Dharma Gaia:
Spiritual Practice for a Finite World
By
Thomas I. Ellis
Introduction
Dharma is a Sanskrit
word, from the Hindu and later Buddhist traditions of India and the
Far East, that originally meant “law” or “that to which we adhere.” It is
related etymologically, through Indo-European, to the Latin root firm-
as in “firmament” or “affirm” or “confirm.” The American Heritage Dictionary
defines it as “the ultimate law of all things” and as “individual right conduct
in conformity to that law.” In ancient Hindu culture, it came also to mean the
sacred duties incumbent upon people in accordance with the caste into which
they were born—as priests, soldiers, artisans, merchants, or common laborers.
But with the rise of Buddhism, dharma came to be synonymous with the
Buddha’s teachings, and hence is sometimes translated (inadequately, in my
view) as “doctrine.” It also refers,
usually in the plural, to phenomena, to the things of the world as they appear to
us. Hence the dharmakaya, or body of dharma, came to mean simultaneously
the phenomenal world as it is and the body of truth embedded in the Buddha’s
teachings; in Mahayana Buddhism, it is one of the “three bodies of the Buddha.”
In fact the Buddha originally referred to his own teachings not as “Buddhism”
(a western coinage) but rather simply as “dharma practice”—the practice of
learning to do the right thing, based on a clear understanding of reality.
Gaia (GAIA) is the ancient
Greek name for the primordial Earth goddess, and provides the root (gh-) of all the
Greek-derived words that refer to the Earth—geology, geometry, geode, and the
name George, originally meaning “farmer” or “earth-worker” (gh + ourgos ) In recent years, however, the mythic name Gaia
has been brought back from archeological obscurity and given new life by
certain renegade scientists. In the late 1960s, at the suggestion of his
neighbor, novelist William Golding, British biochemist James Lovelock adopted Gaia
as a suitable name for his revolutionary new theory of biogenic global
homeostasis. In a nutshell, Lovelock
suggested that, far from being mere passengers on a planet that happened to be
suitable for living things, the biota collectively and interactively sustain
the far-from-equilibrium thermal, atmospheric, and geochemical conditions that,
in turn, sustain life. Since 1970, when
Lovelock published his first book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, the
name Gaia has gained widespread currency as a metaphor for our new
ecological understanding of life on Earth as a fully integrated,
self-sustaining, but perishable system of which we are a part, rather than
merely as a “resource” with no value until it is transformed into commodities.
It thus has come to refer, not only to an ancient Greek myth and a scientific
model named after the myth, but also to a metaphor based on the model, and a
worldwide cultural movement based on that metaphor.
Dharma Gaia is thus a
bilingual, East-West pun on dharmakaya—the living Earth itself as the
body of Dharma—and can be roughly translated in practice as “doing the right
thing for the living Earth.” The term
was first used for the title of a 1990 anthology, Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of
Essays in Buddhism and Ecology edited
by Allan Hunt Badiner, who suggested it as the name for “a merging of Buddhism,
deep ecology, and feminism”(xvii). In the present work, I hope to follow the
path blazed by this anthology and others—by the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh,
along with ecovisionary Buddhist writers such as Gary Snyder, Joanna Macy, Joan
Halifax, Bill Devall, Ralph Abraham, and Elizabeth Roberts—in developing a
useful paradigm for the practice of Gaian Buddhism—for engaged Buddhist
practice in service to the living Earth, in our time of unprecedented global
ecological crisis.
Our
Present Reality
Our present
generation has an awesome, unprecedented challenge: for the first time in our
history, we are obliged to choose, collectively, whether we have a future at
all. In the past, no matter how bad things became locally due to war, famine,
or pestilence, there always remained the hope that, if we or our children
simply moved elsewhere, or started anew where we were, things would be better
for future generations. It was this hope, for example, that drove millions of
immigrants to the new world, that also sustained the slaves on southern
plantations through generations of harsh and bitter oppression, and that burned
in the hearts of soldiers in the trenches during the two World Wars. There were
always new horizons, fresh possibilities, to beckon us or our children toward a
brighter future.
In the present
generation, all this has changed. While our present, at least in North America,
is characterized by affluence unimaginable to our ancestors—cars, suburban
homes, computers, instant access to information and to people all over the
world, jet travel anywhere we want to go, 24-hour entertainment, and an endless
array of options for virtually everything we choose to buy, eat, or do, our
collective global future is looking bleaker and bleaker. Fossil fuels,
especially oil, that have been more responsible than anything else for the
explosive growth of our global population, technology, and per-capita wealth
during the past century and a half, are nearing the peak of their global
productive potential in this decade, while demand for these fuels, and the
products and services that they provide, continues to soar. After the oil peak
passes, there will be a steady, irreversible decline of net energy available
from petroleum at 2-3% per year, causing the prices of everything, including
food (which relies on fossil fuels for both fertilizer and transportation) to
skyrocket. This will turn the already
yawning gap between rich and poor into chasm, creating a grim scenario of
shrinking islands of ruthlessly defended wealth in a growing sea of poverty,
chaos, violence, terrorism, war, and starvation.
