Earth Dharma

This course was presented at the Kootenay Shambhala Centre, Nelson, British Columbia in May, 2010. Please modify it to suit your local needs. If you do use the syllabus, or have suggestions, I would like to get your feedback. I will record your changes and make them available to others. I can be reached at 250 551 0660, or by email at marg2russ@gmail.com. Good Luck, –Russell Rodgers

Earth Dharma

Outline of Classes

Class I: Duality, the Source of the Problem The foundation of our ecological problems begins with the human mind. Conventionally, our ecological problems are ascribed the human proclivity for grasping, aggression and ignorance. In this class we’ll take a deeper view: the nature of the mind and how these tendencies come about. Class II: Sacred World If we do not view the world as sacred and basically good, there will be consequences to our relationship with nature. In this class we’ll look at our monotheistic cultural background, and its division of the world into the material and the spiritual. We’ll look at theism’s successor, science, and its view of the world as mechanical, dead matter. Then we’ll look at polytheistic cultures and their view of the earth’s sacredness, and finally the non-theistic attitudes to the earth according to the Buddhist views of basic goodness, ultimate purity, and non-theistic sacredness. Class III: Practices for Interbeing We will work with Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of interbeing, or interdependence, from the point of view of how the nature of our conceptual thinking functions to isolate us from the cosmos. We’ll also look at how thoughts can lead us back into a sense of being connected. We will work with the notion of soft spots where the world can touch us and the practice of tonglen to explore our inter-connectedness on an emotional level. Class IV: Presence and Drala: The World Speaks In this class we will look at how the world speaks to us. We’ll look at drala from the point of view of depth of perception and from the point of view of drala as unseen presences. We’ll look at the gods and nature spirits of other cultures and how we can relate to them non-theistically. Class V: Buddhist Activism In this class we will look at Buddhist responses to environmental problems and at how one can engage in movements to help the planet without experiencing reaction, anger, frustration and burnout. We will introduce some lojong slogans as a guide to compassionate action. Each class will have a contemplation question for the week preceding the class. The classes will begin with participants splitting into dyads to discuss the question. The meditation period before the class will also have contemplation questions and meditation exercises in order to stimulate students to look at their experience during meditation.

Earth Dharma Kootenay Shambhala Centre

May, 2010

Reading List Main Source Book

Sacred World: The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery and Power, by Jeremy and Karen Hayward, Second Edition, Revised. Shambhala Publications 1998. This book is periodically out of print, so it is good to order copies in well in advance. Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, Edited by Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft. Shambhala Publications, 2000. This book is also periodically out of print, so it is good to order a copy or copies in well in advance.

Supplementary Readings Since there are selections from many sources here, the instructor may wish to provide photocopied handouts to students who don’t have access to the books.

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron, Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron. At some point during the class series it would be good read Sacred World in its entirety. Also of interest is this website: http://www.ecobuddhism.org/ It has interviews with many prominent Buddhist leaders about the environment. These essays and interviews are also available in book form in “A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency” edited by John Stanley, David R. Loy, and Gyurme Dorje.

Student Assignments Class I: Duality, the Source of the Problem.

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism: Chapter on the Development of Ego Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness, chapter on the Sravaka Approach pp 9-25 Contemplation Question: Clearly, our ecological problems originate from something in the human mind. What is the ultimate source, beyond the human proclivity for grasping, aggression, and ignorance? Is it some kind of mysterious original sin, or is there something deeper?

Class II: Sacred World

Sacred World: pp 1-14, 55-70 (also recommended: pp 15-55) Dharma Rain: pp 261-267 Contemplation Question: It is said in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition that basic goodness is unconditional—not produced intentionally or by external causes, and deeper than conventional notions of good and bad. What is unconditional in your experience of your mind? Study Questions on the Readings: 1. Define sacredness in your own words. 2. How can one have sacredness without some sort of theism? 3. If the earth is sacred, how should one properly take what one needs in order to survive?

Class III: Practices for Interbeing Dharma Rain: pp 445, 58-61 Peace is Every Step: pp 127-130 The Places That Scare You, Chapter on Tonglen

Contemplation Question: What in our normal thinking and language process makes us tend to think that nature, Gaia, is separate from humanity?

Study Questions on the Readings 1. Thich Nhat Hanh calls the interdependence of all things “interbeing”. How can you have both self and interdependence/interbeing? 2. Describe the four stages of tonglen. What does this practice have to do with interbeing?

Class IV: Presence and Drala: How the World Speaks Sacred World: pp 178-236 Dharma Rain: pp 271-277

Contemplation Question: Sometimes one finds oneself in places that have a certain atmosphere or “vibe”. Think about such a place. It could be crossing the border from the U.S. into Canada, or vice versa. It could happen when entering a particular town or neighborhood, or it could happen in an undisturbed natural setting. Is that apparent atmosphere just your subjectivity, or is it an external presence or “vibe” of some sort? What sensory mode is operating there? What do you say to yourself when you have that kind of intuition? How would you describe this to someone you didn’t know very well? Study Questions on the Readings: 1. In Sacred World, the Haywards describe three dimensions of experience. How might one actually experience the open/infinite realm? How might one experience the three abodes of the intermediate realm? 2. Would you describe the Greek gods as superstition, or as a way of describing experience? 3. What is your personal experience of drala?

Class V: Buddhist Activism

Sacred World: pp 249-266 Dharma Rain: pp 198-203, 206-214, 293-302, 357-368 Karmapa’s Environmental Guidelines (link at course website) Start Where You Are: pp 101-114 Study Questions on the Readings 1. In the readings, what approaches to Buddhist activism do you resonate with? What approaches do you think are important for the future? 2. In the reading from Dharma Rain entitled “Challenges in Buddhist Thought and Action”, how do you think the cultural inheritance from the 19th century has influenced your feelings about the environment and environmentalism? 3. What would it mean for you to find life direction and meaning in interdependence rather than independence? Contemplation Question: How does one engage in social change without experiencing reaction, anger, frustration and burnout?

Talk I: Duality: the Source of the Problem

Summary: We have to look at the source of our problems: human mind. One of the central tenants of Mahayana Buddhism is that we all have buddha nature, it’s just covered up. This talk will discuss buddha nature, how it becomes duality (a split between us and our world) and how that duality results in environmental problems and crises. This is starting with the big view. Meditation Exercise: Look into the space between thoughts. Where do thoughts come from and where do they cease? After the sitting, break into dyads and discuss this question, then discuss it as a class. Since many people will be relatively new to meditation, it will be important to acknowledge that questions like this are something that one works with over time, and comes back to again and again until one is certain. In the talk, we will give some Buddhist answers to this question, but students need to examine their own experience again and again to see if those answers are true. The Nature of Mind In order to understand how environmental problems come about, we need to understand something about the mind that originates them. From the buddhist point of view, one analogy for mind is that it is like a vast space where all our experience registers. Another analogy is a mirror: it reflects everything but, like space in the first analogy, its nature stays the same. In both cases there are two aspects: emptiness and the ability to manifest what we think of as reality. Physical space, while empty, contains all phenomena. A mirror contains all phenomena as reflections, but is itself unchanged.

