Evening Talk Does Buddhism Need a New Story? 7 PM Sat. June 15, 2013 Wyckoff Auditorium (Bannan Engineering Building) Seattle University Behind our ecological and economic crises there is a more basic problem: a defective story about who we are, what the world is and our role in it. We can’t simply replace this defective worldview with a traditional Buddhist one, but today a new story is beginning to emerge ...

by Nathan G. Thompson I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. My grade school assignments frequently included little titles, poems, or stories, regardless of the original content. Some of the teachers thought these additions were cute, while others were annoyed by them. Later, in high school, I began taking creative writing classes. The near consistent praise for my writing skills started rolling ...

Surprise: Buddhists are not morally pure and blameless. We participate in systems of injustice, both directly and indirectly. But while we work to undermine these systems, can Right Speech and Right Action afford to be gentle when acute violence is being enacted? (And what considerations should be made when criticizing others from a position of privilege within the United States?) Burma (Myanmar) has made t ...

Here it is: the second installment of our year-long curriculum for Buddhist activists. Take a look inside for: An exclusive practice offering video by Rev. Keiryu Lien Shutt Political cartoons, Cultural Appropriation Bingo, and other helpful supplementary texts Our favorite pieces from April's Turning Wheel Media, with discussion questions to help us dig in more deeply An introduction to the audio recording ...

Since today is International Workers' Day, I'm taking today off to commemorate it in my own way, by reading—poetry, analysis, social theory, and history. For those who aren't familiar with the day's origins, it is a commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago. While demonstrators were on peaceful general strike for an eight-hour work day, an unknown person threw a bomb at police, resulting in po ...

It's been a sobering and inspiring month with you, exploring an institutional take on the Second Precept, or a Buddhist look at systemic stealing.  Thank you for joining us in this process of learning and reflection. To close out our month, and in honor of May Day tomorrow, we want to leave you with the insights of author, historian, and journalist Vijay Prashad, on the recent tragic and infuriating deaths ...

As human beings, we live with a lot of abstractions we consider to be normal, almost like a collective hallucination. This is a familiar idea for dhamma practitioners since one of the fundamental and liberating insights of dhamma is the experience of anatta, or “no-self.” Through practice we begin to experience the emptiness of something we thought was very solid—our sense of self. We begin to loosen attach ...

The most inspiring promise of dhamma practice is the possibility of freedom from suffering. What goes along with this freedom, however, is a sense of ethics (the precepts) and development of interconnection with others. When I used to teach community college, I would often initiate discussions about freedom. What, I would ask, is your definition of freedom? Most of the time students would respond along the ...

In one scene of Disney's shockingly progressive movie musical Newsies (now adapted for the Broadway stage), which sets the New York City newsboys strike of 1899 to infectious song-and-dance numbers, two newsies have an illuminating exchange on the ethics of theft. David [with disdain]: Our dad taught us not to steal. Jack [dryly]: Yeah, well mine taught me not to starve, so I guess we both got an education. ...

Did you dig David Loy's recent article for Turning Wheel Media, "Can Mindfulness Change a Corporation?" If you are in Northern California, you have several opportunities to study with David in person - see below for details or check out his full schedule. For in-depth exploration, check out his weekend retreat: Money Sex Fame War Karma: Personal and Social Transformation Esalen Institute in Big Sur CA May 3 ...