The war in Palestine/Israel is profoundly painful for everyone involved, including those of us witnessing the conflict and feeling it impact our communities. How might the Buddha’s teachings support us as we engage in bearing witness and participating in the larger conversation unfolding around this war and other violent conflicts? Non-violence, understood as arising from wise view and expressing as wise action, is a radical Buddhist approach to social engagement, and challenges views we may hold around right and wrong, guilt and victimhood, identity, ancestry, and land ownership. Conversation about politically-charged situations can be difficult in Dharma spaces, but the profound implications of the Buddha’s teaching can also become a real support for us in negotiating complex social and political realities.

Working with the breath: observing the breath without altering it, or altering the breath to make it more comfortable or move energy. Discussion of the beginning of the ānāpānasati practice emphasizing intentional long and short breaths, and breathing with the whole body.

The ancient Buddhist map of existence known as the Six Realms is both a vision of the cosmos and all its inhabitants and an elegant psychological model we can use in everyday life. Working with the realms as psychological archetypes (demon, ghost, animal, human, titan, angel) reveals patterns in how we process both harm and help in our personal and collective past, which play out as trauma and privilege in the present. Differently, and maybe more radically, working with them from an Animist framework reveals a conscious universe, where nature of all kinds is interdependent, intelligent, and part of the round of rebirth in which we all participate until full awakening. Seeing in this way challenges our identity, not just as ourselves but as defined by our species.

An overview of the 5 khandha (aggregates, aspects, heaps), focusing on the 4th: sankhāra (volitional formations, or choices), and how the khandha are the fuel for clinging. Includes Q&A.

So much of the pain afflicting our lives right now is based in conditions that are much larger than any of us as individuals. The climate crisis, racism, economic suffering, and the pandemic all are results of actions committed not by individuals but by groups. Rather than absolving us of responsibility, knowing this can help us to move through doubt and shame into the more wholesome states of urgency and collective agency.