S Kaza, Green Buddhism content & intro

 Green Buddhism Stephanie Kaza

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Contents

 Introduction                                                        vii

Part One: Intimate Relations i. Field of Bright Spirit 2.Window Guest	i 3 I0
3.Buddhist Perspectives on Teaching and Doing Science	'3
4.Conversations with Trees	30
5.Gary Snyder: Heart-to-Heart Instructions in Nonduality	38
6.Tea Mind, Earth Mind	53
Part Two: Envisioning Green Buddhism	63
2.The Greening of Buddhism	65
3.John Daido Loon: A Deep and Enduring Love	88
. A Community of Attention	93
io. How Much Is Enough?	I0I

ii. The Attentive Heart                                        118

12.Ethics Matter: Following the Green Practice Path 124

13.Joanna Macy: Fierce Heart-Mind Warrior          '39

Part Three: Acting with Compassion                         '49

12. Forging the Spirit through Climate Change Practice '5'

Buddhist Contributions to Climate Response         '57

12.  Sulak Sivaraksa: Spiritual Friendship in Buddhist Activism          '7'

 

17.Acting with Compassion: Buddhism, Feminism,
and the Environmental Crisis	178
17.Practicing with Greed	192
18.Becoming a Real Person	198
19.Following the Path of Kindness	205
20.The Gift of the Dark Time	213
Notes	219
Resources	235
Credits	237
Index	241

Introduction

MY JOURNEY TO GREEN BUDDHISM, AT LEAST AS I -tell the story now, began when I first discovered light. It was the early 1950S, and I was five years old, sitting on the deck off my bedroom in Buffalo, New York, held by the soft shadows of the big apple tree. The shimmering leaves, the dancing light and dark, had me spellbound in its radiance. Across the afternoon the light shifted and the sun dropped lower in the sky. I didn't want to leave. This light show was the center of the universe. Some great mystery penetrated my young consciousness. What was it?

Though I dutifully attended Sunday school, I could not connect this church activity with what I'd encountered. Four years later, when my family drove across the vast North American continent to move to Portland, Oregon, there it was again, gleaming in the craggy Rocky Mountains. Here was a staggering sky-rock space on a scale way beyond anything I'd ever known. A magnificent landscape, mountains of such measure I could not even comprehend what I was seeing. Far beyond the barbs of family squabbles, something very, very big entered my nine-year-old mind.

My teen years were marked by the usual school and community ac­tivities, but now I was in a different place. Oregon became home for my soul while I was struggling to become human. The sweeping tides of the Pacific Ocean, the iconic waterfalls of the Columbia Gorge, and most of all, the towering forests of the Northwest. All these shaped my sense of orientation, my sense of place, my sense of deep time and life before humans.

Vii

When I began my studies at Oberlin College, I felt sure I would con­centrate on the sciences. I had taken physics, chemistry, math, biology, and I was fascinated by dissection; I thought I would become a surgeon. A year into the rich liberal arts curriculum, I went into traumatic paral­ysis trying to choose a major, a single perspective, a single worldview. It seemed impossible. Eventually I majored in biology; which confirmed my love of beauty in the complexity of life forms.

In my first ecology course I was introduced to a relational view, now standard in environmental studies and ecological sciences. Seeing organ­isms alive and in context felt much more satisfying than observing them as taxonomic specimens. By the time I graduated, ecological problems were surfacing at a despair-inducing rate, and I found myself absorbed by the plight of whales. The Vietnam War tore apart any sense of stability and meaning in my small world; I nearly lost my first great love to the killing fields. What made sense in this tragic insanity?

Not until things settled down could I turn my attention back to the mystery. By then I was exploring the magical California gateways of ocean, redwoods, dance, and ritual. When my dance teacher went to Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, I followed her the next summer. High in the mountain air, sitting by clear water, listening to Chogyam Trungpa teach, I fell in love—with everything! I learned to meditate, I absorbed the Buddhist creativity of Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass, and found myself at a turning point.

