The Pacific Fellowship invites candidate fellows to undertake an inward or outward journey to nurture inner strength or make outer connections to foster positive and peaceful relationships with oneself and with others.
The Journeys
The Pacific Fellowship offers small stipends to selected fellows to participate in a short retreat (the inward journey) or to seed fund peace-building initiatives by and for young people (the outer journey), to enable a deepening of a culture of peace both within and in community.
Selected candidate fellows are from the Pacific region, must be engaged in peace-building activities and be able to demonstrate their on-going commitment towards peace-making. By selecting fellows who are engaged in peace-making, our intention is to create a community of peace-makers in the Pacific who are connected through their inner or outer journeys, through the wholeness and fellowship that they engender.
As we are a small voluntary organisation, we are unable to provide additional support, nor funds for other activities. On the other hand, if there are specific activities that you think are in line with our purpose of supporting active peace-makers in the Pacific region, let us know how we can work together concretely, using our contact form.
Selected candidate fellows are from the Pacific region, must be engaged in peace-building activities and be able to demonstrate their on-going commitment towards peace-making. By selecting fellows who are engaged in peace-making, our intention is to create a community of peace-makers in the Pacific who are connected through their inner or outer journeys, through the wholeness and fellowship that they engender.
As we are a small voluntary organisation, we are unable to provide additional support, nor funds for other activities. On the other hand, if there are specific activities that you think are in line with our purpose of supporting active peace-makers in the Pacific region, let us know how we can work together concretely, using our contact form.
The Inner Journey
Each of us is challenged to discover our unique place in the universe. Where do we fit in? What is our vision for our life? How do we engage with and contribute to society in ways that promote a more peaceful and more just world? How do we make important decisions? How can we sustain our vision? The aim of the inward journey is to learn about and care for our self. It is a way to find inner peace and clarity of purpose, asking ourselves probing questions, and discerning our answers.
The Pacific Fellowship will support the candidate fellow's inward journey by sponsoring a stay at a retreat centre. While intensively learning meditative techniques, fellows will have ample time to examine his or her inner world during his or her free time. It is hoped that the combination of meditation and temporary retreat from one's daily commitments will help fellows reclaim inner calm, peacefulness, clarity of mind and joy. Have a read about just such an experience to see if this might be something for you. |
The Outward Journey
The outward journey is a journey of doing. We support peace-building projects for and by young people, by providing a small seed grant.
By providing opportunities for thinking up creative initiatives and helping to roll them out, we hope to contribute to a culture of peace-making amongst young people, who will face some of the toughest global challenges that humanity has faced. We will support a diverse range of projects which demonstrate a desire to create understanding and a culture of peace amongst project participants, but which also look to scale impact in an even bigger way. Projects supported could involve partial support for a voyage on the Peace Boat, a workshop and art or video production amongst other exciting projects that you may be working on. In 2018, we supported Danity Laukon to undertake a campaign to raise awareness about the Marshall Island's Nuclear Legacy and the salience of this issue in the face of climate change. This is how we were able to support her. |
The Journey Onwards
Wholeness
It is by integrating our inner life with our outer life, our contemplation with our action, that we achieve wholeness. The goal is the transformation, through wholeness, of ourselves, our communities and society to become more loving and compassionate. The Fellowship can at this stage only offer the candidate support for either the inward or outward journey, but it is hoped that this will complement the candidate's own activities, and lead towards greater integration and wholeness for the candidate fellow's inner and outer work to foster a culture of peace and strive for social justice.
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Fellowship
After the inward or outward journey, Fellows are invited to stay in touch with the Fellowship and contribute to it when able, so that the Fellowship can carry forward and continue to offer exciting opportunities in future. It is hoped that the fellowship will provide an active community of encouragement and support for those engaged in activities to foster peace and work for greater social justice in the region.
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An inner journey
Darkness had overcome me. It is hard to find ways to explain this. But after years of striving, I felt far removed from the intent for peace that had started me out on this path in the first place. I felt darkness outside, and a chasm of darkness within. The more I grasped for peace and tranquility, the further it seemed to slip away. The more I yearned for warmth and light, the further they seemed to recede. While it was only much later that I found these words, they seem to encapsulate some of that which I felt then.
