"You may call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..." --John Lennon.
Yesterday, October 9, was John Lennon's 78th birthday, and to celebrate it, I posted on Facebook a deeply touching videoclip of three talented young children in Russia, performing Lennon's iconic song "Imagine" before an adoring audience. All these children, of course, were born long after John Lennon's death by murder in 1980, yet they were all deeply touched by, and continue to carry on, his legacy--the dream of a world where such toxic mental formations as countries, religions, and possessions no longer are pretexts for people killing and dying...a Gaian world with "all the people sharing all the world..."
Having always been a dreamer myself, fond of imagining a world without "greed or hunger," I now have the good fortune of having retired from teaching and moved to a part of our world--the Willamette Valley in the gloriously beautiful state of Oregon--where environmental awareness and responsibility have become embedded in the default ethos of the dominant culture, and where many bright, creative people not only share this dream, but are actively engaged in making it happen, from the ground up.
One such pragmatic visionary is my online Permaculture teacher at Oregon State University, Andrew Millison. He is a vibrant, keenly intelligent, and personable young man, who is bringing the visionary teachings of the late Bill Mollison and his many brilliant disciples--David Holmgren, Sepp Holzer, the late Toby Hemenway, Geoff Lawton, and many others throughout the world--to a whole new generation of talented, idealistic young people. He has the formidable talent of condensing Mollison's and Holmgren's vast array of ecological design insights into lucid and readily accessible brief lectures and presentations, many of which are now freely available onYouTube.
As I study and learn these brilliant, insightful design principles and practices, and see innumerable examples of their successful application in practice, my pervasive gloom about the political degeneration of our nation and the ecological devastation of our planet fades comfortably into the background of my consciousness. For these are patterns on the macro scale that I can do precious little about, other than voting, canvassing, environmental lobbying, and going to the occasional demonstration--all of which can often feel like exercises in futility.
But Permaculturists are out there every day, actually repairing the planet, one design site at a time, by designing systems that not only emulate nature, but interact symbiotically with the natural world, regenerating topsoil, reducing consumption of resources, mitigating pollution, and repairing the vast damage our industrial civilization has done to our living planet. And--more importantly--they are dedicated to teaching and propagating these principles of healing through design across the entire planet. This is why I plan to devote the rest of my days, to my very last breath, to learning and teaching Permaculture, and--to the extent I am able, within my limited skills and small range of influence--to healing and creating Gaia.
One idea I have for this--which again, may or may not ever come to pass within my remaining life span--is to work with the many new friends I am making here to create a "Dharma Gaia Practice Center" somewhere in or near Salem. Such a center would be first a Permaculture demonstration site, where residing members could give guided tours of the steadily evolving permaculture design on whatever landscape we find, and teach workshops on the methods we use. But it would also be a place where a wide array of hands-on classes could be offered, not only on permaculture design practices, but also on "learning Gaia" through co-sponsorship, with community organizations such as the Audubons or the Native Plant Society, of nature walks around the property or surrounding landscape, or as I like to call them, "Gaia Walks"--where a protocol would be observed, or encouraged, to limit chatter so that we could give full attention to the tour guide. In short, my envisioned "Dharma Gaia Practice Center" would be closely modeled on the Aprovecho Institute of Cottage Grove OR, established by my class mentor, Tao Orion.
Finally, rather like Breitenbush Community nearby, or the Omega Institute in upstate New York, it would be a place that also invited skilled teachers of various "vertical" modes of holistic healing of body, mind and spirit--e.g. yoga, tai chi, ayurveda, meditation techniques, etc.--as well as the "horizontal" healing practices (self-community-planet) of permaculture and satyagraha (i.e. nonviolent, Dharma-based modalities of political engagement). The underlying vision of this Dharma Gaia Practice Center would be a place that integrates vertical and horizontal healing, emphasizing the linkage between healing our fragmented body-mind-spirit systems; healing out community, nation, and world; and healing our homes, our landscapes, and our living planet.
