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Right Action on Climate Change
Introduction
by Gregory Kramer
 In June 2013, I attended the International Vipassana Teachers’ Gathering at Spirit Rock in California. Among other topics, my colleagues and I explored our role as Dharma teachers to support a wise response to climate change. The result of our investigation is the International Dharma Teachers Statement on Climate Change, describing core Buddhist insights into the root causes of the climate crisis and ways to minimize its potentially tragic consequences.
Since the statement was issued in January 2014, over 400 Dharma teachers and 1000 Sangha members worldwide have endorsed the statement by signing it at the One Earth Sangha website. The complete statement is offered below. If you are moved to take action, I invite you to start by offering your own endorsement at the One Earth Sangha website.
The Earth As Witness:
International Dharma Teachers’ Statement on Climate Change
Shared from One Earth Sangha
Today humanity faces an unprecedented crisis of almost unimaginable magnitude. Escalating climate change is altering the global environment so drastically as to force the Earth into a new geological age. Unprecedented levels of suffering for all life on Earth, including human, will result. Significant reductions in greenhouse gases and other actions will be needed to reduce climate change to manageable levels. But more fundamental changes are also needed, and this is where we can draw guidance from the rich resources of the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma. This statement briefly describes core Buddhist insights into the root causes of the climate crisis and suggests ways to minimize its potentially tragic consequences.
As a starting point, the Dharma states that to formulate meaningful solutions to any problem we must first acknowledge the truth of our suffering. As shocking and painful as it may be, we must recognize that without swift and dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use and major efforts to increase carbon sequestration, global temperatures will rise close to or beyond 2 degrees C. This increase will lead to injury and death for millions of people worldwide and the extinction of many of the Earth’s species. Millions more will experience severe trauma and stress that threaten their physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. These stresses will, in turn, trigger social and political unrest. In a grave injustice, low-income communities, poor nations, and people systematically subjected to oppression and discrimination, who contributed little to climate change, will initially be harmed the most. Even worse, as frightening as it is, if we fail to make fundamental changes in our energy, manufacturing, transportation, forestry, agricultural, and other systems along with our consumption patterns with utmost urgency, in mere decades irreversible climate shifts will occur that undermine the very pillars of human civilization. Only by recognizing these truths can we adopt a meaningful path toward solutions.
The Dharma teaches us the origin of our suffering. The majority of the world’s climate scientists are unequivocal that on the external physical plane climate change is caused by the historic and ongoing use of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gases they generate when burned. Destructive land management practices such as clearing forests also contribute by reducing nature’s capacity to sequester carbon. The Dharma informs us, however, that craving, aversion, and delusion within the human mind are the root causes of vast human suffering. Just as these mental factors have throughout history led to the oppression, abuse, and exploitation of indigenous peoples and others outside the halls of wealth and power, craving, aversion, and delusion are also the root causes of climate change. Climate change is perhaps humanity’s greatest teacher yet about how these mental forces, when unchecked in ourselves and our institutions, cause harm to other people and the living environment. Led by industrialized nations, the desire for evermore material wealth and power has resulted in the reckless destruction of land and water, excessive use of fossil fuels, massive amounts of solid and toxic waste, and other practices that are disrupting the Earth’s climate. However, by acknowledging and addressing these internal mental drivers, we can begin to resolve the external causes of climate change.
The Dharma offers hope by teaching us that it is possible to overcome the detrimental forces of craving, aversion, and delusion. We can use the climate crisis as a catalyst to acknowledge the consequences of our craving for more and more material wealth and the pursuit of power and realize we must change our assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors. We can use the climate crisis as a catalyst to educate ourselves about planetary processes so we understand that the Earth has ecological limits and thresholds that must not be crossed. By learning from our mistaken beliefs and activities, we can create more equitable, compassionate, and mindful societies that generate greater individual and collective wellbeing while reducing climate change to manageable levels.
Finally, the Dharma describes a pathway of principles and practices we can follow to minimize climate change and the suffering it causes. The first principle is wisdom. From this point forward in history we must all acknowledge not only the external causes of climate change, but the internal mental drivers as well, and their horrific consequences. To be wise we must also, individually and as a society, adopt the firm intention to do whatever is necessary, no matter what the cost, to reduce the climate crisis to manageable levels and over time re-stabilize our planet’s climate.
The second Dharma principle is ethical conduct, which is rooted in a compassionate concern for all living beings in the vast web of life. We need to make a firm moral commitment to adopt ways of living that protect the climate and help restore the Earth’s ecosystems and living organisms. In our personal lives, we should recognize the value of contentment and sufficiency and realize that, after a certain modest level, additional consumption, material wealth, and power will not bring happiness. To fulfill our wider moral responsibility, we must join with others, stand up to the vested interests that oppose change, and demand that our economic, social, and political institutions be fundamentally altered so they protect the climate and offer nurturance and support for all of humanity in a just and equitable manner. We must insist that governments and corporations contribute to a stable climate and a healthy environment for all people and cultures worldwide, now and in the future. We must further insist that specific scientifically credible global emission reduction targets be set and means adopted to effectively monitor and enforce them.
