David Loy is a (retired) professor of comparative philosophy and religion, a writer, and a teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. His most recent book is Ecodharma: Buddhist teachings for the ecological crisis. He is also co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center in Colorado, USA. I was stunned by his wisdom and perspective and I want to share this with you and encourage you to listen to the talk. Three years on, it seems even more relevant. He asks what does Buddhism offer that can help us understand and respond appropriately to the unprecedented ecological challenges that face us now? The Buddha lived in a very different time, but Buddhist teachings have important social and ecological implications for our times. Perhaps the most important is the bodhisattva—or “ecosattva”—path. How shall we understand the bodhisattva path today? In what ways might it need to be updated, to be the most helpful for us today?
“Buddhism has to change. I think that we have to really acknowledge this an incredibly dangerous time….We have to look at institutionalised greed, institutionalised ill will and institutionalised delusion and karma and figure out ways to address that…..If we have the delusion that we’re going to be able to do it just by disconnecting and dissociating ourselves from the rest of the world and focussing on our meditation….it just isn’t going to work, especially in the kind of time frame that we find ourselves in now”
See: https://www.davidloy.org and https://rmerc.org In addition to teaching at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center and working with a few private students, he offers workshops and retreats, online and in person, mostly on ecodharma and other aspects of socially engaged Buddhism.
As Buddhists we are encouraged to cultivate and practice compassion, both for ourselves and our world. Some of the ways we do this are well known to us, such as in our relationship with others, ourselves and the world.
But how are our financial choices harming or benefiting the world? Are they also an expression of compassion?
With no consultation with us our bank may be using our money in a manner directly contrary to our Buddhist values; in ways that cause serious harm to the planet, people and other living beings.
Many high street banks are major financiers of the coal, oil and gas projects which are directly responsible for the climate crisis. In 2022 the five big UK high street banks (Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds, and NatWest) provided £37 billion of financial support to fossil fuel companies [1].
These banks are also financing industries like nuclear weapons, arms manufacture, single-use plastics and old-growth forest clearance; furthermore these projects are frequently associated with human rights abuses, and poor workers’ rights.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
The Mindful Money Campaign
The Mindful Money campaign is inviting individual Buddhist practitioners and their Dharma centres to become more aware of the impact of their banking choices, and to change their banking practices where necessary. .
Some banks actively create benefit and avoid harm, investing their money in areas such as community housing, renewable energy projects, rewilding, and sustainable farming.
For example, Triodos Bank, The Co-operative Bank, Charity Bank and Nationwide all have strong ethical policies. (See below under Get Informed for more detail.)
Switching banks to an ethical one is an important form of compassionate action. It ensures our money is not being used to do harm in the world. It also sends a powerful chorus of disapproval to banks who invest simply for profit, without regard for the consequences for our suffering world.
Here are some important actions you can take:
1. Get informed
There are many sites online which will help you assess your bank’s ethics. For example:
See how ethical your bank is with this simple tool: bank.green
Find more information and information on individual banks at Good with Money
Many people are understandably unaware of the harm their bank is causing with their money – and without their consent. They may also be unaware of the enormous good their money could do in the hands of an ethical bank. Tell your friends and share this page!
Thank you for your compassionate concern and your action on this issue.
In a world increasingly affected by climate change, the urgency to address environmental issues has never been more pressing. As we grapple with the consequences of our actions on the planet, seeking guidance from various philosophical and spiritual traditions can provide valuable insights and motivation for change. Among these, Buddhism stands out for its profound teachings on interconnectedness, impermanence, and compassion, offering a unique perspective on how to approach the challenges of climate change.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophy lies the concept of interdependence—the understanding that all phenomena are interconnected and mutually dependent. This fundamental principle underscores the inseparable relationship between humanity and the environment. In the face of climate change, which knows no borders and affects all living beings, recognizing our interconnectedness with nature becomes crucial. As Bhikkhu Bodhi, an influential Buddhist monk and environmental activist, aptly puts it, “The world is a single, interconnected organism, and human beings are not separate from it but an integral part of it.”
Central to Buddhist practice is the cultivation of mindfulness—a state of non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. Mindfulness encourages us to observe the world with clarity and compassion, allowing us to recognize the suffering caused by environmental degradation. By being fully present to the reality of climate change, we can acknowledge the pain it inflicts on vulnerable communities, ecosystems, and future generations. This awareness serves as a catalyst for action, motivating us to adopt sustainable lifestyles and advocate for policies that prioritize environmental protection.
The Buddhist concept of impermanence reminds us of the transient nature of existence and the impermanence of all phenomena. This teaching invites us to reflect on the fleeting nature of the natural world and the fragility of life on Earth. In the face of environmental destruction, it urges us to embrace change and adapt to new circumstances with resilience and wisdom. Instead of clinging to unsustainable practices that harm the planet, we are encouraged to cultivate a mindset of flexibility and innovation, seeking solutions that align with the principles of ecological balance and harmony.
Compassion lies at the heart of the Buddhist path—a deep empathy for all sentient beings and a commitment to alleviating their suffering. In the context of climate change, compassion compels us to extend our concern beyond human boundaries and encompass all forms of life impacted by environmental degradation. Buddhist teachings inspire us to act with kindness and empathy towards future generations, recognizing our responsibility to preserve the Earth for their well-being. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, “We need to wake up to the fact that the earth is our mother as well as our home.”
Buddhism offers not only profound philosophical insights but also practical guidance for addressing the existential threat of climate change. By embracing the principles of interconnectedness, mindfulness, impermanence, and compassion, we can cultivate a deeper understanding of our relationship with the environment and inspire meaningful action to protect it. As stewards of the Earth, let us heed the call of Buddhist wisdom and work tirelessly to create a sustainable and compassionate world for present and future generations.
Three years ago I took part in civil resistance for the first time when I joined Extinction Rebellion for their October 2019 uprising. On my fourth day with XR I was finally arrested, minutes after my friend Satya Robin had been carried past me by six police officers, sobbing deeply. I’ve written before of that first experience of arrest but what’s kept coming back to me from those four days isn’t that, but rather the long walk home along the Thames on each of the previous three nights.
There were about 5000 of us taking action in Westminster that October, but the moment you stepped outside the protests there was no sign at all that anything was happening. Everywhere else, London just hummed along as normal. So too on the UK news channels that we all kept looking to for evidence of our actions’ ‘impact’. Barely a mention. The dissonance this generated – as if stepping back and forth each day between two completely different realities – came to a head on the third of those slow night-walks home, as I found myself looking across the Thames at the ongoing redevelopment of Battersea Power Station. The familiar old chimney-stacked giant was surrounded by the dark outlines of cranes, all lit up with red safety lights. It presented an eerily beautiful spectacle: the massive station hulked against the dark skyline beyond the river’s swirling current, surrounded by little votive lights. As I stood looking at it the unease finally gathered itself into a question that, once spoken, has never really gone away: Who exactly are you kidding?
Battersea PowerStation
Last week I travelled up to London to take part in my first action with XR’s offspring, Just Stop Oil. There’s much to say about how the nature and tone of this new campaign has changed since 2019. As has XR’s, perhaps. What’s on my mind here, though, is how it felt to revisit the now fully revamped power station – or rather, shopping mall – the day before our JSO team walked out into a busy Aldgate junction and sat down.
Stepping inside the illuminated interior of this newly completed playground for the rich (‘every inch monetised’ as one reviewer put it) wasn’t so different to looking at it from across the river three years ago. Here in this newly unwrapped shopping mall, then, I met more or less what I’d come expecting to meet: a palpable sense of the overwhelming momentum which these civil resistance campaigns have been attempting to set their shoulder against – the brightly lit state of entrancement at the heart of our oil-fuelled consumer economy. But the reason I’m bothering to talk about this here isn’t simply to go over all that. It’s a conversation I had with my friend Geoff the following day, my limbs still heavy with that spectacle of cheerful omnicide, a few hours before heading off to meet up with the JSO team.
Geoff’s an artist and builder, and someone for whom honesty’s an involuntary virtue. When we first met around twelve years ago I’d recently become drawn to Japanese Pureland Buddhism, in large part through the unforgettable book on this tradition by the novelist Hiroyuki Itsuki: Tariki: embracing despair, discovering peace. Itsuki’s spiritual memoir spoke deeply to me at the time, as it does now. It also connected with Geoff in a way I doubt any other ‘dharma book’ would have. The melancholic authority of Itsuki’s account of his lifelong survivor’s guilt, and of how he found in the Pureland dharma of Other Power a recourse that stayed his hand more than once from taking his own life – all this feels as alive and real to me now as it did then. As I sat with Geoff in a cramped Conway Hall coffee shop I talked with him about that sense of overwhelm, stood before the old power station three years ago and last night – and about the shrillness or silliness, as it seemed to me, of any of us imagining we might somehow turn this juggernaut around ‘in the next two or three years’.
Geoff listened, intent as always. Then he asked if I might not have all this the wrong way around. Suppose it was more the case, he said, that whatever turn this is, it’s something already here – embodied not least by each of these little London roadblocks: an inexorable process of slippage with its own unpredictable tipping points, as our lethal dominant culture transitions or collapses, for better or worse, into whatever comes after it. We might choose to try and influence that transition or not, as we wish, but whatever it may or may not evolve into later is not only radically unknowable from where we stand, but curiously irrelevant.
