The Arrow Journal explores the relationship among contemplative practice, politics, and activism. Inspired in its founding by the teaching and social vision of meditation master Chögyam Trungpa, The Arrow welcomes the insights of multiple contemplative lineages for achieving a kinder, healthier, and more compassionate world. We encourage dialogue on wisdom and knowledge arising from methods of contemplative inquiry, ways of embodied knowing, and intellectual disciplines. In doing so, The Arrow provides a critical and much needed space for investigating the meeting point of contemplative wisdom and pressing social, political, and environmental challenges.
At the start of 2024, we excitedly forged a new partnership with Courage of Care. The joining of our two organizations, both rooted in nondual spiritual traditions committed to the visioning and creation of a liberated future, only strengthens our ability to continue publishing timely and transformative writing and artwork. As part of this new collaboration, we launched a new podcast, Presicely!, and are able to offer curated practice opportunities including a monthly book club, occasional writing workshops, an annual retreat, and courses and symposia related to special-issue themes.
What’s in a name? In many cultures, the arrow is a traditional image of bravery and precision. Within the speed and chaos of our present world, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we might benefit others and society.
Mission
The Arrow Journal fosters thoughtful, nuanced, and scholarly investigation of the applications of contemplative wisdom traditions to addressing global challenges. We aim to be a tool of compassionate disruption of habitual cultural, political, and economic norms that wreak havoc on people and planet. In this way, we encourage contemplative practitioners to sharpen their understanding of how dharma calls on them to show up for suffering and injustice in the world. Simultaneously, we invite policymakers, scholars, and activists to consider alternative ways of knowing that fall outside the western mainstream as necessary and useful perspectives for meaningfully confronting the challenges we face as a global community.
Vision
At The Arrow Journal, we envision an awake society in which humans create political, economic, and cultural practices and institutions that support all people in discovering their innate worth, wisdom, and compassion; in living meaningful and fulfilling lives; in celebrating and respecting human diversity; and in promoting the health, resilience, and flourishing of the more-than-human world.
Team
The Arrow Journal is managed by a small team of editors, creatives, and advisors, as well as the staff and Board of Directors at Courage of Care, our home organization since 2024.
Staff
CHIEF EDITORS
Brooke D. Lavelle, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder of Courage of Care, a non-profit focused on nurturing a field of culture-change workers, or “relational facilitators”, in the art of transformative gathering and community building to support the heart of our movements for justice and liberation. She also is the Program Director for Buddhist Studies at Union Theological Seminary.
Brooke has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for over 25 years, and has been teaching relational contemplative practice for nearly as long. She holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies and Embodied Cognition from Emory University, an M.A. in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism from Columbia University and a B.A. in Religion and Psychology from Barnard College. For many years she studied, taught, and researched diverse models of compassion training and their related frameworks of liberation. As a dancer and devoted student of martial arts, she loves helping people (re)discover their inner sense of power and love and (re)awaken their commitment to relating to others with dignity and care.
Brooke has long worked in spiritual communities as well as organizations and movements working for healing and liberation, and has experience leading national and international political, educational, and climate justice projects. She consulted with the International Solidarity Matters Project, is a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute and the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies in Germany, and has taught courses on compassion-based approaches to anti-oppressive education at the University of Virginia and San Francisco State University. Brooke now runs a community house and urban farm in Brooklyn, NY, and is keenly interested in the micro-relational work it takes to sustain a collective. In these times of great rupture and realignment, she aims to help people imagine and embody new ways of being in solidarity and in right relationship together.
Maha El-Sheikh, M.A., is the Co-Director of Courage of Care. With 20 years working in the international humanitarian sector, Maha’s work currently focuses on the social injustices underlying our global crises. As a facilitator, she is inspired by 15 years living and working in Palestine and Lebanon, learning how connection to heart, beloved community, mutual aid, joy, and compassion can serve as antidotes to oppression, colonization, injustice and violence. She is eager to support those working in the aid sector to not only find sustainable ways of working in the face of ongoing violence and destruction, but also to find ways of seeking alignment—personally and professionally—with values of love and liberation.
Maha is the co-founder of the first non-profit, volunteer-run yoga center in Palestine, and brings her experience in studying and teaching trauma-informed yoga, somatics, and meditation to explore the interconnection of healing, social transformation, and justice. She has mentored numerous individuals in on their healing and facilitation journeys. Maha’s approach is warm, spacious, and devotional—as a lover of poetry, especially of mystical origins—she has a way of guiding people toward healing with gentle and direct insights.
CO-EDITOR
Mishka Erdenesanaa 
is a third-year M.Div candidate in Buddhism and Interreligious Engagement at Union Theological Seminary. Her training and background is in journalism, creative writing, hospital chaplaincy, and Vajrayana Buddhism. Her academic and professional focuses currently include socially engaged Buddhism, collective memory, and intergenerational healing.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Naya Armendarez Jones, Ph.D., (she/her) is a critical geographer and cultural worker. Through research and artmaking, she lifts up Black geographies of health, ecologies, and healing in North and Latin America using a range of qualitative, archival, botanical, and creative methods. Her current projects focus on African-American ecological knowledge beyond the United States South; mapping Blaxicana futures through arts-based autoethnography; and reimagining (ethno)botanical pedagogy. www.nayajones.com
James Rowe, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. His interdisciplinary research program is motivated by a desire to understand and strengthen social movements working towards social and ecological justice. His work cuts across three main areas – political theory, social movement strategy, and political economy – in order to develop an integrated and critical understanding of the challenges social movements face. James recently authored the book Radical Mindfulness. His work has also appeared in the journals: The Arrow, BC Studies, BioScience, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, New Political Science, Socialist Studies, Studies in Political Economy, and Theory & Event. He has also written for public-facing outlets: The Conversation, Corporate Knights, Jacobin, Lion’s Roar, openDemocracy, Truthout, The Tyee, Vancouver Sun, The National Observer and Waging Nonviolence.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., M.A., Th.D. is a pastoral counselor and spiritual director in private practice. She is the principal co-founder and chief editor of Buddhist Justice Reporter, author of Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, Buddhist-Christian DIalogue, U.S. Law, and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care, and other works. Her current project is Year of the Black Woman Spiritual Direction. Her website address is www.pamelaayoyetunde.com.
CO-FOUNDER
Gabriel Dayley co-founded The Arrow Journal, serving as Chief Editor from 2014 to 2023. He currently works as Climate Protection Program Manager for Albemarle County, Virginia, with a focus on ensuring that strategies for local climate action are equitable, inclusive, and just. Gabe formerly served as Executive Director of the Shambhala Meditation Center of Washington, DC. He received a master’s degree in international peace and conflict resolution from American University and a bachelor’s in international relations from Pomona College.
PAST COLLABORATORS
The Arrow Journal wishes to thank founding team members, past editors, advisors, and the former Board of Directors for their vision and service, including Managing Editors shah noor hussein and Ashley Wilson; Creative Director Alicia W. Brown; Board of Directors Martina Bouey, Sharon Owyang, Sheryl Petty, Rachel DeMotts, Gaylon Ferguson, Michaele L. Ferguson, Holly Gayley, Michael Gayner, David Kahane, Sara Lewis, Adam Lobel, Judith Simmer-Brown, Aarti Tejuja, and Gregory Lubkin (in memorium).