Hunger
Fall 2014 Vol. 31 #1
Fall 2014 Vol. 31 #1
Introduction
This next-to-final issue of Inquiring Mind is dedicated to the many guises and manifestations of hunger. Guest editor Wendy Johnson offers her thoughts.
Features
Visionary Zen writer David Loy asks, “Can dukkha be translated as hunger?” Linking an individual sense of lack to collective “lack,” he suggests it is time for a broader understanding of the Buddhist path.
Activist writer Raj Patel rallies us to join in a “social-movement Buddhism” to take on world hunger. “People go hungry,” he says, “not because of a deficiency of food but because of poverty.”
Like Moths Circling a Flame: Climate Change and the Danger to the World’s Food Supply
By Bhikkhu Bodhi
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi challenges Buddhists to act, even to take radical political action, to save a world threatened by climate change and a global ethic of ruthless competition.
Bhikkhu Bodhi compiled an annotated list of links to organizations working on hunger relief and related environmental issues.
Jennifer Russ shows how Buddhist Global Relief projects in Haiti, India and Cambodia empower women through work and education—to benefit not only themselves but also future generations.
Interview with Joanna Macy & John Robbins: Great Turning, Long Friendship
By Barbara Gates, Wes Nisker
Over thirty years of friendship, Joanna Macy and John Robbins have inspired each other’s work for a life-sustaining world. Their exchange examines GMOs, factory farms, pesticides, community-supported agriculture, sustainable production and the power of compassion.
Matthew Brensilver and Kim Allen discuss the Buddhist Insight Network’s recent survey, revealing common and contrasting needs, worries and hopes for teachers of color, teachers with young children and teachers who are aging.
Insight teacher Tara Brach traces back all wanting to the desire to “be” love and to belong. When we trust in our mutual belonging, we will not be overwhelmed and can work together toward healing our world. Presented with a poem by Natalie Goldberg.
Heeding the whisper of “no part left behind,” Justine Dawson left her training as an insight teacher to find a new path through the realm of the senses. She asks, “What are you hungry for?”
When Wilbur Hot Springs burns, Barbara Gates remembers her wedding anniversary there, and reflects on the great forces of plate tectonics, geysers, galaxies and love.
Nikiko Masumoto, farmer, artist and writer, works the same fields as her jiichan (grandfather) and reaffirms her family’s commitment to farm, to answer the call for sustainable food and to feed people.
Qayyum Johnson, an organic farmer at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, asks, “Am I doing enough to truly feed the people who need food the most?”
Poems & Not Poems
“This has never been a poem . . . “
Dharma Jewel
Diving deeply into this seminal work of Mahayana Buddhism, Jenny Bondurant finds that it “is really a fearless love song.”
Reviews
(336 pp., Windhorse Publications, 2014)
Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden, by Karen Maezen Miller
Reviewed By James Schnebly
(173 pp., New World Library, 2014)
(158 pp., Echo Point Books and Media, 2013)
Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects, by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown
Reviewed By James Schnebly
(352 pp., New Society Publishers, 2014)
Practice
Organic gardener and lay Zen teacher Wendy Johnson shows the common roots of dharma and farm. With farmers from the Seneca Nation, she celebrates corn, beans and squash.
The Dharma & the Drama
We humans are creating enormous problems for the other living beings on planet earth, even threatening life itself. Wes Nisker suggests it may be time for us to leave.