The September Rebellion is over, but we are still in rebellion.
We are in rebellion against business as usual. We root ourselves in the reality of a heating planet, and in the catastrophic consequences of continued heating. We do this in the face of the denial and greed of corporations and governments and the super-rich.
We rebel in our daily lives, making choices based on reducing harm and in improving the health of the world.
We rebel in our conversations and communication, speaking up for the endangered and the extinct.
We rebel by resourcing ourselves: by learning about the impact of racial oppression and institutional greed, ill-will and ignorance on the climate crisis.
We rebel through our continued protests and demonstrations, on HS2 building sites and in towns and cities across the world.
Three weeks ago I dressed as a Faceless Bureaucrat and slowly marched with other rebels through Worcester city, dipping my hands into a globe filled with (fake) blood, before ‘dying in’ in the city centre. Last weekend Satya and I sat in vigil for an hour, in the rain, in love and grief for the earth. Someone will sit in vigil in the centre of Malvern every Saturday between now and COP 26.
Satya and Kaspa in vigil
We rebel through our personal practices and reflections. We investigate what it means to be human and how our own greed, ill-will and ignorance affect others and the world. We practice compassion and love.
We rebel in our thought and planning, asking what will our next actions be? Where do I want to put my energy? How can I best affect change?
We are in rebellion.
For more information on sitting in vigil, visit Earthvigil.co.uk
To find out about local actions and actions across the country contact your local XR group, or the national XR website.
“In five weeks’ time I will be traveling from our small rural town to London for a fortnight of rebellion. I will probably do some things that are illegal. I may get arrested. I heard anecdotally last week that those willing to be arrested are often supported by their faith. Is that true? How did I get here again and, as peace-loving Buddhist, why am I planning on causing disruption?”
As Buddhists we recognise and carefully consider any problematic impacts of direct action. Here, Andy and Joe respond to Dharma challenges by a long-term practitioner.
Q Few practitioners are at the advanced stages of the path necessary to be able to cope with the challenges experienced during direct action.
A It is our experience that even relatively beginner practitioners may progress spiritually through supported, compassionate, mindful engagement with the challenges of direct action. Clearly one should only engage in direct action if one is not in danger of losing one’s spiritual foundation, and we would certainly encourage anyone who is impacted in this way to take care of themselves in whatever way they needed. There are many ways to take action of course e.g. in a support role, and not everyone will be willing or able to join protest actions on the streets.
Q Throughout the suttas there are warnings about exposing ourselves to situations where it is difficult to guard the sense doors.
A It’s true that practitioners are advised to hold back from activities that would undermine their inner stability. Therefore each person must choose how to engage in a way suitable to them. The retreat experience in which we can and do guard the sense doors is invaluable, but we continue to practice when we move out into the world. For most of us this movement in and out of the world is the reality and both can contribute to our spiritual development.
Q Direct action creates attachments that hinder our progress to awakening. Once we are “thus-achieved”, or well-advanced along the path, then direct action may be possible, even advisable, but very few of us are.
A We practice mindfulness during actions in order to hold back from being drawn into attachment and anger. This is a valuable practice in and of itself.
A key offering of the Dharma in the context of direct action is non-attachment to results. This is our perspective. It is freeing and takes the stress out of our action. Instead we focus on cultivating the wholesomeness of our motivation and do our best to be well prepared.
Q The Buddha tells us how to develop our practice. It’s a well-trodden path. Most of us in secular dharma (who aren’t monastics) have a difficult job following this anyway because our lifestyle puts us in the way of worldly distractions. So, we should not make it more difficult by going looking for them.
A Direct action on climate change is not a distraction any more than any other compassionate action in the world. We have chosen a focused compassionate practice of non-violent direct action. This isn’t a ‘worldly distraction’ as it arises from a deeply held compassionate sense of universal responsibility, which is the very foundation of the path of awakening.
Q There may be wise ways of responding to legitimate concerns about the environment that involve little or no such dangers. It may therefore be more appropriate to explore these even though it may seem to us they are less effective or exciting, judged by the world’s standards.
A It is important for each individual to choose forms of action that suit their capacity and temperament. The most important point is the intention. If the intention is to generate excitement, then the action is indeed worldly; if the intention is universal compassion and responsibility, then the action is Dharma.
Q Then there is the consideration of the suffering of those adversely affected by XR protests. Some would say “the few must suffer for the many” but this is hardly compassionate.
A As XR Buddhists we favour actions that do not cause suffering. We are confident that our actions arise out of compassion for all beings; but actions toward a more sustainable and more inclusive world inevitably will cause discomfort even suffering to some. There is no way to avoid this, but to do nothing is to allow and perpetuate a system that causes huge suffering, particularly to the poor, the non-dominant cultures and to the other species. If our system continues as it currently does it threatens our very existence with the unimaginable suffering this will cause. There is no way to avoid suffering, we can only attempt to minimise it.
Q The non-violent meditator who stands apart from the world and its norms is likely to receive short shrift.
A This is not our experience. Our meditations may be quiet but they are also very powerful, conveying peaceful determination and rootedness. Very often when we meditate within the wider extinction rebellion movement, others will join us and sit with us. It is often evident that other activists and members of the public are inspired and moved by our meditation. Although we may be sitting apart we have placards that make clear the issues we addressing in the world.
Q. I agree with the goals of XR, but I’m not likely to engage in street actions: is there anything else I can offer from my meditation practice?
Yes. Thank you.Here are two suggestions for prayers and vows; please adapt them to your own needs and heart:
Prayer for the Earth
May people around the world including Governments, awaken to the reality and urgency of the ecological and climate crisis and act quickly and with wisdom.
May climate justice prevail in this world, so that inequality and harmful exploitation everywhere is ended for the good of all
May there be spiritual and ecological harmony in the world between people, in our treatment of animals and in our relationship to the environment, providing wellbeing and happiness to all beings everywhere.
And from a personal perspective here are the Eco-Satttva vows:
Eco-Sativa Vows (from: The Eccosattva Training course by One Earth Sangha)
Based on my love of the world and understanding of deep interdependence of all things, I vow:
To live on Earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products and energy I consume.
To commit myself daily to the healing of the world and the welfare of all beings; to discern and replace human systems of oppression and harm.
To invite personal discomfort as an opportunity to share in the challenge of our collective liberation.
To draw inspiration, strength and guidance from the living Earth, from our ancestors and the future generations, and from our siblings of all species.
To help others in their work for the world and to ask for help when I feel the need.
To pursue a daily spiritual practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart and supports me in observing these vows
Joseph Mishan is a mindfulness teacher in the Vipassana tradition, a psychotherapist and the coordinator of Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement in London and a joint coordinator of XR Buddhists UK.
Andy has been studying, practising and teaching Buddhism within the Gelug Tibetan tradition for 40 years. He joined XR in 2019, and is active in his local XR group in South Somerset.
I’d tend to say that I’ve not much use for hope when looking at the Climate and Ecological Emergency, but of course XR has a wild, improbable hope written all over it. The infectious power of that hope is surely why so many thousands of us have already responded to its call: the idea that if sufficient numbers of citizens confront this planned extermination of the living world by rising up in non-violent civil disobedience, our doing so might yet precipitate a significant process of change. And despite how bad things look, I most certainly feel the visceral pull that hope, or I wouldn’t be caught up in this.
One thing we can be sure of is that XR’s emergence has triggered something that’s caught many of us by surprise. A great many people, it would seem, already know the game is up on industrial civilisation, but have had no way of expressing that knowing, let alone of acting upon it. Which is to say, perhaps, they’ve had nowhere to place the burden of it, and have been left lying awake at 3am with an ever-worsening situation quietly gnawing at them.
