bell hooks // Martin Luther King, Jr. // Thích Nhất Hạnh
We are struck by this moment in history. The annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this year was preceded and followed by the passing into the ancestral of two other visionaries, wisdom teachers, and compassionate leaders: author, feminist, professor, and activist bell hooks, and Buddhist monk and socially-engaged mindfulness activist Thích Nhất Hạnh.
bell hooks, Dr. King, and Thích Nhất Hạnh were formative influences on each of us, as naturally they were for many. They made a lasting impact on millions of people around the world and demonstrated through the elegant paths they each walked, a deep dedication to the collective well-being of all humans, particularly the marginalized, excluded, underserved, and displaced.
Their lives were exemplary in their embodiment of the intention to elevate us all and help people find a place where everyone can breathe freely and flourish. Each of them had a unique message to share and a characteristic style, yet a common point of emphasis was something very simple and very beautiful: mindful social engagement, the interdependence of all, equity, peace, and love.
With appreciation and gratitude
“When we love the earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully.”
// “We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, about the destruction humans cause.”
// “To me, all the work I do is built on a foundation of loving-kindness. Love illuminates matters. And when I write provocative social and cultural criticism that causes readers to stretch their minds, to think beyond set paradigms, I think of that work as love in action. While it may challenge, disturb and at times even frighten or enrage readers, love is always the place where I begin and end.”
–bell hooks
“We can all experience a feeling of deep admiration and love when we see the great harmony, elegance, and beauty of the Earth. … Only when we’ve truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness.”
Thích Nhất Hạnh
“… I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food; and I said to myself:
I know where we can store that food free of charge — in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. …
Love is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all men. And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can’t ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
