This comes from CIC board member Tony Wiederhold:

My name is Tony Wiederhold. My life’s work is helping people to find inner-kindness and healing through facilitating both Inner Work and Outer Work: contemplative practices and group volunteer service. My teaching is informed by what I’ve learned from years of meditation practice and working through my own stuff while going to a job Monday through Friday, living in the world, and encountering a lot of hurt people, injustice, and cruelty. You can find me at the Indianapolis Zen Center (www.indyzen.org) most Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings for 6:45 am meditation.

What I’ve learned from practicing:

• We need each other and we need to stop hurting each other.
• Hurt people hurt people. Cruelty comes from pain and propagates. Recognizing pain and creating conditions for wounds to heal in yourself and others is the way to stop this.
• Kindness heals both the giver and the receiver.
• Working for a more just, less cruel world is totally possible and totally worth doing.
• There’s plenty of work to be done and it’s a lot of fun to work together to make the world better for everyone. I feel that working to create circumstances for people to heal and thrive is the whole point of living.