At the heart of Itsuki’s memoir is a memory. As a 13-year-old boy he nearly lost his life when he attempted to swim the Taedong river, in full spate after heavy rains. As he reached the middle of the river Itsuki realised he wasn’t going to make it, his limbs weakening in the cold as the river’s ferocious undertow began to overpower him. By the time he somehow made it back to the bank and crawled out, this experience of the inexorable drag of the Taedong current had filled the young Itsuki with a deep sensation of his own powerlessness – a physical sensation rather than an idea, one that never left him. It’s this heavy-limbed understanding of his incapacity as an isolated individual, Itsuki tells us, that forms the beating heart of his lifelong understanding of Other Power: ‘A single drop of water in a mighty river. A person is a single drop of water in a mighty river.’
For more than ten years now this sense of being born on an invisible current is how I’ve most viscerally related to a sense of Other Power. Sometimes I’ve spoken of this current as Mother – Our Mother at the Bottom of Time, as my rosary-praying friends like to say – sometimes as Amida, Oya Sama – sometimes simply as Spirit. Whatever. I’m not very good with names – an incorrigible fidget – but insofar as Other Power feels palpable to me, it’s in these gravitational terms. Like Itsuki says, an involuntary bodily sensation rather than an idea – neither a reward for anything, nor something achieved through effort or ‘spiritual attainment’. Just, how things are when we stop trying to manipulate reality to suit our preferences.
As the familiar long wait to be processed after the JSO roadblock played itself out I spoke to my arresting officer about the chances of survival if one were to fall into the Thames at night. Not good, apparently. One of the things I learnt from this man is that the Thames has up to eleven different currents moving within it at any one time, which along with the deep cold are part of what makes it so dangerous. I don’t know where any of this goes next, and seem to have lost track of what I’d even mean by hope or despair, but I think Geoff’s right about these campaigns. Our individual actions and these transient alliances they sometimes coalesce into are of course integral to whatever transition we’re living through. A single drop of water in a mighty river. But more simply than that, what our involvement in these campaigns offers us is a way to live our lives right now as if causing harm to others – or rather, seeking not to – matters. To align our daily lives with the steadying current of nonviolence, ahimsa, caught up as we arein a collective act of intergenerational harm whose scale renders it literally unthinkable within the entranced bubble that is business as usual.
None of this feels resolved, but in here somewhere is why I feel the core of my own response to biospheric collapse, now, is to find and connect with friends with whom to lean back into Other Power with whatever years I have left. To keep turning towards living the dharma in company, as we align together with whatever un-nameable current these friendships form part of, whether or not we find ourselves presently locked or glued on to anything.
Namo Amida Bu
Mat Osmond
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Mat Osmond is a writer and illustrator based in Falmouth, Cornwall. Find more of his writing at Dark Mountain and Borrowed Time
The life story of the Buddha is a great source of teachings, very relevant to today. Born into a royal family, before enlightenment, the Buddha was Prince Siddhartha. There had been a prophecy after his birth that he would either become a great emperor, or a great spiritual teacher.
Because his parents wanted a successor, they feared the latter possibility, so they kept him closeted in the palace, entertained (distracted), and satiated with every sort of worldly pleasure. Rather like our privileged lives before we notice that all is not well in the world, this was all he knew.
Driven by curiosity, just like us at a certain stage in our life, Siddhartha secretly ventures outside the palace four times, each time encountering a sign that causes him to reflect on the reality of the human condition. The first three signs are of ageing, sickness, and death respectively.
In our time, at a global level, we face the challenge of a global pandemic, and of mass extinction, which correspond to the second and third signs.
On his fourth venture into the outside world, Siddhartha witnesses a meditator sitting silently and peacefully on the ground, engaged in the deep inner process of going beyond ageing, sickness, and death. The prince is inspired. It is this fourth vision that leads him to renounce his palace and its pleasures and set out into the world to seek enlightenment, whereby he will transcend his own suffering and more importantly become a genuine and powerful support and teacher to others lost in the confusions of the world.
When people witness XR Buddhists’ actions – sitting in silent meditation inside or outside banks and other sources of the climate and ecological emergency, something touches them deep down. They are often drawn to read the placards around our necks and the leaflets we offer them. It’s not just the words they read that touches them, but the power of the stillness with which we sit in meditation.
There are many kinds of protest, violent and non-violent, loud, and silent etc. Protests make demands on those in power, to do what the protesters want. Occasionally they produce change of direction by their targets. They either inspire or annoy passers-by, probably in equal measure.
