Rev. Danny Fisher

"Photo from around Zuccotti Park on Day 36 of Occupy Wall Street in New York, Friday, October 21." Photo by David Shankbone.

Please check out my brand new interview with the great Joshua Eaton (founder of Dana Wiki) for my new Patheos blog Off the Cushion. In it we talk Buddhism and the #Occupy movement. It’s a really good discussion — don’t miss this one.

I previously interviewed Joshua once before about Dana Wiki for Shambhala Sun Space. He’s a really great interview subject, let me tell you! Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter @joshua_eaton and @OccupyBuddhism.

Read our interview here.

(L-R) "Where the Iron Bird Flies" co-producers / co-directors Amber Bemak and Victress Hitchcock.

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly Online has just posted my new interview with Amber Bemak — an old friend, and the co-director / co-producer (with Chariot Productions founder Victress Hitchcock) of When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West, “a documentary-in-progress, seeking to give the world a comprehensive look at the impact Tibetan Buddhism is having on Western culture.”

Among other things, Amber has worked as a film maker for Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche and Phakchok Rinpoche in Katmandu, collaborated in Mumbai on a video installation based on the concept of mandalas, and served as a cinematographer on the documentary Blessings: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet. In addition, she and I were students together years ago on Antioch Education Abroad’s Buddhist Studies in India program (along with Ravenna Michalsen and others).

You can read my interview with Amber here.

(L-R) The author and Araia Tesfamariam at Denison University, Granville, OH, circa 2000. Photographer unknown.

Over at my new Patheos blog Off the Cushion I have just posted an interview with Araia Tesfamariam, an independent film and TV producer who has worked with, among others, the preeminent American pastor T.D. Jakes. In addition, Araia is an old and dear friend of mine from college days.

Araia is currently at work on a documentary entitled Big Araia, and we discuss it in the interview. I think it’s an important and moving project, which is why I wanted to talk to Araia about it. I hope you will read our interview here.

(Incidentally, I just love the picture above. It’s pretty ridiculous and hilarious from here.)

The author at University of the West, Rosemead, CA, January 14th, 2012. Please visit justicefortroy.org.

Last weekend, I had a lot of people on the street stop me to ask me what me shirt said. (See above.)

It occurs to me that I didn’t do anything about the late Troy Davis and his case at this blog, largely because I was so incredibly busy at the time of his execution by the state of Georgia. (My tweets about him got noticed by The Washington Post along with those of a variety of other religious Twitterers, though.)

Though I was, like many, particularly concerned about the specifics of Troy’s case, I’ve been an anti-death penalty advocate my whole adult life. I first got involved in the work during college: while I was a student at Denison University, the state of Ohio executed its first prisoner in over thirty years when it killed Wilford Berry on February 19, 1999. In advance of this, along with other members of our campus chapter of Amnesty International, I demonstrated at the home of then-Governor Bob Taft, participated in a statewide fast, wrote letters, and helped circulate petitions. (As I trip down memory lane here, it is worth noting that Ohio this week produced their 6th and the U.S.’s 140th death row exoneration.)

Anyway, long story short, I like to make sure to promote anti-death penalty work as often as I can, so, please…

Take a stand for Troy Davis.
Pledge to fight to abolish the death penalty.

The author at the Tibetan Cultural Center in Bloomington, IN, circa 2007. Photo by Camille Gammon-Hittelman.

Well, this is a nice surprise: an article that I originally wrote for Inquiring Mind a while back has been reprinted as a feature in the latest Upaya Newsletter. I’m touched that the folks at the Upaya Zen Center saw fit to publish the piece. Thanks, gang!

You can read the piece here.