The more I practice and study Buddhism, the more I perceive how universal its insights are across different spiritual and cultural traditions. The illuminating brilliance of the dharma is reflected limitlessly in countless human spiritual and cultural principles and practices. With less than one week before Kwanzaa begins, I am noticing how much Buddhist axioms mirror African truths expressed in the principles of Kwanzaa. The dharma and Kwanzaa reciprocally reflect each other’s wisdom and practices for joyful, liberated living. 

Holidays, acknowledgment months, and other cultural practices can be opportunities for reflection, growth, and collective progress. A reflection on Kwanzaa from a Buddhist perspective reveals how the profound insights of Black cultural contemplative practices and Buddhism mirror each other and reflect universal positive values.

Kwanzaa is a seven-day celebration of African American culture and heritage that takes place from December 26 to January 1. It celebrates the importance of Pan-African unity and corresponding African cultural values. For many African American families, including my own, celebrating Kwanzaa serves as a way to honor and connect to our cultural heritage as people of African descent in a way that is not married to any single religious framework. My family is a microcosm of the Black community in the US and perhaps throughout the African Diaspora in that it includes Muslims, Christians, Buddhists as well as those who live by their own spiritual ideals, unaffiliated with any formal religion. 

For many Black families, Kwanzaa facilitates some repair of the cultural rupture caused by the kidnapping and trafficking of our ancestors during the centuries of colonization and enslavement. Between 12 million and 15 million African people, members of families and tribal communities, were torn apart and trafficked throughout the world from 1526 to 1867. The 10.7 million people who survived the Middle Passage across the Atlantic continued to have any new families and communities they tried to make disrupted via chattel slavery, wherein Black people were “sold” repeatedly for profit, or on a whim, or for punishment. Rape and “breeding” of Black people further convoluted African lineage such that it is an elusive struggle for many Black people to trace our African ancestry and learn the unique spiritual and cultural traditions of our ancestors’ tribes and regions. 

Kwanzaa emerged in the United States under the leadership of Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor of Black Studies at California State University Long Beach in 1966 as a bridge to our disrupted African lineage. It is also no coincidence that Kwanzaa emerged as Black people were experiencing relentless, violent police attacks. From 1964 to 1965, thousands of Black people protested, with the protests spanning several days across multiple cities including Rochester, Harlem, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and, most infamously Watts, Los Angeles. Having their protests labeled as “riots” and being referred to as “monkeys in a zoo” by LA police chief William Parker, and many other dismissive and derisive responses to their demands for safety, disabused many Black Americans of their sense of belonging in the United States. 

Despite the fact that the exploited labors of Black people helped build the wealth and resources of the United States, very few Black people have access to the rights, opportunities, and privileges of US prosperity. This lack of opportunities and freedoms, as well as the lack of safety, was actively being protested by both Dr. King and Malcolm X from different spiritual platforms. As James Baldwin stated, “To be Black in America is to be African with no memory and American with no privilege.” Yet our African consciousness lingers, however, sublime and subconscious, such that it awakens and whispers to us when another wisdom tradition echoes it. I perceive my African consciousness, my lineage, not through the portal of tribal or regional connection but rather as a viscerally embedded and embodied way of discerning, relating, and being. My Buddhist practice turns me toward that awareness ceaselessly.

Kwanzaa allows for Black people to unite across religious differences and honor the values of African cultural lineages for inner strength, with guidelines about how to be just toward ourselves and create justice in the world around us. With awareness that any freedom and justice we were to experience would, as ever, have to be created by our own efforts, many African Americans recognized the unifying and empowering principles of Kwanzaa as not only a bridge to our African past but also a unifying platform and launchpad for present and future empowerment and liberation. As a Buddhist, I see the wisdom of the dharma in harmony with each of these seven principles, which correspond with the seven days of Kwanzaa.