I am not sure that XR Buddhist actions are really ‘protests’ in this sense. The term ‘vigil’ is nearer to what they are, but still doesn’t quite convey the power of witnessing meditation, since vigil implies watchfulness, and meditation is more of a deepening into inner stillness.
Siddhartha’s consciousness was transformed by witnessing the fourth sign. As a result, he took a totally new direction in life, and completely turned his back on the old way of life.
Today there is no hope for our world if we continue with business as usual. The only possibility for emergence from the polycrisis is a global transformation of consciousness and collective will towards a completely different society, culture, economics, and politics.
If passers-by witness an XRB action it is hard to say just what is the impact. May it be transformative and help them to recognise the need for a new civilisation, harmonious with the ecology and with one another. When I participate in an action this is my wish.
Recently I’ve been reading George Monbiot’s Regenesis. It begins by describing problems with our existing global food systems. Problems with how we treat the soil; with how we pollute the earth, rivers and sea; how we use far too much land; and so on.
Reading this first part of the book my spirits dropped. The problems facing the world are so large and complex, and the forces invested in keeping things as they are so great, is there any hope, I wondered?
As I began reading the second half of the book I noticed my spirits lifting. In the second half Monbiot is meeting and talking to people who are coming up with solutions, with alternative ways of farming, and so on. I try to keep in mind what he said about Feral, his book about depleted nature that proposed rewilding as a solution: how at the time rewilding was a concept that was laughed out of the door, and that now, a decade later, it’s now considered a viable option. Things can change.
It’s striking how much my mood and view changes depending on what I’m paying attention to, the bad news or the news of positive change.
In many of the activist spaces I’ve noticed more people moving away from thinking about mitigation and to thinking about deep adaptation. I have noticed a big shift in people’s thinking in this direction since COP26 last year.
When I land in the view that things are definitely going to get worse and there is little I can do I have a mix of reactions. Sometimes, I feel real heartbreak at the suffering that people and other living beings are already experiencing, sometimes I feel such longing for things to be different, and a deep sense of despair at how little power I have in the face of the crisis.
And sometimes when I land in that view I feel relief and empowerment. Relief because there is something true about how awful things are, and coming into relationship with the truth ultimately brings relief, and empowerment because it leaves me with the question how can I live well in the midst of this crisis? (What does deep adaptation look like?) and that brings some energy for building strong communities etc.
“Act without expectations.” Many of you will have heard this teaching before. I heard it again from David Loy at an event on Buddhism and the Climate Crisis last weekend. Think strategically, use your wisdom to choose the best place to put your energy (as far as you can tell) take action, and let go of expecting any particular results. Trust that it’s good to act for goodness sake.
This is sometimes described as acting from hopelessness. Not the hopeless of despair that I can feel when faced with the impossibility of knowing what effective action looks like, but the hopelessness that is a deep coming to terms with that impossibility and leads to the energy to act anyway.
This acting without expectations is often held up as the more enlightened approach to activism. And there’s some truth to this, certainly if we act with expectations of particular results then we are inevitably bound for disappointment, and there is a genuine wisdom in not knowing.
And yet I do want to champion those other reactions as well: fear, despair, anger, even longing and hope. These are all natural responses to the crisis and it’s important to welcome and honour each feeling as they arise. I have lived with myself long enough now to know that they will come and go, and that while I shouldn’t treat any of them as holding the complete truth, there is some wisdom in every kind of response.
Can our Buddhist practice be large enough to encompass the whole breadth of our human experience and all the different kinds of responses to the crisis? I also trust that the more of our feelings we can welcome and meet with compassion, the more likely we are to be able to take up the invitation to act without expectation.
I want to focus on two ways we can respond with positive emotion to the overall situation (of climate change, biodiversity loss, authoritarianism in the world. Ways of responding with positive emotion which can be cultivated. The two ways are to do with playfulness or humour (or what I’m labelling ‘carnival’) — and faith.
Why am I talking about ‘carnival’? I think it has a very useful range of meanings and associations. According to the dictionary: an annual festival, typically during the week before Lent in Roman Catholic countries (which happens to be now), involving processions, music, dancing, and the use of masquerade or dressing up. More generally it can be an exciting or riotous mixture of elements. Historically carnival sometimes involved playful inversion of hierarchy: servants becoming masters.
Carnival and theatre have been influential in how protest is done, especially in the last twenty years or so. At Seattle in 1999 (protests against global trade agreements) the police were sometimes heavy-handed in their response to peaceful speaking out. The police had apparently been trained in the expectation that they would be facing violence. On some occasions they really didn’t know how to respond — when, for example, all the protestors suddenly sat down. And there were also ‘Pink Blocs’ of protestors dressed in tutus armed with feather dusters for tickling the police.
