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I've worked in the prison system, on death row and maximum security. I did that work for six years. I've worked with some of the most difficult people in our society. Buddhism was accessible and helpful for these individuals.

Joan Halifax

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Joan Halifax
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: July 30
Activist
Anthropologist
Religious Writer
Hanover
New Hampshire
Joan Jiko Halifax
People
Security
Accessible
System
Maximum
Society
Helpful
Individual
Individuals
Difficult
Buddhism
Death
Six
Work
Prison
Years
Worked

More quotes by Joan Halifax

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Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth.
Joan Halifax
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When we have disorderly lives, it makes it difficult for our minds to be orderly and for us to be at ease with disorder.
Joan Halifax
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Buddhist practice is the grounding for this work, this life, this way.
Joan Halifax
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If compassion is so good for us, why don't we train our health care providers in compassion so that they can do what they're supposed to do, which is to transform suffering?
Joan Halifax
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There is the in-breath and there is the out-breath, and too often we feel like we have to exhale all the time. The inhale is absolutely essential - and then you can exhale.
Joan Halifax
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May I see my own limits with compassion, just as I view the limits of others.
Joan Halifax
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I met Kaz in the mid 1980s when we invited him and other artists to the Ojai Foundation with Thich Nhat Hanh. I felt an instant connection with him, and since that time we have collaborated on many projects and have become good friends and allies in the work of nonviolence.
Joan Halifax
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The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
Joan Halifax
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Most of us are shrinking in the face of psycho-social and physical poisons, of the toxins of our world. But compassion, the generation of compassion, actually mobilizes our immunity.
Joan Halifax
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[I'm inspired by ] courageous young people who take a stand and go into the field to serve really old people who see that every minute of life is to be lived fully and compassionately and so many between this world and that world.
Joan Halifax
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My work has been in the field of engaged Buddhism. That is my own practice, which began in 1965 that formed the base for the work I was doing in the civil rights and anti-war movement.
Joan Halifax
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For me, Buddhism is a psychology and a philosophy that provides a means, upayas, for working with the mind.
Joan Halifax
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We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival.
Joan Halifax
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Many of us think that compassion drains us, but I promise you it is something that truly enlivens us.
Joan Halifax
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Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.
Joan Halifax
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Yes, creation is moving toward us life is moving toward us all the time. We back away, but it keeps pushing toward us. Why not step forward and greet it.
Joan Halifax
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To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.
Joan Halifax
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Kaz's art is a powerful example of discipline and freedom. His classical calligraphy captures the inner movement and stillness of the brush and mind.
Joan Halifax
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Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way.
Joan Halifax
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The Shobogenzo is an enormous work that captures the vastness of Dogen's realization. Kaz, over many years, threaded the beads of these many fascicles into a great mala of wisdom.
Joan Halifax