Next BPF Meeting

Silent Meditation

Public meditations are usually held on the first Monday of every month.  The next Silent Meditation for Peace will be on Monday July 6, 2009 from Noon to 1 PM in front of the Federal Building, 100 State St., Rochester, NY.  

You may attend all or part of the meditation. Please bring your own cushion, chair, blanket, etc.  "All are welcome!"

 Background

The Rochester Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship has been holding monthly silent demonstrations to encourage the search for peaceful solutions to our world's problems, in particular with regard to Iraq. The October '03 demonstration was attended by 85 people from many different faith groups. This is an opportunity for us all to publicly express a non-violent, compassionate, thoughtful alternative to aggression and conflict.

Brief explanation of the form and purpose of the public sitting for peace:

We sit in silence and stillness with a straight back. The silence and stillness make it possible for us to connect with that place in ourselves where there are no divisions, no “here” and “there,” no self and other. The straight back is an expression of our human dignity, and the capacity we all have to respond to adversity in an upright and humane manner.

Beyond these forms, exactly what people do with their minds may vary. For Buddhists it may be following the breath, for Christians it may be prayer.

Why do we choose to do this?

We do not wish to blame, but to take responsibility, and to call on others to do the same. We believe the proposed war with Iraq has support because of misunderstanding, greed, anger, and fear. In silence and stillness we can recognize these things in our own minds and at the same time bear witness to the suffering caused by them; such suffering ranges from the structural violence right here in Rochester that denies many people basic needs to the physical violence of distant wars.

We believe that support for the war is also caused by a failure of imagination. In silence and stillness we can more easily recognize that the Iraqi people are living, breathing human beings like ourselves, the shedding of whose blood will be no less terrible than that shed on September 11.

At the end of the sitting, we bow to each other with hands palm-to-palm. The bow is a way of expressing our interconnectedness -- with each other and with all things.