But that’s not
all. The carbon emissions from our worldwide dependence on oil, coal, and gas
are heating up our global climate at a faster rate than at any time in recorded
human history, causing the polar ice caps to melt, spawning an unprecedented
spate of destructive hurricanes and tornadoes, turning agricultural areas into
deserts, wiping out the flora and fauna of whole bioregions, causing northward
migration of ravaging tropical diseases, increasing our reliance on
air-conditioning, hence on electricity, hence on fossil or nuclear power—while
simultaneously increasing the CFC emissions that are destroying the ozone
layer.
But even that’s
not all. Our worldwide supply of fertile topsoil—crucial for growing the crops
we eat for food—has been exhausted by the relentless application of fossil
fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and is eroding faster than at any time
in history, while worldwide agricultural productivity, having risen steadily
since the Industrial Revolution, has peaked and is now declining, despite
intensive efforts to boost productivity through fertilizers, pesticides, and genetic
engineering. Yet the global population, already over six billion, continues to
grow steadily.
Nor is that all.
Our freshwater aquifers worldwide are strained to the limit, and are rapidly
becoming exhausted, while dams are destroying freshwater and anadromous
fisheries, and irrigation is causing increased salinity in soils. At the same
time, our ocean fisheries are collapsing worldwide due to overfishing and
pollution, and the coral reefs that form the foundation of the marine food
chain are dying off due to global warming—all while the demand for fish
continues to grow.
And finally, our
forests are being chopped down, wetlands filled in, and diverse flora and fauna
exterminated at a breakneck pace throughout the world, to accommodate growing
human demands for housing, commerce, and industry, and to fill the coffers of
greedy global corporations, all in competition with one another to maximize the
bottom line—a kind of global feeding frenzy on the web of life itself.
All these
interacting trends point toward a grim future indeed, a global die-off, a
self-accelerating downward spiral of chaos, repression, random violence, war,
and mass starvation on a ruined and ecologically degraded planet growing hotter
and less habitable every day.
Unless… What? Do
we have any choice? Is this horrific scenario our only remaining prospect for
the future? Should we not simply swallow cyanide and get it over with, like Jim
Jones and his followers?
We cannot call off
the coming apocalypse altogether. We cannot turn back the clock and restore the
vast rainforests and biodiversity we have already lost. And even if we
drastically curb fossil fuel consumption, we cannot immediately stop global
warming trends. And we probably cannot restore the United States of America to anything
resembling a real democracy, where the press is truly free, where a cultural
consensus enables the two parties to govern effectively, or where public
officials serve the public interest, rather than pandering to their corporate
backers. Great civilizations, once in decay, normally continue to degenerate
into tyranny and plutocracy.
So what can we do?
Reclaiming
the Present Moment.
My answer is
simple, but as I hope to show, far-reaching in its implications. We can
reclaim the present moment. But what good will that do?
The present is all
there is. We think and talk incessantly about the past and future, but in
actuality, the past is gone irrevocably and the future hasn’t happened yet—both
are mental constructs. As Buddhist teachings instruct us, and our own
reflection confirms as common sense, the present moment, with all its
constraints and possibilities, is the net consequence of interacting causes and
conditions extending all the way back to the Big Bang. And the future likewise
will be shaped entirely by the choices we make in this moment, even if we take
into account the future constraints imposed by the unwise choices we have made
in the past. Our choices today will still extend or diminish our range of
possibilities for the future. And therein lies the source of our potential
empowerment, the seeds of renewed hope.
My
Vision: A Worldwide Gaia Movement
What would happen
if a popular movement started—call it the Gaia movement, if you will—in which
ever-growing numbers of people shifted their loyalties and identification
upward, including but transcending their own reference groups--organization,
religion, or nationality--and even including but transcending “humanity” as a
whole, to embrace Gaia—our precious and unique living planet itself? What if
people started calling themselves Gaians, and acted accordingly? This is my
dream in a nutshell, for if this were to happen, here are a few possible
consequences:
·
People
would then habitually assume responsibility for the social and ecological
consequences of every dollar they earned, spent, and invested. As a
consequence, producers and vendors would be economically rewarded for choosing
more sustainably produced goods and services to meet the demand of their
customers, while polluters and heedless destroyers would lose business and
collapse.
