In this 2011 Buddhadharma Forum, Larry Yang, Amanda Rivera, Bob Agoglia, and Rev. angel Kyodo Williams discuss how to foster meaningful diversity in American Buddhism.
Three Lessons from Occupy
You can feel things that are unknowable—and should stay that way—to our minds. That’s the third lesson that I learned, which I knew and which was affirmed by this profoundly messy, wild, disorienting space that Occupies Wall Street is. In the progressive community, we like to take pride in our willingness to extend ourselves into difference and bring difference forth. As profoundly important as that is, we have to find spaces of shared practice.
Where’s Your Wall Street?
With decisions made by the General Assembly, “a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought,” OWS seeks to stand for “the other 99 percent” of Americans that are on the stinky end of the economic shitstick that’s been beating the crap out of us all, while the 1% at the top of the food chain get fat eating off the plates we made for minimum wage.
The Transformation Code
In a word, more effective. More than being able to do stuff, skill means stuff happens when it matters. Skill is the right stuff at the right time. Three Keys to More Effective Movement When I think about such a code in movement terms, I see three familiar things: Motivation—what Coyle calls “ignition”—requires energy passion, and commitment, which is most often put in play by having locked into a powerful vision of our ideal selves and future around which we organize and energize.
Apes Will Rise | Rebellion For The Heart
Just as London was beginning to be set ablaze by Blackberries, I was bracing myself for the current Hollywood reboot of Planet of the Apes. The 2001 remake starring Mark Wahlberg left me mortally wounded, having claimed itself a “revisioning” of the original story and movie, it managed to not only leave every racist/colorist myth in place but it was also elevated it to a spiritual plane by being robed in pseudo-Himalayan garb so that the apes were a cabal of ill-compassionate, slave-owning monks and priests. It was one of only two movies
A More Perfect Union: Using Our Wholebody
Our more perfect union will be neither this nor that. Leaving nothing and none of us behind, it will be WholeBody: a Third Way that embraces and embodies being fully Human: ever-evolutionary, ever-revolutionary, ever-dynamic, and always Divine.
Doing Darkness: Change vs. Transformation
…it’s the sun that dragons and butterflies need to fly…but they need the dark to grow their magic wings. So do we. It is only once we emerge from the darkness that we will dare cast off our hardened shells to truly take flight. In its new form, the dragonfly can dive breathtakingly into a precipitous vertical drop, become a mere blur as it darts about at breakneck speeds, only to come to an apparent dead stop, hovering magically in mid-air. For the most part, it’s the sun that dragons and butterflies need to fly…but they need the dark to grow their magic wings. So do we. It is only once we emerge from the darkness that we will dare cast off our hardened shells to truly take flight.
When The People Rise
Beyond survival and security, self-determination is the underpinning of justice…Beyond simple survival, being able to determine our own path is the hallmark of self-expression, self-fulfillment, and most importantly, self-love.
Questions abound as to how the all-knowing US didn’t see such a wave of revolutions forthcoming: America’s deep-seated racism and perceived religious-cultural superiority conspire to make the quiet swelling of a sea of brown and black People calling for their freedom with fearlessness, grace, and unwavering determination a political improbability. To see them do it in succession, leaving the realm of mere anomaly? Impossible.
red, white and black
Waving their flags of red, white, and black with defiance and dignity, destiny is on the side of revolution and the government must finally yield to the eternal law of change. What I see in Egypt is all the people of the world that seek out justice when it is too long denied, insist upon equality when it is too long imbalanced, and take back freedom when it is too long withheld.
state of union
I propose one single resolution that we can take on right now: A resolution for revolution. I propose that we put our efforts into forming a new state. A state of union. I propose that we become a single movement of movements. I propose that we become one.