Nikayla: I’m curious to hear what’s on your heart, what’s on your mind right now at this moment?
Dekila: Speaking for myself, I’m most struck by the two very different kinds of leadership at display in our country, and even in our global society right now. One of them is rooted in community and faith, and a sense of accountability to people. The other kind of leadership is totally opposite, in which people are supposed to feel accountable to the leader, and the leader is accountable only to themselves.
The first kind of leadership transformed the whole world. Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and that makes me think about how the Civil Rights Movement had several leaders like him, which created a ripple effect of blessings. For example, a hundred years ago, the idea of universal human and civil rights just didn’t exist. Most people around the world had no idea that they were accorded any kind of rights. Now, at a fundamental level, most of us are lucky enough to know that we are supposed to have civil rights. The fight for Black and brown people’s rights in the US actually had a ripple effect of blessings that I feel the rest of the world rarely gives thanks for. But, all of us owe a deep debt of gratitude to the civil rights movement in the US for normalizing racial and other kinds of equality.
Right now, it may seem like the second kind of leadership has prevailed: a populous autocratic leadership, powered by money and powered by power. It’s neoliberal to the core, and by which I mean, it’s dismantled a lot of rules and regulations that exist to protect democracy. I’m struck by how this is the kind of leadership presented to us as the kind of leadership that matters and what real power looks like. We’re told that we should emulate this kind of leadership. Many people fall for it. Many vulnerable people grow to believe that this is the real and right kind of leadership – especially those of us who have been harmed enough in our lives to believe in concepts like the survival of the fittest, which I find to be the most hyper-individualistic worldview and, which leads to the I have to get mine kind of attitude.
We’re in a really long marathon. The only way we get anywhere is with the kind of leaders whom we love deeply and who deeply love us.
But for those of us who grew up knowing that we would not be alive right now if not for the altruistic behavior of many, many people, beginning with our parents, it’s worth taking a deep breath and remembering that we know what transforms the world for the better. We know what long term change looks like. We know that it’s possible what we do now actually changes the world for the better a hundred years from now.
This is not a chess game. The king doesn’t topple over and then someone is crowned the victor. This is not a short race. We’re in a really long marathon. The only way we get anywhere is with the kind of leaders whom we love deeply and who deeply love us. We have to create a kind of atmosphere and community that allows these leaders to emerge. Each one of us can help make that possible. It’s not something we can wait on someone else to do. So all of yesterday, I found myself thinking about these two kinds of leaders, and how important it is that we talk about the community-based leadership model as something that is actually a part of our Dharma practice.
Nikayla: How does one integrate community-based leadership into Dharma practice?
Dekila: Many of us were taught that Dharma practice is something done internally and in private, and because we live in samsara and samsara is emptiness, we should observe from a distance what is happening around us. We don’t actually get involved. We don’t dig ourselves into and cover ourselves with the messy. We stay above it. We stay aloof. I know many Western Buddhists who feel this way and it’s worth pointing out that usually, these people occupy a privileged position in their society. Sometimes, I have to push back and say, there is a reason why we use the word practice. We’re practicing for something. We’re practicing in these private, safe, curated spaces so that we can go out into the messy world and still lead with that compassion that we’re supposed to inculcate with our practice. No matter how difficult or messy things get!
I think how we really measure the strength of our practice is by how we show up in community and in our relationships.
Nikayla: I’m really hearing something here around, if you’re not embedded in a community, then the Dharma practitioner may never perform their practice.
Dekila: Yes. And oh how the internet is so deliberately seductive here! The internet gives us a facade of community. Sometimes, we’re lucky and we’re actually able to form communal bonds online because of interests or overlapping areas of care, but for the most part, the internet just allows you to perform all your outrage and extreme emotions. Then, you’re channeled towards a particular direction, towards wherever your outrage and extreme emotions lead you, into a place where all the clicking is making money for someone else.
Nikayla: To go back to your point about the two kinds of leaders, we really live in a time where leaders rise on the internet, and they’re not accountable to anyone but themselves. They may not ever have an in-person interaction or a two-sided conversation with their “followers.”
Dekila: Yes, absolutely. In your email, you asked me about Mount Kanchenjunga.
Nikayla: Yes, I asked why you begin so many presentations with a slide and introduction to this mountain?