·
Gaian
consciousness—awareness of our participation in a finite, wondrous planetary
web of life—would pervade our culture and educational system, constantly
encouraging people to choose the more life-sustaining option in selecting a
career, in building communities, and in buying and selling commodities.
·
Protecting
and restoring ecosystems would rise to the top of the social and political
agenda, becoming an ongoing collective project of all our communities and
societies.
·
International
cooperation to promote regenerative agriculture and to address transnational
ecological issues (like collapsing ocean fisheries or global warming) would
become the rule, rather than the exception.
·
War
would be far less likely, since people’s identification with Gaia would come
prior to their identification with their nation or religion. Killing people or
destroying other life forms would become anathema to most people.
·
The
manufacturing sector would be reconfigured into industrial ecologies, where the
waste products of any one enterprise were immediately recycled into the raw
materials of another, and toxic contaminants were carefully monitored,
controlled, recycled where possible, or sequestered.
·
Local
economies would diversify, as locally produced energy (solar, wind, biomass,
geothermal, and the hydrogen produced locally by fuel cells from these sources)
displaced the highly centralized delivery grids based on fossil and nuclear
fuels. Wealth would be redistributed accordingly.
·
Population
would level off and decline, as women had more educational opportunities, and
as local, ecologically conscious communities established and enforced carrying
capacity limits and land use regulations to protect ecosystems and soil
fertility.
Such measures, of
course, would not immediately solve all the crises we now face. Global warming
would be slowed, but not reversed for at least another generation. The
corporate elite would do everything in their power to suppress the Gaia
movement as it caught on, but eventually they would see that their own economic
interests lay in joining it. Lost topsoil will not be regenerated for
millennia, and of course extinct species are gone forever. But the net result
would nevertheless be a far more livable world than the one toward which all
present trends are headed—a world in the process of healing, not dying. But how
can this happen? How can Gaianity catch on and spread?
Sowing
the Seed
In his delightful
ecological parable The Lorax, Dr. Seuss tells the story of the Onceler,
the personification of corporate greed, who discovers a fine meadow full of
brightly colored Truffula Trees, and immediately sets up an operation to chop
them down and turn them into “Thneeds”—amorphous, but hot-selling consumer
goods. As the trees disappear and the factory churns out air and water
pollutants, the ecosystem collapses, sending the Koala-like “brown barbaloots”
and the “humming fish” away in search of greener pastures. Throughout, the
Onceler is confronted by the Lorax, a fuzzy nature spirit who “speaks for the
trees” and repeatedly denounces the Onceler’s rapacious enterprises to no
avail—until the very last truffula tree falls, and the Thneed business
collapses, amid the grim polluted air and water, where nothing grows but
“grickle-grass.” In the gloomy, polluted landscape at the end of the story, the
boy protagonist comes upon a pedestal with the word “UNLESS” engraved on it.
The now-penitent Onceler interprets it as follows:
UNLESS someone
like you cares a whole awful lot
Nothing is going
to get better—it’s not.
After this
sobering moral of the story, the Onceler entrusts the boy with the “very last
truffula seed of them all,” enjoining him to
Feed
it fresh water, and give it clean air;
Grow
a forest – protect it from axes that hack,
Then
the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.
I would like to
offer the reader my own Truffula Seed—an easily memorized formulation which, if
recited and practiced regularly, can serve as the foundation for a life-long
Dharma Gaia practice. As it catches on and is disseminated, this practice can
serve as a lifeline to a better global future for all of us, by paradoxically
returning our attention to the present moment. Before I present it, I would
like to acknowledge my debt to all my teachers, past and present, starting with
my heart Dharma teacher, the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, and including Lao Tzu,
the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Gregory Bateson, Nelson Mandela,
the Dalai Lama, and myriad others, especially the popular radio host Garrison
Keillor (as we shall see).
My Dharma Gaia
practice is based on a luminous teaching from Lao Tzu, verse 54 (as adapted
from translations by Gia-fu Feng and Man-ho Kwok):
What is firmly
established cannot be uprooted.
What is firmly
grasped cannot slip away.
It will be honored
from generation to generation.
Cultivate Virtue
in yourself,
And Virtue will be
real.
Cultivate it in
the family,
And Virtue will
abound.
Cultivate it in
the village,
And Virtue will
grow.
Cultivate it in
the nation,
And Virtue will be
abundant.
Cultivate it in
the universe,
And Virtue will be
everywhere.