I spent four days in London with XR’s October 2019 Rebellion, on the last of which I finally met up with an old friend from the Amida Shu sangha who I’d been trying to find all week – a Buddhist priest called Satya Robyn. Satya’s been deeply involved in XR this past year and it’s been a joy to watch the humane, grounded spirituality of her Amidist school of Buddhism – the one that’s most deeply shaped my own perspective on prayer – informing her response to and engagement with XR.
I joined Satya and other XR Buddhists early that final morning for a meditation vigil – one that would blockade the doorway to BP’s London Headquarters. Rookies that we were, we’d not factored on their second door, and by the time we crossed our legs we sort of knew our arrestible action was going to be politely ignored – as indeed it was.
After a couple of hours sitting there in silence we made our way to Trafalgar Square. By this point pretty much all the remaining XR presence in London had been corralled into that central zone, and the police had begun an accelerated process of removal and arrest. Mopping all this up.
I met some Cornwall friends at a road-block at the top of Whitehall and sat down with them. Peering between the legs of the police I found myself watching a troupe of young dancers who’d formed themselves into a ghostly, pulsating siphonophore, a composite creature floating and revolving in the open space between us and the main police lines, in complete silence. The Shimmer, as I later learned this many-legged being was called. As I sat entranced by its slow movement, Satya was carried past me by four police, sobbing deeply as she hung between them. You can read her own account of it here.
A few moments later an officer told me to move from the road, and when I refused, he asked if I understood the consequences of that refusal. I remember replying that what I understood was the consequences of this movement failing, and that understanding what its failure meant filled me with grief and terror. A bit hyperbolic, maybe, but true.
My mouth was now dry as sandpaper and I’d begun to feel dizzy. Then something unexpected happened: an old friend, a writer connected to the Dark Mountain Project, appeared out of nowhere and laid his hand on my shoulder without saying a word. The effect of his gesture was extraordinary. I felt rooted to the earth by it, as if the small weight of his hand ran down through me and into the ground, planting me there on the tarmac. The officer asked if I wanted to have more time to think about it, to which I replied I’d not been thinking about much else for the past four days, so now was probably good.
My friend was arrested a few moments after me, and like Satya and many others I know, he spoke of the overwhelming emotion that the experience evoked in him. For me it was rather different. Mainly, it was just a relief. To be finally doing something, maybe. As the police processed me I had plenty of time to talk to them about their role in the unfolding street theatre which our actions that week had co-opted them into. About the extra shifts they were working as a result. About why we were there.
The following nine hours were, I think, the most interesting of my recent life. They were also the quietest of that week. There’s been much discussion, since, about the privilege-bias of XR’s mass-arrest strategy. I certainly get that being arrested is a lot less vulnerable or high-stakes for some of us than it is for others – and yes, the whole encounter offered a nine-hour forensic examination of the social privileges that have shaped and still surround my rather sheltered life. So I’ve no real defence to offer this privilege-bias charge, other than to keep the situation where I can see it, as best I can anyway. And being on the wrong side of a police counter seemed to enable this quite effectively.
But about privilege itself. My friend Amos taught me that what the word privilege actually means is ‘exemption’. The term comes to us from an old tradition of papal exemption from communal taxes. And that’s exactly how privilege plays out in our culture, isn’t it? And why it has the bitter connotation that it does. What our culture tells us to do with privilege is to conserve it: hoard it, shore it up – keep it for yourself, and then pass it on to your own young.
One privilege I was aware of during that week in London was the behaviour of the police. None of us were being killed for being here, as is happening right now in so many other parts of the world – the Amazon especially – to those who dare to take a stand on these same issues. But more significant yet, for me, is the privilege that still enfolds most of us in the UK: the relative ecological stability we still enjoy, but that we can no longer expect to pass onto to our children – our own, or anyone else’s – as they set out on their lives. And along with that stability, pretty much every good or beautiful or otherwise crucial thing you can name or point to.
How do we respond to the fact that we’re living within a cannibal economy – a culture that’s knowingly and wilfully devouring the future lives of its own young? The dilemma of how to spend our own obscene exemption from what they will have to face still seems to me to overshadow these other, unevenly distributed privileges.
