Meeting The Climate Crisis With Wisdom: Meditation And Talk

Just as meditation practice allows us to recognize and allow the difficulties in our individual lives, it similarly can allow us to see clearly the reality of our current climate crisis. Holding the truth of what is happening in open-hearted awareness, we can respond with true wisdom and compassion.

Transcript

Begin by checking your posture and making those adjustments you need to feel alert,

The back straight,

A noble posture,

Checking for alignment beginning at the crown of your head and extending down through your spine to your sits bones,

Hands resting gently,

Feet on the floor,

Closing the eyes if you are comfortable doing so.

Beginning by arriving right here.

Feel that pause from everything that else is that's happening.

Just to fully arrive.

Focus on breathing.

Take a few full,

Deep cleansing breaths,

Deeply filling the lungs,

Then releasing as you exhale.

Another full,

Deep breath,

Relaxing on the exhale.

And one last full deep breath feeling the chest expand as you hold the breath at the top of the inhale.

Feeling that contraction inside that tension and then releasing,

Letting the breath be natural.

Don't try to breathe in any special way either slow or long and just watch the breathing as it's happening.

Checking for where the breath might be most predominant right now for you.

Whether it's in the abdomen,

In your chest rising.

Notice how breathing gently occurs without us doing anything without our needing to intend or organize it.

The body breathes itself and nature is just continuing on making the oxygen that our bodies need as we take it in,

Providing the carbon dioxide that feeds the plants that returns back to us.

The oxygen is feeling our place in this process,

This nature feeding itself,

Sustaining itself with us here to participate.

Observe this miracle of life without us doing anything.

This free gift of life to each of us.

Sensing how all humans on the planet at this moment join in this same beautiful cycle of life,

Refreshing and renewing itself with each breath,

Each moment,

All of us connected by this air,

Earth,

We walk upon that sustains us all without which none of us could exist.

Pausing to feel our gratitude for this air,

This water,

This earth,

All that we can easily take for granted because it's so freely given to us.

Our beautiful blue planet,

Extremely rare thing in our universe,

Where life can flourish with such abundance,

Such beauty,

Bowing to the rivers and the streams,

To the deep oceans,

All the life that's there,

Bowing to the fields,

The forests,

From which the plants and trees grow and produce this abundance of fruits and flowers and vegetables and grains that sustain us,

Bowing to all other beings that walk this earth,

Bowing to the beauty that surrounds us,

The soft earth under our feet,

The sun as it rises and sets,

The cool breeze,

The starry night,

Extending kindness to all living things with whom we share this planet.

May you be safe from harm.

May you be peaceful and happy,

Free from distress.

May you be healthy,

Free from affliction.

May you live with ease and joy,

Extending compassion to any way in which the world is suffering.

The species that may face extinction or the effects of rising temperatures that threaten human and other life to any place our earth is suffering in any way we say to ourselves,

May we be aware of your suffering.

May we be open to your suffering.

And may we respond with love and compassion.

Closing with these words of Shantideva,

The 8th century prince who left everything to become a monk,

Saying these words to each other and also feeling the effect of these intentions as others extend them to us.

May I become at all times,

Both now and forever,

A protector for those without protection,

A guide for those who have lost their way,

A sanctuary for those in danger,

A guide for those on the path,

A resting place for the weary.

May I bring sustenance and awakening until all beings are free from sorrow.

And as you're ready,

You can gently,

You're on time,

You can open your eyes.

If you feel comfortable doing so you can turn your camera on.

I always enjoy seeing you during the talk.

There's a story of the Buddha that soon after his enlightenment,

He was walking down a road and he passed a man who was struck by his extraordinary radiance and the peacefulness of his presence.

The man stopped and asked,

My friend,

What are you?

Are you a celestial being or a god?

No,

Said the Buddha.

Well,

Then are you some kind of magician or wizard?

Again,

The Buddha answered,

No.

Well,

My friend,

What are you then?

Asked the man.

And the Buddha responded,

I am awake.

A question I'd like to pose today is whether we can be fully awake to what is happening around us,

Thinking in particular,

The warnings about the future of our planet as the warnings become more dire.

And with the natural tendency that we have to divert our attention or just to shift to some sort of resignation about nothing that can be done.

So what would it be like to be fully awake to what is happening without despair and without denial?

As we did in the meditation,

We can begin by returning to the sense of gratitude for what is here.

And first,

Simply with the rising and the falling of the chest and recalling for ourselves,

The aliveness of this of this human life,

And the fresh air in our nostrils,

The earth beneath our feet,

And starting to become sensitive to all of these gifts,

Which we take so much for granted,

The water we drink,

The trees and plants that nourish us.

There's something called the overview effect,

Which has been studied from astronauts as they clear the Earth's atmosphere and look back to the Earth from space.

Quoting one astronaut,

He said,

A tiny,

Fragile ball of life is the world hanging in this void,

Shielded and nourished by a paper thin atmosphere.