The third Dharma training, and the one that makes all of the others possible, is mindfulness. This offers a way to heighten our awareness of, and then to regulate, our desires and emotions and the thoughts and behaviors they generate. By continually enhancing our awareness, we can increasingly notice when we are causing harm to others, the climate, or ourselves, and strengthen our capacity to rapidly shift gears and think and act constructively. Mindfulness increases awareness of our inherent interdependency with other people and the natural environment and of values that enhance human dignity rather than subordinate people, animals, and nature to the craving for more material wealth and power.
As we each awaken to our responsibility to follow the path described in the Dharma to help us protect and restore the planet and its inhabitants, we may feel awed by the immensity of the challenge. We should take heart, however, in the power of collective action. Buddhists can join with others in their Sanghas, and our Sanghas can join hands and hearts with other religious and spiritual traditions as well as secular movements focused on social change. In this way we will support each other as we make the necessary shifts in perspectives, lifestyles, and economic and institutional systems required to reduce climate change to manageable levels. History shows that with concerted, unified, collective effort, changes that at one time seemed impossible have time and again come to pass.
When we come together to celebrate our love for the natural world and all of the beings that inhabit it, and when we take a stand to counter the forces of craving, aversion, and delusion, we reclaim our own inner stability and strength and live closer to the truth, closer to the Dharma. Together, we can seek to ensure that our descendants and fellow species inherit a livable planet. Individually and collectively, we will be honoring the great legacy of the Dharma and fulfill our heart’s deepest wish to serve and protect all life.
If you would like to endorse the statement, please add your name at the One Earth Sangha site and consider sharing this opportunity with your email, facebook, twitter and other networks.
Stories from My Days in Robes – Part Two
Carbon Footprint of a Barefoot Monastic
by Gregory Kramer
 Encouraged by the positive interest about my time as a monastic, I continue here with reflections and some of the considerations of a life committed to the lifestyle, practices, and interior reflections put forth by the Buddha. It begins with my not having a trash basket in my kuti at Meetirigala Nissarana Vanaya forest monastery.
Meetirigala is one of Sri Lanka's most respected meditation monasteries. Having been established as part of the strict forest tradition, my room had no electricity or hot water. Nor, it turns out, did it have any place to put trash--you know, tissues and so forth. I was newly ordained and as such I was concerned about learning the protocol for everything from obtaining food, wearing my robes well, engaging in the meditation hall or group practices, and remaining safe from snakes (yes; big and small) and monkeys (including the one that tried to climb my robes when my look into his eyes was compassionate rather than the requisite domineering). For my garbage, I temporarily took the box from my small tube of toothpaste and stuffed into it the occasional tissue and other refuse. Good enough.
Two weeks later, when I packed down the contents of this same box in order to make room for my final debris, I noted with surprise that I'd been there a fortnight and this tiny box was only half full. This triggered a reflection on the rest of my monastic footprint during my time at this austere center in the jungles of Sri Lanka. I had not engaged any mode of transport. My electric use had been nearly zero. All of the food I'd been offered was, to my knowledge, local and involved very little packaging (the rice may have come in sacks, there was the occasional piece of candy). In a word, the carbon footprint of a forest monk, at least in Sri Lanka, is tiny.
So whatever perspective is offered by the Buddha's teachings on renunciation, whatever clarity of mind and compassion is afforded by Buddhist practices, I had in front of me concrete evidence of the teaching on renunciation and its result in harmlessness: half a toothpaste box of waste in two weeks, and near zero use of fuels (I did burn two candles during that time). Of course, I was in Sri Lanka, an economically poor country in which scarcity throttles wastefulness. A forest monk living in the U.S. or Europe would likely have a larger environmental impact, if for no other reason than the calculation of one's carbon footprint includes the resident nation as a whole and the impact of their military, highways, and other infrastructure. Still, the Buddha's call to simple living can be understood in the framework of resource consumption and be appreciated as a teaching relevant to each person's ecological impact. The mind leads all actions, including wastefulness and harmlessness in lifestyle.
I wish I could end the story here and be a hero. It's not that simple. It hurts to reflect on the fact that I flew half way around the world to get to Sri Lanka and Thailand. And it hurts every time I reflect on the fact that in order to teach these Insight Dialogue retreats globally, I am burning a heap of jet fuel. I can and do remind myself that, were I not traveling, the travel of multiple others to my retreats would be grossly more harmful. And it is the case that people sometimes fly quite far to engage in these relational Dhamma and Insight Dialogue retreats that I've been sharing. While I am keeping in mind that I undertake as many teachings as possible for each flight I take, and even many climate change activists fly to conferences and presentations, I remain haunted by the carbon footprint of my teaching activities. When, I ask, do I stop? What best serves our hurting world?
