This is, because that is.
This is not, because that is not.
This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.

The Twelve Nidanas are a specific application of pratītyasamutpāda describing the chain of causation from ignorance to suffering. In the original Theravadan tradition I began practicing in, this teaching was usually explained at length after seven or eight days of sitting. It clearly demonstrates how (1) ignorance of the causes of suffering leads to suffering, (2) how awakening to those causes and (3) intervening in the Nidana cycle at the appropriate point leads to the collapse of the chain, or the cessation of suffering. In essence, it is a much more detailed exposition of the Four Noble Truths.

While going into each of the Twelve Nidanas is beyond the scope of this post, it is a teaching of great depth with important insights for socially engaged Buddhist practice. This is because interdependent co-arising shows that the individual and its environment are inseparable, without clear demarcation. Without knowing the fundamental causes of suffering (craving and clinging), an individual will continue ignorantly reacting to whatever conditions arise in the world, whatever their source. This of course includes unpleasant phenomena such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and economic exploitation, regardless of whether it is perceived to come from an individual or institution.

The gift of mindfulness practice is a rehearsed ability to intervene in the process of reactivity, which normally would be habitual and without thought. So rather than immediately and ignorantly reacting in a way that causes more suffering for us and others, mindfulness practice hopefully gives us some breathing space between the event and our response. For many of us, this may mean that we still get angry and upset, but there’s a two second gap in there rather than a nanosecond. Over time, this gap may increase, and perhaps the reactivity will cool off in the gap, and we have a broader range of choices for how to respond. This is how mindfulness intervenes in the chain of causation from ignorance to suffering.

As we might know, it is hard enough to intervene on our own individual ignorance and reactivity. Put a bunch of us in a room and you have a group of people reacting to their own and others’ ignorance. Incorporate that group as a social institution—whether a school, police force, government agency, or corporation—and formalize that ignorance through policies, laws, or through informal, unwritten rules of conduct or practice, and you have something that is more than the sum of its ignorant parts, with far-reaching power.

Interdependent co-arising is useful for contemplating institutional and structural oppressions, where the first consists of explicit laws, policies, and practices that have an oppressive effect, and the latter consists of seemingly neutral patterns of institutional activity that have a cumulatively oppressive effect, though without explicitly oppressive policies. An example of the first is a company that has a policy of discriminating against people of color or LGBTQ people. An example of the latter is a bank that decides whether to lend money based on a potential client’s zip code—a neutral piece of information, but with a strong tendency to negatively effect poor and working-class people.

While the first example can be remedied by changing the policy, the question of accountability can be sidestepped or distributed throughout the company as a legal entity, preventing individual accountability. The latter example is harder to remedy because there is no specific policy, rule, or law that is discriminatory—decisions are being made “objectively” based on “neutral” data. The task then becomes to demonstrate a historic and pervasive pattern of discriminatory and negative effects. But again, how to ensure accountability is a tricky task.

Both cases are an accumulation of formal and informal social practices that may or may not be pinned on an individual as the cause. The discriminatory or oppressive effect is the result of an ecology of collective ignorance, both conscious and unconscious. It co-arises interdependently.

The US socially engaged Buddhist Joanna Macy has used interdependent co-arising to illustrate the principles of deep ecology, where the individual is just a part of the larger fabric of living beings, and harming any part of the fabric harms the individual. Therefore, the health of our planet is, at base level, an act of self-care and self-preservation. This presupposes that the individual will care, which assumes the best of everyone.

