Buddhists around Britain are this month taking part in the first-ever series of nationally co-ordinated ‘Earthkind’ events, launched on the recent ‘Dharma Day’, the Buddhist festival celebrated on the full moon of July. Lokabandhu, who represents Triratna at the NBO, Britain’s ‘Network of Buddhist Organisations’, explains:

“Earthkind has a rather unusual history. We were approached late last year by officials organising the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, asking if Buddhists would like to be part of “A Year of Service”, something they were organising under which most of Britain’s faith groups would each take a month and a theme and - as part of the Jubilee - organise events on that theme in that month. We said yes, chose July and the theme of ‘kindness to the environment’ (hence ‘Earthkind’) and invited all British Buddhist groups to take part. Other faith groups took different months and different themes: Zoroastrians ‘Visiting the elderly’, Jains ‘Visiting the sick’, Christians ‘Meeting the Stranger’, Sikhs ‘Helping children’ and so on - you’ll find the details on the Year of Service website.

We were excited by the idea of Buddhists of all schools collaborating on a joint national project, and pretty quickly decided to make this an annual inter-Buddhist event: 2012 is thus just the start of a series of ‘Buddhist Action Days’ as we’re calling them.

And we’ve had a great response, with Buddhist groups from Triratna to the SGI to the Amida Trust to the Network of Engaged Buddhists taking part, some 17 at the latest count. You’ll find a list of all or most ‘2012 BAD events’ on the NBO’s website (or past events via the Year of Service webpage).

Pretty soon we’ll start seeking ideas for a theme of Buddhist Action Day 2013 - leave a comment here to let us know if you’ve any suggestions!"