Category Archives: environment

Reflections on the Climate Crisis Summit at Spirit Rock

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No Time to Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change
In the beautiful community hall of Spirit Rock Meditation Center over four hundred people gathered on Sunday, September 15, 2019, joined by many more live streaming. Led by Buddhist teacher and author James Baraz, the event was filled with the big names of insight meditation, including Buddhist teacher/authors Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach and Joanna Macy, who has for decades actively advocated for environmental responsibility.

The Great Hall at Spirit Rock Meditation Center holding our beloved planet

The event was a fundraiser for OneEarthSangha, a key player in the emergence of a Buddhist response to climate change, providing a hub for information, connection and organizing. Founded five years ago by a graduate of the dharma leadership program and a burned out executive from World Wildlife Fund who found sustenance and strength to renew his dedication to the environment through Buddhist practice, the 10,000 member organization offers EcoSattva training to anyone, or any group, interested in deepening their understanding of environmental issues and finding a way to help. They work in partnership with other Buddhist environmental organizations such as Earth Holder, Buddhist Climate Action Network and Global Buddhist Climate Change Collective.

A few environmental organizations had tables in the lobby to help attendees find other direct ways to get involved: Citizens Climate Lobby, Sustainable Fairfax, Marin350, and Pachmama Alliance.

There were in person presentations by James Baraz, Joanna Macy, Belvie Rooks, and others, as well as video-conferences with the co-founders of OneEarth Sangha and Tara Brach. There was a recorded interview with the revered Buddhist monk and scholar Analayo, a dharma talk by Jack Kornfield and a sharing of Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunburg’s talk to the United Nations.

We were offered several opportunities to actively participate. Canadian musician and environmental songwriter Jennifer Berezan and her group had us standing, singing and swaying with ‘Praises for the world’. The hall has amazing acoustics (funny for a room where a majority of time is spent in silence!) so when we were all standing and singing and swaying the words “praises for the world” was powerful.

We were offered the opportunity to write down on a piece of paper our personal intentions of how to use our gifts for the benefit of the earth. We were asked to make a copy for ourselves and put the other one in a basket. All the gathered intentions will be put into the dharma wheel at the entrance to the retreat area.

The effect of offering heartbreaking information, uplifting music, insights and the opportunity to express our own hopes and fears, made for an emotional roller coaster of an experience. We were allowed to crack open and encouraged to feel our sadness, but we were also given means to take care of ourselves and to use whatever gifts we have to help.

The key takeaways from the event are these:

This is no time to play small, asking ‘who am I to….’ make a difference.

Action absorbs anxiety.

“We’re like children playing with their toys in the attic while the house is burning down.” – Buddha

“Climate change is the most important topic for the dharma hall.” – Analayo

The dharma holds the key to sustainability.

Let go of the need to know how it will turn out. Just do what you are doing wholeheartedly.

The harm that has been and is being done to the earth is done out of ignorance and confusion. If we can understand that, we can let go of the anger and come from a more empowered place that can truly make a difference. Anger, even righteous anger, is poisonous and will not bring the desired results. It is a toxic fuel.

“You have no moral authority over those who can feel your underlying contempt.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Othering (us against them, seeing people with different understanding as the ‘enemy’) is the primary disease of the world. Hatred ceases by love alone.

Greed, anger and delusion (which the Buddha called the Three Poisons) are the challenges we all face. We can see the greed embraced by our culture and inherent to our economic system. Joanna Macy said ‘The Industrial Growth Society’ thrives on these three poisons. You can see the greedy, ‘I’ve got mine and I want more’ mentality on which the whole system is built.

Delusion keeps people blind to what’s happening and the causes and effects of their actions and inactions. Resignation is also a part of delusion. The majority of us live in delusion about climate crisis, but we are waking up.

Part of the resistance to waking up to what is going on is the uncomfortable feeling of ‘I’m responsible’. It is far better to say ‘I am taking responsibility to change the situation.’

‘Just fall in love with what is.’ – Joanna Macy
Can we love the earth just as it is right now, wounds and all? Can we love the earth as it burns? We can never return to what was, but we can craft a life-sustaining society through the collapse by learning how to take care of each other.

Then Joanna led us in a dyad exercise where we took turns finishing the sentences:
“As the current world order collapses, I am grateful for___________________”
“As the current world order collapses, I fear ___________________________”
“As the current world order collapses, I want to remember _______________”

She said that the current order keeps power by pathologizing our disobedience and grief. Big Pharma has a pill for that, and others industries offer distractions from our grief. We need to allow ourselves to be sad!

She talked about the Great Unraveling. Since she was talking to a Buddhist group she didn’t need to educate us about the nature of impermanence, how things fall apart. This is the way of all life. Then she talked about the Great Turning, the welling up of consciousness to meet the challenges we face together to build a sustainable community of all beings.