Meanwhile I found myself absorbed by those around me – especially the officer currently responsible for me, a nervous young man about my eldest’s son’s age, who seemed unfamiliar with the necessary protocols, and who I found myself feeling oddly protective of as he stumbled over some of the details and was met with a brisk impatience from his supervisor.
As you may have gathered, I’m not entirely convinced that this strange new composite being called XR has quite figured out what it is yet. We’ll see in the coming months and years, I guess. One thing I did learn that day is that a police cell is a good place to pray. This may sound stupid, but as XR UK’s next uprising approaches, I’ve noticed that the biggest obstacle to returning to arrestible action, for me, is that fractious argument around privilege. But however exposing those questions feel, I reckon that all things considered, such problems are best negotiated by going back and doing it again, and then again, as we work out together what this movement might yet become.
All of us now, one way or another.
Mat Osmond, Mid-Cornwall XR
Mat Osmond’s a writer and illustrator based in Falmouth, Cornwall, with a longstanding connection to the Amida Shu Buddhist sangha. His most recent piece for The Dark Mountain Journal, Black Light, picks up some of threads mentioned here. Mat’s convener for Art.Earth’s 2021 creative summit at Dartington, UK, Borrowed Time: on death, dying & change. Much of Mat’s spare time currently goes on helping to further the regenerative groundswell that is XR, within his local community and beyond.
It’s April 15th 2019; my anxiety rises as I approach the London venue where I’m expecting over 40 fellow Buddhists to gather. A few early arrivals are there already and they tell me that they can’t get in. My anxiety obediently notches up a point or two and I press the bell myself as if my status as organiser will surely work magic. It doesn’t. More people arrive, the door remains firmly shut and I remind myself that I am not in charge of the unfolding of life’s mysteries, including where the key to this particular door might be situated. Finally, one of the building staff arrive the door is opened and we file in to the cool interior to arrange the room and prepare for the gathering.
This is Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement, soon to give birth to Extinction Rebellion Buddhists, at our second major Extinction Rebellion protest. We have Buddhists from across the lineages arriving to take action on this first day of two weeks of protests on the climate crisis. The planning is already done on social media. We will be starting with walking meditation to Marble Arch and then sitting in meditation in the road to block traffic. We have placards to hang around our necks which read ‘Grief and Love for the Earth’; over these words hovers a photograph of Earth from space. An incomparably beautiful blue-green planet, our home, now ravaged and depleted by years of remorseless exploitation.
But before we hit the streets we are meeting to connect with ourselves and each other, to remember why we are here. We meditate together, we speak and we hold silence to make room for the passion and the pain of our ravaged Earth, and of all beings caught up in this destruction. When we file out of the building we move from open hearts, which hold us in the knowledge that although we cannot ever know of the results of our actions, we can be sure of the necessity and the rightness of what we are doing, and the manner in which we are doing it.
Emerging from the underground station we form into a line and in noble silence we slow- walk the quarter of a mile down the length of Edgware Road; a quiet stream of contemplatives moving through the daily mayhem of a busy London street.
People stop and make way; I like to think they are moved by our message and our dignity.
We arrive at Marble Arch and are greeted by another group of Extinction Rebellion activists who have already blocked the road. After discussion we decide to ask if they will agree to us meditating in front of them. They are more than happy. We take our places on the road and as the singing bowl chimes we close our eyes for an hour meditation on the road. Presence, peace, rootedness. Police come and go, traffic honks support or anger, people shout abuse and encouragement. And we sit. We sit in honour of the Earth, inspired and held by two and half thousand years of our spiritual tradition.
The Buddha’s example
But this is an essay about whether Buddhists should remain apart from direct action on the social and environmental crisis that is facing us, and instead focus on personal growth and enlightenment. Are not these crises (and many others) merely the playing out of samsara; the arising and passing of forms fundamentally empty and transient? Should the Buddhist contribution not be to cultivate wisdom and clear seeing; to reveal the ultimately delusional nature of reality? Should Buddhists therefore not avoid politics and certainly direct action?
