Being Gaia

Breathe...Observe...Let Go.

Here is a delightful anecdote shared by an internet friend on Nextdoor; I do not know the original source:

BREATH I noticed a child monk—he can’t have been more than ten years old—teaching a group of five-year-olds. He had a great aura about him, the poise and confidence of an adult. “What are you doing?” I asked. “We just taught their first class ever,” he said, then asked me, “What did you learn in your first day of school?” “I started to learn the alphabet and numbers. What did they learn?” “The first thing we teach them is how to breathe.” “Why?” I asked. “Because the only thing that stays with you from the moment you’re born until the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, your family, the country you live in, all of that can change. The one thing that stays with you is your breath.”  

This ten-year-old monk added, “When you get stressed—what changes? Your breath. When you get angry—what changes? Your breath. We experience every emotion with the change of the breath. When you learn to navigate and manage your breath, you can navigate any situation in life."

Breath is life--the very life of life. Along with food, solar energy, and water, it is what we have in common with every other living being on our planet. But unlike these others, breath is not a "thing" but a process:  as we inhale, we draw in oxygen that trees and all other photosynthetic organisms give us.--and free oxygen is actually embodied solar energy. And that potential energy, stored in free oxygen, becomes available through our respiration and blood circulation to power our metabolism.  The waste product, predictably, is CO2--which we release with every exhalation. These CO2 molecules in turn are taken up by plants and--driven by solar energy--recombine into simple sugars (C6H12O6) which act as batteries, storing energy for plant growth and development. And the byproduct of this essential photosynthetic reaction is, of course, O2. So as we breathe in, the trees breathe out; as we breathe out, the trees breathe in. 

But breathing goes even deeper. While it is an involuntary process (without which we would shortly die), it also can become the subject of our attention, and since our minds can only focus on one thing at a time, the simple discipline of focusing our attention on our breath takes our minds off of whatever was preoccupying us at that point: our bodily aches and pains; our feelings of hurt or rejection; our addictive urges for another piece of chocolate or for sex; our fears or anxieties; or our restless, obsessive thoughts, such as annoying "earworms"--snatches of a tune on endless repeat. The minute we focus our full attention on our rising and falling chests, on the inflating and deflating bellows of our diaphragm and abdominal cavity, and on the stream of air flowing in and out through our mouth or nostrils--we discover a deep calm--no matter how agitated we might be.  This is the reason, for example, why rescue workers routinely instruct traumatized, hysterical accident victims to "take three deep breaths." 

And so there is an intimate--and integral--connection between the rhythm of our breath, the act of observing it, and our state of mind, as the wise young monk said in the story above. We breathe in order to observe; we observe in order to let go; and we let go in order to breathe. And as this simple discipline goes on, gently letting go of whatever thoughts, feelings, or obsessions arise in order to return our attention to our breath, we gradually develop a deep equanimity--calm abiding--which once established, we can revisit thereafter, whenever we encounter stressful circumstances or, conversely, whenever overcome with a moment of selfless joy, such as seeing a newly blooming flower, an ocean sunset, or a newborn child.  This is one of the many ways of understanding the core mantra Om Mani Padme Hum:

OM--Breathe, and thereby re-establish your intimate connection with Gaia and with the universe;

MANI--(the Jewel) Observe, with compassionate attention, everything that is happening around you and inside your head.

PADME--(the Lotus) Let Go of attachment to all forms of craving--to wishing things were other than they are, and experience the transcendent joy of being alive in the here and now;

HUM--Abide in equanimity; "the peace that passeth all understanding."

 

A Beacon of Hope

 "...no need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of Man/Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world..."

--John Lennon, "Imagine"

In these days, when greed and hunger are rampant throughout our country and all over our desperate planet, these verses from John Lennon's iconic song "Imagine" seem impossibly naive--almost a bad joke. Or so I thought--until I stumbled across a community project in Seattle that seems like a real-world embodiment of John Lennon's idyllic vision.

