For many years, the two preoccupations of my life, “meditation practice” and “environmental science”, were two streams that ran parallel to each other.

Buddhist Peace Fellowship and allies decided to stage a group meditation blockading the doors of a Marriott Hotel in Oakland, California. The reason? Police violence and institutionalized hatred.

Can we imagine a world without caste?In positive terms, a social expression of nibbana might be the realization of a society in which each member can find fulfillment and be completely him or herself.

The question of the usefulness or non-relevance of “the story” is one of the great “both / ands” of living a Buddhist life. And, all human stories, descending from the most cosmic myths down to the minor tale of the painful hangnail that snagged on a sweater thread, emerge from and reside in embodied – not abstracted or philosophical – human thought and memory. Here, for example, are two “true” stories.

The BPF Summer Gathering will bring together Buddhists and activists from over 20 states and multiple countries, for dialogues, meditation, and training in nonviolent direct action.

[TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information that may be disturbing to survivors of sexual assault.] “For Warmth”by Thich Nhat Hanh(from Zen Poems) 

I hold my face between my handsno I am not crying

“Great is the matter of birth and death, quickly passing, passing, gone. Awake, awake, each one, awake. Don’t waste this life.” This is the message written on the Han, a wooden instrument used in Japanese styled Soto Zen centers around the world, to call practitioners to the zendo (meditation hall).

“I don't know what else to say. I think we are going to die. It makes me sad that I cannot protect the child I made, I can't protect him from these missiles. I just can't. I don't have the superpower to end this madness.”

On our tour through the Four Noble Truths and how they translate to collective suffering, the first two have taken us into a thorough dissection of the nature of suffering. If we stopped there, it could be devastating.

As a preserver of traditional culture throughout Asia, Buddhism has often been slow to respond to pressing social issues. This was certainly the case in the aftermath of Asia’s worst nuclear energy disaster in of all places, Japan. Nuclear energy cuts across several social lines in Japan,