The Arrow

The Arrow Journal explores the application of contemplative wisdom to pressing social, political, and environmental challenges.

09/20/2026

Join us for a monthly online book club starting Friday, September 25th!

Our first book club book is Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China, by Jessica X. Zu.

This incredible work of “liberation Buddhology” explores how early 20th-century Chinese intellectuals drew upon Yogācāra philosophy to build an irresistible, revolutionary activist movement to bring forth a nonviolent, just society. The book, which just won the prestigious Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism, offers a compellingly clear account of what Zu terms “socio-soteriolgy”, a new revolutionary project of social philosophy and praxis.

You are most welcome to attend even if you are not able to read the entire book! Here is a book chat with Jessica about her book that you might enjoy.

Our book club is open to all paid members on our substack, as well as supporting members and digital subscribers of The Arrow Journal.

Not yet a member? Get 50% off your first annual membership if you sign up by September 25th! (Coupon link: https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=8c14a4fd

06/03/2026

After years of teaching in adult and juvenile detention, and being involved in the police and prison abolitionist movement, katie had the sneaking suspicion that any movement seeking to dismantle carcerality was about a lot more than defunding the police and closing all the prisons. Getting at the “roots of violence”, making prisons “obsolete” as instructed by abolitionist visionary Mariame Kaba, perhaps isn’t only a legislative or socio-cultural venture – but rather a psychological, ontological, spiritual, and metaphysical one.

Picking up what M. Jacqui Alexander put down in her landmark Pedagogies of Crossing, katie’s dissertation research seeks a “new metaphysics of political struggle” (2005) informed by conversations with police and prison abolitionist movement leaders in Minneapolis, MN, USA. What might we learn from how abolitionists experience themselves, their relations, and their realities? Through a close read of recent abolitionist literature and grounding in decolonial philosophy, katie describes a movement in an ontological borderlands – where fixed colonial realities and relational emergent realities exist alongside one another, and abolitionists have learned how to navigate between and beyond them.

In this Dharma & Justice dialogue, katie robinson & co-host Brooke Lavelle speak about the psychological, ontological, spiritual, and metaphysical frames required for transformative and liberatory movement praxis. Together, they consider what the dharma might offer our movements, as well as the kinds of “movement chaplaincy” needed right now.

This conversation took place on Zoom on April 16, 2026. Subscribe to UnionDharma to listen and to receive announcements and recordings of future D&J dialogues (and the full archive!)

04/06/2026

Episode 2 of our Like Water series is here!
In this conversation, Brooke Lavelle and katie robinson speak with movement leader, relational facilitator, and martial artist, Cynthia Ong. Cynthia shares lessons on warriorship from her kung fu teachers and how she’s applying those lessons in political and ecological organizing work through her incredible organization, Forever Sabah in Borneo.

Our Like Water series— with Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown—launches tomorrow, April 7th!

To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water

These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET, beginning April 7, 2026.

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