Movement Dharma: Towards a Buddhist Movement Chaplaincy
Our movements for justice and liberation are facing profound challenges in the face of rising authoritarianism, polarization, and violence. We are in need of politicized spiritual leaders and spiritual political leaders who can not only help us bear witness to suffering, but who can also provide transformative vision to help us realize our collective potential for liberation. While movement chaplaincy has been practiced arguably for generations—though it may not always have been named as such—no theorization of what Buddhism, per se, might offer our current movements for justice and liberation (beyond common, yet important, skills of accompaniment, presence, and bearing witness) have been, to our knowledge, thoroughly explored, taught, or practiced. We see an opportunity to theorize new ways of approaching the challenges our movements face from a nondual Buddhist frame, and to put the dharma in dialogue with many other movements with long spiritual and political traditions of liberatory work. We are calling this type of Buddhist movement chaplaincy “Movement Dharma.” This contributions in this issue are offered in response to this call. We …
