Is our practice merely a way to stay calm during the crises around us?
Or is it something more, a way to help formulate a response to these difficult times?
Donald Rothberg believes that our dharma resources are fundamental to the future of humanity.
He explores how we can connect our inner work with community and social responses that are crucial now, by asking:
- How do we sustain mindfulness in the middle of community organizing?
- How do we employ wise speech?
- Can we use our inner resources to cut through the social conditioning of racism, sexism, and homophobia?
- Do we see how greed, hatred, and delusion manifest in our systems and institutions?
In this rich talk and discussion, he helps us explore how we can see the world through spiritual eyes by starting with equanimity and compassion.
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Donald Rothberg, Ph.D., a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Center, and a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, teaches retreats and groups on concentration and insight meditation practice, lovingkindness practice, transforming the judgmental mind, mindful communication, working skillfully with conflict, and socially engaged Buddhism. He has practiced insight meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen, body-based psychotherapy, and trauma work. He has helped guide many six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality, both Buddhist-based and interfaith, and is the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World, and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in Dialogue.