This is an example of something I think is very important — an ethically positive, playful or carnivalesque response to what may seem overwhelmingly difficult situations, and abuses of power. Mikhail Bakhtin once wrote: ‘laughter must liberate the happy truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by the seriousness of fear, suffering and violence’.
Laughter can be a very strong and deep energy — and of course not all laughter is good laughter. Laughter can be very unskilful, even abusive. But it can be highly skilful (the laughter of enlightenment in the Vajrassatva mantra for example ‘ha ha ha ha ho’). It’s important why we’re laughing, and how.
But play, carnival, laughter can be ethically positive — and maybe loosen us up if our worldviews have got a bit rigid or polarised. I’m going to use Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita as an extended example of what I mean. It’s mainly set some time in the 1930s, and tells the story of what happens when the devil (and his very mischievous cat) visit the rigidly atheistic Soviet Union. It’s a very knowing and witty parody of Soviet society at that time: wildly carnivalesque, full of magic, religion, and the romantic. The satire is against repression of freedom of thought and of speech — against an authoritarian society’s dismissing of the imagination, of religion itself and the mythic dimension. And yet nobody seems responsible for the way things are — the characters in the story don’t come across as particularly bad. Even the devil character doesn’t actually seem bad — far more mischievous and subversive, maybe a symbol of a society’s repressed energy. I’d say the novel itself ultimately celebrates romantic love and people caring for each other — and the energy of the human imagination.
So I think Bulgakov’s novel was written to some extent against Stalin’s Soviet Union — the authoritarianism, the millions of State-sanctioned murders, the violent repression of free speech and different points of view. And it was written against fear itself. It is deeply serious, but also great fun, a celebration of some of the wilder human energies.
Hard to know what would have happened if Bulgakov had tried to publish this novel (as he intended), since he died of natural causes (in 1940) as he was finishing it. This was the time when writing a satirical poem about Stalin could get you executed — which is pretty much what seems to have happened to the poet Osip Mandelshtam. But The Master and Margerita lived well beyond its creator – secretly passed from hand to hand, it was known and loved by many thousands of Russians decades before it was finally published in the Soviet Union in 1968.
When faced with what can seem an overwhelmingly difficult situation, all the positive human qualities matter. But perhaps this satirical energy and wild, magical but ethically positive vision are particularly valuable in cutting through what might be a repressed, cowed, fearful state of mind. Skilful laughter is so opposite to cowed and fearful.
In our own time, right now, the far-right seems to me scarily influential and close to dominance in the USA and Europe, and we may well be on the unstoppable ride of runaway climate change. In some ways, things are looking even grimmer than in Bulgakov’s lifetime. Hopefully, things politically won’t go too far in that direction. On the other hand it seems worth considering that one day we might need to think in terms of resistance rather than outright opposition – of keeping positive vision alive in covert forms, like bulbs in the ground surviving winter. Which is what Bulgakov’s novel was part of back in the 1930s. Maybe even our Buddhist practice itself will need to be more covert and under the radar.
If we’re going to face the big picture, we’re going to need inspiration and emotional sustenance — to keep our souls and spirits alive. Obviously, we can find inspiration in our friendships and relationships, in our practising the Dharma, in the sangha. But it might be helpful to deliberately cultivate more symbolic, non-rational sources of inspiration (aka the mythic context) – perhaps there are parts of us which can only be reached this way. Maybe all great poetry, art, music by tapping into the mythic, has something of this liberating and inspiring function. By the way I’m sure we are all already doing this, I’m just suggesting that it’s really important at a deep level for long-term emotional resilience. So how might we do this in practice? We all probably have our own ways. We could maybe try something we haven’t done before, which might be a clowning workshop, or action theatre (a very in-the-moment, embodied and self-aware form of improvisation where you come up with stories and maybe respond to other people as they improvise). We can listen to and be inspired by carnival (in the sense I’ve been evoking) as it manifests in the arts: books, films, dance etc.
So that’s a bit about carnival. What about faith?
In fact the Buddhist tradition does have its own wild and playful sides. One of many examples (from the Tibetan Vajrayana in this case) is Vajrayogini. She’s a sort of archetypal Enlightened deity figure. She has the form of a beautiful young woman, naked apart from a few symbolic bone implements. Her skin is red, the colour of unconditional, universal loving-kindness.
She’s ecstatic and free, dancing in the sheer void of ultimate reality – sometimes she’s represented as dancing on (or trampling) bodies representing greed, hatred and delusion.
She takes no prisoners. If we dare to dance with her (perhaps by engaging in years of spiritual practice) she will destroy us utterly – and make us into something far beyond what we were.
