by Joseph Bobrow When people first asked what new methods we were using in The Coming Home Project, I would fumble and use words like unconditional acceptance, welcome and compassion. Eventually I came to call it unconditional love, and used the Judeo-Christian term, often employed by Martin Luther King, “beloved community.” It was unconditionality: non-judgmental, down to earth, responsive and non-sentimen ...

Turning Wheel Media emerges from the generous labor of many media makers. We include voices you know and love, and also help introduce a new wave of spiritual activists whose intersectional identities and revolutionary politics help us all think more sharply about the problems our world is facing, and the resilient solutions available to us in this moment. Now is our chance to give generously in return.  To ...

Buddha Comes Home from War: An Interview with Joe Bobrow Turning Wheel/Mushim: There are Buddhists serving in the U.S. armed forces. A blog for this community states in their mission statement that they "Recognize and promote honorable military service as in accord with the Eightfold Path's Right Livelihood." Since you've worked with many vets, what do you think of that statement? Joe Bobrow: Although war i ...

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 ...

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave. Assata Shakur (who lives in exile in Cuba, and just became the first woman on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List) was referring to the oppression of Black p ...

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 ...

By Derek Rasmussen This year, the Idle No More movement focused on Earth Day to bring attention on the links between Indigenous issues and the environmental movement. Events leading up to Earth Day included an impressive ‘Nation2Nation’ dialogue between Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg leaders like Ellen Gabriel and Leanne Simpson and Canadian activist Naomi Klein in Toronto [videos linked here and here]. Rus ...

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 ...

by Fredrick Douglas Kakinami Cloyd You should study the green mountains, using numerous worlds as your standard. You should clearly examine the green mountains' walking and your own walking. —Zen Master Dōgen, Mountains and Waters Sutra (Sansuikyō) As we practice embodying the time of Kaliyuga, Mo-Fa, Mappō, how are we to take up this great practice and the self/no-self? And in investigating such common Bud ...

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 ...