Therefore look at
someone else as you would yourself;
Look at other
families as your own family;
Look at every
village as your own village;
Look at all
nations as your own nation,
And treasure the
world [Gaia] as the round center of everything.
How can I see the
world like this?
Because I have
eyes.
This wondrous
passage is the best recipe I know for anyone who is seriously interested in
becoming an agent of global transformation and healing. It emphasizes that real
change—the kind that matters—starts from the ground up, not the top down. And
that it is rooted in “cultivating Virtue in ourselves” first, so that it is
“firmly established” and can spread, by example as well as by precept. But how can we best “cultivate Virtue in
ourselves”? There are, of course, many
techniques for doing this, but here is a brief summary of my own Dharma Gaia formulation,
which I offer as a seed of contemplation and practice for anyone who wishes to
commit him or herself to healing our precious living planet.
So here
it is…
The Principle: We are caught
in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Precept: Take care of
everyone, and abandon no one. Take care of everything, and abandon nothing.”
–Lao Tzu.
The Practice:
1.
Breathe,
Observe, Let Go.
2.
Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. –Garrison
Keillor
3.
Learn
Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia, Create Gaia.
Now, let’s unpack it:
The
Principle.
“We are
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
--Martin
Luther King, Jr.
In his foundational
Sermon at Benares, the Buddha laid down the
Four Noble Truths as follows: the truth of inevitable suffering; the
recognition of craving or attachment as the cause of suffering; the possibility
of letting go of attachments and therefore of release from suffering, and the
method (the Eightfold Path) for doing so. And in his Eightfold Path, his first
step was Right Understanding—a clear, unobstructed view of reality. The Buddha
epitomized Right Understanding in the Three Dharma Seals—the three basic realities
of experience, which are litmus tests of authentic Dharma teachings:
Impermanence, Interbeing, and Oneness. The first two of these correspond to the
Second and First Laws of Thermodynamics—the Law of Entropy (impermanence) and
the Law of Conservation of Energy (interbeing). The Third Dharma Seal—oneness
or Nirvana—cannot be grasped intellectually, but can best be expressed by the
famous refrain from the Upanishads: That Thou Art.
The above luminous
quote from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that I have
chosen to express the Dharma Gaia Principle encapsulates all three Dharma
Seals: the “inescapable network of mutuality” (interbeing); the “single garment
of destiny” (impermanence); and “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”
(oneness). It can therefore be used as a succinct expression and reminder of
the Dharma as a whole—as a major premise upon which to ground all of our
thoughts and actions.
This quote is true
at all levels—it could as easily have been spoken by a quantum physicist, a
chemist, a biologist, a sociologist, or an economist as it was by a theologian,
as a summation of what we now know about our deeply interrelated world.
Moreover, it is
also the clearest expression I know of the insights embedded in Gaia
theory—that life on Earth is an “inescapable network of mutuality” where
“whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Simply committing this
quote to memory and periodically reciting it to ourselves and others can do
much to remind us gently of the consequences of our actions, individually and
collectively, on both other people and the living Earth. Dr. King’s words, a
summation of both Dharma and Gaia, are entirely reliable as a touchstone
against which to evaluate the merit of any other philosophical or ethical
proposition. They are an apt standard for evaluating everything we think, say,
and do. Dr. King has given us direct, immediate access to Right Understanding.
The
Precept.
Take care
of everyone and abandon no one; take care of everything and abandon nothing.
–Lao Tzu
After Right
Understanding, the next three steps in the Buddha’s Eightfold Path address both
ethical intention and behavior: Right Intentions, Right Speech, and Right
Action.. All these can be summarized by the parallel precept derived from Lao
Tzu, verse 27 (Gia Fu Feng): “Therefore the sage takes care of everyone/And
abandons no one. He takes care of everything, and abandons nothing.”
This precept
derives logically from an understanding of the Principle: “Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly.” It contains within it all of the Five
Precepts that form the basis for ethical behavior in both Hindu and Buddhist
traditions (and that are reflected in the five ethical commandments of the
biblical Ten Commandments). Here they are, as recently reinterpreted by Thich
Nhat Hanh:
Ahimsa (nonviolence;
doing no harm): Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am
committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of
people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let
others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my
thinking, and in my way of life.
Asteya (nonstealing; freedom
from avarice): Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social
injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to cultivating loving
kindness and learning ways to work for the well-being of people, animals,
plants, and minerals. I will practice generosity by sharing my time, energy,
and material resources with those who are in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to
possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of
others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the
suffering of other species on Earth.
Brahmacharya (control of
sensual pleasure): Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am
committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety
and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual
relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of
myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the
commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children
from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by
sexual misconduct.
