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
International
- Read: Extreme Weather and War: How Climate Change Fuels Global Tensions by Shah Fahad
- Sign: Tell your government, wherever you are, to ban fossil fuel ads with Fossil Ad ban
- Write: Green Stories launched a flash fiction competition for stories about “moments of epiphany where attitudes and behaviors change for the greener”
- Read: The Climate Conscious Writer by Wren James at Extinction Rebellion
- Check-out: Stay Grounded, “a network to counter aviation for a just mobility system”
- Read: Stories of people from around the world who have decided intentionally to fly less or not at all
United States
- Read: “From Gaza to LA, the Right to Remain Is Under Attack” from Atmos
- Sign: Help Protect Pangolins with the Center for Biological Diversity
- Share: If you’ve worked to study or protect endangered wildlife, share your story
- Check-out: The Environmental Working Groups released an interactive map of PFAS contamination in water systems across the country.
- Read: Concentration Camp Labor by Timothy Synder
- Write: A climate letter to your kids, grandkids, or loved ones with Third Act
- Act: Join Climate Mobilization and Defend and Recruit to Stop Avelo, the “Abduction Airline”
Canada
- Sign: No Nation-Wrecking Liquid Natural Gas Pipelines with Leadnow
- Sign: Repeal Ford’s Bill 5 with the David Suzuki Foundation
- Act: Pledge to transform lawns into local ecosystem habits for insects and wildlife
- Sign: Urge the federal government to eliminate “forever chemicals” once and for all with Ecojustice
- Read: “There’s always money for the military. But climate?” from Canada’s National Observer
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
EcoDharma
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.