In the case of institutionalized oppression, there are many who benefit from both ignorance and suffering. A common liberal assumption is that, if presented with a sufficiently rational argument, someone causing suffering will see their error and stop or change. But if they benefit from the oppressive arrangement, why would they? There is a similar vein of thought I see among some Buddhists, where the assumption is that, if presented with sufficient equanimity and compassion, the other person’s humanity will somehow respond rather than their inhumanity. I would like to believe this is the case, and though sometimes I swing towards cynicism, I see everyday examples of this principle in small ways. But still, armed with insight into the causes of suffering and empathy for all people’s basic desire to be free from suffering, no matter what suffering they themselves have caused, can we intervene into every chain of interdependently institutionalized ignorance. Is this naive? What do you think?

feeling affirmed in my creativity, in my expression and in my being is an unfamiliar feeling to me; it is an act that i’m learning to do for myself and one that i’m learning to receive from others. as a desi queer womyn of radical descent, i hardly see myself reflected in the u.s. media—we are invisibilized and subjugated to the margins of exotic, token, or impossible. turning wheel media counters this narrative, it goes beyond tokenization. it gives space for folks from many places of margin and intersection to visibilize themselves in the way they want to be seen and heard. and now, turning wheel not only wants to give space for us to create political and spiritual magic but also wants to help us, the contributors, sustain ourselves through compensating for our work. this feels good… really, really good. to be affirmed is a beautiful thing and i appreciate turning wheel so dearly for the affirmation that my expression is necessary and absolutely wonderful.

aneeta is a brown queer of the desi kind living in oakland. she co-founded the radical fuckin’ sangha, a meditation and tool-building space for radicals, organizers and revolutionaries. she writes on her blog, in the process of being, where she jots down insights and musings on her most favorite practices: mindfulness, radical love and revolution. she’s happiest kickin it with the trees and the people; creating art-thoughts; sitting and breathing and workin out what will inspire the uprising of our collective liberation. she enjoys a lot of other things too.

Read aneeta’s other work for Turning Wheel Media here.

If you would like to support aneeta’s work and other media activists at Turning Wheel Media, give a contribution to our Right Livelihood campaign!

Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed not to live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. We will do our best to select a livelihood that helps realize our ideal of understanding and compassion. Aware of global economic, political, and social realities, we will behave responsibly as consumers and as citizens, not supporting companies that deprive others of their chance to live.

This interpretation is valuable since it helps us see how our “economic, political, and social” choices impact others. In our current social arrangement in the United States and much of the world, money connects every person, for better or for worse. It’s always coming in to you from someone or, as may often seem to be the case, going out to someone else. How that money comes to you can be relatively benign, or filled with suffering for others. With regard to cash, since a single dollar bill can travel “between 30 and 500 miles over nine months,” there’s a pretty good chance that somewhere along the way, George has seen some nasty things (including lots of bacteria).

Not that you’re necessarily always implicated in the nastiness. But it’s not easy to participate in a global capitalist economy without eventually purchasing a product that was made in a sweatshop or somehow involved an exploited labor force.

Being mindful of non-harming income-generating activities, or responsible consumerism, is very important as a individual-level practice. This is not in order to be blameless, which is a play for moral high ground, but to cultivate a stable mind as free as possible from the reverberations of harmful activities.

Yet as an individual mindfulness practice, it can feel like it does little to help us understand and undermine the larger systems and institutions that kill, exploit, poison, maim, and otherwise cause enormous amounts of suffering in the world for the purpose of profit. This is why the personal choices we make have to be part of and accountable to larger social movements agitating for fundamental change. Otherwise, practicing Right Livelihood can simply accommodate the system at large, allowing it to roll onward while we might feel morally righteous about our individual choices.

This is also why, at a certain point, many of us realize that it is impossible for our current economic system to not cause mass suffering. Global corporate capitalism as it is currently structured requires an underclass. It needs to increase profits by underpaying or enslaving workers, whether in your home country or somewhere else. It needs to increase profits by downsizing, outsourcing, or adding new technologies that replace workers. And it has to befriend governments who will protect profits by undermining or ignoring human rights.

So as we are aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed to not only work a benign or beneficial job, to not only make responsible consumer choices. Capitalism as it currently is doesn’t have our best interests at heart. It dehumanizes everyone, even the ones at the top. The violence it causes is not just physical or economic, but psychological as well. Our responsibility as consumers and citizens is to go beyond consumerism and citizenship. We need to imagine ways to live and interconnect that don’t see people as hyper-individuated, economic beings, and work towards replacing our dominant global economic, political, and social realities.

