Waking Up to Compassion in the Face of Aggression, Claude AnShin Thomas Speaking at the Chapel Hill Zen Center
July 17 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
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Many people are deeply interested in understanding how to reconcile the commitment to compassion with a seemingly more violent world. How do we find and express the courage to engage with people who see us as an enemy or whom we see as an enemy? How do we live the tenants of active nonviolence through a disciplined spiritual practice in our daily lives? Claude AnShin Thomas will give a public Dharma Talk on Sunday morning, July 17, at 10:30, about these topics and engage with these questions from a place of his life experiences and the training and the embodying of his spiritual path which is as a Soto Zen Buddhist Monk.
Claude AnShin Thomas is a Zen Buddhist monk, Vietnam veteran, international advocate of nonviolence, and author of the book At Hell’s Gate: A Soldiers Journey From War To Peace. Born 1947 in Pennsylvania, he served in Vietnam from 1966-67. Since that time he has been working to heal the wounds from war: emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, using these experiences to help others. He was fully ordained as a Buddhist Monk in the Japanese Soto Zen Tradition in 1995. He has made several pilgrimages worldwide since 1994. Speaking internationally in religious and secular communities about the culture of violence and how they can become transformed, he also facilitates meditation retreats, visits war-torn countries, prisons, former, concentration camps, hospitals, schools, as well as local and national governments. For more information on AnShin’s work, please visit The Zaltho Foundation. (www.zaltho.org)