The Smaller Sukhavativyuha Sutra speaks of the “Last Dharma Age,” a time filled with chaos, strife, and a proliferation of natural disasters—a time I couldn’t help but think of as I watched the video clips capturing the burning of Lahaina, Maui. They left me speechless. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the people, residents, and tourists who were trapped there. 

On August 7th, the news reconfirmed that there would be high winds across the Hawaiian Islands due to Hurricane Dora passing south of the Hawaiian archipelago. Many of us hastily expressed a sigh of relief that although it would be windy, Hawaii would be spared major flooding and other damages caused by heavy rains experienced in recent storms. On the morning of August 8th, however, there was a report of brush fire in the Lahaina area of Maui, and even earlier, another brush fire in a different part of Maui was also reported. By mid-afternoon, the fire that would consume the town of Lahaina would dominate the news. 

The winds from Hurricane Dora fanned a fire that became billowing flames soaring into the sky. The lingering drought did not help. Under normal conditions, the fire probably could have been contained after causing some damage, but with the relentless, whipping winds, it was clear that these were not normal conditions. It was a conflagration. Everyone watched in disbelief as the fire consumed the town, claiming (at the time of this writing) 115 lives. Post-fire photos show Lahaina looking like a devastated war zone. According to current reports, over 2,170 acres were burned, over 2,000 people evacuated to shelters with 1,000 people still unaccounted for, and close to 3,000 structures were damaged or destroyed. 

Among the destroyed structures are three Buddhist Temples: the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission (est. 1904), Lahaina Jodo Mission (est. 1912), and Lahaina Shingon Mission (est. 1902). The clergy, or ministers, of these temples safely evacuated, but temple buildings were not spared the flames. 

However, the definition for “mappo,” or the Last Dharma Age, in A Dictionary of Buddhism, by Damien Keown, made me think. “While this may appear to be cause for despair, many in East Asia actually responded to this analysis not by giving up, but by advocating new and creative doctrines.” Likewise, the people of Hawaii, and even beyond the shores of the Islands, have not given up on Lahaina. Monetary donations, donations of material goods and services, and human resources are pouring into Maui to help those who are still suffering and with the long road to recovery. Aloha and dana are manifest in the words, thoughts, and actions of thousands of people who are lending assistance and support in this dire time of need, including the Buddhists of Hawaii. 

As collection drop-off sites were announced, some temples, like the Aiea Hongwanji Buddhist Temple Affiliate Organizations, began collecting goods to be donated and shipped to Maui. Also, each of the Buddhist denominations affected by the fire, as well as other Buddhist organizations, like the Hawaii Association of International Buddhists (HAIB), empathetically joined other community organizations to establish fund drives, encourage donations, hold memorial services in honor of those who died in the conflagration, and help those who are still suffering. 

As we engage ourselves in compassionate action, it is also endearing to witness the wisdom of the dharma providing guidance, as evidenced in comments by fellow Buddhists. 

Bishop Clark Watanabe of Koyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii: “For the Koyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii, the loss of the Lahaina Shingon Mission Hokoji is extremely painful because the Lahaina Shingon Mission was first Shingon temple to be established in Hawaii and outside Japan… When I reflect on buddhadharma, the main teaching is of change. Change is never easy to accept and this change that has happened in Lahaina is extremely difficult and painful to accept…The best practice we can all do is to deeply listen, with wisdom and compassion, to the people of Lahaina and the Island of Maui. By deeply listening, we can, in a small way, alleviate their suffering.” 

Bishop Kosen Ishikawa, President of the Hawaii Buddhist Council and Bishop of the Jodo Mission of Hawaii: “Burnt buildings could be rebuilt. There is even the possibility that you could have better buildings. However, lost lives cannot be revived. As long as we have life, we can always hope for the future.” Referring to the minister who safely evacuated, he said, “The temple building could attract people, but cannot say anything while Sensei can share the dharma and encourage people no matter where he may be. Though it’s sad we lost beautiful Lahaina Jodo Mission buildings, a living temple (the ministers), the spirit of dharma, is not lost…I’d like to support living temples in this face of adversity.” 

Bishop Toshiyuki Umitani of Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii: “Recovery on Maui could take years…As fellow travelers of the nembutsu, let us stand in solidarity with those who are experiencing suffering and sorrow brought about by this unprecedented encounter. Even though the temple buildings have been damaged, our sincere aspiration of listening to and sharing the nembutsu teaching never disappears…Lahaina Hongwanji has not yet disappeared. It is still standing in our hearts as Namo Amida Butsu…May the wisdom and compassion of Amida Buddha embrace us all. May the sound of the nembutsu bring us peace and comfort, and give us the courage to move forward. Namo Amida Butsu.” 

As for myself, what is Lahaina teaching me? It makes me reflect on the many facets of impermanence. On one hand, some manifestations of impermanence can be challenging, filled with sorrow and sadness, as in the loss of life and destruction of property because of the fires. But, at the same time, the fact that everything can change in an instant reminds us how truly unique and precious life, and every single moment, is. Because nothing lasts forever, Lahaina, with everyone’s help, will recover and rise from this tragedy. The buddhadharma encourages us to value and love each other all the time, but especially when there is hardship and suffering. Let us be guided by the wisdom of enlightenment to understand the changing nature of existence. Nurtured by compassion, we can be a caring presence to each other. 

***

While any donation to any relief organization is encouraged, for those who may wish to extend a helping hand to the Buddhist temples on Maui affected by the fire, some ways to contribute directly to the temples are below. We of Hawaii, and especially of Maui, thank you for your metta and dana. 

Lahaina Jodo Mission 

GoFundMe link  https://gofund.me/df1b0cf2

A donation, check payable to Jodo Mission of Hawaii with a memo “Maui fire relief fund,” can be sent to:

Jodo Mission of Hawaii
1429 Makiki Street
Honolulu, HI 96814

Lahaina Hongwanji Mission

Go online at www.hongwanjihawaii.com by clicking on the “Maui Wildfire Disaster Relief” button under the “Donate” tab.

GoFundMe at the following link: https://gofund.me/ff77a520

For checks and cash donations, check payable to HHMH and in the memo line designate “Maui Wildfire Disaster Relief” to ensure proper credit and mailed to:

Hongpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii 
1727 Pali Highway
Honolulu, HI 96813

Lahaina Shingon Mission Hokoji

GoFundMe link https://gofund.me/6317428c

Or checks, payable to Koyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii with a memo “Lahaina relief” can be sent to: 

Koyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii 
457 Manono Street
Hilo, HI 96720

For further information, please contact by email hikoybof@gmail.com

In anjali/gassho, Eric Matsumoto 
Namo Amida Butsu (Entrusting in All-Inclusive Wisdom & All-Embracing Compassion) 

The post Buddhist Leaders in Hawaii Offer Guidance After the Maui Wildfires appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“I watch the news, but I don’t really ‘see’ it. I hear about a mudslide, or a fire that destroys a town and I shake my head, and the suffering feels too great to bear, so I turn away. It isn’t that I don’t care, so I feel helpless to do anything. Or I did, until the people you will meet in this book helped me see that I am actually connected to all of it, that there are already people doing something about it and I can join them,” says Susan Bauer-Wu, author of the new book, A Future We Can Love. Those people are the Dalai Lama and climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose first meeting, hosted by the Mind & Life Institute, Bauer-Wu introduced to the almost one million people who watched it. They are also Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer Lyla June; British writer and environmental activist George Monbiot; meditation teacher Willa Blythe Baker; and so many more experts whose work offers an empowering approach to the climate crisis, instead of one of despair, paralysis, or avoidance. By seeking the wisdom of these activists, scientists, and meditation teachers, Bauer-Wu presents a case for hope, grounded in science, and actionable advice to make change. 

The book is an invitation, Bauer-Wu says, to join the conversation, and with contemplative practices woven throughout, it’s an active read. One of those practices comes from Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who offers a tonglen-inspired meditation to help with eco-anxiety and despair. Confronting the climate crisis shouldn’t require choosing between facts and emotions, but embracing both. “There’s relief,” Bauer-Wu says, “in giving up the charade that everything’s okay and strength to be found in this deeper communion.”

A Meditation for Eco-Anxiety and Climate Despair 

By Dekila Chungyalpa

In this meditation, we will cultivate our interconnectedness with the earth through a variation of tonglen, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of giving and receiving.

