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 ...

Yoga: Not Just For Young, Skinny White Girls. A Trans Guy Walks Into a Yoga Class. Project Bendypants: Practicing Yoga While Fat. Just a few intriguing titles from popular articles in a new online project: Decolonizing Yoga. Remember the controversy over Yoga Journal and the Hyatt boycott?  And how some yoga practitioners staged an asana protest outside the hotel?  That compassionate confrontation is the or ...

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 ...

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 ...

  Join in an evening with Joanna Macy helping us to reconnect In Fullness of Time May 6, 6:30 - 9:30 Seattle Nalanda West, 3902 Woodland Park Ave North A web cast will be available for those who can not attend in person. In the accelerating pace and pressure of today’s tempo, we as a culture are losing touch with both our past and our future. Drawing on the Buddha Dharma as well as four decades of nucl ...

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 you read this, I’m looking out over the coast of California at the ocean, just south of Half Moon Bay, considering all the layers of history that allow me to be here. This location, like all of California, was first American Indian—Ohlone-Costanoan territory to be specific. In the late 18th century, The Spanish began their occupation of California with the building of missions and introduction of Europea ...

As we study institutionalized theft in this second theme of The System Stinks, what are some of the classic texts that you've found helpful in understanding systemic theft? We're especially interested in the three forms of theft we've chosen for study this month: theft of land, culture, and time. Theft of Land: Media on colonization, Manifest Destiny, indigenous organizing, sovereignty, expropriation Theft ...