A Buddhist Response to Climate Change, Part 2

The Result: Climate Change

Ice caps and glaciers melted. The world’s most famous cities underwater. One-third of the planet turned to desert; the other two-thirds filled with people struggling for enough food and water to survive. Is this to be our future?

Our world is spiraling out of control and yet we still have leaders failing to take action on global warming. Newscasters and journalists report on how the stock market bounced back after some minor profit taking and what the latest tidbits from Hollywood are. People complain about the price of gasoline as they get back into their SUV and drive off, alone. Parents shake their heads and worry about how climate change will affect their children, then board the plane to go visit their children and grandchildren because they love them.

On March 11, 2007, the Sunday Times, a major newspaper in the United Kingdom, detailed the earth-changing scenarios degree by degree that would likely occur in global warming. The article was an interview with Mark Lynas, the author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet and referenced research by the Hadley Centre for Climate Change in the United Kingdom . Based on tens of thousands of pages of scientific research, Six Degrees provides a succinct analysis of what the world could look like after global warming:

“At one degree of warming, the Arctic is ice-free for half the year, the South Atlantic—typically void of hurricanes—experiences coastal hurricanes, and in the western U.S. severe droughts are plaguing residents.

Two Degrees of Warming: Polar bears struggle to survive as glaciers increasingly melt away. Glaciers in Greenland begin to disappear, while coral reefs are vanishing.

Three Degrees of Warming: The Amazon rain forest is drying out and El Niño’s intense weather pattern becomes the norm. Europe repeatedly experiences searing summer heat that has rarely happened before.

Four Degrees of Warming: Oceans could rise, taking over coastal cities. The disappearance of glaciers may deprive many of fresh water. Northern Canada’s agriculture could boom and a Scandinavian beach could be the next tourism hotspot. A part of Antarctica could collapse, causing water to rise even further.

Five Degrees of Warming: Uninhabitable zones could spread, snow pack and aquifers feeding big cities could dry up, and climate refugees could run in the millions. Human civilization could begin to break down with this drastic of changes to the climate. The poor would likely suffer the most.

Six Degrees of Warming: The oceans could be marine wastelands, the deserts could march across continents, and natural disasters could become common events. The world’s great cities could be flooded and abandoned. This could be ‘the doomsday scenario.’” [1]

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[1] http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/sixdegrees/

A Buddhist Response to Climate Change, Part 1

At the end of January, I received a request from Lisu Tan, the director of the Amitabha Buddhist Library in Chicago. The library had received a call for papers from the organizing committee for the United Nations Day of Vesak 2008 to be held in this May in Vietnam . Abstracts and CVs were to be submitted on seven topics. If an abstract was accepted, the writer would be requested to submit the completed paper. Director Tan asked if I would write an abstract, and paper if invited, on behalf of the library.

One title in particular appealed to me: Care for Our Environment: Buddhist Response to Climate Change. Those who have been reading this blog will understand why. But I hesitated to say yes to Director Tan. I’d be writing on a new subject for me. My parents had always taught that if you do anything, do it the best you can. If I made this commitment, would I be able to fulfill it? The abstract was to be submitted in one month and the paper in the following month. Would I have enough time? And how could I write the requested 7000 words?

With Director Tan’s encouragement, I agreed to write the abstract. It was accepted, and I was asked to submit the paper. I will be posting it here over the next eight days. It will then be available as a complete download here.

“With Our Thoughts We Create the World”

Do no harm. Do what is good. Purify the mind.

If you cannot purify the mind, then do no harm and do what is good.

If you cannot do what is good, at the very least, do no harm.

Everything is manifested by the mind and altered by the consciousness. In other words, with our thoughts we create the world. As Buddhists, we learn that our greed results in floods. Angry thoughts result in fires, and ignorant thoughts are the cause of disasters involving wind. This is causality: every cause will have a result. As we continuously crave more power, more material goods and experiences, and we fail to obtain what we desire, the results—like natural disasters and environmental degradation—likewise intensify.

When we look around, consider what we see: prolonged drought; more frequent tornadoes; recording-breaking floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. These are the results of the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance. The terrible truth we are facing in the world today is that we are unable even to “Do no harm.” We are poised at the brink of worldwide environmental collapse and have very likely already reached our “tipping point.” This is the point at which we have gone too far and are no longer able to pull back from the plunge into the abyss. The question becomes “How deep is the abyss?” And then, “How did we get to this point?”

The more power and wealth politicians and companies want to have and the more comfort individuals seek to enjoy, the more we will harm the environment and every person, animal, and plant who struggle to exist in that environment. We are now experiencing the result: climate change. This now looming worldwide disaster has arisen from a very real cause—craving.