1. Umoja (Unity): December 26

Indeed, the first principle, the first day of Kwanzaa is Umoja. Umoja is a Kiswahili word for unity. Many domestic and international Black liberation movements have centered unity as a foundational construct. 

Since colonization, enslavement, and trafficking of Africans disrupted and devalued African peoples’ connections to each other, reuniting not just in proximity but in shared values has become a core aspect of liberation itself. As African culture and traditions have been and often still are devalued, reclaiming and rightfully honoring these aspects of our being is also a vital aspect of resisting racism. 

The devaluation and the appropriation of Black wisdom traditions motivates me to center Black wisdom practices in my work. As Malcolm X put it, “There can be no Black-White unity until there is first some Black unity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

In addition to signifying the effort Black people must make to reconnect and reclaim unity with one another and with our traditions, contemplating Umoja also invites us to notice the effortless unity that exists amongst all life. Reflecting on the Buddhist insight of dependent origination, the reality that “this is because that is, this is not because that is not,” articulates the interdependent co-arising of all life and experiences. This unchanging reality describes how we are linked “in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described. Reflecting on and practicing with the principle Umoja, we understand unity as what already is, and human disruptions of unity as delusions or befuddlements that we can release toward enlightenment and freedom.

An Umoja Reflection for the First Day of Kwanzaa:

Today I perceive unity as the fundamental reality. While delusions compel us to separate ourselves from each other and from the truth of our interdependence, our connectedness endures. The sufferings felt by those we disparage and harm return to us on the ship of karma. I can deepen my own and others’ awareness of this truth and enact justice for myself and all beings. Umoja opens me to the nonduality of pain and positive possibility, the unity of suffering and joy, and the union of life and death.

2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): December 27

Kujichagulia is the Kiswahili word for self-determination. Self-determination is vital for all people, especially people of African heritage who have endured the theft of our autonomy, our names, our bodies, and our cultural practices. In Beloved, Toni Morrison’s main character, Sethe, escapes enslavement and marvels at the reclaimed freedom to “decide what to do with the day.” In that same Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Morrison states that “freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” We claim ownership of our lives by taking responsibility, by centering our values with determination and making choices that reflect our best intentions for ourselves and one another. This is key to liberation. Kujichagulia speaks of resolve and right motivation, two aspects of Buddhism’s noble eightfold path. Resolve helps us “perfect” our heartful, mindful engagement with the world. The bodhisattva vow is itself an expression of resolve and self-determination. 

In my book Joyfully Just, I talk about fierce compassion toward ourselves as the kind of compassion that compels us toward growth, compassion that fuels us in pushing past our comfort zones to act courageously and build the lives we really want for ourselves and those we care for. The first step in developing resilient, fierce compassion is acknowledging what you already do to develop and manifest your greater self. The next step is cultivating your resolve, your self-determination.

A Kujichagulia Reflection for the Second Day of Kwanzaa:

Today I resolve to act with fierce compassion toward myself and all beings—to determine the direction of my own life force as I positively support the lives of all beings.

3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): December 28

The wisdom of Ujima recognizes work as a source of well-being. As theologian and civil rights activist Howard Thurman stated, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Ujima also reminds us that we are interdependent and collectively responsible for how we work and what we work for. This resonates with the eightfold path’s guidance to pursue right livelihood. In Joyfully Just, I talk about how “right” in this context is not a value judgment. Rather, “right” means “comprehensive and holistic.”

An Ujima Reflection for the Third Day of Kwanzaa:

Is the work I do, and the manner that I do it, right for my well-being? How can I liberate myself and others from overwork and do work that brings my greatest vision, my greater self to life? Reflecting on Ujima, I contemplate what I work for, and whom I work with, toward what end. How can I more justly engage in the relational work of life, the work of parenting or aunting, spousing, or befriending? How will I, out of fierce compassion for myself and the world, conduct work for justice? I resolve to work in ways that support my well-being and the well-being of all. 

