Class

Opening New Forms and Approaches to Engaged Practice: B.R. Ambedkar and Navayāna Buddhism (Online Class, Sept-Oct)

Recurrent

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location
Online
Description

Brooklyn Zen Center is overjoyed to welcome Santosh Raut (known as Maitriveer Nagarjuna in retreat settings*) — a Dhamma teacher, scholar of Buddhist aesthetics and philosophy, and a leader in Asian engaged Buddhist communities — for this six-week online course beginning September 13th. It will be an opportunity for practitioners to go deeply together and in community into the legacy of B.R. Ambedkar — a twentieth century Buddhist political thinker who combined intellectual brilliance with his own Dalit identity to understand the dharma as a complete response to oppression, dignity, and freedom. 

Together, Santosh Raut and guests William Edelglass, Rima Vesely-Flad, and Cornel West bring scholarly, contemplative, and liberatory perspectives on Ambedkar’s vision.

In Dr. Raut’s words:

“What does it mean to take up Buddhist practice as an act of liberation for all beings? In this class we will explore the life, vision, and enduring legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who was an Indian jurist, philosopher, Buddhist teacher, and social reformer. He saw in the Buddha’s teaching a radical answer to one of humanity’s oldest and most entrenched forms of suffering. Ambedkar’s Navayāna Buddhism calls us to recognize that caste, race, gender, which are all systems of hierarchy and exclusion, are constructions of mind, and that the cultivation of awareness, compassion, and courageous action can dissolve what centuries of convention have made to seem fixed and eternal. Drawing on his core insight that indifference is among the gravest afflictions a society can suffer, and that nothing is permanent, nothing beyond transformation, this class invites practitioners of all backgrounds to consider how the Dhamma might deepen and widen their engagement with the great work of justice, dignity, and social harmony in our time.

For Ambedkar, BuddhaDhamma was a revolution. One that transforms the self and society together, from the inside out, planting the seeds of dignity and freedom in every mind that takes it up. Even in the darkest of conditions, he held strong the conviction that through relationship and community a new world is possible, and that the Buddha’s teachings show us the way, rooted not merely in law, but in the human heart. His vision speaks with urgent clarity to our fractured present, reminding us that the path to collective liberation begins with the quality of attention, care, and courage we bring to each moment of practice.”

*If you’re in NYC and would like a chance to practice in person, join us for this one-day sit with Maitriveer Nagarjuna on June 27th.

Schedule

Dates: Sundays 9/13, 9/20, 9/27, 10/4, 10/11, and 10/25, 2026 (please note there is no class on 10/18)
Time: 10:00 AM–11:30 AM ET
Location: Online via Zoom (link will be provided to registrants before the first class.)

Registration

Registration deadline — September 10, 11:59 PM ET
Financial assistance deadline — September 3, 11:59 PM ET

Fee — $225-$350

  • See our Equitable Pricing Model here to determine your rate.
  • No one will be turned away due to financial constraints. If you’re unable to pay at the lowest rate, please use this form to apply for financial assistance by the deadline.

Questions? If you have any questions or concerns about registration, please contact us at info@brooklynzen.org.

 

Instructors

Santosh Raut, PhD (also known as Maitriveer-Nagarjuna) hails from Maharashtra, the heartland of the Ambedkarite Buddhist movement. Both a Dhamma teacher and a scholar of Buddhist Aesthetics and Philosophy, he has long been a thought leader and organizer within broader Asian networks of Engaged Buddhism. Following his doctoral studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Maitriveer joined the EFL University in Hyderabad as an Assistant Professor. He combines this work with his role as the Deputy-Chairman of Nagarjuna Training Institute and the co-founder of The Babasaheb Ambedkar Philosophical Society at Nagaloka in Nagpur. Founded in 1994 near the site where Dr. Ambedkar formally converted to Buddhism in 1956 along with hundreds of thousands of followers, Nagaloka is a major Ambedkarite hub connected to the Triratna Bauddha Mahāsaṅgha (TBM). Maitriveer also co-founded the National Network of Buddhist Youth. For a number of years he has actively supported the Ambedkarite Buddhist movement in Hungary among the Roma, about which a documentary was made. More recently, he has been involved in the design of the Buddhavanam project in Nagarjunasagar, a very large Buddhist Heritage site park. Currently, Maitriveer is a Research Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. He was recently interviewed about Buddhism and Social Justice by the scholar Jon Keune at Michigan State University.

 

William Edelglass, Ph.D., is Director of Studies at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Professor Emeritus, Emerson College, Boston, MA. Previously, he was Professor of Philosophy at Marlboro College in Vermont. William has also taught at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (Dharamsala, India), the Central University for Higher Tibetan Studies (Sarnath, India), and the Indian Institute of Technology—Bombay. William has a broad background as a scholar and a practitioner. He has practiced in Zen, Tibetan, and Theravāda traditions. As a scholar, William’s work engages Buddhist studies, environmental humanities, and philosophy. His recent publications have addressed Śāntideva’s approach to mindfulness and ethics; Buddhism, happiness, and the social science of meditation; phenomenology, climate change, and the ethics of difference; the role of Buddhism in B. R. Ambedkar’s political thought; B. R. Ambedkar’s Buddhist approach to violence, nonviolence, and antiviolence; Buddhism and the environment; the role of faith in Indian Buddhist literature on the path; and Buddhist practice and the limits of language.

 

Rima Vesely-Flad, PhD, is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. She is the author of three books: The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (North Atlantic Books, 2026); Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022); and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). Dr. Vesely-Flad has twice been awarded a Department of State Fulbright Fellowship, as a post-graduate student in South Africa and as a faculty member in Ghana. She is also the recipient of grants from the Fetzer Institute, the Henry J. Luce Foundation, the Frederick Lenz Foundation, and the Crossroads Program. For several years, she taught college-level courses at Sing Sing Prison, Sarah Lawrence College, and Warren Wilson College, as well as graduate classes at Union Theological Seminary. You can follow her work at www.blackbuddhiststudies.org and on Instagram @blackbuddhiststudies.

 

Cornel West, PhD, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects — including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. Dr. West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

 

Image: Illustration of B.R. Ambedkar at a loom, On the occasion of World Buddhist Flag Day, 2025 @bakery_prasad

 


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Donations

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Fee
$225-$360
Questions?
info@brooklynzen.org

To request a refund for this program you must notify BZC in writing at least 2 days before the beginning of the program. This supports the organizing effort involved in managing registrations and cancellations.

Opening New Forms and Approaches to Engaged Practice: B.R. Ambedkar and Navayāna Buddhism (Online Class, Sept-Oct)
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