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In honor of Black History Month, Tricycle is presenting a special video series, “Teachings for Uncertain Times,” featuring 13 teachers of color, here on our blog, Trike Daily, throughout February. The videos are free to watch.

In the following video, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, resident teacher at the Bodhi Path Buddhist Center of Santa Barbara and director of education at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential, offers eight teachings to appreciate our inherent value.

“We live in times when many people are led to believe that they are incomplete and that they don’t share in the basic wholeness, in the basic equality of our human species, of our human family,” Phillips says in his talk. “Whether that is because you feel disadvantaged due to the gender, race, sexual orientation, or class that you are born into, our culture makes it easy to believe that somehow you are less than. The premise for the teaching that I want to share with you is based on the fact that all healing starts in an appreciation for our basic wholeness.”

Download a transcript of this talk. It has been edited for clarity.

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Watch other videos in the “Teachings for Uncertain Times” series