by John Stanley and David Loy
from Huffington Post

“The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the Earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise — then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on this truth, then we shall perish.” –Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

“The term ‘engaged Buddhism’ was created to restore the true meaning of Buddhism. Engaged Buddhism is simply Buddhism applied in our daily lives. If it’s not engaged, it can’t be called Buddhism. Buddhist practice takes place not only in monasteries, meditation halls and Buddhist institutes, but in whatever situation we find ourselves. Engaged Buddhism means the activities of daily life combined with the practice of mindfulness. –Thich Nhat Hanh

In one of Buddhism’s iconic images, Gautama Buddha sits in meditation with his left palm upright on his lap, while his right hand touches the earth. Demonic forces have tried to unseat him, because their king, Mara, claims that place under the bodhi tree. As they proclaim their leader’s powers, Mara demands that Gautama produce a witness to confirm his spiritual awakening. The Buddha simply touches the earth with his right hand, and the Earth itself immediately responds: “I am your witness.” Mara and his minions vanish. The morning star appears in the sky. This moment of supreme enlightenment is the central experience from which the whole of the Buddhist tradition unfolds.

The great 20th-century Vedantin, Ramana Maharshi said that the Earth is in a constant state of dhyana. The Buddha’s earth-witness mudra (hand position) is a beautiful example of “embodied cognition.” His posture and gesture embody unshakeable self-realization. He does not ask heavenly beings for assistance. Instead, without using any words, the Buddha calls on the Earth to bear witness.

The Earth has observed much more than the Buddha’s awakening. For the last 3 billion years the Earth has borne witness to the evolution of its innumerable life-forms, from unicellular creatures to the extraordinary diversity and complexity of plant and animal life that flourishes today. We not only observe this multiplicity, we are part of it — even as our species continues to damage it. Many biologists predict that half the Earth’s plant and animal species could disappear by the end of this century, on the current growth trajectories of human population, economy and pollution. This sobering fact reminds us that global warming is the primary, but not the only, extraordinary ecological crisis confronting us today.

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By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

Around the world, people are still struggling to come to terms with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which have left more than 8,000 dead, thousands more missing and hundreds of thousand others homeless. The threat of a nuclear crisis only adds to the uncertainty.

In times like these, many people find comfort in their faith. But disasters can also challenge long-held beliefs. The CNN Belief Blog asked some prominent voices with different views on religion how they make sense of such suffering, where they see inspiration amid destruction and how they respond to people who wonder, “How could God let this happen?”

Rabbi Harold Kushner, author whose books include “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”

Whenever a disaster like this occurs, I go back to the Bible, to the First Book of Kings. Elijah, in despair over the situation in Israel, runs to the desert, back to Mt. Sinai to find the God of the Revelation to Moses.

“And lo, the Lord God passed by. There was a mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. There was an earthquake but the Lord was not in the earthquake.”

To me, that is the key: the Lord was not in the earthquake.

Natural disasters are acts of nature, not acts of God. God cares about the well-being of good people; Nature is blind, an equal-opportunity destroyer.

Where is God in Japan today? In the courage of people to carry on their lives after the tragedy. In the resilience of those whose lives have been destroyed, families swept away, homes lost, but they resolve to rebuild their lives. In the goodness and generosity of people all over the world to reach out and help strangers who live far from them, to contribute aid, to pray for them.

How can people do such things if God were not at work in them to lend a counterweight to a natural disaster?

The Rev. Tesshu Shaku, chief priest of Nyoraiji Temple, a Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land sect of Buddhism) temple in Ikeda City, Japan

Buddhism is called a religion with no god. So we don’t think God caused this, according to the Buddhist way of thinking. We think of the law of cause and effect, searching for a cause. It is the same approach as science. The cause of this earthquake is the friction between the North American plate and the Pacific plate.

The Japanese are more focused on relationships as opposed to faith, feeling the pain of others. I have witnessed this at the time of the Hanshin Awaji earthquake. [In 1995, the Great Hanshin earthquake on the island of Awaji killed about 6,500 people.] There were many people who came to the affected area to help and volunteer.

There is a word, “earthquake children,” for people whose perspectives were affected by the disaster. They became very active in community service or became Buddhist monks. So people will be more spiritual, feeling the pains and joys of others.

Dr. Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America’s Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances

These sort of natural disasters become the collective responsibility of all mankind to mobilize our compassion and resources to ease the pain of the people who have suffered.

This disaster is not the result of any sins of these people; we need to be clear that there is no belief that these victims “deserved” it for any of their actions. Rather, Muslims see these kinds of tragedies as a test from God. Muslims believe that God tests those he loves, and these tragedies also serve as a reminder to the rest of us to remain grateful to God for all our blessings and cognizant that we must support those in need.