Dekila: It’s because I come back again and again to this question: what roots me? Who am I accountable to? When I begin my talk speaking of Mount Kanchenjunga, I’m immediately grounded as a human being. At the core of my identity and no matter where I go, I am conscious that I am from the Himalayas. That’s what roots me, how I’m birthed into being. And I’m accountable to the land that I belong to and my community in Sikkim, which is where I grew up. At the age of 14, I became an environmentalist because of the hydropower dams that were destroying the sacred sites of the Lepcha community, who are Indigenous to Sikkim. All around the world, Indigenous communities have done very little, almost nothing, to contribute to environmental and climate issues. Yet, these communities carry the burden of the environmental and climate crises.
And so grounding in that sense of accountability means that I must assess my performance as someone who creates and runs environmental and climate programs and functions as a public intellectual. As an anti-capitalist, how should I assess how I perform? It cannot be money and growth for me when anti-capitalism is about quality, not quantity. So the most important question about my work – creating and running projects, giving public talks, and writing – has to be: who benefits? For me, it’s important to be able to answer with – communities like mine that did not contribute to this crisis, but are suffering for it. The people who trust me and whom I trust in return, the Indigenous communities I work with, the faith leaders in my network, my project partners, and my team – I have to have a sense of accountability to them.
Nikayla: I wanted to ask about Earth-based practice. I know so many people, including myself, who are very interested in exploring spiritual practice with the land, with the-more-than-human, but are afraid of appropriating Indigenous traditions or practices. Earth-based practices can be so powerful and transformative, and I’m wondering if you have any thoughts to share on how people can respectfully and authentically engage with these practices?
Dekila: I am a born and brought-up Tibetan Buddhist and we have a lot of practices that are Earth-based, especially in Sikkim. In the Tibetan Buddhist language, the word we often use in land-based practices is translated into supplication. We supplicate to the spirits of these landscapes. One of the challenges with these practices – that are sometimes referred to as land-based healing practices – is that they are very easy to appropriate.
These practices have incredible and immense healing power, but the ritual itself is just the tip of the iceberg. What matters more is your worldview. If you believe Nature is alive while you are participating in an Earth-based practice, that’s going to have a different kind of impact compared to someone who does not believe Nature is alive but really likes the performance of the ritual itself.
I think the first step to answering that question is doing a little inner work, and asking yourself: what is Nature to me? How is it separate, or how is it a part of me? Where do I genuinely believe not just that Nature is alive, but that Nature is powerful? You don’t necessarily need the ritual to invest in that kind of exploration. I think there are aspects to Earth-based practices that anyone can do, but first and foremost, before even doing the ritual, you should ask yourself: what is my relationship with Earth? How do I determine my relationship to Earth?
I know there are folks with mixed race or European heritage that may be reading this and wondering where it leaves them. There are many Earth-based practices in European traditions. All cultures have Earth-based practices, so investigating why we are drawn to certain cultural practices versus others is also part of the process. Why am I attracted to a certain kind of ritual over others when Earth-based rituals exist in every tradition?
It really is a personal journey to find out what feels true for us in terms of how we communicate with the land, or how we perceive the land communicating with us.
I say I am a child of the Himalayas. What I mean by that is that the bones and ashes of my ancestors are scattered there, which has deep meaning for me. Ultimately, I want my bones and ashes to rest there too. That is where I want whatever physical remains of me to go, whenever the time comes for me to move on, into whatever that new I is. My connection to that specific land feels sacred.
That kind of visceral connection with land is more important than land-based healing practices and rituals. Ask yourself: what is land connectedness? Where do you feel it most? Where are you one with the land? Where is the barrier the thinnest? Where is it that you feel the land speaking to you? Is the land alive for you? If so, why? Why not? These are all necessary steps to take before you even get to the practice. If you’re jumping this process of investigation right into practice, then consider why that performance is so compelling to you? You really have to do that inner work to think about why the ritualistic performance is more compelling than the actual relationship with land.
I don’t see eco as an addition to Dharma. If we are doing the Dharma right, there is an ecological aspect to it automatically. We are a part of Nature – ecology surrounds us every second.
Nikayla: In my experience, there’s a level of trust you need to have with yourself to experience the experience as true and real.
