FOCUS | From the Editor

“MONKS, ALL IS BURNING,” the Buddha taught in his “Fire Sermon,” freshly translated for this Spring 2012 issue of PARABOLA by scholar monk Bhikkhu Bodhi. While there is no escape from the burning of impermanence and the inner and outer conditions that come with our human bodies and minds, there is a secondary fire that can be extinguished. Through every sense door pour impressions that burn us “with the fire of greed, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of delusion.”

Awareness can cool those flames. Developing awareness is revolutionary, pulling the attention away from the usual objects of our desire, returning it to what is really arising here and now. “Meditation is the DNA of the kindness revolution,” says Pancho Ramos Stierle, who practices meditation and kindness in the midst of strife-torn, contemporary Oakland, California. Stierle and his friend Nipun Mehta, who writes about Stierle in this issue, show how the world can be transformed by picking up broken glass in the street or sitting down to meditate. As Stierle demonstrates, and as his spiritual mentors Gandhi and Buddha demonstrated before him, when we are awake there is no small act.

The editors began work on this issue by firelight and flashlight. A freak October snow storm left us with no electric light and no heat for five cold days. The shock of the storm, widely attributed to human- created climate change, inspired us to think of the way our ancestors lived, but also to think of those who will inherit the world we created. You will recognize a few younger voices in this issue, seeking new ways to live in this burning world. They and all the contributors here conclude that none of us can separate ourselves from an increasingly critical global situation, that we are each called to question what it means to live a good life.

“Everything that was external and away from us surrounds us now,” says Jonathan F.P. Rose, a Manhattan builder and thought leader in finding new ways for us to live and work. Interviewed in this issue, he adds, “The economy is globalized. But climate change knows no boundary except the earth itself. The effects will reach every one of us.” How are we to change? PARABOLA offers this issue in the spirit of illuminating that question. May it help us see that what we are and what we do matters because we are all inextricably connected and all part of a greater whole.

—TRACY COCHRAN