Reflections on Community and Sustainability

Recently, my friend Al Markowitz, a local syndicated journalist who writes deeply reflective and insightful articles on current political issues, asked me for some reflections on the topic of "sustainable communities," which he is working on for his next article. As a long-time admirer of Al's writing and thinking, I am happy to oblige.

As I pondered this topic, it brought up my long personal history of reflections on our global crisis from a lifetime dedicated to environmental advocacy and the elusive quest for eco-sanity. In my younger years, back in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, my thinking on the plight, and fate, of our planet was infused with the idealism of those times. From the time, in 1970, when my youthful hero Stewart Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog on the premise that a truly global, ecocentric community was emerging, I saw myself in the vanguard of this movement, dedicated to pursuing personal and planetary regeneration and empowerment in tandem.  In  1980, I was living a brief but idyllic existence in a geodesic dome in an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, Greece when I received as a gift the 10-year anniversary volume of the Whole Earth Catalog (called "the Next Whole Earth Catalog" after the "Last" one in 1970). This second volume first introduced me to the Gaia Hypothesis, formulated by independent British biochemist James Lovelock and his colleague, American microbiologist Lynn Margulis.

For me, Gaia theory was a revelation--it struck me then, as now, as the central metaphor we had all been looking for: the Earth as a single, dynamic living system of which we are all a part. Coupled with the iconic image of the Whole Earth from Space, it seemed at that time to be a new nodal idea that heralded a worldwide quiet revolution, a shift of polarities, which would inevitably displace the toxic ideologies of nationalism, militarism, and global corporate industrial consumerism--the "Cancer of the Earth"--with a compelling new cultural sensibility based on identification of Self with Planet, of Humanity with Nature. In short, I dedicated myself to the prospect that Gaian consciousness would go viral, bringing with it a worldwide transformation of cultures, as we all learned to live within our ecological means and restore the health and resilience of the only living planet we will ever know. I heartily embraced a slogan coined by environmental scientist and activist Norman Myers at that time: "We have two choices: a Gaian future--or no future."

Needless to say, the Gaian future never happened. After the brief flowering of global, ecstatic Gaian consciousness in the 70s and 80s (mostly on the West Coast, where I then resided) the Empire struck back--big time--first with Reagan and Bush, then with the rampant consumerism of the Clinton years, and then with the hijacking of our democracy by the toxic and hegemonic, oil-industry dominated, virulently anti-Gaian Bush regime, and now, under the bought-out Obama administration, with the Trans Pacific Partnership threatening the corporate takeover of the entire planet and the end of any real democracy altogether.  Meanwhile, of course, fossil fuel-induced climate change has risen to the tipping point where it is now self-accelerating and irreversible, dooming our entire planet to a hideous future of global ecological collapse, swarms of environmental refugees, violence, and starvation, while our fished-out oceans revert to jellyfish--their original inhabitants (prior to the Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago).  In such a bleak and desolate world, any further talk of a Gaian future or of "sustainable communities" begins to remind me of a sad line from Lennie, the simpleton in Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men":  "Tell me about the rabbits, George!"

So is "No future" our only remaining choice? While our past (and present) collective greed, ignorance, and denial have badly foreclosed our options for the future, they haven't eliminated them. When I face the grim prospect that our present generation may see the final days of human civilization before our global support system, Gaia, collapses into a whole new hostile climate regime that no longer supports humans or any other large vertebrates--a possibility that Lovelock and other Earth system scientists no longer discount--my only refuge is that of any condemned man: to let go of the future and fully inhabit every present moment of my life.  After all, the future itself is just a mental formation--it has no real existence, and it is rooted in the decisions we make in the present moment.

So what decisions can or should we make, right now, regardless of whether or not we have a future? Many, of course, will take a "carpe diem" approach--abandon any thought of sustainability, go to the mall, run up their credit cards, get drunk...But such an approach is an admission of defeat, and can lead only to despair. If we assume nothing can be done, nothing will be done.  My own option therefore, and the one I try to pass on to my students, is for us each to become agents of the spontaneous remission of the Cancer of the Earth.   To do so, we must embrace and transform despair--not into hope (which is illusory) nor into anger (which is corrosive and futile) but rather into  mindful courses of action that promote global (or Gaian) awareness, understanding, and responsibility, while also following Gandhi's advice to "renounce the fruits of action"--that is, not to be concerned with whether we succeed or fail, but simply to do what needs to be done--mindfully, strategically, compassionately, and relentlessly.