We might start to address this question by looking at the Buddha’s own life. What stance did he take in response to the issues of his day? There is in fact much evidence from the Buddha’s teaching and his life that he challenged the established order of his day quite directly.
The caste system was a dominating and powerful influence on the lives of the population of South Asia at the time of the Buddha. He took a radical stance on this. In the Assalayana Sutta a conversation between the Buddha and the Brahmin caste supremacist Assalayatta is reported in detail. Assalayatta is pretty smart: ‘a master of the Three Vedas with their vocabularies, liturgy, phonology, etymology, & histories; skilled in philology & grammar, fully versed in cosmology’ Nevertheless, the Buddha dismantles the Brahmins claims of his caste’s superiority with impeccable logic: asking for example, how sure the Brahmin is that all his caste is ‘pure’ Brahmin going back into history; and whether his case is subject to the same natural laws both physical and karmic as other castes and so on. The Brahmin’s claims start to look extremely thin and he is reported to have become rather dejected ‘When this was said, the Brahmin student Assalayana sat silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words.’ The Buddha’s position is clear from this conversation: that he holds all four castes to be of equal merit. It is to be noted that the Sanghas which the Buddha set up did not allow any expression of the caste system.
In relation to women we also find the Buddha taking a decisive position. He established a monastic rule that ensured that the testimony of women should be sought if any dispute arose in the community – a radical act for his day. He also made it clear that women had the same potential for awakening as men, and he created a parallel nun’s order about five years after the start of the monk’s order. Within the nuns’ order women had the opportunity to opt out of what was a highly oppressive patriarchal system. His advice to his follower King Pesanadi the King of Kasala also expressed his view of women: he encouraged the king not to be downhearted on the birth of a daughter with these words: ‘Some women are better than men oh King. There are women who are wise and good, who are pure in thought and deed…’
The Buddha was also directly in contact with the kings of his day and gave advice to them – for example about the treatment of prisoners, education and the wisdom of going to war. He also addressed householders with the ’57 mental postures’; a guide for living which included advice on how to deal with lust and greed for example. The Pali literature of the Theravadins reveals the Buddha facing political intrigues and several wars. He counselled: Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain. Happily the peaceful live, giving up victory and defeat.’
It is worth adding that many of the radical initiatives that the Buddha introduced were subsequently dropped or ignored after his death, Buddhism has become more patriarchal for example, and more focused on individual awakening rather than the good of the whole, perhaps influenced by the individualistic culture of the modern world. But the historical records do point to a man whose actions and words reflected an uncompromising stance on the importance of compassion and respect for all beings.
The Scriptures
Let us now turn to more faith-based objections to engaged Buddhist action. In my experience perhaps the most common objection to active engagement in the climate crisis is that based on the Heart Sutra’s wisdom teaching that ‘form is not different than emptiness’. If the real world is illusory why would we get engaged with it? Surely the best and most we can offer is the invitation to recognise this – to not get so hung up on the so-called real word? Should we not let go and relax into non-attachment to this illusory world, into the truth of formlessness. But this is to ignore that the Heart Sutra immediately adds: ‘emptiness is not different than form.’ In his book Eco Dharma David Loy, Buddhist activist and author writes: ‘the Buddha did not teach – nor does his life demonstrate – that non-attachment means unconcern about what is happening in the world.’ The exclusive emphasis on emptiness is the route to the ‘spiritual bypass’ which confers a bland un-concern for suffering of any sort as a misunderstanding. In her contribution to ‘Response to the Climate Emergency’ Joanna Macy sees this view of emptiness as a justification of non-action as a ‘spiritual trap that cut the nerve of compassionate action’. To give lived expression to the whole of the Heart Sutra’s teaching, ‘form is not different than emptiness and emptiness is not different than form’, is to find a path of deep compassion for all beings while holding our actions and the results of our actions within a knowledge of the vast emptiness of all things. In practice this confers on even the most decisive activism the qualities of clarity courage and calm.