Please start by grounding yourself with the earth beneath you. Pay attention to how your feet or any other part of your body that is touching the floor is placed. Notice how you are rooted, through a chair or floor, to the earth and how she literally holds you up—unconditionally, effortlessly, compassionately.

This practice requires that you access the emotions of eco-anxiety or climate distress—grief, anger, vulnerability, sadness, fear—and open yourself up to experiencing them. I ask that you observe how these emotions arise, in what manner and intensity. Pay attention to the shape, color, size, any aspects that give an emotion form. Where does it arise in your body? What are its characteristics? If an emotion overtakes you and washes you away, that is all right. Simply bring yourself back to your purpose of observing, as many times as you need to.

When you have a good hold of the characteristics of your emotions, acknowledge them with respect. Your emotions are a completely valid response to an existential threat to you and your loved ones. It means your inner warning system is working and that is a good thing. So, whatever losses you have witnessed or anticipate, whatever emotions you have suppressed or reacted to, take time to let them all flow out of you and into the earth. Acknowledge and let go.

Notice your incoming breath—the air entering your nostrils, your mouth, filling up your belly. That oxygen that keeps you alive is coming from forests and oceans, from plants and phytoplankton, from all over the world and from outside your window. Rest in the awareness of this physical manifestation of the earth’s compassion for you.

Every aspect of you right now, the air that fills your lungs, the clothes that you wear, the food you ate today, all of that comes from outside of you. This ever-present, life-encompassing, compassionate earth sustains you. You are part of this effortless cycle of give and take. You are participating in an exchange with the elements, with other living beings, with the earth herself. With each inhale, breathe in the earth’s compassion, and with each exhale, breathe out gratitude.

Relax here in this indivisible connection with all that surrounds you; breathe in compassion, and breathe out gratitude.

Now comes the hard part. Visualize a place or being or community you love that is suffering from climate and environmental harm. It could be a river, a species, the community you belong to, or even the earth herself rotating in space.

Resting in and rooted by the compassion and gratitude you hold, I want you to access your intention, your motivation to alleviate the suffering of your beloved. Now, when you inhale, breathe in their suffering; and when you exhale, breathe out your compassion.

This can sometimes bring up fear, or you may be swept away by grief. If that happens, simply go back to grounding yourself in the earth’s support. When you’re ready, come back to inhale the pain and suffering, exhale your compassion and healing.

You can practice this for as long as you feel comfortable and at ease. Do not force yourself; you can always come back to this stage another time.

When you are ready, I would like you to return to the earlier exchange of compassion and gratitude. However, this time you will reverse the direction. Let yourself inhale the

earth’s gratitude for your existence; and when you exhale, offer the compassion and love you have for her. You are inextricably connected with her in every moment and there is no division here.

Wonderful. As you emerge from this practice, please set the intention to try it again the next time climate distress or eco-anxiety arises. You can also compress the practice and simply rest in the give-and-take of compassion and gratitude for short moments throughout your day. The work you do is critically important for safeguarding the earth and all the life she carries. I hope this practice strengthens your inner resilience as you go forward.

♦

From A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts and Minds by Susan Bauer-Wu © 2023 by the Mind & Life Institute. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

The post Your Despair Over the Environment Is Valid. Embrace It. appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This conversation is an excerpt from Tricycle’s second annual Buddhism and Ecology Summit, a weeklong event series focused on transforming anxiety into awakened action.

Sam Mowe: Rebecca, in Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility you describe the climate crisis as being, in part, also a storytelling crisis. What do you mean by that? And would you also describe the climate crisis as a spiritual crisis?

Rebecca Solnit: I think the spiritual crisis and the storytelling crisis are the same crisis. Capitalism would like us to believe that we’re basically selfish individuals. Private individuals. And that what we most want and need are things money can buy—lots of stuff, plus maybe some sex and some family and lovers in our immediate vicinity. What other views of human nature tell us is, in fact, the things we most yearn for are broader connection, community, meaning, purpose, hope, and awe—these other things that capitalism is very bad at, which is why it would prefer we forget them. 

Then there are stories about how change works, which suggest that change is something that the powerful hand down to us. That’s a problem. Another problem with the story of change we often get is also a kind of capitalist story I call “instant results guaranteed or your money back.” We have a demonstration on Monday and if the powers that be don’t fall to their knees on Tuesday, people too often go away expecting that if nothing happened, then it didn’t work. Whereas change is actually often very indirect. There are ripple effects. The story we’re told about the nature of power is that it exists among the officially powerful politicians and the wealthy. But ordinary people, massed together, can be more powerful than anything else. 

Storytellers have the ability to change the story. With climate itself, there are just so many ways the story can be told differently. We see a lot of defeatist stories: that it’s too late, we have no power, there’s nothing we can do, nobody cares. I saw somebody on social media saying the climate denialists and the defeatists are telling us the same thing: don’t do anything, there’s nothing we can do. But of course, there’s not only so much we can do, but there’s so much already happening right now. The more closely you look, the more exciting it is—the energy transition, the research on new, better materials and energy sources, the growth of the climate movement, and the success of its ideas, which have become part of what the majority of people around the world, believe, support, care about, and think is urgent. 

There are so many ways in which how we tell the story conceals or reveals what’s possible, who we are, what we desire, what constitutes a good and meaningful life, or what the future can hold.

Roshi Joan Halifax: Our stories represent our views. And our views are deeply embedded within our society and also how the economic structures, as Rebecca has pointed out, shape our experience. We’ve been, in a certain way, colonized by late-stage capitalism. And we are in a process of decolonization, if you will, from the stories that have contributed not only to toxifying and mortifying the earth, but also the psyches of people all over the world. From my point of view, the value of practice to look deeply into reality, to see the truth of impermanence, to understand the power of the realization of pratityasamutpada, of co-arising or co-dependent arising, interconnectedness, interdependence, interpenetration. To understand there is no inherent self in the absolute sense, but that we are composed of all of the elements, and in a way, we are inhabiting each other there. Our subjectivity is coextensive with all of life. So being able to have the quality of mind to perceive reality deeply will make it possible for us to actually shift our view of reality—not the distorted view of reality that is promulgated by the economic systems that are in control of so much of our world today. It takes determination. The Buddha said, “my dharma is swimming upstream.” And this is kind of an upstream swim, quite frankly. But you know what swimming upstream does for us? It makes us a heck of a lot stronger if we manage to navigate against the current of the times toward a reality that is sane and compassionate. 

“What are the stories that are constructive and liberating?”

Talking about stories, I think it is important to understand the role of myths in society. We know that myths have had a tremendously important presence in culture for thousands of years. And in a way, we’ve jettisoned the typical myths that would guide our culture toward greater integrity. Myths come out of both the social structure and the psyche. The social structures that we live in are reflected in the psyche and the psyche influence our social structures. And those structures are reflected inside of the stories that are told through time, but also point toward timeless truths. Much of my work is, how do we actually come back to narratives that are generative? What are the stories that are constructive and liberating? 

Rebecca Solnit: One familiar story is that we’re constantly told we live in an age of abundance. And some of us do live in material affluence and comfort. But part of that story is the idea that what the climate crisis requires of us is renunciation. I learned once from a Buddhist leader, or maybe a Catholic person, that renunciation can be great when you’re giving up something terrible. But the idea that we’re now living in abundance and must go to austerity, I think can be turned on its head. Look at the ways that we are austere in meaning, purpose, hope, social connection, justice. We’re impoverished in clean air, clean water, healthy topsoil, in the survival of so many species, and the health of the ocean. We either feel it as a kind of moral injury, or we experience a kind of moral numbing. 

We can look forward to an age of abundance in these qualities we’re currently austere in, but first we have to find the language, imagination, stories, and cultural structures to recognize, name, value, and make them central to who we are. Right now, I feel like we don’t see nearly enough how poor we are in so many ways. We find it so normal to live in a world so poisoned by fossil fuels. Two-hundred-thousand people in Thailand were just hospitalized for particulate matter, air pollution inhalation, and more than eight million people a year die of air particulate matter from fossil fuels primarily, which is more than in any recent war. And yet we normalize this and think everything is fine. And that we have to give stuff up. What if we’re giving up poison? What if we’re giving up loneliness? What if we’re giving up hopelessness? Those are the stories I’m trying to tell and the stories that I think will make us brave enough to make the transitions we need to make.

The post What If We’re Telling the Wrong Stories About the Climate Crisis? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In response to the climate crisis and other ecological problems, a new development within socially engaged Buddhism has emerged: ecodharma, also known as ecobuddhism. Despite traditional Buddhist focus on individual practice and awakening, today the ecological implications of the dharma have become difficult to ignore. Buddhist emphasis on interdependence—what Thich Nhat Hanh describes as our “interbeing”—is part of an all-encompassing worldview that does not separate one’s personal well-being, or collective human flourishing, from that of the earth. We find ourselves confronted by an unavoidable question: how do we acknowledge that interconnectedness in how we actually live? 

In accord with this, an increasing number of Buddhist teachers, scholars, and activists are drawing attention to ecological engagement as an important aspect of Buddhist practice today. From March 24 to 28, twenty-one of us gathered at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies for an eco-retreat sponsored by the BESS Family Foundation to discuss this very issue. 

Most of the participants were members of an eco-advisory team of North American teachers and practitioners that has been meeting online since last summer. This group of fourteen advisors, incorporating a broad range of backgrounds and lineages, is also sponsored by the BESS Family Foundation. The group came together to explore the intersection of climate change and practice, particularly to assess ways to benefit people and the planet as we go through this uncertain time.  We are discussing questions such as: How is the eco-crisis affecting people differently? How can Buddhist meditation and secular mindfulness help people cope with the distress in ways that lead to beneficial actions? What is the difference between grief and despair? Which eco-practices seem most useful, and to whom? What are the challenges of implementing them? 

The highlight for everyone was the opportunity to spend time together in person with other like-minded ecodharma practitioners, strengthening the emerging eco-Buddhist community, and beginning to share resources. Several people noted that “it felt like a homecoming.” As one of the participants said, “We can’t do this alone. The jewel of community is crucial to our work around visioning a better world.” Another emphasized that “only with deep friendships and coalition building can we create strategic ways to scale up a just response to the ongoing climate emergency.”

Along with informal discussions, members of the advisory group offered eco-meditations, ranging from brief tonglen sessions to a three-hour Earth-based practice. This allowed participants to observe how others are approaching this work and sustaining themselves in these challenging times. The discussions highlighted the intersection of the ecological crisis with social justice issues, including racism and other forms of oppression: “how can we support and uplift Indigenous communities and communities of color who are facing the most urgent manifestations of environmental injustice?” We also addressed a variety of other issues, including systems theory, economic implications, and the importance of skillful means (upaya).

The retreat was not designed to produce a specific result, but there were several key takeaways, including:

• Despite its importance, ecodharma still has a small presence in the US and most other Western nations. One major factor is that many people come to dharma centers to ease their suffering and feel better, not to confront the anxiety that most of us feel in response to the ecological crisis. How can ecodharma teaching and practices respond to this reality?
• The intersection of Buddhism with ecodharma and other social justice concerns requires a double engagement: although we continue to work on our own practice and transformation, we realize that our personal well-being is intimately related to the well-being of others. Acting on this insight requires social engagement. How can we skillfully promote this understanding within the Buddhist community and encourage this double practice?
• There may be a generation gap between older Buddhist practitioners and younger Buddhists, who often seem more concerned about the ecological crisis and more determined to do what they can to address it. How do we attract and serve younger people? What can more experienced Buddhists do to make practice centers more welcoming and responsive to their personal and social concerns?
• Buddhism has always emphasized interdependence: the delusion of a self that is separate from others is a source of suffering. Today, the eco-crisis seems to be a larger version of the same duality: our now-global civilization feels separate from the earth, exploiting it without any sense of responsibility to it. How can we address this collective sense of alienation? What practices—traditional and new—can promote the realization of our nonduality with the earth, which is our mother as well as our home? As one participant put it, how can we promote “a future in which everyone knows that we are part of an intelligent, living Earth?” 

Earth-based practices seem to be a key: For example, listening to the earth, to ancestors, and to nonhuman animals. How might such practices be integrated into traditional Buddhist teachings? Several of the participants represent centers and programs already exploring some of these possibilities: Kristin Barker with One Earth Sangha, Susie Harrington’s NatureDharma Teacher Training, Lama Willa Blythe Baker’s Rewilding the Soul, Thanissara’s Peoples Alliance for Earth Action Now (PAEAN), Ayya Santacitta with the Aloka Earth Room, Kritee Kanko and David Loy with the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. What is working well, and what is not? What can we learn from one another, and how can we make these teachings and practices more widely available?

• It is not enough to realize our nonduality with the earth. We need to act on that realization. As Thich Nhat Hanh emphasized, what is the point of seeing if it doesn’t lead to action? But what types of action are appropriate? Education only? What about challenging and even disrupting institutions? In particular, how can our work begin to redefine community values so that the health of the earth comes first? How can we promote the healing of the earth, along with the healing of our relationship with it? 

Buddhism originated in a very different time and place, so we can’t expect traditional texts and teachings to offer precise answers to what to do. But contemplative practices can help us decide for ourselves where to engage. Examples are reflecting on questions such as: What do I have to offer? What are the best possibilities for me? And (most important) what tugs at my heart? These three contemplations can also be done by groups that are drawn to work collectively.

• We discussed a declaration of alliance or solidarity, which would articulate the beliefs and values that we share. Such a declaration could be an important symbolic gesture to the entire Buddhist community, emphasizing the unique challenge we face today and the importance of responding appropriately. (This discussion is ongoing.)
• How can we continue to work together, and expand the circle to bring in more people and groups? We listed “offers for help and requests for help” among us. One idea is to create a registry of teachers (with their preferred topics) who would be available to offer online or in-person ecodharma talks and workshops (online or in person) to dharma groups that want to begin discussing such issues.
• There are already several interreligious coalitions in the US where members from different traditions work together to address the climate crisis, such as GreenFaith and Interfaith Power & Light. In addition to various ecodharma groups becoming more familiar with one another and cooperating, should we join such coalitions (or create new ones)? Can we make bridges outside the Buddhist community? We may have more impact working together.
• The participants expressed their desire to continue meeting online and in person. Two online meetings of the advisory group are planned for later this year, and a second in-person retreat, again at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, is planned for September 2024.

To sum up, what has evolved so far is the beginning of a network of ecodharma teachers, programs, and centers. We hope that others who share these concerns will contact us (either as individual participants or at info@bessfoundation.org) and join us in developing this new and vitally important direction for socially engaged Buddhism. 

The post An Ecodharma Retreat for Buddhist Teachers appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In 2016 and 2018, conservationist William deBuys joined Roshi Joan Halifax and a team of medical clinicians as they trekked through the Himalayas providing basic medical support to the residents of the region. A lifelong environmental activist, deBuys set out on the expedition with an unusual question: How can we apply the ethics of hospice to the environmental movement? Over the course of six weeks, he accompanied doctors and nurses through northwestern Nepal as they cared for patients whose illnesses were incurable, doing what they could to provide relief from immediate suffering.

In his latest book, The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss, deBuys reflects on how the expeditions transformed his understanding of hope, grief, and loss, as well as what it means to care for the planet. Tricycle sat down with deBuys to discuss his time in the Himalayas, the role of awe in the environmental movement, and how we can harness and honor our rage.

Can you share more about your expeditions through the Himalayas in 2016 and 2018? I had to go on the second expedition to make sense of the first—the first was just so full of new experiences that I couldn’t process it all, let alone squeeze the real learning from it. In the first expedition, we [the members of the Nomads Clinic] were on the trail for about six weeks. We traveled about 150 miles on foot and on horseback through the Himalayas. We held six major clinics, and the doctors and nurses also provided a lot of medical care incidentally as we went along. We treated about 900 patients, and we provided acupuncture and foot massages to hundreds more.

Along the way, the trip was also a pilgrimage. We visited many gompas, or monasteries, and holy places. We participated in a number of rituals, and we interacted with lamas and village leaders. Often, as a way of thanking the clinic for the ibuprofen and the antibiotics and the foot massages, a village would collectively put on a cultural performance, which consisted of singing and dancing, often under the starlight on a cold, cloudless night at 13,000 feet above sea level. It was a spectacular experience.

You originally set out on the trip with the intention of applying hospice ethics to how we care for the earth. How did you come to this notion of hospice for the earth? For most of my adult life, I’ve worked in land conservation and environmental work. In recent decades, I’ve lost some friends and supported them on their way out of this world, and so it became natural to blend the various things I was thinking about into a consistent set of themes. Hospice for the earth arose from my hunger for a way of thinking about how we can continue our efforts to make the planet healthier and curb our own negative influences on it. In hospice care, you accept the trends of where things are going, and instead of focusing on the big fix, you focus on making things as good as you can, right here and now, for as long as you can. It requires you to relinquish attachment to outcomes and to focus on the fullness of the present. I find a lot of relief in that shift.

One of the phrases that you repeat throughout the book is “care over cure.” Can you share more about how this philosophy played out on the medical expeditions to the Dolpo region of Nepal? I learned the phrase “care over cure” from Roshi Joan Halifax, who led the expeditions into Dolpo. That was her injunction to the doctors and nurses and health practitioners who were part of our clinic: not trying for a “big fix,” which was, in most instances, impossible anyway because we didn’t have blood labs and X-rays and surgical operating rooms. We were working with limited tools to try to help people get through the days and the weeks and the months ahead more happily than they would have otherwise. That was one of the unifying ethics of our entire effort in Dolpo: there was no big fix, so we had to focus on the care we could provide.

This lack of a “big fix” is a major theme in the climate movement as well. How can we work with this sense of futility or impossibility without turning to despair? I’d like to change the word from futility to impermanence. I believe that as long as it’s done with care, nothing is futile. And so you do the best you can and relieve the suffering that you can, and you know that nothing is going to last forever. Part of my meditation going through the Himalayas was to look at how young the landscape was and to know that those mountains had risen from sea floors over millions of years. To be aware of that on a daily basis really shook my worldview. Applying that understanding of change to human affairs can be liberating. Nothing is going to remain the same. But it does not follow, logically or emotionally, that because nothing lasts forever, we should stop doing what we can in the present moment to make this moment richer and happier and less painful.

Throughout the book, you write about the deep sense of wonder that being in the Himalayas inspired in you. Can you speak to the role of awe in the climate justice movement? In particular, how can awe support us in protecting the environment? One of my goals in writing the book was to make it a celebration of the beauty of Earth. Celebrating the beauty of Earth is also a celebration of the awe we experience when we behold it. The book tells the stories of Charles Darwin and of various Earth scientists who came up with the theory of plate tectonics. For me, these scientific narratives are stories about the pursuit and acquisition of full-time awe, of delight and admiration and wonder at the marvelousness of life on this planet.

As we struggle to protect life on this planet from climate change and the erosion of biodiversity, I think we need to renew our awareness of the beauty of Earth. Our species has only been around for about 300,000 years. We’re newcomers. There are so many mammal species that have been around for a couple of million years, and the reptiles and birds have been here even longer. When we think about the beauty that we have inherited, we have a moral obligation to preserve that beauty. We will fail to some degree. But we can also succeed to a considerable degree. We know that more species will be coming along. We know that our own species will eventually die out, as all species will over time. But for now, we’re part of a big experiment in the vastness of the universe, and given our gift of consciousness and awareness, we need to live up to our role and the benefits we have received from this creation of which we are a part.

When thinking about the destruction of the climate, it can be so easy to get angry. In the book, you write about sacred rage and how we can harness our anger productively. What do you mean by sacred rage, and how can we work with our anger to enact meaningful change? I think that a person would have to be fully anesthetized not to feel angry about the chain of events that has taken us to such a critical point in the climate crisis: the buying of politicians, the spread of disinformation, and the role of Big Oil and Big Coal in diverting society from doing what has clearly been needed for a long time. But just being angry isn’t good enough. We need to channel that anger and focus it. I borrowed the concept of sacred rage from my friend Terry Tempest Williams, the environmental activist and author. Sacred rage is a rage that is focused. It’s not just letting off steam. It’s using steam the way a steam turbine uses it, focusing its heat and velocity to do work in a physical sense: to achieve something and get things moving. That’s how we need to use our rage: not just to blow off the steam but to focus it so that we accomplish something with it. That, to me, is living up to the sacredness of that kind of rage.

You also write about how the physical act of walking can teach us how to process and hold our grief. What have you learned from the act of walking? One day as I was walking, a realization came into my mind: The right way to carry the grief is the right way of walking. It was like a metronomic reminder or a mantra. The rhythm of this mantra matched my steps, so I marched to its beat. Then I reversed the phrases: The right way of walking is the right way to carry the grief. That idea unlocked the deepest discovery in the expedition for me. We had walked together for six weeks. We had formed a community through walking, and the trail became home. We were on a big circular journey, which in Tibetan Buddhism is called a kora. In a kora, you return to the point where you began, but with every revolution, you learn how to walk just a little bit better. Since the trip, almost every day, I realize that here I am, I’m 72 years old, and I am still learning how to walk. I apply that idea all the time: Just try to walk a little bit better.

Do you have any recommendations for practices we can engage in to facilitate awe and connection with the earth? Once in a while, we have the gift of encountering an animal in a non-hostile way, and that can give that sense of connection. But I think just being in place and being genuinely alert and aware, being still and quiet enough to allow a wild place reveal itself to you: that, to me, is a skill that is really healthy to cultivate. It’s not fundamentally different from preparing yourself to allow beauty to come into yourself on a regular basis.

I was originally attracted to the stories of Darwin and plate tectonics because they’re really stories driven by awe, by this desire to make sense of this spectacular world in which we live—and to do so without resorting to magic. To me, that’s part of the spectacular moment in history that we now inhabit: we can tell ourselves the biography of Earth without relying on magic. We’re the first people who have been able to do that. This is the great irony and paradox of our time: we have this knowledge, which opens the gates of wonder and spreads them wider than they’ve ever been spread before, and at the same time, we’re doing so much to destroy this marvelous creation of which we are a part. In a way, The Trail to Kanjiroba is my attempt to reconcile those two irreconcilable facts. It’s an attempt to find grace amid the grief.

[This article was first published on July 31, 2022]

The post Finding Grace Amid the Grief appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

If consciousness is an ocean, thoughts are waves that can be churned into vast storms.

Have you ever awakened in the wee small hours, adrift on your tiny raft of awareness, to find yourself confronted by such a storm?

Perhaps an icy wind is whipping up the memory of something you read about COVID and slapping you in the face with it:

So now I have to tell the daughter that both her parents are dead in a matter of three days. Her dad’s not even buried yet.

You blink up at the ceiling and take a deep breath, before being struck by another blast:

“It is very concerning, extremely worrisome,” Peter Tans, senior climate scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Financial Times. “This last decade, the rate of increase [of carbon emissions] has never been higher, and we are still on the same path. We’re going in the wrong direction at maximum speed.”

In the distance, you can’t quite make out how far, the big black wave of your own personal death looms. In front, around, and behind it, other great waves—the loss of family, loved ones, friends—rise and fall as they approach, like steel-grey pistons driving some inexorable engine of death. Is it any wonder you’re trembling?

Beyond even these, like a range of mountains on the horizon, the mile-high tsunami of climate collapse glints faintly in the light of your night-time awareness. You can see from the sheer size of it that it’s threatening the annihilation of all humans and most complex life on earth. And here, truly, there be sea serpents: fully one-fifth of Australian forests—one-fifth!—were wiped out in a single period of fire. What will happen to the other four-fifths in the future with temperatures and carbon emissions rising all the time, with next to nothing being done?

From your raft of awareness, you gaze up at this advancing tidal wave of death in awe and fear. It’s too terrible, you think. It can’t happen, somebody will find an answer. Amazingly, you find that thinking such nonsense helps somewhat—cheap but priceless denial. Perhaps denial would be enough to let you sleep, except…

Except that, closer to hand, treacherous whirlpools swirl with personal memories: “I’ll always be your friend, but I’ll never love you.” Or: “If you can’t even perform this simple task, you shouldn’t be sitting there!” Thoughts and emotional wounds, ancient and modern, spin round and round, sucking you in. 

You try to think-swim away from these treacherous vortices, to keep your head above the waves of anxiety, grief, guilt, and regret, but thinking just makes it worse—thinking is precisely the problem! This mental chatter is so exhausting, so useless as a response to the overwhelming forces of the world. But what, then?

Traditionally, people have had to be beaten, battered, and half-drowned by these internal storms of mind before they finally turn to meditation. The classic modern example is supplied by Eckhart Tolle in his book, The Power of Now:

I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train—everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing for the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence.

The understandable conclusion: “I can’t live with myself anymore.”

But Tolle noticed a strange contradiction—who exactly was this “I” who couldn’t live with “myself” anymore? Was he, in fact, two people, then? He realized that he was sick of the exhausting, obsessive, thought-churning mind. In other words, sheer suffering caused him to realize that he wasn’t, after all, “the little voice in the head”. Rather, he was an inner witness, an awareness, that perceives those thoughts. After all, computers also have all kinds of information and messages rattling around their mechanical skulls but, unlike us, they have no awareness, no witnessing presence that sees those messages.

Our identification with “the little voice in the head”—our feeling that this mental noise is “me”—is so deep-rooted that it can take deep suffering of the kind Tolle endured to break free from it. 

Two Feeling Practices

There are two main ways to dive beneath the oceanic tumult of thought, and they both involve feeling.

First, we can direct our attention to physical sensations in the body. For example, if you are suffering on your raft of awareness at night—if you’ve at last had enough of anguished thinking—turn on your back and focus your attention on your hands. Feel any tension in your fingers. Feel any tingling, warmth, or aching in your palms. You’ll find that simply redirecting your attention in this way makes a difference—any aches in your hands will intensify and then soften and heat will increase. There will be a feeling that the hands are like thirsty plants being watered with attention. What you will also notice is that focusing on the hands causes the previously unstoppable thought torture machine to dramatically slow down and lose intensity. Of course, noticing this can cause the machine to start up again: “Great, I’m no longer compulsively worrying about climate change… which is threatening my parents, me, everyone I know, thanks to the complete failure of political…” And off we go again.

The remedy is simple: we direct attention to our hands again, feel the tingling, the aches, the heat. Guided meditations are an easy way to experiment with this kind of body scan practice, and apps like Calm and Headspace offer a variety of practices to choose from. For example, this ten-minute Calm meditation includes a body scan, which is an extension of feeling your hands and feet. Or try this somatic mindfulness practice from Willa Blythe Baker on coming down from the thinking mind into the feeling body.

Sometimes, the emotional waves and whirlpools are so intense that it’s difficult to do any kind of body scan meditation. In this case, rather than diving below the surface of the thinking turmoil into physical feelings, we can dive into our emotional feelings. The mystic Osho discussed the art of diving into whirlpools in The Wild Geese and the Water:

In my childhood I used to love swimming, and my village river becomes very dangerous in rainy season, it becomes flooded. It is a hilly river; so much water comes to it, it becomes almost oceanic. And it has a few dangerous spots where many people have died. Those few dangerous spots are whirlpools, and if you are caught in a whirlpool it sucks you. It goes on sucking you deeper and deeper. And, of course, you try to get out of it, and the whirlpool is powerful. You fight, but your energy is not enough. And by fighting you become very much exhausted, and the whirlpool kills you. 

I found a small strategy, and that strategy was that—everybody was surprised—that I will jump in the whirlpool and come out of it without any trouble. The strategy was not to fight with the whirlpool, go with it. In fact, go faster than it sucks you so you are not tired, you are simply diving in it. And you are going so fast that there is no struggle between you and the whirlpool. … I learned my art of let-go through those whirlpools. I am indebted to my river.

What has any of this got to do with the waves and whirlpools of the night?

And then I tried that let-go in every situation of my life. If there was sadness I simply dived in it, and I was surprised to know that it works. If you dive deep into it, soon you are out of it and refreshed, not tired, because you were not fighting with it, because you were not pretending, so there was no question of fighting. You accepted it totally, full-heartedly. And when you totally accept something, in that very acceptance you have transformed its character.

In the same vein, Lao Tzu said:

Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.

When we try to oppose and resist whirlpools of thought-fueled sadness, to swim away from them through thought, we become exhausted from the effort, while our misery only increases. But when we dive into the whirlpools, astonishing things happen.

When we stop resisting sadness—trying to sweeten it with phone calls, distractions, or pleasures—and just let ourselves feel it in all its heaviness, darkness, and pain, it disappears by itself, and even transforms into delight.

Likewise, trying to escape fear through distraction, alcohol, and avoidance can have short-term benefits, but fear is dogged, and, like a dog, loves to chase someone running away. If instead we place attention on the feelings of anxiety, on the burning fear, the racing heart, and the deep-breathing lungs, the fear will “disappear by itself.”

And this is true of all painful emotions and behaviors—we just have to pay close, meticulous attention for a long time. As long as it takes.

In an age of cataclysms that we may be unable to avert or avoid, we can still alchemize fear and sadness into peace and bliss. The mystic Kabir said:

Don’t go outside your house to see flowers, my friend, don’t bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals.

This flower is the “kingdom of heaven” that “lies within.” We don’t need to leave the house to find it. We need only turn within and feel whatever we find in our heart area, chest, and stomach. This is no idle promise—everyone who has seriously looked, without exception, has found it.

The post Meditation in an Age of Cataclysms appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a troubling time frame for global warming that pointed to a catastrophic and unavoidable temperature increase of 1.5°C by the year 2040 due to global carbon emissions. A dizzying parade of emergency alerts followed. Wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, floods, and superstorms pummeled the planet at an unrelenting pace. It felt as if this blazing, brutal season offered a glimpse into the approaching abyss. 

These are fraught and anxious times. It seems obvious that no amount of meditation will forestall the disasters that are already baked into the climate equation. Yet, much remains to be salvaged and transformed, including in our own hearts and minds. 

The breakdown of our ecological and climate systems poses many questions for Buddhist practitioners. What is the most appropriate response given the nature, scale, and pace of the crisis? How does one stay grounded when it feels as if the ground beneath us is giving way? What can Buddhism offer us at this overwhelming time of fear and loss? 

Tricycle asked three dharma teachers—David Loy, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Mark Coleman—to share their wisdom for responding to the challenges of the climate crisis.

***

David Loy calls for engaged activism 

Zen teacher and Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Center founding member David Loy says the climate crisis might be the greatest challenge Buddhism has ever faced. “If we can’t respond to this,” he says, “Buddhism will become irrelevant.” Loy’s recently published book Ecodharma explores the relationship between the Buddhist path and the ecological crisis.  

Though the Buddha’s original teachings don’t directly address climate change, he believes the dharma, particularly the path of the bodhisattva, is a rich resource for activists and all those answering the call for change. Our task now, Loy says, is to do the very best we can without knowing if it will make any difference whatsoever. To vow to save our planet despite knowing that it is impossible to alleviate all of the harm we’ve already inflicted. “We can’t be attached to results. We should act because it’s the right thing to do.” 

Loy calls for a more capacious reading of the teachings where social transformation through activism is as important as anything that happens on the cushion, and believes the communities we form through engaged activism will serve as our strongholds. “We need to address and challenge the institutions of incredible complexity and power whose policies impact the environment and climate,” he says. “Individual action isn’t sufficient. Just as it’s not enough to focus on our own carbon footprint.” 

To anyone feeling outrage or anxiety about our teetering ecosystems, Loy offers a three-part contemplation to prepare people with tools for engagement as the challenges deepen.

1. Ruthless Self-Evaluation. Make a thorough assessment of all you have to offer the world. Consider your education, skills, interests, abilities, languages, life experience, networks, geography, assets, job, health, and age. 
2. Realistic Opportunities: Explore all possible opportunities for engagement and service that align with your assets, identity, and skillset. 
3. Recognize Passions Use contemplative tools such as meditation to tune into your heart’s desire. Reflect on which possibilities for engagement make you come alive and feel passionate. If you follow the energy of the heart, you’re less likely to burn out. It’s important to find some joy in the work in order to develop resilience and sustainability. 

Roshi Joan Halifax says show up with compassion 

When Roshi Joan Halifax, founder and abbot of Upaya Zen Meditation Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, became active in the social movements of the sixties, she says nobody ever anticipated that our problems would be as widespread, problematic, and conflicted as they are now. “We thought a lot about personal responsibility,” she explains. “We didn’t think in terms of global responsibility. We never anticipated the scale of what’s now happening with the climate catastrophe and the political turn across the globe.

Her Buddhist practice and decades of hospice work have helped her cope and respond to this new era. As a former hospital chaplain, Halifax sees all forms of death as a sacred rite of passage that merit our tending. She believes we can bring a quality of presence, dignity, and service to our work with grief and loss around the climate crisis. “In hospice care, there’s this notion of coming alongside. That’s what a chaplain does,” she says. “It’s not a matter of going into emptiness or falling into futility. Compassion means to attend to things as they are, to be present, to experience concern, to consider what will really serve.”

