Engaged Dharma Book Club
Bridge your political and spiritual values in community
Dharma-informed learning on texts related to ethics, activism, post-capitalism, and social change. Connect, meditate, and discuss with other justice-oriented meditation and Buddhist practitioners.
What if you could deepen your political education and dharma practice in tandem?
Dive into a political text with like-minded spiritual community
Live meetings
For each book, we meet live via Zoom. We connect, meditate, and discuss the text in connection to dharma teachings and practice.
Online community
All participants have the opportunity to connect with each other outside the live Zoom meeting through Chats on Adriana’s Substack, Radical Change.
Held by the dharma
Doing social justice work in a space held by a Buddhist worldview and practice just lands differently. We’re learning not only with our minds, but with our hearts and bodies.
How it works
Choose a book to engage in for one month
Join Adriana’s Substack community: The Engaged Dharma Book Club is a paid subscriber benefit to Adriana’s Substack, Radical Change.
Choose a month and book: Pick a book from the below schedule that excites you! Get a copy of it and start reading the first few chapters a week before our first session.
Join the live Zoom call: There will be one live Zoom call to connect, meditate, and engage in discussion with other justice-oriented meditation and dharma practitioners.
Reflect and connect: Draw learnings from the text and discussion, and apply it in your own life, relationships, and activism. Connect with other community members to see how you can support one another until the next Book Club!
Join the upcoming Book Club!
Date:
Six consecutive Sundays 4-6:30pm EST
January 25 - March 1, 2026
Book:
How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action
Edited by Erin Miles Cloud, Erica R. Meiners, Shannon Perez-Darby, and C. Hope Tolliver
From leading abolitionist organizers, a much-needed intervention arguing that the systems that purport to protect children make them—and our communities—less safe.
Based on decades of shared organizing, study, and lived experience, the contributors to How to End Family Policing argue that the child welfare system cannot build genuine safety. Rather than the misleading language of “child welfare” and “child protective services,” scholars and activists use the term “family policing” to name the fact that these institutions and practices are neither neutral nor benign. Black, Indigenous, and Latinx parents do not mistreat their children at higher rates than white parents. Yet 53 percent of all Black children in the United States will experience a child protective services investigation before the age of eighteen.
Offering first-person testimony and laying out visions for alternatives to family policing, this book is an urgent call to build flourishing communities.
Price:
Free! This book club series is co-hosted with the Beyond Prisons Podcast.
2025 Schedule
Click the titles below to watch the live book club discussion replays
January 2025
Mindful Solidarity: A Secular Buddhist Democratic Socialist Dialogue by Mike Slott
Encouraging political activists and Buddhist practitioners to connect with, and learn from, each other, Mike Slott argues when we pursue individual and social transformation together we enrich the Buddhist path, making it more ethically and socially focused.
March 2025
The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs, a legendary figure in the struggle for justice in America, shrewdly assesses the current crisis—political, economical, and environmental—and shows how to create the radical social change we need to confront new realities.
May 2025
With wise and witty prose that wanders and turns, guides and reveals, Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong’s meditation holds our collective moment with gravity and tender care. She asks us to not only imagine but to live into a story beyond crisis and collapse—one that expands to meet our dreams of what (we hope) comes next, while facing with clarity and grace our here and now in the world we share today.
July 2025
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
September 2025
We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson
Abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving.
November 2025
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Society’s Wrongs and The Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back . . . and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest.
Who’s the facilitator?
Hey, I’m Adriana 👋
I’m a Buddhist meditation teacher, scholar, chaplain, and parent. I help meditators integrate their social justice values and spiritual practice.
I believe that reimagining a more life-giving world requires social-political-economic change and deep spiritual transformation. My mission is to help you live into your values of service and solidarity supported by the radical wisdom of Buddhist practice, so that you can continue to resist in the struggle for collective change.
During each Book Club, I am relating to the text and learning alongside you. I am asking myself: what does the dharma have to say or offer? Where are there tensions? How can liberation politics and dharma learn from one another? I have a feeling you might have similar questions.
I’m so happy you’re here and hope to see you in the next Book Club!
Have some questions?
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We’ll start off by doing introductions and check-ins. From there, I’ll offer a 25-mins guided meditation for us to settle into our bodies. Afterwards, I’ll review our community agreements and we’ll dive into small and large group discussion.
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Everyone is welcome to tune into the Zoom and listen to the discussion, regardless of having done the entire reading.
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No, you do not need to be a Buddhist to participate! Folks of all spiritual, religious, or secular backgrounds are welcome.
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Yes, sliding scale and scholarships are always available, please email me at ad@adrianadifazio.com for options.