[Podcast] A ministry of presence & radical imagination
In March 2020 I joined a conversation with two friends, Viveka and Candradasa, about the unfolding COVID-19 crisis, and what was this was bringing up from a Buddhist perspective.
The picture I have included here is of Viveka and I, in the Pyrenees on long retreats, right after my ordination in 2018. Happier times, but even so, I feel on fire with the Dharma in a similar way that I was in that moment.
Here is the write up of what we discussed:
“A mythic sense of things is never far away in today's conversation about radical imagination: at the most intimate levels of close, personal friendship; and also culturally, historically, politically, and spiritually as we try to meet the moment of crisis to which we are all witnesses.
With Viveka and Upayadhi we discuss taking cues from anticipatory communities who deal with systemic suffering every day, and who have stored up effective responses to some of the issues we are all now facing. The questions that arise are themselves hopeful:
How do we love each other back into life when we stand in a place that feels almost impossible? How do we make actual the vision of a just, loving world? And how can we imagine that as the simplest thing rather than as the most difficult?
A great, encouraging conversation from New York City and San Francisco, where the words of Grace Lee Boggs, activist and American revolutionary, ring out: A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation, is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.
We close today's episode with a minute's silent meditation.”