Belvie Rooks’ presentation was profoundly touching as she shared her poetry and her personal process of grieving the loss of her husband. She is a cofounder of Growing a Global Heart.  She shared something her grandmother told her: “But for such a time as this that you were born.”

There was such a powerful sense that yes, we were born for this time. And it is not by accident that so many of us are waking up from the numbness of going along to get along, of reacting with greed, hatred and delusion to life; of feeling separate and lost. But for such a time as this that we were born. If a woman who was born into slavery could recognize her own purpose and power, then surely we can stop making excuses for our self-absorption and inaction. Yes, we need to take care of ourselves, and recognizing the Three Poisons active in us is an important part of that. Can we see greed, hatred and delusion at work in ourselves and in our world? And can we see ourselves as intrinsic and vital to what the earth and all life needs now?

Is this any way to make a living?

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For the past eight weeks we have been exploring the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Now we look at Wise Livelihood. This is not only our work but our interaction in the marketplace: How we invest our money, where we choose to purchase things, and how we interact in these exchanges. With a growing sense of being not just interconnected but actually one seemingly infinite energetic and organic being, we begin to see how what we do affects this wondrous web of life. We’re not locked up in a limited view that believes it’s possible to ‘win’ while ‘others’ lose.

When you are making your living in a way that isn’t aligned with your truest intention, you can feel it in your body — the tension, the anxiety, the out of kilter sensation. If you don’t heed this valuable sensory feedback and make a course correction, you will make an unskillful adjustment to compensate.

You might, for example, compartmentalize your work-life. But then where are you if for a good part of the time you are going unconscious?  You end up living somewhere in the lapse between your truest self and this person who feels you must do this job. Your thoughts are full of justifications, self-blame, guilt and excuses for continuing on this course. You feel separate from what matters to you. Unethical living is painful. Persisting to live in this manner can lead to illness, addictions, depression, despair, falling out with those you love, and a general failure to thrive.

I know this from my own experience. I am a writer and writing is a good skill to have, but it can be put to many uses, not all of them wise. I was in advertising for a decade of my life. It was fun! I loved the creative challenges and the camaraderie. To the degree I was able I made sure my work was ethical, in that the clients I wrote copy for offered useful services. In the most traditional sense of Right Livelihood, there was nothing specifically wrong with my work. But at some level it felt wrong, and I didn’t feel I had the time to look at why. Instead I forged ahead, did what I had to do, and lost myself in the process.

 

Does any of this sound familiar at all? If you are employed, is your work aligned with your ethics? Or is there a quality of sacrificing ethics for the bottom line?

Beyond work, Wise Livelihood has us look at where our money is invested. Where are you purchasing your clothes, food and household goods? What is the impact of your choices in the marketplace? Are you mindful or oblivious in all these transactions? The world is so complex now that it is almost impossible for anyone to live in a manner that is impeccably ethical, even though most of our intentions are good. But to whatever degree you are willing and able, it is worth looking at your choices and seeing if they are aligned with your truest intention and your core values.

Years ago I received a small inheritance from my beloved grandmother, a tiny percentage of some mineral rights in the Texas Panhandle. Each time I got a $30 royalty check it felt like a loving gift from grandma. So I held onto the mineral rights for many years. My husband and I liked to joke that I was an oil heiress whenever the random check would arrive. It was all very sweet and innocuous. But at some level I was uncomfortable with profiting from the oil industry.

Protecting the environment is deeply aligned with my truest intention. I feel strongly that we can only solve all our human problems if we have a healthy planet to sustain us. While I have always felt this way, the increase in global warming really reminded me that I don’t want to be part of the problem. We switched to 100% Deep Green energy for our home. We leased an electric car to be our main transportation. And I sold my mineral rights. I no longer get little checks from grandma, but I have a sense of being true to myself. But I can’t be self-congratulatory, because I can look around and see that there are other areas where my interactions in the marketplace are not as aligned with my truest intention.  It is an ongoing process. But I try to make it a loving exploration rather than a reason to beat myself up. That’s important. When I was younger I had such a strong sense of environmental guilt that I felt like I didn’t deserve to take up space on the planet. I don’t know where that came from, but fortunately I was able to recognize that I am of this planet, and while I need to be mindful of how easy it is to use up way more than my fair share of it, still I belong here. I don’t have to erase myself.

I had a conversation this morning with someone who had dreaded looking at Wise Livelihood because she felt that her work would not meet the requirements. She was relieved to discover that in the traditional sense, it did. But even so she is still not happy with her work, but that discomfort seemed more related to Wise Effort, or the lack thereof. Like many careers these days, she is expected to be in constant communication from the moment she wakes up in the morning, with IMs (instant messaging), email and phone parvatticalls with clients and staff. We discussed the possibility of making sure she does a regular practice of meditation each morning, even if only for ten minutes before launching into checking emails. And then to make her workday like a dance, being so fully present, so anchored in physical sensation, so much about creating spaciousness with compassion, that she could actually perform all the interactions as part of her practice. If this sounds like a tall order, it certainly is. But she is a practiced meditator, and if anyone can do it, she can. It will be an interesting experiment.