4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): December 29

Ujamaa teaches us that just as work is relational, so are all the fruits of labor such as economic and material resources. Philanthropy comes from the Greek words philos (love) and anthropos (humankind). Even the word charity comes from the Latin caritas, which means generous love or affection.

In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin states, 

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. 

Baldwin’s words echo Dr. King’s exhortation to develop compassionate power—power that is love implementing the demands of justice. And this corresponds to the Buddhist paramita (perfection of mind) of dana, or generosity. Generosity is a way to perfect our minds because it helps us cultivate the capacity to demonstrate love in the service of justice.

For Buddhists, the practice of dana is not an expression of largesse. Indeed, the condescending connotations that the words charity and philanthropy have come to bear, wherein noblesse oblige give to the less fortunate, is illusory because all economic resources are accumulated from collective labor. Since the majority of wealth is inherited or accrued through legacies of exploitation and theft, returning resources to communities that have been exploited and robbed is reparations, not charity or philanthropy.

An Ujamaa Reflection for the Fourth Day of Kwanzaa: 

I practice generosity with awareness of and gratitude for all the wealth and resources life has given me. I return the water of wealth to the sea of service from which all resources come.

5. Nia (Purpose): December 30

The fifth principle, Nia, invites us to contemplate the purpose of our lives and how that purpose is lived and embodied, moment to moment. The bodhisattva vow declares, “Liberated, I will liberate [others].” Acting on this vow to free others from delusion and guide them toward enlightenment is how a bodhisattva attains their own enlightenment. This is precisely what Toni Morrison meant when she said, “The purpose of freedom is to free somebody else,” that our freedom is actualized in liberating one another.

A Nia Reflection for the Fifth Day of Kwanzaa:

Contemplating Nia, I return to my highest purpose and resolve to think, speak, and act in ways that purposefully advance the liberation of all beings.

6. Kuumba (Creativity): December 31

Kuumba refers not only to artistic products we may create but also more fundamentally to a dynamic way of living each moment of life, one wherein we are trying to be fiercely compassionate to ourselves and everyone around us.

To live creatively means we paint the present with a brilliant brush of wisdom—a sagacity steeped in awareness of the unity of our life with all life. This invites a courageous experimentation with our minds, hearts, and bodies: seeking what each unprecedented challenge can yield when we meet it with unprecedented courage and resolve. Buddhist philosopher and educator Daisaku Ikeda said: 

Never for an instant forget the effort to renew your life, to build yourself anew. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway of life itself. This is not an easy task. Indeed, it may be the most severely challenging struggle there is. For opening the door to your own life is in the end more difficult than opening the door to all the mysteries of the universe.

A Kuumba Reflection for the Sixth Day of Kwanzaa:

Today I am living an inspired and inspiring life. With my creative mind, failure becomes a foyer, a path to uncharted progress. 

Whether I write, sing, dress, dance, or elsewise express it, my wise, courageous creativity makes marvels out of mistakes and illuminates the creativity of others and all life around me. 

7. Imani (Faith): January 1

With Imani, we live bravely. As Dr. King taught us, “Faith means taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” If we have faith in our own buddhanature and that of others, if we believe in and support one another’s capacity to be limitlessly strong, wise, and good, then that capacity will grow in each of us. Faith is not a belief in what is unfounded but rather a belief that what is not yet manifest can be. Ikeda describes faith as “the function of human life that dispels the dark clouds of doubt, anxiety, and regret, opens one’s heart and orients it toward good.” Imani is New Year’s Day, reminding us to launch the new year with resolute faith.

An Imani Reflection for the Seventh Day of Kwanzaa:

Today I embody and act on faith. I have faith in positive possibilities: mine, yours, and those inherent in all circumstances. Witnessing the fidelity of sunrise and ocean tide, I live faithful to my purpose. With resolute self-determination, I live in creative unity, generously nurturing my life and all the lives of all beings.