She considers this current moment in time a profound apotheosis and opportunity to “come alongside” the suffering around us. “We can no longer bypass what’s happening to the planet,” she says. “We’ve been sheared off from the old way of life in a radical and sudden way. This process of separation and dissolution is an incredible opportunity to show up with compassion and turn toward the truth of suffering and its causes of greed, hatred, and delusion.” 

Buddhism can be particularly powerful at this juncture, she says, because it offers us tools to track our moment-by-moment experience and course-correct even in the most difficult of times. “We can continue to ask ourselves what we’re learning and how we can use that knowledge to deepen and grow,” she says.

To develop skills for sustained compassionate service around social and ecological transformation, Halifax teaches a practical intervention with the acronym GRACE to help practitioners remember the sequence.

1. G stands for gathering attention. Here we use the tools of mindfulness to ground in the present moment. The quality of our attention is essential. Our attention should be panoramic, inclusive, unperturbed, non-judgmental, and reflective like a mirror. 
2. R reminds us to recall intentions. We set your focus on the area of concern and create clarity around our purpose. Our intentions should ride on a felt sense of connection and concern for the wellbeing of others. 
3. A signals us to attune to our own embodied experience. The body is a repository of so much information that we often disavow. Take a moment to connect with the sensations of the breath and the physical body, the affective stream of feelings emanating from the heart, and the mind’s thoughts that come in the form of aversions, attractions, and biases. 
4. C asks us to consider what will best serve. Determine the most appropriate response based on unselfish intentions. We can touch into our vulnerability with an attitude of humility to take perspective and see a variety of causes and conditions. From there, we sense into what might best serve. 
5. E suggests we engage in ethical action. We do our very best to engage, serve, and act for the greater good, while letting go of selfish concerns and any attachment to outcomes.

Mark Coleman encourages a deeper relationship with the natural world 

Mark Coleman, a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and author of Awake in the Wild, responds to the ecological crisis with the assumption that people work to protect what they’ve grown to love. For over a decade, he has led wilderness retreats with the aim of helping meditators foster a loving connection with the natural world. One of Coleman’s upcoming “Awake in the Wild” retreats, scheduled to take place at Mount Shasta, had to be relocated suddenly due to wildfire concerns, underscoring the urgency of this work. 

“In California, we can’t go outside without seeing evidence of the fires. Everywhere I go, I think it’s going to burn,” Coleman says. “This is the reality now. We have to be fluid and resourceful in order to cope and adapt.” 

He hopes that his retreats help foster a deepening love for life on Earth and usher in a sense of stewardship, care, action, and concern. He finds the principles of dharma almost effortlessly accessible when he brings retreat participants into natural settings. Examples of impermanence and interdependence are abundant and obvious once we step outside, he says. In nature, we have more access to both grief and gratitude, which helps build resilience and connection at this time of great upheaval. “It’s harder to access our grief sitting indoors,” Coleman says. “We need to be able to feel and process the emotions so we don’t become paralyzed. Nature helps provide the container to feel and work through those feelings.” 

Practicing outdoors helps us experience more prosocial feeling states such as intimacy, wonder, awe, reverence, and, ultimately, love. “We may find ourselves falling in love with a hawk, or a caterpillar, or a rock, and our hearts open,” he says. These states help us cultivate a sense of inner stability so we don’t simply drown in negative news. “The data can be paralyzingly bleak,” Coleman adds. “If we exist in a mind state of despair, we’ll miss the beauty of a blue bird’s wing or the small jasmine flower. We may forget there are still daffodils in the spring.” 

Coleman shares a few practices from his book to help us step outside and deepen our relationship with the natural world. 

1. Lovingkindness Nature Walk. Go for a walk in the woods, a park, or along a shore. Approach that which draws your attention, perhaps a maple tree, lupin, flower, waves on the shore. Notice what attracts your interest. Let yourself be fascinated and absorbed in relationship to the subject of interest. Attune to your breath, your footfalls, your heart rate, and the temperature of your skin. Recall the classic mantra of lovingkindness. May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. (If you wish, you can also create your own mantra tailored to your specific intentions.) Send these wishes of lovingkindness to a beloved honeysuckle, bullfrog, or cherry tree. Allow everything you see to open your heart in this way. Finally, offer yourself the same blessings you offered others on the path. 
2. Become an Engaged Participant. Find a quiet place outdoors to contemplate, perhaps a meadow, or on a log beside a stream, or a stretch of beach. Take a moment to regard the place as a casual observer. Walk around with your headphones on or let your mind make lists or plans for later. Note how that detached experience feels. Then remove your socks and shoes. Feel your feet and toes on the earth. Register the pressure and density of your body on the ground. Feel the subtle shifts in weight, the temperature of the soil, the grasses tickling your skin, your toes sinking into the sand. Now dig your hands into the earth. Note the texture and smells. Like a child, let yourself play with the soil, the sand, the grasses, the stones. Draw or make shapes on the ground with a stick. Observe how your senses come alive. Now sit with that open sense of awareness. Drop all agendas and stories in your mind. Reflect on how this sensual and intimate contact has changed your relationship with the life around you. 
3. Attune to the Song of the Land. This is a practice to help you develop intimacy with your favorite place in nature. It’s helpful to spend time in this place each day or at least once weekly. Visit the place like you would a good friend with whom you’re having an ongoing conversation. During your visit, listen to what the land might be saying. For example, tune into the sound of birdsong in the canopy or skittering on the forest floor. Observe animal tracks or skat on the trails. Experience the place with your eyes both open and closed. Lie on the ground and gaze skyward. Note the changes in light, weather, temperature, seasons. Feel the energy of the place and trust your response to it. Take your time there, without rushing. Sit with the silences between the sounds. As you sit, notice what you bring to the relationship with this place and how that might change or deepen over time.

The post How to Stay Grounded and Motivated in the Face of Our Climate Crisis appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When it comes to the climate crisis, expressing optimism can come across as being out of touch with reality. And yet, this is exactly the mindset we need if we are to avoid irreparable damage from climate change, says Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac.

Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the Paris Climate negotiations, and has said that Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings helped her find the fortitude she needed to finalize the 197-nation agreement. During the negotiations she worked closely with Tom Rivett-Carnac, a senior strategy advisor to the UN who lived as a Buddhist monk for two years. 

In their new book, The Future We Choose (Knopf, February 2020), Figueres and Rivett-Carnac stress two scientifically established goals for staving off the worst effects of climate change: halving global emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050. To accomplish these goals, they say, we need to start with the counterintuitive task of looking inside ourselves. Tricycle spoke to Figueres and Rivett-Carnac about their Buddhist practice, climate solutions, and how to co-create the world we want.

I’m devastated about climate change and feel helpless to make any meaningful contribution to address the problem. What can I do?

Christiana Figueres (CF): Solving the climate crisis involves many issues and solutions. However, all of them point toward radically cutting emissions in half over the next decade. In order to achieve this, institutions, companies, governments, and individuals must all play a role. Individuals often feel their actions are less important, but that is simply not true. The most effective way to move beyond fear is to take action.

However, even before jumping into action, the most important step we can take is to change our mindset. While fear paralyzes, gritty optimism reminds us that we are actually making a choice about the future with every decision we make today. We can choose to not only avoid the worst impacts of climate change but, in fact, build a world that is better than the one we have now. We can and we must choose to play our part, with compassion, clarity, and courage, collectively building the path toward the necessary transformation.  

But the actions available to me at the individual level feel utterly incommensurate with the task at hand. Is the idea that if a critical mass of us start down this path of taking the actions within our reach, that more possibilities open up for us collectively?

CF: The first step we outline in The Future We Choose is coming together to decide that, yes, we can do this. It’s imperative that we make this decision as a collective because one person cannot reduce global emissions by 50 percent in the next decade, but each person, each family, each community, each city, each corporation, and each country can reduce their emissions by 50 percent over the next ten years. After that, the other actions we call for are not only about moving beyond fossil fuels and investing in technological solutions, they also call for a fairer economic system that does not strain the social net even further, they call for strong political engagement by everyone, and for relinquishing nostalgia for a past that might be dangerous to recreate.