Satya (truthfulness):
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen
to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in
order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their
suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am
determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy,
and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not
criticize and condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from
uttering words that can cause division and discord, or that cause the family or
the community to break. I am determined to reconcile and resolve all conflicts,
however small.
Aparigraha (noncovetousness
or moderation): Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am
committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my
family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I
will ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in
my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and
society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to
ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs,
magazines, books, films, or conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or
consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my
society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear,
anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself
and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation
and for the transformation of society.
These five
precepts—the essence of Right Intentions, Right Speech, and Right Action—are
all implicit in Lao Tzu’s parallel precept: Take care of everyone and abandon no one; take care of everything and
abandon nothing. The “everyone” includes ourselves (Fifth Precept) and the
“everything” includes our planet (First and Second Precept—“people, animals,
plants, and minerals.”)
The
Practice.
Noble
philosophical principles and ethical precepts are all well and good, and are
easy to grasp and recite, but do little if any good unless we consistently
translate them into practice. And as Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice laments, “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,
chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces…I can
easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to
follow mine own teaching.”
Knowing this
yawning gap between good counsel and our actual, habituated behavior, the
Buddha devised a series of direct, hands-on Dharma practices for his disciples,
which are embedded in the last four injunctions of his Eightfold Path—Right
Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. However,
He instructed his disciples on these in reverse order, starting with training
in Right Concentration. In the injunctions for Dharma Gaia practice, I have
endeavored to follow his example:
1.
Breathe, Observe, Let Go
In his Sutra on
the Full Awareness of Breathing, the Buddha set out an easily grasped
sequence of guided meditations that anyone could practice, any time. The first
instruction he gave was remarkably simple: “Breathing in, I know I am breathing
in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.” Newcomers to Buddhist practice are
often baffled by the tautological simplicity of this instruction, but the
Buddha knew exactly what he was doing. Simple attention to our breath connects
our bodies and minds in the vertical dimension, and thereby prevents us, for a
while, from thinking about all the other stuff that habitually plagues our
consciousness—our obsessions, hopes, desires, fantasies, fears, and anxieties,
as well as our physical aches and pains. At the same time, bringing our
consciousness to our breath causes us to breathe more smoothly and deeply, thus
calming us down, alleviating our stress.
Naturally, all our
habitual distractions worm their way back into our awareness sooner or later,
but the Buddha anticipated this as well, by following with breathing exercises
that draw attention to, and encourage us to observe, acknowledge, embrace, and
let go of, whatever rises to our attention in our bodies, feelings, mental
formations, and consciousness. His final instruction sums up the practice:
“Breathing in, I observe letting go. Breathing out, I observe letting go.”
The essence of the
foundational practice of mindfulness and concentration that the Buddha taught
his disciples is contained in this final instruction. We breathe in order to
observe—whatever is going on in our body or mind, starting with the breath
itself, and moving on to our body, feelings, and thoughts. And we observe in
order to let go—not to push thoughts or feelings away, but just to observe the
coming and going of thoughts and feelings, rather than becoming attached to
them. And we let go in order to breathe. And so on. The net effect of this
simple but powerful practice is to restore our equanimity, to bring us back to
the present moment, again and again. It grounds us in what is, so that we may
let go of all the subjunctives that torment us—all the “if onlys.”
Our breath is our
home base—the basis of life and the root of our consciousness—and as long as we
are alive, it is always available to us. Simply observing our breath connects
our subjectivity (the vertical dimension of body-mind-spirit) with the
horizontal “objective” world of our physical sensations in contact with the
world outside of our skin. The oxygen in the air we breathe comes directly from
Gaia—from the photosynthesis of trees, plants, and phytoplankton all over the
world, without which the atmosphere would be 95% carbon dioxide, and we would
perish instantly. So in breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide,
we are literally dancing with the trees, which are breathing in carbon dioxide
and breathing out oxygen. It is no wonder that the Greek word for “Holy Spirit”
was agia pneuma, literally “holy
breath,” In fact, the word “spirit” itself derives from the Latin verb spiro,
spirare, spiritus, meaning “to breathe.” And as William Blake said,
“Everything that lives is holy.”
Furthermore, the
triad “breathe, observe, let go” corresponds exactly to what the Dalai Lama
described as the three basic forms of religious practice found throughout the
world—meditation, contemplation, and prayer. Meditation is breathing;
contemplation is observing, and prayer is letting go, as when Jesus instructed
his disciples to center their prayers on the mantra “Thy will be done.”
2.
Be well, Do good Work, Keep in Touch –Garrison Keillor
After teaching his
disciples Right Concentration (breathing, observing, and letting go), the
Buddha went on to teach Right Mindfulness, Right Effort, and Right Livelihood.
