One of my favorite projects is directing the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, based here in Santa Fe, under the leadership of Roshi Joan Halifax.
Penny Alsop, of Tallahassee, Florida, is one of our Second Cohort students. She has submitted a great proposal called “Bridge the Gap” to the Pepsi-Cola “Refresh Everything” campaign.
Here’s how it works: Each month, Pepsi gives away more than $1 million in grants to fund great ideas. Here’s an overview of Penny’s idea:
The “Bridge the Gap” project will fulfill one of the most critical needs of ex-offenders upon release and during their transition time from the ‘inside’ to the outside world – employment. Using the proven viability of small scale gardening, Florida’s long growing season, and the general public’s growing desire for fresh, local produce, it will create and operate a small urban farm and market, employing up to ten ex-offenders in its first year of operation. The training center will teach skills and provide ample opportunity to practice and cultivate gardening, cooking, retail, service and small business management skills.
You can help make Penny’s vision a reality by voting for her project here. The projects with the most votes will receive funding from Pepsi. Voting ends on February 28. And while you’re there, check out some of the other great ideas.
I’m happy to share an opportunity to make something good happen. How often do we get to do that?!
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906 – 1993) is one of the founders of modern socially engaged Buddhism, and was a key person in the reformation of 20th century Thai Buddhism.
Born in Thailand (then called Siam), Buddhadasa became a monk in 1926. However, he soon became very concerned by the corruption of the monastic sangha and its preoccupation with money, politics, and comfort. He returned to the rural area of his birth and founded the forest monastery Suan Mokkh, which means “Garden of Liberation.”
Through Suan Mokkh, his talks, and his books, Buddhadasa strove to practice a Buddhism that was closer to the spirit of its original source. He once wrote, “People…have become attached to and view Buddha as a god instead of seeing him as a human being who attained enlightenment and had great compassion for others. They are not aware that Buddha teaches that anyone can follow his path and find the way out of suffering by and for themselves.”
He was very ecumenical in his understanding of Buddhism, and also reached out to members of other religions including Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.
Buddhadasa’s teachings, and especially his emphasis on interdependence, inspired a generation of Thai social activists and artists, including Sulak Sivaraksa and many of the monks who have protected Thai forests.
This week’s quote from Buddhadasa comes from Donald K. Swearer’s essay “The Three Legacies of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu” (in The quest for a just society: the legacy and challenge of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, ed. by Sulak Sivaraksa).
The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees and soil. Our bodily parts function as a cooperative. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise, that human beings are all mutual friends in the process of birth, old age, suffering and death, then we can build a noble, even heavenly environment. If our lives are not based in this truth, then we shall all perish.
To learn more about Buddhadasa and his legacy, visit this website.
This is very bad news from Southeast Asia: ethnic Karen refugees from Burma are being deported by the Thai government back to a landmine-infested camp in Burma. According to the Burma Campaign UK,
[On February 5] Three families, nine women and four children, including a nine month old baby, were forced back into Burma before the deportations were halted. The halt coincided with the arrival of foreign diplomats and NGOs. Thai authorities had originally blocked their entry to the camp. There is great concern that the Thais will restart the forced deportations soon.
You can read more about the situation here on The Irrawaddy news website.
I asked my friend Alan Senauke, founder of the Clear View Project, what we might do to support these people. His response was not optimistic: “There is a lot of governmental and NGO response to this at a very high level. And negative press all over Asia, including Thailand. A letter to the Thai prime minister was sent yesterday by 30 or so US congress people. Also, the State Department has commented. The painful entanglements and complicity of Thailand and Burma is deeply painful. I have not often seen the Thai government be responsive to outside opinion.”
One thing you can do is send an online letter to Thai officials urging them to stop the deportation. (With thanks to Genju of 108 zen books for the link.)
This may be one of those times when the best thing we can do is send lots of metta in the direction of the refugees as well as the Thai government.
Something that I noticed during my days editing Turning Wheel for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship was that there didn’t seem to be one place that aggregated all the socially engaged Buddhist events going on. And there are lots.
I’ve already collected a few of them on this blog, and I just did a search and found more. So, in the hopes that this will be of benefit, here’s a calendar of some of the major events for the year. Please add more in the comments section, and give us details like when, where, and a link for more information.
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Feb 12 – 14: Ready from Within A Quaker/Buddhist interfaith program exploring the spiritual dimensions of social action. Where: Oxfordshire, UK. More info: http://www.engagedbuddhists.org.uk/?p=902
March 2 – May 10: Walk for a Nuclear-Free Future The monks and nuns of the Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda will lead a Walk for a Nuclear Free Future to offer prayer and call attention to the United Nation’s review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Where: Their route will take them from Buffalo, NY, to New York City. Click here for more info.
