The Ecodharma Teacher Certificate Course from One Earth Sangha is offered as a groundbreaking training for modern Buddhist and mindfulness teachers who wish to bring the living Earth, climate realities, and the polycrises of colonial modernity into their teaching and communities with wisdom, courage, and care.
In today’s world, it can feel overwhelming—or even divisive—to address ecological collapse, climate grief, or cultural trauma within spiritual spaces. This program offers the skills and inner grounding needed to meet these challenges without falling into despair, denial, or moral righteousness. Instead, teachers will learn to embody resilience, compassion, and clarity in ways that sustain communities through turbulent times. The crises can be transformed into possibilities.
The course unfolds in three phases:
- Personal Depth Work — Exploring our own hearts, assumptions, and worldviews to metabolize the complexities of this era.
- Earth as Teacher — Entering a land-based contemplative retreat where the more-than-human world guides our practice.
- Skills for Service — Training in best practices for facing eco-distress, facilitation, group process, and local ethical engagement, equipping teachers to lead communities with maturity and inspiration.
Participants will encounter the depth of Buddhist ecological teachings, embodied nature-practices, and compassionate ethics, in dialogue with thought leaders, Indigenous wisdom holders, eco-psychologists, and leading ecological thinkers. Together we ask: What is the role of Dharma in this time of profound change?
Graduates emerge as certified Ecodharma Teachers—mature, wakeful, and resilient leaders, able to guide communities through the grief and possibility of our times, and to turn the Dharma wheel toward an ecological and compassionate future.
2026 Course Status and Key Dates
- The next two runs of the course (choose one):
- March 3 – May 5
- June 10 – August 12
- Applications for either cohort are now open.
More About This Course
Overview
Context
The Earth is rapidly changing. The rising temperatures, wildfires, floods, and storms long-predicted have arrived alongside the sixth great extinction all together representing incalculable loss to wealth that is this world. Ecological destabilization will soon become pervasive and, as such, a source of intense physical suffering for countless beings. Human individuals and human society cannot remain at ease in such a context and yet dominant culture offers little more than maladaptive responses. This is hard to bear.
Yet the Earth has always been alive with wonder. Beneath the storms and heat, beyond the collapsing systems, there remains the living teaching of the intricate web of life—kin, ancestors, rivers, fungi, winds, stones, forests, birds, and breath—all teaching the Dharma. We are part of this Earth community, not separate from it. Amidst ecological disruption, we are called not only to grieve what is lost, but to remember, reconnect, and respond—to reclaim our place in the living Earth story.
You’ve no doubt heard it said before but it bears repeating: the ecological crisis is both a material emergency and a spiritual threshold. As the Earth transforms through extractive injustice and toxicity, we are called to reimagine what spiritual life means in this time. The Dharma carries so much more than addressing the suffering of the individual human practitioner. Rather, we see in the Great Dharma a deep well of wisdom that can transform at the collective level as well as a vision for a resilient world that can explicitly shape culture. Consistent with the history of this profound tradition, we need a new generation of courageous teachers to lead another “Turning of the Wheel,”1 and inquire into the vast and urgent insights that may lie just beyond our edge.
A New Course
Since 2013, One Earth Sangha has been a leader in cultivating a Buddhist response to ecological crises, providing a hub for teachings, connection, and engagement opportunities. Led by a network of respected teachers from diverse Dharma traditions and lived experiences, One Earth Sangha is a unique gathering place for exploring what it means to understand and practice Dharma in a dramatically changing world. Alongside our curation of EcoDharma articles, poetry, and events, we host monthly EcoDharma Explorations featuring wisdom leaders for timely inquiries into the eco-social with sangha members from around the world. We are in the 7th year of our EcoSattva Training, an eight-part series that takes participants into a journey to open to the polycrisis, create a home in uncertainty, cultivate insight, and then emerge with new wisdom and practices for their work in the world.
At this critical juncture for humanity, the time is right for a more advanced EcoDharma offering for the transmitters of the Dharma themselves. The EcoDharma Teacher Course has been years in the making, shaped by experimental cohorts of Buddhist teachers and rooted in lived experience. Through this offering, we aspire to cultivate teachers who can support their communities in bravely countering the coming decades of further ecological loss and climate chaos. We hope to support the cultural scaffolding that can collectively dislodge from life-destroying systems and re-embed ourselves in place, community, and service to life.
Who is this for?
We presume that participants are already trained to guide meditation, offer Dharma talks, and work with students. Upon that foundation, and whether you are a new or seasoned Dharma teacher, mindfulness guide, or a practitioner in a teaching role, this course is for those ready to step into leadership amid the sacred, difficult opportunity of our time: to help midwife an EcoDharma that is courageous, creative, and deeply alive.