As usual with such dreams, I have no idea if such a vision will ever come to pass in my remaining lifetime. But that does not matter. As the Parable of the Sower illustrates (and permaculture confirms), all that matters, ultimately, is the soil and growing conditions into which we drop our seeds. And I know of no richer soil for a seed such as "Dharma Gaia Circle" and "Dharma Gaia Practice Center" than right here in Oregon. If I get it started but never live to see it, so be it. What we learn dies with us; our only legacy is what we teach, heal, and create.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Monday, October 8, 2018
The Five Enemies of Gaia
These are dark days: our once idealistic, once democratic republic, hijacked by a maniacal tycoon, is spiraling down, down, down, into tyranny, plutocracy, chaos, and rancor; we are no longer citizens but mere consumers, our democratic institutions sabotaged by corporate greed and corruption, and our very consciousness colonized day and night by Glomart media and advertising. In tandem with this incremental and accelerating collapse of our civilization, we watch with dread as Gaia, our global life support system, goes into its final convulsions from a fever induced by excess levels of CO2 from fossil fuels--unprecedented wildfires, massive floods and hurricanes, melting ice caps north and south, collapsing ecosystems and vanishing species, bleached out coral reefs, fished out oceans full of jellyfish, catastrophically declining insect populations--a panoply of biological horror stories from all over the world. Yet our Glomart-corrupted politicians persist in their pig-headed denial, while multinational corporations blindly pursue their profits, served by a bloated military-industrial complex that is secretly engaged in "special operations" sending out murderous drones and spreading endless, asymmetric warfare all over the world in the hallowed name of "national security"--all oblivious to the social and environmental catastrophes they are wreaking everywhere we look.
It all makes peace of mind rather elusive--instead, levels of public anxiety are at an all-time high throughout the world, and many in the younger generations are terminally alienated, finding illusory refuge in drugs, violent movies or video games, gangs, or pornography. What then can we do?
One way of thinking about Buddhist teachings is that they are tools of thought that can be used to train our minds for times like this--whether personally or globally--when things look utterly bleak and all hope seems to have vanished. One such tool is the famous mandala that illustrates the Wheel of Samsara. This mandala is arranged concentrically to illustrate the laws of Karma, or what Buddhists call pratitya samutpada--roughly translated as "codependent origination" or "this is because that is (and vice versa)." This doctrine of codetermination is also fundamental to the systems sciences and Gaia Theory. So it is a point of convergence between Buddhism and Gaia Theory that is well worth exploring further.
At the hub of the mandala are three symbolic beasts--the pig, the rooster, and the snake--signifying, respectively, ignorance, hatred, and desire (or greed). These are the "drivers" of Samsara--the world of delusion in which most of us are trapped. Each issues forth from the mouth of the other in a circle, signifying the codependence of these "three poisons," each giving rise to--or quite literally vomiting up--the other. Surrounding this is a ring that is light on one side and dark on the other, with human figures swimming up and down, roughly analogous to the "Wheel of Fortune" in western iconography. This depicts our cyclical transmigration though various lifetimes--upwards due to our virtuous deeds, and downward due to our mean or selfish deeds. In the next broad layer, we see images of the Six Samsaric Realms into which we are reborn--the Hell realm, the Hungry Ghosts, the Animals, the Human realm, the Asuras or "jealous gods," and the Devas, or deities.
These are not "places" so much as ego-generated delusions, default states of mind we all tend to inhabit at various times as we go through our lives. In brief, Hell dwellers are driven by fear, hatred, and violence; Animals are driven by sensual desire and anxiety; Hungry Ghosts are plagued by inner thirst, despair, and desolation; Humans (most of us) are capable of rising or falling, based on our choices; Asuras or "jealous gods" are driven by relentless ambition (rather like many university professors, politicians, or businessmen), and Devas can be thought of as analogous to the super-rich, those we all envy for their luxurious and carefree lives but who, like all the rest of us, inhabit the Samsaric realm of consciousness engendered by ignorance, greed, and hatred, and who therefore, as Bob Marley once put it "think they're in Heaven but they're living in Hell." In the outer circle are depicted the 12 links of codependent origination, from ignorance through attachment to birth, old age, and death.