One way to do this is to understand that all living organisms, for survival, depend on three values: health, competence, and resilience. The next is to understand that we all depend on communities for our survival, and that our communities all depend on a healthy ecosystem and planet for theirs. Knowing that, we can deduce what I like to call a "Gaian Categorical Imperative:"

In every decision you make, strive to promote the health, competence, and resilience or yourself, your community, and the planet.  Any benefit to ourselves that is harmful to our communities will ultimately harm ourselves as well (and usually get us thrown in prison); any benefit to our communities--including benefits conferred by multinational corporations--that is harmful to Gaia may make us billionaires, but is equally harmful to our own and our children's survival.

Such an ethic embodies the enlightened awareness that what is best for our planet is also best for our communities and ourselves. That is the starting point of true sustainability.

To take but a single example of people who are living out this Gaian categorical imperative, consider Will Allen, the founder of Growing Power, the urban farm market cooperative in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Living in an urban "food desert," Allen, a lifetime gardener, used the skills he had inherited from his sharecropper parents to buy a few old run-down greenhouses in downtown Milwaukee and convert them into a thriving farm market that has made him nationally famous, and that has enabled him to hire hundreds of local citizens, grow topsoil from compost gathered from area restaurants, and provide fresh, organic produce to citizens while providing both hands-on education and volunteering opportunities for their children and youth, while teaching them, in turn, the skills they need to start their own gardens, and starting up a national network of urban gardeners (including our own Bev Sell in Norfolk.). He is one of thousands of such Gaian visionaries, well below the radar of corporate media, who are out there today, growing gardens, growing communities, growing awareness, and thereby--as the name of his cooperative suggests, "growing power."  With a present like that, who needs a future?

The Three Poisons

In Buddhist philosophy, the “three poisons”—that is, the three underlying causes of all the distress and suffering in the world—are identified as Ignorance, Greed, and Hatred. These are common tendencies within all of us—though with practice, these tendencies can be brought to our awareness, seen for what they are, and let go, leaving space for our innate capacities for benevolence, compassion, joy, and equanimity to flourish.

Ignorance is the root of our problem—but ignorance of what? Above all, it is ignorance of the plain, readily observable fact that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… [where] whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” In simpler terms, whatever goes around, comes around—especially on a finite planet!  And this goes not only for our use of resources, but for our concern—or lack thereof—for others.

Greed arises from ignorance—it is simply the toxic belief that we ourselves are more important than others, that more is always better, that there is no such thing as “enough.” Unfortunately, this toxic  ideology is embedded in our economic system, for money is nothing but an arithmetical transform of information about the relative value of commodities—of things that can  be separated from their matrix in order to be bought and sold. And the money system operates according to only two basic rules: (1) more is always better; (2) what is mine is not yours.  On an infinite planet, an unregulated free-market economy would work exactly as those on the right claim that it does—fostering innovation and creativity, rewarding the most talented, and causing a rising tide of affluence that lifts all boats. But on a finite planet like the one we inhabit, where “whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly,” the money game behaves exactly like a monopoly game—wealth and power are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, until finally one player has everything and the rest—nothing.

When Greed and Ignorance combine, they create Denial—which is willful ignorance, a refusal to acknowledge facts that threaten one’s self-serving ideology.  Denial takes many forms, such as racism—the belief that one “race” is superior to, and therefore entitled to rule over, enslave, exploit, or oppress another “race.”  Another form of rampant denial today is refusal to accept overwhelming scientific evidence that threatens your interests, such as the reality of climate change, or the simple fact, validated by every law of physics and confirmed by irrefutable evidence, that on September 11, 2001, the sudden and catastrophic collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 had to be caused by controlled demolition charges planted in advance, not by terrorists hijacking airliners.

The other spawn of ignorance, greed, and denial, of course, is hatred, especially of those who hold the mirror up to our ignorance and greed—like black people who refuse to play the subordinate role to which they are assigned, environmentalists who reveal the horrific biological consequences of my greed, or “lib’ruls” who would take my money away to provide food, health care, and education for the poor and destitute, or even “terrorist sympathizers” who question the ongoing policy of invading and brutalizing the Muslim world (and therefore are unpatriotic because they don’t “support our troops”), or who realize that the official story of 9/11 is arrant, unscientific nonsense.  