March 7 – June 1: ZENVC Ango: Practicing Everyday Life. ZENVC Ango is a three-month intensive in the fire of your daily life, offering deep study and reflection, skillful means, and lots of support for those who respond to this calling. Where: A virtual practice period done you’re your home, with a concluding 7-day retreat in North Carolina. Click here for more info.
March 18 – 21: Buddhism Without Borders. The Institute of Buddhist Studies hosts this conference on contemporary developments of Buddhism in the West. Where: Berkeley, CA More info: http://www.shin-ibs.edu/eventreg/Berkeley2010.php
March 23 – 24: The Dharma of Living Systems and the Work That Reconnects A workshop with Joanna Macy. Where: Santa Fe, NM More info: http://www.upaya.org/programs/event.php?id=471
April 1 – 4: Zen Peacemakers Street Retreat. Where: Washington DC More info: http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/sa/street_retreats.htm
April 11 – 16: Bearing Witness Retreat in Rwanda. In Partnership with Memos: Learning From History and many other Rwandan NGO partners, the Peacemaker Institute is proud to announce the first Bearing Witness Retreat in Rwanda. More info: http://www.peacemakerinstitute.org/BW_rwanda.html
May 1 – 5: Zen Peacemakers Retreat on Bearing Witness to the Greek Refugee Issues. Where: Athens and Lesbos, Greece. More info: http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/sa/street_retreats.htm
May 1 – May 10: Sustaining Resistance, Empowering Renewal This workshop offers a range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective. Where: in a remote and wild valley in the Catalan Pyrenees. Click here for more info.
May 12 – 15: Zen Peacemakers Street Retreat. Where: Zurich, Switzerland. More info: http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/sa/street_retreats.htm
Aug 5 – 8: Dharma at the Edge: Training in Socially Engaged Buddhism and Servant Leadership A workshop with Roshi Joan Halifax, Sensei Fleet Maull, and guest Jimmy Santiago Baca. Where: Santa Fe, NM More info: http://www.upaya.org/programs/event.php?id=392
Aug 9 – 15: Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism. A major gathering of Western Socially Engaged Buddhist activists, academics and sponsors. Speakers include Roshi Bernie Glassman, Roshi Joan Halifax, Hozan Alan Senauke, Paula Green, Frank Ostaseski, and more. Where: Montague, MA More info: http://zenpeacemakers.org/soc_eng_bud/symposium.htm
Nov 1 – 5: Bearing Witness Auschwitz Retreat Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers are returning for the 15th year to the old site of the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Oswiecim, Poland. More info: http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/sa/auschwitz.htm
I was just surfing the web and looking for socially engaged Buddhist events for a list I will post soon here, and I came across this fascinating piece of news. Sarvodaya, the Sri Lankan-based organization founded by Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, organized and just finished a 12-day mass meditation event held in Colombo, with over 2,000 people participating. The purpose of the meditation was to “[harness] the spiritual energy of individuals through out the country to ensure a peaceful presidential election 2010 and to contribute to creating a peaceful society.”
There’s another story about the event here, from Asian News service.
In the past, Dr. Ariyaratne, surely one of the exemplars of socially engaged Buddhism, has led peace meditations with hundreds of thousands of people, embodying his belief that it is necessary for peaceworkers to themselves awaken, spiritually, and to transcend religious and ethnic differences.
From The Worst Horse, by way of Susan Piver — marvelous.
The other day I saw an email from Code Pink, addressed toward President Obama and outlining all the reasons for concern about his leadership on issues such as health care and the military.
I agreed with some of the points in the letter, not with others. But what really bothered me was that midway through the email, the salutation became simply “Obama.” As in, “Obama, I am losing hope… Obama, we need renewed leadership.” This struck me as plain rude. What happened to “President Obama”?
Call me silly, but I think this matters. When George W. Bush was president, even though I disagreed with nearly everything he did and everything his administration stood for, I always made a point of saying “President Bush.” (Even though it really stuck in my craw.)
I think it goes back to remembering something that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said about loving your enemies. He actually said a lot about this — it was at the core of his preaching, and it was the fundamental basis of the Civil Rights Movement, as King interpreted it. He gave a whole sermon about it in 1957. Here’s what he says near the end of the sermon:
So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, “I love you. I would rather die than hate you.” And I’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. And then we will be in God’s kingdom. We will be able to matriculate into the university of eternal life because we had the power to love our enemies, to bless those persons that cursed us, to even decide to be good to those persons who hated us, and we even prayed for those persons who spitefully used us.
