Occupy LA-Wisdom Quarterly activities

Council of Elders, Occupy Los Angeles, Wisdom Quarterly, Against the Stream, LACHS

Saturday, 11-4-11: 3:30 pm meditation and Dharma teaching guided by Against the Stream, south steps. SEIU Health and Wellness Fair at OLA covering addiction, mental health, both the physical and spiritual. Clinicians, counselors, mediators, 12 steppers will be there.

Sunday: 2:00 pm, Interfaith Affinity Group meeting and to discuss plans for Nonviolence Day. Less about planning and more about sharing and being together in a spiritual setting. 3:30 is a Compassionate Communication class.

• COUNCIL OF ELDERS Sunday, Nov. 20th, 3:00 pm: Noted civil rights leaders Rev. James M. Lawson, Dolores Huerta, Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd, Dr. Maher Hathout, Rabbi Leonard Beerman, and others from many of the defining American social justice movements of the 20th century. They will lead a service of solidarity and host a conversation with Occupy demonstrators and others. Similar event with other notable elders will be held in San Francisco.

Nonviolence Day is 12-3-11. Music and more. Guided meditation. Inspiring original songs incorporating devotional chanting including harmonium, bells, tambourines, guitars, drums, singing and dancing. Yoga class.

Meditation by Megan and Andrea (Against the Stream)

• Monday, Nov. 21st, 11:00 am-12:15 pm

Everyone is invited to join a Sitting Meditation and Silent Peace Walk at Occupy Los Angeles. We will send positive intentions out into the world.

Let us be the change we want to see in the world -- as we generate the combined energy of mindfulness, calm reflection, loving-kindness, and insight. The 99% and the 1% are worthy of happiness and compassion. Let's sit and walk for protestors as well as police, slum lords and slum residents, householders and homeless. Poverty, unemployment, greed, and corruption are more than a domestic issue. Help create an environment for the 100% to come together in meditation and share the intention of creating peace, harmony, and freedom for ALL beings.

Simple acts contribute to a major paradigm shift. Why? Peace in ourselves creates peace in the world.

SCHEDULE
10:50 am - Gather, get settled
11:00 am - Sitting meditation
11:20 am - Peace Walk in silence
11:50 am - Sitting mediation (20 mins)

Organized by the Los Angeles Compassionate Heart Sangha, a mindfulness meditation group practicing in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. No political affiliation.

The Buddha's Peaceful Protest

Seven, Amber Dorrian, CC Liu (Wisdom Quarterly)
(serenescentsations.com)

Peaceful demonstrations, anti-war protests, sit ins, teach ins, and the like have a long history in Buddhism. The Buddha's own life holds one great example that may have been the model for Burma's Saffron Revolution as Buddhist monks rose up to defy the totalitarian Burmese regime. He repeatedly and peacefully came between two neighboring kingdoms to prevent war. He occupied a spot by the river to bring peace. Eventually, however, he realized that their karma was such that he could only put it off. He had the penetrating insight to eventually realize that. We do not. So we are wise to continue our demonstrations indefinitely.

What peace looks like, which is what NYC's Z Park can look like if the peace is won.

• Thus have I heard. At one time petty squabbles arose between the farmers on both sides of the Rohini river. The river served as the boundary between the Shakyan [where Siddhartha grew up before setting off on a spiritual quest] and the Koliyan kingdoms. Each side was trying to divert as much water as possible to their fields. Finally, these conflicts led to a major confrontation between two armies. The Buddha becoming aware of this arrived on the scene. At first just his presence forced the sides eager for war to rethink their actions. But their selfishness, anger/fear at one another, and ignorance about what was to be lost as a result of war brought them again to the verge of war.
  

The Buddha's "sit in" on the Rohini river to prevent war became a "teach in."

• The Buddha exhorted them on the calamitous results of war and the many advantages of arriving at a peaceful resolution and just settlement. In this way, war was averted and peace restored. It is said that the Buddha has so far been the only religious teacher to visit a battlefront in person to act as a mediator that averts war which, once triggered, never really plays itself out. People, groups, and ideologies want to retaliate even centuries later. Why? It is because the roots (greed, hate/fear, delusion) that led to war have not been addressed at all.

"The people united will never be defeated," Zuccoiti Park patriots chanted as they continued to occupy a corporate creation for peace and economic justice.

War is exhausting itself. Peace is a rest. Peace is easy. Peace is natural. War opposes peace. Peace does NOT really oppose war: It just is. Peace that "opposes" war is not peace, just more war.

Peace is a state in the absence of conflicts. Nonconflict is just a base, not a goal in itself. Beyond peace we want harmony, happiness, growth, development, opposition, cultural evolution.

Conflict is neither good or bad except that what we do with it (how we respond) makes it so. What is the cause of war and peace? Each is due to the various motives in our heart/mind.

The happy resolution (repose) of thoughts that fall under the categories of greed, hate, and/or delusion certainly lead to peace. Permanent peace will only come when one has completely eradicated these mental defilements. Wars will cease and peaceful dialogue between individuals will lead to a world of peaceful and harmonious living.

• Occupy Together: The American Autumn gets heated
• Occupy Wall Street rediscovers radical imagination

Why Occupy, why Rebel?

"Peace One Day" in 3 minutes (video)

Peace One Day Concert 2011 marks the start of the 365-day Global Truce campaign leading up to Peace Day 2012! Be part of the FIRST of three concerts over the next year, including the Peace One Day concerts in collaboration with the London 2012 Festival. The O2. Tickets.

(Peace One Day) Introduction to Peace One Day created for Peace Day

Global Truce 2012 Intro

"The Buddha at War" (book)

Many Buddhist masters believe the present era of worldwide upheaval -- from 9/11 and the US War on Iraq, to the tsunami disaster and global warming -- is a new Dark Age (Kali Yuga) that requires powerful strategies for coping.



This book offers hope by bringing together Tibetan Buddhist teachings and contemporary politics. Presenting traditional Buddhist philosophy in a practical, accessible way, the book helps readers cultivate the inner resources necessary to meet challenge and conflict -- both in themselves and in the world.



Author Robert Sachs lays out a series of steps necessary to achieve this, including:

• taking personal responsibility for the future,
• understanding that there is no need to despair, and
  
  
• becoming "conscious, engaged activists" with a firm spiritual foundation to inform political actions.
  
  

Sachs's book is a galvanizing reminder, providing a strikingly Buddhist argument that actions can count, both to foster personal change and improve the world. Goodreads.com

• Obama to greet incoming troops he killed in Afghan chopper
  
  

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Rep. calls for end to War on Afghanistan

10 Years Too Long: Rep. Barbara Lee Renews Calls for End to Afghan War After Killing of Osama bin Laden

In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to vote against the 2001 resolution [belatedly] authorizing the "use of force" in Afghanistan.

Today [after the Obama administration's extrajudicial killing of Osama], she is a leading advocate for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. She is also for repealing the authorization that grants a president the authority to use force without a formal "declaration of war" issued by Congress.

“While the head of al-Qaeda is no longer around, we have to really address the root causes of terrorism and understand that we have to refocus our resources and our strategy in a way that begins to get us out of Afghanistan,” Lee says. Democracy Now! also speaks to filmmaker Robert Greenwald about his "Rethink Afghanistan" campaign and journalist Anand Gopal, reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan. More

• Democracy Now!

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