Each year, Buddhist Global Relief’s worldwide community comes together for our annual Buddhist Action to Feed the Hungry Online Gathering. This year’s gathering, “Transforming Compassion Into Action,” will be held on October 25, 2025. Hosted by BGR founder and chair Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, the event will include Dharma talks and guided meditations from Buddhist monastics and lay teachers as well as introductions to BGR’s work to relieve the suffering of chronic hunger and poverty worldwide.
BGR is honored to announce this year’s Dharma speakers:
Venerable Thubten Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Newport, Washington, USA. Ordained in 1977, she is a student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan teachers. She teaches worldwide and is known for her practical and humorous explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life, and is involved in prison outreach and interfaith dialogue. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and assisted His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the writing and publication of The Library of Wisdom and Compassion, a ten-volume series of teachings on the Buddhist path. Visit thubtenchodron.org for a media library of her teachings, and sravastiabbey.org to learn more about the Abbey.
BGR Sangha Council member Dhammadīpā is the founder and Guiding Teacher of Dassanāya Buddhist Community in Alexandria, Virginia. She has been practicing Buddhism since 1987 and she was ordained in 2007. Dhammadīpā has received Dharma Transmission in the tradition of Soto Zen, and practiced for five years as a nun in the Theravāda tradition. In addition to English, she teaches in Spanish, an expression of her Latin heritage. She enjoys watercolor painting and spending time with her adult daughter.
Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts, Roshi, is a teacher in the White Plum lineage and founder of Heart Circle Zen in Hackensack, New Jersey. She is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She has published chapters and articles on Zen practice and psychotherapy in various publications. In 2004, she initiated a project to bring psychological and spiritual relief to people in Sri Lanka after the terrible tsunami in Southeast Asia. She has also been involved in prison ministry and for many years served on the board of Sanar, an agency engaged in services to women who were formerly commercial sex workers. She has been teaching Healthy Boundaries for Buddhist Leaders since the online course was initiated in 2017. She recently relocated from Ridgewood, New Jersey, to Tiburon, California.
David R. Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. He is a prolific author, whose essays and books have been translated into many languages. His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. Many of his writings, as well as audio and video talks and interviews, are available on the web. He is on the advisory boards of Buddhist Global Relief, the Clear View Project, Zen Peacemakers, and the Ernest Becker Foundation. David is one of the founding members of the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado.
The Buddhist Action season is BGR’s major annual fundraiser, and we encourage all of our supporters and community members to spread the word about BGR and our work by creating a fundraising page for yourself or your Sangha or meditation group.
We thank each and every one of our donors and fundraisers for your generous support of BGR and those whom we serve. We could not do this work without you.