I know of no better summation for all of these practices than Garrison
Keillor’s signoff from his morning radio station, Writer’s Almanac: “Be
well, do good work, keep in touch.” Let us look at them more deeply.
Be
well.
In his “five
remembrances,” the Buddha taught his disciples to make friends with
impermanence by acknowledging their own:
1.
I
am of the nature to get sick. There is no way I can avoid getting sick.
2.
I
am of the nature to grow old. There is no way I can avoid growing old.
3.
I
am of the nature to die. There is no way I can avoid death.
4.
All
that I cherish, I will lose. There is no way I can avoid losing everything I
cherish.
5.
My
actions are my only possessions. There is no way I can escape the consequences
of my actions.
Ironically, the
Buddha knew that only by acknowledging our impermanence—our inevitable
subjection to sickness, old age, and death—could we truly “be well” in body,
mind and spirit. He saw, that is, that “being well” is rooted in mindfulness,
in compassionate attentiveness to the present moment, which will inevitably
lead us to eat and drink wisely and moderately, to take good care of our
bodies, to avoid intoxicants and excess, and thus to live longer, happier lives
before our inevitable sickness, old age, and death.
One can “be well”
not only in body, however, but in mind and spirit as well. Even if our bodies
are racked by disease, (as they all are, sooner or later), we can “be well” in
our minds if we continue to breathe, observe, and let go—and we can “be well”
in spirit if we can say “Thy will be done” and mean it; that is, in Buddhist
terms, if we can accept the current circumstances, whatever they are, as the
inevitable consequence of causes and conditions going back to the Big Bang, and
let go of our attachment to the subjunctive—to
wishing-things-were-other-than-they-are.
Do
Good Work
This injunction,
the essence of Right Effort and Right Livelihood, has two sides to it, which
may be characterized by the Greek words Arête and Agapé—Doing
Well, and Doing Good.
To do well means,
in Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, to address any task mindfully—to “do it in order to
do it, not in order to get it done.” This injunction can be applied to any
task, no matter how simple or complex, and no matter how arduous. If you wash
the dishes in full mindfulness, it can be like “washing the baby Buddha.” Likewise, even unpleasant but necessary
tasks, like cleaning out a kitty box, can be turned into a sacrament if they
are done with complete mindful attention. If on the other hand, we do things
simply in order to get them done so we can do something else, we are living in
the future, not in the present, and the present thus becomes that much more
tedious, because we don’t want to be there. The Buddha—and Jesus
likewise—understood that hell resides in the subjunctive—in wishing things were
other than they are—for this is, in Christian terms, turning our backs on God’s
will, and in Buddhist terms, causing Dukkha, or dissatisfaction with that
that is and craving for what is not and cannot be.
The objection will
naturally arise—“but what if the present situation is simply unbearable, and
must change.” The answer the Buddha
might have given would be to (1) breathe, observe, and let go, and then (2)
work mindfully and carefully in the present moment to change it, letting go of
attachment to outcomes.
The other side of
“doing good work” is, of course, agape—devoting whatever work you do to
taking care of all humanity, all living beings. This is what the Buddha meant
by “Right Livelihood”—choosing a career path that serves life, that serves,
rather than working against, our Bodhisattva vow to “take care of everyone (and
everything) and abandon no one (and nothing).” This naturally precludes certain
occupations—the design, manufacture, and sale of weapons, for example, or of
alcohol and other intoxicants. But Right Livelihood goes deeper than this.
We live in a world
today where our global economy is dominated, as never before, by large
multinational corporations whose sole aim is to maximize their own bottom line
at any social or environmental cost. This means that much of what we buy and
how we earn our money is complicit, directly or indirectly, in creating human
suffering through poverty, exploitation, or injustice, and in exhausting the Earth’s
resources and poisoning or degrading the biosphere. I know of no easy way out
of this dilemma—most of us, myself included, have nothing like the skills and
resilience to live “off the grid” on organic farms with solar and wind energy,
although there is an emergent global movement called Permaculture, devoted
precisely to nurturing such autonomous, ecologically sustainable communities.
Nevertheless, if a
large number of us make small, persistent changes—driving less, buying more
fuel-efficient cars, recycling, bicycling, buying less junk, and assuming
responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of our purchasing
habits and our livelihood, and networking to build community both locally and
globally, the net effect will be far greater than if an infinitesimal number of
us, with the knowledge, skills, resources, and connections to do so, go off the
grid and establish their own ecovillages. The Buddha intended “Right
Livelihood,” like the rest of his Eightfold Path, not as an absolute standard,
but rather as an asymptotic ideal—one for which we continuously strive (Right
Effort) even though we know that we may never fully attain it.
