For Taigen Dan Leighton, a Zen teacher, scholar of Mahayana Buddhism, and activist, mindful awareness is the meeting point of inner and outer transformation.

Awareness is transformative. It happens on the level of working out the conflicts in our own hearts and minds, as well as in the culture. In meditation, we become aware of our own inner processes and the primal separation of self and other. We come to see the interdependence of self and other, how our identity is dependent on so many things, including what’s going on in society. Once we have some sense of any particular problem in society, then we can also look at it in terms of our own involvement. No one is pure and not part of the problem; we are in a web of connections. Even though I worked to oppose the invasion of Iraq, I am still connected to the murder of Iraqi civilians.

Excerpt from The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World by Donald Rothberg, Beacon Press, USA, 2006 (p. 52).

Dr. Donald Rothberg is a leading teacher and writer on meditation, the intersection of psychology and spirituality and socially engaged Buddhism in the United States. He has practiced Buddhist meditation for over 25 years and has been significantly influenced by other spiritual traditions, particularly Jewish, Christian, and indigenous. His teaching and training have helped to pioneer new ways of connecting inner and outer transformation. He is on the Teachers’ Council of Spirit Rock in Northern California and has been an organizer, teacher, and board member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Dr. Rothberg has also served as director of the interfaith Socially Engaged Spirituality program at the Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco. His book, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World, was named one of the best spiritual books of 2006 by Spirituality and Practice. Dr. Rothberg lives and teaches in Berkeley, California.