NY Times/Soe Than Win/Agence France-Presse

“Please use your liberty to gain ours.”
Aung San Suu Kyi

As wonderful as it was to see Aung San Suu Kyi finally being released from house arrest this past weekend, let’s remember that there are still at least 2,200 other political prisoners in Burma. As Alan Senauke, founder of the Clear View Project, wrote in an article posted on Shambhala SunSpace,

It is up to our worldwide community of conscience, hand in hand with Burma’s democracy activists, to use this opportunity and Daw Suu’s political skills to best advantage. There are still more than 2200 political prisoners in facing torture and long years in Burma’s prisons, including student leader Min Ko Naing, labor rights activist Su Su Nway, Saffron Revolution leader U Gambira, comedian/social critic Zargana, and many, many others. Among these political prisoners we have identified nearly 250 monks and nuns.

Time and again, Daw Suu made a choice to forgo her own freedom so that she could work toward the liberation of all her countrymen and women. (Did you know that when her husband, Michael Aris, was dying of cancer in 1999, she refused a chance to travel to Europe to visit him because she thought she might not be allowed back into Burma?)

The best way to celebrate Daw Suu and honor her legacy is for us to continue to act in this struggle for freedom and human rights in Burma.

Here are four things you can do to help:

1) Call for freedom for ALL of Burma’s prisoners of conscience

This page on Amnesty International’s website gives you a template for a letter to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), calling on them to exercise their influence and press Myanmar’s authorities to release all prisoners of conscience.

2) Write to the UN Secretary General

The Burma Campaign UK provides this online letter to call on United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take the lead on Burma and renew efforts to pressure Burma’s generals to release all political prisoners.

3) Adopt a Monk

The intention of this project, sponsored by the Clear View Project, is to call attention to the false imprisonment of the monks and nuns in Burma. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPPB) reports that when the international community shines a light of attention on particular prisoners, their lot improves. When one prisoner’s life improves, hope is restored. By sending regular letters on behalf of the monk or nun that you “adopt” and also providing some funding to assist with their food and medicine, you can make a difference. Find out more about Adopt a Monk here.

4) Support Freedom of Press in Burma

The Irrawaddy News Magazine is one of the few journalism outposts that provides the real story from inside Burma. It is a nonprofit media group that needs grants and donations from international supporters in order to continue its work to be an independent media voice. You can learn more and donate here.

Looking Back at the Year in Socially Engaged Buddhism

December 30, 2010

by Maia Duerr

Buddhist monks praying for peace in Thailand, May 2010

This is the full first year that The Jizo Chronicles has been up and running, so it’s a good time to look back at what’s been going on in the world of socially engaged Buddhism in 2010. (To get an idea of what’s ahead for 2011, look at the Calendar of Events that we maintain here.)

It’s been quite a year, actually.

• Two of the pioneer socially engaged Buddhist organizations, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and Zen Peacemakers, were quite active. Sarah Weintraub stepped into the role of executive director at BPF and that organization’s Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement (BASE) program is being revived. In August, the Zen Peacemakers hosted the Symposium for Western Engaged Buddhism in Montague, MA, featuring (among others) Roshi Joan Halifax, Paula Green, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Robert Thurman, and Fleet Maull.

• The Tzu Chi Foundation, which has also been around for a long time (since 1966), continued to provide help when it was needed most, in the wake of the January earthquake in Haiti.

• Newer organizations like the Interdependence Project, Buddhist Global Relief, and the Clear View Project are up to some interesting things. like IDP’s fairly bold step into the New York political arena and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s visit to the White House on behalf of Buddhist Global Relief.

• In the blogosphere, Hozan Alan Senauke just started the new Clear View blog, and other bloggers featuring socially engaged Buddhist content include Danny Fisher, Katie Loncke, Nathan of Dangerous Harvests, and Nella Lou of Smiling Buddhist Cabaret.

• By the way, the best book on socially engaged Buddhism this year, for my money, is Alan’s The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines.

• On the international scene, the biggest news without a doubt was the November release of Burma’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

• This was the year we lost Robert Aitken Roshi, fierce and dear Zen teacher, founder of the Diamond Sangha, and co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

• There were Buddhist chaplains in the Gulf after the oil spill, Buddhist peacemakers amidst the violent uprisings in Thailand, Buddhist activists sitting on the streets of San Francisco, Buddhists bearing witness in Auschwitz and Rwanda, and Buddhist monks and nuns walking for a nuclear-free future.