It is best,
therefore, in recollecting the second injunction, “Do Good Work,” to focus on arête—mindful
and compassionate attentiveness to the present task--while holding on to agapé--taking
good care of everyone and everything, and abandoning no one and nothing—as our
ongoing, long-term goal in everything we do.
Keep
in Touch.
Whereas “Be Well”
brings us back to our own bodies, minds, and spirits, and “Do Good Work” draws
mindful attention to our ongoing daily
tasks and long-term goals, the last injunction in Garrison Keillor’s beautiful
mantra, “Keep in Touch,” refers us back to the indispensable cultivation of Bodhicitta,
of genuine, practical, and immediate
compassion for all beings, predicated on our recognition that the separate
“self” which we spend so much time cultivating is in fact an illusion; that in
reality, whether we can see it or not, we are one with everyone and everything
we encounter: “That thou art.” Or as John Lennon put it, “I am he as you are he
as you are me and we are all together.” This is the insight, of course, that
lay behind Jesus’ core injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
The Buddhist
practices of Metta (Loving Kindness) meditation and the (closely allied)
Tibetan practice of Tonglen meditation are two powerful tools for
cultivating universal compassion through our recognition of oneness with
everyone and everything else. There are, of course, many methods for practicing
this, but here is one I developed based on Garrison Keillor’s mantra. It is a
guided meditation that combines Tonglen and more conventional Metta meditation:
Breathing in, I
take in, feel, and acknowledge my own pain and anguish.
Breathing out, I
[contact my Buddha/Christ nature and] irradiate my own being with love,
compassion, joy, and equanimity.
May I be well, do
good work, and keep in touch.
Breathing in, I
take in, feel, and acknowledge my wife’s own pain and anguish.
Breathing out, I
irradiate her being with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
May she be well,
do good work, and keep in touch…
I continue in this
vein, beginning with family, then friends, then students, then acquaintances,
then all humanity, then all living things on Earth, and finally, all living
things in the universe. But that’s the
easy part.
Now comes the hard
part—loving our enemies—the most difficult injunction of all to practice, but
also the most essential. I save this for last, for I know I will need all the bodhicitta
I can muster in order to do it sincerely. Depending on who those are who
aggravate you the most, it can take a variety of forms. It might be best to
start easy and work up to those who are most difficult for you to love. Here is
one example:
Breathing in, I
take in, feel, and acknowledge the pain and anguish of [say, a particularly
irritating student, or a truckdriver tailgating me on the highway]…
Breathing in, I
take in, feel, and acknowledge the pain and anguish of [say, an ex-spouse, a
boss, or someone else who chronically aggravates you]…
And finally (for
me) “Breathing in, I take in, feel, and acknowledge the pain and anguish of
hateful people like Donald Trump and the rest of their regime.
Breathing out, I
[contact my Buddha/Christ nature and] irradiate their beings with love,
compassion, joy, and equanimity.
May they be well,
do good work, and keep in touch.
And in the case of
particularly repulsive people (like the above, for me) I may also add, “May
they see the light.”
The practice is
difficult at first, but the rewards are great. When driving a car, if someone
cuts you off or flips you an obscene gesture, or if your boss or spouse or
child gets on your nerves, or if you hear a news story that fills you with
apoplectic moral outrage, it is good to have this practice available.
The essence of
keeping in touch, then, is to build up a reservoir of good will and compassion
that is available to us at any time, for anyone you encounter, so that we can
be there for them if they need us, and leave them alone if they want to be left
alone, and better calm our anger and thus avoid unskillful behavior. Here is
another practice for keeping in touch that I developed for my students:
1.
Everyone
you see is your teacher, so be ready at all times to learn.
2.
Everyone
you see is your student, so be ready at all times to teach.
3.
Everyone
you see may be hurting in some way, so be ready at all times to heal.
4.
Everyone
you see may need your special gift, so be ready at all times to create.
And this leads us
directly to the final phase of my Dharma Gaia mantra:
4.
Learn Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia,
and Create Gaia.
Whereas the
Principle, embodied in Dr. King’s luminous quote, is always a useful
intellectual reminder of the Dharma, and the Precept, embedded in Lao Tzu’s
quote, is a useful ethical reminder, the Practice thus far, especially Garrison
Keillor’s mantra, is intended as an easily recalled way of actualizing the
Dharma in our lives on an ongoing basis, moment to moment and day by day. But what about Gaia? We are still faced with
the daunting dilemma of a global market economy based on infinite growth of
production and consumption that has already exceeded the carrying capacity of a
finite planet, and is on the verge of collapse into chaos and massive,
worldwide violence, suffering, starvation, and death. All the personal dharma
practice in the world will not do much to change this grim future, though it
might help us survive it, both physically and spiritually, longer than others.
