DESCRIPTION:

Ayo Yetunde is a Buddhist Lay Leader and Pastoral Counselor.  The Reverend Doctor Melissa Sexton is a post-doctoral fellow in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.  Dr. Sexton is completing a practicum with the Interfaith Health Program as part of her fellowship; as part of that work, she is interviewing those with particular insights into the religious and spiritual dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak and our responses to it. 

In this interview, Ayo employs Buddhist teaching to describe ways to respond to the outbreak.   Ayo starts by reflecting on the gift of compassion and our human bodies in light of a Buddhist anthropology to come to understand a compassionate, ethical response to COVID-19.  She then discusses how Buddhist wisdom helps to instill in us the “skillful means” to reduce suffering.  Ayo then reflects on the essential tenet of true leadership—that it must be predicated on the care of all and reflect interdependence. 

Melissa takes the interview onto an unexpected and delightful topic by asking Ayo about what wisdom the singer Prince would have to offer us for these days.  Ayo’s response is both enlightening and provocative—fitting when discussing Prince! 

Ayo ends the interview by offering a reflection on the serious state we find ourselves in and what a wise spiritual response can be.