With this model as our backdrop, we can gain much insight into our current plight on our threatened civilization and planet, and--ideally--use this insight to convert our collective despair into equanimity and resolution. So let us begin with the Three Poisons, to which I would add two spin-offs, resulting in the "Five Enemies of Gaia:" Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair.
Ignorance refers, in Buddhist theory, to the root delusion we all share as our birthright--that "I" am an autonomous, persistent entity, separate from "you," from "him and her" and (above all) from "them." This is a delusion because this "self" is actually no more than a mental construct that enables us to function in a community mediated by language. It has no actual form or substance--if we try to find it in our bodies or our minds, we will soon give up looking. It is what the Romans called a persona, a mask that we fashion from our genetic predispositions and our experience and that we identify with, calling it (appropriately) our "personality." Yet we grow and change constantly in response to external stimuli and the internal processes of growth and aging. Our memories extend back to early childhood, yet that "I" we remember was vastly smaller than, and different from, the "I" of today.
This delusion is entirely natural--we share it with all other living organisms, from bacteria up to ourselves--simply because in order to function, all biological systems must surround themselves with a permeable membrane that separates "outside" events from "inside" processing of those events. This deeply rooted concept we have of ourselves as separate entities no doubt developed from these biological roots--our need to protect our body-mind systems from the world--only the "world" today includes, and is dominated by, language and other abstractions such as money--not just by predators, rivals, poisons, or diseases.
This basic underlying ignorance of our true nature--as temporary moire patterns in an ongoing flow of matter, energy, and information (like waves in the ocean or pixels dancing on a screen)--inevitably engenders the two other poisons: greed or attachment, and hatred or aversion. We crave, or become attached to, people, places, things, or concepts (mental formations) that enhance our self-image or satisfy our (temporary) desires, but this craving is never satisfied; we hate and fear all those who threaten, not only our physical well-being, but also our ego concept--our assiduously cultivated sense of our own value and importance.
As the Tibetan mandala above shows, these three emotional states--ignorance (i.e. the delusion of separateness), greed (attachment) and hatred (aversion) ceaselessly give rise to each other at the core of our self-consciousness. We crave things, people, and power to reinforce our self-importance, our "me-ness." But this craving can never be satisfied--more is always better. And it is always haunted by fear of loss--of our money, our possessions, our power over others--and so we objectify these threats by our hatred of, and violence toward others. Our "me-ness" gives rise to meanness. (Donald Trump is, of course, the avatar of Samsara--the very personification of all-consuming ignorance, greed, and hatred).
These "three poisons" at the core of our ego-construct, as the Tibetans aptly call them, also give rise to two toxic spinoffs--denial and despair. Denial is simply the refusal to acknowledge blatantly obvious realities that directly threaten our power and our samsaric worldview--the structure of mental formations we erect to validate our greed and hatred. There are many forms of denial, but by far the most insidious--the one that makes it an "enemy of Gaia" along with ignorance, greed, and hatred--is denial of climate change: the refusal, by an entire, empowered political subculture (the US Republican Party and the corporate elite whom they serve) to acknowledge the obvious, well-attested reality that our fossil-fuel-based global economy is destroying our planet and imperiling all future generations.
One might even say that with Trump, ignorance, greed, hatred, and denial have become the main platform of the Republican party, as they set forth (with vehement hatred) to dismantle democracy, enrich the super-rich yet further, impoverish the poor and destitute, assert patriarchal dominance over women, and dehumanize immigrants and ethnic or religious minorities. And all this has given rise, within a broad swath of the American public and throughout the world, to the Fifth Enemy: Despair.
