TFF Blog

Photo: David Loy at an Extinction Rebellion protest in Denver. Photo by denver.cbslocal.com How do bodhisattvas respond to the greatest crisis of our time? Appropriately, says Buddhist teacher, activist and TFF Associate, David Loy. By David Loy One of my favorite Zen stories is short and simple. A student asks the master, “What is the constant activity of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas?” In other words, what’s special about the day-to-day lives of awakened people? The master replies: “Responding appropriately.” That’s all. No special powers, except being fully attentive to what’s actually happening and acting accordingly. “We don’t know what is possible, we don’t know what will work, but we do our best.” That’s an easy thing to do in a monastery. When the bell rings, you put on your robe and go to the Buddha Hall for meditation. But what about when one leaves the monastery gates and steps...

s came Thatcherism and Reaganism. Their governments set about a heavy-handed pruning of the social welfare safety net. Poverty rose dramatically. Fortunately for their people, the governments of the rest of Europe, by and large, did not emulate the Anglo-Saxons. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair in the late 1990s introduced what they said was the “Third Way” – something between naked capitalism and over-demanding socialism. Clinton tried but failed, to fashion a fairer health system, although, paradoxically, he cut welfare payments for the poorest in the mistaken belief that this would drive the poor to find jobs (Later he admitted his mistake). In Britain, the child poverty rate plummeted. Then came the Great Recession of 2008. This indeed was the result of wicked capitalism. The crash of the big New York bank Lehman Brothers triggered a tsunami of bankruptcies, unemployment and increased poverty across the world. The...

Above a modified image of President Ronald Reagan with Afghan mujahideens – ‘freedom fighters’ against Soviet communism – in 1983. Since George W. Bush – a friend of the bin Laden family – declared the global “War On Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayers approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters… And it has involved virtually all Western – NATO/EU – countries, sent millions of refugees and terrorists in all directions and created a surveillance state everywhere. It has come to threaten and undermine privacy, trust, freedom and democracy – in short, undermined everything the West/Occident believed it stood for. It has destroyed the idea of the good society and a future in peace. And has it succeeded in reducing or abolishing terrorism? No, on the contrary. In the years up to 9/11 2001 about 400 people were killed in political terrorist...

In Munich this past weekend at the Security Conference the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, nailed her anti-Chinese colours to the mast. Despite being a liberal on many issues and the leader of the fight to impeach President Donald Trump, she has joined forces with Trump in preaching that the West must not allow itself to be penetrated by Huawei’s 5G phone technology, (which is cheaper than any Western counterpart). But she appeared to have no response to a former Chinese ambassador to the UK who asked what was wrong with Huawei seeking Western markets when Microsoft, Google and Facebook were such big players in China. The Chinese government didn’t feel its security was threatened by them. He could also have added that if they do anything that the Chinese government doesn’t like China is always able to deal with it – it has blocked out...

Today TFF launches “Bootprint – Militarism and Environment” – a curated, free-of-charge online magazine that brings you quality knowledge about the connections between the two most urgent problems that humanity faces. These two main clusters of problems which, if not solved, threaten to destroy humanity, our Earth and all future potentials are: Environment – with catchwords such as climate change, global warming, CO2 footprint, non-sustainability, pollution, resource depletion, species extinction, variety and diversity reduction, rain forest destruction, overconsumption, fossil fuels economy, limitless material growth, etc. etc. – and Militarism – with catchwords such as warfare, nuclear weapons, arms production and trade, militarization of land, air, space and oceans, tension creating, interventionism, base networks, terrorism, cyber and propaganda warfare, other weapons of mass destruction, special forces operations, intelligence agency crimes, imperialism, etc. The two clusters a fundamentally connected – militarism is enormously destructive of the environment; climate change and other processes...

