Forms and Opportunities for Engaged Practice
Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. Environmental despair is a poison every bit as destructive as the methylated mercury in the bottom of Onondaga Lake. But how can we submit to despair while the land is saying "Help"?
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
No small part of our challenge is the pervasive poverty of agency. How often do we hear, including from ourselves, “but I’m just one person”? Yet both Dharma and sociology disagree. Our words and actions matter so much and indeed they are all we have.
Yet whether or not our actions make a big difference that we can actually see, feel, and touch is, in a way, none of our business. Our opportunity is to meaningfully respond. We can speak in ways that actually help. We can act in ways that are deeply rooted, skillful, strategic, and unattached to specific outcomes.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
- Nikayla Jefferson
One Earth Sangha’s suggestions for how to get started on taking action.
Current Action Opportunities
- Check-out: Climate Change Litigation Database tracks how ordinary people around the world are using their court systems to demand climate and ecological justice.
- Read: 6 ways you can support Palestinians in Gaza from The American Friends Service Committee.
- Join: The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative virtual summit September 8-15.
- Act: 350’s “Draw the Line” global days of action on September 19-21.
- Read: 35th annual State of the Climate report from the American Meteorological Society.
- Act: September 20th is World Clean-Up Day, create or join an event near you.
- Sign-on: Urge His Holiness Dalai Lama to sign onto this effort to end the ethnic cleansing in Gaza with Buddhist Peace Initiative.
United States
- Sign-on: Join the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy
- Act: Sun Day is September 21st, a nationwide celebration of solar energy. Find an event near you.
- Act: If you’re in the DC area, join Free DC to “protect Home Rule and win lasting dignity for. our communities.”
- Join: Climate week is on in NYC September 21-28.
- Read: Using our money as a lever for climate action
- Write: Submit your comment to the EPA to protect the Endangerment Finding.
- Learn: Take the Fall Grassroots Organizing Training (Free & Virtual) with Beyond Plastics.
- Check-out: Code Pink’s War is Not Green campaign
- Apply: Climate Mobilization Project is looking for young BIPOC people to join the National Climate Survivors Incubator cohort.
Canada
- Email: Write to the CBC and call for better energy coverage.
- Sign-on: Call for Canada to end the US loophole and stop arming Israel.
- Organize: Host an event at Canada’s Climate Week Xchange.
- Sign-on: Tell the PM to push back on reckless environmental rollbacks.
- Sign-on: Demand that Canadian companies should have no part in Trump’s human rights abuses.
- Read: The ICJ’s landmark climate opinion is a turning point Canada can’t ignore.
United Kingdom
- Act: Mother’s Climate Action Network five-week program “Anxiety to Action”
Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. It's not enough to grieve. It's not enough to just stop doing bad things.
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
Stories of Engagement
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EcoDharma
Buddhism, Social Change, and Skillful Means
- Melvin McLeod, David Loy, Mushim Patricia Ikeda and Joan Sutherland
How does our Dharma practice call us into politics and shape our engagement? While we no longer live in the moment of Occupy and the Tea Party movements, the words of David Loy, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, and Joan Suthlerland speak powerfully to this moment of 2024.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
A Community Renounces Fossil Fuels
- Steve Seigan Miron
With its recent installation of an emissions-free heating system, Zen Mountain Monastery is one step closer to its goal of phasing out fossil fuel use by 2030.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Demand for Statehood and Ecological Protections in Northern India
- Justin Whitaker
In Ladakh, India, a coalition of political and religious leaders is organizing to safeguard human rights, cultural heritage, and environmental well-being.
