Author Talk: You Belong with Sebene Selassie

About the Book:

From much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie, You Belong is a call to action, exploring our tangled relationship with belonging, connection, and each other

You are not separate. You never were. You never will be.

We are not separate from each other. But we don’t always believe it, and we certainly don’t always practice it. In fact, we often practice the opposite—disconnection and domination.  From unconscious bias to “cancel culture,” denial of our inherent interconnection limits our own freedom.

In You Belong, much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie reveals that accepting our belonging is the key to facing the many challenges currently impacting our world. Using ancient philosophy, multidisciplinary research, exquisite storytelling, and razor-sharp wit, Selassie leads us in an exploration of all the ways we separate (and thus suffer) and offers a map back to belonging.

To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face our own shadows. Full of practical advice and profound revelations, You Belong makes a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and reclaiming the connection—and belonging—that have been ours all along.

About the Author:

Sebene Selassie has studied Buddhism for more than twenty-five years and received a BA from McGill University and an MA from the New School, where she focused on Buddhism, Hinduism, cultural studies, and race. She is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and of the Professional Coaching Course training program at New Ventures West. She was the Executive Director of New York Insight Meditation Center, where she currently teaches and on the board of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. A native of Ethiopia, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About the Moderator:

Shubha Bala identifies as an Indo-Canadian queer artist who tells stories through performance, writing, and visual art. Their writing and visual art has been published in Off The Coast, inkt|art, and Ego the Mag, among other literary magazines, and they have exhibited at BRN GRL SPK’s “This Is My Home (Too)”. They have performed at Greenlight Bookstore, the 92Y, and Sakhi’s annual Gender Justice and the Arts Showcase, and more. Shubha is an alum of the graphic novel program at Voices Of Our Nation (VONA). Shubha has also nurtured the story-telling of others through being a co-director of the community-led production YKR - storytelling by South Asian and Indo-Caribbean people - and through founding Kalyani Magazine, a literary magazine that was devoted to the voices of women and gender non-binary people of color.