Buddhists Respond to Terrorism:

What We’ve Been Practicing For by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Welcome to the Real World by Judith L. Lief

Waking Up the Nation by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Real Enemy by Rimpoche Nawang Gehlek

Anger and Patience by Rimpoche Nawang Gehlek

Nothing to Regret by Clark Strand

Spaces in the Sky by Stephen Batchelor

The Gateway to Compassion by Lama Palden

 

“They insulted me,
hit me,
beat me,
robbed me”
—for those who don’t brood on this,
hostility is stilled.

Hostilities aren’t stilled
through hostility,
regardless.

Hostilities are stilled
through non-hostility:
this, an unending truth.

                    —Shakyamuni Buddha

 

The Dead No Not Want Us Dead

The dead do not want us dead;

such petty errors are left for the living.

Nor do they want our mourning.

No gift to them—not rage, not weeping.

Return one of them, any one of them, to the earth,

and look; such foolish skipping,

such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!

Even a cucumber, even a single anise seed: feasting.

—Jane Hirschfield
September 15, 2001

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