Today’s Republican Party, with the  aid of their corporate-funded propaganda machines, Fox News and Clear Channel Radio, has therefore adopted Greed, Ignorance, Hatred, and Denial as their party platform, and is busily sowing these poisons into the minds of ignorant, resentful white people everywhere, spawning the insurgent, neofascist “Tea Party” movement that has hijacked democracy itself in order to enforce its will on the rest of us.

So what can be done about this appalling situation? First—and whenever necessary--breathe, observe, let go, and abide.  As equanimity is restored,  remember that our nation and world order, just like our bodies, are impermanent, and are of the nature to get sick, grow old, and perish—that we will lose everything we cherish sooner or later, including our democracy, our freedoms, our security, the topsoil that grows food we eat, the water we drink, the biodiversity that sustains us, our families and friends,  the beauty that surrounds us—all are impermanent.

By embracing impermanence fearlessly, we embrace and transform our despair and rage, regaining the equanimity, hence the courage, to practice Satyagraha—the  discipline practiced by all the great Gaian Bodhisattvas of our past century—Gandhi, King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Aung San Soo Kyi, Wangari Maathai,  Vandana Shiva, and many, many others. Satyagraha begins, as Gandhi said, with renouncing the fruits of action—doing what needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure; that is, letting go of the illusory future and focusing on the present moment, which is all that ever exists.  Satyagraha consists of three strands of discipline:

1.       Swaraj, or self-rule. This means beginning with ourselves, casting off the ignorance, greed, and hatred in ourselves, and cultivating the health, competence, and resilience of ourselves, our communities, and our planet, through relocalization—growing gardens, growing communities, and progressively withdrawing our money from Glomart  (the corporate order that thrives by promoting Greed and Ignorance) and re-investing it in Gaia (a healthy garden, healthy local economy, and healthy planet).

2.       Satya, or truthfulness. This means the ability to speak truth to power, and do so mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly—calmly and skillfully, without hatred or resentment. This is easier said than done, but when done, it can be immensely effective. It demands a high level of self-discipline, which means constant practice, honestly investigating our own motives before we say anything. All of the great Bodhisattvas have cultivated the patience to master this difficult art of speaking truth to power until power could no longer resist the truth they spoke.

3.       Ahimsa, or resolute nonviolence.  This is the difficult art of resistance without hatred or attachment. Contrary to the opinions of many, nonviolence is not simply a tactic to be abandoned for guns, knives, or rocks when it no longer works.  Rather, it is the foundation for effectively subverting the three poisons—Greed, Ignorance, and Hatred—both in ourselves and others.  In political terms, nonviolent direct action campaigns are always a last resort, after all efforts at negotiation have failed.  And their purpose is to create pressure on those in power so they have no choice but to negotiate. Any other purpose is futile and self-indulgent. To be successful, a nonviolent direct action campaign involves four distinct steps, outlined by Martin Luther King, Jr.: Investigation, Negotiation, Self-Purification, and Direct Action. Investigation establishes both the existence and the nature of the harm being done; Negotiation is the good-faith effort to persuade those in power that it is in their self-interest to right the wrongs that have been revealed by investigation.  Only when negotiation fails do the latter two steps become necessary. Self-purification, through meditation or collective spiritual practice, is an essential prerequisite to leading an effective nonviolent direct action campaign. Without it, rage and frustration can quickly set in, leading to hatred and self-defeating acts of violence or sabotage.  And Direct Action should violate laws only when absolutely necessary, for there are many forms of direct action, such as sit-ins and boycotts, that do not violate any law, but still apply the needed pressure for negotiation.

But above all, Satyagraha direct action campaigns must be disciplined and strategically intelligent in order to be effective, and they must be conducted mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly. However, most of us are not called to such courageous activism, nor do many of us have the courage to speak truth to power—for power can and will bite back when threatened.  Nevertheless, the rest of us can do our part by practicing Swaraj or self-reliance through three simple practices:

·         Good Buy—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of the money we spend. Seeing money for what it is—a transform of information about the value of commodities—of information about what we actually value. With this knowledge, we start to see the dollars we spend as a vote, and we start “voting”—every day--for locally produced, sustainably grown food, local enterprises that recycle our money into the community in order to create jobs for our friends and neighbors, and sustainably produced, fair-trade merchandise—whenever possible. Remember that a dollar invested in Gaia is a dollar denied to Glomart;  that every time you spend money in a socially and ecologically responsible way, you make it easier and more cost-effective for everyone else to do likewise.

