what that means?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:12:41] Yes. So it's my understanding, not having been around as old as I am, I wasn't around when this concept came about, but years ago, in ancient India, in the Vedic traditions, there was this concept of God, Indra, who ruled the world. Who had a net and in this net had encapsulated the universe. His enemies could be caught in that net and therefore could not escape punishment, could not escape the wrath of Indra. But over the years, over the centuries, this concept of Indra's Net got adopted in different places and got adopted in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. And so it is now in that tradition it is understood as the the web of reality, that we are all interconnected to one another. So taking the old we are interconnected, but putting the new, which is this is not about being caught in an inescapable network of punishment. But caught in a network where each one of us is a node, in the net, in the network. With the ability to live out our basic goodness and reflect the basic goodness of others, such that we light up the sky as stars. And that's what that's the concept that I'm using in Casting Indra's Net.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:14:29] I just love, I just love that analogy, because it's it just really reflects who we are and how we are all interconnected, but also we reflect our actions to other people as reflected back upon us and the way we react and act towards other people is also what comes back. So you're talking about the fostering spiritual kinship and community in this book. What can you say about how, how people react to different events and how that affects the society as a whole or affect different people. So when people are racist or not fostering kinship in this society. What we see a lot of today, people are not supportive of many different groups of people, whether it's race or beliefs or sexuality, there is so much upheaval in the society today. And how do we how do we put our arms around that and how do we change that to make people understand that we are all one, we are all connected to each other. Do you have any advice and can you talk about that topic?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:15:48] Yeah. Dr. Lotte, this is a conundrum, isn't it?

 

Dr. Lotte [00:15:54] Yeah, it really is.

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:15:55] It really is a conundrum because we we can think back not so long ago when Barack Obama was giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention, and he talked about we are the United States. And there was just an unleash of appreciation, affirmation, joy, and I remember calling a few people, I said, "did you see that speech? Did you see how people reacted?" I said, "that person's probably going to be our next president". There was so much enthusiasm for the call to be united. Fast forward eight years later or somewhere around there. After a few years of the rise of conspiracy theories about who Barack Obama actually was, the Islamophobia, the the racism. The fear and phobia around whether he alone was going to take away people's guns. I mean, all of this stuff, I think, began to have purchase in our society and purchase and power in our society. And so as that began to grow, I think people also said, hey, if I want to have purchase and power politically in the society, maybe I should jump on this bandwagon. Maybe I should proliferate conspiracy theories, suspicion, paranoia, and so on. And so we can see at least this is how I see it from a pastoral counseling point of view, that our perceptions are are so liable are subject to, manipulation based on rhetoric, based on who's speaking, based on where they are, in the structures of power, based on what we choose to read and listen to. And we can go from being gung ho about being united to now supporting policies around separation. And so I think what we need to do, aside from what anybody is saying, aside what anybody saying, is go deep and determine what do I really want for my life? What do I truly believe in? How have I been supported in my own life? How has love and compassion supported me being the best person I can be? And then ask the question, why would I deny anyone those nutrients and nutrients of love and compassion and recognition when I know how valuable those things have been to me? And then come out of that contemplation with a renewed commitment to the well-being of each other.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:19:21] Wise words. You know, to have people go within themselves to look at what they want. Because we are human beings. We strive for connection because it's it's what we need as human beings, we're social animals, but we are supporting, like you said, separation in the society. So, how would you, how would you guide people to make this shift to is it would you say just each person just go within? Or is it something that you could advise to become part of other organizations? Or how do we speak up? How do we make people understand that we are all connected, We're all one, we're all striving, we all want to have the connection, we all want to come home and feel safe and feel loved, that's what everybody wants. But we're creating the separation in our society and it's I've never seen anything like it. It's so divided. And I think most people are in the same boat where people that you were friends with, you might not even be friends with anymore because there's such division politically with regards. But we are forgetting that we need to just listen to everybody's opinion and work with it. But the way we're behaving is we are taking our country back 100 years.

