I believe we need to see what’s in front of us with such steady clarity that the spell we’ve been under finally shatters. This is so we recognize that we will be failed by anything or anyone we give allegiance to who uses their power to drive this system of destruction. Of course, we know that we are all compromised; for instance, we are beholden to a fossil fuel economy that is driving the destruction of our living systems. However, as we work to untangle ourselves from these dependencies, we should already be withdrawing our emotional investment and fidelity to those who actively wield their power to harm others.
All of this takes courage. I am grateful that my twelve years of monastic training emphasized consciously turning toward suffering. I’ve been reflecting on how the Buddha placed the Four Noble Truths at the heart of his path to liberation. While many “new age” spiritual practices focus on happiness, joy, and love, all of which are essential, there is a tendency in our secular Dharma scene to airbrush out the central importance of facing suffering.
… there is a tendency in our secular Dharma scene to airbrush out the central importance of facing suffering.
A deep shift happens when we confront our experience of suffering to identify its inner causes and mechanisms. We can’t always change the outer circumstances, and while we react to emotional, mental, and physical pain, the Buddha pointed to removing the extra suffering generated by that reactivity. The ability to do this creates inner space and, from that open awareness, the power to respond from wise reflection rather than our patterning rooted in fear, trauma, and the grasping and aversion of the conditioned mind. Ajahn Chah, the Thai meditation master, put it like this:
Know and watch your heart. It’s pure, but emotions come to color it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch feelings and the reactivity of the mind that comes, and investigate them before you react.
As Dharma practitioners, we train ourselves to do this inwardly. Now, we must apply that same focused awareness outwardly. The Buddha radically transformed the central systems of his time, bending them toward compassion and fairness. In that same spirit, we can learn from longstanding non-violent social justice and liberation movements alongside contemporary system change visionaries to help us map ways to dismantle the systemic machinery of colonization and oppression.
Meanwhile, as social unrest and disruption increase, so will state violence. We saw this already when militarized police violently suppressed pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities. And as daily, academics, journalists, TV presenters, medics, humanitarians, and any speaking out, have been silenced, arrested as “terrorists,” canceled, threatened, and have lost their jobs, not only in the U.S. and U.K., but across the globe. The merging of Israel and the U.S. has deeply entwined us all with the violence of empire in its final, desperate attempts to dominate the globe.
Over this last year, the extreme genocidal violence unleashed by Israel has been normalized by those in power, making it easier to deploy similar brutality elsewhere to crush dissent. As this incoming U.S. regime has already indicated, we can expect the mass repression of “dissidents” to escalate. What was once hidden is now painfully clear: the forces shaping the U.S. have turned this country into an imperialistic instrument of military power, thwarting the possibility of a cohesive, just nation respected by its people.
Initiatives like “Cop Cities,” like the one proposed for Atlanta, are spreading across the U.S. Police forces, not only here but worldwide, are trained and militarized by Israel, which is now clearly seen as a brutal apartheid state. With this and all else going down, if you feel fear and dread, it’s completely justified. These times have become, quite frankly, terrifying. The powers that be have been openly flirting with their willingness to use nuclear weapons, revealing a chilling indifference to the prospect of millions, or even billions, dying or displaced by the escalating impacts of global war.
These ongoing wars, genocides, invasions, and political and military coups are deeply tied to the most daunting threat of our time: climate collapse. Offshore from Gaza lies an oil and gas field worth billions of dollars, resources that rightfully belong to Palestine. Yet Israel has no intention of allowing Palestinians to benefit from this resource. Israel has even declared that all rainwater belongs to them, not the Palestinians. This arrogance and extractive entitlement drives our collective demise. We should now see “climate collapse” as a politically whitewashed term and instead, each time it’s used, see it as muted code for what we are truly facing–mass extinction.
These ongoing wars, genocides, invasions, and political and military coups are deeply tied to the most daunting threat of our time: climate collapse.
The stakes could not be higher. This fast-moving global war is really about who controls the planet’s future. A few short years ago, around the time of the Paris Accord, there was a glimmer of hope. But now, the fossil fuel industry has made it clear they have no intention of facilitating a rapid transition to a green economy–quite the opposite. Instead of helping, the oligarchs have fortified their bunkers, kept private jets on standby, and readied militias. With few exceptions, they care little for the rest of us. They believe they can own it all.
However, while this incoming regime will put us all in grave danger, it also offers us a rare opportunity to see, with crystal clarity, the agenda and intent of those who seek to run this planet solely for their own crazed ideologies, eccentric aims, and narcissistic benefit.
Behold this psychopathic, heartless gaze of the deadly machinery of oligarchic colonial capitalism. Behold its decaying, soulless, craven, narcissistic, violent, and ugly face. Behold its utter lack of beauty, grace, sanctity, poetry, love, and wise counsel.
This is a machinery designed to destroy and desecrate all for profit and power. Behold it all–and resist.
Read the full essay: Revolutionary Spirituality: Navigating the Collapse of Empire and the Fight for Collective Liberation. Reprinted here with permission.