I realize this may seem like a trivial, but it feels like it points to something deeper. I’m curious — what do other people think/feel? Does this relate to your Buddhist practice in any way, or am I just way out on a limb here?
January 15 would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 81st birthday. I wonder what the world might be like today had he not been assassinated in 1968.
Dr. King’s teachings and politics were more radical than the Disney-fied version of him that tends to be put forward on the commemoration of his birthday. When he was only 23, he wrote to his wife-to-be, Coretta Scott: “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.” His ability to link apparently disparate issues like race, economics, war, and technology, as well as to build bridges between groups of people, made him a potent leader. In fact, after King’s 1963 speech at the March on Washington, FBI Assistant Director Louis Sullivan charged that King was “The most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
Although Dr. King was himself a Baptist minister, he developed a relationship with, and a deep respect for, Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh; King nominated Thay for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. And the heart of King’s teaching transcends any one religion – it’s a clear testimony to the truth of our interconnectedness and the power of love to overcome hate. Which sounds quite a bit like the basic teachings of the Buddha, actually.
Rather than try to summarize Dr. King’s amazing life here, here are a couple of good sources to learn more about him:
- Taylor Branch’s book trilogy – Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan’s Edge – may be the very best to tell Dr. King’s story as well as the story of the complex times in which he lived:
- Rev. Hozan Alan Senauke, vice-abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center, gives a wonderful workshop on “The Dharma of Martin Luther King, Jr.” You can listen to a dharma talk by Alan on Dr. King here.
I could have chosen one of Dr. King’s many quotes on our interconnection – that would make sense for a Buddhist blog, and many have highlighted those quotes. Instead, here’s one that fully exemplifies his passion for peace and justice, as well as his love for his country. The quote is from a speech given on February 25, 1967:
Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace. We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of our nation are shaken. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was a bodhisattva extraordinaire.
Emily Breder, author of Peace Ground Zero Blog, shares news that the Tzu Chi Foundation is on the ground now in Haiti. Tzu Chi (founded in 1966 by Ven. Master Cheng Yen) is the most engaged Buddhist organization I know of, almost always being first in the line of action in situations like this to offer help.
To make a donation, please visit www.us.tzuchi.org , or call 1-888-989-8244 , or send your check to 1100 S. Valley Center Ave., San Dimas, CA 91773. (Your donation is tax deductible in the USA!)
From Tzu Chi’s press release:
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 has caused catastrophic damages and casualties in the country, especially in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Tzu Chi USA headquarters immediately established an emergency coordination center to respond to the needs in Haiti. On January 13, meetings were held with Tzu Chi global headquarters, Tzu Chi USA’s regional directors throughout the nation, as well as other humanitarian organizations.
Tzu Chi global headquarters has initiated a global fundraising campaign to deliver the love from people around the globe to the affected people in Haiti. To kick off the global fundraising campaign, Tzu Chi volunteers in the US will hold a nationwide street fundraiser on January 16, 17, 23 and 24.
Tzu Chi’s relief team, including volunteers and doctors from the US and the Dominican Republic, is currently preparing to provide relief. Tzu Chi USA and global headquarters are preparing relief aid and medical supplies to be delivered to Haiti when possible. Currently, the situation in Haiti is unclear, and the international airport in Port-au-Prince is only open to urban rescue teams. Tzu Chi and other humanitarian organizations are in the process of investigating other routes into the country in order to provide aid.
The monks and nuns of the Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda will lead a Walk for a Nuclear Free Future from March 2 to May 2, 2010, to offer prayer and call attention to the United Nation’s review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The walk begins in the terrority of the Six Nations near Buffalo, NY, where nuclear waste and nuclear weapons, have been important issues, and continues to New York City. Walkers will cover more than 700 miles on the route; some of the cities on the route include Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca, and Albany.
You can support the walk by joining for an hour, a day, or for the entirety. You can also support the walkers by organizing a community potluck, a sharing circle, a visit to your mayor, a place for walkers to sleep, or a coverage by the local media. For more information, contact:
Jun Yasuda, Nipponzan Myohoji Grafton Peace Pagoda, Phone: 518-658-9301
or
Jules Orkin, Phone: 201-566-8403 Email: julesorkin@yahoo.com
You can download a PDF with more details about the walk here: Walk for a Nuclear Free Future