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:20:54] It's so sad. It's so sad. And part of it, I think, is just forgetting that we have the capacity to actually tolerate difference. Sometimes we forget that, you know, I have relatives who don't have the same political leanings that I have. But we have other things. We have the recognition of each other, the appreciation of growing up with each other. We have culture in common. There's so many things we also have in common. And so we just choose not to define our relationship by our political differences. That's the choice that we're making because we love each other, right? So sometimes it's like this go back to the basics, go back to who were we before the injection of all of this vitriol and hatred and separation? Who were we before that? Why did we allow ourselves to be changed by this? I've been betrayed and I want to go back to what's true. And I can't go back. That's one thing I hope people will reflect on, because like you said, Dr. Lotte, not only are people no longer friends with people they used to be friends with. People have turned against their own relatives in their own family over over something that is in my view, not everlasting. This is not the everlasting path to liberation. This is an expedient means for someone and some people who want power to have more power over others. Unfortunately or fortunately, I'm going to go I'm going to lean in the air in the direction of fortunately. We cannot make anybody believe anything, right? So that's good, because since we can't do that, then we can't, well, we still try to enforce a certain belief on people, but that that comes with aggression, right? If I knew that I could force someone to believe something, then I might use aggression to make them believe that. Okay. So let's step away from from that impulse and say, I think that one of the things that's most convincing about anything as it relates to change is how does it impact you? What's what's your sense of self? What's your sense of belonging? Your sense of security and your capacity for open heart? How does that feel? And can you stay with that long enough to let it change you? For example, I've heard this many times neuroscientists say that when they see someone on the screen acting with courage and compassion, that inspires them to also act with courage and compassion. So I think the thing that we need to do is see each other acting in this in these ways and be inspired by each other in real life, not on TV.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:24:08] Kinda goes back to the Indra's Net and that of how we're all a jewel on the net, but we're also reflecting each other on the net, and so what we send out comes back. So if we are compassionate and loving creatures, it sort of rubs off just as if if you're in a room and somebody comes in and they're really mad and upset, it sort of rubs off on everybody else, and other people will be upset. But if somebody comes into the room and it's very loving and oh, this is a wonderful opportunity and hugs everyone, then that rubs off on people. So it's very much how we co-regulate our own nervous system with all of those that are around us. Just like an infant co-regulates with a mother. So the infant comes out and co-regulates with mom's nervous system, if if mom is upset, the baby's going to be upset. But we still do that as adults and so here we are in this society right now that a lot of people it's almost narcissistic society, right? People are very greedy, they want to rise to the top, it's all about the power, it's all about themselves. And people are very feel very entitled to to owning things or being serviced or whatever it is. They feel that their opinions about things are the correct ones. So in this society that we had now created, how can mindfulness and Buddhism help with changing people's mindsets?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:25:47] Yeah, Dr. Lotte thank you for that question. I want to go back and correct myself first. There are certain things on TV that are inspiring. I shouldn't say don't watch anything on TV. There are certain things that are inspiring and there are news programs that try to end their news, their news program with a good story, right? And show that person who's helping another report on the good samaritans out there. But usually that's just a small fraction of of what we're consuming. We're consuming mostly information about criminal behavior. Right. And then that tiny segment on the on the Good Samaritan. So I would just say that, watch the people around you. And if you find that the people around you are not acting neighborly, neighborly, try to find try to get out of that setting and find the people who are acting neighborly towards one another because a lot of that is taking place. All right. Buddhism and mindfulness. Need to go with ethics. So mindfulness is not necessarily an ethical path other than being aware. Buddhism, and I want to talk about Buddhism, if I can, as a way of life rather than a religion or a set of ethics or a philosophy or a psychology, just of the way of life. So the combination of mindfulness and and the Buddha way, I'll call it that, the Buddha way. Is being aware, being aware of the things that delude us from reality. So waking up, that's what we mean when we say waking up in the Buddha way, being aware of the things that to dilute us from what from who we are truly, who truly are and who others are. And when we do that, then back to your what you were saying, Dr. Lotte, about co-regulation, I'll throw in this word to empathy. That when we co-regulate with one another, we are empathizing with one another. And so the Buddha way is about empathizing with our joys and our sorrow, and then acting appropriately, responding appropriately to one another. Sometimes we don't talk about the Buddha way and mindfulness as ingredients for supporting relational resilience, what I call remarkable relational resilience. But that's what it is. When we practice deeply, mindfulness and the Buddha way, what we're learning to do is regulate our own nervous systems. That's what we're doing, so that when we are with people who are acting in ways that through our co-regulation might aggravate us that we can return to our awareness practices. And say, "oh, I am feeling aggravated, agitated, let me employ my breathing exercises to downregulate". Breathing and deeply breathing out through a little hole in our lips, right? To bring us and bring us down and ground ourselves so that we then avoid to the to the extent that we can, suddenly being swept up in something that we should not be swept up in. These are some of the things that mindfulness and the Buddha way can help towards reducing the tendency to mindlessly engage in acts of violence.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:30:04] So how, I know you also started a center called The Center of the Heart. How can people so people who are listening that would say, "Oh, I would love to learn mindfulness or Buddhism and learn how to regulate my nervous system and be more calm." How do you offer online classes or is this a center? You actually have to go there to take a class or?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:30:30] Yeah, right. So thank you for asking about Center of the Heart. I'm one of the co-founders of Center of the Heart, but I don't run Center of the Heart. Right now, I know that they are offering Yoga classes and I love Yoga, so I high I highly recommend that people check out Miriam Phields, who is the yoga teacher through Center of the Heart online. So no one has to show up in-person and they are offering other programs and I know that they are accepting ideas for programs, so people can check check out Center of the Heart. Yes.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:31:05] Yeah, that's that's amazing, and do you are there other platforms where you would recommend people learning more about Buddhism, Mindfulness in general?