There is of course a model for this compassionate and wise action in the service of others, which is the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. This emphasises the combination of wisdom and of compassion and it replaces the focus on personal liberation with the aim of benefit to all beings. It is compassion in action. As the Dalai Lama has said: ‘It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.’
In a recent interview David Loy is asked ‘what is Buddhism for?’ He replies: ‘how does our practice empower us to respond appropriately [to the climate crisis]? ‘and he goes on: ‘If Buddhism doesn’t help us to do that maybe Buddhism isn’t what the world needs today’. I believe, along with the growing number of deeply committed practitioners in our movement, that the world desperately needs the qualities and wisdom which Buddhism offers.
Thich Naht Hahn, the father of engaged Buddhism, emphasises the reality of interdependence. He encourages compassionate action based on the recognition that we ‘inter-are’; we are part of a vast web of intricate interdependence and interconnection. This means that work in the world is part of our work on ourselves (and vice versa): and so we do not wait until we are perfectly enlightened to enter the fray. Our activism is an expression and vehicle of our inner transformation; it is sacred work. This is why XR Buddhists must in my view continue to embrace expressions of activism which convey the power and potency of our faith, as we tread this path of engagement in our beautiful, precious and troubled world.
Joseph Mishan
Joseph Mishan is a mindfulness teacher in the Vipassana tradition, a psychotherapist and the coordinator of Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement in London and a joint coordinator of XR Buddhists UK.
with insights from Patrick Barkham and Julian Hoffman
By Kaspalita Thompson
As I write, temperatures in the Arctic Circle are soaring to around 40o C. What’s happening in response? Very little, as far as I can tell.
A few days ago I was reflecting on how quickly life in the UK had changed in response to Covid-19, and asking what lessons might be drawn from that, when I found myself in the audience of a discussion between nature writers Julian Hoffman and Patrick Barkham, at the online Wonderland festival.
Julian Hoffman’s most recent book Irreplaceable is about how individuals and groups are working hard to save important natural spaces. Patrick Barkham’s latest book is Wild Child: Coming Home to Nature. Inevitably, the theme of the climate and ecological crises and how we respond to those was woven into their conversation.
It’s been striking how quickly and easily people, businesses and governments have made dramatic changes in response to the Corona virus: a Conservative government spending billions of pounds to pay the wages of ordinary workers; people restricting themselves to their houses apart from once a day to exercise; and grounded aeroplanes and unused cars.
Why did we respond so quickly?
At the end of the Wonderland panel I asked a question about what we might learn from lockdown. Patrick Barkham talked about the sense of “imminent danger” that we had in response to coronavirus, and that many people don’t have that sense in response to the climate crisis.
At the beginning of the pandemic there was a real sense of urgency, and of personal risk. There was a sense that I might die, and my loved ones might die – not in some abstract future scenario, but in the next few months, by this disease that I can already see killing thousands of people.
An invitation to urgency
Is it the work of climate activists to create this sense of urgency?
When I think of creating urgency from a Buddhist point of view, I think of that tension between urgency and ease that we find in the Buddha’s teachings and across different Buddhist traditions. I see that in the contrast between exhortations to practicelike your hair is on fire and the sense of relaxed confidence that I saw in Theravada monks I met in India, with their deep faith in their practice and in the Buddha.
I also think of my work with psychotherapy clients, and my clear awareness of the danger of overwhelming powerful emotions. I know that powerful emotions can be faced and transformed, and I also know that my job is to support the client into a place where that is possible. There is one state of mind in which we can do that work, and many states of mind in which the healing can’t happen.
As activists can we hold both urgency and safety in mind?
Home, urgency and safety
On the Wonderland panel, Hoffman described the common element he discovered in those groups and individuals working to save and take care of wild spaces: they had all expanded their sense of home to include those natural spaces. The woodlands, the meadows, and the waterscapes became parts of these activists’ homes, and they formed some sense of community with the non-human life in those spaces.
