The Zen Studies Podcast

Crisis Buddhism requires us to mindfully balance three essential areas of practice: Bearing Witness, Taking Action, and Taking Care. In this episode I discuss Bearing Witness, or exposing ourselves to the suffering of the world in all its forms in order to make wise decisions, activate our natural compassion, and awaken a sense of urgency. How do we Bear Witness without becoming overwhelmed, depressed, or despairing? We embrace it as a noble practice of compassion and wisdom.

Crisis Buddhism is a new formulation of practice to help us navigate our everyday lives as we face ecological and climate breakdown. We mindfully balance three areas of practice: Bearing Witness, learning about the suffering of the world to make wise decisions, activate our compassion, and awaken a sense of urgency; Taking Action, participating in a tangible way to help alleviate or prevent the suffering we witness, and Taking Care, engaging in activities, relationships, and practices that sustain us.

The Vajrayana teaching of the five wisdom energies is a about five types of energy we all have within us, or five tendencies within a human being. Within each of us, one or two energies tend to predominate, resulting in what we might call “personality,” but at a deeper level these five energies are about five characteristic orientations to the conundrum of human life.

Vows guide our decisions, help us prioritize how we spend our time, resources, and energy, and allow us to discern whether our actions are in harmony with our deeper aspirations - helping us live intentionally instead of letting our decisions be determined by habit energy, inertia, fear, selfishness, or a lack of imagination. I first discuss why it can be so hard to stay true to our intentions, and then I present five aspects of the Buddhist practice of vow that make it a powerful way to shape our lives.

Our practical, lived response to our climate and ecological crisis – as individuals, Sanghas, and Dharma teachers – is inseparable from our Dharma practice. As Greta Thunberg has said, “Change is coming whether we like it or not.” Also, as Buddhists we're morally compelled to act for the welfare of other beings. Finally, the eco-crisis is a profound and difficult koan, whether we choose to engage it that way or not - and therefore, it's an opportunity to grow in understanding, compassion, and manifestation.

Explore why we desire a thought-free mind and learn that meditation is about redirecting attention beyond thoughts. Understand the challenges of meditating with a busy mind and the importance of cultivating wisdom. Delve into He-Shirio in Zazen meditation and the transformative journey of awakening through consistent practice.

Facing Extinction: A Personal Journal about Trying to Do the Right Thing in a Climate Emergency. Topics: I Need You(r support for my activism); What Does Zen Have to Do with Climate Action? (a discussion with other Zen teachers); What’s the Problem? (why cry myself to sleep at night?); Life is (inexplicably and unconditionally) Beautiful; Civil Disobedience as a Cure for Cognitive Dissonance. Please feel free to skip this episode if you're really only interested in episodes explicitly about Buddhism.

Next week I’ll take a break from my busy life and projects in order to attend a silent meditation retreat. After spending the half-a-year since my last retreat immersed in the relative aspect of life, the absolute aspect of life will come to the fore. I hope to regain balance and see everything in a much larger context. In this episode, I talk about what that feels like, and the value of awakening to the absolute aspect of reality if you want be an effective agent for positive change in the relative world.

I finish up our study of Zen master Dogen’s essay “Four Ways Bodhisattvas Embrace Living Beings” with a discussion of "identity action," or "being in the same boat" with living beings. Even if you’re not a big fan of Zen texts, or of Dogen, I hope you’ll listen; this episode is on the importance of a bodhisattva – the importance of any of us – making a practice of seeing ourselves as “being in the same boat” with other beings. Can you imagine how different our societies would be if we all tried to do this?

Practice can help us “brighten the mind” when we’re feeling trapped in negativity, hopelessness, despair, discouragement, depression, lack of confidence, etc. We practice four steps: 1) Acknowledging (noticing and admitting how we’re feeling); 2) Taking some time to fully experience whatever it is we’re feeling, without trying to change it; 3) Exploring what’s going on within us, gently and non-judgmentally, and 4) Engaging in an activity, like zazen, you know is calming and restorative.