FOCUS | From the Editor
Few people in modern times know the steps of the noble eightfold path as well as Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi. In 1972, as his fellow young Americans protested the Vietnam War and sought a way out of the confining materialism of the age, he left Western culture entirely, entering a Theravada Buddhist monastic order in Sri Lanka. Believing the best way to help the world was to work on himself, he lived in a monastery in Asia for decades. A master of Pali, the ancient Indo-Aryan language in which the earliest Buddhist texts are preserved, he translated, taught, and lived the way the Buddha called “the way to the cessation of suffering.”
Yet as he relates in a galvanizing essay written for this Spring 2013 issue of Parabola, his perspective changed as he progressed on the path: “Our task today, in my understanding, is to complement the ascending spiritual movement with a descending movement, a gesture of love and grace flowing down from the heights of realization into the valleys of our ordinary lives.”
Returning to the United States after decades in Asia, the eminent monk learned more about global issues and observed how Buddhism was being assimilated in the West. He was struck that “Buddhist practice was narrowly understood in terms of one’s personal meditation, which served a largely therapeutic function.” It seemed to him that Buddhism “was being taken up as a path to personal fulfillment rather than a means of tackling the deepest roots of suffering both for oneself and others.”
The fruit of his concern, expressed to friends and fellow Buddhists, was the founding of Buddhist Global Relief, a nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating hunger, developing sustainable food production, and educating and improving the lives of women and girls. Allowing that such activities may not square perfectly with the Buddhist orthodoxy that nurtured him, Ven. Bodhi writes “that sometimes one must give priority to one’s deep intuitions.”
“Spirit in the World” investigates and celebrates many other journeys, inner and outer. Among its highlights are a reflection on embodiment, a Hasidic story about the gift of giving, a visit with G.I. Gurdjieff, and an epic, healing ride for a wounded people. Some of these journeys arise from the heart of tradition; others leave the established map of higher truth for the wild territory of our own experience. May all of them inspire you.
—TRACY COCHRAN
