A Buddhist Approach to Saving the Planet

So welcome everybody, welcome to the small select group of people who are with us live, and also I know some people are going to be watching later on YouTube, so welcome to you as well. Namamitabhu. We have chosen the audacious title 'A Buddhist Approach to Saving the Planet,' but there is something audacious about about Buddhism. And when every Wednesday evening when we practice together, we recite the Bodhisattva vows: Innumerable are sentient beings, I vow to save them all. Me, one little person, vowing to save all sentient beings— that is also audacious. So there is this quality of ambition in Buddhism that can seem unrealistic. And yet there's something really important about that, setting our sights on a higher goal. And I think it's important in two ways. One, because it does orient us to something important, and it acts as a mirror for our own actions in the world. Am I contributing to saving all sentient beings, or am I doing things that are detrimental to saving all sentient beings? Am I harming all sentient beings? So it acts as a mirror. It shows us the reality of life as well as the ideal, and that's really useful. What I just want to spend a moment thinking about what saving all beings means in a Buddhist context, because whilst the Buddha was very compassionate and, for example, encouraged people to stop doing the ritual sacrifice of animals and instead sacrifice their own ego on the altars of the gods, giving up greed, hate, and delusion, saving the lives of countless animals, When Buddhists talk about saving all sentient beings, what they really mean is enlightening all sentient beings. And of course, to be enlightened, you have to be alive. So there is some element of keeping beings safe, keeping the environment safe for that to happen. But really, he's talking about— or Buddhist teachers, Buddhists and the Buddha are talking about a spiritual liberation when they talk about about saving all sentient beings. And what is a spiritual liberation? Just hearing the dogs grumbling in the background.

Should I go and check on those sentient beings?

You can too, yeah. I think they're probably okay. Spiritual liberation is bringing people more into the realm of love, and we do this by loving beings ourselves. So this is a good example. Satya loves the dog, so she's going to check that everything is okay. So the way to save— this kind of answers the question, what does saving sentient beings mean? Bringing them more into the field of love. But it also tells us how to save all sentient beings, simply to love them. It's both very easy and very difficult, because that is the nature of love. Sometimes it springs spontaneously and easy, and it's very easy to feel compassionate and kind towards things and to know what the right thing to do is for another being, for the environment. Sometimes, because of the knocks and bruises that we have received, our own love is less available, so loving others is more difficult. And the other challenge, of course, is to love wisely. We may well feel moved to compassionate action but not know what wise compassionate action is, which is a different sort of challenge. The Buddha was very clear. He said enlightenment is a bird with two wings, and the first wing is compassion and the second wing is wisdom. And if you only have one wing, you should have the wing of compassion, because compassion comes from the heart. And if compassion is flowing, well, you can learn to be wise with the mind. If you, if you make some compassionate action and it goes wrong, you can learn from it and become wiser. And then next time you do something more tuned in to what is actually required. But if compassion isn't there, all the wisdom in the world doesn't make any difference. So this is where I wanted to begin, with the audacity of the Bodhisattva vow, which I'll probably say more about, that audacity later, and saving all sentient beings means loving all sentient beings. It isn't just simply about caring for their material needs, but of course, when we love all sentient beings, we do want to care for their material needs. We do want them to have as much freedom as possible. We want them to be in good condition. So naturally, as we bring ourselves in relationship with the world, with the suffering in the world, We're moved to act, to create conditions in which all life can flourish. Yeah, so I kind of— I've touched on a number of different things there, and hopefully over the course of this conversation we'll pull some more of those things out and think about what that actually looks like for us as ordinary human beings in the world. But for now, I'm gonna see what Satya's got to say.

