From the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep, the staffers’ and trainees’ days were marked by continuous labor alongside each other. The ultimate goal of this program was to encourage trainees to return to their home villages and become community leaders of sustainable development and environmental efforts—leaders who would know how to live in and for the collective.
Western aid organizations typically attempt to manage dispensation of bureaucratic benefits, often via the free market. Such aid turns both the staff and recipients into neoliberal subjects.
This book discusses how a large, Shinto NGO (The Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement, or “OISCA”) runs a very different kind of international organization in which the goal is not to atomize people but to unite them. Becoming One shows how collectivist, Asian practices offer viable alternatives to Western modes of organizing, acting, and being together in the world.
]]>Although he is highly critical of a hybrid culture in which Westernized values are on the ascendant and traditional Asian/Thai values wane, he is by no means hostile to the building of a hybrid culture of resistance where Buddhism and Christianity join hands in confronting injustice.
]]>when you use the law and science to change the mind, it can change tomorrow. But when you change the heart, it is forever. In the midst of the ongoing climate and COVID-19 crises, I believe that we can change the story of the world if we change the storyline. “The seeds of goodness live in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”
]]>Objectives of state redaction as set forth by Muriel Rukeyser’s redacted file:
He’d accidentally gone into climate-rant mode instead of speaking as a dad.
The apocalyptic stakes of climate change cause one Seattle father to go over the edge along with the story of a technique Santa Fe uses to put its glooms to rest.
]]>Preregistered analyses reveal a notable increase in biological stress levels among both LGBTIQ+ individuals as well as those close to them during the campaign.
]]>These effects were, however, moderated by exposure to the campaign for marriage equality (i.e., yes-campaign), indicating the powerful buffering effects of the yes-campaign on the impact of discrimination on individuals’ health.
The symbolic ordination of trees as monks in Thailand is widely perceived in Western scholarship to be proof of the power of Buddhism to spur ecological thought. However, a closer analysis of tree ordination demonstrates that it is not primarily about Buddhist teaching, but rather is an invented tradition based on the sanctity of Thai Buddhist symbols as well as those of spirit worship and the monarchy. Tree ordinations performed by non-Buddhist minorities in Thailand do not demonstrate a religious commitment but rather a political one.
]]>It is often said that the increasing availability and applicability of remote sensing technologies has contributed to the rise of what can be called ‘satellite-based activism’ empowering non-state groups to challenge state practices of seeing and showing. In this article we argue that NGO activism is not challenging the sovereign gaze of the state but, on the contrary, actually reinforcing it.
]]>… one of the most interesting things Open Philanthropy does is the way you intentionally divide up your giving portfolio into buckets based on really different ethical, arguably even metaphysical, assumptions. So tell me about “worldview diversification.”
]]>It has to do with spending a great amount of time in a meditative state where I am able to connect with people [energetically] in anticipation of meeting them [physically].
An African-American, Buddhist herbalist explains how she’s able to build communities of care across political and cultural divides.
]]>Mindfulness provides a breathing space to take stock and re-energize our actions from a place of care, awareness and creativity.
A look at how mindfulness can reduce burnout and increase resilience, particularly for those working with non-governmental organizations in areas of extreme conflict.
]]>The peace movements are weaker and largely reactive to and restrained by the [state-backed,] radical, Buddhist nationalist movements.
]]>For most of the shift, it was more about not looking
bored or wanting to seem invisible behind the ER desk
while nothing much happened at all…
Therapy assumes that someone is sick and that there is a cure, e.g., a personal solution. I am greatly offended that I or any other woman is thought to need therapy in the first place. Women are messed over, not messed up! We need to change the objective conditions, not adjust to them.
A highly influential, feminist essay which is still informing leftist thought today.
For a conversation on what it means, check out Chris Hayes’ interview with Brittney Cooper.
]]>… ways of understanding their [group’s] distinctiveness which challenge dominant characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination
A definitive introduction to the subject.
]]>… in order to understand the truth of any situation, you have to start from the position that every person is equally valuable, and that what they have to say must be heard. And whether that is in a clique where somebody is being shunned and blamed for everything, or whether that’s an entire class of people whose experiences are not taken into account, it’s the same formula from the bottom to the top: let everyone speak and let everyone be heard.
]]>To contend seriously with the problem, you first have to let it in. And when I say “let it in” I mean “drag it towards you, press it down and sit with it.” Sit with it past the point of discomfort and pain and dispair until you can observe it without blinking, until its weight is just another thing about about you. In a way, “letting in” is too passive. What I’m talking about is fitting a hyperobject into your heart without it breaking.
A conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us.
]]>Dhammaloka’s life is a window into the relationships at the heart of empire, a glimpse into alternative possibilities of the struggle against colonialism. It is a way of thinking about the meaning of “Buddhism” at the start of its modern globalization. It is also, of course, a remarkable tale
The biography of a turn-of-the-century, plebeian agitator against the British colonial establishment and one of the first, Western monks.