Despair is not an external enemy--it is the enemy within. But it likewise arises from, and in turn engenders, ignorance, greed, and hatred. And we see, in popular culture and in the constant chatter of the Internet, a virtual epidemic of despair spreading among younger generations, in direct response to the entrenched greed and hatred of their elders. In its most corrosive form, despair engenders mindless and indiscriminate violence--hence the crazed gun nuts who mow down innocent people in crowds, schools, concerts, movie theatres, and even churches. And when despair mixes with political hatred, we get terrorism (for a terrorist is nothing but a revolutionary without hope). When it mixes with greed, we get the murderous drug cartels of Central America or street gangs of our inner cities. We see it also in the rising suicide rates of teenagers, for if there is no hope for the future, why live?
So what can we do about the Five Enemies of Gaia--Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair?
The first thing to recognize is that these enemies are not people, not "others"--not even the corporate elite nor the belligerent right-wing neofascists that people on "my side" love to hate. All these "enemies" can be also found within our own consciousness, as well as being so clearly manifested in Trump and his clueless devotees. When we meet hate with hate or violence with violence, hatred and violence proliferate, becoming ever more deadly.
The Buddhist solution to all of the above begins with the simple act of breathing, observing, and letting go. As we gradually learn (through conscious breathing) to simply observe, rather than either indulging or repressing, our thoughts and feelings, we simultaneously develop the capacity to let go of our toxic emotions, our addictive cravings, our fears and anxieties--and to simply abide in the present moment. From this foundation of calm abiding and insight, we are then able to cultivate empathy for others--even ignorant right-wing fascists (without justifying their behavior)--and thus to develop genuine, unfeigned compassion--for ourselves, for those closest to us, for everyone else, and for all living beings. We can then make that baseline compassion the foundation of our everyday behavior, rather than our greedy. angry, or anxious obsessions. In this way, we cultivate the ability to be well, do good work, and keep in touch on a daily basis, and to consecrate our lives to learning Gaia, teaching Gaia, healing Gaia, and creating Gaia.
It all makes peace of mind rather elusive--instead, levels of public anxiety are at an all-time high throughout the world, and many in the younger generations are terminally alienated, finding illusory refuge in drugs, violent movies or video games, gangs, or pornography. What then can we do?
One way of thinking about Buddhist teachings is that they are tools of thought that can be used to train our minds for times like this--whether personally or globally--when things look utterly bleak and all hope seems to have vanished. One such tool is the famous mandala that illustrates the Wheel of Samsara. This mandala is arranged concentrically to illustrate the laws of Karma, or what Buddhists call pratitya samutpada--roughly translated as "codependent origination" or "this is because that is (and vice versa)." This doctrine of codetermination is also fundamental to the systems sciences and Gaia Theory. So it is a point of convergence between Buddhism and Gaia Theory that is well worth exploring further.
At the hub of the mandala are three symbolic beasts--the pig, the rooster, and the snake--signifying, respectively, ignorance, hatred, and desire (or greed). These are the "drivers" of Samsara--the world of delusion in which most of us are trapped. Each issues forth from the mouth of the other in a circle, signifying the codependence of these "three poisons," each giving rise to--or quite literally vomiting up--the other. Surrounding this is a ring that is light on one side and dark on the other, with human figures swimming up and down, roughly analogous to the "Wheel of Fortune" in western iconography. This depicts our cyclical transmigration though various lifetimes--upwards due to our virtuous deeds, and downward due to our mean or selfish deeds. In the next broad layer, we see images of the Six Samsaric Realms into which we are reborn--the Hell realm, the Hungry Ghosts, the Animals, the Human realm, the Asuras or "jealous gods," and the Devas, or deities.
These are not "places" so much as ego-generated delusions, default states of mind we all tend to inhabit at various times as we go through our lives. In brief, Hell dwellers are driven by fear, hatred, and violence; Animals are driven by sensual desire and anxiety; Hungry Ghosts are plagued by inner thirst, despair, and desolation; Humans (most of us) are capable of rising or falling, based on our choices; Asuras or "jealous gods" are driven by relentless ambition (rather like many university professors, politicians, or businessmen), and Devas can be thought of as analogous to the super-rich, those we all envy for their luxurious and carefree lives but who, like all the rest of us, inhabit the Samsaric realm of consciousness engendered by ignorance, greed, and hatred, and who therefore, as Bob Marley once put it "think they're in Heaven but they're living in Hell." In the outer circle are depicted the 12 links of codependent origination, from ignorance through attachment to birth, old age, and death.
