I am launching a major new course for 2026, on the topic of how we deal with political turmoil.
Here’s why:
It sometimes seems that the world we’re living in is falling apart in terrifying ways.
I feel oppressed by the knowledge that the world is on a very wrong track at the moment. My fears of where things might go are a heavy burden to carry. The events unfolding around me were once unthinkable and are now shocking and I view them with a sense of disbelief. It’s like one day I woke up and found myself in the wrong timeline. How can all this be happening?
Much that we value is being lost or is under threat: a livable climate, free speech, the rule of law and due process, the reliability of the US as an international partner, our expectation that the world had learned “never again” with regard to genocide, the assumption that larger countries should not invade smaller ones just because they can, the belief that all human lives matter and that racism and xenophobia are wrong, economies in which ordinary people can better themselves, trust in science and medicine — even democracy itself.
n so many ways a familiar world (imperfect though it is) seems to be crumbling around us, being replaced by something crueler, less human. The forces of authoritarianism and fascism, although largely defeated, never went away, even in liberal democracies, but they’re undergoing a dark resurgence.
Change is coming at us so fast that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We might feel paralyzed with terror. We might feel tempted to give up in despair. We might find ourselves consumed with rage.
I have to say, some of you might be sick of politics. You might want to just hide.
But that’s what authoritarians want. They do and say outrageous and cruel things at a breakneck pace so that we’ll feel overwhelmed and hopeless, and so that we’ll stop paying attention. We can’t let that happen, because things will just get worse. Many, many people will suffer.
We can’t directly change the upsetting things that are happening in the world around us. But we can change how we respond to them. And if we want the world to change direction, that’s what we’re going to have to do.
A new course
For the last few months I’ve been working on a new course on how we can learn to stay calm, open-hearted, and optimistic as the world is falling apart.
The course is structured around three broad headings for spiritual practice:
- Feet On the Ground: This means learn to calm ourselves even in the midst of chaos and outrage. This involves not just mindfulness, but the sense of calm empowerment that comes from knowing we’re doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We practice self-care to keep ourselves in balance. We get smarter about reading the news and using social media.
- Heart Wide Open: This includes actions such as supporting ourselves with self-compassion, staying open to the sufferings of others, and cultivating joy as a form of resistance. It includes becoming more fearless. It includes reconnecting with the good that exists in the world and remembering that there are more people who want peace and unity than want violence and division. It includes connecting with and working with those people.
- Keep Looking Up: This includes developing and maintaining our faith in a better world. It involves becoming clearer about what a better world would look like. It’s about learning to work with other people of good will to make that a reality.
Taking action — which is one of the emphases of this course — doesn’t necessarily mean becoming an activist. It might mean encouraging those who are. It might mean holding a sign at a rally. It might mean contributing to groups that are working for good. It might mean staying in touch with others who know that what’s going on is wrong, and offering each other moral support. It might include smiling at strangers, and showing that you’re not cowed. It might mean reading an inspiring book with friends. However little we can do, it’s important we do it.
We can push for the creation of a better world, starting here, starting now. In the future, you’ll want to be able to say, “We couldn’t stop them. But we slowed them down. And when the insanity collapsed in on itself, we’d already worked out how we wanted to rebuild things.”
How it works
This course is based on others I’ve run in the past — especially “Love Your Enemies” and “Politics As a Spiritual Practice” — which many people found helpful. I’ve been substantially reworking the materials from those courses and creating new content to make sure I address the renewed threat of fascism and authoritarianism, how we resist it, how we live with it, and how we make it less likely to happen next time.
- The course starts Wednesday, 28th of January.
- This course has a weekly email, which will go out on Wednesdays at 5 AM US Eastern Time. Each email contains a substantial essay, or a part of one.
- There will be meditations, but the emphasis is more on the readings, reflections, and practice suggestions.
- The number of emails isn’t finalized, but the course will probably run for the whole year.
- There will be live Zoom discussion groups every two weeks where we can talk about the articles, our thoughts and feelings, and our lives. I’m aiming to do these at two different times, to accommodate people in the US, the UK and Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Bear in mind it’s not possible to suit everyone’s schedule. Details to follow.
