The Mindfulness Bell Submissions

The heart of The Mindfulness Bell is the creative expression of mindfulness practice offered by practitioners throughout the world. The beauty of each issue comes from the creative fruits offered by our readers. Many of our articles are commissioned, or transcribed and edited from Dharma teachers’ talks. We welcome your submissions and publish a limited number of unsolicited articles. 

Submissions for upcoming issues of The Mindfulness Bell should include specific examples of how mindfulness practice in your daily life is helping you to transform suffering, create peace, and improve relationships and well-being. 

Please share submissions from your personal practice in the Plum Village tradition, writing from your heart on:

• Upcoming theme: Thích Nhất Hạnh brought the Plum Village tradition to the West to transform the collective consciousness.  How does the monastic path inspire you to respond to suffering in the world?  Or, how do you see the monastic path becoming rooted in the West?
• Current theme: In Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Love Letter to the Earth, he says “I aspire to practice to love Mother Earth, Father Sun, and for human beings to love one another with the radiant insight of nonduality and interbeing in order to help us transcend all kinds of discrimination, fear, jealousy, resentment, hatred, and despair.” What does the insight of nonduality, and healing from the illusion of separateness, mean in your personal practice?
• Climate justice and engaging with the climate crisis
• Social justice (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, gender, healthcare, income inequality, etc.)
• Buddhist psychology and its relationship with science, public health, neuroscience, and trauma
• Sangha building and outreach

We especially request stories, poems, and artwork from children and teens.

We prefer articles between 600–1,200 words and poetry up to 25 lines. Please send your submission in Word format, a high-resolution photo with a file size of at least 1 MB to illustrate your submission (optional), a high-res photo of yourself, and a 2–3 sentence bio with your Dharma name (if any). 

We appreciate photos, artwork, illustrations, and cartoons. Please send high-resolution images as TIF, PNG, or JPG files, 1 MB or larger.

Please do not use AI in your submissions.

Deadlines

We accept submissions on a continuous, rolling basis for consideration to be published on our website.

For consideration for our print issues, deadlines are October 1 for the March equinox issue and April 13 for the September equinox issue.

We are a small team and it may take several months for us to respond to submissions. We appreciate your patience.