CBD 2017: Keynote with Alice Walker - Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart: Noticing where you are, and who or what is there with you

Tickets for this Contemplation By Design keynote event are available through the Stanford Ticketing Office starting Tuesday, September 12th at 9:00am by clicking HERE.

(Registration for all other Contemplation By Design Summit sessions is available at: contemplation.stanford.edu/summit.php 

The summit is November 1-9, 2017.)

“No one escapes a time in life when the arrow of sorrow, of anger, of despair pierces the heart. For many of us, there is the inevitable need to circle the wound. It is often such a surprise to find it there, in us, when we had assumed arrows so painful only landed in the hearts of other people. Some of us spend decades screaming at the archer. Or at least for longer periods than are good for us. How to take the arrow out of the heart? How to learn to relieve our own pain? That is the question. Like many such questions it is one delved into by Buddhism, but also by anyone who has lived long enough to see, by trial and error, for the most part, that the futility we begin to feel, as we attempt to bring down the archer, leaves our wounded heart untended and the medicine of life that abounds wherever we are, is left unapplied.” - Alice Walker

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen million copies. Walker has been an activist all of her adult life, and believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity and work available to all. She has a deep meditation practice. She is a staunch defender not only of human rights, but of the rights of all living beings. She is one of the world’s most prolific writers, yet continues to travel the world to literally stand on the side of the poor, and the economically, spiritually and politically oppressed. She also stands, on the side of the revolutionaries, teachers and leaders who seek change and transformation of the world.