- We can also have written discussions in the community website. Participation and sharing are important.
Our world falling apart is an opportunity
The title of this course is not meant to be alarmist or depressing. In a sense the world is always falling apart. Our own bodies are falling apart, right now. The leaf in the photograph above is falling apart. What keeps things together is the ongoing work of building and sustaining. As well as falling apart, your body is constantly healing and growing. The leaf’s very falling apart is the condition that supports the growth of new leaves. Old institutions die, and new ones are created.
The falling apart of the old world is like the death of a leaf. It looks like a loss. But it’s also an opportunity for new growth. We know that the world we lost, no matter how much we mourn its passing, can never be put back together again the way it was. And it shouldn’t. It fell apart because it was a bad world for too many people. What we grow in the leaf litter has to be something better, fairer, more just, more human. It has to be a world in which all people can flourish. That’s what we need to aim for. What is that world like? How do we get there? We’ll talk about that together.
This course is only open to those who sponsor Wildmind, thereby giving me the opportunity to reflect and write. But it’s easy to become a sponsor, and it’s only $8 a month. That’s a sound investment in an exploration that will help you feel happy and balanced amidst the turbulence, and that will help you be of more use to our suffering world.
With love,
Bodhipakṣa
22 Comments. Leave new
I am considering doing this but live in Europe. Would the time difference be an issue?
Hi, Marion.
One of the Zoom sessions is scheduled for 2030h on Thursdays, for 90 minutes. That’s European time. The gatherings would be every two weeks.
Hi Marion,
I’m considering it too. I’m in the UK
I am interested. As an American permanently residing in New Zealand I have felt isolated yet deeply concerned about changes underway in the States. I have worked in Congress and at the local political level before I came to New Zealand to live (marriage). Can you let me know what the time of the zoom discussions are likely to be in NZ (Auckland) please. Will they also be recorded – will all be recorded? Viryasuri
Hi, Viryasuri.
Unless something drastic changes, the gatherings would be at 8:30–10:00 AM Friday, and 1:30–3:00 PM Fridays, Auckland time. This would change over the course of the year as daylight saving starts and ends.
Have the dates and times of this course been established yet?
Hey, guys. You mean for the Zoom calls? Those are scheduled for Thursdays, 2:30–4:00 and 7:30–9:00 on Thursdays, US Eastern time. They’d be every two weeks. I believe it would be an hour earlier for you. That might move around a bit over the course of the year as the clocks move forward and backward.
I have been thinking and feeling about the very same things you have been talking about here. I grew up in the sixties and was frustrated extremly about politics in the US and President Nixon. But this is so much worse. My emotions and frustrations have increased much more with the awful influence of Pres Trump on politics and with the people who support him. I need to keep up with it. But it is driving me around the bend. I went here tonight to see if you might be making some suggestions on how to deal with this as Buddhists and Meditators. And you are doing just that. As soon as I can I will be sending fees for this Initiative and putting it into effect.
Blessings, Joan from ONTARIO
PS How do I sign into zoom for this?
Hi, Mimi.
Things are extraordinarily troubling right now for many of us (although my MAGA relatives don’t see any problems with anything that’s happening). Anyway, as for the Zoom calls, first, sign up for the course in the Community website. You’ll find it under “Subscribe to online courses.” At a later date I’ll send all course participants details about the Zoom calls, including the times and the links.
If you scroll back down through the blog posts here you’ll find several articles about dealing with the current political situation. You might find them helpful.
One of the most upsetting, heart breaking things that have been happening for two years is watching a genocide live streamed on our phones, the genocide of the Palestinian people. It would have been nice to see that acknowledged in your list of upsetting things in the world today. A simple phrase adding ‘watching a genocide being live streamed on our phones” is all that was needed. Senior Theravada monk, Bikkhu Bodhy has been commenting on this shocking silence of Western Buddhists as we see a people being erased after 70 years of occupation and an apartheid regime. Shame on the silence and constant omission of the Palestinians. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17MxRuCC2R/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Thank you for your passionate concern and for reminding me of this oversight.