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-sentimental, that created a safe space, sacred but non-denominational, for the work-play of repairing the natural connectedness that cumulative trauma dismantles.

Our first retreat for military families was held at First Congregational Church in Berkeley in January 2007. We all gathered for our opening circle, 33 vets and family members from seven states, with four volunteer facilitators. In the opening moment of silence, as we remembered those unable to be with us, three-year-old Ben, the son of Stephanie and Michael, was playing with another child around the edges of the circle. Amidst the reverent quiet, we all heard Ben say, “My daddy died in Iraq.” We learned later from Stephanie that Michael actually committed suicide six months after returning from Iraq. Out of the mouth of babes, the first words spoken at a retreat conveyed their own truth: something inside Michael did die in Iraq.

After the workshop we were having supper and socializing at our “base camp,” the Marina Doubletree. I looked around and felt a caring and responsiveness among the military families as strong as any I’d felt in any other setting. It was a “no duh” moment: Buddhism certainly had no monopoly on sangha or on compassion. Our retreat had provided the opportunity to unleash the power of compassion, healing and joy, and this was very gratifying.

Meditation Practice is not an All-purpose “Mr. Clean”

Over the six years I have introduced meditation to returning vets, I learn again and again that practice is not like the all purpose solvent, like the old “Mr. Clean”: good for counters, floors, dishes, toilets and laundry. Challenges abound and silence itself can be worrisome. So can letting go of the hyper-vigilance that seems to help us anticipate and forestall a traumatic recurrence. Stephanie, who lost her husband Michael to suicide, wanted to meditate but felt that, although there were no religious trappings to the instruction given, she was somehow being disloyal to her religion of origin. And Rory, who survived an IED blast (improvised explosive device) that killed the others in his unit, left the room early because he experienced anomalous sensory experiences in his head when following his breath and noticing bodily sensations; it was disorienting. And understandable given that parts of his brain destroyed in the blast were replaced by plastic filler and a major part of his skull was formed from a hi-tech composite. Doing walking meditation together helped Rory. Listening to Stephanie unpack her simultaneous desire to practice and fear of being disloyal, and clarifying what we were doing, helped her. And I found myself suggesting to those afraid of closing their eyes or keeping them half closed that they could try keeping their eyes open, which was helpful to some. Qigong, which integrates awareness, breath and movement, was a favorite of many. There is no one way that worked for everyone. What mattered was taking people seriously, listening, staying in touch with what unfolded, and recalibrating where necessary.

Turning Ghosts into Ancestors

I have learned that the wounds that eat away at war veterans cannot be reduced to an anxiety disorder. They involve what are now being called moral injuries. The shame, guilt and self-loathing that come from seeing or doing or countenancing actions that clash deeply with our internal ethical compass can last for decades. Deep, complex unexpressed grief, the helplessness of not being able to act on our ethical imperatives, say saving a buddy, or limiting civilian casualties, can also take a paralyzing toll. Abandonment by those who should lead and protect but who betray their mission for self-centered reasons at great cost to the unit under their command can be as destructive, one soldier said, as a bayonet to the belly.

I developed conviction about a core human process of transforming trauma that I call turning ghosts into ancestors. Most of us do not want our suffering and the suffering of those we love to have been in vain. We want it to mean something. “What have we got to show for it?” service members asked about a campaign they fought in. Driven to find meaning, many veterans endeavor to “make something” of war-related trauma, to “redeem” it. To do so they need to process it in a relational field bigger than themselves, in the presence of other hearts, minds and bodies that are breathing and listening, witnessing and sharing their humanity. Transforming trauma asks that we recreate and author it, rather than experiencing it as lodged within, a kind of foreign invasive element, inflicted on us, inscribed and burned into our neural and relational circuitry by the profound helplessness to change it. Without working it over and making it our own, overwhelming trauma remains a ghost, an “inner demon.”

A ghost gradually becomes an ancestor, and traumatic experiences become memories, by a most human alchemy. The beloved community provides the safe environment, so we can stop holding our breaths in traumatic reaction and anticipation, and finally exhale, trusting that we are supported. As this trust deepens, we allow ourselves to come home to this moment, to body, breath, peers and family, community and our surroundings. When the conditions are right, we feel safe enough to represent our experience. In Coming Home retreats this happens spontaneously among peers and family members, in small support groups, and through expressive arts. The fear of shame, humiliation and other crushing reactions is disconfirmed and replaced by a loving response. Buoyed, we can choose to venture in and share more, according to our own rhythm. The content and pacing of what is revealed is at the direction of the participant, modulated according to his or her degree of felt safety so that rarely, if ever, does it re-traumatize. We are supported, as we become ready, to re-experience our anguish in a new key. Not only is this a huge relief, but repeated instances of this benevolent cycle re-grow our capacity to encounter and integrate our ghosts. The power of the community’s support, and the resilience skills learned and practiced in this optimal relational setting, work in concert to animate and bolster us through this process. Gradually the fear of being re-traumatized abates and the traumatic shards reintegrate and take their place as memories. Our sense of meaning is renewed. Traumatic experiences thus represented and re-experienced, become re-encoded into a transformed, healing narrative and worldview. Although painful, they are now memories rather than haunting ghosts.

They trigger us less because they’ve become more integrated, and when they do rear their heads, the loving community and our resilience practices are available to meet the surging tides of powerful emotion. We accept ourselves and our broken elements more, we breathe into the contraction, lean into, rather than react to, the pain, and tame and regulate it better. Not perfectly — the wounds of war do not disappear — but we go forward with reduced anguish, increased hope, aliveness, emotional stability and connectedness.

Joseph Bobrow is a Zen master, psychoanalyst, and community organizer. For 40 years he has been integrating Buddhist mindfulness and western psychology to create healing environments. In 2006, with therapists, chaplains, vets, and family members, he founded the Coming Home Project, a non-denominational community service of Deep Streams Institute. Since 2007, the Coming Home Project has helped 3,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, service members, their families and their caregivers from 45 states transform the traumas of war, reintegrate, and enjoy genuine wellbeing. A Dharma heir of Robert Aitken Roshi, Joseph joined BPP shortly after its inception, building an interfaith coalition and helping organize the first Hiroshima Day commemoration on Maui. Later, he provided consultation to the BPF Board. Two summers living at Plum Village in the early 1980’s strengthened his conviction in the healing power of community. Joseph’s book, Zen and Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation, has received acclaim from Buddhist teachers and trauma researchers and therapists alike. He is working on a second book, Waking Up From War: How Our Veterans, Their Families, and Our Nation Heal The Unseen Wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is transmitting what he has learned over these four decades about trauma, mindfulness, awakening and healing with Turning Ghosts Into Ancestors, a workshop that distills these insights and weaves in pioneering research on post-traumatic growth from Coming Home retreats. To read more, check out Joe’s blog on Huffington Post. For information on new workshops, contact Joe at bobrow@deepstreams.org

https://www.facebook.com/DavidLoyInSeattle

A friend of mine once collected a list of Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhist responses to a single koan, “What is Nirvana.” The wide variety of responses are startling and often funny because they challenge our conventional ideas of what Nirvana is. I’m on the road today and can’t put up a longer post, but I offer the list to you as a contemplation of socially engaged Buddhism, or even just Buddhism. They speak to craving, aversion, compassion, equanimity, and so many other qualities we confront or cultivate. Which is your favorite and why? How does it speak to you about practicing Buddhism and being socially engaged, concerned about social justice?

What is Nirvana?
Answer: You have brought us to hell.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: What shall we do now?

What is Nirvana?
Answer: What is your purpose in asking?

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Now you’ve gone and done it!