 

I have written an number of posts on Wise Livelihood, shared below. But I have also added a link to a Wikipedia definition of ‘Benefit Corporation’, a new way of incorporating a business so that all participants benefit, not just shareholders. This seems like such a skillful trend!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

https://stephanienoble.com/2014/01/11/wise-livelihood/

https://stephanienoble.com/2011/05/01/spacious-livelihood/

https://stephanienoble.com/2009/04/08/eightfold-path-right-livelihood/

Wise Action, Well Planet

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In the last dharma talk I offered a way to investigate whether an action we did was wise. Even the simple question of whether something is a wise action brings our attention to the present moment, modifying the impact of mindlessness, which is the chief cause of unskillful action.
The other cause is feeling disconnected, separate and therefore lacking in a sense of compassion, for ourselves and others. When we looked at Wise View, we saw why it is that we feel separate when in fact that sense of separateness is simply a convenient shorthand to get things done — handy but if we buy into it too much, we cause suffering for ourselves and others. [Read more.] But we have other ways to investigate an action to see if it is wise. We can ask, ‘What if everyone did this?’ This challenges any sense of personal entitlement we might have mindlessly lurking in our murky motivations. If we can honestly answer that if everyone did this action there would be no negative outcome, then perhaps it is not so unskillful. Another question we might ask is what impact this action could have not just on our children or grandchildren but on down to the seventh generation of our descendants, a wise consideration imparted by native American traditions. Understanding the long term implications of our actions, even small ones, is increasingly important as our population increases and our resources are depleted. To a degree, we as a species have become more mindful, have taken steps to modify and correct our previously mindless behavior with recycling, composting, increases in alternative technologies, etc. But we are far from where we need to be in order to say we are doing our best.

I am happy to say that the Buddhist community is increasingly committed to Wise Action in this regard. And this week, Buddhist meditation teachers have been asked to talk about the importance of environmental awareness to their students. How perfect when we are studying Wise Action!Notice how this feels. What comes up in your thoughts? What happens in your body when I say this will be our topic. Is there an eagerness or a sense of unease? Whatever you are feeling, be compassionate. This is not a scolding, but an exploration of what is true and what, with mindfulness and balanced effort is possible. Take your time and answer these questions for yourself: To what degree does the well being of the air, water and land play a role in your daily decisions? If everyone did what you are doing, what kind of world would this be? This is such a great question because it speaks to our collective humanity, our community. It reminds us that we are not isolated. Yay! But also that everything we do has ramifications. How can we be conscious without becoming strident? How can we be in relationship with the earth and all beings who inhabit this planet in a way that is compassionate, caring, joyful and responsible. Can we do this without proselytizing and fueling an ‘us against them’ mentality that is so disruptive and counterproductive? We are not just all in this together; we are one pulsing energetic system of life! Try this practice right now:

  • Set the intentions to be present, anchored in physical sensation and to be compassionate with yourself and others. 
  • Bring to mind your relationship with all beings and the earth itself. 
  • Notice how this feels in the physical senses, if there is a sense of ease, discomfort or tightness arising.
  • Practice some metta, lovingkindness: May I be well. May I be happy. May I be at ease. May I be at peace….See how that feels, this sense of giving and receiving lovingkindness. Then: May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be at ease. May all beings be at peace.

Sit with the gifts of this simple practice, staying present with physical sensation, being compassionate when the mind tugs like a puppy on a leash, wanting to leap into the past or future. Simply come back to this moment, anchored in physical sensation. Rest in this place a bit, this natural relationship. If there is tightness, you might imagine a furry animal coming and nestling against that area, offering compassion, companionship and warmth, a sense of shared aliveness.

Coming into a tender heartfelt relationship with our planet and its inhabitants is a lovely gift. From that state, what is Wise Action? Do your actions or lack of action reflect your understanding? Or is there a disconnect?


This is where the Eightfold Path is so very useful. It helps us to see what that nagging discomfort is within us. Knowing this, we can take Wise Action, based in Wise Intention, Wise Effort, Wise View, Wise Mindfulness, attended by Wise Concentration. 

What would Wise Action be for you?
For me, I took my commitment to the well being of the planet to another level when I switched to Deep Green level of the Marin Clean Energy program. If you live in Marin County, CA and would like to know that your electric bill buys 100% wind power, rather than a combination of nuclear and other sources, it’s easy to switch.
Again, if you live in Marin County, you might find the Green Up! page on the Marin Group Sierra Club website useful. (I am the volunteer website administrator, and that page is my baby. I am always interested in feedback on how to make it better, so please check it out.)