Buddhist Responses To Occupy Wall Street

There have been a number of Buddhist responses to Occupy Wall Street. See here for a recent round-up by Maia Duerr. Here are a few more. First is Bob Thurman, a Columbia University professor of Buddhist studies:

From James Ford’s blog, I found this video. James remarks:

I just love it.

Obviously a motley crew, representing who knows how many traditions.

But, it gives me some hope that mindfulness by many names is part of this deal.

Maia also posted a call to action: Meditate in Solidarity with OWS (taking place on the 15th and 16th of Oct.)

Lastly, Bodhipaksa presents some prescient thoughts at Wildmind, “The Buddha and Occupy Wall Street.” He notes:

… the Buddha indicated that one of the duties of kings was to prevent social unrest and to promote economic well-being through making sure that wealth was fairly distributed in society. He has no communist — he clearly recognised that there would be wealthy people and people with less wealth, and he was after all talking about a monarchy — but he recognized that a fair distribution of wealth was essential to a healthy society. The alternative, he suggested, was a repressive regime that kept people in line through heavy-handed law and order tactics.

And

It behooves us to look at a website like We Are the 99%, and to see that even if we’re doing alright just now, we’re one crisis away from disaster.

And finally,

It’s time to stop our political system from being a subsidiary of Wall Street. It’s time that the economy worked for the 99% as well as the 1%. It’s time for government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

That’s what Occupy Wall Street is about.

These are a few Buddhist responses to Occupy Wall Street. What are yours? Will this amount to anything? Is the change they advocate really the change we need? Something more? Something less?