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Absolute love. Something that is not calculable.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: In order to reach it, the Iron Cow must sweat.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: You can’t touch it, can’t smell it, can’t taste it, can’t describe it. In fact, I’ve really been speaking cow-dung.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Be well my friend and turn the world upside down.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Not this, Not that. Only this, Only that.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Do Good. Don’t do evil. But even I cannot do this.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Make sure your bananas are in order.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: I chop wood, I carry water.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Not two.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: (holds up an index finger)

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Just Go Forward.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: You’re wasting such precious time.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: (screams)

What is Nirvana?
Answer: Fresh air, white rice, and donkey shit.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: There’s so much pain I cannot tell you.

What is Nirvana?
Answer: A world in turmoil.

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 in almost immediately. Given this boost, I soon learned to peddle my words for grade cookies. Instead of doing the assigned work, I’d offer up a pithy critique on some novel I had read, or hand in a stack of newly drafted poems. It almost always worked. I got straight A’s in every class where writing was a major component, and even a few where it wasn’t. When you don’t need to earn money to survive, living off your writing is pretty easy.

As a young adult, I became a political animal. Driven by a concern for the environment and a decidedly fierce anti-war stance that made me wonder about my past lives, I started writing elected officials and joining protests. In addition, the college tuition and student rights battles that continue today were just getting warmed up back in the mid-1990s, when I was an undergraduate student, and I enthusiastically joined our campus student senate to fight the good fight. In my English classes, I argued with gray haired, white male professors over the value of literary canon, and the lack of diversity in the writing they presented us. In one class, when it came time to write a term paper, I chose Jack London’s The Iron Heel because it was the most radical novel on the list, and I wanted to stick it to the conservative professor who barely gave the time of day to the brilliant Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, and other African American writers of the early 20th century. When all you need is a good grade, the strength of your writing skills and research often is enough. I wish the same were true when you’re looking to get paid.

My parents divorced when I was young, and for several years, my mother did everything in her power to better herself and, in the process, make things better for me and my sister. She went into debt to give us a nice house to live in. She went into more debt to go to grad school, so that the skills she had didn’t go to waste in a low wage, dead end job. A few of those years, we regularly ate welfare staples like powdered milk, cheap pasta, and those big blocks of yellow cheese that don’t really taste like cheese. Even after she began to climb out of poverty, we were always the last kids to get the “newest, hippest” thing, if we ever did at all. I remember finally receiving a Nintendo game system for one of my birthdays, a good five years after it had been hyper popular. I was happy and depressed all at the same time. As I played Tecmo Football with a friend of mine one day, a little voice inside my head said, “This is how it is when you’re poor. You’re always way behind.”

The Buddha’s teachings provide some solace. Instead of considering money the root of all evil, or the sign that you’re one of the “chosen ones,” Buddhist teachings point to money as being empty of inherent nature. The monastic teachings around renunciation are helpful in letting go of desires around having lots of stuff I don’t need. In addition, the Pali Canon is filled with advice to kings, wealthy folks, and others to share what they have, warning that extreme material imbalances lead to societies of deep suffering. And meditation practice itself provides an always ready training ground, for facing fears around money, and lack of money, and for letting everything just be as it is.

However calm and stable I may be, though, there’s still a need for money. I haven’t yet figured out a decent fix in this capitalist society for going without money. Bartering is great when you can find a partner to do it. Growing your own food is great when you have a bit of land and decent weather. Dumpster diving sometimes brings good results, but certainly isn’t a long term solution for anything. Co-operative living has its pluses and minuses, but for the most part, you still need some money to that. Point being, like most of us radical types out there, I’m still working the dream of a healthy, liberated way of being beyond capitalism. It isn’t easy, and there seems to be a lot of impediments to it in place, including some from the very people who say they want a new world to spring forth.

Social activist circles are notorious for their idealism, and also their clinging fiercely to that idealism. Like the non-profit sector, there’s a strong ethos that says you should give, give, give to the cause. But that it’s usually wrong to receive much of anything in return, besides some of those praise cookies I so loved back in the day. Writers and artists in particular are put through the wringer because our skills are needed to advance the cause, and yet any expectation of pay or gifts of material goods for our work is frequently met with scorn and/or calls of being a “sell out.” Academics and professional pundit writers like Chris Hedges or Noam Chomsky are either given a pass because they have “day jobs,” or are used when convenient and tossed aside when not. Either way, the impact of this behavior on them is marginal at most, whereas the same behavior towards the average poor activist can be the difference between having a place to call home, and being homeless.

