In 1969, horrified by the war in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia, I left graduate school in search of a way of living on the planet that didn't require us to kill each other. I was deeply confused by what I perceived to be the utter disconnection between my own values and behavior and those of the people who were planning, funding and fighting that war. In an unstructured search that was more of a meander, guided by often invisible “signs,” I traveled through Europe and the Middle East. It was a pilgrimage, I now realize, to an unknown destination. It introduced me to the human family: I remember picnics outside Belgrade, meeting sheep herders in the Turkish desert, visiting mosques in Tehran, laughing and bargaining with merchants in the bazaars of Kandahar and Kabul and Peshawar, living with a family in Kashmir whose son had just been released from prison for being part of the independence movement. I felt at home everywhere. I was moved and intrigued to discover something intimate and familiar in all these people. Eventually, I reached India, and soon found myself in a monastery with 100 others learning to meditate at the first retreat offered for Westerners by a Burmese meditation teacher. A line I had heard Gary Snyder say while I was in graduate school came back to me:

"The mercy of the West has been social revolution; The mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both."

I no longer see these mercies as existing at the poles of East and West. We find them in many places in the Global Whole. But when I was first sitting in that Buddhist monastery in India, the merging of the two began to seem important for our future.

Although Western thinkers, even those who are not social revolutionaries, have focused on creating social change through legal, political, and economic systems, contemplatives in every tradition throughout time have taught that a changed world depends on changing the inner life of individuals. The Dalai Lama is a tireless spokesperson for this message. “When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on.” He recognizes that “material progress is also important for human advancement” but says that “material development without spiritual development can cause serious problems.” Thomas Merton said “We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us.&rdqou; My own experience in the monastery began to confirm this as I saw the ways in which my own mind created a false separation from others out of insecurity and fear, and I began to realize that of course others would do the same, and that very separation could lead to hatred and violence.

As unlikely as contemplative practice as a strategy for social change seemed to me when I arrived in India, it slowly began to look like a critical component in the creation of a more just and compassionate global society. If by looking within in stillness, we could see not just our common humanity with others but the seeds of world problems in ourselves as well, we would understand them better in others and might be able to create methods for eliminating them, or at least better choices for acting on them. Awareness seemed key. And contemplative practices seemed like a really good way to develop awareness of both our own inner lives and our connection with others.

Although religious and spiritual institutions have traditionally been the source for contemplative practices, contemplative opportunities now exist also in secular settings. My own path since that first meditation retreat has led to the creation with others of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, an organization committed to integrating contemplative practices into secular settings in order to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society. In the course of our work, we have become even more committed to supporting contemplation as a critical part of social change.

Its contribution to stress reduction and enhanced well-being is now widely documented. We know we are better able to engage most problems when we are less stressed, from love affairs to terrorism. But beyond those benefits (with the caveat that meditation can also increase stress in the short term as it reveals what we have cleverly hidden from ourselves) are the many qualities and capacities that lead toward a life lived fully in wisdom and compassion. These are the real foundations of awakened citizenship, activism, and leadership in every sector of life and a global society that works for all. We are not, of course, suggesting that contemplative awareness alone will lead to a fully just and sustainable society, but that along with education, analysis, and resources, it makes a critical contribution. It is also true that the practices must be taught with skill and integrity and learned with commitment and endurance to have deep positive impact. Contemplative practices, although simple in form, are not easy to sustain, and they do not always produce short-term improvement. Anyone who has practiced knows this. They are seeds of change for a long- term sustainable cultural shift in our individual and global lives. Some of the benefits are particularly relevant for global citizenship:

A recent poll, funded by Ford Foundation and others, found that “religious belief and participation emerged as a key indicator of civic involvement.” But in a comment on the study, Robert Putnam (Harvard, Bowling Alone) cautions that “people with strong religious views and connections also tended to rate lower than average in tolerance for people with ideas different from their own.” On the other hand, we have heard repeatedly from participants in the Center's retreats that meditation, walking the labyrinth, contemplative arts, and other contemplative practices learned outside a religious setting increased their tolerance, compassion, and ability to see the positions of others and work creatively with them. At a meeting on philanthropy and the inner life, Leah Wise of the Southeast Network for Economic Justice, who works with ethnically and racially diverse groups toward a common goal, said, "The real work is developing ways to address our differences and build community together. Building a community of inclusiveness requires the spiritual practices of ritual and celebration." Pat Harbour, Director of Healing the Heart of Diversity, includes meditation, contemplative music, and altar building in all their training sessions. Awakening the wise heart outside any parochial form is proving to be powerfully healing in socially diverse settings. (This is not to make a "new age" distinction of spirituality vs. religion-we just note that sometimes religious affiliation can reinforce a sense of "us" and "them," and that does not seem to be a factor in the secular settings in which we have worked.)

Become awake to life so that you can live it more completely. Be more aware of every moment. Increase your sense of shared humanity, of the interconnection of all life.

-- from The Center Meditation Manual

During the first stage of the Center, we interviewed 40 well-respected teachers of contemplative practice from diverse religious, spiritual, and secular traditions. One of the many questions we asked them was this: What is the connection between contemplation and social change? Most of these teachers stated that not only does meditation not lead to antisocial (navel-gazing) behavior but that there is a causal connection between contemplative practice and social action. They gave specific examples both of direct action and of service offered in the form of teaching contemplative practices as a means of relieving suffering. They also discussed capacities for compassionate action that are developed through contemplative practice.

What happens for many people in the process of quieting, stilling, and cultivating awareness is a deepening sense of the interconnection of all life, and flowing out of this, greater compassion. It seems to me, Rabbi Meir Sendor explained, that there are certain ethical postures or stances that you come to appreciate, to be understood more deeply as you meditate. A sense of equanimity that meditation helps generate also gives you a deeper sense of equality that spreads to your relationship to others, as you can diminish your own ego obsession and open up to others and you get a greater sense of reciprocity and mutuality. These are all the great principles of every moral tradition. It seems that, in a certain sense, meditation or contemplation, helps bring these principles alive. You get to understand them in a much deeper way. It's not just on the surface. It's not just weighing one thing against another. You really feel your sense of oneness with others, your connectedness with others, with all beings in the universe.

The relation between contemplation and social action is deep, one balancing the other. Ram Dass points out that One shouldn't see it as contemplation versus action. I think contemplation is a form of action. I think that one needs a contemplative mind in order not to get trapped in seeing things a single way--which can be the predicament of the activist.

Some teachers are concerned about the dangers. Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man cautioned that meditation could also be used to avoid dealing with life. My concern was that people - my students and other practitioners - were using meditation for a means to become too detached when there was a need to be attached. But Rabbi David Cooper reminds us that it is about balance: In our day, you need both; you can't do one without the other. If you become a person of incredible social action and you're just out there, burning the candle at both ends, what happens is you burn out very quickly. You need a place where you can come back and regenerate yourself. On the other hand if you just go inside and become completely dedicated to practice and don't have social consciousness and social action in mind - what happens is you shrivel up and lose your juices. Father Thomas Keating also felt that contemplation is the basis for social action, in the sense that without contemplation such action can be draining, while if one's activity is rooted in a spiritual center nourished by contemplative prayer, there is much greater chance of perseverance and effectiveness in one's service.

Now that the Center has been exploring these connections for five years, we have heard interesting and profound reports of the potential benefits of contemplative practices for social change, from the ability to be more present with suffering to the renewal of commitment to a cause. This transformative approach to experience that contemplative practice cultivates not only allows for change but appreciates its inevitability, essential to a vision of a more just society.