Working with Paradox and Uncertainty in the Anthropocene

An EcoDharma Exploration with Mark Coleman

This EcoDharma Exploration featuring Awake in the Wild founder Mark Coleman took place on Sunday, February 20, 2022. Find the recording and resources below. We welcome your support for this program.

How can we reckon with the challenges and uncertainties of life in the Anthropocene? Is our situation hopeful or hopeless? Are our actions meaningful or meaningless? Does our experience in nature evoke joy or sorrow?

The challenges of our time ask us to respond to our world, just as it is, with wise view, loving-action, and equanimity. What lessons are latent in the paradoxes of our age?

EcoDharma Explorations are offered monthly for you to explore a particular aspect of EcoDharma as well as develop a sense of community. In this gathering on February 20, 2022, Awake in the Wild founder and One Earth Sangha guiding teacher Mark Coleman led a heartfelt investigation of how we might hold the pain and joy of the Earth as we practice compassionate engagement.

Mark is an inner and outer explorer, who has devotedly studied mindfulness meditation practices for three decades. He is passionate about sharing the power of meditation and has taught mindfulness workshops and meditation retreats in six continents for the past twenty years. Mark is a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and has taught there since 2000. Through his organization Awake in the Wild, he shares his passion for integrating meditation and nature.

     Pieces on One Earth Sangha

Support this Offering

One Earth Sangha and our featured speakers offer these explorations on a donation basis, with no required registration fee. We invite you to participate in the tradition of offering dana, or generosity. Your support makes these gatherings possible, and any amount offered is greatly appreciated.

Another way to support us is to share what this exploration has meant to you in a way that we can use in our materials. We invite you to share a “testimonial” here! (select “EcoDharma Exploration Participant” from the dropdown menu.)

Recording

Additional Resources

Breakout Session 1 Inquiries

What are the paradoxes you live with:

  • In your life?
  • In relation to the earth?
  • In relation to the ecological crisis?

Breakout Session 2 Inquiries

  • What polarity / fixed view do you get lost in or attached to?
  • How might holding a sense of paradox about this actually support you in releasing attachment and even inspire your engagement?

Follow Up Resources

More EcoDharma Explorations

Upcoming

Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse

As we face the poly-crisis, how do we escalate our actions without escalating a worldview that keeps us from interdependence? How can we view injustice as a manifestation of collective trauma? How can the Dharma support us in a skillful response?

Upcoming

A Work that Reconnects Spiral Gathering

What might the Earth desire from us this Earth Day? Alex Julie guides a Work That Reconnects spiral practice to ground in gratitude, lean into grief, and clear our heart-minds enough to listen for the Earth.

Past

Standing in Fierce Compassion in this Age of Reckoning

As extractive systems collapse and uncertainty rises, how do we stay present and act with wisdom? This session explores Dharma teachings and meditative grounding for meeting grief and the call to disrupt and reimagine with courage.