Vajrayogini might sound a bit much! Not everyone’s cup of tea maybe. But meditating on Vajrayogini is just one example of a Buddhist faith practice — which can be more of a slow burn, or long fuse. Such an important and deep energy. Our heart-response to our ideals of love and compassion. During meditation I sometimes visualise the Buddha, with golden light radiating from his heart to mine. Very simple and undramatic. But it works — I feel it physically, and in my depths emotionally. If my values or interests have been maybe getting subtly superficial, materialistic, self-centered — then faith practices like this one help remind me, reconnect me with what I really care about at a deep level. And that can feel like a deep relief, and release of positive energy.
There’s the saying that faith can move mountains — and it’s true. It does. It’s what motivated Martin Luther King, the suffragettes — so many heroic people who changed the world for the better. Maybe we aren’t heroic, it’s ok not to be a hero! tho I suspect many of us are in reality more heroic than we think we are. But whatever or whoever we are or think we are — we can all play, we can all harness that deep wild playful energy. We can all draw on deep skilful inspiration, wild energies, and we can all cultivate faith.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the wisdom understanding emptiness is sometimes referred to as the mother. This is because the beings liberated from samsara – arhats, ārya bodhisattvas and buddhas – are all born from the wisdom realising emptiness. Because emptiness is the ultimate nature of everything, we might call these highly realised beings mother nature’s children, because they have realised directly through meditation the final nature of all things.
Conventionally speaking, mother nature refers to the natural world, the environment, and mother earth. All life on earth is born from this mother, through interaction with space and the sun, thereby producing earth’s atmosphere. Because we are all, along with everything that grows and moves on planet earth, children of mother earth or mother nature, we are siblings of all humans, other species, trees et cetera.
Is there any link or correlation between these two mother natures? Very much so. All evolution is a process of cause and effect. Ecologically every life-form is interdependent with many other life-forms and elemental substrata. Because of cause and effect and interdependence, nothing exists independently. The absence of independent existence is what we buddhists call emptiness.
Generally, people mean the natural environment when they speak about nature. In buddhism we can talk about relative nature, for example the hardness of the earth element, and ultimate nature, the lack of independent existence, or emptiness.
Relative and ultimate natures are sometimes called the two truths, and everything that exists always has both these truths, depending on which way you look at it. So, for example, if you look at a tree, relatively it is a tree and ultimately it is emptiness.
As Buddha said in The Heart Sutra, “Form is empty; emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form; form also is not other than emptiness.” Realisation of this fundamental non-duality of form and emptiness is what liberates us from suffering, samsara.
With the pandemic, mother nature has brought her human children to their knees. We have collectively been shown that mother nature is more powerful than us. Not surprisingly, people get back up again, and many try to forget that this mother is in charge of her family.
This is unfortunate, because the climate and ecological crisis is much more devastating and powerful than the pandemic, and unless we begin to live by the natural laws, our mother will destroy us.
The natural laws are simply the laws of cause and effect of actions, what we commonly call karma. If you heed the teachings of the buddha and other sages, you will not perform destructive actions. Instead, you will practise non-violence and non-harming towards other living beings and their environments.
The ecology is governed by natural laws of cause and effect, and our happiness and misery are also so governed. If we practise kindness towards our relative mother nature – the environment and living beings – and practise wisdom towards our ultimate mother nature by abandoning false notions of independent existence, all will be well. Thus, we will live harmoniously with everything.
I was inspired to write this by our XR Buddhists retreat. It became increasingly clear to me during the retreat how our problematic relationship with mother earth may be healed through the Dharma – the teachings of the Buddha – if we only take it to heart. I am deeply grateful to XR Buddhists for providing me with this insight.
There are various kinds of activism, and thus various kinds of activist. Moreover, one activist can engage various kinds of activism either at different times or simultaneously.
Activism is comprised of specific actions aimed at identified results in the world. Here we are concerned with activism for the benefit of all (as distinct from for example far-right activism which seeks the benefit of one group at the expense of everyone else.)
As you read through the following descriptions of types of activism, you may recognise elements of your own journey as an activist and locate where your personal emphasis seems to lie right now. Remember that activism requires flexibility to the moment, and shapeshifting, so it’s advisable not to feel too fixated in a single type.
The varieties of activism described here are not in a hierarchy. The transformations required in our time require all the powers and forces available, from every possible type of activism. In practice, successful collective actions include many kinds of activists working together alongside one another. We can’t generally tell by looking at anyone, what kind of activism they are practising.
This article divides activism into three main types – direct, radical, and deep. There is a further division of deep into outer, inner, and secret. As indicated above, this taxonomy is not exclusive, simply a method to explore the overarching topic of activism, to help support the processes of all activists.