And comparing various reports from astronauts over the years,

Another author described the most prominent common aspect of the astronauts experience were appreciation,

And the perception of beauty,

Unexpected and even overwhelming emotion,

And an increased sense of connection to other people and the Earth as a severe sphere rising in the distance.

And then finally,

These words of William Anders,

Who was Apollo 8 crew who landed on the moon.

And as he was standing on the moon and look back to see the Earth,

He said,

We came all this way to explore the moon.

And the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.

We and we know from our meditation experience that this gratitude is a powerful intervention in our experience that really just can reorient our perspective on life.

And it's essential,

I think,

To this work and finding the time to return to nature to feel the gratitude that arises when we pause just to take in and to feel and smell and touch what's all freely given to us there.

So reconnecting to the Earth,

The question is whether we can turn and perceive and hold the truth of what's happening.

For myself,

I have saved this copy of the Washington Post.

And I put it on my desk at home in a place where I'll see it every day.

And I'll explain why the front page,

Looking only at the front page has various headlines,

Including President Putin trades flattery with Chinese leader Xi at the recent summit.

It's another front page headline about a classroom incident in New Jersey,

That's raised tensions.

And then there's another headline that reads,

World nears cataclysmic threshold,

UN warns and the article begins like this.

This is the first sentence,

The world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next 10 years,

Pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming,

Unless nations drastically transform their economies,

And immediately transition from fossil fuels,

According to one of the most definitive reports ever written about climate change.

So for me,

I've left this headline on my desk at home.

Because I feel like in a way,

It should be the headline on all front pages from now on,

In all newspapers,

As a reminder to us of what this reality is.

There's a very natural tendency to move on and to avoid these realities,

Particularly when the rest of life just continues to stream by for all of us.

There was a study where subjects were asked to wait in a room and fill out a questionnaire that they were told was in preparation for what their actual research study would be.

And while they were there,

The researchers introduced a smoke like vapor into the room in which they were waiting.

And what they found is if the individuals were in the room alone,

They responded quickly by leaving the room and looking for help.

But if several people were in the room together,

They would usually look to see if anyone else was responding.

And if they saw others remaining calm,

And continuing to fill out the questionnaire as as instructed,

They were likely to continue to do so as well.

And even when the smoke made it difficult to see and people began to rub their eyes,

They continued this way until the researchers came in to rescue them and explain what was happening.

You might recall the rain practice,

Which we've done several times together.

And the first step in the rain practice is always to recognize and allow difficult experiences,

Instead of distracting ourselves or anesthetizing ourselves that we can actually,

In meditation,

Feel very clearly what's happening.

And of course,

On a personal level,

This has to do often with our reactive patterns of thinking and behavior that cause us to suffer.

And the practice then allows us to first uncover realize what these patterns are,

You see into them.

And that's the first step towards towards freeing yourself.

And I think that there's the same instruction for what we would call these economic or social structures that we also see lead leading to our suffering.

That the first step can be to recognize what this is,

Whether it's a form of oppression or racism or a threat to our planet.

And in uncovering them and feeling them in the body is the first step then to freeing ourselves.

And I think that this is,

You know,

This is something we know from the first moment that we meditate in watching the breath or sensing into the body,

The way that has a natural effect of calming the heart and mind and allowing a space to open up in which you can deal much more compassionately and wisely with whatever is happening.

And I think in the same way as as the experience for the suffering we experience in our in our own lives,

That it's a skill that we learn little by little that this capacity to really bring compassion and kindness to,

To what's here.

So really,

It's the same question,

I think,

For all meditation practice that can we meet this moment with this open hearted awareness that pauses the fight,

Flight or freeze response and allows us just to become aware,

Entry with kindness and care.

What is what is happening?

A quote from Albert Einstein who said,

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

And then I think the other the other thing to recall is that when we start down this path,

And we begin to act,

Even in small ways,

That we discover that we are not alone in this that there's,

There's an overabundance of people who are engaged in this same endeavor.

There's a book by Paul Hawken called Blessed Unrest,

Which describes how the ecological movement just over a few decades has become the largest social movement in history.

He first estimated that maybe there were 100,

000 groups throughout the world in this movement,

But his conclusion was he was wrong by a power of 10,

That there are at least a million and maybe even as much as 2 million such organizations.

So we can conclude by just going back inside for a moment,

And reconnecting with the breath,

The life giving rhythm of the breath,

As it sustains the body,

And giving us this gift of human life,

Given without us doing anything,

The miracle of being alive.

With that gratitude,

Asking ourselves,

What can we offer the gifts that we have from the abilities that we have?

How can we respond?

Concluding with these promises adapted from the work of Joanna Macy,

I vow to commit myself daily to the healing of the world,

And the welfare of all beings to live on earth more lightly,

Creating less harm in the food and products and energy that I consume,

To support others in our work for the world,

To pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind,

Strengthens my heart,

And supports me in keeping these promises.

And as you're ready,

You can come gently back.

Reviews

I am listening to this in the midst of a climate catastrophe in my hometown and state in the south of Brazil. This has helped me tremendously to get back to myself while remaining aware of what is happening outside. Thank you forever for this 🙏🏼