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Perhaps it was the sheer desperation that I felt in my life, the devastation. I reached out for ways to bring light into my life again. I took time off work, and off trying to find work. I searched for concrete practices that friends or someone somewhere somehow had told me had helped them. And I felt drawn to the zen temple, searching and then reserving my place in mere minutes.
The days started with a warm clear bell calling us from our dark sleep in the hills above the neighbourhood which was still a constellation of street lights and lamps not yet distinct from the night sky above. We washed our faces in the ice-cold water at the steel sinks outside. And then we woke our bodies with breathing and movement.
Slowly, we started with 20 minute sittings in lotus position. Then 40 minutes, intermingled with the all-important cleaning of the temple grounds, and perhaps of our minds with this activity. Then chanting, and breakfast, sometimes as the sleet rained past outside.
I asked a more seasoned practicant, seemingly much more 'zen' than I, whether he felt no pain, and he replied that of course he did, with a smile. This was part of the practice. The pain and then the numbness would concentrate the mind, hopefully disciplining it away from all of the other feelings and thoughts that assailed it. Mine was often still full of pain the desire to escape it.
A regular of the modern world, I find comfort and convenience easily, but with it also the means for complicating things endlessly. Perhaps that's why I found simplicity so difficult and yet so liberating. Breathing, sitting, walking, even contemplating more mindfully. Gradually, although I cannot say that it got easier at all, since other things would get more difficult or complicated, I felt like the darkness lifted bit by bit.
Perhaps it was the discipline and routine that I had shunned in search of more distraction in my life. Perhaps it was the ancient routine, which captured the attention of my unwitting mind. Perhaps it was just that after a while, I started to feel that this darkness seemed empty compared to the simplicity and beauty that I saw around me in these rituals and this place that embodied such mindful practice.
Whatever be the case - I am still not sure I am yet able to give a full verbal account of this experience - much later I felt that just such an experience might help others who are likewise discouraged and exhausted by the hurry and pressure of the worldly world. Perhaps this would help others with simple practices, liberation and joy.
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Perhaps it was the sheer desperation that I felt in my life, the devastation. I reached out for ways to bring light into my life again. I took time off work, and off trying to find work. I searched for concrete practices that friends or someone somewhere somehow had told me had helped them. And I felt drawn to the zen temple, searching and then reserving my place in mere minutes.
The days started with a warm clear bell calling us from our dark sleep in the hills above the neighbourhood which was still a constellation of street lights and lamps not yet distinct from the night sky above. We washed our faces in the ice-cold water at the steel sinks outside. And then we woke our bodies with breathing and movement.
Slowly, we started with 20 minute sittings in lotus position. Then 40 minutes, intermingled with the all-important cleaning of the temple grounds, and perhaps of our minds with this activity. Then chanting, and breakfast, sometimes as the sleet rained past outside.
I asked a more seasoned practicant, seemingly much more 'zen' than I, whether he felt no pain, and he replied that of course he did, with a smile. This was part of the practice. The pain and then the numbness would concentrate the mind, hopefully disciplining it away from all of the other feelings and thoughts that assailed it. Mine was often still full of pain the desire to escape it.
A regular of the modern world, I find comfort and convenience easily, but with it also the means for complicating things endlessly. Perhaps that's why I found simplicity so difficult and yet so liberating. Breathing, sitting, walking, even contemplating more mindfully. Gradually, although I cannot say that it got easier at all, since other things would get more difficult or complicated, I felt like the darkness lifted bit by bit.
Perhaps it was the discipline and routine that I had shunned in search of more distraction in my life. Perhaps it was the ancient routine, which captured the attention of my unwitting mind. Perhaps it was just that after a while, I started to feel that this darkness seemed empty compared to the simplicity and beauty that I saw around me in these rituals and this place that embodied such mindful practice.
Whatever be the case - I am still not sure I am yet able to give a full verbal account of this experience - much later I felt that just such an experience might help others who are likewise discouraged and exhausted by the hurry and pressure of the worldly world. Perhaps this would help others with simple practices, liberation and joy.