Today’s collaborator is fellow Buddhist practitioner Ravi Mishra, founder of the Awaken App. We set out to talk about language, the importance of context, and how to cross-pollinate ideas by being clear about how we define the words we use. We dig into the use of terms like ‘awaken’, ‘woke’, ‘enlightenment’ and ‘liberation’ in both a Buddhist and social restoration context—accounting for English translations of words pointing to concepts formed in very different cultures and times to our own. I especially appreciated Ravi pointing out the importance of always remembering that “If we could only use language to convey what has already been conveyed then we could never convey anything new.”

Visit whynotawaken.com to learn more about the Awaken app, and visit kaitlynschatch.com to learn more about my work in the world.