King intended these words as a comment on the Vietnam War specifically, and on war generally, but when I hear them I think of more day-to-day concerns, and of the way in which our ideals—the way we want to live our lives—become separated from how we actually live, moment by moment. We may want peace in our lives, but we more often end up with strife.

It seems every close relationship we enter is begun in the future hope of continued shared happiness, intimacy, and joy. And yet if we’re not careful we end up with distance, bitterness, and blame. We’d like to get from point A to point B, but end …

The four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism are trying to find common ground to carry forward Lord Buddha’s teachings in way they can be used to resolve geo-political conflicts, says Thrinley Thaye Dorje, the 17th spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

‘The awareness that the four schools have to find common ground is getting stronger. It will happen because unity among the Buddhist sects is crucial to world peace,’ 27-year-old Thrinley Dorje told IANS in an interview in Bodh Gaya, the seat of Gautama Buddha’s enlightenment.

‘It can solve conflicts because the teachings of Buddha are based on bringing inner and outer peace,’ he added.

The four schools are the ancient Nyingma tradition, the Karma Kagyu school, the Sakya …

Every day, almost without fail, Connie Tellman escapes to the solitude of her grown daughter’s former room to meditate.

After doing yoga postures to relieve body tension, she sits cross-legged on a pillow, hands resting on her knees, eyes closed. For 15 minutes or so, she silently repeats her personal mantra, breathes rhythmically from her diaphragm and methodically touches the 108 small wooden beads of her mala necklace.

“Your mind concentrates on the breath,” said the 52-year-old Indianapolis woman. “You go within and close out the distractions of the world, so you can focus on your inner self.”

Local people who meditate agree on how it makes them feel: peaceful, calm, centered.

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Virginia resident Kia Scherr walked quietly through the jasmine-scented halls of Mumbai’s Oberoi Trident high-rise hotel as Indian staff members gently smiled.

On Nov. 26, 2008, her husband, Alan Scherr, 58, and their 13-year-old daughter Naomi were killed when gunmen opened fire in the hotel’s oceanfront restaurant. The Scherrs were among six Americans killed in the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead and more than 230 wounded.

Now Kia Scherr has come to India to meet President Obama during his three-day visit to Mumbai and New Delhi. She said she wants to thank him in person for the condolence letter he wrote her after the attacks, which were carried out by 10 gunmen from Pakistan.

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In Pocket Peace, Allan Lokos, founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center located on New York City’s upper west side, offers some practical advice for those of us who are seeking to create more balance in our lives.

It’s no newsflash that living in modern times can be a challenge to the development of our spiritual selves. The truth of the matter, however, is that there have always been daunting challenges to developing a strong spiritual practice. Early Buddhists recognized this by creating the “Paramis,” or “Perfection Practices.” In this book, Lokos re-investigates the Buddhist “Paramis” and builds on them by offering effective “pocket practices” that we can use …

Lokabandhu, a peace activist, finds Lin Jensen’s new book to be a moving evocation of Buddhism’s ethos of lovingkindness.

Together Under One Roof is Lin Jensen’s third volume, and follows in the footsteps of Bad Dog! and Pavement (already reviewed here). It’s a more slender volume than the others, but still a delightful read and in places very moving.

Like the others, it’s a series of essays in which he takes an ordinary event and reflects upon it, drawing out of it some nugget for reflection, some correspondence with the teachings of Buddha or Zen, some motivation to deepen his practice. In …

The image of meditators remaining aloof from the world, caught up in examining the metaphorical fluff in their mental bellybuttons, still lingers on despite the fact that many practitioners are deeply involved in social actions like feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, teaching prison inmates, and working to solve environmental issues.

Hopefully the first-ever Symposium for Western Socially Engaged Buddhism, organized by the Zen Peacemakers, will help put the myth of the disengaged meditator to rest, especially since the event’s speakers include some big names from the world of Buddhism (and beyond).

Starting Monday, Aug. 9 through Saturday, Aug. 14, influential pioneers of Western Socially Engaged Buddhism will speak and engage conversations about Social Entrepreneurship, Politics, Challenges for

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Union Leader: RAYMOND, NEW HAMPSHIRE – Concerns about the type of crowd that might gather and a lack of information led the board of selectmen to deny a request by a local resident to hold a yoga for peace event at the town common on Sunday.

Sunday is the International Day of Peace, which is sanctioned by the United Nations.

Resident Molly Schlangen sent a letter to the board requesting use of the town common for a brief gathering with complimentary yoga classes to “promote peace in our community and in our world.”

Schlangen, a local yoga instructor and formerly the school nurse at Lamprey River Elementary School, held the same event last year. About 20 people attended and took part in …

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation for such method is love.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I feel it when driving — that desire to get back at the person who cuts me off, or who tailgates, or who nearly hits my car while talking on a cellphone — that surge of fear and anger that causes the heart to beat faster and the hands to tighten around the steering wheel and the thoughts to turn to revenge. If …

Lin Jensen’s little book Pavement — Reflections on mercy, activism, and doing “nothing” for peace (Wisdom, March 2007) arrived in the mail a few weeks ago and has been by my bedside since, an almost-daily source of inspiration in the mornings before rising. Its 36 short chapters are an easy read, but squarely address a tough theme — how to respond as a Buddhist when you are a citizen of a country you believe to be violent and to be engaged in violent acts, in this case America and her war in Iraq.

Jensen is a man of deep feeling, a long-standing Zen Buddhist, and possessed of a passionate need …