Rev. Danny Fisher
Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings
September 4, 2009
I’m a Signatory on the Buddhist Climate Declaration
I’m one of the 62 Dharma teacher/scholar signatories on the Buddhist Climate Declaration. Follow the hyperlinks for more information.
If you’re not familiar with the Buddhist Climate Declaration, it is the pan-Buddhist declaration on climate change authored by Dr. David Tetsuun Loy and Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi with scientific input from Dr. John Stanley. The effort was initiated by contributors to the new Wisdom Publications title A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency, and the first signer was His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Over 5,000 people, from over 100 countries and most Buddhist traditions, have now signed the Declaration. If you haven’t already, you can sign it here.
September 4, 2009
Video of the 2009 World Peace Pilgrimage to Mt. Baldy
I recently blogged about my participation in the World Peace Pilgrimage to Mt. Baldy with some of my colleagues from the University of the West. The pilgrimage was an official pre-2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions event.
The Aetherius Society, which sponsored the pilgrimage, has produced a two-part video series about the event. Take a look below. Eagle-eyed viewers can catch frequent images of me trudging up the mountain and then standing at the top in my minister’s robes.
You can watch our Buddhist presentation in the first video, starting at 6:56.
And you can see me offering my own personal prayer in the second video, at 7:27.
September 4, 2009
“The Meditator’s Toolbox”
Over at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog, magazine editor and publisher James Shaheen revisits their “Meditator’s Toolbox” from the Fall 2007 issue. Take a look.
September 4, 2009
“Until Medical Bills Do Us Part”
Nicholas Kristof offers a sobering portrait of the American health care system at work in the pages of The New York Times this week:
My friend M. — you’ll understand in a moment why she’s terrified of my using her name — had to make a searing decision a year ago. She was married to a sweet, gentle man whom she loved, but who had become increasingly absent-minded. Finally, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
The disease is degenerative, and he will become steadily less able to care for himself. At some point, as his medical needs multiply, he will probably need to be institutionalized.
The hospital arranged a conference call with a social worker, who outlined how the dementia and its financial toll on the family would progress, and then added, out of the blue: “Maybe you should divorce.”
“I was blown away,” M. told me. But, she said, the hospital staff members explained that they had seen it all before, many times. If M.’s husband required long-term care, the costs would be catastrophic even for a middle-class family with savings.
Eventually, after the expenses whittled away their combined assets, her husband could go on Medicaid — but by then their children’s nest egg would be gone, along with her 401(k) plan. She would face a bleak retirement with neither her husband nor her savings.
A complicating factor was that this was a second marriage. M.’s first husband had died, leaving an inheritance that he had intended for their children. She and her second husband had a prenuptial agreement, but that would not protect her assets from his medical expenses.
The hospital told M. not to waste time in dissolving the marriage. For five years after any divorce, her assets could be seized — precisely because the government knows that people sometimes divorce husbands or wives to escape their medical bills.
Read the rest here.
