Forms and Opportunities for Engaged Practice
There is a way to be a human being
that causes all life to thrive.
— Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe)
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.
While we won’t be “saving” this Earth, our opportunity is to meaningfully respond. We can action that is deeply rooted, skillful, strategic, unattached to specific outcomes. We can speak in ways that actually help.
Opportunities for Engaged Practice
Featured Calls to Action
Upcoming
- Stop the Money Pipeline: Join the campaign to #DefundLine3
- Sacred People Sacred Earth: Sign the Statement to be presented to world leaders at COP26 in November 2021
- Faith-Climate Action Week: encourage your Sangha to turn towards and respond to the suffering of ecological crises April 16 – 25
Ongoing Opportunities
- Stop the Money Pipeline:
- Move your money and divest from fossil fuels
- If you are a college student, learn about and launch a reinvestment campaign
- Tell your government representatives and local financial institutions to put people and planet before polluters
Featured Campaigns
Interfaith Power and Light, Faith Climate Action Week
Our partners at Interfaith Power and Light are inviting people of diverse faith backgrounds to learn about and examine their relationships to food, farming, and the earth this upcoming Earth Day.
Opportunities to Counter Structural Greed
- Launched February 24, 2021
United around a set of equity principles, this broad coalition confronts the financial sector institutions that fund climate chaos. If you're looking for a way to counter institutionalized greed, this might be a place for your practice.
Domains and Defining Characteristics of the EcoSattva Path
- Kristin Barker
- February 7, 2021
Meaningful response to ecological crises doesn't look one way. Just as ecosystems invest in diverse, wild and creative forms of engagement, so can we.
Stories of Engaged Practice
Buddhist Monastics Practice Forest Protection
- March 19, 2021
- March 19, 2021
Moved by intimate awareness of dependent co-arising, monastics in Southeast Asia have become leaders in protecting their local environment.
- January 15, 2021
- January 15, 2021
Green Gulch Farm Zen Center has provided a vivid demonstration of engaged practice during the pandemic, sharing its vegetable harvests with communities in need throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
- December 10, 2020
- December 10, 2020
One of Cambodia's most prominent, socially-engaged Buddhist scholars leads efforts to provide not only spiritual but material relief to victims of flooding and the COVID pandemic.
Go Deeper with Us
Menu