Buddhist Peace Fellowship Digital Collection

Contents: About the Collection | Tech

About the Collection

This collection is made up of what is believed to be a complete run of the publication created by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, California. From the History section of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship website:

“From the beginning, BPF has had a newsletter. The first versions are typed and mimeographed, mailed to a small set of friends of the founders. As membership grew, the newsletter was the mail form of communication between socially engaged Buddhists. Early issues of the BPF newsletter featured pieces on Theravada, Tibetan, Zen, and Pure Land traditions, outlining a doctrinal and historical basis for engaged Buddhism, and setting precedents for our own emerging work. These foundations were important at a time when most Westerners turned to Buddhism as an escape from the world and the turmoil of the times. The quality of the newsletter continued to improve, and soon Turning Wheel evolved into an award-winning magazine in its own right. Under the editorship of Susan Moon some of the best known thinkers and writers in socially engaged Buddhism appeared in Turning Wheel’s pages: Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, Gary Snyder, Alice Walker, and of course our founder, Robert Aitken Roshi. Since Susan Moon’s retirement in 2007, we at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship have been searching for ways to both expand Turning Wheel’s audience and maintain the strong link to the organization that gave birth to the magazine. As part of that process, we’ve found that the kind of interactivity and discussion that can happen on the internet provides exactly the tools we need to expand Turning Wheel’s mission, bringing Buddhist activists into closer conversation with each other, and the world. And so Turning Wheel Media was born. We hope you will stay in touch with us as we explore urgent questions of our historical moment, from perspectives grounded in hope for freedom for all beings.”

The collection came to the University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives at the request of University of Idaho Law Professor Sam Newton, in cooperation with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, who also wished to have the newsletters more widely available to the public.