The project, appropriately named Beacon Food Forest,  is located on city-owned land in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle.  Staffed entirely by volunteers, it is a community garden, based on agroforestry and permaculture principles, that was established on a barren patch of grass.  It now provides free food to citizens, as well as educational outreach and a convivial public gathering space. Altogether, it includes the following elements (taken from their website):

• Food forest: This semi-natural area is made up of fruit and nut tree guilds and berry bushes. Groundcover includes some edible greens like kale and chard. Perennial plants are dispersed all over the site (including edible plants such as sunchokes, orache, burdock, cardoon).

• Helix vegetable garden: The 2,000 square foot garden grows annual greens, roots, squash and nightshades. More familiar food plants are an easy entry point into foraging at Beacon Food Forest.

• Medicinal and culinary herbs: There are several herb gardens/spirals and individual plants around the site.

• Gathering and teaching spaces: Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Beacon Food Forest project each have a large gathering plaza with benches next to a tool shed and notice board/map. This is where our potlucks and workshops take place and visitors can rest and observe the site.

• Native plant guild: The wetland and prairie at the southeast border of the site have been restored and now grow native food plants such as wapato, camas and native berries, as well as grasses traditionally used for basket weaving.

The enthusiasm of the volunteers who run this magical place is evident in their promotional videoclip, and in greater depth, in a series of interviews that my friend and teacher, Andrew Millison, recorded here.

I found this project deeply inspiring because it models a gift economy--one where social and experiential capital are exchanged for the biological capital--vegetables, fruits, and herbs--necessary to our survival. And this is a positive sum, win-win arrangement: the more social and experiential capital we share with others, the more we get in return, without losing any of what we already have. And so the mutually beneficial cooperative relationship between plants in the various guilds here are reinforced, and reciprocally reinforce, the mutually beneficial cooperative relationship between the people--both volunteers and visitors. This is a marvelous illustration, on a small scale, of a mutually beneficial Gaian economy, as opposed to our extractive, dysfunctional zero-sum Glomart economy (based only on money). It is what happens when you replace "the bottom line" with the flourishing and propagation of life itself--including our own--as our ultimate personal and social goal.

An afternoon on Mars

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B_6K-splRU

This panoramic view from the Mars Rover is oddly beautiful: a reddish, stony landscape with a variety of rocks, the hilly crest of the crater, ancient, dry watercourses, sand, and more rocks and stones.

And nothing else, no matter how far the Rover will drive across the surface.  Nothing else.

No sound but occasional random gusts of wind buffeting the surface of the rover.

And people want to travel there, and set up a research station?  Why?

Of course I understand--the lure of the unknown, which has drawn our relentlessly curious species over the next horizon for hundreds of thousands of years, since we first developed brains big enough and the vocal apparatus needed to share our thoughts--and our questions--with one another.  But all the earlier explorations on our own planet found more life--more people, animals, plants, cultures--just beyond the horizon. On Mars, they've found nothing like it--and even if they are looking for possible biosignatures of ancient microbes on the apparent delta deposit leading into the crater, these microorganisms--if they existed at all--will have been dead for billions of years.

I have no problem with these explorations; in fact, like most other curious humans, I find them fascinating. But I can't get over how appallingly lonely--how ultimately boring, despite the variety of rock formations--it must be on Mars, with no animals, insects, grasses, flowers, trees, watery oases, even mosses or lichens to enliven and transform the dusty surface.

How incredibly lucky we are to live--to breath oxygenated air, drink fresh water,  listen to the rustle of the trees or the call of birds, and contemplate wildflowers up close, on this wondrous, life-sustaining blue planet! As William Blake said, "Everything that lives is holy." 

If nothing else, these stark and barren new images of Mars can serve as a reminder of the fragile, sacred miracle of life, right outside our doors.

Gaian Enumerations

 Throughout its history, Buddhists have used enumeration as their most frequent Dharma training technique for young aspirants, whether monks (Bhikkus) or nuns (Bhikkunis) or laypeople.  Hence these aspirants are taught to memorize these, including the Four Noble Truths, the Six Paramitas, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Twelve Links of Codependent Origination (to name a few). And having such enumerations readily at hand, they can practice and internalize the Dharma teachings more easily. 

Over the years since I first embraced the Gaia concept as the epicenter of my worldview (starting in 1981, when I first discovered Lovelock's Gaia theory), I have found myself--without any knowledge or intent--emulating this practice, by organizing my Gaian thinking around just such enumerations, mostly threes and fours. So here are a few of these enumerations that have organized my thinking:

 The Two (antithetical) Worlds: Glomart and Gaia. By "worlds" here, I refer to complex adaptive systems of which we are an integral part, and on which we depend for our survival. Glomart (my own coinage) refers to the money-based Global Market Economy; Gaia refers, of course, to our living planet: the biosphere as structurally coupled with our atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. We utterly depend on both--Glomart for our livelihoods and possessions; Gaia for our very lives. Yet the production rules of Glomart (based on the maximizing logic of money--"More is always better") are fundamentally incompatible with the production rules of Gaia (based on the optimizing logic of living systems--"Enough is Enough.")

The Three Survival Values:  Health, Competence, and Resilience. These are common to all living systems, from bacteria to human beings to whole nations and Gaia herself. Health is internal homeostasis; Competence is ability to thrive within a stable, predictable niche; Resilience is ability to adapt to unpredictable changes in one's niche.

The Three Levels of Identity: Self, Community, and Planet. From these, coupled with the Three Survival Values, we may derive the Gaian Categorical Imperative: Make every decision based on what promotes the health, competence, and resilience of ourselves, our communities, and our planet. Any benefit to a subsystem (self or community) which is detrimental to its larger support system (community or planet) is ultimately self-destructive.

Garrison Keillor's Generic Daily Agenda: Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. These can also be seen as a good way to enhance our own health, competence, and resilience.

The Three Aspects of Dharma:  Principle, Precept, and Practice. That is, the Principle of codependent origination; the Precept of universal compassion; and the Practice of meditation.

The Three Injunctions of Meditation: Breathe, Observe, Let Go. These form the foundation of any meditative practice. 

The Four Aspects of Gaia: Myth, Model, Metaphor, and Movement. These pertain, respectively, to Gaia as apprehended in the subjective, objective, cultural, and social domains.

The Three Core Ethics of Permaculture: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share.  There are variants of the third, of course; it does not mean "redistribution of wealth" (which scares a lot of people) but rather, it means "reinvesting the surplus back into Earth Care and People Care."

My own Three Permaculture injunctions: Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness. Each of these enhances the other: By growing gardens and sharing food and techniques, we grow community; by doing both, we grow awareness of our embeddedness in, and dependence on, Gaia.

My Four Gaian Life Goals: Learn Gaia; Teach Gaia; Heal Gaia, Create Gaia. These, of course, are self-evident. They encourage us to keep learning all we can about our embeddedness in Gaia, to teach what we know to others, to heal our threatened biosphere in whatever ways are necessary, and to create a human culture that is symbiotic with, rather than parasitic upon, Gaia.

The Four Useful Attitudes

The Four Brahmaviharas, roughly translated as the "Four Abodes of God," are an essential Dharma teaching that can be found both in foundational Hindu texts like the Upanishads and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and throughout Buddhism as well.  In Buddhist teachings, they are also called the "Four Immeasurables" or "the Four Immeasurable Minds," but I prefer to call them, more colloquially, the "Four Useful Attitudes." They refer to four dispositions of mind that seekers of enlightenment should strive to cultivate and revisit on a regular basis, and they are as follows:

1. Maitri (in Pali, Metta): Often translated as "loving kindness" or "benevolence," including gratitude, this should be our default attitude toward all other living beings. It denotes the consciously cultivated disposition to be friendly, open, and generous to all whom we encounter; to wish them well. It is, in effect, our baseline for relating to others (and to ourselves as well). It is well encapsulated in a mantra that the Dalai Lama recently shared with us: "Breathing in, I cherish myself; breathing out, I cherish all beings."

