Eva Seligman is a Master of Divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School, where she studies the entanglement of Buddhism and Colonialism. She works as a graduate assistant at BCBS. A pdf version can be downloaded here. In October 2017, I had been working as a middle and high school teacher for over ten years. I imagined that I would be a teacher for the rest of my life. But… things had been feeling off for a while and I couldn’t explain why. I was having increasingly intense mood swings and … [Read more...]
A Dharma Heart for These Times
Thanissara
Thanissara began practice in the Burmese school of U Ba Khin in 1975. She spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun in the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah. She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice. She is co-founder, with Kittisaro, of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat in South Africa, and Sacred Mountain Sangha in California, which runs a two-year Dharmapala Training. She has authored several books including Time … [Read more...]
Going in, reaching out: The Dharma in us and amongst us
Pascal Auclair and Eva Seligman
Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America with revered monastics and lay teachers. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, where he is now enjoying teaching retreats. Pascal teaches in North America and in Europe. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and one of TNI’s Guiding Teachers. He was … [Read more...]
Finding Zen: Strength In The Dharma And The Sword
Cristina Moon
Cristina Moon is a writer, strategist, and Zen priest. She lives and teaches at Daihonzan Chozen-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple in Honolulu. A pdf version of this article can be downloaded here. "A good analogy for zazen," said the Zen priest instructing me in seated meditation, "is early man hunting. Totally still, totally silent, and totally alert. Seeing, hearing, and feeling everything." "And," he continued, after a brief pause, "ready to jump up and kill something." It was January 2018 and I … [Read more...]
All Cops Are Buddhas (ACAB): Stretching our Empathy and Defunding the Police
Katie Loncke
Katie Loncke (they/them) is a longtime activist, Buddhist practitioner of 14 years, and a fan of warm-hearted, unconventional rebellions. A former Co-Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Katie currently serves as a somatic coach helping people — primarily queer, trans, and/or BIPOC — deepen pleasure in their ecologies of intimacy. A pdf version of this article can be downloaded here. “Mercy means to surrender cloaking ourselves from ourselves and experiencing a shared vulnerability … [Read more...]
The Burden Sutra
Mu Soeng
In “The Bhara Sutta,” Mu Soeng, inspired by the Bhara Sutta, SN 22.22, takes up the image of the oxen as craving, and their oil-tiller as clinging, and presents taking up the burden and putting down the burden. Mu Soeng is Scholar Emeritus at BCBS. He trained in the (Korean) Zen tradition and was a monk for eleven years. He is the author of Thousand Peaks: Korean Zen (Tradition and Teachers); The Diamond Sutra: Transforming the Way We Perceive the World; Trust in Mind: The Rebellion of … [Read more...]
Interdependence and Healing: Natalie Avalos on Practice, Scholarship, and the Liberating Power of Ceremony
Natalie Avalos and Eva Seligman
Natalie Avalos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is currently working on her manuscript titled The Metaphysics of Decoloniality: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal, which explores urban Native and Tibetan refugee religious life as decolonial praxis. She is a Chicana of Apache descent, born and raised in the Bay Area. She was interviewed by our graduate intern, Eva Seligman. Eva Seligman is a Master of … [Read more...]
In Memoriam: Thich Nhat Hanh
Sallie B. King
Sallie B. King is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University in the USA. She is the author of numerous publications on Engaged Buddhism, Buddhist ethics, Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. A Quaker and a Buddhist, she is a former President of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, a Trustee of the international, interfaith Peace Council, and a member of the Christian and Interfaith Relations Committee of Friends General … [Read more...]