Oxford, UK (Special to Informed Comment) – On February 11, 2020, the Islamic Republic of Iran marks the 41st anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Thus, it has defied the Trump administration’s prediction of its demise for two years beyond its allotted time. In his speech at a conference of the MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq or People’s Jihadis) in 2017, for which he received huge fees, the former National Security Advisor John Bolton said: “The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its fortieth birthday…and that is why before 2019 we here will celebrate in Tehran.”[1] In 2018 President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani also predicted: “Freedom is right around the corner … next year I want to have this convention in Tehran.”[2] The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his neocon allies have tried very...

and 2016 the average income of the bottom 50% of earners in the world nearly doubled. Direct interventions like building more schools, clinics and hospitals, countering child mortality and deadly diseases, feeding the hungry when famine or floods decimate vast areas, spreading the use of vaccinations and contraception, and preventing malaria have had the most impact. Over the long-term economic growth is important if development is to proceed without foreign aid. Growth does produce more of the wherewithal for government social and development programs – if a government so decides. But we cannot rely just on growth to improve peoples’ lives. China and India have both had periods of high growth, but now are slowing. Is this inevitable or is it, as in China, just a maturing of the economy? This export-led economy can’t grow its exports faster than the world economy is growing. In India, after a 30 year...

The main building of Lund University, situated next to the Lund Cathedral in the centre of town And why I lived happily ever after Albeit small, this is a piece of Nordic academic history that deserves to be shared. It’s an early example of the destruction of Nordic peace and conflict research and education that followed By Jan Oberg February 10, 2020 Last November 2019, it was 30 years since I left Lund University as associate professor and head of the Lund University Peace Research Institute, LUPRI, from 1983-1989. I did so, and have been a freelancer ever since because the Faculty of Social Sciences that year had decided to close down all inter or multi-disciplinary research and teaching, units and departments at the university – that is, peace and conflict research, women studies, human rights studies, environmental studies and human ecology studies. In my view, this was a disastrous...

Can we be happier? All of us probably experience grave unhappiness at some point in our lives- a bereavement of someone close, a job loss, a bad illness, a vindictive boss, a drop in income or status, a loss of love for or from one’s partner, even a divorce, a standard of living when ends can hardly be met. Every reader can add their own woes to this list. Yet the world as a whole does appear to be getting happier, except in a few countries where war or fighting has taken over- Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi and Sudan, for example. Indeed the lessening of war is one reason for rising happiness around the world. Another is the rapid decline in infant and maternal mortality- don’t ever think that a big Indian or African family today or a 19th century European family doesn’t or didn’t feel immense pain if a...

in May and June. This is “the largest deployment of U.S. troops to Europe in more than 25 years,” NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg tells us. I assume, proudly. But wait … What on Earth is NATO and its Secretary-General saying and doing? Do they live in the same world as the rest of us? How low should the intellectual level sink before it becomes a security risk for the world? And just how do they get away with deceiving the world with their militarised mantra about stability, security and peace – no matter it is always about more weapons and offensive military strength – virtually without any important (if they are) mainstream media reporting it, not to mention ask questions about it? The last one is simple to answer: 1) Censorship; 2) Self-censorship; 3) Framing and 4) The Military-Industrial-MEDIA-Academic Complex (MIMAC) – that is, the very close relations between media,...

By David Loy Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil, but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. Originally posted in Tricycle’s Magazine in spring 2002, here If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Alexander Solzhenitsyn Because it emphasizes mindfulness of our thought processes, Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. We distinguish between the opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends...

Let’s cut to the chase – there is no question, no doubt, that the government of Myanmar and the army which controls it have committed the most vile atrocities against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority that lives in the West of the Buddhist-dominated country. The International Court of Justice (the World Court) which ruled last week against the Myanmar government, may not have concluded it was genocide as some say but it did unreservedly condemn the government for its atrocious sowing of violent mayhem against the Rohingya. The Court has ordered Myanmar to take steps to prevent acts of genocide against the 700,000 or so Rohingya that remain in exile, mainly in overcrowded, unsanitary refugee camps and the 500,000 who still reside in Myanmar, and to prevent the destruction of any evidence of genocide. The Court will continue to gather evidence of attempted genocide. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres,...