Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Bhikkhu Bodhi (Buddhist Global Relief)
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| Bhante |
[Two years ago] in 2012, when they found that the homeless students were arriving
hungry and unable to focus, the RF team started a vegetarian meal
program called “Starved for Meaning.”
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| We won't stand for sexism, racism (FEMEN) |
Meals, prepared collectively and
served “family-style,” with a moment of gratitude before the meal,
fulfilled the students’ hunger for community, dialogue, and meaning.
Last year, with the help of Buddhist Global Relief funds, the number of meals doubled and
there was an increase in the number of youth coming to the center for
food.
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| Bombarded with propaganda from the NY Times |
In a questionnaire about the program, 100 percent of the youth
said that their life improved as a result of the meals, they felt a
greater sense of belonging, and they felt more optimistic about their
life.
[This is June 2014 and] over the next year, BGR funding will help the Reciprocity
Foundation increase the capacity of the vegetarian meal program for
homeless youth in NYC and expand the food program to reach young people
living on the streets. This and the next in the Bronx are annually renewable projects:
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New York City: Community Garden Plots in the Bronx (Fiscal BGR Projects)
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The Urban Community Food Project (UCFP) was started in 2011 as an initiative of the
Urban Rebuilding Initiative.
Its mission is to build a sustainable food system throughout New York
in order to fight poverty and resultant food insecurity.
UCFP’s farms
are located in the 16th Congressional District of the US, an
area that has the lowest median income and the highest rates of
unemployment and [police state mass] incarceration in the nation. UCFP works with at-risk
youth, young adults, and formerly incarcerated men in local
neighborhoods to convert urban spaces into food production sites. The
food grown on these sites is donated to neighborhood food pantries and
homeless shelters. The BGR grant will help UCFP fulfill its goals for
2014-15, which include:
- Developing four inner-city farms that will
produce 5,000 pounds of produce for local food pantries and soup
kitchens;
- introducing a new fitness program called “good food and
fitness go hand in hand”; and
- offering regular workshops on
sustainability, urban farming, green technology, and civic action.
Without a Doubt – It’s Time to Get to Work on Climate Change
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| Ayya |
The American
Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a report to
dispel the fog of disinformation about the reality of climate change to impress on us the urgency of taking action. What we need to know is
what we can do about it.
One day when I was talking about the importance of taking immediate
action on climate change, a good friend of mine said, “I just wish the
scientists would get together and tell us whether they think climate
change is happening.”
Well, my friend, there is a paper I want you to
see.
More
Our Quest for Meaning
Bhikkhu Bodhi (accesstoinsight.org); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
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| The stupas of Pagan, Burma, the ancient "City of Pagodas" (Platongkohphoto/flickr) |
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| You hungry for meaning? Eat Chinese food! |
However much the modern world may pride itself on its triumphs
over the foolishness of the past, the progress
we credit ourselves with has been bought at a steep price.
The price is so steep that it throws
into question the worth of our achievements. This price has been the shared conviction we've lost that our lives are endowed with any
ultimate meaning.
Even though in earlier ages humans lived in a space
populated largely by figments of the collective imagination, they could
still claim a precious asset we sorely lack: a firm belief that their everyday lives had
enduring significance stemming from a transcendent
goal.
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| "NYPD is a layoff away from joining us!" |
Present-day attitudes -- molded by scientific reductionism
and technocratic audacity -- have combined forces to sweep away from our
minds even the faint suspicion that our lives may possess any deeper
meaning than material prosperity and techie innovations.
For many people today the consequence of this militancy is a pervasive sense of meaninglessness. Cut loose from our living spiritual traditions, we drift on a sea of
confusion where all values seem arbitrary and relative. We float
aimlessly along the waves without any supreme purpose to
serve as the polestar for our ideals or inspiration for our
thoughts and actions.
Nature does not tolerate a vacuum, and humankind
does not tolerate a loss of meaning. So to escape the
plunge into the abyss of meaninglessness, we grasp after distractions.
We pursue pleasure and
power, wealth and status, surround ourselves with
contraptions, invest our hopes in emotional relationships that only
conceal our own inner poverty.
At the same time as we become absorbed in distractions to cope with our psychological void,
we stifle a deeper and more insistent need -- the
longing for a peace and freedom that does not depend on externals.
The Buddha's solution
One of the great blessings of the Buddha's teaching is the remedy
it can offer for the problem of meaninglessness so widespread in human
life today.
The Dharma can serve as a source of meaning because it provides us with the two requisites of a meaningful life -- an
ultimate goal in life and a clearcut and flexible set of
instructions to advance toward that goal from wherever we are now [even if it's in
Jay Z and Alicia Keys' overcrowded, concrete megalopolis of
New York City].
More
One day when I was talking about the importance of taking immediate
action on climate change, a good friend of mine said, “I just wish the
scientists would get together and tell us whether they think climate
change is happening.”