2. Karuna or compassion: This is a logical extension of Maitri toward all whom we encounter, or hear of, who are suffering or in distress. It is not simply "pity" (which is often condescending); rather, it is more precisely understood as empathy, the cultivated ability (and willingness) to heal others' pain by feeling it as if it were our own. It thus entails a disposition to action--to taking care of everyone, and abandoning no one.

3. Mudita or selfless joy: We can visualize this as the feeling that arises spontaneously when we first see a newborn child, whether our own or that of someone we love, or even someone we never met. It is also, for example, the feeling we get when we watch young people at a graduation ceremony--whether we know them personally or not--overcome with joy, excitement, and pride as they receive their diploma. And finally--like the others--it can be consciously cultivated when we look at a flower, at buds opening up on a tree, at a beautiful sunset over a lake, or a magnificent snow-capped mountain appearing in the distance. It is, in short, a joy that takes us out of ourselves--the joy of life itself.

4. Upeksha (Pali Upekkha): This refers to equanimity--the cultivation of patience, even in the face of adversity. This should not be confused, however, with indifference. It harmonizes, that is, with the other three Brahmaviharas, and it could be seen, for example, in the quiet, serene imperviousness of the Civil Rights activists when subjected to sneers, insults, and abuse from white racists in the South.

As Swami Satchidananda points out in his beautiful translation and interpretation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, these four attitudes, or dispositions of mind, constitute a comprehensive repertoire of attitudes we can take toward anyone we meet.  We start with Maitri--benevolence--as our default attitude toward everyone we encounter; if the person is suffering or in distress, we shift to Karuna, or active, engaged compassion; conversely, if the person is smiling, we smile back with Mudita, or selfless joy; and finally, if the person is a complete jerk, we return to our breath and cultivate patience, or upeksha.

So how can we best cultivate these four useful attitudes? There are, of course, many practices for achieving this, but one I have developed is as follows:

As you settle into formal meditation, try associating each of these dispositions of mind with the following mantra--on four complete breaths to start with:

1. BREATHE with benevolence and gratitude (Maitri);

2. OBSERVE with compassion and empathy (Karuna);

3. LET GO with selfless joy (Mudita);

4. ABIDE in equanimity (Upeksha);

You can start with a whole breath, in and out, while contemplating each in turn. Thereafter, if you wish, you can condense them into one breath: On the inhale, breathe (with benevolence) and observe (with compassion); on the exhale, let go (with joy) and abide (in equanimity).

Then, if you wish, you can shift from "Breathe-Observe-Let Go-Abide" to "Om Mani Padme Hum"--the classic core mantra of Buddhism. These seed syllables evoke the same basic attitudes: gratitude, compassion, joy, and equanimity. But of course, they take it all to a deeper contemplative level. As the Dalai Lama points out, this mantra encapsulates all the teachings of the Buddha.

--and as always, once your mind is focused, you can forget these mantras completely, calmly abiding in Samadhi, or what Huston Smith aptly characterized as "Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future."

Dharma Gaia FAQ

 As I launch my new Dharma Gaia Circle as a virtual Sangha (using Zoom) tomorrow evening, I wish to take this opportunity to answer a few of the questions that some who have received this invitation might have about what I am up to.  So let's dive in...

1. Are you starting a new religion?

Heavens no!  The last thing our planet needs is another religion! There are enough--probably too many--already!  So Dharma Gaia Circle is a Sangha--a completely voluntary community of practice, open to anyone of all faith traditions, or none at all: Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Hindu, Taoist, indigenous, or whatever...It is intended as a supplement, not a substitute, to whatever faith tradition you may currently be affiliated with.  And you don't have to "believe" anything to join. Conversely, you can "believe" anything you like, so long as you don't try to impose your own preferred religious ideology on others.

2. Do I have to be a Buddhist in order to join? 

You don't have to "be" anything. Your question reflects a common misunderstanding. The term "Buddhism" or "Buddhist" is a Western coinage--the term was never used by the historical Buddha nor his followers. Rather, the Buddha referred to his teachings simply as "Dharma practice," open to anyone at all. There are no mandatory Buddhist "creeds;" nothing you "have to believe" in order to practice.     

While I myself am a Dharma practitioner within the ramifying "Buddhist" tradition, with my own practices rooted in the teaching lineage of which Thich Nhat Hanh, the venerable Vietnamese monk, is the leading modern examplar, I draw in my thinking and in my practice on a variety of wisdom traditions, including Christian, Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist, Hindu, and Indigenous. I try to eschew labels, but if someone asks me for an honest answer to the question "What are you?" I answer, without hesitation, "a Gaian Buddhist." At the same time, I am also a proud member of a Unitarian Universalist church, here in Salem where I belong.

3. So what is a Gaian Buddhist? 

There are, of course, many possible definitions. But over the many years of my study and practice, as both a Dharma practitioner and a passionate "environmentalist," I have come to see a strong coherence between the Dharma teachings of the Buddhist tradition and the Gaian teachings of contemporary scientists and visionaries such as Gregory Bateson, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Francisco Varela, William Irwin Thompson, Fritjof Capra, and many others, as well as the practical implications of the holistic Gaian understanding of humanity's embeddedness within the web of life as a complex adaptive system--implications that were first explored by visionary Gaian activists such as Stewart Brand, the late Wangari Maathai, Joanna Macy, and Vandana Shiva, and that are codified and embedded in the practical discipline of Permaculture, as founded by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.  This coherence between Buddhism and Gaianity was first clearly explored in the 1991 anthology Dharma Gaia, published by Parallax Press, the publisher of Thich Nhat Hanh's many books, established by his international Mindfulness Community. So this is the relatively recent tradition or lineage (starting in 1970s) within which Dharma Gaia Circle takes its place.

4. So what will we do in the Dharma Gaia Circle? As I see it, and as I hope, our Sangha will take root, ramify, and bear fruit in three phases, corresponding exactly to the three stages of the Dharma Gaia Mantra I have created as our core practice:

1. Breathe, Observe, Let Go. We will begin with instruction and practice in what Thich Nhat Hanh aptly calls "the essential discipline" of meditation: that is, the discipline of returning to our breath in the present moment (as our home base, so to speak), and through this, cultivating the ability to simply observe our continuous thoughts, feelings, and impulses, rather than letting them control us, and then letting go of our attachment to them, in order to return to our breath. This will be our primary activity in every meeting, followed by a mindful discussion of our meditative experience, using a "talking stick" (a Native American practice) to ensure that everyone gets to share their thoughts or feelings without interruption or cross-talk.

2. Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. Garrison Keillor's wonderful sign-off (from his morning radio program, "Writer's Almanac") inscribes a useful generic daily agenda for Dharma practitioners. As such, they also describe the first fruits of a consistent meditation practice: (1) the ability to let go of afflictive emotions so we can take better care of our own bodies, minds, and spirit; (2) the ability to recognize and let go of distractions, so that we can focus on our tasks more diligently and do so for the common good; (3) be more aware of the effects of our behavior on others, and reach out compassionately to those in need, or those who simply would like to hear from us.

3. Learn Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia, Create Gaia: These four injunctions inscribe a generic life agenda for serious Gaians: to learn everything we can about the living world we inhabit, so that we can discover our own skillful means for teaching others and healing the manifold damage inflicted on our planet through ignorance and greed. Finally, our ultimate goal is to become agents in the spontaneous remission of the Cancer of the Earth, by creating Gaian alternatives to the dysfunctional status quo in whatever ways fit best with our own talents, skills, and interests--by growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness.

I hope this addresses whatever concerns you might have about joining us. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me at tiellis@gmail.com.

Why start a Dharma Gaia Circle?

 

Why am I starting a Dharma Gaia Circle this month? To answer this, I wish to begin with one of my favorite passages from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.

According to recent scholarship in Chinese history, Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching most likely date from the Warring States era of Chinese history (481/403 to 221 BCE) when China had fractured into various rival warlord states battling viciously for dominance; a prolonged (two centuries or more) era of bitter internecine warfare prior to the unification of China under the Qin dynasty.

In the context of this period of catastrophic societal breakdown into civil strife, Lao Tzu composed a simple but beautiful recipe for social regeneration (Tao Te Ching, verse 54):

What is well planted will not be uprooted.

What is firmly grasped cannot slip away.

It will be honoured from generation to generation.

Cultivate Virtue in yourself,

 And Virtue will be real.

 Cultivate it in the family,

 And Virtue will overflow.

 Cultivate it in the village,

 And Virtue will grow.

 Cultivate it in the nation,

 And Virtue will flourish.

 Cultivate it in the world,

 And Virtue will be everywhere.

 

Therefore:

 See others as yourself.

 See families as your family.

 See towns as your town.

 See countries as your country.

 See worlds as your world.

 How do I know that the world is like this?

 By looking! 

(Gia Fu Feng Translation, adapted with reference to other translations).

The word translated as "Virtue" here is Te (or pinyin de), the second word in the title Tao Te Ching, often translated as "The Classic of the Way and its Virtue." However, like Tao itself, this word Te is not precisely translatable; it does not simply mean "goodness" or "manliness" (two Western meanings of "virtue" from its Latin root virtus), but it refers, in general, to what might well be described as the efficacy of human behavior in accordance with the Way of nature. (Hence it could even be taken as another definition of permaculture!) Therefore, my own interpretation of "Virtue" (Te) might be a combination of (1) ecological awareness, understanding, and responsibility, with (2) behavior that effectively promotes the health, competence, and resilience of ourselves, our communities, and our living planet, all rooted in wisdom and compassion.

So what is Lao Tzu telling us, in the context of a chaotic, violent, disintegrative era much like his own?

That social regeneration begins, not from the top down, but from the ground up--starting from individual healing and regeneration, leading to the healing and regeneration of families, communities, societies, landscapes, and our entire living planet.  And this, in a nutshell, is why I am creating a Dharma Gaia Circle.

The key line is this one: "Cultivate Virtue in yourself, and Virtue will be real." This is a profound insight that we often forget as social activists, in our passion to right the wrongs of our society and government. No attempt to "cultivate Virtue" in the community or state is likely to last or become deeply rooted unless we first make that Virtue "real" by cultivating it within ourselves. So this one line comprises the agenda of my Dharma Gaia Circle: to "cultivate Virtue" in ourselves, so that it is real, and so that we can then plant it more firmly, and  cultivate it more effectively, in the larger circles of relationship within which we live: our families, communities, states, and living planet.

There are, of course, myriad methods for cultivating Virtue in ourselves, but I have sought, over many years, to evolve an effective method for myself and others that integrates personal integration and healing with that of all the larger systems of which we are a part: our household, neighborhood, circle of friends, landscapes, community, state, nation, and--above all--our living planet.  And here, in brief, is what I have come up with, based on the Dalai Lama's wonderful definition of the Dharma as simultaneously a "principle, precept, and practice."

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.

PRECEPT: "Take care of everyone, and abandon no one.  Take care of everything, and abandon nothing."  --Lao Tzu.

PRACTICE: (Guided meditation on the breath)

1. (Reinhabiting the present moment):  Breathe, Observe, Let Go. --the Buddha (Sutra on Breathing)

2. (A generic daily agenda): "Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch"  --Garrison Keillor.

3. (A generic life agenda): Learn Gaia; Teach Gaia; Heal Gaia; Create Gaia.

For a deeper dive into all of this, please see my Dharma Gaia Manifesto.