! In a dream, there is a dream self, a dream action and a dream world. Mind is capable of manifesting all these. ! Conventionally we might say “I have a mind” In dream experience, it is more

like “the mind has me as the dream actor”. “I” am a manifestation in this bigger mind. Buddhists say that waking life is similar, in that the sense of self happens in the context of a bigger, deeper mind. As in he dream state, the world is also happening in this bigger mind.

! In the scientific model, there are sense data in the form of electrical impulses: simple vibrations or oscillations of electrical potential that come in through the nerves and are assembled into images in the brain. We do not actually “see” the world; we see these mental images and call them “the world”. This is similar to the dream.

! Normally we say that the world is “out there.” This can’t be right in terms of how we experience, since experience happens in the mind. We can’t know for sure what happens outside the mind, because we can’t experience it.

! We get some experiential intimations of the “space-like” quality of mind when we get the feeling of spaciousness in a wide-open natural environment. We might identify this spaciousness as coming from outside the mind, in the world, but it is actually a quality in the mind because that is where we experience it. ! Mostly, we think the mind is thoughts. Occasionally, in meditation, we sense

the “space of mind” that the thoughts come out of and disappear into. This mind-space has a feeling of perky emptiness, and at the same time it feels relaxed and good and aware.

! Sometimes we feel spaciousness in the presence of direct perception, when we are not thinking about something, but are directly, vividly aware of the senses. Flower arrangements can evoke a sense of spaciousness.

! Certain environments slow down the speed of thoughts and we have a sense of just being. We often become very attached to these places and find them very restorative. This is especially true of natural environments where mind is not encouraged to speed. These also have a feeling of spaciousness.

! Here are some examples of how great meditators experience their minds.

Look directly into your mind; But mind is no thing, so looking has nothing to see. --Lord Gotsangpa, Ocean of Definitive Meaning

Just as space, which is by nature free from thought, pervades everything, the undefiled expanse, which is the nature of mind, is all pervading. –Maitreya, from Contemplating Reality by Andy Karr.

! Birth of duality

! Experienced meditators looking at their minds say that there is no centre to that mind-space, no self, just a self aware space. The thought of self arises just like other thoughts, and has no more reality than any other thought.

! Is there a basis for this concept of self? ! There are a body, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, concepts, consciousness.

According to Buddhist teachings, the self is a thought that conceptualizes a unity of what is actually a constantly shifting constellation of these many elements.

! Thoughts and memories create a story of self, which is attached to and confused with the body.

! When we name or label something, the name stays the same over time, but the cluster of events that is named constantly changes and is not the same. By giving the shifting elements a label, “self”, we solidify the illusion that the

there is an entity that doesn’t change from moment to moment. It is like naming a river as a “river”: there is no such thing as a “river”, because it is completely different from moment to moment. Even the banks of the river change. But the name doesn’t.

! We could say that we accept that change is the nature of the self, but we are emotionally attached to the stability implied in the unchanging conceptual label. We get very upset when we or a loved one are threatened with death, or even the loss of a possession that we identify with. We are attached to the ideas of success or failure, because we have a fixed notion of self.

! How did duality start? Trungpa Rinpoche makes an analogy of a vast plain with energy and color. Then the grain of sand sticks its head up and freezes the scene into self and other. (See Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism: the Development of Ego.) ! Duality feels completely normal, as though it has always been there. Why

question it? Trungpa Rinpoche calls this “ignorance born within”. ! We feel like this all the time: we all know that there is a vast universe, but

all we feel that we are at the centre. We know intellectually that we are just part of an interdependent reality, but we feel as though we have a separate existence. If we hurt a tree or an animal, it’s separate. If our country hurts people, they are “over there”. We feel separate from others and from the environment even in this room.

! How duality becomes the source of environmental problems

! Since the self is just a thought/concept, it is therefore tenuous. Because of this tenuous quality, there is a constant fear of loss of self. This fear results in behaviors that are very environmentally destructive. It could take many environmentally destructive forms that don’t even feel like fear. For example: ! Consumerism: we may combat any sense of lack of existence by building

up lots of possessions. “Who am I? I have a car, property, a new stereo--Maybe I need a new car, a bigger house, a bigger stereo.” We develop an unsustainable lifestyle. Advertising convinces us that this is normal, and so we feel that it is normal.

! Active ignorance and rigid beliefs: We are uncomfortable in a shifting, vast impersonal universe that doesn’t care if we live or die. We could counteract that with rigid beliefs founded on a tendency to ignore: “The natural world was given by God to man to exploit.” “It’s the economy, stupid.” “I don’t have to change my habits because climate change doesn’t exist.”

! Passive ignorance: we become lost in discursiveness that takes one away from genuine connection with reality because we find it too threatening. We walk about in a haze of discursive thoughts and are blissfully unaware of the effects we have on the environment. We watch a familiar and comforting choice of television programs that re-enforce the feeling that no change is needed. We stick to the familiar, what has worked in the past.

! Aggression: If we have secret feelings of insecurity, we could resort to war, conflict and competitiveness: “I am the strongest, most important. Don’t mess with me.” We might begin to feel that reality is actually all about how much territory we control in business. Environmental concerns are secondary.

! ! Buddhist practice and environmental problems

! In succeeding classes we will look at Buddhist practice and how it works with our fundamental nature to avert these problems.

! In meditation, we notice our fear-based avoidance patterns. They gradually lose their power because we notice them as just thought patterns. More clarity results. We begin to shift our allegiance from thoughts to wakeful mind--the spacious, knowing quality that arises whenever there is a gap in thoughts.

! Recognizing our own fear-based patterns of self preservation enables us to empathize with others as they are threatened by non-existence and suffer accordingly.

! As we become more in tune with our own nature, we can settle into “just being”, which is a requisite for living simply and ecologically on the earth.

With understanding, we can dedicate the merit to end the class.

May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the root of suffering. May they enjoy the great happiness devoid of suffering. May they dwell in the great equanimity free from grasping, aggression and

prejudice.

Talk II Sacredness `

Summary In this class we’ll look at our monotheistic cultural background, and its division of the world into the material and the spiritual. We’ll look at theism’s successor, science, and its view of the world as mechanical, dead matter. Then we’ll look at polytheistic attitudes. Finally we’ll look at non-theistic views of sacred world through the language of basic goodness, purity and emptiness, and vajrayana. ! Meditation exercise:

When we begin to meditate, we feel that our self is trying to meditate. Does this meditator-self wake you up, or does waking up happen automatically when there is a gap between obscuring thoughts? At the beginning of class, this investigation could be discussed as a group. It will be important to point out that this question is a subtle one that students will have to investigate over time until they become certain. True certainty may take years. Discussion: If one thinks that wakefulness inherent and always there, but temporarily obscured by thoughts, then it will be much easier to appreciate sacredness. If one thinks that the obscurations are permanent and the wakefulness is temporarily manufactured by the meditator, then it will be hard to see oneself and the world as sacred. You will see yourself as permanently stained, and therefore the world will seem stained as well. In the West, we have a pre-existing cultural background that derives from the perspective of original sin. This may be one of the reasons that people who are concerned about the environment may become depressed and see humanity fundamentally flawed.

Review:

! In the first class we talked about basic mind as being like space—able to manifest all experience, including self and other equally. This is illustrated in the dream example.

! Space in the physical world by itself cannot be found: you need objects and boundaries and then you can intuit the space between them. Likewise, mind-space can only be intuited in the presence of mental events such as thoughts and perceptions. These arise from that space and dissolve back into it.

! Birth of duality: On the gross level of common experience we experience self and other. With regards to the self, we have many transitory elements in our experience: flashes of body, feelings, perceptions, memories, ideas and a vague sense of consciousness. When we name all the elements as a self and become attached to that idea, then there is something that has to be defended, maintained and enhanced. ! Passion: We enhance our sense of self by buying possessions to give us a sense

of stability. This leads to consumerism and exploitation of the world. The world is regarded as “other” and is exploitable.

! Aggression: We fight with enemies over territory. We form corporations to control territory.

! Ignorance: We watch TV and dwell in a protective haze of comforting thoughts that our world is safe and nothing changes. We may develop rigid beliefs that the climate is not changing to justify our resistance to changing our habits of consumption.

Group contemplation: Is there anything sacred about this world we live in? Is it all just about survival? Do we live in a mechanical universe based on inanimate matter? In your experience, what is sacredness? Break into dyads to discuss this, and then do it with the whole group.

! ! Sacredness in Our Monotheistic Culture

! Background: In our culture, historically, spirit has been viewed as different from the material realm. East Indian religion has similar strains of thought and strives to transcend the world. ! In our culture, God created earth, and then put us on it as custodians. Amongst all

sentient beings, we alone have a special relationship with Him. When we die we will go to heaven and leave this inferior existence.

! The earth and its animals are viewed as other: exploitable, and lacking feelings and intelligence. They are here to sustain us.

! Things are sacred if they are related to God. They are not sacred in themselves. They are just mundane matter.

! This is not necessarily true for all theists, but it has remained a strong and dominant element in our culture.

! In the post religious world, science has taken the place of religion. But there is still the basic assumption that the world is material, dead matter. It is like a clock: if we understand its mechanism, we can control it. ! Things that we may find deeply meaningful, like love, are viewed as brain

chemistry. Many scientist struggle with this view in terms of finding deeper meaning in life, but don’t know how to deal with it. This perspective tends to make life meaningless: just an exercise in survival.

! Because of science and technology, we gain more and more power over the world, but are not able to manage that power and it becomes destructive.

! In polytheistic cultures, lakes, mountains, trees and so on may be sacred because they are inhabited by gods or spirits. If one were Greek, one would not abuse the ocean because that would anger Poseidon. Poseidon is inherent in the ocean. If the ocean has big waves, that is a direct expression of the god.

! This way of accessing sacredness has been largely lost in our culture. Other deities were systematically suppressed by the church, and scientism tends to regard deities that cannot be detected by an instrument or by the five senses as superstition.

! Polytheism is usually present in the Asian sources of Buddhism as a folk religion that runs parallel to Buddhism and is often incorporated into the buddhist understanding in those countries.

! We’ll get back to the notion of nature deities in our fourth class.

! Non-theism and the sacred: Buddhists give different answers about the actual existence of gods, depending on how the questions is framed. Sometimes it is said that they do have a level of apparent existence, just as the self has an apparent level of existence. Or, Buddhists sometimes say that gods are not separate from mind. But it is important to remember that the mind that they are referring to may not be the mind that we customarily think of when we say the word “mind”. They may be referring to the level of non-dual mind where separate existence is irrelevant. ! Buddhism is essentially non-theistic at its higher, non-dual levels. The world is

regarded as sacred, in its own right, not because of its relation to a deity. That means that there is sacredness in the mundane, and it is up to us to clean up our perception in order to contact it.

! We’ll look at non-theistic sacredness from the points of view and terminology of three different schools of Buddhism. We will explore each of these terms according to some of the characteristics that are emphasized in each. They are essentially pointing to the same quality from different perspectives. These terms describe an experiential quality that happens when mind is very open and not clouded by thoughts. This experience of sacredness happens when there is not a strong sense of self in control, but rather an openness to a non-self centred world.

! Basic Goodness, ! Basic goodness is a term used in Shambhala Buddhism. It is only experienced in the

moment—during a gap in thoughts. The rush of busy life stops and one is just there with one’s experience. It could be described in terms of suchness or thatness. Your projection about the experience is released and you just have the experience.

! For instance you might see a child, and rather than thinking about how you want the child to behave, you just see its child-ness. There is some sense of purity in that child-ness that is a link with universal child-ness everywhere. It feels basically good. In these moments we may recognize a certain harmony in the world: everything is interconnected and functions properly as a whole.

! You can try to explain that experience to others, but only you can have the actual experience. Words do not work here. It is completely non-conceptual. It is temporary, in the moment, and the moment will move on. Therefore there might be some sense of sadness. The experience may have a feeling of empty-fullness--empty of your fear that the child will mis-behave, but full of the experience itself. The experience may also be empty of your own sense of self. It could be sad because the experience is so temporary and empty, and yet full because the experience is complete. There could be a quality of tenderness.

! Basic goodness is beyond conventional comparisons of good or bad, it just is. It could happen in a death or a birth. It has a primordial quality.

! One can discover BG by allowing space. For instance, good flower arrangements have a space quality indicated by the elements of the arrangement. A bird song in a background of silence stands out. Words spoken in atmosphere of silence become poetry.

! These moments of basic goodness are touching, poignant, open, lonely, fresh. They have a quality of sacredness: instinctively you don’t want to transgress on them.

! Dzogchen view and the view of shunyata: In dzogchen, phenomena are said to be “kadak”, which could be translated as “alpha pure”. Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet. It could also be called “primordial” purity. This is similar to “emptiness” in the Mahayana, but here there is more attention paid to the “presence” of purity. Examples:

! In emptiness, if you are looking at a tree, it is what it is, the pure perception in the moment and nothing more. In that moment, the tree isn’t a collection of board feet, or an object in standing in your way, or even a name or a category.

! When you stand at the door of the shrine room and are about to enter, you think that the floor will hold you up. This projection is not in the perception itself; it is embedded as a thought hidden in the perception. Because of that, you probably don’t even notice the floor.

! At the level of Mahayana emptiness or dzogchen purity that we have been talking about, the thoughts about the tree or the floor can be disentangled from the visual perception of the tree. The appearance that manifests is pre label. It is beyond “tree”, board feet, natural or unnatural, big or small, rough or smooth. These are all comparisons made by conceptual mind.

! Sometimes, experientially, one might have moments of looking at something familiar and feeling “what is this?” There might be a slight sense of disorientation. You “see” it for the first time. Sometimes in sitting, you may “see” something as if for the first time. Hallucinogenic drugs can temporarily have that effect.

! In those moments we are back to pre thought: before good or bad. There may be a sense of a that you are there as a perceiver, but the perceiver at this point is pretty basic: it doesn’t have a lot of wants or needs, it just perceives, and it is aware of its own awareness.

! Sacred world in the vajrayana. You may have wondered about deity practices that you have heard of. How does that fit into non-theism? ! The vajrayana is not separate from the perspectives mentioned above. Dzogchen is

part of vajrayana. Vajrayana has an aspect of “samaya vow”: a vow to regard all experience as sacred.

! In the vajrayana one is introduced to sacred world experientially by means of various deity practices which help to re-orient conceptual mind towards sacred world. In these practices, one visualizes oneself as the deity and the world as a palace of the deity. Then, when the visualization is dissolved, there is some carry-over of sacredness into the post meditation experience.

! The practice (samaya vow) is to regard all of existence as sacred. This is somewhat a conceptual re-orientation at first, but there is a basis in occasional glimpses that have a sense of truth about them.

! In the vajrayana, one wouldn’t say or do anything to disparage things that we encounter in the world. We become conscious degraded ways of relating to the environment and make a special effort to abandon those tendencies.

! Eternalism and nihilism are problems that can arise with trying to view the world as sacred. ! Nihilism: One of the issues that arises with saying that everything is basically pure or

sacred is that some people will say that “if that’s so, I can do anything I want—I can destroy the natural surroundings and it’s all basically good no matter what I do. Nothing matters.” ! This is a mistake in symbolic thinking: true sacredness occurs only in the

moment, and nihilistic action is an action embedded with thought, so it is not in the moment.

! Part of being in the moment is sensitivity and connection to the suffering of others. Therefore one wouldn’t do things that increase suffering.

! Eternalism: Alternatively, it is also a mistake to say that “everything is sacred and basically good, so I can relax and everything will be taken care of”. ! Eternalism is closely related to certain “new age” ideas that the path of

humanity is always towards higher and higher levels of spirituality. ! Eternalism is closely related to the notion that an external deity will take care of

us. ! When we live in the world of thought, we need have societal ethics and morality to guide us.

Only in the world between thoughts can we rely on sacredness to guide us. However, having a basic view of sacredness, and a faith that there is a primordial sacredness that underlies everything is a fundamental pre-requisite to forming a society that has a good relationship to its environment.

Discussion: If the earth is sacred, how should one properly take what one needs in order to survive?

Talk 3: Interbeing

Summary: Today, we’ll look at interconnectedness, also called interdependence. Interconnectedness is called interbeing by Thich Nhat Hanh. Using a verb, he says we inter-are with the world. Most people are aware of interdependence on an outward, scientific level. The readings for the class include a couple of poetic examples. Here, we will work with interbeing from the point of view of how our concepts and language create barriers to our sense of interbeing. We will also introduce the practice of tonglen as a way to use our emotions to link us back in to an empathetic connection with our fellow beings. ! Contemplation for use in the sitting period before class:

According to the teachings of the buddha, your body is not yours . Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents and future generations. It also belongs to society and to all the other living beings. All of them have come together—the trees, the clouds, the soil, everything, to bring about the presence of this body. --Thich Nhat Hahn

Review

The apparent continuity that we think is the self is actually empty, aware, space-like mind. This mind has background sense of intelligence, but no intelligencer that can be found. This mind is alive and productive: perceptions, thoughts and thoughts of a self arise in this space. Thoughts, perceptions, and body all change, but the unchanging concept of self gives the illusion of stability. When the thought of self occurs, duality follows. In duality, the environment becomes separate, something for the self to exploit. In talking about sacredness as it applies to the world, we started with the Judeo/Christian monotheistic view of the world as “material” as opposed to “spiritual”. We talked about theism’s successor, science, which views the material world as mechanical. In this view, love is a matter of brain chemistry, and this feeling of love could conceivably be managed by pills or electrodes in the brain. Polytheism is the background of folk belief in most buddhist cultures. Here, the world is infused with spirit—the movements of the elements are an expression gods and spirits. We also explored non-theistic views of spirit and nature, including basic goodness of the Shambhala tradition, the emptiness of the Mahayana, the alpha purity of the dzogchen tradition, and sacredness in the vajrayana practices. All are experiences that happen fully only in moments of non-thought. All have qualities of tenderness, empty/fullness, aliveness, vividness,

freshness and spaciousness. Without a foundational view of the world as primordially sacred, the world is vulnerable to exploitation for the short term benefit of ego. This exploitation takes the form of grasping (consumerism), aggression (establishing control and territory at the expense of other inhabitants), and ignorance (ignoring messages from the environment). Interbeing

! “Interbeing” is a term used by Thich Nhat Hahn to describe how the universe is interconnected in a way that destroys the illusion of a separate self. On a mundane level, biologists have described how ecosystems are interconnected in such a way that they function almost as a single organism. James Lovelock coined the term “Gaia” to describe this. In this class we will assume that people attending are already familiar with this concept of interdependence. Here, we will look at how our normal thought process intrinsically creates the illusion of separation from the whole, and how we can work to overcome that separation.

! ! The relationship between thoughts, conceptuality, and sense of interbeing

Contemplation question for discussion in dyads and then as a group: What in our thinking process makes us tend to think that nature, Gaia, is separate from us? ! The positive qualities of thoughts: For beginners, thoughts seem like the bad guys in

meditation. They steal away one’s mindfulness and awareness. However, on another level, we seem to need thoughts, and their power can be beneficial. ! Thoughts can point to something and following that we can have a direct perception of

that object. ! Thoughts are symbols for reality. They are not reality, but abstractions. Thoughts can

also enable us to re-arrange reality by re-arranging it symbolically in our minds. ! For instance, Henry Ford probably thought to himself that person X was good at

putting the wheels on a car, person Y at the spark plugs, and person Z at painting. Using symbolic thinking one could imagine having persons X, Y, and Z work assembly line rather than having each of those individuals build their own separate car from scratch.

! Another example: Some cave person notices while sharpening sticks that rubbing them together creates heat. A symbolic image of the heat of a lightning-started fire forms in his mind. Putting the two situations together in his mind, he reasons that he might be able to make fire by vigorously rubbing two sticks together.

! These are examples of the huge power of symbolic thinking. Because of that we have immense power over nature, giving us a sense that we are above nature and separate from it.

! How thinking separates us from nature ! Thoughts have their own presence if you are aware of them as thoughts. They aren’t

good or bad, they are just movements arising in the mind. There is a sixth sense consciousness that directly perceives thoughts, just as the other five senses perceive external phenomena. In the moment of awareness thoughts are basically

good, just like any other perception. However, when we are not aware of thoughts as thoughts, we become trapped in attachment to their conceptual content. This programming results from a combination of personal and cultural programming.

! Symbols are not the same as direct perception: they stand in for direct perception. Even naming a tree as a “tree” subtly obscures the thing itself. The label becomes mixed with the perception, along with memories of how the other trees have functioned, and so on. When you walk into the room, you think the floor will hold you up. This is an example of how thought-symbols are mixed in with perception. Your perception of the floor is deadened and you don’t even notice it.

! One could study all kinds of facts about forests, but one will never experience it without actually going into a forest and being open to the experience. Because of their training, many foresters tend to think of trees mostly as standing lumber with dollar value. This is a case of symbolic thinking mixed in with perception.

! Thoughts are an expression of what is called discriminating awareness wisdom, which is more primordial than thoughts. In its pure form this wisdom has warmth and passion to explore qualities among things in the world. This wisdom, which is before thoughts, does not isolate things from each other, but sees them as the play of phenomena in a whole. Thoughts and concepts selectively highlight these qualities and differences in ways that isolate them from their interconnected nature and freeze them. ! For instance, would an alien being conceive of trees as part of the earth,

expressions of it, or as separate beings? By giving these phenomena the label “trees,” we isolate them as separate: separate from the water, from the earth, the nutrients, the air and the sunlight.

! We do the same with ourselves, naming ourselves and applying labels, and lose the sense of interbeing. Names function to separate because the name stays the same even as what is being represented by the name changes in the flux of relationship with the rest of the universe.

Interdependence on the thought level: Like all other aspects of our existence, even thoughts themselves are an aspect of interbeing. Whatever you think of what is being taught, your own thoughts will be influenced by what you hear and what you experience. Even if you disagree, what we are talking about becomes part of your internal dialogue. We tend to think of this internal dialogue as a crucial part of our individuality. However it is clear that even on a thought level, there is really no such thing as an autonomous self. We inter-are with the each other and with the rest of the universe, because the conditions that support us change without the universe asking us for permission. We are expression of the universe: we are temporary patterns of events-- like whirlwinds, or rainbows. ! How emotions can lead us to more heart awareness of interbeing.

! We are each in our own small worlds. Small amounts of exposure to this wider world feel good: we go into the mountains with our down sleeping bags, GPS, tents, and specialized food. We create a safe cocoon because we are threatened by our interconnections with a world that doesn’t care about us. At the same time, exposure stimulates us.

! We have soft spots that where the world can touch us—it could be pleasant: an appreciation of a mountain meadow. Or, it could be threatening: for example, when we feel socially inappropriate. Our soft spots could also manifest as a sense of connection to those who are suffering.

! The soft spots are there because underneath our defenses there is intelligence and wakefulness that sees through fixed ideas, similar to what happens in meditation when we see our thoughts as thoughts. This wakefulness is always ahead of our identity as a self. Whatever patches and defenses we create to protect our egos, part of us sees through them. Much of our discursiveness during sitting meditation revolves around how we have contacted the world.

! We could welcome these messages as fresh and invigorating, or we could respond with fear-based defenses: anger, depression, desire, sleepiness, a protective haze of discursive thoughts and so on. In meditation, we often experience an endless rehearsal of arguments that support the positions we identify with. This should be a clue that our underlying intelligence has recognized a soft spot where we are in connection with the world. We can work with that connection using the practice of tonglen.

. The Practice of Interbeing Using the Emotions: Tonglen

! Tonglen works specifically with suffering, but it also works with the fear-based defense

mechanisms that cause suffering by disconnecting us from reality and from the earth. Tonglen counteracts the tendency to use shamatha as an escape from the more painful aspects of inter-being. In shamatha, we might use the breath as a substitute or an escape, and try to dwell exclusively in the “development peace” aspect of the meditation. With tonglen, we honor the ways that the world touches our soft spots.

Guided Tonglen

! Four stages: ! 1. Flash on openness, being present. Imagine being so spacious that one could

accommodate anything. Some people find it helpful to visualize a vast ocean or the open sky, or imagine the sound of a gong.)

! 2. Synchronizing breath with the textures of suffering and release: ! Breathe in the texture of suffering: dark, heavy, claustrophobic, smelly, humid,

hot. One could visualize this as similar to coal dust, or smog. ! Breathe out openness and well-being, symbolized by lightness, satisfaction,

tenderheartedness, freshness, cleanliness or wholesomeness. Or, we could just breathe out a sense of being fully present.

! Make this a whole body experience: all the pores of our body take in and send out.

! Do this until it synchronizes with the breath. ! 3. Work with specific situations that have touched your soft spots. Breathe in what is

painful and unwanted, feeling the underlying energies completely but dropping the story line. We breathe out relief from the neurotic aspect of those energies. We train in softening and opening to the energies without judgment or interpretation.

Environmental degradation provides many opportunities to practice tonglen. One could do it for the earth in general, for animals and insects, or for people.

! 4. Generalize, extending to everyone throughout the whole world who may be feeling this particular energy/suffering.

! Tonglen goes against the habitual style of drawing in pleasure and pushing away pain. Therefore it tends to bring out our defense mechanisms in full force. Whatever avoidance mechanism arises in our minds gives us something to work with, because millions of people have the same defense mechanisms. These avoidance mechanisms include spacing out, sleepiness and so on. Because millions of people can’t face difficult issues, these defenses ultimately lead to social dis-ease and eventual damage to the environment. When you feel depressed and discursive, you could think “I’m depressed and discursive, let me feel this fully so that no one else needs to feel it. This pain could benefit others.” ! We live in a world where technology has given us tremendous power, but we

lack the responsibility to manage that power. If you are caught in a haze of thoughts you could draw that in and feel it fully, and give out freedom from that to all other sentient beings, so that they could have with the clarity to live on the earth without harming it.

! When you “taste” the energy fully, without the story line, you automatically transform it. This is symbolized by sending out freshness, clarity, and relief. Tonglen can have a quality of transmutation. The transition between the in and out breaths can be a moment of transmutation.

Additional notes about tonglen: ! We are working primarily with our own stuff: the emotions that arise in us in response

to the external world. It is hard to know whether we are affecting others some distance away. However, when you walk into a room where there is someone who radiating goodness and confidence, you feel tend to feel better yourself. Likewise, there is someone who is feeling down, that tends to lower everyone’s feelings. In that way, our states of mind can be contagious.

! Whenever you get lost in the practice, you can start over. ! Tonglen is good to do as an on-the-spot practice. When you get more proficient, you

can combine the stages, and just flash sending and taking as a way to work with whatever is happening in your immediate situation.

! If we are able to stay with the energy of our fear-based defenses for even a moment, we learn not to fear them.

! Summary of talk: We have worked with interbeing from the point of view of how our thoughts and conceptuality create barriers to interbeing. We have also worked with how our emotions can link us back in to connection with interbeing. Tonglen uses our soft spots to increase our sense of empathy to other sentient beings. Empathy is a direct feeling of inter-connectedness and interbeing. As Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, we “inter-are” with the universe.

Earth Dharma Talk 4: The Earth Speaks

! Meditation exercises during the sitting period before class:

1. How are your perceptions different in the gap between the ceasing of one thought and the beginning of another?

2. Tonglen: When we are interconnected with others, we feel vulnerable. Sometimes we will just be caught in a protective haze of thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts take the form of emotional story lines that play out again and again. You can breathe in the quality of that, tasting it completely, and breathe out to others release from that, so that they may have the clarity, peace and compassion to deal intelligently with the world’s problems. Do guided four-stage tonglen.

Review

! In the first class, we looked at how our relationship with the earth is conditioned by the

duality of our minds. We looked at how the sense of self needs to be maintained and enhanced at the expense of the world. This maintenance happens through consumerism, attempts at mastery of territory, and ignoring of signals from the world.

! In the second class, we looked at basic goodness and sacredness: how these qualities come through in the gaps between thoughts. There is a primordial quality to experience on this level that is beyond the mundane world of gain and loss, good and bad.

! In the third class we looked at interbeing, and at how language and concept create the illusion of separateness by naming and labeling things as though they were separate entities. We also investigated tonglen practice as a way to feel directly the interdependence of the world.

Summary of this Class ! In this class we will look at how the world speaks to us. We will do this from the subjective

point of view of the vastness of perception, and from the point of view of presences that seem to manifest externally.

! Questions for contemplation and discussion in dyads at the beginning of

class: ! Sometimes one comes into places that have a certain presence or “vibe”. Think

about such a place. It could be crossing the border from the U.S. into Canada or vice versa. It could be a particular town or neighborhood, or a natural setting.

! 1. Is that feeling just your subjectivity, or is it an external presence or “vibe” of some sort that seems to exist in the outer environment?

! 2. What sensory mode is operating there? ! 3. What do you say to yourself when you have that kind of intuition? ! 4. How would you describe this to someone you didn’t know very well (ie:

someone who might not confirm your beliefs)

! Group discussion: For cultural reasons, the psychological, subjective, explanation feels more “scientific” to us—“if we can’t see, hear, feel taste or touch it, it must our in our imagination.” ! There are two common responses to these questions:

! Solidification: you might say that the vibe definitely exists externally. There is a strong tendency to look for others who will confirm this view. We might hesitate to express it if we think it will not be confirmed.

! Dismissal: From the point of view of scientific materialism, that vibe would be purely personal subjectivity. Since it cannot be measured with instruments, it doesn’t exist. “It is just in your head.” In this view, the universe is cold, dead, lifeless matter, and perceptions of anything else are some kind of wishful thinking. The person who uses the dismissal approach feels themselves as being realistic and hard headed.

! We can’t know for sure whether what we experience is our personal psychology, or whether it is external.

! How do we detect those vibes? It’s hard to say which senses are involved, but they seem to be felt with one’s whole being.

! These feelings also show up in places that have power for us, that make our normal perceptions more vast, more intensely vivid. There could be a sense that the world is not dead, lifeless matter after all, that it speaks to us. It has basic goodness, and powerful suchness. There might be some sense of awe or at least appreciation for being alive and able to be in contact. One might develop trust in that.

! Other Cultures

! If you did the readings, you would have some sense of how the Greeks saw their gods not as separate beings, but as indistinguishable from how nature communicates to us. If one experienced beauty in the world, that itself was Aphrodite; if you were struck by an insight, you were stricken by Hermes; if you were brave in battle, that was itself the experience of Athena. In a sense, their experience was not abstract at all: it was immediate and obvious.

! The Japanese believe in kami that inhabit natural places where there seems to be “presence”.

! Indigenous peoples the world over have spirits and deities that inhabit natural phenomena. These spirits speak to them and guide them.

! We are one of the few cultures that have worked to eliminate these carriers of messages from the world. We have no place and language for them. They are

pagan. While we may be able to appreciate the beauty of other religions, they seem like superstition, or someone else’s religion. We may wish we could partake of indigenous culture, but that is awkward because most of us are not of that background. This leaves us feeling somewhat impoverished and disconnected.

! From the Tibetan point of view, there are two ways of understanding these feelings or intuitions. When you come to a place that has a certain atmosphere, you could be sensing the local deities of that place. Or, you could be simply opening to a depth of perception previously unavailable because you were obscured by thoughts. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive. ! If it is an experience that arrives with clarity, vastness, spaciousness and freshness, it

could be called “drala”, which means “above the enemy”. The “enemy” in this case is the haze of thoughts that normally obscure clear seeing of the world. The experience of drala is connected with a gap in thoughts. It seems as though something in the world stops our thoughts, and we are just fully there. Trungpa Rinpoche talks about vastness and unlimited depths of perception that have the power to penetrate our habitual discursiveness. ! Examples: a really good flower arrangement, seeing a bear while hiking in the

forest, a drop of water on a leaf, a mountain top, or a waterfall. ! When asked if dralas had external reality, Trungpa Rinpoche commented that dralas are

“as real as you are”. Besides dralas, Tibetans also have nature spirits and deities that reside in mountains and lakes. There are also lower level presences that can lead one away from wakefulness and into suffering. You may know of places that don’t feel right. If you were to personify such a place, how would you represent it in a drawing?

! Days have dralas: some days are good for getting things done, and others are good for rest and contemplation. On some days everything sparkles and there is a lot of attraction to beauty, others are subdued and low energy.

! However you regard them, dralas can only be accessed through gaps in discursive mind. Depths of perception are related to the absence of subtly embedded thoughts. For example, there is the example of thinking that the floor will hold you up when you enter this room. Projections like this make the world routine and habitual. One does not actually experience the floor completely. However, rarely, sometimes you might actually have a perception of the floor as if you are seeing it for the first time. This can happen when you experience perceptions as perceptions. At first, these experiences may be unsettling, but then you begin to appreciate them as pure perception.

! Three levels of experience of drala: ! The first level is the world of form and matter. Traditionally, this is known as the

nirmanakaya. ! The second level is the communicative aspect of the world that most cultures

experience as spirits and deities. This level includes the dralas. It corresponds to the sambhogakaya.

! A few individuals experience these as visions. VIDH saw deities and writing. At the same time, he emphasized that solidified theism was a trap, and that dralas and other presences were not separate from one’s own mind.

! The third level is a sense of vastness and openness that is reminiscent of the non-dual level of mind. This level also has its own dralas. It corresponds to the dharmakaya. ! Jeremy Hayward talks about the third level as the “open, infinite level”. Here,

we are talking about the level of awareness that exists as a background during moments when thoughts cease. This is the level of awareness that includes both self and other.

! These levels of experience interweave: we can have experiences of matter that seem to carry the vastness, and purity and open awareness of the dharmakaya level. Good flower arrangements are an example. At the same time they could communicate richness, playfulness and beauty of the intermediate level. ! For most of us, when we feel these communications from the world, it is hard to

say whether we feel them with our ordinary senses. It is more as though we feel them with our whole being. Some would say we feel them with our heart. Others might say that our ordinary senses seem more vivid.

Invoking ! Drala is not just something that happens to us: it can be invoked. Indigenous people

have many ceremonies to invoke drala. In these ceremonies, one enters into a ritual. One’s mind is carried on a journey using word imagery and ritual actions. The liturgies create a story about reality. At the end of the ritual one’s awareness is pointed to an alternate, open kind of experience. Sometimes, like the lhasungs that we do in our tradition, these ceremonies involve smoke from juniper, sage, sweet grass or cedar. Here, the world is purified and the deities are invited down in the smoke. Most world cultures besides our own experience these presences as “other”. ! For these cultures, taking the outer perspective makes drala more workable. The

outer perspective opens the door to rituals that draw out the inherent magic of the world in the form of deities. These rituals can open us to possibilities unknown by our ordinary senses.

! Rituals can be meaningless, but they can also be very powerful if they are done with full awareness of the emptiness of the ritual itself, the recipient and the doer. ! For instance, a handshake could be a meaningless social form. If it was done

with complete openness and awareness, a profound connection could be made with the recipient. One could make a connection that would take one to Istanbul or New York.

! Trungpa Rinpoche also taught us to invoke drala in the way we dress, in the pins and jewelry that we wear, and in how we take care of the place where we live. Indeed, most indigenous cultures have power objects that help to connect them to deities or unseen energies in the natural world. The way you take care of your house and garden attracts dralas. If there is a sense of spaciousness, order and cleanliness and care, it attracts qualities that linger and communicate.

! There are protector deities that we can invoke. We invoke Ekajati, because when we are tormented by sloth, she manifests as “an arrow of awareness” or, when we are attacked by doubt, she “sounds the great trumpet of confidence”. This is similar to Greek idea that ordinary communications from the world are expressions of the gods. ! By doing the chants we become aware of feedback from the world. We begin to

pick up on more and more subtle levels. Example: You may be about to try to talk to someone about something painful and delicate and the phone rings. You know it’s not the right timing for the conversation.

! There are ways that we can do rituals without solidifying them: one can have awareness of the emptiness of the ritual and the thoughts that surround it, and at the same time be open to anything that arises on the magical level of coincidence. In tantra one does rituals wholeheartedly, and at the same time keeping ones mindfulness and awareness of the ritual itself as a ritual.

! Children have a natural knack for rituals: they might make a circle of rocks with a feather or a special shell in the centre.

! We can invoke drala by paying attention to the wakefulness of perceptions coming from the natural world. Places where we practice awareness and contemplate emptiness can become saturated with the power of drala. They become power spots for us, sacred and magical. Lands where people do meditation retreats are examples of this.

! Coincidence: One way that the dralas speak to us is through coincidence. Example: One might be starting on a project and meet someone who is able to supply critical but rare information. In that case, one feels that one is on the right track and that the coincidence is auspicious. ! There are two common responses to coincidence: solidifying (building a conceptual

extrapolation around the coincidence) and denigrating it (“It’s just coincidence and doesn’t mean anything”)

! Best to keep it to yourself. That contains the magic. Closing Contemplations

! Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn’t have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything. --Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche from Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior.

! A mind that knows its own depth can see the brilliant, elemental magic of the world. –

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Talk 5 Engaged Buddhism and Compassionate Activity

! Meditation exercise during the sitting period before class: ! Tonglen using one’s present state of mind as a springboard:

! Start tonglen as usual by flashing open awareness, then coordinating the textures of imprisonment and release with the breath. Then, move on to your personal experience of your state of mind, and finally, generalize your practice to include all sentient beings.

! Our interconnectedness with the world is revealed during meditation by the kinds of thoughts that we have. We have soft spots where the world can touch us. This might provoke desire or anger. Sometimes we will just be caught in a protective haze of thoughts. You can imagine all the other people in the world that are obscured by those thoughts and the environmental consequences of that. You can breathe in the quality of that imprisonment, tasting it completely, and breathe out to others release from that, so that they may have the clarity, peace and compassion to deal intelligently with the world’s problems.

Review

! In the first class we looked at the birth of duality. The mind, like the mind of the dreamer,

splits experience into events that are felt as “self” and “other”. Upon waking from a dream, we realize that both were generated by a mind that precedes subject and object. We looked at how our relationship with the earth is conditioned by the duality of our minds. Our sense of self needs to be maintained by grasping, ignorance and aggression, all at the expense of the world.

! In the second class, we looked at basic goodness and sacredness: how these qualities come through in the gaps between thoughts. There is a primordial quality to experience on this level that is beyond the mundane world of gain and loss, good and bad.

! In the third class we looked at interbeing, and how language and concept create the illusion of separateness by naming and labeling things as though they were separate entities in the universe. In the Dharma Rain reading about the walk around the lake, one of the Westerners was cautioned about using the word “environment”, because it brought with it the Western sense that there are humans, and then there is “the environment”, as though humans and environment were separate. We also investigated tonglen practice as a way to feel directly the interdependence of things.

! In the fourth class we looked the atmospheric qualities of certain places and power spots from the points of view of externally existing presences and heightened sensory perception. We looked at these in terms of dralas and deities.

Discussion of the Readings

1. In the readings, what approaches to Buddhist activism do you resonate with? What approaches do you think are important for the future?

