A favorite image in many Buddhist traditions is of the bodhisattva who ferries people from the world of delusion, across the sea of suffering, to a home of wisdom and compassion. The word “bodhisattva” means awakened being, or in today’s language, a “woke” person. To be awake is to be aware of the multiple layers of narrative that run through…
Around the world, citizens are arising with new energy for transformation. The Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements were two recent manifestations of this. People are demanding that they participate and lead in their own governance and development. It is time to move beyond the control of corporatocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, patriarchy, and militarism. Citizens are capable of governing…
At the Garrison Institute, we believe our current ecological crisis is also a spiritual crisis—one that asks us to both deepen our emotional, intuitive, and embodied ways of relating to the earth and to expand our collective sense of perspective, meaning, and solidarity around the global crisis. However, in addition to our efforts to encourage a societal shift around profound…
The term “Buddhist economics” first appeared in E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. In her new book, Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science, Clair Brown builds on Schumacher’s understanding of the term while focusing on what she sees as our two biggest economic challenges: global warming and inequality. The Buddhist…
Imagine if you identified yourself as an oxygen atom. All your life you’ve somehow known oxygen is your identity. Even when you combine with another oxygen atom to form O2, you have no confusion because you and your kin are the oxygen that animals breathe to live. But there’s another kid on the block that is even more abundant than…
Developer Jonathan Rose and physician Prabhjot Singh each published books infused with systems thinking in 2016. Rose’s The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life offers a model for how to design our cities in ways that increase the equality, resilience, adaptability, and well-being of its residents. Singh’s Dying…