Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.

For me, there's a very clear parallel between the practice of insight in Buddhism and what's called prajna - the insight that arrives through meditation.

The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.

There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.