With this model as our backdrop, we can gain much insight into our current plight on our threatened civilization and planet, and--ideally--use this insight to convert our collective despair into equanimity and resolution. So let us begin with the Three Poisons, to which I would add two spin-offs, resulting in the "Five Enemies of Gaia:" Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair.
Ignorance refers, in Buddhist theory, to the root delusion we all share as our birthright--that "I" am an autonomous, persistent entity, separate from "you," from "him and her" and (above all) from "them." This is a delusion because this "self" is actually no more than a mental construct that enables us to function in a community mediated by language. It has no actual form or substance--if we try to find it in our bodies or our minds, we will soon give up looking. It is what the Romans called a persona, a mask that we fashion from our genetic predispositions and our experience and that we identify with, calling it (appropriately) our "personality." Yet we grow and change constantly in response to external stimuli and the internal processes of growth and aging. Our memories extend back to early childhood, yet that "I" we remember was vastly smaller than, and different from, the "I" of today.
This delusion is entirely natural--we share it with all other living organisms, from bacteria up to ourselves--simply because in order to function, all biological systems must surround themselves with a permeable membrane that separates "outside" events from "inside" processing of those events. This deeply rooted concept we have of ourselves as separate entities no doubt developed from these biological roots--our need to protect our body-mind systems from the world--only the "world" today includes, and is dominated by, language and other abstractions such as money--not just by predators, rivals, poisons, or diseases.
This basic underlying ignorance of our true nature--as temporary moire patterns in an ongoing flow of matter, energy, and information (like waves in the ocean or pixels dancing on a screen)--inevitably engenders the two other poisons: greed or attachment, and hatred or aversion. We crave, or become attached to, people, places, things, or concepts (mental formations) that enhance our self-image or satisfy our (temporary) desires, but this craving is never satisfied; we hate and fear all those who threaten, not only our physical well-being, but also our ego concept--our assiduously cultivated sense of our own value and importance.
As the Tibetan mandala above shows, these three emotional states--ignorance (i.e. the delusion of separateness), greed (attachment) and hatred (aversion) ceaselessly give rise to each other at the core of our self-consciousness. We crave things, people, and power to reinforce our self-importance, our "me-ness." But this craving can never be satisfied--more is always better. And it is always haunted by fear of loss--of our money, our possessions, our power over others--and so we objectify these threats by our hatred of, and violence toward others. Our "me-ness" gives rise to meanness. (Donald Trump is, of course, the avatar of Samsara--the very personification of all-consuming ignorance, greed, and hatred).
These "three poisons" at the core of our ego-construct, as the Tibetans aptly call them, also give rise to two toxic spinoffs--denial and despair. Denial is simply the refusal to acknowledge blatantly obvious realities that directly threaten our power and our samsaric worldview--the structure of mental formations we erect to validate our greed and hatred. There are many forms of denial, but by far the most insidious--the one that makes it an "enemy of Gaia" along with ignorance, greed, and hatred--is denial of climate change: the refusal, by an entire, empowered political subculture (the US Republican Party and the corporate elite whom they serve) to acknowledge the obvious, well-attested reality that our fossil-fuel-based global economy is destroying our planet and imperiling all future generations.
One might even say that with Trump, ignorance, greed, hatred, and denial have become the main platform of the Republican party, as they set forth (with vehement hatred) to dismantle democracy, enrich the super-rich yet further, impoverish the poor and destitute, assert patriarchal dominance over women, and dehumanize immigrants and ethnic or religious minorities. And all this has given rise, within a broad swath of the American public and throughout the world, to the Fifth Enemy: Despair.
