Community Guidelines | jayaashmore

Open Dharma Community Guidelines and Practices

Open Dharma is dedicated to creating opportunities for our community to experience contact with aliveness beyond ideas. For more than two decades, Open Dharma participants, friends and team members have cultivated and enjoyed an implicit culture based on radical friendliness with life. This document serves as an explicit map of our culture.

Please integrate these Guidelines when participating in Open Dharma programs, both online and in person. We welcome your reflections on these Guidelines and on your experience in the Open Dharma community.

Inclusivity and respect for every person are at the heart of what we offer each other as a community. We welcome all, regardless of background, and together, we endeavor to create a supportive and trustworthy environment for everyone.

Our Practices and Guidelines for Community

We love to create ways to gather in friendliness and ennobling mutual regard, and opportunities to communicate with consent and kindness.

We recognize that everyone is on a unique journey.

We practice approaching one another with humility, curiosity, respect, and compassion.

We refrain from giving advice to one another unless specifically requested.

We practice speaking from direct experience, and in our own words, while listening for and to the wisdom of lived experience in others.

We honor complexity, inviting multiple perspectives and ways of knowing.

We honor interconnectedness and collaborative community. We are all co-stewards sharing the power to create a respectful environment alive with goodness.

We practice honoring boundaries, and meet moments of discomfort with patience and spacious care.

We aspire to be a community free of discrimination. We are committed to the ongoing process of unwinding these harmful tendencies, while acknowledging built-in human tendencies towards bias.

In online meetings, we use genuine information, including (at least) first names, and profile images that authentically represent us. We are free to be off-camera much of the time if needed, but come on camera at least once at the beginning of a meeting.

These ways of participating together in teachings and practices center accessibility, love and freedom.

Accountability

We are committed to creating gatherings where self-responsible participants can engage with depth and dignity, free from judgment and free from behavior that undermines participation. We come together from different backgrounds and different relationships to power and resources. When moments of misunderstanding or harm occur, we can shift from judgement towards curiosity and listening to one another with care.

Our community does not support:

● Discriminatory or offensive comments or hate speech

● Intimidation, harassment, or continued communication after a request to stop

● Unwanted sexual attention or advances

● Deliberate misrepresentation or misuse of identity

Accountability includes:

● Being open to feedback

● Attending to the impact of our words and actions

● Approaching moments of tension with reflection and willingness to learn

● Slowing down to feel and respond outside of reactivity

When moments of tension or discomfort arise, we invite grounding in these shared Guidelines as a starting point for reflection and repair.

Responding to Harm

We acknowledge that some things take time to resolve and resolution is not always the goal. At the same time, we approach harm in a way that prioritizes the agency and dignity of those impacted, while also considering the wellbeing of the broader community.

Responses may include:

● Conversations and setting clear boundaries.

● Exploring growthful ways to get beyond harming.

● Exploring ways the particular friction may be relevant in the wider field.

● Finding what can repair harm, and how the harmful incident might eventually lead to greater connection and trust.

● Forming agreements to prevent the same harm from repeating.

If recurring, harmful behaviors could lead to limitations on participation, including temporary or permanent removal from programs.

Reporting Concerns

If you experience or witness harm, harassment, or behavior that does not align with these guidelines, we would really like to hear from you.

Any community member can request help in dealing with a concern. Our team can receive concerns, provide support and help assess next steps.

During in-person and live online events, please report concerns to the retreat manager. For groups and online programs, or to report concerns about a retreat manager, please reach out to ~ connect@opendharma.org

All reports are taken seriously and reviewed with care.

Final Note

We ask all members to do their part in making this community welcoming and liberating for everyone.

Together, we can enjoy community based on trust, mutual regard, and freedom.