We live in a world marked by vast inequalities of wealth, power, and privilege, a world where billions of people live in degrading poverty and over 800 million struggle just to get enough to eat from one day to the next. We see women trapped in oppressive systems of male domination, girls denied the opportunities they need to thrive, small-scale farmers witnessing their lands being swallowed up by giant corporations. Yet the collective moral voice of humanity, as expressed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, sounds a different note. It holds that all human beings everywhere are entitled to the things they need to live with dignity and realize their fullest potentials.
This contradiction presents us with a taunting personal challenge: As practitioners of Buddhism and as people of conscience, what can we do to help create a world that works for everyone? A world where the human rights that belong to us by virtue of our humanity are not just words on paper but the underlying foundation of our common life on this fragile planet. A world where everyone has a safe environment, adequate food, a decent education, and meaningful work. —Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
Since its founding as the seed of an idea nurtured by a small group of students of founder Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist Global Relief has been rooted in Dharma community. Thanks to the generosity of donors, volunteers, and other committed supporters, BGR has grown steadily over the last 15 years to become an organization with a truly worldwide reach.
Each year, supporters come together in our Buddhist Action to Feed the Hungry online gatherings to celebrate the continued flourishing of BGR and our shared work in service of people in need around the globe. On October 28, 2023, we will once again meet on Zoom for an afternoon of meditations and Dharma reflections from renowned teachers alongside inspiring stories from BGR partners. Our focus this year will be a question that has shaped BGR’s development over the past 15 years: As practitioners of Buddhism and as people of conscience, what can we do to help create a world that works for everyone?
Hosted by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, this two-hour event will feature talks on this topic by speakers including Ayya Yeshe, founder of BGR partner the Bodhicitta Foundation; Rick Hanson, president and founder of the Global Compassion Coalition; Joah McGee, founder of BGR partner Better Burma; Raimund Hopf, founder and chair of BGR’s European partner Mitgefühl in Aktion; and other luminaries in the work of conscientious compassion. Guiding the event will be Ayyā Dhammadīpā, a BGR Board member and founder of the Dassanāya Buddhist Community.
This online event is BGR’s primary annual fundraiser, supporting our work toward creating a world where all human beings everywhere are entitled to the resources they need in order to live with dignity and realize their fullest potentials.
Please consider joining us as a peer-to-peer fundraiser for this event to help spread the word about our work of “conscientious compassion” in the Dharma. For more information and to register as a participant and/or fundraiser, please visit the event and fundraising pages on our website.
We could not do this work without you, our Dharma community of supporters. Please join us to celebrate all that we continue to accomplish together.