Convert American Buddhists, on the whole, don’t seem to be much better when it comes to dealing with this kind of thing. First off, there’s the rather collective aversion towards social and political issues in the first place. It’s ok to “do that” on your own time but don’t expect any of us to support what you’re doing publically, especially in terms of financial support. Along these lines, the heavy middle/upper class bias prevalent in the vast majority of convert American Buddhist sanghas renders such issues mostly invisible. “Vowing to do good” – one of the Buddhist pure precepts – is something we are supposed to do our best with, but if you place it at the radical center of your life, you’re basically on your own in trying to keep the bills paid. Even living in a monastic community, where you may be able to reduce your material needs enough to focus on serving the broader world, is a privilege in this country. You usually need money to get there, money to stay there, and money to leave there.

A lot of folks in both of these sanghas, the Buddhist ones and the social activist ones, decry the increasing privatization and material wealth imbalances that plague the United States. And yet, many of the same folks fail to see how they very notions they have about what constitutes a “good activist” or a “good Buddhist” are privatized themselves. Activists routinely speak of solidarity, and yet gobble up the work of their writers and artists, often without so much as thought to how the person that created that work is keeping their bills paid, if they are at all. American convert Buddhists are fond of waxing poetic about interdependence, but when push comes to shove, are decidedly individualistic in how they approach both the dharma, and the world around them.

Something has to give. Someone has to give.

I write this article without expectation of payment. It’s like so many other things I do. Offering to the world a little liberation plea. Putting my words in service of anything and everything that might help wake someone, anyone up from the slumbers wrought by modern capitalism, and the colonial past from which it sprung. The dharma name my Zen teacher gave me several years ago translates to “Devotion to Enlightenment,” and that I am, however far I might be from it moment after moment. I love my fellow writer and artist activists, feel so immensely moved by their work sometimes that I’m stunned silent, with tears down my face. Have you heard of Ricardo Levins Morales? Amazing. How about Troy Amlee? Probably not, but I bet you will someday.

Sure, most of us could get “day jobs,” and do the rest on the side. Many do just that. I did just that for years, and might be doing just that again someday soon. Of course, the ever precarious nature of the job market these days means procuring work is that much more difficult. And once you do so, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have the time and energy left to do things like writing about injustice or painting murals to document the disappearing stories of indigenous folks. In some cases, the workplace you land in might be at total odds with both your true work, and the dreams you have for a better, more just world. They may even try to stop you from doing that work, from speaking of those dreams. People not in the know usually underestimate the power of corporate interests to threaten anyone that threatens their bottom line.

Where we put out money and material support is where the world tends to go. The story of the starving artist and starving writer is neither romantic, nor sustainable. We don’t, as a society, value the vast majority of our writers and artists precisely because they don’t feed the corporate bottom line. Our work has been deemed superfluous and extra precisely because it isn’t – except in rare cases – money making. Do you see how the loop reinforces itself? And actually, if you look a little closer, you’ll see that we do produce wealth. We are a money-making venture. Everyone from corporate giants to the little non-profit down the street make money off our sweat, blood, and tears every single day. They just don’t own up to it. We – the people of the United States of America – just don’t own up to it.

It’s time for that to change. It’s time for folks to put their money where their hearts are. I am a writer activist. And this is my story.

Nathan G. Thompson is a writer, social activist, and Zen practitioner from St. Paul, MN. He is the author of the blog Dangerous Harvests, and has numerous other print and online publications.

Read his other articles for Turning Wheel Media here, here, and here.’

If you would like to support Nathan’s work and other media activists at Turning Wheel Media, give a contribution to our Right Livelihood campaign!

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 be clear: we won’t be able to pay enough to cover rent or anything, but we believe that even a small amount like $20 per person can make a difference. Over the next few days, we’ll be highlighting a few contributors to TWM, as they share what this shift toward Right Livelihood compensation would mean for them.