When I returned to Santa Cruz I took up a sitting practice on my own and sat every day for five years in steadfast devotion. To what? I knew hardly anything about Buddhism, but meditation seemed like a good thing to do. Only after I finished a PhD, taught environmental ethics, couldn't get a job, and tried living in a Mendocino hippie commune, did I consider formal Zen practice. I moved into a small sangha house at the Santa Cruz Zen Center, took up daily practice as a way of life, and met my eventual ordination teacher, Kobun Chino Otogawa.

The next years took me further into both Zen and nature, as I worked first with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory and later with UC Berke­ley Botanic Garden as education director. I learned the native birds and plants, the soils and rocks of northern California, and roamed the trails of Mount Tamalpais and beaches of Point Reyes. Somehow I found my way to Green Gulch Zen Center and was able to live there as a student for three years. I was lucky to be able to hear Thich Nihat HanWs early teach­ings in the United States and to join his experimental retreats for children and environmentalists. His precepts of interbeing and his way of lead­ing walking meditation had a profound effect on my Buddhist practice. I was exposed to many fine Buddhist teachers in the Bay Area such as Jack Kornfield, Maylie Scott, Norman Fischer, Blanche Hartman, and Steve Stucky, among others. I helped to organize conferences on women and Buddhism and socially engaged Buddhism and went on as many retreats as I could afford. Then a period of serious illness in my thirties led me to ponder (in a Zen sort of way), "What next?" What really was my life path?

In a somewhat unexpected turn, I followed one halting step after an­other and landed at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley where I studied ethics and theology. Here I gained considerable depth in under­standing human values and social systems and had the good fortune to take a class with Joanna Macy, one of the pioneers of green Buddhism in America. I volunteered for social action causes with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and took my meditation into the marketplace. I walked the hills and paths of coastal Mann County in every season. I wrote reflec­tive essays about relations with trees that eventually became a book (The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees). Where all this was going was quite unclear at the time. I seriously considered entering the Unitarian ministry, but when I realized all my sermon topics were about the envi­ronment, I decided undergraduates were a better audience; After many letters of rejection and dashed hopes, I was offered a faculty position with the Environmental Program at the University of Vermont.

At that time, there was almost no dialogue between world religions and the natural sciences and almost no moral reflection on environmen­tal concerns outside the academy. In the 19905 the field of Religion and Ecology was born and I was quickly invited to bring my knowledge of Buddhism to interfaith dialogue. I flowed right into all the emerging conferences drawing attention to the crises we faced, and thus, my ac­ademic scholarship took shape. That long career of speaking and writ­ing has yielded a good number of books, articles, speeches, and practice challenges. This volume represents a selection of that work, updated and drawn together here for the first time.

For me, green Buddhism has been a practice field for personal insight and social activism, as well as intellectual engagement. In my writing I have lifted up central Buddhist principles of compassion and nonharm-ing, interdependence and no separate self. These themes appear in many

of the pieces in this book, applied broadly to conservation, consumer­ism, ecological culture, and climate change. I highlight the practices of mindfulness and lovingkindness central to the early Pali texts and Thera-vada traditions. As a Zen student, I bring out Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva way as a path to liberation, right in the midst of our environ­mental crisis. Like other Western Buddhist environmentalists, I find tremendous value in the Chinese Hua Yen teaching of Indra's net, a concept that demonstrates parallels between Buddhist philosophy, ecological sci­ence, and modern systems thinking. Interdependence, emptiness of self, and the diagnostic frame of the Four Noble Truths are all key themes in my writing.

Among my primary teachers and influences in this work are Buddhist scholars Kenneth Kraft, Ruben Habito, Rita Gross, Judith Simmer‑

Brown, and David Chapple. I am grateful for their committed scholar‑

practitioner roles in engaged Buddhism and their invitations to participate in stimulating Buddhist-Christian dialogue. I also draw strongly on the Buddhist activism of Joanna Macy in despair and empowerment work, Sulak Sivaraksa in global development, and Paula Green in nonviolence and peace studies. All three bring an inspiring depth of scholarship and

global awareness to their Buddhist-informed life work. As a writer, I

rejoice in the penetrating and elegant writing of Gary Snyder, Gretel Ehrlich, W. S. Merwin, and Mary Oliver. These lovers of words, land, and

place have moved me with their Buddhist understanding of the passing and profound beauty of the planet. To walk in some of their landscapes and hear their words has been a great gift for the heart.

My foundational training in Buddhism was shaped by teachers Kobun Chino Otogawa and Thich Nhat Hahn (whom his students call "Thây,"

Vietnamese for "teacher"). Kobun was a poet, calligrapher, a drifting

cloud, the most gentle and welcoming teacher. I loved sitting with him at Jikoji among the bay trees with the sliding doors of the zendo open to the summer air. Walking and singing with Thây at Santa Maria, sur­rounded by children, was a sweet delight. I appreciated the fresh lan­guage of Thây's precepts, his gathas, his poetic expressions of interbeing. At Green Gulch, I learned from Abbot Norman Fischer, and I carry his marriage ceremony blessing with me always. I met Robert Aitken at the first Buddhism in Action meditation retreat I helped to organize with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship; his talks on the paramitas and his personal activism forged the frame for my own actions. While I lived in Vermont, John Daido Loori was an important touchstone for me, with his deep practice, keen eye, and great love for the natural world. Though my Bud­dhist path took me to Zen, I have read almost everything by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and I will never forget being with him in Dharamsala across a weeklong interfaith dialogue conference.

Most of the works presented here have been shared with other audiences, sometimes in obscure or popular contexts, other times in formal book chapters or academic journals. A number of them have been excerpted or adapted for the purposes of this volume. Original sources are indicated for all chapters, and additional references can be found in the notes section. They are grouped in three parts: "Intimate Relations," "Envisioning Green Buddhism," and "Acting with Compassion."

In part i, "Intimate Relations," I explore experiences of nonduality, seeking intimacy free of the usual conditioning of self. In this I draw on my scientific training in natural history and ecology as well as my exposure to Buddhist practice in the West. The pieces in this section are about the attentive mind and the desire to fully meet others as complete beings, whatever the circumstance. My core understanding of direct ex­perience and intimacy with all beings comes from thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei DOgen, whose teachings offer a lifetime of inquiry and contemplation.

In part 2, "Envisioning Green Buddhism," I offer manifestations of green Buddhism, with examples and stories of how this practice field has taken form in current times. Profiles of leading green Buddhist thinkers are mixed in with my own personal experience, as well as discussions of practical applications for this way of seeing the world. The history of green Buddhism is wider than my own path, of course, but I have been delighted to observe the groundswell of interest across my lifetime, glad for these rich teachings to reach so many seekers. I offer my own vision of the green practice path and possibilities for deepening green Buddhist practice in community.

In part _3, "Acting with Compassion," I share some of my own strug­gles and reflections trying to practice with such difficult conundrums as climate change and runaway consumption. I look at the interdependent

concerns of green Buddhism, ecology, and feminism, and the challenge of embodying the green practice path. I highlight spiritual friendship and kindness as two critical ingredients in practicing compassion. It seems to me that the environmental work of this century will ask much more of us than we can now imagine. I believe it will be helpful to place that work in the context of a steady spiritual practice, knowing the work will go on beyond our own lifetimes.

Now more than ever, I feel that what matters most is the practice it­self: embodying the precepts, practicing mindfulness, offering gratitude and kindness, challenging delusion. I am deeply indebted to the lineages of both ecological and Buddhist thought and grateful for this lifework at the meeting place of ancient tradition and modern challenge. My love of the natural world has been well met and supported by environmental colleagues and friends, especially Brett Engstrom, Betsy Brigham, Ian Worley, and Greg de Nevers. Thank you for keeping my field senses alive across the years. The lifetime of effort in this book has been graced by the deep encouragement of dharma friends Wendy Johnson, Paula Green, Christian McEwen, Ken Kraft, and Nancy Wright. I offer my grateful heart and nine bows to each of them. And finally, a deep floor bow to my life partner and tree lover, Davis Te Selle: our practice life together is an ocean of blessing beyond measure.