By Carla Ott
How can we nurture inner resources like joy, confidence and peace that are necessary to face the climate emergency as well as to persevere in our ecological commitments? What can help us to deal with “eco-anxiety”, i.e. feeling overwhelmed, distressed or powerless in sight of the magnitude of the climate emergency? In which ways is Buddhist thought and practice relevant in addressing the great challenges of this time? And how can environmental and Buddhist wisdom work together in order to protect our planet?
These questions are the inspiration and guiding light for the initiative of the Wisdom Working for the Earth Forums. This series of events aims to bring together the practical wisdom present in both the environmental fields and Buddhist traditions with the wish that these approaches work together in the most fruitful way for the health of our earth and of all beings who depend on it (hence, the name “Wisdom Working for the Earth”, or “Sagesse pour la terre” in French).
The first forum in this series took place last June (4-6th June 2022) in Lerab Ling – a Tibetan Buddhist retreat centre located in the lush green setting of the Natural Regional Park of the Haut-Languedoc in Southern France. This three-day event provided the occasion for people from all walks of life to come together and learn practical tools and wisdom from a rich number of environmental and Buddhist experts.
In this article we would like to share the genesis and experience of this first event and give you a flavour of the program, of what worked well and what future events can improve. We end with rejoicing in all the great efforts and with inviting you to organise similar events and perhaps join the next edition of the Wisdom Working for the Earth forum in 2024!
A seed had been growing…
For several years the wish to bring together Buddhist and environmental wisdom had been germinating in a number of nature lovers across the Rigpa Sangha. As it became increasingly obvious that the world is in a climate emergency, the motivation became stronger and stronger to reflect on and share tools that help to address this emergency from a place of compassion and wisdom. At the end of the year 2020, this seed finally met with the right conducive circumstances – a dedicated group of people, the support of Lerab Ling and its environmental committee, and the synergy with a similar initiative by Rigpa’s youth group, Rigpé Shyönnu. Nourished by these conditions, the seed began to grow into the concrete idea of organising a series of forums on Buddhism and Environmental Action in Lerab Ling.
The fruition into a rich three-day program on interdependence
After a growing period of around 17 months having been nurtured by the warm care of a wonderful and diverse team of fifteen, the first Wisdom Working for the Earth Forum finally came to fruition on the weekend of Pentecost in June 2022. By this time, it had grown into quite a large tree, taking the form of a three-day program filled with different kinds of activities: There were plenary talks in the morning, meditation in movement sessions and a fair of local environmental associations during lunchtime, round table discussions in the afternoon followed by a number of parallel practical workshops and evening programs in nature.
The overarching theme of this first forum was interdependence – a fundamental concept in both ecological thinking and Buddhist philosophy. All different program elements approached interdependence through one or more of these following three angles: Seeing or recognizing interdependence, cultivating this perspective and acting in harmony with it. As some of you might have noticed, this structure is based on the three elements that define Buddhist practice: view, meditation and action. This informative, reflective and practical focus on interdependence proved to be a fruitful starting point for many discussions that sprang from the meeting of the audience with experts and practitioners from a variety of environmental and Buddhist disciplines.
Overall 27 amazing speakers and workshop holders came to this forum and shared their perspectives of interdependence and its implications, guided deeper reflections on this topic and provided specific tools on how to act in harmony with interdependence. All the main plenary talks can be watched on Prajna Online (prajnaonline.org) both in English and French. In the following, I will just highlight a few impressions of the main talks to give you a flavour of the type of dialogue this forum created.
Every morning we had the great fortune to have Ringu Tulku Rinpoche addressing the audience in person. He presented a Buddhist way of looking at the environment through the eyes of interdependence, replied to a number of deep questions coming from participants and encouraged each of us to not lose hope but to try our best to act for the benefit of our world. He also introduced a video message that His Holiness the Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje recorded for the purpose of this forum and echoed the Karmapa’s words that practising Dharma and working for the protection of the environment are not two different things – in fact, there is no better Dharma practice than protecting the environment because if we manage to prevent the degradation of our planet, it will benefit everyone living on this earth now and in future.