Dekila: Maybe one way to think about it, more than just is the Earth speaking to me or what is the Earth communicating is to ask: what am I capable of hearing? Let’s go ahead and assume the Earth is communicating all the time. I mean, at best, we are like an ant to a mountain or to a river in terms of how we are perceived by the Earth. Think about what time is to a tree compared to a human and that they, like every living force on the planet, are making sense of the world and communicating in their own way. So, the question then becomes – what are we tuning in to hear? This framing takes away the self-doubt in many ways because our role isn’t to respond, it is to just be a witness and to listen.
Nikayla: Almost like tuning into stations on a radio, that is, if you get the dial off your thoughts.
Before we slip away further into this wonderful topic, I have to ask you: we’re meeting in this emerging field called Ecodharma. This word means different things to different people. What does Ecodharma mean to you?
Dekila: I don’t see eco as an addition to Dharma. If we are doing the Dharma right, there is an ecological aspect to it automatically. We are a part of Nature – ecology surrounds us every second. Dharma practitioners would not exist if Nature was not here. We could not exist for much more than ten minutes without oxygen in our lungs! Every necessary aspect of our lives – oxygen, water, food, clothes, housing – is all generated from Nature. And so the idea that we would take something like the Dharma, the path, and then separate that from Nature makes no sense to me. If anything I’d reverse it and say, ecology is the dharma to me.
I became an environmentalist because I’m a Buddhist. Everything I was taught about compassion and interdependence by my mother and my grandmother (both Buddhist nuns), and by the great lamas in my tradition, I observed in the natural world. And, everything I studied in the field of Environmental Science reinforced the magnitude of compassion I was taught was all around me. Take the water cycle as an example. Just for a second, consider how incredible that is – that water comes down as rain, collects all over the surface of this planet, transpires and evaporates into the form of clouds and eventually produces rain again. How could it be anything but the widest expression of compassion, giving life to billions and billions of beings, generation after generation, for eons and eons? How can we say the Dharma is something separate from that?
To me, it just doesn’t make sense that we would take Dharma and ecology and introduce a dualism between them. But I grew up in a remote wild part of the Himalayas as a child and that probably has a lot to do with my perspective!
Nikayla: The nondualism of dharma and nature, humans and nature, is really captured quite neatly in the concept you recently co-authored a paper on, deep resilience.
Dekila: When I designed the Loka Initiative, I invited over 60 faith leaders, culture keepers of Indigenous traditions, scientists, community leaders, and experts into the design process. From the very beginning, our vision was that inner, community, and planetary resilience are all connected. You have to work on all three because they’re interdependent. Focusing on social resilience without thinking about the mental and emotional wellbeing of individuals, well, that just doesn’t work. Focusing on household resilience and economic wellbeing without thinking about the community or the planet, well, that doesn’t work either. Focusing solely on one field of resilience hasn’t worked for us in the last 50, 100, 200 years.
One of the realizations for me over the last few years of working with scientists, scholars, and community experts on the interconnectedness between these three fields, is that we actually need a new term. Deep resilience is the equal and simultaneous prioritization of inner, community, and ecological resilience.
This came out of lengthy conversations and events that explored the questions: how did the Anthropocene unfold, and what do we need to get out of it? What do we need to change about how we function in society, no matter the role we play? What is the vision and vocabulary that allows us to create a future where the planet and all life thrives along with us?
I see a lot of folks investing in creating the best possible space for themselves to do their practice. It’s quite lovely. People will go out and buy the perfect Buddha statue. I’ve done it. I have this perfect orchid in my prayer room. If we’re applying systems concepts to ourselves, then we must ask, what have I done to replicate this action in the rest of my life? What have I done to create safe space for other people? Beautiful, safe spaces for other species? We do it for ourselves, and then go no further.
Deep resilience is about the constant embodiment of our values, no matter who or where we are. It’s about expanding that circle around the individual so that our actions are also creating safe, beautiful spaces for the community and the planet.
Nikayla: So let me clarify – it’s like taking care of myself the individual, and then myself the community, and then myself the planet?
Dekila: Yes, it comes back to: if Nature is alive, Nature is a part of us, and if we are strongly connected to Nature, then it’s effortless, isn’t it? To be able to think about what the land needs, and apply that in every sense. To be able to pause and listen. Maybe you don’t hear anything, but you’re still investing in pausing and listening.