·         Good Work—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of the money we earn and the work we do.  This is the next step—it is what the Buddhists call “right livelihood”—finding ways to earn a living in ways that regenerate the health, competence, and resilience of our community and the planet. The Benefit Corporation concept, for example, is an excellent approach to this, but Good Work can be any livelihood that involves learning, teaching, healing, or creating a better world. If the work you do does not involve these, and if it merely enriches the super-rich while despoiling the planet, it is a form of slavery to Glomart—and you should emancipate yourself from it as soon as possible, no matter how little or how much you are paid.

·         Good Will—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of your attitudes toward others—including those you resent or despise.  In Buddhist theory, there are four adaptive attitudes we can cultivate toward everyone, all the time: (1) Benevolence and gratitude; (2) Compassion or caring awareness of suffering; (3) Sympathetic joy, or quite simply, a good sense of humor; and (4) Equanimity, or the ability not to let people or situations “get” to you.  You can practice these at any moment on the four parts of any breath, using the following guided meditation:

o   Inhale (“Breathe”—with benevolence toward all you see and gratitude toward all who have made your present living moment possible);

o   Pause (“Observe”—with compassion and understanding, realizing that all bad behavior originates in inner suffering of some sort, so both perpetrators and victims need your compassion and understanding);

o   Exhale (“Let Go”—with joy and humor, “breathing out” good will toward all around you.)

o   Pause (“Abide” in equanimity—the “peace that passeth all understanding.”)

You can also use these four adaptive attitudes as a repertoire of behavior toward anyone you encounter:

1.       Your default mode is benevolence and gratitude—simply smiling quietly and authentically—without any agenda--toward everyone you encounter.

2.       If the person you see is obviously suffering, do what you can to alleviate it with active compassion—initially, just by listening and acknowledging their humanity, but then by seeing what you can do to help.

3.       If you see someone who is beautiful, happy, overjoyed, or full of fun, smile again, this time participating in their joy and validating it—again without any personal agenda (especially sexual—it is important for men especially to keep a mindful oversight on their own testosterone!).

4.       If someone gets in your face, snarls at you, or otherwise offends you, maintain your dignity and go back to your breath immediately, so you resist the temptation to lash out, and abide in equanimity until you have let go of your hurt or anger, so you can resolve the issue peacefully, if necessary. Don't repress your anger or seethe in resentment; rather, observe it, acknowledge it, and let it go, one breath at a time.

None of these practices are easy—they all require continual reinforcement and scrupulous honesty with ourselves, to prevent self-deception or self-aggrandizement. But our larger agenda—triggering the Spontaneous Remission of the Cancer of the Earth—makes it all worth it, no matter how long it takes.

What does Dharma mean today?

Dharma is a Sanskrit word, derived from the proto-Indo European root *dʰer- which means "to support" or "to hold."  Thus its basic meaning is "that to which we adhere," or "that which supports and upholds us." The term has evolved, throughout Hindu and Buddhist history, to carry a range of connotations (as listed in the Wiktionary from Wikipedia):

1. (Hinduism, Buddhism) the principle that orders the universe; one's conduct in conformity with such a principle
2. (Hinduism) one's obligation in respect to one's position in society
3. (Buddhism) the teachings of the Buddha as one's personal path to enlightenment [quotations ▼]
   • "Dharma practice in the tradition of the Theravada Buddhist masters enabled me to quit smoking and improve my relationships, oh, and by the way, to achieve nirvana."
4. (Buddhism) the teachings of the Buddha as a practice to be promulgated and taught.

