With noisy neighbors and the homeless camped on street corners, city life offers many opportunities to practice kindness. Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche on how urban living can open our hearts. Spiritual practitioners often aspire to live alone in the mountains among wildlife, yet a city can be an equally or an even more supportive environment for practice. Unlike the [...]
Yes, We Can Have Hope
In this commentary from the Fall 2018 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on the idea of "wise hope" and why we should open ourselves to it. A good part of my life has been spent relating to situations that might be deemed hopeless—as an anti-war activist, a civil rights worker, a caregiver of dying people. I have also [...]
Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love
The practice of love, says bell hooks, is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination. She traces her thirty-year meditation on love, power, and Buddhism, and concludes it is only love that transforms our personal relationships and heals the wounds of oppression. At a conference on women and Buddhism that took place in spring last year, I was upset because [...]
First Do No Harm
Environmentalist Stephanie Kaza invites us to consider how Buddhist principles can help us nurse the planet back to health. Sometimes it seems like Buddhism doesn’t have much relevance to environmental problems. Can Buddhist philosophy solve climate change? Can meditation bring back lost species? I think about these things much of the time, trying to find my way in a world [...]
Commentary: We Can Always Do Something
Karen Maezen Miller on the human courage reflected in Christine Blasey Ford. Last night I said a service, or chant, invoking compassion and healing for 150 victims of sexual assault. These are our daughters, sisters, mothers, sons, brothers, and, yes, mostly ourselves. After the convulsive end to Thursday’s Senate hearing, I felt like I’d been run over and left for dead. [...]
Buddhist leaders pen open letter encouraging Americans to vote
The letter urges Buddhists across America to "express your commitment and respect for the innate dignity and worth of all" by voting in the midterm elections on November 6. Nearly 130 Buddhists teachers and leaders have signed an open letter to Buddhists across America in an effort to increase voter turnout at polling stations this election season. The effort, Mindful [...]
Listening Deeply for Peace
Without deep listening and gentle loving speech it is very difficult to move towards peace. Peace will only become a reality, says Thich Nhat Hanh, when world leaders come to negotiations with the ability to hear the suffering at the root of all conflicts. A traditional Vietnamese Zen garden is very different from a Japanese Zen garden. Our Zen gardens, called hon non bo, [...]
Why Is Rebecca Solnit Hopeful?
Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit fearlessly tells the truth about misogyny, injustice, and environmental destruction. But, as Lindsay Kyte reported in this 2016 profile, Solnit tells us another important truth: we have hope, and it is found in uncertainty. Rebecca Solnit is certain of only one thing—that hope includes uncertainty. “We don’t know what’s going to [...]
How Not to Freak Out
You're not alone if you despair about the present and fear for the future. If you find all the bad news overwhelming, Buddhist teacher Judy Lief has some meditations to help you relieve your socio-political pain. It’s not as if times of fear and despair are anything new. People have fought wars, struggled to survive, faced injustice, experienced loss, dealt with violence [...]
Help When Your Heart Breaks
Caring for people who are suffering is a loving, even heroic calling, but it takes a toll. Roshi Joan Halifax teaches this five-step program to care for yourself while caring for others. In the early morning, a weary man dressed in tattered clothes walked into a rural Himalayan mountain hospital with a grimy, reeking bundle in his arms. I was in Nepal serving in one of [...]