Tom Rivett-Carnac (TRC): The additional pieces may feel remote from the issue of climate change, but they are fundamental parts of our response. We must reject the cycle of blame and retribution and embrace the shared endeavor we so desperately need. We cannot strain the social safety net and continue to expand inequality, or else our democratic systems will refuse to allow further changes to the economy. We have to get our arms around the whole issue at the same time.

CF: It is not simply about making minor changes to lifestyle, although those can be important too; it is about transforming our collective priorities in order to create a future in which all of us may thrive. It will involve developing and utilizing positive qualities of mind and using them to take greater steps toward creating a new world.

Even though so many important and necessary commitments came out of your work on the Paris Agreement, few countries are meeting their goals. And, of course, the US withdrew from the agreement. With ten years to cut our emissions in half, how can we possibly move fast enough?

CF: The Paris Agreement of 2015 was the first global climate pact to be unanimously agreed by every nation on earth. It was a historical breakthrough that outlines a path for all citizens of the world. The agreement is constructed upon a five-year cycle of ever-increasing efforts to reduce emissions. The first collective effort was registered in 2015. The second collective effort is set for this year 2020. More than 100 countries have already stated that they are preparing their next level of effort. Most of these countries are small economies and together they will not impact the trajectory of global emissions, unless the larger economies do their part as well. 

What has come as a surprise in the last few weeks is the unintended drop in global greenhouse gas emissions due to the economic downturn in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this might seem like good news for climate change, it is actually not. Real and lasting decarbonization must be the result of measures which move us beyond fossil fuels, clean the air, strengthen the economy, improve transport, and produce more jobs. Many governments and corporations are moving in that direction but much more remains to be done in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

TRC: The current crisis has shown that we humans are able to act individually and collectively, in our own self-interest, and turn things around. Policy makers need to see this as a golden opportunity, to bring people along with them in making climate-resilient regulation and setting the direction of public finance toward emissions reductions at scale.

How has your Buddhist practice informed or shaped your climate work?

TRC: There are many insights from our Buddhist practice that have been crucial to our work on the climate. We can start with our understanding of impermanence, which served to lift our thinking beyond the thought that the past determines and defines the future. We can all acknowledge that we are constantly in a process of change, and that our past fossil fuel dependence does not have to restrict a future based on very different energy sources. We were also helped by our commitment to deep listening. All too often our instinct is to point a finger at those who we think are responsible for climate change, but we know that blaming and demonizing gets us nowhere.

CF: Early on in our path toward the Paris Agreement we understood that our work to bring all countries to common ground was best served by suspending judgement and devoting ourselves to listening deeply to every participant to understand their respective needs and wants. It was through that deep listening that we were able to let collective solutions emerge at the right time and recognize the seeds that needed to be watered in order to blossom into fruition. Finally, we were blessed to know that, ultimately, we are all interconnected with one another and with all other living beings, and it is this interconnection that guides our path forward. 

The post The Future We Choose appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Perhaps the truest form of touching the reality of this moment is this: to experience our capacity to praise and love our world, as it is. Even when it’s on fire. 

The Arctic is on fire. The rainforest of the Amazon is on fire. The Bolivian rainforest is on fire. Great swaths of Indonesia and Central Africa are on fire. 

Can we praise our world still? Yes. 

Last November, I was at a retreat at Spirit Rock. Doing walking meditation outside on the road, just concentrating, placing the foot, lifting the heel. But this mindfulness was broken by a stupid memory—it stuck like a bur. I didn’t need it. It was about some minor embarrassment to me, years back. 

And I thought to myself, “I should know better how to handle this.” Just noting, noting, noting. And then I despaired, asking, “Oh, what do I do?” Then—right up my left side—rose a thunderous voice that said: “Just fall in love with what is.” 

As soon as I heard that voice, I saw, right ahead of me, two curtains closing. On the left was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) report. “Twelve years left to cut our emissions in half”—and even though we knew this—emission levels have been steadily growing. This had been the most searing, most alarming, frankest report yet. On the other side of the curtain: Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election, and his electoral promise to cash in on the Amazonian rain forest and turn it over to big business and “let it make money.” 

I was rooted there. My whole body seemed to turn to stone, as I stood facing an impossible future. 

We can’t stop climate change to go back to what we were. We’re in collapse now, but it doesn’t have to be a total collapse.

My life hasn’t been the same since this “fall in love with what is” rang like a command in me. It was a message of acceptance: “Stop your self-preoccupation for a minute, Joanna, and accept what is happening to the world.”

What we’re up against is so mammoth, I realized, a change so total, that it is like we’re entering a bardo [the liminal state between death and life in Tibetan Buddhism.]  

The bardo occurs not just when you die; it also can be a huge change in the conditions of your existence. [Tibetan Buddhist teacher] Mingyur Rinpoche talks about something like this in his book Falling in Love with the World, describing so powerfully how totally disoriented he was after leaving his monastery and going out into the world completely alone. 

But we’re entering this bardo together. 

In the east is Akshobhya Buddha, the buddha of mirror wisdom, who holds a mirror to us and our world. For us to survive, for us to pass through, we have to not turn away from the mirror. Look into it, and you see a lot of beautiful things: students marching, wise teachers, and some of the great wisdom traditions stepping forward. In the center, however, we see a political economy doomed by its own rapacity. We see global corporate capitalism, or what you can call an “industrial growth society.” It’s devouring the world, and it’s on automatic––it’s gotten to a point where it can’t stop.

The Earth is being assaulted, extracted, poisoned, contaminated. This is us coming home to our true nature and our true identity. We can’t stop climate change to go back to what we were. We’re in collapse now, but it doesn’t have to be a total collapse. That’s where my heart-mind-body is poised now. 

There is inspiration out there to help us craft a life that sustains society through this. Five centuries of hyper individualism has messed with us, but we ache to shake off our competitive suits of armor. We want to fall into the Earth’s arms and into each other’s arms. We need to find our way back to each other, and learn once again how to take care of each other. 

It will be messy, but this is our work right now: to see the Great Turning [from an ever-growing industrial society to a life-sustaining civilization], even as things are falling apart. 

♦

This article was adapted from scholar and environmentalist Joanna Macy’s talk at the “No Time To Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change” event hosted by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California on September 15, 2019. A recording of all the talks from the conference is available on the Spirit Rock website. Copyright 2019, Spirit Rock Meditation Center

The post No Time To Lose appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The environmental activism group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has been making headlines since November 2018, when around 6,000 protesters blocked traffic on five bridges in London at their first demonstration. They made more waves on April 1, when 12 protestors stripped down to their underwear in the House of Commons and glued their hands down to various surfaces. On April 15, thousands of people took to the streets, shutting down transit stations, streets, and bridges for several days with theatrical displays such as a large pink boat, a halfpipe for skateboarders, and a stage for a choir. By April 19, London police had arrested 682 protesters. 

But behind XR’s raucous spectacles is a calm contemplation, according to the many Buddhist teachers and practitioners who have joined the movement. XR organizers have not kept track of their members’ faiths, but religious and spiritual leaders seem to be exceptionally visible at their demonstrations, where it is common to see human blockades engaging in meditation, yoga, or prayer. The group even addresses this perception in an FAQ on their website, writing, “Your movement seems a bit woowoo to me. What’s with the shamans and all that?” Their answer: “Some, though not all of us, have a ‘spiritual’ orientation, and we welcome anyone regardless of their beliefs . . .”

One Buddhist teacher, Mark Ovland, was among the dozen XR activists who were arrested for their “cheeky intervention,” as one British lawmaker described it. Ovland told Tricycle that he has put his teaching on hold and stepped back from his commitments to Buddhist groups to focus on activism. Still, he said, “Extinction Rebellion is just the perfect vehicle for taking practice off the cushion, it has a remarkably dharmic backbone and a lot of how we relate to each other and go about our business would be very familiar to anyone coming from Buddhist circles.”

Ovland is not alone. Robin Boardman, one of the group’s founding members, is a Buddhist practitioner and yoga instructor. XR’s podcast recently featured an interview with Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, where she talked about the importance of self-care for activists. The closed Facebook group Extinction Rebellion Buddhists has more than 1,250 members. (A similar group for XR Jews had around 250 members, a Quaker group had 700 members, but no other religious group showed up in a search for “Extinction Rebellion” groups.) The New York Insight Meditation Center (NYIMC) has begun hosting climate-related events, and board president Tom Carling has said he hopes that NYIMC can be one of the movement’s “spiritual homes.” Scholar, activist, and Zen teacher David Loy—the author of Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis and vice president of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center in Colorado—was arrested on April 20 at an XR event in Denver, Colorado. And the list goes on. 

