Tuwhiri will be publishing our next book Mindful Solidarity: A Secular Buddhist Democratic Socialist Dialogue by Mike Slott in October 2024, and has just launched a Kickstarter campaign for the book.
To find out how you can get early bird copies of Mindful Solidarity, and support the Mindful Solidarity project, go to:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tuwhiri/mindful-solidarity
A lifelong US political and labor movement activist, Mike is also the editor of this website. At the suggestion of The Tuwhiri Project’s editorial board, he has written a book which brings together two topics that mean a lot to him:
1 - a secular approach to the teachings of Gotama, the man we know as the Buddha; and
2 - democratic socialist politics – both the ideas and how we put them into action.
Buddhist meditators and progressive political activists rarely interact. Activists may dismiss Buddhist practices as irrelevant in the face of struggles for urgent political change, while many Buddhist meditators believe activists fail to recognise that human suffering arises not simply from unjust social institutions, but also from our instinctive greed, anger, and delusion.
In Mindful Solidarity, Mike Slott encourages political activists and Buddhist practitioners to connect with and learn from each other, suggesting that a secular form of Buddhism and democratic socialist politics complement each other well.
Secular Buddhism enables us to recognise the ways in which we harm ourselves and others, as well as how we weaken progressive political movements. Buddhist meditation practice is an essential tool for activists working to transform oppressive social institutions, the source of so much human suffering.
Mike suggests that political activists with a meditation practice, imbued with an ethic of care, will be capable of reducing suffering and facilitating human flourishing more effectively. We will be strengthening our political movements by injecting mindfulness and compassion into our campaigns and projects, and when we pursue individual and social transformation at the same time, we are enriching the Buddhist path, making it more ethically and socially focused.
You can follow the discussion around the concept of ‘mindful solidarity’ in this Substack newsletter:
We hope you will consider supporting our Kickstarter campaign and support the Mindful Solidarity project by going to:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tuwhiri/mindful-solidarity
