I don't comment on these threads much because I also find it difficult to face the fear and sadness, I have been a biologist at heart my whole life and seeing everything dear to me change so quickly despite humanity's ability to understand and predict it has been a hard pill to swallow. Practice has helped me accept that if factors within our species do not allow us to act to keep it from happening, then it will just be part of the Karma of myself and future generations. We are wealthy and privileged, but our offspring and their offspring may need to adjust to much scarcer resources and the survivors will need to evolve and find a new balance. There is already some suffering going on, as weather events become more catastrophic, and as the younger generations are realizing that we haven't been good stewards of the world's resources for them.
Of course that doesn't mean we should give up, there is always hope that we can mitigate some of the suffering by using our human ability to communicate the knowledge we have. We may have to change our dream of the future from conquering space to learning how to survive a new Earth.
That article by David Loy linked above says it all:
"A really important social implication of this deconstruction and reconstruction of the self brings us back to social engagement, including eco-dharma, the application of Buddhist teachings to our ecological situation. As we start to wake up and realize that we are not separate from each other, nor from this wondrous earth, we also begin to realize that the ways we live together, and the ways we relate to the earth, need to be reconstructed as well. That means not only social engagement as service, but finding ways to address the problematic economic and political structures—the institutionalized forms of greed, ill will, and delusion—that are deeply implicated in the eco-crisis. Within such a notion of liberation, the path of personal transformation and the path of social transformation are not really separate from each other. We must reclaim the concept of awakening from an exclusively individualistic therapeutic model and focus on how individual liberation also requires social transformation. Engagement in the world is how our personal awakening blossoms.
It just so happens that the Buddhist tradition provides a wonderful archetype that can help us to do that: the bodhisattva. We overcome deep-rooted self-centered habits by working compassionately for the healing of our societies and the healing of the earth. This is what’s required for the Buddhist path to become truly liberative in the modern world."
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH
Of course that doesn't mean we should give up, there is always hope that we can mitigate some of the suffering by using our human ability to communicate the knowledge we have. We may have to change our dream of the future from conquering space to learning how to survive a new Earth.
That article by David Loy linked above says it all:
"A really important social implication of this deconstruction and reconstruction of the self brings us back to social engagement, including eco-dharma, the application of Buddhist teachings to our ecological situation. As we start to wake up and realize that we are not separate from each other, nor from this wondrous earth, we also begin to realize that the ways we live together, and the ways we relate to the earth, need to be reconstructed as well. That means not only social engagement as service, but finding ways to address the problematic economic and political structures—the institutionalized forms of greed, ill will, and delusion—that are deeply implicated in the eco-crisis. Within such a notion of liberation, the path of personal transformation and the path of social transformation are not really separate from each other. We must reclaim the concept of awakening from an exclusively individualistic therapeutic model and focus on how individual liberation also requires social transformation. Engagement in the world is how our personal awakening blossoms.
It just so happens that the Buddhist tradition provides a wonderful archetype that can help us to do that: the bodhisattva. We overcome deep-rooted self-centered habits by working compassionately for the healing of our societies and the healing of the earth. This is what’s required for the Buddhist path to become truly liberative in the modern world."
Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH
Anna
st
)
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