This course may be a good fit if:
You are currently—or have recently been—offering Dharma or mindfulness teachings.
You are recognized as a teacher in these lineages, whether through formal training, mentorship with a senior teacher, or both.
You want to meet the ecological and social ruptures of our world not with bypass or despair, but with grounded practices that open meaningful paths forward for those you serve.
You’ve come to know your own edges—and can stay present, at least most of the time, when comfort runs out.
You’re not looking for answers so much as invitations: to co-sense, to grapple honestly, and to be changed in the company of peers who value vulnerability, compassion, and collective discernment.
You carry a longing—for integrity, for aliveness, for teachings that can meet this moment without flinching—and you’re seeking a place to tend that longing in courageous, connected company.
How Might This Course Support My Path as a Teacher?
Our course offers a transformative, grounded, and visionary space for those who feel called further—to lead within the emergent EcoDharma field. We will support participants with the development of EcoDharma insights as well as practical skills to share with their communities. We will help teachers develop their own unique EcoDharma approach, rooted in their lineages. With live small-group facilitation, voices from leading teachers, and collective practice, we will explore how the Dharma might evolve to meet this moment—not as escape, but as engaged presence. Together we will appreciate, challenge, grapple, imagine, and practice. We will specifically support you in discovering your own role to play in the lineage of EcoDharma by
- Facing the truth of ecological unraveling and metabolize its personal and collective impacts
- Exploring the historical, political, and cultural dimensions shaping this crisis
- Integrating key elements of climate psychology to address ecological grief, anxiety, and anger
- Nourishing the capacity for transforming these immense challenges into sources of wisdom, connection, inspiration, and collaboration
- Cultivating a space for mystery, sacredness, and durable meaning rooted in the living Earth
- With insights from Buddhism as well as indigenous ways of looking, animism, and eco-psychology, fostering collaborations among human communities as well as more-than-human communities at the watershed level for response and resilience.
EcoDharma Teacher Certification
Graduates will receive a certificate of completion recognizing their engaged inquiry into the themes of this course. This certificate does not signal mastery, but attests to a meaningful and sustained commitment: to deepen one’s Dharma teaching by attuning to the structural, historical, and planetary dimensions of suffering and response. It reflects a capacity to hold the fractal nature of the Dharma—where the personal and political, the individual and collective, the intimate and systemic, are not separate but co-arising. For communities and institutional partners, the certificate offers a visible sign that something valuable has been sought, tended, and taken root. Graduates are welcome to reference the certificate in their bios, and we are glad to provide confirmation of completion if needed.
What to Expect
This 10-week course blends six in-person gatherings with four weeks of independent self-study, requiring a weekly commitment of about 3–5 hours. You’ll move through a mix of self-paced content and live sessions that include articles, practices, inquiries, and pre-recorded video lectures. The journey begins with five weekly in-person meetings, continues with four weeks of guided self-study, and concludes with a three-hour in-person capstone gathering.
Plan to make time and space for this course—it needs both to do its work on you, with you, and in the company those walking alongside you, in ways that can’t be rushed.
We will offer two cohorts in the Spring and Summer of 2026.
- First Cohort: Five weekly two-hour sessions will be held on Tuesdays from 12:30–2:30 pm ET on March 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31, followed by a three-hour Capstone gathering on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, from 12:30–3:30 pm ET.
- Second Cohort: Five weekly two-hour sessions will be held on Wednesdays from 12:30–2:30 pm ET on June 10, 17, 24, July 1, and July 8, concluding with a three-hour Capstone gathering on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, from 12:30–3:30 pm ET.
Your Guides
Course Facilitators
Kristin is co-founder and director of One Earth Sangha whose mission is to cultivate a Buddhist response to ecological crises. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader program and now teaches with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (DC). As a co-founder of White Awake, Kristin has been supporting white people since 2011 with a Dharma approach to uprooting racism in ourselves and in our world. With a background in software engineering as well as environmental management, she has worked at several international environmental organizations. She is a GreenFaith Fellow and serves on the advisory board of Project Inside Out as well as the steering committee for Interfaith Power & Light DMV. Kristin was born and raised in northern New Mexico and currently lives in Washington DC, traditional lands of the Piscataway peoples.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Adam Lobel, Ph.D, practices at the threshold of ecologies, Buddhist meditation and philosophy, contemplative education, and psycho-social political change. His work in the world weaves these practices together into the Four Fields. Adam is a scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, focusing on Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary theory. He is active in contemplative design and research. A teacher of Ecopsychology and a Focusing professional, he is curious about cultural therapeutics for social upheavals. He leads ecodharma workshops, teaches in the Ecosattva Training, is a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, a GreenFaith fellow, and is active in environmental justice movements. He helped found 4F Regeneration, an ecological consulting organization to support individuals and nonprofits on the front lines of protecting the earth. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his partner and two kids where he protects lands from the petrochemical industry. For more on Adam’s practices: www.releasement.org
Pieces on One Earth SanghaCourse Contributors
Ashanti Kunene is an epistemic activist, slam poet, decolonial dialogue facilitator, published writer, and the founder of Learning 2 Unlearn. She is interested in how cultural narratives are reflected through big data and technology; and how pedagogical design and dialogical narrative change work can be used as decolonial tools to create social change.
Rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, Bayo Akomolafe is a father, life-partner, posthumanist thinker, essayist, poet, teacher, public intellectual, and the author of two books. He is the founder of The Emergence Network, a global initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the civilizational challenges we face as a species, and he is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, “We Will Dance with Mountains.” Dr. Akomolafe currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and has held several other appointments at prestigious institutions, including the Aspen Institute, UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, and the Council of an Uncertain Human Future. The recipient of several recent awards for his global contributions, he is also a member of the Club of Rome, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. Bayo Akomolafe is currently the Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies in Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA (August 2025). Click HERE to learn more about Bayo Akomolafe.
Britt Wray, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Human and Planetary Health at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, eco-anxiety researcher, writer, creator of the Unthinkable Times newsletter about “staying sane in the climate crisis” and author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. Her website is brittwray.org.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
A long term student of the Diamond Approach, Catherine has been teaching Insight Meditation internationally since 1997. She is a member of the Gaia House teacher council, and since 2014 has been collaborating with Rob Burbea in shaping and teaching Soulmaking Dharma. Her teaching emphasizes embodiment and working with whatever hinders us from living our deepest knowing in the world.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
David Robert Loy is Director Emeritus and Cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. He is a professor, writer, and teacher in the Sanbo tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. A student of Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken, he was authorized to teach in 1988 and leads retreats and workshops nationally and internationally. He is author of EcoDharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis and A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World, and he is co-editor of A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency. His website is davidloy.org.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer and speaker. After an early career as a BBC journalist, he co-founded organisations including the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. He has collaborated with scientists, artists and activists, serving as a leader of artistic development at Riksteatern (Sweden’s national theatre) and as an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics & All the Other Emergencies (2023). He co-hosts The Great Humbling podcast and publishes a Substack called Writing Home.
How much does it cost?
Registration fees help cover the significant costs of our offerings. Because we have no physical building, it may seem like we have no costs. This is not so. While we also depend on the practice of dana or generosity, the truth is that, like many convert-Dharma institutions, we lack the funding to provide our programs based on dana alone.
The basic rate for registration is $750 USD. We offer two sliding scales of registration fees as well as need-based discounts.
Sliding Scale
We invite you to consider your ability to pay as a function of your geographic and social location as well as other circumstances. Our sliding fee scales are based on your relative financial standing in a global context.1 We are grateful to the folks at Network Weaver for this framework. (https://networkweaver.com/brave-questions-recalculating-pay-equity/)
Considerations include:
- historical discrimination and disenfranchisement faced by your peoples;
- your financial wealth (do you have retirement savings?);
- your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your country and in the world? do you expect to receive an inheritance?);
- people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members;
- and the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world).
For people with medium, high, or very high access to wealth in the global context:
- Basic rate: $750 USD
- Supporter: $1,000 USD
- Sustainer: $1,500 USD
For people with relatively low access to wealth in the global context:
- Basic rate: $275 USD
- Supporter: $350 USD
- Sustainer: $500 USD
Convert USD into your currency with this currency converter (starting with $750 USD).
It is our policy that no one is ever turned away for lack of funds. Need-based discounts are available to those who are unable to afford the basic rate. Email to inquire about these discounts.
I'm interested. What do I do next?
- Applications are now open for both the March and June cohorts.
- Since this course is best experienced with and among your peers, we invite you to share this page with colleagues who just might become your valued journey mates.
Gratitude
One Earth Sangha is 12 years old this year, and we could not have made it this far without the generosity and support of our guiding teachers, this training’s session leaders, our Sangha, and of course the Earth. We are particularly grateful to those who have taken the training in the past and provided valuable feedback, as well as those who have bravely and kindly supported others in this experience by leading local and online groups.
I still have questions.
If you don’t see your question answered above, let us know by emailing and we’ll do our best!