I will sit with this and other burning questions. I invite you to do the same. The Dharma invites us into the full challenge of cause and effect. "I am the heir to my actions” advises the last of the five remembrances we are asked to contemplate daily in the Upajjhattana Sutta. We can tap into the richness of the Dhamma to reflect on how we live. Can my life be simpler and can my footprint in the carbon world shrink along with the footprint in the mental world of the self? Concretely, each of us can ask whether the hunger for pleasure is behind a purchase or a trip, and whether it reflects our values to purchase an object, drive to the countryside, or fly to the vacation? What positive actions can I take, like planting trees to offset my carbon use, speaking to others about climate change, supporting organizations that are taking intelligent action? Maybe I can just read more about the issue, and maybe I can sign the Dharma Teachers' statement? As with all things, we begin where we are and continue from where we are. The here and now of meditation is not separate from the here and now of relating to others nor from the here and now of our impact on the physical world.
May I make wise choices. May the forest monks and nuns, and the many innocent beings in our hurting world, be at peace. May we awaken.
Yours in the Dhamma,
Gregory, formerly Venerable Revata
Sharing Dhamma Through Audio Recordings
Recently Uploaded
Thanks to the efforts of volunteer reviewers, Metta is pleased to offer a variety of audio recordings through our Teachings Library. Recently uploaded audio offerings include:
Four Noble Truths
Gregory Kramer offers a straightforward talk explaining the Four Noble Truths. The listener is invited to look closely and see the sensitivity of the body-mind, and when looking at it, begin to recognize the pain of grasping and how this leads to the possibility of something different. Is it possible for us to watch the process of the mind building our sense of self so that we cease to believe it every time it speaks?
Liberated Through Sense Contact
In this talk, Gregory Kramer begins with the question, “What is the spiritual path for, why and how am I doing it?” He continues to explain how the human is hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. In the second part, Phyllis Hicks describes how we keep it real by being here now with what is here now. By bringing presence to the difficulty and knowing the reactivity, the mind grows bright and we can know what it is to be caught. We are cultivating a path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Clinging and the Vicissitudes
In this talk, Mary Burns describes how we can have stability of mind even when changes happen in life and we take it personally, thinking things shouldn’t be as they are. We can guard the sense doors and know how to meet with awareness the worldly dhammas of gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. When we know it, we can meet it in the way that it is, not in the way we thought it should be.
Become an Audio reviewer
If you enjoy listening to audio teachings and are interested in helping Metta as an audio reviewer, there are two distinct ways.
1. Join Metta’s Audio Evaluation and Editing Online Group where you can access unedited retreat recordings to listen to and then evaluate through an online survey. With this option, engagement is self-directed and accommodates individual availability in terms of time and commitments. Recent recordings for review include teachings by Venerable Sukhacitto and Mary Burns from the October 2013 retreat at Gaia House in England. Note: In order to access the group, you must first be registered as a member of Metta’s Online Community. It only takes a few minutes to sign up.
2. If you seek more structure and the opportunity to connect with other reviewers, consider joining the Audio Review Contemplations Sangha. This option requires more commitment, offering the occasion for Insight Dialogue practice, discussion, and community support. The following update and invitation offers further description of this opportunity and how to get involved.
Audio Review Contemplations Sangha
 An update and invitation by Erica Pittman
Gregory Kramer and I have spent the past six months meeting over Skype with two dedicated groups of Insight Dialogue practitioners around the world to hear, review, and discuss ten years worth of his contemplations and dhamma talks. Originally intended to generate ideas for how best to develop this richness of audio files into more accessible formats, the project has turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for everyone involved to deepen their relationship to the dhamma through these teachings. We are currently planning another round of the project, newly titled Audio Review Contemplations (ARC), and would like to invite other Insight Dialogue practitioners to participate.
Many of the volunteers have found that participating in this project enables a deepening of dhamma practice both in community and also through individual work with the contemplations. Participation will give you access to many talks and teachings, and will include monthly small group meetings over Skype with Gregory and me for Insight Dialogue practice, discussion, and support.
Over the course of another six months, we’re asking for roughly a 1.5 hour a week commitment from volunteers for listening to audios, reviewing them through an online survey, and participating in monthly Skype meetings to practice Insight Dialogue together and to further discuss the material. We anticipate that the project will start up again in late May or early June.
If you are interested in participating in this next iteration of our project, please email me at Erica@metta.org, ideally no later than May 1 st.
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