BPF | Work Around the World

A History of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship: The Work of Engaged Buddhism
Chapter 3: Work around the world

BPF is based in the United States, so we have a strong network of activists and supporters here. There are some 15 BPF-affiliated chapters, each doing Buddhist-inspired activist work in their own communities. The BPF National Office provides support and encouragement for BPF chapters, as well as activists doing independent work here and abroad. Our new volunteer BASE Program is flourishing, and we publish our provocative, nonsectarian Turning Wheel quarterly magazine.

Our international work has focused on Asia. Last year, with a $5,000 grant from the Kaiser Foundation, we sponsored mobile medical teams for displaced Burmese on both sides of the Thai/Burma border; a second grant has just come through for this year. Many BPF members worked for and rejoiced in Aung San Suu Kyi's release from six years of house arrest, just the first step towards democracy in Burma. Our Tibetan revolving loan program has distributed $40,000 in low interest loans to right livelihood projects in Tibetan exile communities in Nepal and India. BPF's East Bay Chapter has a long-standing program that provides thousand of meals to Tibetan children in the settlements. We celebrated Sulak Sivaraksa's successful defense against charges of lese majeste, defamation of the king and former leaders of Thailand's military junta. Keeping in mind our vow to save all sentient beings, not just Buddhists, board members and friends attended the NGO Conference for Women, and work with “women in Black” to promote peace and reconciliation in what was once Yugoslovia.

BPF's domestic work (which, of course, includes BASE) centers on issues of weapons control and non-violence. We helped create the program of spiritual leaders and nuclear survivors commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki presented last August at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Local members were key organizers of a week-long East Bay Peace Walk, from Richmond to Livermore, California, underscoring the links between handgun violence in the neighborhoods and nuclear arms on the geopolitical stage. Our summer 1995 Institute, with Nelson Foster, David Grant, Fran Peavey, and Tova Green, focused on ways of transforming violence. We are also working for a ban on land mines, cheap weapons of mass destruction produced in the U.S. and Europe and used in unimaginable numbers throughout the world, something we have learned about through the teachings of Maha Ghosananda and our friends in Cambodia. As an ecumenical Buddhist organization, BPF is creating a Buddhist Ethics Project to provide resources and offer training in matters of ethics and misconduct for Buddhist centers and for individuals facing these issues within their communities. Resources include mediation, pastoral counseling, legal referral, healing, and advice to sanghas about ethical guidelines and procedures. In this work we are closely allied with Jan Chozen Bays, Robert Aitken, Yvonne Rand and others in the Western Buddhist Teachers' network.

This patchwork of programs has great strengths and weaknesses. The main strength is our ability to act quickly and flexibly. We respond to what is right in front of us, as our training in mindfulness teaches us to do. Another strength is that we are consistent. Over the years, we've tried to keep our key issues in sight — nuclear disarmament, democracy and human rights in Tibet, Burma, and elsewhere, social and environmental awareness in our communities. To them have been added matters of race and gender in society and in our sanghas, ethics, and building engaged Buddhist communities. We are careful about our commitments because we intend to see them through. Our principle weakness is lack of strategy. How do we chose the work we do? What approach do we take? Are we about service or social transformation — is there a clear distinction? Do all the pieces of our program support each other; do they flow from a guiding vision?