Despair is not an external enemy--it is the enemy within. But it likewise arises from, and in turn engenders, ignorance, greed, and hatred. And we see, in popular culture and in the constant chatter of the Internet, a virtual epidemic of despair spreading among younger generations, in direct response to the entrenched greed and hatred of their elders. In its most corrosive form, despair engenders mindless and indiscriminate violence--hence the crazed gun nuts who mow down innocent people in crowds, schools, concerts, movie theatres, and even churches. And when despair mixes with political hatred, we get terrorism (for a terrorist is nothing but a revolutionary without hope). When it mixes with greed, we get the murderous drug cartels of Central America or street gangs of our inner cities. We see it also in the rising suicide rates of teenagers, for if there is no hope for the future, why live?
So what can we do about the Five Enemies of Gaia--Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair?
The first thing to recognize is that these enemies are not people, not "others"--not even the corporate elite nor the belligerent right-wing neofascists that people on "my side" love to hate. All these "enemies" can be also found within our own consciousness, as well as being so clearly manifested in Trump and his clueless devotees. When we meet hate with hate or violence with violence, hatred and violence proliferate, becoming ever more deadly.
The Buddhist solution to all of the above begins with the simple act of breathing, observing, and letting go. As we gradually learn (through conscious breathing) to simply observe, rather than either indulging or repressing, our thoughts and feelings, we simultaneously develop the capacity to let go of our toxic emotions, our addictive cravings, our fears and anxieties--and to simply abide in the present moment. From this foundation of calm abiding and insight, we are then able to cultivate empathy for others--even ignorant right-wing fascists (without justifying their behavior)--and thus to develop genuine, unfeigned compassion--for ourselves, for those closest to us, for everyone else, and for all living beings. We can then make that baseline compassion the foundation of our everyday behavior, rather than our greedy. angry, or anxious obsessions. In this way, we cultivate the ability to be well, do good work, and keep in touch on a daily basis, and to consecrate our lives to learning Gaia, teaching Gaia, healing Gaia, and creating Gaia.
Friday, October 5, 2018
Strange times
We live in strange times indeed. On one hand, those of us in the Consumer Class (a more accurate term, I feel, for the tedious and much-overused term "Middle Class") in most industrial nations have never had it better. With even modest professional salaries and pensions, we can live in comfortable, secure, climate-controlled houses, often far larger than we need; travel all over the world in hours or at most a day or so; use our computers and cellphones to connect with others all over the planet and instantly find out any information we seek; listen to a vast array of music and see an equally vast array of films and TV programs to entertain us during idle hours; enjoy the previously unimaginable benefits of modern medicine to heal our diseases and prolong our lives; eat fresh food and sample cuisines from all over the planet throughout the year--all luxuries that our ancestors could not have even imagined. (They would think they were in paradise if somehow they could revisit the present and see us as we are now...)
And yet we are quietly anxious, not happy--largely because those of us who can still evaluate evidence or take the time to read and to search out the truth of things are well aware, whether we admit it or not, that--we are on the precipice of an unprecedented global catastrophe. The fossil fuels that provide the limitless energy we take for granted to power all these luxuries have a side effect--release of vast quantities of CO2 emissions that concentrate in the upper atmosphere--which has effectively doomed our planet, not in the far-distant future, but starting already, quite visibly, everywhere: relentless headlines of record-breaking droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, along with growing dead zones in the oceans, melting glaciers and ice caps, rising seas, and swarms of environmental refugees from the global South pouring over national borders. The pace of global heating spurred by this atmospheric change has now gone into a runaway feedback loop, for as icecaps melt, the northern oceans absorb rather than reflect heat, and as warming oceans kill off coral reefs worldwide, the calcium carbonate of which they are made breaks down into yet more CO2, while methyl hydrates, with 10 to 50 times the heat-trapping potential of CO2, are then released from the permafrost, bubbling up under the Arctic and Antarctic seas...We have no way of knowing whether the ecosystems of our planet can withstand this ever-more-rapid heating of the climate, as changes which normally would take thousands or hundreds of thousands of years now are occurring over mere decades.