Today we’re inviting you to support them and your other favorite Turning Wheel Media voices in the creative labor of media making. Why should our creative workers – artists, writers, poets, filmmakers – be *expected* to work for free?  As BPF strives to align our practices with our values, we gain inspiration from other models of right livelihood in media:

I used to pay the bills by writing for a major marketing giant. What a welcome change of pace when I got to write an editorial for the feminist magazine Make/shift!  When Make/shift offered compensation for my piece, I could opt to accept the payment or donate it back to the organization.  A beautiful model of dana, generous giving. I would be excited to pay it forward to the contributors to Turning Wheel Media.” – Katie Loncke, BPF Co-Director

You can be part of making a different world possible: Donate to our “Right Livelihood” fund today to help us be a community where creative brilliance is honored, respected, and valued.

And, you can Double your dollars! The first $2,000 in contributions will be matched 2-for-1 by a generous donor.

Dawn Haney & Katie Loncke

Co-Directors of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

P.S. Your $100 donation would mean a lot: we could offer compensation to 5 contributors next month!

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 is hell and nearly every war I know of was disastrous and avoidable, in itself, military service is honorable and carries its own dignity. The intention of the vast majority of those who volunteer or sign up is benevolent and protective. They have earned our respect, gratitude, and care. Is the choice to serve in the military in accord with the Eightfold Path and with the Precepts? Without getting into theological hair splitting, with right intention I will say yes. Is the carnage that war inevitably brings with it in accord? No. I think war is an absolute last resort. But, we must end the need for war. And help veterans, their families , their caregivers, and all citizens, wake up together from the fog of war and heal. Then we can touch and share and grow the peace that passes ideology.

Turning Wheel/Mushim: Please tell us more about your relationship as a Buddhist teacher and socially engaged activist to what you have called a “broken system that neglects many of the needs of U.S. military veterans and their families, wastes U.S. Taxpayers’ money, and is driven in part by greed, hatred and delusion.” You’ve chosen to direct your energy and skills as a psychotherapist and Zen meditation teacher to retreats for U.S. war veterans and their families. While most people would probably agree that this is compassion in action, does it contribute to dismantling or transforming the military complex? If yes, how?

Joe Bobrow: I see the work that my friends and I have been doing at Coming Home as peace work, making the peace after the war. Not one of the thousands of people I’ve met and worked with over the past six years would eschew inner peace. Everyone wants equanimity and peace. This is a good quality to foster, no matter what the context. The lotus grows in the midst of the fire. Knowing Thich Nhat Hanh for the past 30 years, I am certain his dharma was forged in the heat of battle, in the belly of the beast that was the Vietnam War. I do not want to become ideological and turn my gaze from those who can benefit from what we offer.

However, it is true that dishonesty, hidden self-interest, short sightedness, pig headedness, bureaucratic dysfunction, infatuation with power, outright cruelty (including sexual harassment and abuse) and hypocrisy are rampant. It is all too easy to wrap yourself in the flag of patriotism for personal gain while ignoring the deeper needs of our war veterans. I believe that peaceful means of resolving differences are most efficacious, even if they don’t seem that way in the short run. But I’ve also come to see that the warrior archetype has a necessary place in the human psyche. It is part of serving, being a fire fighter or a law enforcement officer, or … a soldier, sailor, airman, marine or coastie. It is linked to protection, keeping safe, serving the community. I have been amazed at how many I have met in the military at all levels and ranks who know war and its horrors first hand, and are not casual about it at all, to the contrary. One former commander in Fallujah routinely calls war “obscene.” Many see themselves as peacemakers.

But I have realized that I am not a complete pacifist; there is a place for protecting and defending ourselves. In terms of substantively changing broken systems, ughh, that’s a job for Sisyphus. I’ve valued Coming Home’s independence in developing our programs and demonstrating their value in people’s lives. Maybe we can undermine toxic systems by showing their members how to take good care of people, including the providers and leaders. Maybe change will come from the inside out, or, from the example Coming Home and others on the “outside.” I don’t know. Sometimes I and friends in the field whom are in the know think it might be better to (figuratively) “blow up” the systems and start from scratch.