2. In the reading from Dharma Rain entitled “Challenges in Buddhist Thought and Action”, how do you think our cultural inheritance from the 19th century has influenced your feelings about the environment? What would it mean for you to find life direction and meaning in interdependence rather than independence?

Contemplation Question for Discussion in Dyads

How does one engage in social change without experiencing reaction, anger, frustration and burnout?

Compassionate Action

! It is said that a bodhisattva, an enlightened person who has vowed to release all sentient beings from suffering, can act without provoking destructive reaction. There are non-buddhist bodhisattvas who have similar capabilities. Some examples might be Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. How do they do it? ! The bodhisattva knows first hand the causes of world problems. She knows that

environmental and social problems arise from attachment to ego, and she recognizes the fears that cause that attachment and has compassion for those who are entrapped.

! The bodhisattva is able to address people in terms of their basic goodness and genuine aspirations. She does not address people through the terms of their confusion. She recognizes in all of us the instinct to be connected, gentle and present. This feels right when it happens, more right than being angry. She recognizes the longing for decent and sane human society. She respects the basic awake nature in all of us. She or he recognizes the interconnected nature of the world that touches us in our soft spots.This is collectively called bodhicitta, buddha nature, or awakened heart.

! Since all sentient beings have bodhicitta, that is a foundation in common that we can work with in terms of compassionate action. Having confidence in basic goodness and bodhicitta means that the bodhisattva can see how, through confusion, basically good motives can become distorted into unskillful actions. The bodhisattva cuts through confusion and connects people with their own basic goodness and awake nature.

! Lojong Practice: how to work skillfully in human society ! The basic notion of lojong practice is that we can make friends with the parts of

ourselves and our world that we would normally reject. ! The heart of the practice is tonglen, plus what are called slogans. These are little

sayings that can cause us to notice and then reverse habitual patterns, and cultivate

awakened heart, bodhicitta. This starts first in ourselves and then it can move on to effect others.

! Like tonglen, the slogans are revolutionary, in that they go against the grain of ego. This can be challenging. On the other hand, they open us up and we instinctively feel that that is good.

! There are dozens of these slogans, but some of the ones that are connected to compassionate action are particularly appropriate to working with social issues.

! With social issues, it feels as though there the are good and bad outcomes. Emotions run high, and resistance to change seems diabolically entrenched. For example: ! Business people often feel that the economy is the all-important driver of society.

Environmental concerns secondary. ! Conservatives are afraid of government encroachment in the guise of collective action.

They do not trust the government, and do not want to pay any more taxes to support common goals.

! Environmentalists see the environment as the foundation of everything. ! The central question as Pema Chodron puts it is “ how do we work with our actions and our

speech and our minds in a way that opens up the space rather than closes it down? In other words, how do we create space for other people and ourselves to connect with our own wisdom?” ! Most of the difficult situations that we find ourselves in are not emergencies: they

involve people that we will have to deal with over and over again. Therefore, one has to look beyond temporary victories. One also has time to connect properly and compassionately to people.

! It starts with loving kindness towards oneself: respecting our naturally awakened quality, our instinct to be connected in a gentle and compassionate way, and our longing to live in a decent society. This level is pre-belief, pre thought. When our own barriers come down and we connect with our own awakened and compassionate nature, we become less afraid of others. People who are fearful can be very defensive and rigid.

! There needs to be a way of becoming aware of the space between the situation and ourselves where there is no “here” or “there” in terms of battle. The slogans are a way to introduce that space into social discourse.

In order to transform bad circumstances onto the path, whatever you meet should be joined immediately with meditation. ! Whatever you meet should be brought into wakefulness. Bad circumstances show you

where you are connected and give you a chance to practice sending and taking, and recognizing thoughts as thoughts.

! People who are able to accommodate others gain respect and trust. On the basis of that, they gain respect from others and don’t have to force situations using anger.

! Drive all blames into oneself ! Often we encounter situations where there are repeated cycles of blame. Each cycle

has its supporting logic. Defensiveness and further blame go back and forth endlessly. When we are hurt we want to hurt back, driving all blames into the other.

! When you are in a situation of blame, taking the blame upon yourself stops the dynamic. When we are angry about injustice, our usual approach is to go to authorities and demand changes. This challenges their power causes them to erect defenses. Another approach is to approach the authorities as people, accepting the blame: “Maybe it’s my problem, but personally I find that this water doesn’t taste good”.

! This slogan is about working with as opposed against. It is based on cultivating kinship rather than separation. It is not about problem resolution where you have an outcome in mind. It is open-ended to whatever arises.

! Don’t ponder others. Don’t talk about injured limbs. Don’t malign others. ! These three slogans deal with arrogance. Thinking about other’s defects is a way to

build up oneself by comparison. ! Example: “I am the helper and you are the one who needs help.” This might

work, but only on a temporary basis. ! Sometimes we might say just enough to get people against someone, but not enough

for them to disapprove of us for slandering. ! One can build a fortress out of being an environmentalist: being right, being better,

feeling righteous. The other person is ignorant and misguided. This creates resentment and alienation.

! Refraining from outrageous conduct ! This is not about the conduct itself, but about the person who is doing it and the effect

that it has on separating people. You might get flamboyant in your helper role, coming from the idea of being superior person. This is illustrated by Pema Chodron’s example of the girl placing a flower into the barrel of the National Guardsman’s rifle: she didn’t look at him as she did it. Although the photograph of that incident became iconic, the guardsman felt that he had been used by the girl. Sometimes political action takes the form of making a big display, but it’s more about building one’s image of oneself rather than helping anyone. This is coming from the idea of being an environmentalist as opposed to being a person who selflessly wants to help the environment.

! Don’t seek other’s pain as the limbs of your own happiness. ! We are glad when troublemakers suffer: Example: The CEO of British Petroleum

loses his job after the oil spill, and we secretly take pleasure in that. We might even feel distaste when things are going well for such people.

! Asking the dharmapalas to help you in your practice ! Example: You make what seems to be a neutral statement and get a strong reaction

from others: this tells you something about your state of mind as others are reading it.

! Feeding the ghosts ! Refers to “ghosts” who create sickness and misfortune. ! We might take the attitude that “I have learned a lot from this disaster.”

Closing tonglen practice using environmental issues

Ecological crises raise many difficult and emotionally challenging issues. There are innumerable beings in the animal kingdom that suffer intensely. Whole species are disappearing. There is human suffering due to pollution and extreme weather. There are fellow humans who arouse our own anger with their consistent denial of corporate or social responsibility and their short sighted actions. There is our own depression and desire to turn away. All of these are fertile ground for the practice of tonglen. Tonglen is a way of training ourselves to stay open and act compassionately and intelligently when opportunities arise.