We consume more, thinking all the things we crave will make us happy. But in reality we are depleting our nonrenewable resources and exhausting our planet. Toxic waste seeps into the earth and works its way into our rivers and oceans, contaminating everything it touches. Our imported goods and exotic foods are transported around the world on ships, planes, and trucks that spew toxic fumes and pump tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rights of the poor to have clean water, arable land, and a safe place to raise their children are completely disregarded in the name of profit. As corporations become larger and larger, their preoccupation with the bottom lines makes them forget that those “purchasing units” are real people, struggling to live on this planet. One agribusiness fund manager gleefully said recently “Higher food prices are inevitable all over the world; we’re in a sweet spot.”

The more we buy and the less mindfully we live, the more we destroy what is natural and pure. In its place, we leave devastation. Tragically, we are committing unimaginable harm. Because of our greed and wish for control, we are coming precariously close to destroying our world as we know it.

Is there a way to stop this reckless behavior—a way to behave responsibly and stop climate change? Is there still time? We do not know the answer to these questions. But we need to do everything within our power to try.

Even if everyone else does not do what is right,
I alone will.

Even if everyone else is doing wrong,
I alone will not.

Take a Deep Breath and Blink

Imagine you are driving along a country road at night. You go around a curve and your headlights suddenly are on a lone deer. Transfixed by the light, the deer is frozen, unable to move. Confused, it cannot move forward or go back where it came from. Angry at its inability to move, it senses it is powerless against the light it is caught in, the danger it is facing. It wants to escape, but is held by the light.

These are the five elements of fear—confusion, aversion, a sense of danger, a sense of weakness, and a desire to escape.

We react in much the way the deer does. Not knowing what to do, we are confused when confronted by that which we fear. We feel we are weak, perhaps unable to do what we sense to be the right thing. Or perhaps we have no idea what the right thing to do is. We are repelled by our helplessness and feel aversion for our own ability to move forward or to act wisely. Overwhelmed by the thought that we are in danger, our overpowering urge is to escape, but we cannot, for we are stuck.

What can we do?

Take a deep breath and examine our fear.

The deer acts on instinct. We, however, have the ability to analyze our fear to discover its cause. In doing so, we may realize our fear is based on a misperception. The cause of the fear was more imaginary than real. Realizing we overreacted can provide us with the opportunity to blink. Like a deer that can blink, we break the spell of our self-induced fear.

But what if the fear is real?

Through analysis and calming our minds, we can experience the equivalent of a mental “blink.” Remembering that is our own karmas that brought us to this point will help us grasp that what I broke, I alone have the potential to fix. With this comes the realization that our usual way of reacting often don’t work. Fear, confusion, aversion, and the desire to escape don’t improve a bad situation. We need to take a deep breath, calm down, and blink. We need to have a paradigm shift and be creative in looking for a new solution.

New ways of reacting do not come easily to us so we will need mindfulness and determination. And much practice. But as we get it right, fear will begin to recede and in its place, we’ll be able to blink more often.

How do I Turn This Thing Off?

When I visited my cousin Deborah and her husband Bart in 2006, I had the joy of celebrating Shabbas with them. For twenty-four hours, the telephone didn't ring, the computer was off, and the television was quiet. We walked to the synagogue and then home again for the noon meal that Deborah had prepared the day before. It was a day for family and reflection. It is truly a wonderful tradition.

Much of my day, like those of so many people today, is spent on the computer. It is a communication marvel, but can become a demanding taskmaster. So for April (and hopefully for longer if this works), I will not turn on my computer for a twenty-four hour period over the weekend. I cannot set a specific time, because our translation group meets via web-conferencing and often we get together over the weekend. So I'll have a sliding time slot centered around Sunday.

Now if you're thinking at this point that I must be out of things to write about so am rambling on here, don't worry. ;-) My point in this entry...here it comes for all you patient readers...is that I will not be posting on Sundays during April. After the morning practice at the center, I'll be having some old-fashioned, go outside and get some fresh air, read a book, talk to people, low-tech Sundays. So I'm posting this on Saturday for release on Sunday and will be offline for a day. (If I feel myself weakening, I'll ask Celine to hide my laptop. Finding it hidden somewhere on seventy-five acres should take me about...twenty-four hours...)  

Why do We Hold On?

Maybe we believe that our safety lies in holding on,
That losing our grip could spell disaster,
Or we may believe that holding on is the way to salvation.

But do we really know it is safer to hold on?
Would letting go really be so bad?
Do we really gain from holding on?

It is the role of the teacher to show us that such security is illusory.
That holding on only holds us back.
That our salvation lies in letting go.

Our holding on is a constraint we've placed upon ourselves.
It is an attitude, a way of thinking.
And our thinking - unlike the weather or the movements of the planets - is one thing we have complete control over.

The task of the teacher is to show us that we can change our minds, and that it is safe to do so.

~ Peter Russell