The best way to prevent and treat war trauma is to find peaceful ways to resolve our conflicts. Here’s a true story taken from a blog I wrote about in the HuffPo, The Costs of War, Collective Amnesia, and Learning From Experience:

Last year I attended the annual Memorial Day commemoration at a military cemetery. A retired general officer was among the speakers. I had seen him over the years in various settings and he was always super patriotic and indefatigably upbeat. This time his presentation sounded different. He spoke of how acutely he felt the burden, more than 20 years on, of having sent men and women into harm’s way, and how deeply he felt responsible for their injuries and deaths. You could hear his voice tremble. Then he said something that startled me. With complete conviction, this patriot’s patriot said that the costs of war are so great that we just have to find ways to solve our problems that do not involve killing one another.

Turning Wheel/Mushim: BPF’s initiative for 2013 is called “The System Stinks.” It’s looking for proposals for radical actions for systemic change. When you think about what you know about the U.S. military, VA, corporate, legislative complex, if you could unify and mobilize everyone in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s extended network right now, what would you direct us to do, collectively? What paths of action and activism do you think would be most useful for us to take?

Joe Bobrow: Meet a vet, talk to a vet. To a sister, brother, mother father, grandma, grandpa, child or teenager of a vet. Develop cultural competency. Feature stories of vets and families, maybe focus on military kids. Vets are a marginalized population; live your multiculturalism. Learn about the extensive costs of war by human to human community-building. Put aside ideology and make contact with real folks. Create civilian-veteran dialogues where, through heartfelt conversation and art, the awful divide between the 1% of those who served over the past 11 years and the rest of us can be bridged. Make common cause. Help build social support networks, based on forged affinity, a proven — — and radical — alternative to the some of the existing compartmentalized, medical model approaches. Link up with interfaith groups working to raise consciousness about the moral and spiritual injuries of war. As my Army Colonel and Commander / Social Worker buddy David likes to say: Isolation Kills and Community Heals.

Editor’s note: We’ll be featuring more on The Coming Home Project this month, stay tuned.

Joseph Bobrow is a Zen master, psychoanalyst, and community organizer. For 40 years he has been integrating Buddhist mindfulness and western psychology to create healing environments. In 2006, with therapists, chaplains, vets, and family members, he founded the Coming Home Project, a non-denominational community service of Deep Streams Institute. Since 2007, the Coming Home Project has helped 3,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, service members, their families and their caregivers from 45 states transform the traumas of war, reintegrate, and enjoy genuine wellbeing. A Dharma heir of Robert Aitken Roshi, Joseph joined BPP shortly after its inception, building an interfaith coalition and helping organize the first Hiroshima Day commemoration on Maui. Later, he provided consultation to the BPF Board. Two summers living at Plum Village in the early 1980’s strengthened his conviction in the healing power of community. Joseph’s book, Zen and Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation, has received acclaim from Buddhist teachers and trauma researchers and therapists alike. He is working on a second book, Waking Up From War: How Our Veterans, Their Families, and Our Nation Heal The Unseen Wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is transmitting what he has learned over these four decades about trauma, mindfulness, awakening and healing with Turning Ghosts Into Ancestors, a workshop that distills these insights and weaves in pioneering research on post-traumatic growth from Coming Home retreats. To read more, check out Joe’s blog on Huffington Post. For information on new workshops, contact Joe at bobrow@deepstreams.org

Nurturing Peace in Contexts of Global Violence: A Conference for Theological Educators and Religious Leaders

Religious leaders throughout the world in every faith tradition are challenged today to be active agents of peace.

This 4 day conference will bring together theological educators and others to work together to teach and learn about peacemaking both globally and locally.

May 22-25, 2013
The Interchurch Center
475 Riverside Drive,
New York, NY 10115

See full conference schedule and register online now at – http://peacemaking.nyts.edu