For my own practical purposes, then, Dharma comprises these distinct but interrelated meanings for us today:

1. Phenomenon or manifestation (usually used in the plural) as in "all dharmas are empty" (of separate existence)--a core teaching of Buddhism; by this definition, everything we see is a dharma. Or putting it more simply, a dharma is a thing.
2. Calling or Vocation--an individual's Dharma refers to the specific role in life which is ideally suited to that person's temperament, talents, and aspirations. Hence my Dharma is to teach English and Humanities; my wife's Dharma is to paint pictures and create artworks. To cite a useful term from African-American dialect, then, a dharma is your "thang."
3. The Sacred Truth, intuitively perceived--that which every sacred tradition on the planet has in common, understood (as the Dalai Lama has said) as a Principle, a Precept, and a Practice simultaneously. In short, the Dharma is "the thing itself," that which upholds us, that to which we adhere.  Here is my own favorite formulation of Dharma:
• 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. This is a succinct formulation of the Dharma as the abiding truth of the universe--combining impermanence, interbeing, and Oneness in one choice quote.
• Precept: "Take care of everyone, and abandon no one. Take care of everything, and abandon nothing."--Lao Tzu. This is the core ethical obligation--universal compassion--that follows directly from a clear understanding of the above Principle.
• Practice: "Breathe, Observe, Let Go."--The Buddha. This is the core injunction of Dharma Practice--the essential discipline taught by the Buddha and all other spiritual teachers, for letting go of ego-fixation and awakening to our essential Oneness with all life, all existence.

High Water Everywhere

"It's bad out there...high water everywhere."  --Bob Dylan.

Today, we are in Day Two of Hurricane Sandy, a huge, slow-moving weather system crawling northwards offshore, about to interact with two cold fronts converging from northeast and northwest to create a monster storm, with the Halloween-appropriate nickname "Frankenstorm" by the ever-cute mass media.  It is due shortly to bend westward and slam into the Eastern Seaboard--Delaware, Jersey, New York, and New England, by tonight or tomorrow, complete with high tide storm surges in the full moon--they are predicting 11-foot storm swells washing over Lower Manhattan, possibly even inundating the New York Stock Exchange.  Everyone in the media is calling it "the perfect storm"--the worst possible combination of hurricane, nor'easter, and tidal swells aimed toward the most densely populated part of the country--with power outages, flooding--the works--affecting millions of people all at once.

Here, we are relatively lucky--our lights are still on (for now) and while we've had some local flooding and sporadic power outages, it's nothing like what is in store further to the north. There have been wind gusts, but so far (in our area, and as far as I know) not a lot of damage or fallen trees.  I have spent the storm time grading papers and reading Anthony Burgess's novel A Dead Man in Deptford, a juicy fictional imagining of the life and times of Christopher Marlowe. A symphony (or some orchestral work) by Alexander Borodin just came on the radio.

A massive storm like this, coming a scant week before Election Day, is one more reminder, in case we need it, of how utterly vulnerable we are to the vagaries of wind and weather.  It is also one more indication, should we need it, that rising sea temperatures due to carbon-induced climate change are causing more erratic, turbulent, and violent weather patterns throughout the world. I can only hope, of course, that enough voters see this connection that they might reconsider  Romney, who is, like most Republicans, in total denial about climate change, and would give carte blanche to coal, oil, and gas companies for a feeding frenzy on the planet that would push CO2 levels right up over the tipping point, into a cascade of self-accelerating climate catastrophes that might well spell the end of civilization as we know it, leaving only scattered tribes of survivors, fighting over the remnants. This massive storm could, in effect, be part of our collective karmic debt--Mother Gaia's revenge for our collective greed, ignorance, hatred, denial, and despair.

But whenever I find my thoughts traversing these dark pathways toward immanent, incremental apocalypse, I try to bring myself back to the present moment--breathe, observe, let go--and renew my vow to take care of everyone and everything, and abandon no one and nothing.  To be an agent, that is, of the Spontaneous Remission (if such is to be, as God wills) of the Cancer of the Earth.  And even if that cancer is terminal, to embrace impermanence, interbeing, and oneness, knowing that there is, at the ultimate level, no birth and no death, no time, and that Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.

Buddhist Nonsense?

The question mark after the title of this blog is intentional, since I am not so much claiming that an extensive body of Buddhist teachings is nonsense, as I am venturing this as a tentative hypothesis--since the truth or falsehood of any such claims about the afterlife can never be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

With that disclaimer, here we go.  Throughout the various traditions of Buddhism in Asia--from India to Tibet to the Mahayana traditions of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, one recurrent school, or branch, of Buddhist thought, belief, and practice has been the doctrine of the Pure Land--Sukhavati--the domain of the otherworldly Buddha Amitabha, a land of pure and infinite bliss, to which, with the right kind of focused meditation practice and or ritual such as phowa,  one can be catapulted after death, and thereby escape the orbit (as it were) of karmic rebirth through the Twelve Links of Codependent Origination in Samsara--the sixfold realm of suffering...