But in order to embrace the challenge of global healing, we must use Dharma
practice as the foundation for a serious and sustained commitment to Gaian
healing. Hence I have come up with what I call the “Four Commitments” that can
serve as a general guide for consecrating our lives to the task of creating a
Gaian future, which is our only alternative to no future at all. While Dharma
practice—breathing, observing, letting go, being well, doing good work, and
keeping in touch—is the indispensable root and stem of our lives, Gaian healing
can be the fruit, if we commit our lives to the following:
Learn
Gaia.
Learn all you can
about ecology, biodiversity, wetlands, forests, oceans, etc—wherever your
interests lead you. Pay close attention to the living world all around you, and
make this a lifelong learning project.
Teach
Gaia
Use every opportunity you have to teach Gaian
consciousness to others, especially children. Teach, by both precept and
example, responsible behaviour toward the living world around us. This can be
summed up in three themes:
· Good Buy--assuming responsibility
for the social and ecological consequences of our spending and investment
habits;
·
Good Work--assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of
our livelihoods and activities;
· Good Will--finding effective ways to
respect, listen to, work with, take care of, set good examples for, negotiate
with, and win the respect of others, especially the vast numbers of oblivious
people who get all their information from corporate media and are still
addicted to short-term, selfish, destructive behavior.
Heal Gaia
Get involved in, or initiate, projects to clean up
and restore damaged ecosystems, and in political campaigns to protect our
living planet and its biodiversity from the vested interests of greed and
ignorance.
Create Gaia
Get involved in, or initiate, projects to create
sustainable alternatives to the toxic status quo in food production (local
organic farming cooperatives and community-supported agriculture); community
design (ecovillages, cohousing, etc.); energy production and use (solar, wind,
and biomass); money management (responsible investment), and education
(incorporating Gaian consciousness into every aspect of the curriculum).
This, then, is my summation of Dharma Gaia practice,
of doing the right thing for the living Earth. As a reminder, the Principle,
Precept, and Practice is brief enough to be posted on the refrigerator, but, as
I hope I’ve shown, it provides a useful mnemonic device for reminding ourselves,
as both Dharma practitioners and Gaian healers, of both our rootedness in the
present moment and our commitment to a sustainable future for our
children and grandchildren. It can also serve as the focal point for Sanghas
devoted to Dharma Gaia practice. A sample protocol for such a Sangha might be
as follows:
1.
Begin by touching base—that is, asking everyone in your circle to give
their names, and to share whatever they wish with the rest of the Sangha.
2.
Begin the formal meditation by inviting a bell, after which the
facilitator, a chosen participant, or the group as a whole recites the Dharma
Gaia Principle:
We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly.
With gratitude to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.(Bow)
(silence)
(bell)
3.
The facilitator, chosen participants, or the group as a whole recites
the Dharma Gaia Precept:
Let us strive to take care of everyone, and abandon
no one. Let us strive to take care of everything, and abandon nothing.
With gratitude to Lao Tzu. (Bow)
(silence)
(bell)
4.
The facilitator leads the following guided meditation:
Breathing in, I am aware of breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware of breathing out.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in, I observe my body, feelings, and mind.
Breathing out, I let go of whatever distracts my
body, feelings, and mind.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and out, I renew my vow to be well in body,
mind, and spirit.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and out, I renew my vow to do good work.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and out, I renew my vow to keep in
touch.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and out, I renew my vow to Learn
Gaia
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and
out, I renew my vow to Teach Gaia.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and out, I renew my vow to Heal
Gaia.
(Pause for practice)
Breathing in and
out, I renew my vow to Create Gaia.
(Pause for practice)
(Bell)
(Silent meditation ensues, for 20-40 minutes,
depending on the preferences of the group)
(Bell)
5.
Following formal meditation, at the discretion of the group, there may
be walking meditation, a recorded Dharma Talk, and/or a Gaia
presentation/discussion, based, perhaps, on a book that one or more of the
group have read. This should be followed by announcements.
6.
Closure: The group stands, joins hands, and recites the following:
May
we all be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
…Feel
free, of course, to modify this protocol as it suits you and your group. And
may my Dharma Gaia precept, principle, and practice contribute, in some small
way, to alleviate the inner and outer suffering of all living beings, and to
healing our precious living planet.
Be
well. Do good work. And Keep in Touch.
