Satya Robyn leads a Buddhist practice session exploring denial, climate apathy, and activism. Caspar reads Jamy's reflection on collective denial about climate change. The group chants, takes refuge vows, and discusses how Internal Family Systems therapy and compassion can help us face what we're avoiding.
Chapters
Good morning everybody, lovely to have all been in the garden this morning, apart from Philip who might have been in his garden but not ours unfortunately. Today we will begin with a Dharma glimpse by Jamy, which Caspar will read out.
Namamitabhad.
So thank you for Jamy for sending this in. He's at work today, unfortunately, otherwise I'm sure he'd be reading it himself. The heart of the matter. How do you explain the phenomenon by which many of us remain emotionally indifferent to a threat such as climate breakdown that could easily extinguish the human race and all life on Earth? When the evidence is as clear as it could possibly be, why do we continue to live as if everything is okay? Is it a form of collective nihilism, simply a refusal to care Or is it an apathetic response to the overwhelm of consumerism, where we literally haven't got space in our distracted minds for anything that disrupts the continuity of the capitalist mentality? Maybe a bit of all of them. How do we hold the things that we claim to value the most—family, love, friendship, etc.—in balance with the fact that the conditions we will face in the next 10 years or so as a result of our inaction most probably will not be conducive to the maintenance and continuation of them. Maybe we haven't got that far with the process of accepting the facts yet. As another war rages and greed and excess drain the life force out of our planet, what am I left with? What am— what I am left with is a lot of questions. Maybe there can be no rational explanation as to why, as a society, we're incapable of a proportionately empathetic response to this catastrophic situation. If Russia invaded England tomorrow and wreaked the same havoc and destruction here as they are in Eastern Europe, mothers would be running for shelter with their children, desperate to protect them from the threat. Everyone else would be instantly mobilized in a united effort to repel the aggressors. Yet when we are told beyond any doubt that the ecological threat we face will mean the same level of harm, perhaps even worse, being inflicted upon us and future generations, somehow it doesn't register as urgent enough to take serious action. We sit back and wait for the cavalry to save us. But the cavalry are distracted and incentivized towards continuing the carnage no matter what the consequences. Business as usual at all costs. It is in our nature as humans to destroy ourselves and each other, of that there can be little doubt. Yet it is also in our nature to be peaceful, loving, and extremely strong and resilient. When we know that what we all want deep down is love, peace, and some form of security, how do we manage to reach those depths and nurture these basic goodness instincts in the face of our base survival drives and the subsequent onslaught of fear? Violence and manipulation that we're all exposed to? The answer, as I have come to understand it, is that we have to work through the layers of angst and frustration, fear and uncertainty, in order to tap into our deeper nature, like penetrating the armor to get through to the softer bits. There's no shortcut or quick fix. We must go through the pain in order to get over it. Buddhism invites us to take a deeper look at reality, which more often than not begins within ourselves. It shows us how to stand firm and even grow roots that will help us to withstand the mayhem that we collectively unleash on the world whilst acknowledging its deeper origins. It shows us that every effect has a distinct cause and that we are capable of taking control of the forces within us that crystallize in the experiential world as all of our worst fears. Namamitabhu. Thank you, Kastha. Thank you, Jharmey. Thank you, Jharmey.
And all of the Dharma glimpses that we read out go on to our website under the Dharma glimpses section, so if you want to catch up with the rest of it, you can. I'll do that later today. So what a beautiful morning, and hopefully you can pick up on some of the spirit of the garden that me, David, Kameran, Casper have brought into the shrine room. And Angie also brought some flowers in yesterday, so they're also here. Maybe as we sit this morning we could just listen to the birds, do some birdsong meditation. Notice the sound of the birds, notice the traffic, notice any other sounds, and just let them kind of wash through you. Notice when you feel distracted or when thoughts come up or you're distracted by your body. And notice that. Let them go and just come back to what you can hear. And then we will chant something which I will decide later. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So move into some chanting together, and today we will chant to conjure Taishi-ji. Amitābha Buddha is traditionally flanked by Guanyin. We have a shrine for her over there, and Taishi-ji on the right there. Taishi-ji is also known as Mahāsthamaprapta, and also is depicted in the wall hanging just above Izzy. And Tai Chi Chi, I was introduced to him as— him/her— as embodying courage and embodying creativity. So when we call out to Tai Chi Chi, you can imagine that those qualities are kind of rubbing off on you, whichever one you need the most, or maybe both. And the words are Namo, like I call out to, like Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Tai Chi Chi Bosat. And Bosat is just short for Bodhisattva. So Nammo Tai Chi Chi Bosat. And it's the same tune for the Kwan Yin chant, which you will know, I'm sure.
No need to be. Nammo Tai Chi Chi Bosat.
Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat.
Namotai shi chi bo sat.
Namotai shi chi bo sat.
Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa. Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa. Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sa. Namotai shi chi bo sa. Namotai shi chi bo sa. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat.
Namotai shi chi bo sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sa. Namotai shi chi bo sa.
Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa.
Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa. Namah Tai Chi Chi Bo Sa.
Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat. Namotai shi chi bo sat.
Namah Tai Chi Ji Bursaat!
Namotai Shichi Bosatsu. Namotai Shichi Bosatsu. Namotai Shichi Bosatsu. Namah Tai Chi Chibu Saat! Namotai shi chi bo sat namo tai shi chi bo sad namo tai shi chi bo sak namotaishi chipo sa— —namotasishichi bosat namotsaishi khiposa! Namah tai shi ji bo sat namo taishi jibo sad namoh tai shi ji bo sam namotai shiti bosat namothaishi chibu— Namaste! Shanti bhosajam. Namo Tai Shi Ji Bo Sad.
For refuge I go to the Buddha.
For refuge I go to the Buddha.
Namo Buddhaya. For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to Dharma— Namo Dharmaya! For refuge I go to Sangha—
for refuge I got some sangha—
Namu Sanghaya! With faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may not take life—with faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may not steal; I pray that I may not steal— With faith in The Three Jewels .
—with Faith In The 3 jewels...
...and avoid wrong-speech! <LYRICS>I PRAY THAT I MAY AVOID WRONG-SPEECH.</LYRIC> ...With "Faith" And 'The three jewells' . I Pray That I May Avoid Intoxication? . I pray that I may avoid intoxication. No blame. No blame. Be kind. Be kind. Love everything. Love everything.
Innumerable are sentient beings. We vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are diluted passions. We vow to transform man more. Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings. We vow to transform faster than more.
Infinite is the Buddha's way.
We vow to fulfill it completely. Namaste.
So listening to Jamé's Dharma glimpse makes me think about one of the three poisons, which is ignorance or delusion, alongside greed and hate. It's always for me been the poison that I've been a bit more confused about. Greed and anger are quite easy for me to understand, that we either want to pull things towards us or push things away in order to protect ourselves from the knowledge of impermanence or the fear of nothingness or kind of building ourselves up and holding ourselves together. And denial is something that I have had a long relationship with, both in myself and in various other arenas. First of all, in the realm of addiction and the, uh, the idea that in order to be in a full-blown addiction, you have to have a lot of denial. They say that alcoholism is a disease of denial. Um, and then in the arena of veganism and the denial that I was in for a long time about the suffering involved in, um, the dairy industry and the egg industry. And now in the climate crisis, the, the, uh, the denial that I was in until 3 years ago, and that many— and that I move in and out of still, and that many people are still protected by. Um, and since, uh, studying Internal Family Systems, the, the way of working the therapeutic way of working that I now have, I feel, uh, much softer towards my own denial and other people's denial because I see it for what it is now, which is a necessary protection. It's a necessary protection from the pain of the world, or the pain of parts of us that, that may threaten to overwhelm us if we don't do something with them, if we don't put them in a cupboard or put a layer of bubble wrap around them or keep them far away from ourselves. And in my old days of being a therapist, I would see it as a kind of a a success, or I'd feel proud of being able to break through denial to get to the vulnerability and the sadness and the trauma. And now I can see how much— I'm laughing, but it's not funny— I can see how much damage I did by not respecting that protection. And I have people that have confirmed that to me who, who, you know, are working with me now and worked with me a long time ago and feel very different about about coming to sessions because, um, because there's no point in pushing through denial. I often talk to my clients about, uh, as denial or any protection as being like bouncers at a club, you know, like big beefy, uh, efficient bouncers. And we know what happens if you try to sneak past bouncers. They don't take to it very kindly, and they drag, you know, they'd be made— depends on the club, but they might drag you out by the, by the ear, because that's their job, is that they're protecting something. So what do we do when we want to heal something, or when we want to face something, or when we want to when I want to help people to wake up to what's happening, we speak very nicely to the bouncers and we ask them what their job is, and if they weren't doing that job, if, you know, if they went off to have a cup of tea, what's their worry? What might happen if we got in? And they, they know, they, they know that it's usually that we'll be overwhelmed by emotion, but it might be that we'd have to change our life in a way we don't want to, or we'd have to feel some shame, which is a horrible thing to feel and we'll go to all lengths to avoid. And we slowly allow the bouncers to trust us, to trust the person asking the questions and the person feeling compassion for the bouncers and for the whatever it is that's being protected. And over time, they, they do learn to trust us, and they step aside willingly, and they let us go in, and then we can help, or then we can act then we can feel, we can begin to feel the grief of what we're doing to the world and use that as fuel. But the aim is never to remove all the protection because we couldn't live like that. It's too much. The country has recently been through an experience of feeling for people in Ukraine and that, that yes, we have felt that more than we felt the other wars that have been going on for a long time in other parts of the world, but that's because there's something that's just broken through that protection, and it's good to feel it. But after a while, you can see that people have to continue with their lives, and the protection kind of comes back up. So I don't know if the Buddha would agree with me here, because part of our work as Buddhists is transforming the three poisons, allowing ourselves to be more and more open-hearted. But I think he probably would agree with me that it's not helpful to rip to rip it away, but instead to just get curious about what's going on, to notice those little bits of feeling we have, to keep being gentle and kind to ourselves and to other people because we are where we are and they are where they are, and trusting that the Buddha Satya Robyn is always there, slowly encouraging us to relax and allow light in to those parts of us that have been shut away. So Hooray for denial, and hooray for the occasional breaking through of denial. And just a final bit of good news, certainly for me, when I was in a place where I could let go of some of my denial, it changed my life for the better. And that's not often— it's not easily understood by people who are on the other side of the denial. I really want people to understand when I write about activism that it's one of the best things that's happened to me. But what people often see is me doing strange things and being vulnerable and And they're kind of like, oh, thank you. Thank goodness you're doing it and I'm not doing it. And I should get better at saying this. It's really good. Like, come, come and do some and see, because it's real and it's true. And it's a place where there's a lot of happiness and companionship and hope. And yeah, come on in. What do they say? Come on in, the water's lovely. What's another phrase? The water's something. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, come on in, the water's really great. Is it lovely? Come on in, the water's warm. Namaste.
Someone help Kema up.
Maybe don't do a full bow today, Kema.
Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu.
Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu.
Blessed by Haman's father's light, may we care for all living things on the holy earth.
Amen.
