We used VOICE (Voice Of Innate Clarity Exercise) to explore how meditation and mindfulness relate to action, specifically action aimed at making the world safer and more fair for everyone. What does it mean to say each moment is whole and complete just the way it is, when there are people being oppressed? How does sitting quietly on a cushion relate to standing up for our rights or the rights of another person? How do we become more open-hearted when there is such suffering on this planet?

Here is what Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams has to say on this topic:

There is this place of vulnerability from which truly transformative action must come...we can take action, and we can take very skillful action. Don’t get me wrong in any way — there’s an enormous amount of advocacy being done, very hard choices that people are making, to put themselves on the front lines. But without this particular place and location of a willingness to be flexible, open, soft-bellied enough to be moved by the truth of the other in whatever given situation, then it is not transformative.