Reading Archive (Activism)
Contemplation Vs. Social Change
Brother David: You can’t really be a contemplative, unless you also want to change the world. You want to...
The Shambhala Warrior
[A Tibetan Legend] "There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste their...
Bridging The Spiritual and Mundane
As I now look at our situation, I distinguish three major domains in which human life participates. One I call the transcendent domain,...
The Shambhala Warriors' Weapons
There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Great barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth...
Force Of Love Is The Force Of Total Revolution
A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives...
Pilgrimage to Nonviolence
First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he...
Flow of Money
In a modern society in which most everything essential to a secure and happy life seems to depend on money, the flow of money takes on...
Clear and Present Compassion
Understanding and compassion are very powerful sources of energy. They are the opposite of stupidity and passivity. If you think that...
Looking With Head, Heart, and Hands
When I speak of seeing, I feel that the mind is open and in a relationship to the hands working, which opens a feeling of being more...
Spiritual Activism
I'm an environmentalist and I'm very much into cars that get high mileage and don't pollute, and I see that somebody's...
A Higher Level Of Conscious Engagement
We live in an age of spiritual smorgasbord: People are mixing concepts, aphorisms, and insights from a broad variety of mystical and...
The Three Narratives
When we come together for this work, at the outset we discern three stories or versions of reality that are shaping our world so that we...
Organizing With Love
My favorite life forms right now are dandelions and mushrooms—the resilience in these structures, which we think of as weeds and...
A Marvelous Victory
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment we will continue to see. We forget how often in this century we have...
Wisdom Of Grieving
Not only is grieving a stage of the spiritual activist’s journey, but the grieving process itself often unfolds in stages, which...
Response Is Different From An Answer
The current moment calls for moral ferocity. We should not sleep well at night when we know others are suffering. Ferocity itself,...
Two Kinds Of Resistance
The light begins its slow return to places in the North, and today a new year begins. Some people are saying it is already “too...
No Longer Playing It Safe
To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand...
How Much Silence Is Too Much?
Ours is a noisy country. We’ve been rebellious, insolent shouters since the beginning. We invent freak shows and circuses and...
Love is the Source of Fearlessness
Some of the prison bars that we have constructed for ourselves are our fear of losing our jobs. Our fear of not being liked. Our need for...