Bringing together the Buddhist and political domain, the former Prime Minister of Bhutan Jigme Y. Thinley spoke on the topic of “Ecological Resilience in Gross National Happiness: Evidence from the Environmental Management of a Buddhist state” via zoom. His talk gave a concrete example of how countries can be managed with the view of interdependence and its implications in mind. He also offered a great practical takeaway in his concluding advice on what each of us can do to live within planetary boundaries.
Further representing a Buddhist perspective, we had two senior teachers of the Rigpa Sangha opening and closing the forum. In his opening talk, Philippe Cornu contextualised Buddhism and its relation to ecology and environmental action and in her concluding talk, Dominique Side wove the main messages of each talk into an excellent summary and underlined what Buddhism can contribute to the dialogue with ecology, both philosophically and practically.
Another international guest whom we welcomed via zoom was the environmental activist, author and founder of the organisation Local Futures, Helena Norberg-Hodge. She gave us a big picture view of the dynamic economic forces at play in our current society and how to return to a more sustainable model through local economies. A point that struck me was how she highlighted that localization is a way to build communities in which we can share about our struggles and how this process brings healing and support.
Furthermore, the French biographer of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, author and spiritual activist, Sofia Stril-Rever called on the qualities of love, compassion and universal responsibility as implications of the view of interdependence and guided a practice on cultivating loving kindness.
Combining these qualities with a scientific approach, Pascale Fabre, a Physio-chemist, Buddhist practitioner and research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), focused on plastic pollution in oceans as an example of interdependence. On the basis of the most recent scientific findings related to the extent of this pollution, she guided the audience in a reflection on how we personally relate to this issue. She ended with specific actions society and we ourselves can adopt to minimise plastic pollution. Turning inwards, she argues, helps us take action more appropriately and enthusiastically.
The natural world is full of examples of interdependence and the ecologist Franck Richard, from the Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE) department at the CNRS, guided the audience in an exploration of the interdependence between living organisms present in the under-ground.
Finally, moving towards the end of the forum, the importance of local actions was emphasised. Dekila Chungyalpa, director of the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the environmental advisor to His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Thinley Norbu, joined us via Zoom to share with us the lessons she learned from her experience in helping to establish the environmental protection association Khoryug. This group of over 50 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in the Himalayas started in 2008 and has done remarkable work in facilitating environmental education and action. Her practical summary of conditions of success and failure for setting up environmental actions at these monasteries is of great use for other Buddhist or religious groups striving to implement an environmental program. Beyond this specific Tibetan Buddhist example, Dekila reminded us of the even wider perspective that faith groups in general can play an important role in environmental protection because they practically represent a large share of landowners, financial investors, educators and leaders, and spiritually often motivate people to protect nature, especially among indigenous peoples all around the world who share a special link with their lands.
I see this forum as a first and small step towards living up to the potential a Buddhist centre can have in protecting the environment. Part of this initial role was also to support and showcase the great work of the many active environmental associations of the area around Lerab Ling. Eight associations ranging from the local permaculture association Humus Pays D’Oc to compost educators to the representatives of the French National Forestry Office (ONF) animated stands at the fair of local initiatives that took place during lunchtime.
A favourite element of many participants were the workshops in the afternoon. They invited participants to learn specific tools to help them in their environmental actions, such as learning how to meditate, how to start a permaculture vegetable garden, getting to know the lives within forests and how to manage forests sustainably. The choice of workshops over the course of the three days were: “Healing oneself to heal the world” with Frère Phap Lu (a former doctor and monk from Plum Village), “Discovering Meditation” with Rigpa meditation instructors, “A guided tour of Lerab Ling’s environment and environmental management” with Sam Truscott (member of Lerab Ling’s environmental committee), “What to know about forests” with Élisabeth Guichard (a Buddhist forester of the French National Forestry Office), “Starting a Permaculture vegetable garden – an exchange” with Nelly Pons (author committed to ecology), “Contemplating Interdependence” with Dominique Side (Rigpa senior teacher), “Sustainable forest management applied to Lerab Ling” with Gaëtan du Bus de Warnaffe (independent forest manager consulting Lerab Ling), “How permaculture can feed our world and ourselves” with Damien Dekarz (permaculture educator), “A Collective experiment – Where to land?” with Chloé Latour (Lawyer, theatre director and artistic facilitator) and “An educative walk from Lerab Ling to the L’Escandorgue forest” with Laurent Bayle-Bascoul (forester of the neighbouring section of the French National Forestry Office).