And so on.  With all due respect to esteemed Buddhist teachers, past and present, I can say only one thing:  Give me a break!  I have the same problem with any notion of a "Pure Land" to which the most advanced and virtuous practitioners go after death as I do with the Christian concept of Heaven and Hell. My old buddy from the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, put his finger on it when he noted that all joy or pleasure--or for that matter, grief and pain--resides not in any stasis, but rather in the transition from one state to another.  Or as Lao Tzu never tires of reminding us, happiness is rooted in misery--they codetermine one another.  So how could there possibly be a realm of infinite bliss, without suffering? Or for that matter, infinite suffering without relief? Very simply--if you found yourself  in a realm of unending bliss, sooner or later you would get bored. Likewise, if you were in a realm of infinite flames, torture, and suffering, sooner or later you would get used to it. Pain, like pleasure, results from the transition from one state to another.

This is why I have always liked Bob Marley's take on the question of the Afterlife, as a motivation for much of anything:  "If you know what life is worth/You will look for yours on Earth."  Indeed, since the present is all there is, it follows that, as Hamlet says, no man knows aught of what he leaves behind.  In short--I have no idea what will happen after I die--if anything.  I'll find out when I get there--if there is any "I" left to get there with. Without hardware (the body) how can there be software (the mind)? Who knows?  I don't.

And in fact, the real, living, magnificent, diverse world all around us--Gaia--has all of the above, in every moment, freely available to us: endless joy and endless misery. That is all we know, and all we need to know. The challenge, then, for the practitioner, is to maintain a kind of equipoise--to be compassionately aware of the vast suffering of sentient beings, starting with ourselves, while simultaneously sharing the vast, sympathetic joy of being alive, of participating in the uniquely magnificent, miraculous life of Gaia, with every flower that blooms, every bird that flies, every child that smiles.  As Sogyal Rinpoche puts it succinctly, "learning to live is learning to let go..."  And that includes, for me, letting go of nonsense, however comforting the illusions may be, or however revered the source of the nonsense may be.  The present is all there is.  The past has gone, and the future is only imagined.

A Plan of Action?

A gorgeous, blue-sky day dawned this morning.   After I read some particularly grim news stories about the "law of retribution" in Libya, where the insurgents who overthrew Gaddafi are now hunting down former Gaddafi supporters, torturing, and killing them with ruthless abandon in the absence of anything resembling an actual system of justice or due process, and in Brazil, where ranchers are enslaving and brutalizing peasants and forcing them to chop down rainforests illegally, I stepped out on my back porch and caught sight of my magnificent daylilies opening up in the first light of the sun--red ochre, beige, bright yellow. These, like a fresh breeze, dispersed the vile and depressing thoughts induced by the morning's headlines and left me feeling light and bouyant, as I stepped out to water my squash patch, basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, greens, and peppers.

The world is a mess, but the Earth is magnificent still. We have not destroyed it yet.  All of these thoughts led, during my morning meditation, back to my sustaining fantasy.  What might happen if...

I created a "Dharma Gaia Circle"--an ecumenical, ecological Sangha or meditation group, based on the following:

• Understanding " Dharma" as a Principle, Precept, and Practice, and as that which all the world's authentic religious traditions hold in common, despite their different (culturally influenced) ideologies.
• Understanding "The Four Paths to the Sacred" as a schema for understanding and accepting every religious tradition on the planet as a legitimate Path to the Sacred. Seeing, that is, all religious traditions as as admixture of Dharma and identity politics, and on that basis, welcoming those of all faith traditions to our Circle.
• Regular Meditation, based on the following basic injunction (on the breath): Breathe, Observe, Let Go, Abide. (Supplemented by various other Dharma Practices, at our own discretion).
• Expansion of the above into the Tenfold Dharma Gaia Mantra as a core daily practice:
• Breathe, Observe, Let Go (Abide)
• Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch (Abide)
• Learn, Teach, Heal, Create.
• Understanding and embracing "Gaia" as the Living Earth--a self-organizing, self-regulating Complex Adaptive System, unique in the solar system, and hence irreplaceable--as our first allegiance.
• Committing ourselves to both Vertical (Body-Mind-Spirit) and Horizontal (Self-Community-Planet) healing by engaging in the Four Gaian Commitments:
• Learning Gaia 
• Teaching Gaia
• Healing Gaia
• Creating Gaia.
• Studying and Practicing the discipline of Satyagraha as an an expression of our commitment to Heal Gaia:
• Cultivating Self-reliance (Swaraj)--starting with our own gardens and communities.
• Speaking Truth to Power (Satya)--starting in our own communities 
• Engaging, when necessary, in Nonviolent Noncooperation with Evil (Ahimsa).
• And doing all of the above mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly.
• Once such a Dharma Gaia Circle is securely established, undertaking an effort to disseminate it elsewhere AND to reach out to any and all other religious traditions to encourage them to establish similar initiatives within the scope of their own governance and traditions (e.g. among Christians, a Mustardseed Project based on "The Parable of the Mustard Seed")
• Establishing, when resources become available, one or more Dharma Gaia Practice Centers to provide opportunities for others in the community to Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create.

This is how I hope to save the planet.  Who knows?  It might actually work--but as Gandhi ceaselessly reminded us, the important thing is to renounce the fruits of action and "just do it" with mindfulness and integrity--or as Thich Nhat Hanh says, to BE the change we hope to bring about in the world.

Easter 2012

Today is Easter Sunday, yet again. It is also Passover for the Jews, and in Japan, Hanamatsuri, or the Buddha's Birthday (always celebrated there on April 8, though correlated with the Lunar Calendar in other Buddhist nations). Astronomically, it is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon following the Vernal Equinox, thus aligning solar, lunar, and terrestrial holidays. A propitious time, by any reckoning--if indeed the word "propitious" has any other than fanciful significance. Garrison Keillor has, as always, a good take on this today on his Writer's Almanac, in which he describes the pre-Christian or "pagan" roots of the holiday as a celebration of fertility and renewal of life:

"The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century."

Renewal of life. The common theme in all of these equinoctial holidays--Passover (the sparing of the Israelites from the wrath of Jahweh, inflicted on their Egyptian oppressors); the Resurrection of Jesus, the Birth of the Buddha, and of course the Rabbit laying eggs. In each case, stories of something miraculous, breaking the usual pattern of things--whether we believe it or not. And this recurrent theme, I think, hints at the miraculous nature of the life we all take for granted: the gradual unfolding of a tiny seed, fed by little more than sunlight, rainwater, minerals, and compost, into new life, familiar yet unique, pursuing its own path through the world as it staves off death and entropy for a time, as it grows to its own fruition. Here is an Easter Poem by May Sarton that I found this morning in my Earth Prayers anthology:

Easter Morning

The extreme delicacy of this Easter morning
Spoke to me as a prayer and as a warning.
It was light on the brink, spring light
After a rain that gentled my dark night.
I walked through landscapes I had never seen
Where the fresh grass had just begun to green,
And its roots, watered deep, sprung to my tread;
The maples wore a cloud of feathery red,
But flowering trees still showed their clear design
Against the pale blue brightness chilled like wine.
And I was praying all the time I walked,
While starlings flew about, and talked, and talked.
Somewhere and everywhere life spoke the word.
The dead trees woke; each bush held its bird.
I prayed for delicate love and difficult,
That all be gentle now and know no fault,
That all be patient—as a wild rabbit fled
Sudden before me. Dear love, I would have said
(And to each bird who flew up from the wood),
I would be gentler still if that I could,
For on this Easter morning it would seem
The softest football danger is, extreme. . .
And so I prayed to be less than the grass
And yet to feel the Presence that might pass.
I made a prayer. I heard the answer, "Wait,
When all is so in peril, so delicate!"

I love the way she emphasizes both the sheer beauty and splendor of life in this poem, but at the same time its fragility, its vulnerability--a miracle so easily snuffed out, even by a careless footfall. It reminded me of my own afternoon in the garden yesterday, delicately planting or transplanting starts of spinach, mixed greens, collards, kale, parsley, eggplant, and marigolds interspersed amongst them all, while stepping gingerly through the crumbly, newly prepared soil, hoping I would not inadvertently crush any of these tender seedlings.