Elephant Group on Separate Clouds

Elephant Group — Prospectus v3

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a working document, aiming to become an invitation to members of Bodhi College to join a new Community Group of Bodhi College.

The Elephant Group has been meeting informally since January 2026 within the Bodhi College sangha. The name takes its inspiration from John Peacock’s article The Elephant in the Dhamma Hall: What is the place of politics in Buddhism? (March 2024) This initiative was prompted by the gathering of the Bodhi College sangha in December 2024.

Risks and Protocols v2

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This document is still an early draft.

Building a group for exploring the practice of engaged Buddhism brings with it several risks: to us as individuals and to the group “us” that emerges from dialogue. After sketching some of these risks, we consider ways of managing the group as a container that goes towards mitigating them. It is unrealistic to assume that all problems can be avoided, and in fact we need to be careful not to unduly constrain discussion and exploration. However, acknowledging problems and dealing with them in a considerate and kind way can be regarded as part of the practice.

Proposal — An eightfold path of engagement v1.1

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

In this document we sketch an exploratory programme for interpreting the Eightfold path in a way that combines our common engagement in the human predicament with our plural engagements in current socio-economic-historical predicaments. It is intended as one possible way of organising future meetings of the Elephant Group.

A pattern

A quite powerful yet simple pattern would be to take one element of the path per session, and ask ourselves what kind of difficulty we each have with this piece of the path: