Dr Jacqui Dodds, Buddhist Psychotherapist

The early season, September fierce fires In Australia prompt us to think more deeply about what we can do to mitigate global warming. Prompted by several fires only a few kilometres away from my home on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, I am moved to share this Lions Roar post offering a Buddhist view on how to respond to global warning.

AWAKENING TO
OUR CLIMATE CRISIS
It seems we’re at a crossroads with climate change. The choice before us is either to lean in to the reality of it and take meaningful action or to ignore what we are seeing and feeling around us and go about our lives as though we weren’t hastening our own end. This crossroads isn’t exactly new; after all, we’ve known about global warming for decades. But ever since the IPCC report came out last October stating we need to get things under control by 2030 if we are to have any hope of averting an irreversible climate catastrophe, the world has been placed on notice.

In his address to the United Nations, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi explains that the Buddha’s diagnosis of climate change would rest with the human heart, and more specifically with the roots of craving and ignorance. He reminds us of the parable of the burning house in the Lotus Sutra, in which the children continue to play with their toys while flames surround them. Today, he points out, we are those foolish children going about our everyday lives while our one and only home — the Earth — literally burns.

Whether it’s the raging fires in the Amazon or the devastating hurricanes and floods that are obliterating entire communities, more and more we are forced to confront the high stakes of climate destabilization. We are also forced to examine our reactions and actions (or inaction) in the face of it all. For those of us who embrace the Buddhist teachings, it’s an interesting test of sorts.

Ahimsa, or non-harming, is a fundamental tenet of Buddhist ethics. It seems straightforward enough on paper, but what does it actually mean to live by this principle when we are witnessing entire species becoming extinct and people dying from heat waves, droughts, and storms brought on by global warming? Who are we harming with our lifestyle choices or with our silence on climate justice? Are we brave enough to ask and see?

What about interdependence, another cornerstone of Buddhism? Do we truly understand how we are interconnected with all other people, birds and animals, the water, air, and land — and appreciate the responsibility that comes with this?

And as we experience the fear and panic that climate crisis brings, are we stepping forth as bodhisattvas to help or are we looking out for number one and shoring up our mental defenses to try to insulate ourselves from others’ pain?

There will be many tests to come, and many opportunities to put the Buddhist teachings to work. If we believe in the Buddha’s awakening and our ability to do the same, we must awaken to the climate crisis as well. And we must act, quickly.

—Tynette Deveaux, editor, Buddhadharma

This is well worth reading through. I think we have to pay attention to this issue of disinformation and the undermining of our trust. This is a warning about how integrity and traditional beliefs about it being wrong to lie are being undermined and are proving politically successful strategies. It has just happened in the Australian election, British and European elections and the American elections, let alone Brazil, Turkey, Philippines, Russia, China and countless other countries.

Disinformation: everything you need to know! We're drowning in fake news and disinformation. Here's how to spot it, stop it, and protect democracy! ...

Tara Brach's talk on facing fear, rather than continually running away, is well worth listening to. Acceptance with mindfulness brings peace of mind and freedom.

NICABM Take a look at the Advanced Master Program on the Treatment of Trauma: https://www.nicabm.com/program

Kristin Neff really explains self compassion and its benefits so well. This talk is wisdom personified. What a delight! Please be compassionate to yourself and listen to her. Thank you Kristin for your wisdom and compassion.

STOP CHASING SELF-ESTEEM & JUST BE SELF-COMPASSIONATE with Kristin Neff at Happiness & Its Causes 18 STOP CHASING SELF-ESTEEM AND JUST BE SELF-COMPASSIONATE Kristin Neff, pioneering researcher into self-compassion For more information on our annual Happiness...

I feel moved to recommend a very special book I have recently read and reviewed, Aging with Wisdom ‘ by Olivia Hoblitzelle. This is a book packed full of wisdom and compassion that is of particular use for those of us aware of aging, leading us inevitably to the moment of dying.
You can read my review on http://eastwestwisdoms.com under the menu heading ‘Book reviews’.

Buddhist Psychotherapist, Dr Jacqui Dodds in South East Queensland Dr Jacqui Dodds is a buddhist psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in Queensland with a strong spiritual interest, based primarily on Buddhist philosophy

Read this to remind us to explore our own Trump like arrogance, ignorance and Ill will.

A Zen Master's Advice On Coping With Trump It involves a lot more than meditating.

An excerpt from “Walking in Wisdom” E-Book
By Tarchin Hearn

Today’s world of human experience is increasingly moulded by feelings of insecurity, entrapment conflict, and fear. We feel trapped in situations and circumstances: family obligations, economic constraints, weather, traffic, bureaucratic red tape and so forth. We fight interminable battles with people, creatures, invasive species, weeds, belief systems, expectations and fears. In the name of establishing peace, we wage war and build more prisons and systems of surveillance. For many people it seems completely right and natural to defend themselves against perceived enemies of goodness and sanity, using any means available, regardless of morality or fundamental decency. While desperately trying to escape from pain and limitation we dig ourselves into an intractable mess of even more pain and limitation.

In these early years of the 21st century, the political and economic world seems to have become hijacked by what we could think of as the shadow side of the American dream of individual freedom and prosperity. What was once clearly a psychological ‘demon’ of the collective unconscious has now taken flesh in the world of daily experience and we find ourselves caught up in a battle against terrorism which is really a battle against a terror of insecurity arising in and from our own depths. This is the terror of feeling we can’t control the world; the troubling recognition that a way of life, driven by consumerism and desire for instant gratification, cannot go on much longer without something collapsing, be it the economy, or the ecology or our interior immune systems.

Today, the world’s military budget has risen astronomically while the average standard of living continues to fall, and political and financial support for ecological and environmental wellbeing, education, health care and social justice, is increasingly neglected. To wake up in a truly meaningful way, we will need to look much more deeply into what is happening and to realise that more weaponry and control will never heal the painful and frightening sense of disconnection that has come between ourselves and nature and between ourselves and other human beings. When separatism and sectarianism gain the upper hand, ‘other’ is often seen as dangerous and untrustworthy and we spiral ever more deeply into fortresses of fundamentalism and narrow-minded bigotry. At the risk of saying the obvious, wisdom and compassion are rarely discussed in houses of parliament and multi-national boardrooms. Physical health and mental wellbeing are increasingly required to give way to market driven factors and economic bottom lines. No wonder so many people feel we are tottering on the edge of an abyss.

In Buddhism, there are two contemplative themes or explorations that can powerfully support the awakening of wisdom and compassion. The first takes us into a profound experiential understanding of ecology.

Nothing exists independently on its own. Everything and everyone is interconnected. Each one of us is a dynamic weaving of myriad relationships happening simultaneously at multiple levels of being; from the micro realms of atoms and molecules, to the organism levels of creatures and society, to the macro levels of ecosystems, planets, solar systems and cosmic processes. What I do affects you. What you do affects me. What humans do affects the non-human world. And what happens in the non-human world affects humans. Activity in the micro world affects what takes place in the macro world, and vice versa. This is much more than just a theme. It is a vast life-long investigation and exploration, that can open our understanding and compassion and change our relationships with everything.

The second contemplative exploration involves investigating mind and knowing. The world of your ongoing experience is made known to you, through the interrelating of atoms, molecules, cells and organs; through the communal dancing of senses, memories and associations; through physical conditions, education, attitudes, brain function and so forth. At the same time, all of these processes taking place ‘within you’ are responding with and to the mystery of everything else ‘out there’ – other beings living their lives around you. Though often described as a collage of transient parts, your moment to moment living feels like a seamless whole – a dynamic ‘holomovement’. In Buddhism, this collaborative field of multi-levelled knowings is collectively referred to as ‘mind’. In other traditions it is sometimes referred to as ‘self’ or even one’s ‘true self’.

No one has ever experienced the world exactly the same way as you are experiencing it now and, in the future, no one will ever again experience it in exactly this way. The experience that you are having is arising in and as your knowing! It doesn’t arise in anyone else’s. This applies not only to you and to me, but also to animals and plants and, if you stretch your imaginative understanding, to all existent forms. In a deep sense, knower and known are not separate. They are seamlessly interdependent. Every sentient being is a world of living experience and we interact with each other – worlds interweaving with, and inter-responding to, other worlds.

Many people are tempted to latch on to these two themes; that everything exists interdependently and that everything you experience arises in your own knowing, as if they were fundamental truths. To walk the path of awakening however, it would be more skilful, though perhaps rare, to soften this tendency. Instead, consider these themes as rich avenues for contemplative investigation which can lead us in the direction of healing the devastating divisions between humans and nature, men and women, self and other, us and them, mind and matter. These two themes are paths upon which all of us can walk, so . . . Let’s continue with walking.

A Meditation for Extending Loving-kindness Charles Suhor guides you through a “Connectedness Meditation.”

Learning to See in the Dark Amid Catastrophe: An Interview With Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy Theorist Joanna Macy discusses the necessity of perceiving the full reality of the current ecological situation, difficult as that may be.

As we come into the new year of 2017, this teaching on how to respond to the presence or fears of increased violence, hate and injustice is well worth reading. Please open this link below and breath in the wisdom and compassion it expresses. Each one of us can then make effort to embody and manifest this deep listening and peaceful aspiration.

Listening Deeply for Peace Peace will only become a reality when world leaders come to negotiations with the ability to hear the suffering at the root of all conflicts.

Ian Gawler Ian is well known as a pioneer in Mind-Body Medicine and therapeutic meditation. He is a long-term ca

This is an incredible article on why and how we should develop a compassionate response to suffering in all its many forms, including through violence, recognising that violence causes suffering to the perpetrators as well as the victims of violence.

She Who Hears the Cries of the World In Buddhism, compassion is embodied in the bodhisattva Kuan Yin, who is said to manifest wherever beings need help.

I've just posted an inspirational response to a cancer diagnosis in my latest blog on my website, http://EastWestWisdoms.com.

Finding refuge in the wonder of the continuous, ever-changing dependent arising and dying of the myriad aspects of our lives and every aspect of the universe is perhaps a novel way to greet a cancer diagnosis. But it makes such good sense. This seems to be the refuge taken and reflected on by my spiritual teacher, Tarchin Hearn, in reaction to his diagnosis. Read more on http://EastWestWisdoms.com.

East West Wisdoms: Interweaving Spirituality and Therapeutic Healing