Related: Awakening in the Age of Climate Change by David Loy

Buddhism in the West is no stranger to activism. Many of today’s most prominent Western dharma teachers came out of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Activists coined the terms engaged Buddhism and ecodharma to explicitly link their practice and social awareness. But Extinction Rebellion has been more successful at activating engaged Buddhists than other groups with similar goals. What is behind this apparent affinity? 

No Violence, No Blame

Many Buddhists see XR as a kindred spirit because of the group’s use of nonviolent civil disobedience and their emphasis on not blaming or shaming people (No. 8 and No. 9 on XR’s list of ten principles and values). The Buddhist activists see those goals as being in line with the teachings of non-harming and compassion.

“What moved me about XR was the sense that we have to respond to everyone from a place of love—to not blame or shame even the apparent beneficiaries or perpetrators of destructive behaviors,” explained Extinction Rebellion activist and dharma teacher Yanai Postelnik. He has been arrested six times at XR demonstrations—including one protest on February 27 when he joined Mark Ovland in super-glueing their hands to the door of a building hosting an oil-industry conference. 

Postelnik, who teaches in the Insight meditation tradition, said he originally considered his spirituality and activism to be relatively distinct, but he found himself frequently leaning on his practice at demonstrations. 

“If you’re in a position where you’ve committed to your location and you can’t move, being able to relax is really helpful. All those years of sitting with unpleasant sensations turn out to be really helpful when you’re locked to a friend in a position where you’re not going to move,” he said. 

“I realized that buddhadharma has a lot to offer here. To be genuinely nonviolent, we need to have a basis in spiritual practice that allows one to deal with the forces that otherwise overwhelm it.”

Related: Climate Change is a Moral Issue by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Extinction Rebellion is not without its critics. Many have questioned XR’s methods, arguing that their disruptions were hurting working people and alienating possible allies. Others claim the group’s demands are too vague to engender substantial change. But few deny that XR has been effective in bringing attention to the issue of climate change. In May, the UK Parliament conceded to one of Extinction Rebellion’s demands and declared a climate emergency. (Time will tell whether that act was merely meant to appease the protesters or whether it was the first step in a new direction.)

NYIMC’s Tom Carling, who recently took on the role of an action coordinator of XR’s New York chapter,   said that he got behind XR because nonviolent civil disobedience is the most effective tool available. “One of the reasons for doing it is that it works. And I think that’s been demonstrated over and over again,” he said.

XR organizers often cite the work of Harvard University professor of human rights and international affairs Erica Chenoweth, who found that over the past century nonviolent resistance has been far more effective overall than violent campaigns, and that successful movements require participation from just 3.5 percent of a population.

Carling expressed concern that the group’s disruptive tactics, while being nonviolent, may not meet the standards of non-harming. But he saw no other way to counteract the destruction of climate change.

“In the end, the objective is to win hearts and minds, to get people to join in the rebellion,” he said. “In order to get the attention of the media and of city officials, we have to create some economic disruption, and certain people are going to be harmed by that. At this point, we feel that is an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice that we’re imposing on other people. But if you put that harm up against the catastrophe that we’re facing, it looks more like tough love. We’re trying to tell the truth about what’s happening, and we’re trying to get people to acknowledge that truth. That’s what these actions are designed for.”

The Death of Death

XR’s principles help explain why Buddhists feel comfortable joining up, but there is a different reason that their cause has resonated with an array spiritually minded people: Climate change is an existential threat, and Extinction Rebellion does not shy away from this harsh reality.

“The very fact that the word extinction is in play is very important,” said Australian Zen teacher and author Roshi Susan Murphy. “If you talk about the extinction of a species, you’re really talking about the death of death. Death ends there—death and all of its propellant force to awakening to life’s creativity. And to bring extinction together with a simple world like rebellion—saying, ‘No, we’re not accepting this’—is very potent.”

Related: Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

The potentially apocalyptic consequences of climate change, Murphy said, raise fundamentally religious and spiritual questions: “There is so obviously a spiritual dimension to the huge existential questions we’re facing,” she said.

Religious News Services reporter Jack Jenkins has written about what he sees as the resurgence of the religious left (or the spiritual left). The Democratic presidential primary race currently includes spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson and mindfulness and yoga practitioner Rep. Tim Ryan as well as the outspokenly religious Sen. Cory Booker and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. None of these candidates are frontrunners, and their effort to court the religious left may turn out to be in vain. Still, the emphasis they place on how spirituality informs their morality suggests that a significant segment of the political left is responding positively to these views.

“It’s hard to get people’s attention without sounding like a religious nut talking about Armageddon coming,” Carling said. “But the truth is that we’re talking about the end of the world, the end of life on the planet. A UN report basically said that if we don’t reduce our carbon output by 40 percent over the next ten years, it will be a catastrophe. People say, ‘We’re doing this for our children.’ But that message leaves out the fact that we’re already in the sixth extinction. We’re already seeing the deadly effects of the climate crisis. It can be overwhelming.”

Regenerative Culture

Climate activism can seem Sisyphean, and the consequences of failure are staggering—the perfect conditions for burnout. XR organizers have created a kind of wellness first-aid kit with a variety of self-care resources, creating another place in the movement where activism and practice intersect, and the Buddhists of XR have noticed. 

“In XR, there’s a recognition of the value of different practices for nourishing and regenerating our spirit and our well-being in the context of being engaged in activism or organizing, which can be pretty crazy and chaotic in a decentralized situation,” explained Postelnik. “There’s an understanding that if you just all go at it flat out, you’ll get wiped out. It’s like the XR equivalent of mindfulness.”

The attention to wellbeing is related to one of XR’s principles (#3 on the list): “We need a regenerative culture,” which refers to both sustainable industries and activism. Postelnik explained that these wellness practices found their way into the movement as the more spiritual members shared what they found supportive. 

“That’s how the yoga class on the Waterloo Bridge started,” he said. “It’s pretty stressful sitting on a bridge, day and night in the heat, and with the police coming and dragging various members of your community away at times.”

While XR activists have been inspired by a number of traditions, Buddhism has an especially prominent position in the discussions around regenerative culture. On an episode of the Extinction Rebellion podcast, the show’s host, Jessica Townsend, who is a Buddhist, and asked Joanna Macy to share the story of the Shambhala warrior that she learned from Dugu Choegyal Rinpoche:

There comes a time when all life on earth is in danger. At this time, great powers have risen, and they are engaged in programs to abolish each other. And although they waste their wealth and preparations to abolish each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and death, and technologies that lay waste the world.

And it is in this moment when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges. Now you can’t go there. Because it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors . . . .

Great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors, moral courage and physical courage, because they are . . . going to go where the instruments of death are fabricated and deployed, and they’re going to go into the corridors of power to dismantle these weapons. They know these weapons are mind-made. They are made by the human mind, so they can be unmade by the human mind. Because the devastation is being wrought not by some evil deity, or some extraterrestrial power, but they arise from our lives, our minds, our habits, our relationships, our confusion. 

The Path Forward

On October 7, Extinction Rebellion will be kicking off a new wave of international activism. To prepare, organizers have been asking new members to participate in a nonviolent direct action training, which Carling notes teaches the importance of staying aware of one’s own emotions and being grounded in the body.  

In New York, Carling is striving to drum up the enthusiasm that is on display in England. He hopes to provide mindfulness classes for climate activists at NYIMC and has plans to increase the center’s programing around climate crisis issues. 

Related: Reflections on an Impermanent World, a special section

In Australia, XR is in its early stages, Murphy said. She and other monks and nuns in the Sydney region plan to march in their robes under the banner of “Extinction Rebellion Buddhists” at the School Strike for Climate on September 20. The school strike movement has been gaining steam in Australia where kids are following the lead of teen activist Greta Thunberg, whose work has earned the admiration of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

While there are many reasons for the overlap of Buddhists and climate activists, which vary from person to person, it’s clear that Extinction Rebellion has stirred something in the engaged Buddhist community. 

For Murphy, the simplest explanation is the best one: “It’s dharma to protect the Earth.”

Correction (09/18): An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to David Loy as the founder of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. The center was founded by its executive director and president, Johann Robbins. Loy currently serves as the vice president. We regret the error.

The post The Buddhists of Extinction Rebellion  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.