EcoDharma Explorations

In a dramatically changing world, we are more vulnerable to reactivity. In this EcoDharma Exploration on January 29, Heather Sundberg offered somatic practices to bolster our resilience and engagement.

How can our practice bring relief… not only to ourselves but our relationships and community? From the ground of inner stability, can we begin to heal environmental injustice and other collective wounds?

Meditation teacher and shamanic practitioner Spring Washam led this EcoDharma Exploration on September 18.

The practices and teachings of the ancients still offer helpful ways to respond. In this gathering, we will explore some of these teachings and practices, including a koan attributed to the great Chinese teacher Dongshan Lianjie.

In our engagement on climate and other ecological issues, we are placing ourselves at the intersection of the three domains: ecology, justice, and Dharma. These have the potential to vitally inform one another and yet, in the absence of mindfulness, each also has the potential to deny the other two. In our practice of engagement, then, how might we understand these tendencies and risks in each domain, so that we can more fully and effectively express their gifts?

In the midst of large-scale ecological harm and injustice, how might we cultivate resilience and an open heart? And how might connecting to unconditional joy strengthen our engaged practice?

What is the relationship between Earth's vibrancy and our own? How might we sense, even subtly, the dramatic changes underway in the living Earth community? And what is possible when we begin to understand our body as inseparable from Earth's body, as an extension of our source and home? 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 April 17, 2022, Natural Dharma Fellowship founding teacher Lama Willa Blythe Baker invited us to commune with our bodies, our planet, and one another — and to allow this communion to support our engaged practice.

In this gathering on March 20, 2022, senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community and award-winning author Vimalasara led an embodied inquiry into our relationship with the elements of our bodies and the Earth.

In this EcoDharma Exploration on January 23, environmental lawyer Melissa Hoffer offered insight on US environmental policy and how we can bridge the gap between aspiration and action.