A number of these workshop holders also participated in the round-table discussions on interdependence that took place each afternoon in a plenary setting. These exchanges of different environmental actors, Buddhist teachers and practitioners brought forth intriguing conversations that undoubtedly will shape the future editions of these forums.
These are just a few snap-shots of the main program highlights to give you an impression of the perspectives and topics this forum discussed and to invite you to dive into the recordings of the main talks on Prajna Online if they caught your interest. Three talks are also available in English only on Lerab Ling’s Youtube channel. We hope they provide inspiration and support for anyone to become a force of wisdom working for the earth themselves.
What we learned
A total of around 350 people participated in either one, two or three days of this forum and each of them had their own unique impressions and insights they took home with them. This short article just presents my view of this event coming from the perspective of an organiser and program designer who could not even join a single workshop herself because she was too busy with organising the rest of the day. Nevertheless, from the atmosphere I felt and the feedback and conversations our team heard, it seems that this forum achieved its main goal of bringing a sense of hope and inspiration, providing practical tools each of us can apply and creating a feeling of interconnectedness and shared mission between Buddhist and environmental fields. This fills us with great joy!
Of course, there are many points to improve in future and this is something similar events could learn from. The program was quite full with a lot of input and people wished for more time to reflect for themselves and to exchange with each other. A specific challenge of our forum was that the main language of the event was French (international speakers got translated), while we also wanted to cater for an English audience who joined via live-stream. Here the balance of which audience and translation style to prioritise was not always satisfactory for everyone. In addition, people wished that the talks via zoom had been more interactive, which is doable in future and ideally could be remedied by speakers being present in person. Furthermore, we received the feedback that people would have liked more speakers active in the political arena. Also we experienced first hand how hard it is to change certain environmentally unfriendly habits that have become systemic over the course of many years. In future, we will devote even more time and care to ensure that every element in the venue from bottles to badges lives up to the message of the forum and has less of a negative environmental impact. With these lessons learned, we are planning the next forum and hope to inspire other similar events.
The tree will continue to grow – Future Forums
After the time of harvest, nature rests and regenerates to gather the strength to give fruits again. Learning from this example of nature, after the season of intense fruition and harvest during the first forum, we needed a time to rest and regenerate. Therefore, we delayed the next forum to 2024 and we are slowly letting our roots gather nutrients for growing another beautiful event for you to enjoy and benefit from. You are all warmly invited to join in this feast in 2024! To stay in touch, you can follow our instagram account @sagessepourlaterre.
In the meantime, it is so encouraging to see so many initiatives and programs dedicated to bringing together Buddhist wisdom and environmental protection – this issue of the EBU magazine being at once one of them and a testimony to these efforts. We offer our gratitude and best wishes to all these endeavours and hope that these initiatives will inspire the wider Buddhist world and other communities to affirm their role in protecting and regenerating the planet!
May each of us connect to the force of transformation within ourselves and thereby influence society to help to restore to our world the living notions of interrelatedness, respect, hope and meaning that it so desperately lacks.
About the author
Having been raised by a Buddhist mother, Carla Ott started to fall in love with Buddhism from a young age onwards. She recently completed a Master degree in Buddhist Studies at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal and now lives in France, where she is part of the environmental committee of Lerab Ling, a temple and retreat centre of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition. Fascinated by the process of how Buddhist traditions are responding and adapting to contemporary landscapes and issues (which was the topic of her thesis) combined with her deep appreciation for nature, she helped to organise the first Wisdom Working for the Earth Forum bringing together Buddhist and environmental wisdom, which took place in Lerab Ling in June 2022.
This article first appeared in EBU Magazine #10 – Ecodharma (Spring 2023). Download the full issue as PDF or browse all issues.