CBD 2026: Interactive Workshop, Educating for Interbeing: Imagination, Embodiment, and the Education of Compassion with Kaira Jewel Lingo
About this event
This interactive workshop explores how contemplative practice can help us teach humans to be human—nurturing empathy, discernment, collaboration, and relational intelligence across the lifespan. Drawing on Buddhist practices, the principle of not-self, and collective ways of knowing, participants will consider how contemplative education cultivates the “imaginal cells” within ourselves and our communities—the seeds of a more compassionate, connected, and generative society. The session will also explore the distinction between approaches that focus on personal achievement and those that nurture awareness of ourselves as part of a living community. Drawing on examples such as the founding of Deer Park Monastery’s School of Interbeing and other contemplative educational models, the session will highlight practical approaches to nurturing the capacities necessary for wise, compassionate, and socially engaged citizenship. Participants will leave with insights and tools for integrating contemplative practices into educational and community settings to help young people—and ourselves—thrive in a complex, interconnected world. This workshop is part one of a three-part series with Kaira Jewel Lingo in the Contemplation By Design Summit. This workshop will extend the knowledge and skills presented during the keynote lecture on Oct. 14 at 7pm titled We Were Made for These Times: Coming Home to Ourselves in the Age of AI, please consider attending Kaira's keynote as well if your schedule permits you to do so. You may also want to attend her iPause Guided practice titled Interbeing Meditation: Touching Our Source and Growing Our Connection on Fri. Oct. 16 at 7:30am. You are welcome to join one or all three of Kaira's Summit sessions. Kaira Jewel Lingo is a senior Dharma teacher in the Plum Village Zen lineage and a Vipassana teacher, and a member of the Plum Village North American Dharma Teachers Council of Elders. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh