Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) is a Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer, Theravādin Buddhist, trauma-informed, certified mindfulness meditation teacher, and a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher through Brown University’s School of Professional Studies. She’s been practicing vipassanā meditation since 2002 and has more than one year of cumulative silent retreat practice in the U.S. and India. She is in the 2025-2028 Spirit Rock/IMS Teacher Training Program.
Aishah practiced vipassanā meditation exclusively in the S.N. Goenka tradition for 17 years. After leaving that tradition, she began practicing in the Insight tradition. Her primary Dharma teachers are Tuere Sala and DaRa Williams. She also studied in the Vajrayana lineage with Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls for two years.
Aishah is also an award-winning filmmaker-author and lecturer whose work—including the groundbreaking, Ford Foundation-funded acclaimed feature film, NO! The Rape Documentary (2006) and the 2000 Lambda Literary-award winning anthology, love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press)—breaks silences, offers healing paths for trauma, and provides visions for humanely disrupting the inhumane epidemic of sexual violence.
Aishah explores sacca pāramī, the practice of truthfulness, through lying to survive, wise speech, and the courage to keep looking, even when looking changes what we thought we knew, and how this awakens truth from within.
This talk explores sīla (moral conduct/virtue) as the foundation of Buddhist practice. Aishah shares how the five precepts guide ethical living through daily intention-setting, connecting personal accountability with responding to global suffering. Drawing from both traditional Buddhist texts and contemporary interpretations, she emphasizes maintaining integrity while engaging with injustice, preventing reactivity, and responding with discernment, compassion, and equanimity in challenging times.
In turbulent and unsettling times, equanimity is not indifference but a courageous, compassionate balance. Drawing on Buddhist teachings and lived examples, this talk explores how upekkhā becomes the steady anchor that allows us to respond—rather than react—to personal and collective suffering.