These kinds of calamities should push us in positive ways. They should strengthen our faith in God and in his goodness. We attribute the things we don’t understand to his limitless wisdom and comfort ourselves that he is with us and he loves us, so there must be some meaning in what has happened, even if it is beyond our comprehension here at this time.

We are trained by our faith that every suffering, whether big or small, brings us closer to God’s mercy and forgiveness, to the extent that the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) said, if you are walking and feel a thorn pierce your foot, you should know that even this little bit of pain brings you divine blessing and God’s forgiveness. These times of suffering give us an opportunity to demonstrate patience and faith, and therefore, become closer to God.

Every natural phenomenon challenges us as God’s trustees on this Earth, showing us that we should continue to study and explore ways of safeguarding humankind and all creatures from being subjected to this kind of devastation. It is the collective duty of all humankind to put resources in this and advance our understanding of how to respond to these disasters in a scientific way.

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From Patheos.com,

By Natascha Bruckner

I recently attended a Buddhist retreat led by monks and nuns in the Order of Interbeing tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, known to his followers as Thay (pronounced “tie,” meaning teacher in Vietnamese). Thay was not at the retreat, as he was being treated for a lung infection in a Boston hospital. (He has since recovered, and is out of the hospital now). In his place, the monastics gave dharma talks to an assembly of 900 retreatants.

Brother Phap Niem was a gentle, soft-spoken monk who talked to us about “cultivating dharma eyes to see things as they are.” He said, “We see an orange and think, ‘I know oranges.’ But the thing we call orange is only an appearance.”

Looking with dharma eyes, we see that the orange isn’t what we think it is. It’s not a separate entity. It’s not solid or permanent. The orange is made of all the elements that created it — sunshine, rain, dirt, insects that turned the dirt, farmers that fertilized and tended the tree. The orange is also made of all the elements that created these elements: the cloud that changed into rain, the farmer’s mom and dad. And the orange is also all the elements it will become: worms that eat its rind, you who eat its sweet wedges.

In the great kaleidoscope of life, none of us can exist without all the others. But it gets deeper: each of us is all the others. So, really, there are no others.

Brother Phap Niem explained: “Inside of you, you can find everything. There is only one thing you do not contain — a self.” This is a Zen master’s way of saying: a) you’re purely made of stuff that isn’t you, and b) everything that seems to be outside you is actually part of you. The fancy spiritual term is nonduality, also known as oneness.

Some people have had direct experiences of oneness. They’ve realized their true self, inclusive of everything and everyone, in moments of divine interconnected bliss. I occasionally access this oneness in fleeting instants, when I feel someone else’s emotions, or know what they’re going to say before they say it.

Practicing Reiki (hands-on energy healing) brings me closest to that feeling of oneness. In Reiki, my body becomes a conduit for energy, like a hollow straw. Healing energy pours through my palms into the other person. Sometimes I let my consciousness extend out through my hands, into the other body, and I sense colors, shapes, dark blockages, currents. I see dreamlike images. Once while giving Reiki to a client, I envisioned her practicing non-violent martial arts, not in self-defense but to cultivate inner strength and integrity. After the session I asked if she had ever done martial arts. She said no, but she’d been wanting to take a class. Many other times I’ve seen and felt clients’ inner truths. How could I perceive these visions if we weren’t all one?

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Produced at Plum Village Meditation Center, this short film highlights the practices of mindful breathing and walking meditation.  Based on the teachings and tradition of Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Monastic community.

This video was spontaneously created during the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, Melbourne.  As the creator states:

“The day before the end of the parliament, I viewed a 10 minute video telling the story of the atrocities that have occurred at the Bat Nha Monasteries in Viet Nam. After the video, a number of us continued in a meeting to discuss what we had just seen and what we could possibly do about it. One of the ideas we came up with was to video tape parliament participants the next morning sending their support and blessings from the parliament and post them on YouTube for the monks and nuns from Bat Nha (and hopefully many others) to be able to see.” –Hal Martin

Click Here to view the address by the Most Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh and the short video about Bat Nha.

For more information about Bat Nha Monastery, please visit www.helpbatnha.org

The Most Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh’s powerful and timely address to the parliament: A Collective Awakening for the Future of Our Planet.  Click Here to watch the talk.

Following the presentation of the talk at the parliament, Brother Phap Kham presented a short video documenting recent events concerning the Bat Nha community in Vietnam.  A link to that video can be found here.

Watch more videos on our video page.