Lion's Roar

Don’t Just Sit There—Act

“IF YOU DEDICATE YOURSELF to a life of compassion, is it possible you still may have to engage in a fight?”

This was the question I posed in May to a newly ordained priest in my Buddhist community. As part of the ordination ceremony, our new clergy engage in dharma combat, when anyone in the sangha can pepper them with questions.

“Yes,” the new priest replied. He then cited the tragic death of Kendrick Castillo, an eighteen-year-old who had died four days earlier engaging a gunman at his school in Colorado. He disrupted

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