• Mindfulness and meditation continue to find applications in all kinds of interesting realms, from technology (like the first-ever Wisdom 2.0 conference) and education. 84,000 dharma doors indeed.

In my own life, I continue to be blessed with being in such a close relationship with Roshi Joan Halifax and Upaya Zen Center, and Upaya’s chaplaincy program. I don’t have to go more than a few dozen steps from my front door to be able to sit in the beautiful zendo there, and to hear teachings from  Joanna Macy, Fleet Maull, Ouyporn Khuankaew, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sharon Salzberg, Kaz Tanahashi, Norman Fischer, and Father John Dear (all visited Upaya this past year). I’ve also appreciated my long-distance dharma relationship with Shosan Victoria Austin of the San Francisco Zen Center and the sangha there.

My practice continues to deepen and I am ever more aware of the subtle power of the dharma to transform suffering into joy. As the old year comes to a close and the new one begins, I wish you and your loved ones great peace, great equanimity, and great compassion.

I’m sure I missed a lot in the above recounting. Please let me know your experience and memories of engaged dharma practice this past year… leave a comment below.

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Quote of the Week: Robert Aitken Roshi

December 28, 2010

tags: Robert Aitken Roshi

by Maia Duerr

The last “Quote of the Week” for the year is reserved for Robert Aitken Roshi, who passed away on August 5th of this year.

This one is short and very much to the point… may we let it support our practice in the coming year:

“Our practice is not to clear up the mystery.
It is to make the mystery clear.”

 

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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Peace on Earth

December 25, 2010

by Maia Duerr

Peace on Earth and Good Will to All!

 

Art by Mayumi Oda, Upaya Zen Center Christmas Tree

Wishing you and your loved ones a blessed holiday season…

in kindness,

Maia

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Video: Aung San Suu Kyi: At the Crossroads

December 23, 2010

tags: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma

by Maia Duerr

Okay, this looks like a real gem. Coming from Al Jazeera in partnership with the Democractic Voice of Burma, here is a roundtable with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The dialogue includes [text from Al Jazeera]:

• Maung Zarni, a Burmese dissident and an academic research fellow at the London School of Economics. His first-hand knowledge of Burma allows him to share his insights of armed conflicts, resistance, and the Burmese military.
• Mary Kaldor is professor and co-director of Gobal Governance. She has written extensively on global civil society, how ordinary people organise to change the way their countries and global institutions are run.
• Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political commentator and regular colomnist for the UK newspaper The Guardian. He is professor of European studies at Oxford University. His main interest is civil resistance and the role of Europe and the old West in an increasingly western world. In 2000, Aung San Suu Kyi invited Professor Garton Ash to Burma to speak to members of her party, the National League for Democracy, about transitions to democracies.

 

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

Two posts in one day… Jizo doesn’t do that very often! But there’s a very good reason today. Earlier, we posted the momentous news about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from detention in Burma after 21 years of detention/arrest by the military junta that has ruled that country.

Here is some wonderful video footage of her being welcomed by crowds in Rangoon. No international journalists were allowed to cover this event, but a CNN correspondent was there to capture this moment and relay it to the CNN website. You’ll need to watch an ad first, but it’s worth it to get to this film footage.

UPDATE: See this amazing video from the BBC of the moment Aung San Suu Kyi was freed. Also watch this longer background video also from the BBC which provides a good summary of recent history in Burma that led to Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention and coverage of her life, including her decision to remain under house arrest in Burma rather than travel to see her dying husband. Incredible.

photo from New York Times/European Pressphoto

I am so happy to relay this news… news that many people thought might never come to pass:

After days of rumors, it’s now official: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the bodhisattva of Burma and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is now free after 21 years of detention and house arrest.

As the New York Times reported this morning, she was “greeted at the gate of her compound by thousands of jubilant supporters.” The article goes on to say:

She stood waving and smiling in a pink, long-sleeved shirt, as people cheered, chanted and sang the national anthem in a blur of camera flashes. She held a white handkerchief in one hand.

“Thank you for welcoming me like this,” she said, clutching the iron bars of her gate as she looked out at the cheering crowd. “We haven’t seen each other for so long, I have so much to tell you.”

She said she would speak again on Sunday at the headquarters of her now defunct political party, the National League for Democracy.

“We must unite!” she said. “If we are united, we can get what we want.”

There is much more to say about what happens in Burma next, of course, but in this moment, let us rejoice that this woman who has given so much of her life for the freedom of her brothers and sisters in Burma can now taste freedom herself.