VISION:

Our vision is to be a welcoming, engaged, and equitable community where all may find refuge, connection, and a path toward liberation.

MISSION:

Our mission is to offer Buddhist teachings (Dharma), support for meditation practice, and opportunities for openhearted discussion with people of all backgrounds and beliefs. We gather in community (Sangha) to cultivate greater awareness, joy, compassion, and freedom from suffering.

VALUES: 

Our values are grounded in the teachings of the Buddha.

The Dharma - We dedicate ourselves to the ethics, compassion, and liberation framework of Buddhist teachings, which are as applicable today as they were 2500 years ago.

Welcoming Community – We are dedicated to creating a Sangha space that is welcoming. We embrace diversity, respect differences, and honor all voices.

Generosity and Service – We cultivate the open-hearted practice of generosity (dana) in service and monetary gifts to support our community.

Living the Teachings – We encourage living the Dharma by deepening our understanding of the teachings and their application to all of life’s joys and challenges.

Stewardship - We are committed to the responsible stewardship of financial, human, and natural resources for future generations. We are committed to developing and maintaining a healthy, responsive organization with stability and clear purpose.

Social Engagement – We actively foster equity within our Sangha and through service to our surrounding community. We commit ourselves to the healing of the world by helping to dismantle human systems of oppression and harm. We recognize personal discomfort as an opportunity to share in the challenge of our collective liberation toward a shared experience of love, wisdom, and justice for all beings and our natural world.

Sustainability- Guided by Buddhist principles, we support our Sangha and our surrounding community in responding to our ecological crises. We vow to live more responsibly in the food, products, and energy we consume, drawing inspiration, strength, and guidance from the living Earth, our ancestors, and future generations.

The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) committee was established in 2021.  IMCC’s current DEIJ committee includes Sarah Adams, Laura DeVault, Phil DuPont, Susan Kaufman, Darby Maille, and Bev Wann.

Sarah Adams serves as our DEIJ Coordinator. This role works to support IMCC to be a welcoming, engaged, and equitable community where all may find refuge, connection, and a path toward liberation. The DEIJ Coordinator’s responsibility is to form new Racial Affinity Groups (RAG) and coordinate DEIJ-focused events.

The following statement of purpose was written by the DEIJ Committee on behalf of the sangha. It is a living document which will, no doubt, continue to evolve as our sangha changes and the community of which we are a part changes.

IMCC is committed to creating a socially aware, welcoming, and open-hearted refuge where all can benefit from the teachings of the Buddha (dharma), including people of color, members of the LGBTQIA2+ community, people with disabilities, and other underrepresented communities. Historically, IMCC has not been a place of inclusion and equity where marginalized groups have felt they belonged, and therefore our sangha does not currently reflect our larger community. IMCC is committed to addressing the barriers that have kept people from finding a spiritual home here. We aim to provide a safe space for our practitioners to explore and learn the dharma, based upon a deep cultural humility that openly acknowledges and actively seeks to incorporate our community’s diverse backgrounds and current experiences. 

To this end, IMCC has created a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice committee which includes members of the Board as well as sangha members.  We pledge to proceed with curiosity, inquiry, and reflection. This effort will be a shared responsibility throughout our sangha.

We are committed to a socially engaged Buddhism that actively fosters equity within our sangha and through service to our surrounding community. Our practice is not just about individual awakening, enlightenment, and freedom, but about our collective journey and transformation toward a shared experience of wisdom and justice. Interdependence with the world of suffering beings is embodied in the Buddhist vision of the bodhisattva, the inspired practitioner who vows to awaken in support of the liberation of all beings.    

It is our intention to be a community that embodies:  

Diversity – acknowledging and valuing differences based on race, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, age, class, wealth, education, abilities, background, opinions, experience, and other social and economic differences.

Equity – meeting people where they are while removing barriers to success and not treating everyone the same. It means dissecting the broken parts with a sincere desire to learn and understand (without judgment).

Inclusion – creating an environment that supports a sense of belonging for people from diverse social groups, allowing us to awaken together.

Justice – extending our inward awakening outward into the “external” realm of collective healing and liberation, the expression of compassion for the suffering of the world.

Cultural humility – using our beginner ’s mind enables us to listen, reflect, become aware of power and privilege, hear a multiplicity of voices, learn from one another, and create a safe space.

This commitment to creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive sangha is a reflection of dharma in action.

Monacan youth posing outside the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School, c. 1914. Photo by Jackson Davis

Motivated by the Buddha’s teaching to investigate the root causes of suffering wherever they exist and to act with the intention of preventing future harm, we at IMCC respectfully offer the following land acknowledgment.

For thousands of years, the people of the Monacan nation lived on, protected, and cultivated the land on which Charlottesville and surrounding communities now stand. This land was forcibly seized by white-bodied settler colonizers. We at the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville acknowledge the profound suffering inflicted on the Monacan people, past, present, and future as a result of these acts and as a result of policies rooted in erasure. We recognize the relationship the Monacan people of the present day have with the land where their ancestors are buried.