Climate change can feel so immense that it hurts just to think about. Lama Willa Miller offers five meditations to help bring the truth of climate change into your awareness and lay the ground for a skillful response. Hurricanes and wildfires have come and gone, leaving hundreds dead. We’re left facing a dire reality: we live on a warming planet. Homes blown apart. Lives [...]
6 Buddhist Leaders Reflect on the US Midterms and What Comes Next
In the US midterm elections on Tuesday, the Democrats took control of the House and seven governorships while the Republicans strengthened their hold on the Senate. Six Buddhist teachers interpret the outcomes through the lens of Buddhist wisdom. Upaya and the Middle Way Rev. angel Kyodo williams After two impossibly long years of what seemed like daily offenses to the [...]
Why We Go for the Gun
Greg Snyder on how to reclaim the grace and humanity that our access to guns has led us to squander. Just over twenty years ago, a friend was shot five times in the face a few feet in front of me. He was a music venue doorman, and earlier that night he had asked a young college student to leave for drunken, aggressive behavior. The few words spoken by the shooter betrayed [...]
Eve Ensler on Nobel Peace Prize Winner Denis Mukwege
"He moved me to my core," said the playwright about the Peace Prize Laureate in this 2014 conversation with bell hooks. In 2014, Eve Ensler and bell hooks spent an evening discussing patriarchy, activism, and dance at The New School in New York. In that conversation, Ensler discussed her experience meeting Congolese doctor Dennis Mukwege, who — along with activist Nadia [...]
Hundreds of Buddhists join San Francisco climate march
The march started with a meditation led by monks from Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. On Saturday, Buddhists from fifteen different communities marched alongside thousands of others in San Francisco to call attention to climate change. The Rise for Climate march was one of many that took place around the world this weekend highlighting the impacts of the current climate [...]
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 [...]
300 Buddhist teachers, leaders, and practitioners call for reunification of families at US–Mexico border
Approximately 2,000 children remain separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border On Friday, more than 300 Buddhist teachers, leaders, and practitioners across traditions sent out a letter addressing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s zero-tolerance immigration policy and asked for all separated immigrant families to be reunited. “We stand with leaders of other [...]
Reflecting on a Year of Buddhist Action for Immigrant Justice in Oregon
Activist Alex Rodriguez looks back on the work Buddhists have done to foster at the Oregon ICE headquarters in Portland. Shocked and heartbroken by the recent adoption of the Trump administration’s cruel “zero tolerance” policies, on June 14, over 400 protestors gathered to share space and demand change at the Oregon Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in [...]
How Buddhists are responding to America’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy
In the past six weeks, approximately 2,300 children have been separated from their parents at the US–Mexico border. Though US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he would end the practice, CNN reports, "it's unclear whether those children will be reunited with their parents." Just one section of a very long line of people surrounding the ICE building at 4310 SW [...]
Now is the Time to Find Our Compassion
On Monday, 200 Buddhist teachers issued a statement calling for an end to the US government’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents. Lion’s Roar magazine deputy editor Andrea Miller talked to Tenku Ruff — president of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which created the statement — about what she hoped the letter would achieve. Andrea Miller: What can [...]