Seeing the landscape as home and facing its destruction brings that same sense of urgency that Covid-19 inspired.
There’s also a connection between home and safety as well. Whilst the threat to these places inspires urgency, I imagine that inhabiting these spaces resources and nourishes the activists.
Buddhism
Our job as Buddhist activists is to both cultivate that sense of urgency, and to support people to experience that urgency without being overwhelmed.
As Buddhists we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The word refuge connects to home, and to the safety that homes offer. We can find a similar safety wherever we are through rooting ourselves in the three jewels.
As well as the practices and teachings that can support us and others to be with powerful feelings we can also offer our own ways of being to others.
I went into that panel discussion at the online festival carrying my own doubts and fears, and I caught some of Patrick Barkham and Julian Hoffman’s hope. Faith, trust, confidence and ease are as infectious as hopelessness.
Hoffman spoke about the changes that have been made in European cities like Milan to accommodate walking and cycling. These changes came out of people’s experience of lockdown and wanting to keep some of the good. “Not enough, but a start.” He said.
Barkham spoke of the hope that arose from looking at young people, both in the climate activist movement and in social justice movements like Black Lives Matter.
Sometimes I am able to ground myself in that hope for the future, and sometimes I am not. Buddhism offers another hope as well: regardless of worldly conditions, liberation is possible.
Anchoring ourselves in the liberation of the Buddhas, we can face and respond to urgency, and take action to mitigate the climate crisis, and we can support each other to tumble gracefully into whatever happens next, whether we are able to mitigate the climate crisis or not.
Acharya Kaspalita Thompson, known as Kaspa, is a Buddhist Teacher, psychotherapist and member of XR Buddhists.
During the enforced isolation of the Coronavirus pandemic Brighton Extinction Rebellion Meditators reached out across borders to rebels in Bogota and sat together in an online vigil to commemorate those killed in defending the earth in Colombia.
XR Meditators are drawn from all faiths and non. We were struck by our privilege and the safety of our activism when a young Colombian who joined us and asked us, with tears in her eyes, to commemorate the Colombians activists murdered.
The online vigil
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the word to be an environmental activist; 50 have been killed this year. The second most biologically diverse country on Earth is vital to the earth’s biosystem. To our economic system, it is an untapped resource with a voracious land grab between mining, Palm Oil, Beef, and Cocao production, while local peoples fight for their lives and livelihoods, we in the UK safely profit from this exploitation.( UK is 2nd largest investor in Colombia.))
Bogata XR rebels were surprised and curious about how meditation might fit with civil disobedience and non-violent direct-action. Perhaps the radially quiet approach would attract interest in the usual noise of many strikes and demonstrations in Bogota?
A creative on-line collaboration emerged with a short video. 100 UK and Colombians sat together over zoom, while 100s more watched it live on Facebook . Reaching out across the earth we shared our opposition to the destructive and exploitative systems that kills and dominates the earth, we sat together in grief and love and a deepening awareness of our interconnection and ‘interbeing’
Using the power of social media and meditation to share our presence and our stories across the global XR community at this time of isolation felt important and significant.
Reaching out across the earth we shared our opposition to the destructive and exploitative systems that kills and dominates the earth, we sat together in grief and love and a deepening awareness of our interconnection and ‘interbeing’
Using the power of social media and meditation to share our presence and our stories across the global XR community at this time of isolation felt important and significant, and we hope just the beginning of more connecting across borders.
XR Brighton Meditators is a group from across denominations that come together and share courageous silent sitting and walking practices in support of our planet and to raise awareness of the climate emergency and mass extinction that is already upon us. We have been involved in actions such as silent vigils in road blockades and public mass meditations. If you’d like to make contact with the group and join us in future activities, email us: BrightonXRMeditation@protonmail.com
Interview with an arya bodhisattva on a distant planet in 150 years’ time from now
Q. It is said that you are an arya bodhisattva. What does this mean?
A. It signifies that my mind has directly realised the nature of reality and is pervaded by uncontrived altruism.
Q. Very good, but how can you sustain those?
A. Because I have achieved samatha, I can sustain these realisations indefinitely when I meditate, so consolidating a regenerative inner resource for helping others.