You can hear an interview with Alicia Turner talking about the book on the New Books Network.
]]>Wisdom enables helping practitioners to free themselves from “sentimental compassion” and reduce stress when serving
]]>… revolutionaries suffer subjective vertigo when they meet the state’s disciplinary violence with the revolutionary violence of the subaltern; but they are spared objective vertigo. This is because the most disorienting aspects of their lives are induced
]]>… the scholarly act of embracing members of the Black Liberation Army as beings worthy of empathic critique
“A monastery is a place where equality is preached but not practiced; a gar is a place where equality is practiced but not preached.”
It is no wonder that today a common appellation found haloing Jigme Phuntsok on icons and shrines says his teachings are like “the blissful sun rising in the Snowland as the miserable period of darkness fades (dus ’khrug gi mun nag dbyings su yal/ bod gangs can la bde ba’i nyi ma shar).”
An inspiring overview of the first college in Tibet to offer the highest academic degrees to women, including a summary of the school’s curriculum, exams, and social impact.
]]>Practices like yoga and meditation were woven throughout Occupy [Wall Street], and were integral to its endurance and impact; they were not a sideshow.
]]>From suffering arises desire to end suffering. The secular humanistic activist sets himself the endless task of satisfying that desire, and perhaps hopes to end social suffering by constructing utopias. The Buddhist, on the other hand, is concerned ultimately with the transformation of desire.
]]>Capitalist industrial society has created conditions of extreme impermanence, and the struggle with a conflict-creating mood of dissatisfaction and frustration. It would be difficult to imagine any social order for which Buddhism is more relevant and needed.
We always say “Nobody knew,” and that means that everyone who knew was a nobody.
]]>… there is no viable future for civilisation that does not include a radical change in the nature of our educational systems
]]>… but someone was about to arrive in Texas to stick up for these bats
]]>Through mindfulness based interventions, the author, a psychologist with humanitarian experience, aims to foster a culture of ‘learning and care’ among aid workers and their agencies.
]]>You can find all the interviews on SoundCloud at the following links:
]]>How does one say “what if” without reproach?
A kaleidoscopic meditation on race, identity, culture, and deep listening.
]]>… this paper aims for a philosophically more nuanced discussion of the case for and against eating locally. I assess, in turn, locavore arguments based on environmental preservation, human health, community support, agrarian values and political concerns
]]>Every other rights struggle that we have seen—disability rights, gay rights, women’s rights—all come from the efforts of the black civil rights struggles. […] It is black people who have been the perfectors of democracy.
The history of The United States, retold beautifully and powerfully in three emotional hours.
]]>… there will be resistance to giving the thing rights until it can be seen and valued for itself; yet, it is hard to see it and value it for itself until we can bring ourselves to give it rights — which is almost inevitably going to sound inconceivable
On the history, and future, of how we define property and rights.
]]>The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction–to locate what is true. …beauty is a starting place for education.
A thorough defense of beauty and of its power to push the boundaries of our concern outward.
Not written from the Buddhist perspective, these essays dismiss (too?) casually the ugly failure modes of beauty: the acquisitiveness, possessiveness, and jealousy which consume many the beholder. However, I find it a useful corollary or even corrective to the standard Buddhist “rejection” of aesthetics, explaining how beauty can condition becoming’s wholesome forms.
In this way, we start to view the spiritual education as a kind of aesthetic education: acquainting the student with “truer” sources of beauty and affording them the more sublime responses outlined in these notes.
]]>Look at the Dalai Lama. For fifty years he’s been cracking jokes about his torturers.
A long-time activist on what it takes to be a long-term activist.
]]>Belief systems and abstract commitments are, of course, indispensable to social change. But when this isolated interiority becomes the sovereign justification for political action, there are only two possible conclusions: either a quietist withdrawal for endless self-reflection or a dangerous willingness to achieve political ends through violent means.
]]>Set aside all the social norms we have, the expectations we have about who animals are or what is appropriate to do for animals and just ask: What would you do—what do you think the right thing to do is—if you saw an animal suffering?
A long and emotional interview with the founder of Direct Action Everywhere on why he cares so much about animal suffering and what drove him to risk so much fighting it.
]]>The rate of change is visibly unsustainable. The profiteers call this process “disruption,” while commentators on the left generally call it “neoliberalism” or “late capitalism.” Millennials know it better as “the world,” or “America,” or “Everything.” And Everything sucks.
Explaining the economic moment we are caught in, its tangled roots, and the challenges of trying to fight our collective, exponential momentum.
]]>Focus on your ability
Now focus on your ability
Focus on your ability
Gain again what they want to steal
… power need not be only repressive. Think of how our parents, schools, employers, and even peers mold our behavior. This molding doesn’t just stop us from doing certain things. It makes or encourages us
A short pamphlet defining power in the political sense. When we think about how the sangha works, it’s useful to reflect on the complex and variable nature of power and authority.
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