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:31:16] Wow. Oh, yeah. There's so many and I'm afraid that if I, If I mention some, somebody will say, "But why didn't you mention mine?" So I'll just say, just type in in your search engine, Buddhism and Mindfulness and then let your mind be blown by the plethora of offerings that there are. There are apps galore. There are organizations galore. When people realized that there survival dependened in large part now on being online, there's more online than ever. So people will not be without an option.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:31:58] So your book Casting Indra's Net. Tell me a little bit about for people who might be interested in reading this book, what the book is about and what led you to write the book?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:32:11] Yeah. Well, I'm a Pastoral Counselor, and so as the Pastoral Counselor I am interested in how people's spiritual lives, their religious beliefs, support their resilience and how sometimes it undermines their resilience. That's the work that I do. And in this age, I'll say in this age, in the United States and other places too, but in particular the United States right now, there does seem to be a movement towards shutting down curiosity, shutting down critical thinking, shutting down an interest in history, shutting down various people's perspectives on history. And these things are resulting in a lot of aggression at libraries against librarians, school board members, teachers, to the extent that a lot of people are saying, forget about it, you don't pay me enough to teach. I didn't sign up for this. The chilling effect, for example there is a very heavy, chilling effect on professors in Florida. I heard recently from a friend that there's a campaign to target professors in the state of Maryland by by I'll call them vigilantes. Anti-woke vigilantes. So my hope through Casting Indra's Net is that the people will begin to embrace age old wisdom, and embrace it and apply it. And also, one of the reasons why I wanted to focus on wisdom from a variety of traditions is because in this situation that we're in right now, there's also the rise of Christian Nationalism that says no other belief system is valid. We live in the United States where we have the First Amendment, freedom of religious belief. We also have the 14th Amendment equal protection under the law, and we also have very low constitutional literacy. So maybe if people would just take time, it doesn't take long to read the Constitution. It doesn't take long at all. And come to appreciate the history that led up to these freedoms, and then maybe compare our constitution to the constitution of many other countries. We could come to appreciate that the reason why the United States is as it is, is because we have a history of immigration, as well as brutality, okay. I don't want to pollyannaish it. We have a history of brutality. We have a history of an embrace of freedom. We have a plurality of beliefs and ethnicities. And so, if we are to try to live together, coexist with one another, support civility in this country, I think it would serve us well to learn just a little bit about another person's religious beliefs. See how we have some commonalities. That we can appreciate, hold on to and apply and decide that for our well-being, that we will pay more attention to the commonalities than the differences. Respecting those differences, but not defining ourselves and each other by those differences alone. Minimizing the whole person into just a fraction of who they are in a fraction of who we are. That's my hope.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:36:37] Yes. I couldn't agree more. The the attack that you were talking about, the teachers, the professors, school teachers saying, "I didn't sign up for this". We have school shootings out of control. We have the attack on what the teachers are allowed to teach, their removing books from the libraries. How do you feel this is going to affect the next generation?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:37:07] Yeah, well. I think it's gonna backfire. I really I think it's an effort that's going to backfire for these reasons. One, the next generation has been educated. They know, they know what's up. They know the score. And this is probably what has frightened a lot of people. They are already and have been for a long time, been friends with with people across our differences. After George Floyd was tortured and murdered, what we saw if we were paying attention, was a coalition and intergenerational, interethnic, interacial, interreligious, interpolitical, coalition. International coalition of people standing up against police brutality. That's the generation I think you're referring to and they're not going back. You can't make ignorant people who already know. Right. So I think these efforts will backfire. It's part of human nature. I wonder if you agree with this Dr. Lotte, it's part of human nature as we're growing up and we go from believing everything our parents, our parental figures tell us, to questioning it, it is just part and parcel of the of the developmental process. Then that once we realize everything our parents, everything the things everything that our parents told us are not true necessarily were maybe shared many of them were shared with an agenda, which is to make them like mini versions of themselves. Once they realize that, then many things that that we are told we received with some level of skepticism and we want to check it out ourselves. So one day, like I say in my book, you may tell your children whatever you want to tell them, but one day they're going to learn something different and they're going to learn it just by living their own lives. The other thing is, the reason why I say it's going to backfire is because these old these old strategies for censoring for censorship, and they are old. These old strategy strategies for censorship were developed before the Internet. So information and misinformation are at our fingertips. I don't think that the old strategies are are going to stand up to the technology that we have today. So it's going to backfire. And they and parents who are really rabid adamant about censorship, eventually their children are going to see that. And they're going to say, Well, why are you hiding this from us? So it's not the way to go. The way to go is good parenting. I do believe in that. I do believe in good parenting and parents being involved in their children's education. I do believe in that. I'm a parent. I was involved with my child's education. I was in conversation with teachers and principals and so on. That's the way to go.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:41:02] Yeah, no absolutely. Because how are we supposed to create critical thinkers if they take all the books away? But like you're saying, the next generation is very different. But they also have the Internet at their fingertips compared to our generation because I was born in 58. So you're just, what, three years behind me? Yeah, I'm 61, so we grew up in a whole different world where if we wanted information about something, we basically had to go to the library and right? And so but that next generation so my kids grew up with the Internet, or it came about as they grew up, rather, I should say. But the personal computers were around I remember we had the first personal computer, my oldest son was six, it was with the green screen, the floppy disks. But nevertheless, they grew up with the Internet and when he was in third grade, we lived in New York and they had computer 1 or 2 hours a week of computer time, and he learned how to type at school, which of course served him well. Now he works in the tech industry. But it's just interesting because we look back at that and we said, "no, yeah learn how to type! It's going to be important!" We knew that it was coming, that this was the next generation. But also they have all the information they ever needed at their fingertips. So, I am always confused about them you know, they're targeting the professors, they're targeting the teachers, they're removing the books. But what is that really going to do? Because a lot of the information is already available to them and they already have access to it. So I'm not sure how effective that is actually going to be in the end.

