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A History of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship:
The Work of Engaged Buddhism
Chapter 5: Last
Words
Faith is natural, but exacting.
It allows no stopping place.
Avolokitesvara has eleven heads, a
thousand eyes and a different tool in each hand. Our own abilities
and our wisdom are more circumscribed. If we act in concert
we have a thousand hands and eyes. Does our understanding
unfold as deep, collective wisdom, or common denominator wisdom,
individual delusion multiplied by thousands? Thich Nhat Hanh
writes, “Transformation is possible only when you are
in touch.” Can we help transform our society and our
world? Bowing to all Buddhas and ancestors for the gift of
faith in a troubled time, I believe we can.
Faith is natural, but exacting. It allows
no stopping place. Changing ourselves and our world calls
for mindful action and deep inquiry, unattached to particular
outcomes. We live in the “short aeon of swords,”
and the world is marked with unfathomable, seemingly unnecessary,
suffering. With full awareness of joy and sorrow, strength
and weakness, and with the help of good friends, kalyana mitta,
let us, “voluntarily descend into the hells which are
attached to all the inconceivable buddha-fields.” And
as we work, we can dedicate the merit of all that we do to
the benefit of all life. May all beings be free from suffering.
Much of what is written here grows out of
conversations with and essays by Robert Aitken, Nelson Foster,
Ken Kraft, Donald Rothberg, Margaret Howe, Santikaro Bhikkhu,
and other friends in and around BPF. Nine bows to these friends
and teachers.
Alan Senauke was Executive Director of
the Buddhist Peace Fellowship from 1991 through 2001. He lives
with his wife Laurie and their two young children, Silvie
and Alexander, at the Berkeley Zen Center, where he was ordained
as a Soto Zen priest in 1989. For more than thirty years Alan
has been a student and performer of traditional American music.
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