In the 1990s the American Zen teacher Bernie Glassman ditched traditional forms of practice and plunged into the poor, black community that surrounded his Center in Yonkers, New York. In 1997 I travelled there to witness this remarkable experiment in Buddhist social...
As the Iraq war waged meditation teacher Christopher Titmuss wrote Transforming our Terror, exploring the response to 9/11 and the drive to war: ‘They decided that the way to combat their fear was to hit out.’ Vishvapani met him in Totnes to discuss the...
Tibetan Buddhist monk, Palden Gyatso, spent 33 years imprisoned by the Chinese and drew deep on his Buddhist practice to survive his brutal treatment. He escaped to the West to tell his story and I met him in London to discuss his experiences his searing memoir, Fire...
In 1975 when Helena Norberg-Hodge first met her friend Tsewang Paljor in a Ladakhi village, Tsewang told her, ‘We don’t have any poverty here.’ That was before this the remote Himalayan region – politically part of India but culturally part of the old Tibetan Buddhist...
