Family
by Donald Rothberg

I experienced the BASE program as a temporary family dedicated to exploring and sharing our lives as engaged Buddhists. The group became our container.

This emphasis was in some ways a surprise. Although we planners of the program had thought some about the importance of group process, we had given more attention to different aspects of "training" members of the group in engaged Buddhism, and to dealing with issues arising in the group members' social service and/or social change work.

But as the program developed, the group members themselves led us to consider more fully our group life together. As we took more risks and felt greater trust, we realized that the group met a deep longing felt by each of us, a longing to integrate the psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions of our lives. We opened up to each other in ways that brought together, for example, my fears about intimacy and anger; your despair over continuing ecological devastation; her difficulties with working day in and day out with people with cancer; his joy about teaching composting to inner city youth; and their interpersonal friction in the group. The group helped us make connections between personal psychology, group dynamics, and social systems. Increasingly, we came to approach difficulties of any kind in the spirit of engaged Buddhist practice.

At the end of six months, our family dispersed, some to faraway places. Yet each of the participants was, I believe, touched profoundly by our explorations of how to live an engaged dharmic life in this often difficult society, attending together to all the parts of our lives. We were able to do this, at least temporarily, with more support and less isolation, through the experience of a "base community," a small local sangha that each of us, I think, came to see as vital to our lives as engaged Buddhists.

— Donald Rothberg

Contents
BASE Weekly Meeting
Moving Together with Encouragement and Forgiveness
Buddhist Trash Collecting
Family
Home is Where the Heart is
Making a Dent?