Meeting The Climate Crisis With Wisdom: Talk And Blessing

To respond to our climate crisis with wisdom, we shift our orientation from a small sense of "me" and my life, opinions, likes and dislikes, to a much wider space of connection to all living beings and this beautiful earth, our fragile planet home. Awakening to the truth of this interconnection, we naturally "protect what we love"--the land, air, and water that nurtures and sustains us.

Transcript

I was very happy last Sunday to be able to participate in the Climate March in New York City and this has led to me to explore this week and next week some themes that are very much up in my own heart and mind now related to climate change,

Which I think are very much tied into our meditation practice and this path that opens up to us to be able to connect much more to all other beings and to our earth.

I think you could easily start any discussion of the climate with a list of things that should happen,

Both for ourselves personally and then also for our politics and our economy and I think all those are important,

But behind those I think there's a consensus that there also has to be some sort of shift in awareness or consciousness to a kind of deeper,

Larger understanding of who we are and this relationship that we have to our earth.

This week I was walking to the metro and I was watching the sunrise and I first thought to myself just how beautiful the colors were across the horizon,

But then I recalled that it's actually this huge planet that's turning itself with us on board or so many other things.

The water that we drink from the faucet is coming from this earth that covers most of our surface of the earth and is I think 60% of our bodies made out of this water.

That we're really so connected to this earth on which we live.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago this experience when I was in Africa this summer and going on a safari and seeing these enormous majestic elephants and the waters filled with these enormous hippos and antelopes racing in front of me and this feeling like I was just a visitor in this world which really very much belonged to the animals,

That I was their guest,

That all humans were just guests.

I think even if we look deeply into the experience of living in the city or close to the city where they're just very small green spaces or trees lining the streets that you can start to sense that they're not so much intruding on this landscape of buildings and houses and roads so much as a reminder that the roads and the buildings are just this very thin cover over our earth and that everything else really just belongs to this living planet or the oxygen that we need for our bodies to breathe is just the gift of the plants and the trees,

Their carbon dioxide which is again offered back from us to them.

Just as we can rewire our brains through meditation little by little to just incline more naturally to wholesome states of heart and mind,

We can also rewire our brains to slowly recognize that we're not just a bunch of small separate selves,

Each on our own path in life,

Disconnected from everyone else and from the rest of life,

But that we are really part of some living whole.

So as we develop in meditation these wholesome states of heart and mind,

Whether it's kindness or empathy,

Compassion,

Equanimity,

We also cultivate the sense of what Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing,

This close connection that we all have to each other and to all living things.

I recall in my college Introduction to Philosophy course that we studied the problem of God and as part of that,

The proofs to the existence of God from medieval philosophers,

The one I remember is that if you look at everything that is in motion in the world,

Then you can ask yourself,

Well how did it all become in motion originally?

And you have to conclude that there was an unmoved mover,

The first thing that started all of this off.

And that being a proof to the existence of God.

And I contrast this with myself,

My own experience in working in a refugee camp for a few years in southern Mexico.

And we used to go out in the planting season and bless the fields before the planting.

I recall thinking that these indigenous Mayans that were living there didn't need a proof for the existence of God,

That they lived entirely dependent on the land.

They saw that creator directly in the earth,

In the plants,

In the rain that would come to grow the plants and grow the plants and themselves as just one piece of this great creation.

So I think meditation can open us from this very small sense of self that we all are living independently and striving for some goal with all of our hangups and our neuroses,

Which we know is in itself a dead end and cannot satisfy this deep longing that we have for connection and for belonging.

And that the benefit of meditation is it opens us up not just as a means of understanding this for ourselves and our place in the world,

But also reorienting us in our perspective as to what's important for the whole.

Zen master Dogen said,

To study the self is to forget the self,

And to forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

What would happen if we could live from this truth,

I think,

Is the question.

There's a saying that you protect what you love.

So for us,

You know,

This earth,

This climate,

And everything that flourishes here.

The inspiration for the meditation we'll do together now is from a beautiful book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called Braiding Sweetgrass,

Which I really recommend.

She's an indigenous woman,

A botanist,

A university professor.

And in the book,

She provides or recounts a Thanksgiving address and greeting to the natural world that school children on the Onondaga land begin their day in the same way that children here are accustomed to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

So I've taken some of that content,

I've added and adapted some material to it,

And I'd like to use that with you in our meditation today.

To begin,

I invite you to get comfortable and just adjust your posture so that it is alert and steady,

But opened and relaxed at the same time.

The body at rest,

Your feet on the floor,

Your hands can rest gently at your sides or in your lap.

And closing your eyes,

If you feel comfortable doing so,

Coming home to the body,

Feeling the points of contact of the body first of the feet,

Their weight,

Their shape against the floor,

Your toes and feet inside your shoes,

The clothes against your skin,

The contact between your body and the chair,

The feeling of the air against your skin.

Relaxing.

Now smoothing out the brow,

Relaxing the muscles around the eyes,

Relaxing any tension in your jaw,

Relaxing down your throat,

Letting the shoulders drop,

Releasing any tension in the abdomen.

With a few deep breaths,

Feeling the abdomen and the chest expand,

And then release,

And feeling gratitude for being alive.

Give thanks to our Mother,

The Earth,

For she gives us everything we need for life.

She supports our feet as we walk upon her,

Gives us joy that we live on this Earth,

Where she cares for us,

Just as she had from the beginning of time.

To our Mother,

The Earth,

We send thanksgiving,

Love,

And respect.

Now our minds are one.

In the drawing in of the breath and releasing it again,

We give thanks for the air that gives our body life,

Nourishing our body with every in-breath and each out-breath,

The life-giving cycle of breath,

Receiving this beautiful gift of life that's freely given from our Mother,

The Earth,

To each of us.

Over and over,

Our minds are one.

Standing around us,

We see all the trees.

The Earth gives many families of trees,

Each with instructions and uses.

Some provide shelter and shade,

Others fruit and beauty.

Many people of the world recognize a tree as a symbol of peace and strength.

With one mind,

We greet and thank the trees.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn toward the vast fields of plant life.

As far as the eye can see,

The plants grow,

Working many wonders.

They sustain life.

When we look about us,

We see the berries providing us with delicious foods.

The leader of the berries is the strawberry,

The first to ripen in the spring.

With our minds gathered together,

We give thanks and look forward to seeing this plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are one.

Everything we need to live a good life is here on Mother Earth.

With all the love that is still around us,

We gather our minds together.

Now our minds are one.

Now we turn to the ancestors,

All generations going back in time,

The bearers of this human life for hundreds of thousands of years,

An unbroken chain back in time,

Each of us dependent on the generation before to give this gift of human life to the generation that follows,

And then the next,

And the next thousands of times over,

Each of them nurturing and protecting and passing on this unique gift of human life to our parents and then to us.

The miracle of being able to stand here today only because of the love and the care of each generation given to its newborns,

Carefully protecting and nurturing them so they could grow,

Pass on this blessing to those who followed.

Now our minds are one.

Today we have gathered and when we look up on the faces around us,

We see that the cycles of life continue.

We have been given this duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.

So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to all created things and to each other as one life form.

Now our minds are one.

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words of all the things we have named.

It is not our intention to leave anything out.

If something was forgotten,

We leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

And now our minds are one.

In your own time,

You can come gently back.

Open your eyes.