Direct Activism
It’s called direct because it pinpoints a specific situation, methodology and purpose, and focuses directly at that point. Traditional methods include strikes, occupations, pickets, blockades, and marches. It may be volent such as engaging in fighting police or opponents of the action, using weapons, such as Molotov cocktails or not. It may be non-violent as in the non-violent direct action (NVDA) practised by Extinction Rebellion, which includes disruptive or obstructive actions, which might involve lock-ons, gluing oneself to fixed objects or just sitting or standing somewhere for a purpose.
Radical Activism
Radical means changing from the root, so radical activism takes place within an understanding of the place of specific issues rooted within a system. Thus, radical activism is aimed at changing the system in whatever way necessary to ensure sustainable transformation. In other words, it’s revolutionary.
We can see, in recent statements by Greta Thunberg, Gail Bradbrook and other leading climate activists that they have become increasingly radicalised. Increasingly we are seeing system change as an implicit or explicit requirement in communications from Extinction Rebellion.
Deep Activism
This recognises that transforming society depends on transformation of consciousness, and thus goes deeper than direct and radical activism. In climate activist circles, the experience of grief and anxiety is openly acknowledged as a common part of the deal. Extinction Rebellion has always highlighted regenerative culture as a means of mitigating these, and thus sustaining the zeal of activists. Deep activists may go further than this purpose and see that without transforming the roots of culture in consciousness, meaningful change isn’t possible.
Here, I divide deep activism into three: outer, inner, and secret deep activism. As mentioned above, these are not exclusive and aren’t presented as a hierarchy. The separation is simply for discussion.
Outer Deep Activism
This can come through religious faith. For example, the Faith Bridge in Extinction Rebellion includes groups of activists from Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Buddhist faiths. Typically, activists of faith call upon their holy beings such as God or Buddha as a source of power, inspiration, and support in their activism. They use prayer, meditation, ritual, and mantra to invoke this connection, and might call upon the powerful being they worship to help bring about the change they seek.
It is also practised by activists of no faith, invoking deep connection to the earth, the universe, universal love and so forth, as sources of inspiration, comfort, and power.
Outer deep activism, through the agency of the outer Being or beneficent force, helps the activist to feel part of a whole – the whole of humanity, the web of life, nature, or creation. This in turn renders the approach to activism more selfless.
Inner Deep Activism
This recognises the source of the supreme being or universal power as situated within each individual. Theists might talk of ‘the God within’ or soul, and Buddhists of Buddha nature. Sometimes it’s referred to as an inner light. Some feel that all living beings have it; others say it’s only found in humans.
The point for inner deep activists is that through connecting with this basic element within oneself, one may connect to it within every other being. This brings an additional power to meditation and other practices of deep activism, enabling activists to feel a deep interconnectivity with those with and for whom one takes action.
Secret Deep Activism
This is based on personal connection with the innermost essence of consciousness, which transcends one lifetime, together with its ultimate nature, its absence of inherent existence. It is accessed through Tantra (or its equivalent such as psychedelics) and is thus particularly insightful. Moreover, it offers access to transformative energies from within the subtle energy system of the activist, which may be harnessed as agents of change beyond oneself. Skilful actions at this level of awareness require extensive training and guidance.
Summary
As said at the outset the purpose here is not to suggest a hierarchy of activism but to offer potential channels for reflection and discussion. Effective activists know where they are coming from and are not fixed in the methods they utilise.
The challenges of our time are so great that we have little chance of success unless we use as much of our personal and collective potential as possible. As mass extinction and societal collapse look ever more likely outcomes of our collective predicament on planet earth, it’s up to each of us who care about that, to become excellent activists in as many ways as we can and offer our service for the good of all.
Yesterday, while walking along the beach at Studland in Dorset, we were approached by a man who gave us a small piece of flint. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he said and proceeded to explain that after the dinosaurs became extinct, their carcasses etc caused the acidification of the oceans, which led to a proliferation of jellyfish. He said that flint is fossilised compressed jellyfish. The same will happen when we become extinct, he explained.
External power
When we talk about the ‘powers that be’ with respect to this climate and ecological emergency, we mean organisations and their leaders with the power to resolve the crisis. As shown at COP26, they are doing the opposite – enabling things to get worse. This power matrix has various names – ‘the industrial growth economy’, ‘neo-liberalism’, ‘neo-colonialism’, or just plain ‘capitalism’. Regarding the fossil fuel industry, there are corporations who extract fossil fuels, industries that produce the plant and machinery to do this, the massive motor vehicle and aviation etc industries, the road construction industries and many other vested interests.
