A message from Elizabeth Hallett
The Lotus Institute was founded by Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward and Dr. Larry Ward, senior dharma teachers ordained by peace activist and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Deeply inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh, they have committed their lives to nonviolent social change, healing, and transformation at all levels, from individuals & communities to the global scale. Their background in Buddhist practice, service work, psychology, corporate coaching, education, trauma-resiliency training and somatics creates a powerful dynamic for healing and change.
The Ashland, Oregon community first met Larry and Peggy when they came to speak at our Peacekeeper Awardees Dinner in 2019. They were invited to receive an award from Peace House and share their wisdom with us. It was an honor and a blessing that they were willing to travel some distance to be with us. The visit has been resonating ever since.
We appreciate the intersection between the spiritual and social activist sensibilities they carry; and their down-to-earth way of sharing sacred teachings along with the tradition of engaged Buddhism in the world-wide Beloved Community. Peace House aspires to create and sustain the Beloved Community in our work as progressive activists, while feeding our local hungry and unhoused people and sending books to prisoners in 16 different states.
Why We Are Connected
We love the way Drs. Peggy Rowe Ward and Larry Ward bring us teachings from their years with Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as those that emanate from the nonviolent movements of civil rights, gender equality, war deterrence and healing trauma. With the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh, they help to illuminate his Plum Village tradition and translate related teachings into our contemporary world. In a real sense they are the next generation of peacemaking ancestors, bridging between countries and worlds, between generations and societies who are longing to evolve into Beloved Community. They also manifest from the roots of a special part of our US spiritual culture of nonviolence.
Roots of the Beloved Community in the US of A
In the American tradition, the Beloved Community is an idea and a way of being that was first named in the US by Josiah Rice (1855-1916) and then passed on as a way of perceiving and practicing peace to many in the 1930’s by Howard Thurman and other associates, eventually landing in the progressive and activist awareness of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950’s and sixties, along with so many of the sixties who struggled to preserve a culture of nonviolence and a belief in the Beloved Community as a possible worldwide future, while resisting discrimination and violence visited upon them. More recently, the great House Representative from Georgia, John Lewis, held the ideal of the Beloved Community high throughout his life as a civil rights activist. His story is masterfully recorded by Raymond Arsenault in John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community.
Roots in the Sixties
Peace House is an offspring of the nonviolence movement of the sixties. Now forty years old, it began under the umbrella of the national and interfaith Fellowship of Reconciliation: the nonprofit that brought Thich Naht Hanh to the US from Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam War. Thich Nhat Hanh soon met Dr. King, with whom he formed an immediate bond and understanding that was based in their common belief in the importance of creating a worldwide Beloved Community. The story of their all-too-brief time together before Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1967 is beautifully chronicled in Marc Andrus’ book called Brothers in the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh.
The horrifying assassination of Brother Martin Luther King Jr. left Brother Thich Nhat Hanh bereft. Suddenly he was faced with how to develop their dream without his dear brother.
In 2014, Thich Nhat Hanh is quoted in the Marc Andrus book:
“I was in New York when I heard the news of [Dr. King’s] assasination; I was devastated. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I made a deep vow to continue building what he called the Beloved Community,” not only for myself but for him also. I have done what I promised to Martin Luther King, Jr. And I think that I have always felt his support.”
When I become discouraged, I think about how much Brother Thay did after Brother Martin was killed. I marvel now at how multiple monasteries and communities in the Plum Village tradition now exist, where practices of teaching, meditation, service and kindness are fundamentally re-patterning and modelling alternatives to communities of violence and division in many parts of the world. Today we honor the work of the Plum Village tradition, and of the Lotus Institute. We are pleased to share in each other’s work.
Building upon the many movements for a nonviolent world, Peace House was founded in Ashland, Oregon in 1982 during the mass mobilization of the International Nuclear Freeze movement, with the focus of preventing nuclear war. Peace House then initiated a resolution passed by the Ashland City Council to make Ashland a nuclear free zone. Ashland joined the International Mayors for Peace with over 8,402 cities around the world to date. Our original sponsor was The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR); the same organization that brought Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr. together.
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We continue to educate about the dangers of nuclear war; uphold diplomacy over violence; and work for progressive values and responses to local and national or international crises through our weekly Clear Actions News. We reject all the forms of racism and hatred so rampant today and support the ways in which we can dissolve it wherever possible.
The Peace House Beloved Community is growing as well, excited to be the umbrella for two other groups, Ashland Together and Southern Oregon Pachamama, who work to amplify multicultural awareness and climate action concerns respectively.
Thank you, Lotus Institute, for featuring us this month in your newsletter. It is truly an honor. We look forward to building the Beloved Community through our mutual association way into the future.
With deep gratitude to all who have gone before us and enormous hope for the future,
Elizabeth V. Hallett
Director, Peace House
P.S. Watch for an inspired story by Dr. Larry Ward to be published in next week’s Clear Actions News.