The psychological, social, and political consequences of this unstoppable, runaway global climate disaster are unsettling, to say the least--and likely to get a lot worse, fast, in the coming years. We have already witnessed, for example, the rapid erosion of liberal democratic institutions and the rise of fanatical, authoritarian demagogues worldwide--Trump being only the most obvious example of a dangerous trend which is also afflicting Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, and elsewhere--as nativist zealots in these and many other countries gain public support, demonize or threaten their opponents, and seize power, calling for closing borders, deportation of immigrants, summary execution of criminals or "enemies" of the regime, and promising to restore a mythical, ethnically "pure" past.
But this craziness goes well beyond political destabilization, resurgent fascism, and polarization. In a future-oriented, essentially optimistic culture like our own, we are likely to see a growing cognitive dissonance between the future people have always been taught to envision and work toward--a future of ever-growing affluence and technological wonders--and the actual grim future prospects unfolding day by day, as our planet heats up uncontrollably, as ecosystems collapse, and as social cohesion degenerates into turmoil and violence.
According to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the four stages of grieving are denial, bargaining, anger, and acceptance. At present, most of us in our political and mass media culture (especially science-denying Republicans) are in deep denial, while many scientists, activists and technological optimists have already moved on to bargaining--dreaming up quixotic technological fixes or utterly implausible calls for global cooperation--even as nations become more insular, belligerent, and defensive.
But woe unto all of us when denial and bargaining give way to anger--especially the anger of the betrayed Millennial generation whom we have robbed of any prospect for a decent, livable future--whom, in our short-term greed, willful ignorance, and denial, we have doomed to a horrific future beyond imagining. We are already seeing clear evidence of such hopeless rage in the brutal and vicious behaviour of ISIS and other Islamic fanatical groups, as well as among the narcotics cartels and street gangs of Central America and--increasingly--in our own cities. Even the election of Donald Trump by a large swath of disaffected, angry white Americans throughout the heartland states could be seen as yet more evidence of this hopeless, destructive rage. But far worse "lashing out" is likely to come, as the general, inescapable panic increases worldwide.
What's left? According to Kubler-Ross, the final step in the grieving process is Acceptance. But while individual acceptance of the death of a loved one is fairly easy, since one's own life will go on, acceptance of one's own mortality--in the case of a terminal disease--is far more difficult, but is eased by the awareness that new generations will arise and life will go on after we are gone. But what will it take to accept the imminent collapse of a whole global civilization, the end of our history, and the death of a whole life-sustaining planet even? How will we accept the idea that there really is no future, no hope, for any of us or our descendants?
This is where spiritual practice becomes our only recourse--to take us beyond despair, into a new kind of empowerment--not as saviors of our current, moribund civilization, but as seeds of a new one, rather like the fire-activated seeds of certain trees, that germinate only after a forest fire has consumed everything else around them into ashes and dust.
And the good news is, such seeding is already happening. It is called Permaculture--an ethical design protocol that works in accordance with, not against, Gaia, our biological support system. What would happen if the tremendous "seed-power" of this fledgling, world-wide Permaculture movement were somehow synthesized with the already well-established, transformative "seed-power" of Buddhist practice--to transform denial and rage into acceptance and empowerment? And what if THAT went viral? That is my aim, my goal, my life purpose, which I will pursue to my last breath. Here is how it might work:
Imagine...a set of small, self-replicating steps that might unfold as follows:
Be well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch;
Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create--Gaia.
But this craziness goes well beyond political destabilization, resurgent fascism, and polarization. In a future-oriented, essentially optimistic culture like our own, we are likely to see a growing cognitive dissonance between the future people have always been taught to envision and work toward--a future of ever-growing affluence and technological wonders--and the actual grim future prospects unfolding day by day, as our planet heats up uncontrollably, as ecosystems collapse, and as social cohesion degenerates into turmoil and violence.
According to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the four stages of grieving are denial, bargaining, anger, and acceptance. At present, most of us in our political and mass media culture (especially science-denying Republicans) are in deep denial, while many scientists, activists and technological optimists have already moved on to bargaining--dreaming up quixotic technological fixes or utterly implausible calls for global cooperation--even as nations become more insular, belligerent, and defensive.