During XR actions, one of the rebels’ most popular songs has the chorus, ‘Power to the people; people got the power; tell me, can you feel it; it’s getting stronger by the hour.’ This refers to a power not of oppression or exploiting the planet for profit. It’s a shared power. It’s inclusive, equally distributed, and just. It’s revolutionary, because it urges total transformation of the system.
Many people are understandably suspicious of revolutions. Their history isn’t encouraging because they have often led to dictatorship by a strong man who seizes power from the people, with the false promise to manage the chaos that followed the revolution.
So, for many people, ‘power’ has a bad name – it’s being abused now and could be abused in future. A reluctance to address the issue of power sets in, and so, even among activists, an underlying sense of powerlessness prevails. Protests against the existing powers-that-be fall on deaf ears. Burnout and disillusion take over.
However, unless we create a new ecological civilisation, with many features in common with indigenous cultures, with respect to relations between each other and the environment, extinction of ourselves and countless other species follows.
Internal power
In Tibetan Buddhism, enlightenment is sometimes discussed in terms of three deities – Avalokitesvara, Manjushri and Vajrapani. These embody respectively enlightened compassion, wisdom, and power (aka action or skilful means). Vajrapani generally appears as a wrathful deity, with bulging eyes, fangs, upstanding hair and surrounded by fire. He is the ‘Lord of the Secrets’ because he protects secret mantra – the vajrayana. His power is the power of mantra, of wrath, of ritual protection of the Dharma. It is a power that can be terrifying.
When it comes down to it, this power is simply the power of the completely pure mind, cleared of egoistic selfish compulsion –without self-interest or grasping, acting for the wellbeing of everyone. Its fierce aspect deters the ego-empire-building inclinations of those of us bogged down in samsara, who too easily slip into the mode of power-over-others when circumstances allow.
XR Buddhists often speak of the powerful meditations they experience when sitting in meditation in an XR action. There seems to be an effect on those around, when a group of XR Buddhists meditate in public, an effect that grounds the energy in a powerful way. Arguably, this is the internal power of Buddhadharma, manifesting and pervading the space.
Connecting external and internal power
XR’s third demand is for citizens’ assemblies (CAs) to determine how we can get out of the climate and ecological crisis we’re in. The CA is a form of deliberative participatory democracy whereby a group of citizens is randomly selected through a process known as sortition, to deliberate and propose a way forward which is put to a referendum and then carried out. The CA has access to experts who help them understand the causes of the problem being deliberated. Their decisions are made in the interests of everyone.
Deliberative participatory democracy is quite different from the representative democracy that prevails at many levels in so-called democratic countries. Representative democracy has been hijacked by political parties, professional lobbyists and media friends of wealthy elites and has spawned a caste of professional politicians who are skilled liars. Once every four of five years these politicians secure election by promising to solve everyone’s problems, but once in power proceed to shore up the system that creates those problems.
Deliberative participatory democracy enables ordinary people without vested interests to collectively figure out practical solutions to collective problems. Nevertheless, popular power is vulnerable to manipulation, and in the turbulence situation of social transition, the egoic grandiosity of individuals can disrupt its democratic character.
The emerging ecological civilisation will only succeed if it is founded on altruistic compassion and transcendence of such ego-grasping. Therefore, we need Dharma to help us build a positive resilient future society. Dharma offers the possibility of power beyond power – selfless power.
Dual power
Right now, we are in a situation of dual power. On the one hand corporate colonialist capitalism and its political institutions hold the strings of external power everywhere. Simultaneously, there is an emerging global consciousness of the nature and roots of the crisis and the necessity to end consumerism, fossil extraction, ecocide, and inequality. This consciousness is manifesting in diverse forms and movements all over the world. It’s a growing internal power with external forms.
Classically, dual power is a stage in revolutionary transition. As a buddhist, I support a non-violent revolution that isn’t rushed but isn’t afraid to acknowledge the issue of power. This requires a power that starts within, abandons ego-grasping and radiates universal love and compassion – a power that manifests the radical inclusivity of genuine participatory democracy. Radical inclusivity accepts everyone and every part of everyone. In radical inclusivity there is no inequality, exploitation, or social injustice. It holds all beings dear.
This stage of dual power is hard to live through, but it points towards a transformation to come. It is the ‘chrysalis phase’ when the caterpillar of the old civilisation liquifies inside the chrysalis prior to reconstituting as the butterfly of the new civilisation. It has been said that the covid pandemic is the beginning of the chrysalis phase of the 21st century global transition.
It certainly feels like there is a meltdown underway as the old civilisation breaks down. Uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety everywhere – it can feel scary. But meanwhile one may feel a groundswell of determination and courage for change. XR Buddhists sit silently on the ground of this rising energy, at one with the pain and yearning of the world. Thus, we participate as agents in the process.