Nikayla: Might a helpful inquiry be how can I take care of Earth-self, or what does my Earth-self need? And this as an Earth-based practice?
Dekila: Yes, hugely!
To go back to Loka, an important part of the initial vision was exploring and investing in the question, how do you build inner resilience? We’re building resources and leading research right now looking at inner resilience practices, especially for environmentalists, BIPOC, young people, and so on especially in light of eco-anxiety, climate distress, and other ecological emotions. The other arm of Loka is community work, building community-based projects with faith and Indigenous communities that have mostly been left out of the mainstream environmental movement. We work with evangelical preachers, Tribal elders, knowledge holders, and youth in Wisconsin, Tibetan Buddhist monastics, and other leaders.
This is all to say, I couldn’t do the deep resilience work without the community work. The community work keeps the deep resilience work grounded, clear-eyed, and accountable. And it’s the community work that really holds the potential for deep resilience. We cannot make the planet or the individual resilient if the community is not.
Think about the role of the community when it comes to disaster preparedness and recovery. You as an individual can decide that in order to be safe, you will stock up on food and water, but what if your energy is on the grid? How safe you become is dependent on how safe the grid is. How safe you are is based on how safe the roads are, how accessible the hospital is, and if there is a hospital at all.
Survival requires interdependence, which is at least one reason why it’s important to invest in community resilience – and community-based jurisdiction over their own preparedness and recovery.
This disconnect and hyper-individualism that exists, and is growing here and around the world, really seduces us into believing we, as individuals, have control over everything. If we learn anything from Buddhism, it is that everything is impermanent and control is an illusion.
Nikayla: Are there any examples of community resilience you’ve found particularly inspiring?
Dekila: I feel very privileged to have partnerships with tribal communities, and I’m really struck by just how thoughtful and well-designed elder care programs are in some of the tribes I work with. Many times, tribes have actually made this a priority within their own reservations and even across reservations.
I’m always inspired by this architectural concept called Designing for Access. Instead of designing for people who have money and power, even if those are the people that hired you, the ultimate principle that drives your design is creating and increasing access for the most vulnerable. It turns out that when you increase access for disadvantaged folks, you increase access for everyone else.
Deep resilience is about the constant embodiment of our values, no matter who or where we are. It’s about expanding that circle around the individual so that our actions are also creating safe, beautiful spaces for the community and the planet.
Applying this principle to resilience building and community work would mean when we are thinking about rebuilding or retrofitting for disasters, we ask ourselves: who is most vulnerable and how do we make it easy for them instead of what is most convenient and cost effective? When you design for the vulnerable, you’re actually preparing and adapting to future disasters because you’re anticipating and designing for how things will likely change.
Nikayla: Before we wrap up, I really like to end with visions of the future. You’re already speaking to possibilities and imaginations, but I’m curious to hear about what a deeply resilient version of us might look like?
Dekila: I imagine a future where community activities are non-transactional and non-capitalist. I am inspired by the rituals and activities I grew up with as a child. For example, in my Bhutia community in Sikkim, there is a tradition called bhyakey. Basically, when someone is sick, dying, or gives birth, people in the community just drop stuff off at their home. Two kilos of oil. A bag of rice. A chicken or two dozen eggs. The mother of the household takes note of what is being dropped off, and the next time an event like this happens to the gift-giver, they give back. If their family received two dozen eggs, they give two dozen eggs plus something more. They actually calculate for inflation within the system! People give what they can and give more if they have extra but there isn’t an expectation necessarily. In this way, whether it’s a loss or a gain in the family, the cost of whatever is happening for one household is shared by the wider community.
Often when I talk about degrowth, people really feel afraid or become aghast, especially in America, where people associate a circular economy based on degrowth with poverty and sorrow. As if we’ll have to go back to the caves and wear tattered clothes. But, I come from a community where communal care is still strong and where the rituals are set up so that everyone has some access to communal wealth. And, moreover, there are feasible applications of degrowth now at various scales, including Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, which have been applied by cities like Amsterdam.
I’m not saying collectivist societies have no problems. But there are important lessons to learn from societies that are nurturing all of us, and not just nurturing a few of us at the expense of most of us.
When I think about a resilient future, this is what I imagine. If we are thriving, it’s because we are all thriving. Not a few of us, not some of us. We all thrive together.
