By the time we arrive at the Fourth Noble Truth, the Buddha offers us the medicine that helps to bring an end suffering. He teaches it as the Eightfold Path, a set of interdependent practices that help us to untangle the knots of greed, ignorance, and hatred.

In the face of violence and brutality, we should develop "samma kodha" — Right Anger — for the sake of all beings.

"Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity."– Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian writer

When it comes to the education of low-income students of color, mindfulness can easily mystify the structure of social oppression, shifting the analysis of school reform from the systemic level to the individual. I hope for a future in which mindfulness is grounded in notions of interconnectedness and social benefit, rather than focusing on individual growth.

We are constantly yearning for peace and harmony. Yet, the transformation requires us to destroy a life system that we depend upon — a system that is artificially bound together by the dominance of one living being upon another.

Can we imagine a world without caste?In positive terms, a social expression of nibbana might be the realization of a society in which each member can find fulfillment and be completely him or herself.

The question of the usefulness or non-relevance of “the story” is one of the great “both / ands” of living a Buddhist life. And, all human stories, descending from the most cosmic myths down to the minor tale of the painful hangnail that snagged on a sweater thread, emerge from and reside in embodied – not abstracted or philosophical – human thought and memory. Here, for example, are two “true” stories.

[TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information that may be disturbing to survivors of sexual assault.] “For Warmth”by Thich Nhat Hanh(from Zen Poems) 

I hold my face between my handsno I am not crying

“Great is the matter of birth and death, quickly passing, passing, gone. Awake, awake, each one, awake. Don’t waste this life.” This is the message written on the Han, a wooden instrument used in Japanese styled Soto Zen centers around the world, to call practitioners to the zendo (meditation hall).

On our tour through the Four Noble Truths and how they translate to collective suffering, the first two have taken us into a thorough dissection of the nature of suffering. If we stopped there, it could be devastating.