Let's see what I've got to say. Thank you, and if anyone doesn't know, I'm Reverend Satyavani and this is Reverend Kasparita, and we run the Malvern Amida Mandala Buddhist Temple. I know you lot know, but some people listening later might not know. I've been thinking about what it is that we do to save the planet, to save the world, and Caspar was speaking about the, the motivation, the energy, the fuel for acting in the world, and I'm curious right now about what that looks like for me, what that looks like for your average Buddhist, your average person. And when I left the room just now to check on our sentient beings, Ralph and Aiko dogs, the terrible whining was Aiko looking up at the sofa where Ralph was sitting with the bone that they found in the garden. They've managed to pull a chunk of it off—

I didn't know they'd brought it inside—

which they've managed to sneak into the house. It's a big bone, this bone, and that this is now the prized object. And we've only had Ralph, our second dog, for about a month now, so it's been very interesting to watch their relationship together, to see how they are negotiating between themselves. And something that happens very often is that one dog will get something and the other dog will want it. And even if we have two identical antler bones or toilet roll, empty toilet roll tubes or bones or whatever it is, if you give one to Iko, Ralph immediately wants that, that one, the one that's in his mouth, her mouth, and there's also quite a lot of swapping that goes on, so one of them will put their thing down for a second and the other will kind of dive in and take the prized object, and then the other one will be like, "Oh, I'll have that one then," even though they're exactly the same. So what does this have to do with saving the planet, with sentient beings, with Buddhism? So my form of Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, tells me that I and everyone are foolish beings of wayward passions, that we are driven by our greed, hate, and delusion, and that we bob like corks on the stormy, roiling turbulency of those passions that move through us. And watching the dogs, it's really, it's really obvious to see that in play. It's really obvious to see that when Casper arrives and he hasn't been around for a couple of hours, the dogs are both desperate to be nearest to him, so there's some squabbling that happens to see who can get in to be closer to him. There's the kind of the negotiation around Ralph's not the top dog, so he really should wait just a little bit away until Iko's greeted him properly, and sometimes he manages that and sometimes he doesn't. It's really obvious to watch them wrestle. All of their playing is a kind of variations on who gets to be on top and who, who gets the bone, who gets the prized object. So this is the place where we begin from as we go out into the world as Buddhists, We have to begin with knowing that we as individuals are driven by our greed, hate, and delusion, and that everyone around us is driven by theirs to a greater or lesser extent. But unless you know many Buddhas, then that's, that's, that's in the mix. For all of us. And so saving the planet means encountering this at every turn. It means encountering the grumpiness, the defensiveness, the jealousy, the— what's that word for when you want to grab onto stuff and hold it? That thing. The fear, the selfishness of us all. And it's tempting, I think, when you work in activism to divide people into two camps. This is happening a lot with racism at the moment, with, with current events, that there's the racists and they're over there, we know who they are because they say racist things and they're bad, and then the people over here, we're not racist, we're all right, we'd never be like them. And I think the same happens with capitalism with the use of the world's resources. There's, you know, there's those people over there that run the stinky factories and dig oil out the ground and invest in terrible funds, and then there's us, and we spend extra money on the sponge that we can use to do our washing up that just, you know, disappears into the earth rather than those horrible plastic ones that other people use. So there is that temptation that, well, certainly that I have, to divide people into kind of the goodies and the baddies, and that we're working on behalf of the goodies and we're going to overthrow the baddies. What I am discovering more and more as I step tentatively forwards into activism activism, it's a very new thing for me, it's just been not quite a year that I've been properly engaged, certainly in environmentalism, is just realizing how complex it is, how, how deeply we are conditioned, how rigid most of us are in our belief systems, how immovable most of us are, how little most people know about the things that we take for granted, and I think that if I'm not careful, that can, that can quite quickly overwhelm me, and I encounter the dogs squabbling because they're tired after a long day and their playing is getting more and more like fighting and they're making loads of noise and we can't hear the TV and I just, just feel overwhelmed and I just want to put them to bed separately in their crates and to not deal with them and to push it away. And that happens with the world, that when I engage in various forums with people who are making all sorts of snap judgments about environmentalism, or they're just certain about their view, which is that, you know, either there's no point us doing anything because China needs to change, or— what are the other classics?— there's no such thing anyways as climate change. All the things that I hear over and over again, where, you know, it's just political and there's just a a left-wing agenda. Sometimes those conversations can also feel overwhelming. Sometimes the small actions we take in the face of the world suffering just feel pointless and ridiculous. I'm taking quite a long time, is that all right?

Just leave me a few seconds.

You can have extra time afterwards because I'm kind of still reaching my point. I hope I'm getting to my point. So my point is that as a foolish being, as a pure lampadist, who is— who I'm motivated to help the Earth through loving her and through loving her creatures and loving her fellow humans imperfectly and sometimes I really don't love them, but that's where my motivation comes from. For me, the secret is to keep it very simple. So this morning, one of my offerings to sentient beings has been to go and check to see if the dogs are okay. After the call to you, I'm going to be going and filling up the bird feeder outside. I'm part— I'm involved with organizing a Black Lives Matter march, demo tomorrow in our local town, so I'll be getting in touch with a couple of people and seeing if they can speak. Yesterday I had a conversation with someone about what happened when I posted the event, and there was lots of racism. All we can do is the little simple things that the Buddha asks us to do, and trust that, trust that it is good to do little good things regardless of whether we can see it making any difference or not, whether whether we feel overwhelmed, whether we think there's any point, we just trust and we do the little things that are asked of us and we keep our ears open and we do our bit. And our bit, whoever we are, is very different. Some people are called to be in relationship with people in a particular way, some people are called Some people are called to do direct action, some people are called to create a garden. They're all very simple things, and these simple things help to create a pure land around us, which is the field of merit surrounding the Buddha, the beautifulness that naturally springs up around the Buddha. So I probably won't say anything else at all now because I've said plenty.

Okay, I love how helping to organize a protest is seen as a simple thing. It's like you've had an hour meeting before this talk and hours of doing things yesterday in preparation for it.

Fair point.

For me, that speaks to something about, well, what's simple for one person may not be for another one. What we're being invited to do is to take the step that's in front of us. Which is different for each of us. I also want to say something about— oh, it's really important, it is really important to recognize the greed, hate, and delusion in our own hearts and to take time to reflect on what am I personally contributing, how do I make things worse? What are my unconscious habits that contribute to these dangers that the world faces? And it's also really important to recognize that there is a difference in volume between what I am doing and what somebody who has billions of dollars invested in oil is doing. There is a qualitative difference in how we are affecting the world. And so for me, it's the middle way. It is something about how can I not fall into the trap of demonizing people, and yet also recognize that some people and institutions and structures are more harmful than others. Both of those things are true. And that is quite a complex idea to hold in mind, that in some ways we're all in the same boat because we're all human and we're all carrying karma, and we all know what it's like to be hurt and become defensive and, and carry the wounding of generations leading to us acting in harmful ways. We all have some experience of that, and yet some people their actions are more harmful than others. Both of those things are true. So it's about recognizing our own flawed nature. The karma that we personally collect and carry and act on, the harm that we create in the world, is really important. It softens our heart to the plight of other people, other people's suffering, and other people's selfishness, which allows us to feel compassion, love, respect for all sentient beings and all human beings particularly. But it's possible to love somebody and still draw a line underneath their behavior and say that this must change. You know, the phrase for Amida Buddha that's often used in Japan is 'Oyasama,' which means 'mummy daddy.' And a parent loves their child— this kind of archetypal parent loves their child unconditionally, but they also set boundaries and teach them right from wrong. And as, as spiritual activists, our practice is to ground ourselves in both of these things. Practice of loving all sentient beings and also holding to a clear morality, knowing the difference between right and wrong, or at least continually being curious about the difference between right and wrong. Some questions are very complex. To know what the, you know, for example, the HS2 railway is, our red thread by by an environmentalist who was pro-HS2, whereas I know a lot of environmentalists are against it, and it's very difficult to tease out the reality in that situation, but it's important to, even if we don't know what the answer is, to know that some outcomes are better than others and that we can still love all the players whilst keeping that in mind. And then I think I also want to say something about how it is for me in this time in the life of the Earth, as I deeply come into relationship with the suffering of the planet and occasionally touch on feelings of hopelessness and despair in myself over the last few weeks, reading more and more about how habitats are being destroyed, how some— that, you know, for example, the Brazilian government is taking advantage of lockdown, and companies in Brazil are taking advantage of lockdown, that all the protesters have gone home so they can just destroy swathes of the rainforest without any resistance. And then we are still being impacted by the coronavirus, so I've got my own feelings about that and empathy for people who have had deaths. You know, the government figures now are around above 40,000. Financial Times estimates puts it at around about 60,000 deaths from coronavirus in the UK. That's a lot of suffering in the world. And then in the last few days, or over the last couple of weeks, seeing really clearly, being brought into relationship with racial violence in the United States through those very powerful and disturbing and important images and videos that have been shared on social media in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. That's— this is a lot for my heart to carry. And I find in response to this that I do one of two things. The first thing is to stay on Twitter collecting as much information about everything as I can do, and as I'm doing that, feeling both more buzzy and more and more exhausted the more things that I take on board. And I believe that it's really important to pay attention to these things. And I also know for me it becomes compulsive, it becomes a way of— ironically, the more— if I feed myself, it's like if I feed myself really quickly, I don't have to sit with the suffering so much because I just touch on one thing and then there's the next and I kind of don't notice the impact until later when I'm completely exhausted and overwhelmed. That's one option, and sometimes I fall into doing that. The other thing that I do is my Buddhist practice. I find that I am saying more Nembutsu than I usually do. Nembutsu is the practice of taking refuge in the Buddha through saying the name of the Buddha, particularly Amida Buddha, the Buddha of infinite light, infinite love, we could say. So this is a religious practice, a spiritual practice that reminds me that there is a field of love that is available. Satya talked about the pure land being this field of merit around the Buddha. We can say it's a field of love wherever there is an awakened teacher, either physically manifest or the spirit of an awakened teacher that we kind of can tune into, but through remembering their presence around them— bless you— is a field of love. And my practice of saying Nembutsu reminds me, oh yeah, that's— that love is there. It doesn't just have to be the compassion that I find in my own heart. It doesn't just have to be the love that I find in my own heart. There is a love in the universe that I can lean into that supports me. And physically, as I say the Nembutsu, I feel my body changing and relaxing and settling onto the earth. And it allows me to deeply feel the sadness and the hopelessness, the despair, and also to feel deeply loved and held and moving back into feeling hopeful. Because if in the midst of that despair and hopelessness I can find myself being held in this field of love, then there is hope for everybody. You know, I know that as much as that experience, that place is available to me, it's available to everybody. And after I've kind of recharged myself in that way, sat with the suffering, sat with the love, then I can go back out into the world and take action. Whether that action is actually genuinely doing some proper research rather than just continually scrolling on Twitter, or going out and standing in solidarity with a group of people on an Extinction Rebellion march or Black Lives Matter protest, I'm then approaching those things with a different spirit. So for me, that's the really important thing that I wanted to say today, just noticing how I'm called to practice more in this time and the real benefit that that brings me. So we've covered a lot of ground this morning, from that sense of the audaciousness of trying to save all sentient beings, which for me links into what I was just saying now. Actually, it sounds audacious, but it isn't. Or it doesn't— when I come into that place where I'm practicing and I feel that I'm held by the Buddha's love, it no longer feels audacious because it's really clear on an intuitive level, on a heart level, that that Buddha's love is for everybody and it's available to everybody. And trusting in that means that, oh, I don't have to go and save everybody, they're already loved. I just have to kind of encourage them to rest in that field of love in the way that I can rest in that field. We've talked about the difference between wisdom and compassion, and, and that saving all beings simply means to love all beings. And naturally, when we love them, we want to take wise actions. We want to become resourced so we know how to create good conditions, to change the environment, to change the way that human beings treat each other. We talked about the importance of looking inside our own hearts and seeing how our greed and hate and delusion affects the world, and that also knowing that we carry those can soften our heart towards people who we might think of as on the other side of the fight, whilst also remembering that there are real differences. Some actions do have better and worse consequences. We talked about knowing that just taking the next step in your journey is enough, and that, that's different for everybody. That when we are held by love, that next step becomes really clear and obvious, and our job is simply just to step into it, and that wherever we are, that can feel like a very simple thing, however complicated it looks from the outside. And finally, just about trusting that regardless of how weighed down I am personally by all of this, there is a place that loves and supports me. That resources me to go back out into the world and take wise action again. If you want to find out more about that specific practice, you can look on our website at amidoandala.com, where there's lots about it. And of course, there's lots of other Buddhist practices and practices in other faith traditions that encourage people into Fields of Love. Namami to be.

Namami to be. We have some time for questions if there are any. So if you would like to ask a question, do unmute, but no pressure. No pressure.

I haven't got a question, just want to say thank you. It was really, really good. I was thinking when you said, when you talked about that, that the Earth suffers because of greed, hate, and delusion, and all of us have it. I came to think of an epiphany I had during the lockdown. I've been doing my morning walks and I'm trying to do it as early as possible so there's not any other people out. But one day lots of things happened and I ended up being at the park around 10 o'clock on a Sunday. It was completely packed and I was outraged about all the people being there. We're in lockdown. And later on I heard myself talking with someone and saying it's completely outrageous, the park was packed with people. And as soon as I said it, I realized, oh my God, I was there too. I saw all those people, I was actually one of those people in the park. And it was just funny. And then later I saw a clip from a beach somewhere completely packed with people now that the lockdown is over and people are going to the beach. And there was one being interviewed that said, and all of these people, "That's me, I did that too, I did that too." Yeah, I remember seeing that clip on the news.

Yeah.

So I think we forget that whatever we think the others are, it's just, you know, what we are ourselves. And there was another thing you said, Caspar, where you talked about that that obviously I do a lot for the environment, and then you make the comparison with some oil magnate and the damage he does to Earth is like tenfold worse, if not thousandfold worse. But he doesn't think that. Him in his world, because nobody ever look at themselves and go like, yeah, I'm really polluting the Earth here. You know, nobody does that. We all think that we're doing our utmost, and all of us think that we're doing the right thing. And I think that what the bodhisattva vows do for me— when I vow to save— the sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all— what that does to me is remind me of being humble because I just vowed to do something that is absolutely impossible. And, and that, that humbleness is, is for me very important to remember in every interaction I have with all people, other people. I can't judge them or think that they do things worse than what they actually could do. I'm sure all of us do the best that we can from the capacity that we have. And, and for me, that humbleness, it's, it's very, very important when we talk about, about the environment with other people. Because as you said, Satya Robyn, people are overwhelmed. As soon— like you were with the dogs, you're tired, just want to watch TV, and now the dogs are fighting and all that. That is where, where other people are when we come and say we should save the planet. It's overwhelming for them. So I think it's very important to keep that in mind, that when people— when the oil magnate does not do anything about it, there are very, very good reasons in his life for not doing it, and I'm no one to judge.

Absolutely, yeah, that is important to remember. I think I want to say something like Texaco knew about climate change in the 1960s and decided to keep drilling oil. So it isn't that they thought that what they were doing was good for the planet, but they thought it was good for themselves. And I trust that in their system, that doing what is good for themselves really makes sense because of the karma that they've had has led to this really self-protective structure that they carry with them. So it, it feels to them like maybe life or death. Either I have all this money or or I'm going to be obliterated. And, and that is really hard to find empathy with because they're not connecting with how it is for other people. They're really in a very tight, painful place, and which is completely repressed. So it's just the greed sits on top of that. Um, it is It is really important to be able to empathize with that and to understand that that comes out of their own suffering and their own karma that they carry. And also, that's what I say about the complexity, that both of these things are true at the same time. That, you know, it isn't that they think what they're doing is good for the planet. They know that it isn't, but they— but, and they've got what they think are very good reasons for keeping themselves safe first.

But again, a super important point in that is that it's not Texaco that does it. It's not them, it's individual people that together are justifying something. And that is what we need to keep this human, that it's not a 'they,' you know, because then we just do what is happening with the whole racism thing in the States right now, it's an us against them. It's not us against Texaco, it's individual people working at Texaco that are for some reason in their life not making a stand or decision, and we don't know it. I don't know any of them, so I don't know that, you know. I can just— the only thing I know is my impact and what I can do. And that might reach a person that works at Texaco that then will, you know, end working there and start doing other things. If I look at them as a them, then we have a problem.

I think that this is maybe a matter of where our energy lies, because I think that it's really important to hold on to that kind of empathy and not judging. I also am frightened about how quickly climate and ecological emergency is proceeding, and there are bodies of people who are responsible. There are bodies of people who could do something that might get us out of it. I don't know if it's too late or not. So for me, there's something important about saying, I think BP needs to make drastic changes. They are not doing well. I think that the government in this country needs to really consider what they're going to do about it. So I hear what you're saying, and I also think that sometimes Mandjushri's sword is necessary, and we need to say, yes, there's people that are suffering, and yes, they have their reasons, and this is not okay. If these people carry on making these decisions, we're all going to die. So for me, there's something that some people are called to a more radical form of action, and for me that's why my personal take on it is that it is necessary for people to really call out what's happening and to take actions that are arrestable or that come into the media in a more kind of powerful way.

You also did exactly what I was looking for because you made it into there are people at BP that are making decisions and that's the point. It's not BP, they can't get away with it because then we're back to the Ku Klux Klan hiding behind the sheets. Then it's a them and then there's safety in the numbers, you know, they are a they, it's Texaco and BP. If we say that there are human beings at BP and at Texaco that are making decisions every single day that is influencing all of us, and we need to reach them. Just like by saying that it's the Tory government that is reason to why 60,000 Brits are dying. I mean, one day in the UK, the same amount of people died in one day as we have had deaths in 3 months in Denmark because of the government. But if I say it's the government, then they can hide, you know. It's not the government, it's one person, and that person needs to be addressed.

Yeah, and I think that we're also talking about corrupt systems. So I think that it's not always just one person. I think that that person is a part of a system, like systemized racism. That infiltrates and that does need to be looked at as a collective. So I think for me there's importance in remembering individuals and saying this is, this is the body of people who have allowed this to happen, so we need to look at this whole body. So for me there's different levels of system. We've got parts inside ourselves, we've got individuals, and we have the system of BP or the government or the UK or the planet, and different people have different skills at different levels, and I think we need to go where we're called. I do think that it is important to look at systems sometimes.

Yeah, all right, thank you. Anyone, any comments from anybody else?

Thank you, that was really interesting. Thank you very much. Thanks, Hannah, I just about heard you, I think you said thank you. I did, yes, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for being here, it's good to have you here. It's really nice to— other people will watch this, but it's really nice to have people in the room, in the Zoom room as it were. Makes a difference.

I'd like to say thank you too, Pamela. I know exactly what you mean, because when I could go for walks, I would have that same reaction when I saw other people. There's all these other people here, and then of course I was one of those people there. So yeah, and I also share your view, Satya Robyn. Soraya Satya Robyn, about systems, because those systems are running this planet.

Yeah, it's a complicated issue, isn't it? It's very complicated. I think it's complicated and simple, so I think that back to what we were saying, there's something about really deeply thinking about these things and reflecting on them and having conversations and then just saying, well, what is the next right thing for me to do? What is the next small thing? And you were speaking, Penelope, about maybe organizing a sit on a roundabout. That's the next thing, and those kinds of actions are really important. They're really important to the people that do them, to the people that see them, to the people like us who hear about them.

Yeah, and something about we don't need to know what the exact right thing to do is or the perfect thing to do is, because if we're trying to work out— this is a bit of a problem sometimes that I see with activists, which we try so hard to work out what the exact right thing to do is that we end up not doing anything at all, or lots of, you know, or the conversation gets split and we kind of lose momentum. So actually being motivated by compassion and doing something imperfect is better because the spirit of the action is what's carried into the world as much as anything else.

Yeah, well, thank you very much for joining us this morning.

Namaste.

Namahamidabhu.

Namahamidabhu. I hope you all have lovely days. I know I'll see Liz and Hannah again