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.
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.
And Justice For All
Start the movement toward dismantling punitive justice and discovering the justice that comes from love: What is it that we have to see? What do we have to deconstruct? What are we holding onto that it’s time to dismantle in our own hearts so that we can create more space for real justice? This is justice that arises, not out of a sense of punishment, but out of a sense of love, justice that serves and embodies love. Not justice that is confused and mistaken for punishment.
Imagining The World That’s Possible
I believe this different world is not only possible but that it can be manifest by achieving a tipping point: one that is ushered in through the existing networks of individuals, informal groups, communities, and organizations that are striving for justice in all areas of society.
Real and Not Real: On Border and Divisions
Nine Things are Real and Not Real. We, the People, are divided by fear, lack of vision, and imagination is real. The so-called border that divides this land…
I have found the thinking, choices, behavior, and resulting consequences of our people so incomprehensible at a heart level, that my mind has refused to put words to a phenomenon that seems beyond them. when I say our people, I mean OUR people. all of them. the ones that every single human that ever lays eyes on this—from now until the end of time—have a relationship to