But woe unto all of us when denial and bargaining give way to anger--especially the anger of the betrayed Millennial generation whom we have robbed of any prospect for a decent, livable future--whom, in our short-term greed, willful ignorance, and denial, we have doomed to a horrific future beyond imagining. We are already seeing clear evidence of such hopeless rage in the brutal and vicious behaviour of ISIS and other Islamic fanatical groups, as well as among the narcotics cartels and street gangs of Central America and--increasingly--in our own cities. Even the election of Donald Trump by a large swath of disaffected, angry white Americans throughout the heartland states could be seen as yet more evidence of this hopeless, destructive rage. But far worse "lashing out" is likely to come, as the general, inescapable panic increases worldwide.
What's left? According to Kubler-Ross, the final step in the grieving process is Acceptance. But while individual acceptance of the death of a loved one is fairly easy, since one's own life will go on, acceptance of one's own mortality--in the case of a terminal disease--is far more difficult, but is eased by the awareness that new generations will arise and life will go on after we are gone. But what will it take to accept the imminent collapse of a whole global civilization, the end of our history, and the death of a whole life-sustaining planet even? How will we accept the idea that there really is no future, no hope, for any of us or our descendants?
This is where spiritual practice becomes our only recourse--to take us beyond despair, into a new kind of empowerment--not as saviors of our current, moribund civilization, but as seeds of a new one, rather like the fire-activated seeds of certain trees, that germinate only after a forest fire has consumed everything else around them into ashes and dust.
And the good news is, such seeding is already happening. It is called Permaculture--an ethical design protocol that works in accordance with, not against, Gaia, our biological support system. What would happen if the tremendous "seed-power" of this fledgling, world-wide Permaculture movement were somehow synthesized with the already well-established, transformative "seed-power" of Buddhist practice--to transform denial and rage into acceptance and empowerment? And what if THAT went viral? That is my aim, my goal, my life purpose, which I will pursue to my last breath. Here is how it might work:
Imagine...a set of small, self-replicating steps that might unfold as follows:
- Small "Dharma Gaia Circles" form, who practice the integration of contemplative meditation practice--reinhabiting the present moment, accepting impermanence, letting go of attachments, and cultivating active compassion--with both social/ecological activism and permaculture theory and practice. The core practice of such circles, of course, would be the 10-fold Dharma Gaia mantra: contemplating, practicing, and vowing (with one verb phrase on each of ten full breaths) to--
Be well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch;
Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create--Gaia.
- These circles go on to establish Dharma Gaia Practice Centers, which offer ongoing training programs to their communities in the three essential disciplines of Tonglen meditation (to train our minds to let go of attachments, accept impermanence, and actively cultivate compassion), Satyagraha (to organize others to resist the tyranny of corporate greed and fascism without giving in to hatred or violence); and Permaculture (to restore the health of Gaia, starting with our own back yards).
- These go viral--before the electric grid starts to collapse, due to energy costs and social chaos--and Dharma Gaia Circles (or their equivalents in other religions and cultures) start popping up everywhere, like wildflowers. The equivalents, of course, would take names within their own cultural tradition reflecting the healing of the Earth (e.g. Tikkun for Jews, or the Mustardseed Project for Christians, et al.)
- Gaians (as we are now widely known) reach out to all people, no matter how wounded or desperate they may be, assuring them, for example, that they can be Gaian Christians, Gaian Muslims, Gaian Jews, Gaian Hindus, Gaian Buddhists, or Gaian whatever...
- As a direct consequence, such trends as solar, wind, and biomass energy, along with relocalization of the food economy, holistic healing modalities, regeneration of topsoil through carbon sequestration and other permaculture practices, a newly evolved political culture of Gaian democracy, and innovative Gaian technologies of all sorts start to make wider and wider swaths of the world look and feel as the Willamette Valley is already starting to look and feel today--as more and more people abandon addictive consumerism and start growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness.
Could this actually happen? Who knows? But just in case it is possible, I will be conducting my first actual Dharma Gaia Circle on October 21, at my Unitarian Church in Salem, Oregon. If we don't plant seeds, nothing will grow.
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