Q. It’s also said that you can recall your previous lives, and that this is the first time you have been born on our planet. If this is true where were you before you were born here?
A. On a planet called Earth. I was reborn there successively many times, in many different cultures and life forms. It was my home and habitat for many lifetimes.
Q. Why did that all stop?
A. Humans and other species became extinct there, so I couldn’t take a human rebirth again there. Being human is the best form for benefiting others.
Q. How did the extinction come about on Earth?
A. The humans destroyed their planet by excessive buring of fossil fuels, excessive livestock farming and widespread deforesting, thereby heating up the planet beyond the point where food could be produced any more. In such ways they destroyed their planet and its resources. Eventually everyone starved to death.
Q. Didn’t they realise what was happening?
A. By the time enough people took the crisis seriously it was already too late. The facts had been known for some time, but people either didn’t believe the evidence, or were too hooked to short-term goals to make wise decisions. There was a general addiction to consumption and economic growth, generated by a culture that put accumulation of wealth by a few people above the needs of everyone else. This culture generated unsustainable use of resources and human lifestyles.
Q. Why did you decide to become an arya bodhisattva?
A. I learned from my teachers that arya bodhisattvas are best able to help those around them, so I decided to engage in the recommended inner work to become one. It was hard work. You must be very determined and have a lot of conviction. The work involves cultivating renouncing attachment to worldly pleasure, altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and wisdom realising reality, speeded up by the two stages of tantra. We were amazingly fortunate that these teachings and methods were available at that time, because the lineages were still alive. Few people knew, and even among those that did, laziness often held them back. Not everyone who heard about the path recognised how very precious and meaningful it is.
Q. What sort of help can an arya bodhisattva offer in such a situation?
A. As the climate crisis escalated and food production declined, society fell apart – sometimes this was gradual and sometimes there were sudden shocks. The collapse was actually economic and political disintegration which caused a sort of collective mental breakdown. Many people lost their minds, because they lacked the inner resilience to cope with the crisis. Some individuals, groups and nations used violence to grab and hold onto scarce resources. Some people just died from despair. Regimes of heavy repression fuelled by mob hatred sprang up to prevent the starving millions from the hottest parts of the world from reaching places where life was still possible. In such situations, arya bodhisattvas naturally, calmly maintain inner equilibrium, self-discipline and compassionate motivation. Thus, they guide the people around them to non-violent compassionate actions, away from harming and hardening their hearts towards others. Those of us doing this work were not enough of us to save the planet and people, but still we did what we could.
Q. Didn’t you get distressed or overwhelmed by the challenges?
A. Of course it was very sad to witness what was happening, and one could only provide a fraction of the help needed, but it was great to be able to offer support, care and good advice amidst so much confusion and anguish. And some people were helped. Those who could hear what we said could create causes for good future rebirths, by practising virtue and avoiding non-virtue. They could help those around them to some extent, with kindness and generosity. Some of those people are here on this planet living happy lives right now.
Q. Do you have any advice for the people of this planet, given what you experienced on Earth?
A. Avoid harming others, and wherever possible, help them. Live life contented with what you have. Find joy in things without needing to possess them. Avoid grasping for stuff you don’t really need. Remember that the natural environment is precious because it sustains life. Don’t believe humans to be superior to other species – every living being has the right to be treated with respect. Don’t eat animals or steal from them. Don’t allow any section of the community to claim supremacy. Create harmonious social structures free from exploitation and oppression. Teach peace and kindness to your children through your example. Ground your culture in knowledge of reality. If you can do these things, all will be well.
Andy has been studying, practising and teaching Buddhism within the Gelug Tibetan tradition for 40 years. He joined XR in 2019, and is active in his local XR group in South Somerset.