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:42:45] I don't think it will be.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:42:46] Yeah. And you're also your co-editor, I believe, of the Black and Buddhist What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom. Do you have anything you want to say about that book?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:43:01] Well, I'll say two things. I, I could say more, but I'll leave it to these two things. African descended folks who have read it, and our Buddhist practitioners have said to me, thank you. "Thank you for reflecting our lives". People who are European descendant and Buddhist practitioners have said, "Thank you for opening the window into the stories of people we don't know well." I'm proud of this, I'm proud of this book. Okay, so one one last thing, okay, four things! I'm proud of this book because of the collaboration I have with my co-editor, Cheryl Giles. And the people who wrote chapters in this book um, brilliant, dedicated Buddhist practitioners doing the work of liberating our minds and hearts from suffering. I'll leave it there for now. Thank you for asking about it.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:44:18] There's just so many things you've done. We could be, we could be talking for hours! But I know we're coming to a close on this podcast, so how can people learn more about you and the work that you're doing? And how can they find your books?

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:44:35] Yeah. Well, you mentioned the website PamelaAyoYetunde.com. There they can find out more about my writings. I also happened to be an Associate Editor with Lion's Roar, and so there are several articles, a Lion's Roar, as well as the podcasts where I have hosted or co-hosted conversations with a variety of people. And in listening to your podcast, I mean I've told you so much about myself! What more is there to know? I would just say that, as a Pastoral Counselor I know that we are subject to the rhetoric and the behaviors of people doing violence towards one another. And we also have the capacity to think about Indra's Net again, we also have the capacity to touch into the our basic goodness and let that shine and reflect it reflect another person's basic goodness so that we can come to trust each other more. And my hope is that what little I do in the rest of my years here on this planet is to support that.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:46:00] Well, that was beautiful words.

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:46:00] And be in conversation with. Thank you.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:46:03] That beautiful words of wisdom, so that was such a good close! I was going to ask you if you had a message to the listeners, but that pretty much wrapped it up right there! So it's been such an honor to have you as a guest today, and I will also make sure that your website, the link to your website is in the podcast notes, so you can just go straight to the notes and click on the link and you'll end up at PamelaAyoYetunde.com. So again, thank you so much for taking the time and be a guest on the podcast today!

 

Pamela Ayo Yetunde J.D., M.A., Th.D. [00:46:38] My honor, and pleasure! Thank you.

 

Dr. Lotte [00:46:42] As we conclude this episode, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your presence within our community. If you haven't yet, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Subscribe to my newsletter in the show notes and receive new podcast episodes delivered right to your inbox. If you resonate with the interconnectedness of mind, body and soul and are motivated to embark on a journey of personal healing, I invite you to connect with me at DrLotte.com. Together, we can pave a path towards transformative healing in your own life.

 

Spirituality, BuddhismAnn Charlotte ValentinMindfulness, Buddhism, Spirituality