Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu Oakland Museum of California March 16-June 30, 2013 The San Francisco Bay Area painter and installation artist Hung Liu has long been one of my favorite visual artists. I had a chance to visit a survey exhibit of her work at the Oakland Museum of California during the museum’s free First Sunday, and was not disappointed. I first became aware of Liu’s art when I encounte ...

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 ...

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 ...

I spent $5,000 a year on therapy while I worked at a rape crisis center. My therapist got well over 10% of my income each year; a tithe to her painstaking work re-teaching me that it was safe to be mindful of my body, even in the face of devastating trauma. While my therapy work addressed my own past trauma, this trauma was violently yanked forward to the front of my consciousness from facing day after day ...

Both dhamma practice and structured intellectual activity serve as decolonization practices for me. Some years back, when I was questioning the assumptions I had developed about my own dhamma practice, I entered a graduate program strongly informed by anti-colonial and post-colonial thinkers. To my surprise, the intellectual practices of these thinkers were extremely complementary to Theravadan Vipassana pr ...

Since we’re looking at Stolen Lands, Stolen Culture, Stolen Time this month at Turning Wheel, it’s worthwhile to examine capitalism. What is the fundamental mechanism that allows capitalists to accumulate wealth? It seems like every week we hear another outrageous story of skyrocketing corporate profits while many of the rest of us struggle or worry about basic needs. While some of these newsworthy profits ...

Native American feminist scholar and activist Andrea Smith argues, “In order to colonize peoples whose societies are not based on social hierarchy, colonizers must first naturalize hierarchy through instituting patriarchy.” In the third installment of The System Stinks, a systemic look at the Five Precepts of Buddhist ethical conduct, we’re facing the ways in which hierarchies of sexuality and gender have b ...

While we await the results of the US Supreme Court's consideration of "same-sex marriage," I find myself wondering why, in order for a marriage to be considered legitimate, it has to be sanctioned by a government. Why should a private relationship between people be subject to a political thumbs up or down? Since the US is a basically a culturally Christian society, it’s worth looking back at how it all happ ...

If Thich Nhat Hanh is right that "The next Buddha, the Buddha of the West, will come as the sangha" - it is my belief that East Bay Meditation Center is leading the way to our personal and collective liberation. I invite you to support East Bay Meditation Center - by attending their star-studded upcoming event (see details below) or by making a direct donation to support EBMC's continued flourishing. Someti ...

Since BPF's inception in 1978, the mandala of socially engaged Buddhism has blossomed. Today's landscape of political Buddhism is rich and varied: Buddhists are working on global warming, mindfulness in prisons, organizing for freedom against colonial powers, ending global hunger, building an inclusive, social justice-oriented sangha, and accompanying Peace Communities in war-torn Colombia, among so many ot ...