Dear friends,
On our way to the Sierras this summer, my wife began turning across several lanes of traffic to get back on the highway. From the passenger seat, I saw a car speeding towards us.
"Stop, stop, STOP!"
She hit the brakes. I'd been blocking her view, and she hadn't seen the car. We were fine—though everyone was rattled.
So much in our world feels like that to me right now, especially the climate emergency.
What We Can See
This summer, a glacier collapsed in Nepal and wildfires tore across Europe. Both made world headlines, but the deaths of at least 35,000 people during Europe's heatwaves barely registered. Meanwhile new fossil fuel infrastructure is being approved.
The science has been clear for decades. We have the technology to transition to cleaner, cheaper energy. We lack political will, and a movement large enough to push leaders to hit the brakes on fossil fuels.
My wife wasn't driving carelessly. She simply couldn't see. I wasn't wiser or more alert—I just had a seat with a clear view.
Two Kinds of Suffering
Dharma practice trains us to turn toward what's true, including the things we'd rather not recollect: impermanence, old age, sickness, death.
But there's a difference between inevitable suffering and injustice. There's a difference between an unexpected diagnosis and tens of thousands dying in heatwaves intensified by global heating. Losing your home, livelihood, or community in a climate disaster isn't simply an unavoidable part of life. It's the cumulative result of choices that specific people, companies, and governments make to place short-term profit over the welfare of life on our planet.
One kind of suffering asks us to accept what cannot be changed. The other asks us to act. Contemplative practice gives us the clarity to tell them apart, and the courage to respond.
What I find hardest isn't my grief or anger. It's the pull to drift back to sleep. Everything carries on as if we had unlimited time. Turn on the news, walk down the street, and it's business as usual.
Staying awake doesn't mean we need to flood ourselves with bad news. It means cultivating the capacity, together, to keep looking, to feel what's evoked, and to listen for how we're called to respond.
There's a koan in my heart. A question that arises when I look into my children's eyes, hear the birds in the morning or the crickets at night: What is the most important thing I can do to help?
Right now, for me, that means writing and speaking about this plainly. (It also means supporting free and fair elections here at home—the nearest lever I can reach.) Each of our answers will probably look different.
No one knows where the tipping points are or how this will unfold. But we do know enough—enough about what is happening, what's causing it, where we are heading, and what we need to do.
Everything is asking us to step up.
In kindness and strength,
Oren
P.S.
A mass movement is built out of conversations—with neighbors, with family, with people who see things differently than we do. It's slow work, and it's essential.
This fall, I'm teaching Wise Communication at Spirit Rock: six Thursdays online, beginning October 15, on speaking from the heart and listening beneath the words. If any of the above stirred something in you, I invite you to join me.
If this post is meaningful to you, feel free to share it.
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