In anticipation of the DVI January 2025 Community Sit, Steering Committee member John Howell sat down with Aishah Simmons to discuss her spiritual and creative journey.
John Howell: How did you discover the dharma and who do you consider your most influential teachers?
Aishah Simmons: I came to Buddhist practice in 2002 because I was suffering, and I was looking for a way out of the suffering. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s my herstory. At the time, I had been working with a black feminist licensed clinical psychologist for ten years. I was also in search of additional tools to help me navigate my journey as a survivor of childhood and adult sexual violence. A dear friend at the time had recently attended a 10-day vipassana meditation course in the S.N. Goenka tradition. As soon as I heard about it, I was intrigued and began the steps to apply to sit a course.
Since my first 10-day course in December 2002, I was like a moth to a flame. Through vipassana meditation taught by Goenkaji and his assistant teachers, I found solace and rigor. From December 2002 through September 2019, I attended and served multiple 10-day, 20-day, and 30-day retreats in the U.S. and India. In 2009, I was a member of the international committee that organized the first 10-day vipassana meditation course in the Goenka tradition for people of African heritage worldwide. The course was held in India at the Global Pagoda where Goenkaji lived.
I departed from that tradition in the fall of 2019. During that time, I went through a brief period of feeling like a fish out of water in terms of finding a spiritual home. I began a deep dive into pariyatti (theory) as I believed, at the time, my patipatti (practice) was very strong. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed me to practice through many virtual Insight meditation gatherings and retreats ranging from one hour to twelve consecutive days. I began an independent one-to-one study with my teacher, Tuere Sala, whom I first met in person through a DVI-sponsored event in January 2020.
While still working with Tuere one year later, I also began working closely with DaRa Williams. Once the world opened up again, I attended in-person retreats at Spirit Rock, IMS Retreat Center, and the Forest Refuge. I found a compassionately rigorous home in the Insight meditation tradition. These experiences have reaffirmed my belief that dhamma remains my spiritual path and that the Early Buddhist lineage will remain my primary study.
S.N. Goenka is my root dharma teacher because it is through him that I embraced the dharma. Contemporarily, Tuere Sala and DaRa Williams are dharma teachers who continuously influence my practice. Thich Nhat Hanh, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls, Pamela Ayo Yetunde, and Ruth King have also greatly influenced my practices. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t name black feminist author and filmmaker Toni Cade Bambara, who was my teacher and my big sister friend for five years from 1990 until her untimely passing in 1995. She is now a guiding ancestral spirit. She was not a dharma teacher, yet her writings, teachings and, most importantly, her being embodied dharma principles.
John: As an artist, how does meditation and mindfulness impact your creativity?
Aishah: Instead of artist, I prefer to use cultural worker, a term I first learned from Toni Cade Bambara. For thirty years, the focus of my cultural work was on breaking silences and healing from adult and childhood sexual violence. The goal for my work was healing and alternatives to carceral responses to harm. I can’t imagine my cultural productions without meditative, mindful, dharma practices. It is in the stillness -- which isn’t necessarily a peaceful experience, but is insightful and clarifying -- where creativity emerges.
The closing dance sequence of my film NO! The Rape Documentary (2006), “For Women of Rage and Reason,” includes an original song whose refrain is “Rage. Meditation. Action. Healing.” Although I wrote the words in 1994, eight years prior to beginning dharma practice, it’s included in the film precisely because of clarity of the power of dharma meditation practice.
During extended periods of sitting meditation at home alone in 2015, when I was newly awake to the harsh impact of bystander inaction on my life, the words “Love WITH Accountability®” emerged. That phrase, which comes directly through my meditation practice, represents a body of black survivor abolitionist-centered work that is foundational to my anthology, “Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse.” (AK Press, 2019)
In summary, I can say that combined mindfulness, dharma, and meditation serve as a compass and guide on my journey called life, of which creativity is an integral part.