I can assure you, the mass slaughter that’s going on in Gaza deeply troubles me, and it’s not something I’m silent on. Last week someone accused me of being a Hamas sympathizer for condemning the genocide in Gaza. Now I’m being accused of not caring about it.
Anyway, I’ve added a mention of that issue. I couldn’t use the wording you suggested because this is a list of things we’re losing, but I found a way to include it.
Thanks for the link to Vince’s article, by the way. He’s a good guy, and I’m looking forward to reading his piece.
Thanks for a reminder that for westerners, Buddhism is just leftism in a saffron cloak. Not a word from you condemning the Hamas massacre of Jews on October 7, 2023. The Gazans started a war which they could have stopped at any time by returning the hostages they took.
Islam has been committing genocide of other religions and ethnicities since the 7th century (Assyrians, Baha’i, Berbers, Kurds, Yazidis, Zoroastrians), and you condemn the one group that refuses to be erased from history. The entire Middle East is apartheid land except for Israel.
By the way, majority Muslim countries occupy about 1320 times the area of Israel. Israel is less than 0.08% of their area, but even that seems too big for you.
Do you know archaeologically which region Jews originate from? It’s Judea, while Arabs are from Arabia.
The historical Buddha would not recognize this political movement masquerading as a religion.
Hi, Surak.
I see a few problems with your comment.
First of all, you make the same mistake as a previous commenter, which is assuming that if someone hasn’t commented on some atrocity, then they either don’t care about it or actually approve of it. And Hamas’s raid on Israel, its taking of hostages, and their subsequent mistreatment are of course atrocities.
Second, you’re making unfavorable generalizations about an entire group of people — “westerners.” That’s almost always a mistake.
Third, you are saying on the one hand that western Buddhists are not really practicing Buddhism because of leftist bias. On the other hand you are justifying Israel’s vastly disproportionate military action against Gaza. Perhaps you could point me to some sayings of the Buddha that amount to “If they hit you, hit them back a hundred times harder”? I’m unaware of them. On the other hand I am aware of sayings like these:
The Buddha was anti-violence and anti-war. I too am anti-violence and anti-war. So I’m not seeing where the liberal bias is coming in.
Yes, any nation and any individual have a right to protect themselves, but any protective actions must be proportionate, and not be based on hatred or the desire to inflict harm. And certainly targeting innocent civilians as retribution for terrorist acts can never be acceptable. Or maybe you can point to Buddhist scriptures that argue to the contrary.
Being anti-violence is not “liberal.” It’s an integral part of Buddhist practice.
This looks a great initiative, Bodhipaksa, and I’m looking forward to it. UK based
Great timing for me. I’ve been reading Jem Bendell and others, who confirm what I have been thinking and feeling for some years. It’s a relief in a way to have it more out in the open so that I can turn towards it more fully and share with others. Thank you for offering a Triratna context in which to explore the hard truths, and potential, of our present time.
Thanks, Ākāśamati. I’m looking up Prof Bendell now, although it’s bedtime so it’ll be tomorrow before I can catch up. I hope you enjoy the course.
I cannot see a cost here for the seminar/ course. Is it by dana. Please give me fuller information on this.
Hi, Viryasuri.
Apologies if it wasn’t clear. The course is free to all members of the Wildmind sponsors’ community. To be part of this community is $8 (US) a month, plus a $40 joining fee. And you can subscribe here.
All the best,
Bodhipaksa
I’ve just signed up as a sponsor, but can’t find how to join this course. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the contact form to work either.
How do I join?
Many thanks.
Hi, Rachel. I’ve already emailed you. This is a very small operation and enrollment is manual, so it takes a little time, especially if you’re in a different time zone from me or my very part-time admin assistant.
From my heart to yours thank you. I would like to join but want to know if it’s too late since it already started?
It’s definitely not too late to start, Sam. The emails go out weekly on Wednesdays, and you only have one to catch up on so far. Even if we were further into the course it would be easy to catch up.