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Environment

 Preserving our environment and mindful consumption are a part of our practice
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    The Greatest Danger Paid Member

    By Joanna Macy
    How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged or expressed directly. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy. More »
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    Asking Earth Paid Member

    By Clark Strand
    Humbly asked Earth to remove our shortcomings.In order to “humbly ask Earth to remove our shortcomings,” we first had to admit that we actually had shortcomings. For those of us involved in ecological activism of one kind or another, this required a resolute step backwards—into our own lives and our own bodies. We’d grown used to thinking that the problem was all “out there.” If only the corporations weren’t so predatory, if only the government would enact and enforce environmental regulation, if only the average American were less materialistic and less wasteful—then things would get better. What a shock it was to discover that we could find no moral foothold in Ecological Recovery unless we started with ourselves.  More »
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    Cultivating Compassion: An Interview with Karen Armstrong (Video) Paid Member

    Posted by Monty McKeever on 13 Sep 2011
    This week we are beginning the Tricycle Community discussion, Cultivating Compassion in Your Community, with author and religion scholar Karen Armstrong. We were recently able to speak with Karen in Washington, DC: Join the discussion here! More »
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    Intuitive Action Paid Member

    By Colin Beavan
    After so much suffering in Nirvanic castles, what a joy to sink into this world! —Zen Master Seung Sahn Some time ago, Zen Master Soeng Hyang (Bobby Rhodes), the guiding teacher of the Kwan Um School of Zen, gave a talk to a group of students. Afterward, during questions and answers, one of her students began to ask about all the problems in her life and how sad and perturbed she was. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. When the student had finished, Zen Master Soeng Hyang looked at her kindly and simply asked, “Well, can you just trust all that?” In other words, instead of deciding that this experience is good or bad, can you just be with it and see where it wants to guide you? Can you ask what the experience and thoughts are telling you instead of trying to make them all stop? More »
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    As Spacious as Nature Paid Member

    By Master Sheng Yen
    Since people might feel a bit lonely coming out into nature by themselves, they tend to go out in groups. But often they just transplant their own little world out into the big world, and they still feel separation: “I’m with these people, not with those.” We should not be like a snail that carries its house on its back and shrinks back into it when another creature comes along. It is better not to put people into categories based on your social distance from them, whether or not you know them. It is also good to feel intimate with creatures around you—the birds, butterflies, and so on. Just as smoke from a chimney disperses into the air, we should disperse our sense of “group” or “family” and truly participate in the life around us. More »
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    The Care of Earth Paid Member

    By Clark Strand
    Ask ten people on the street if they believe in God, and—depending on where you live—you could get ten different answers. Ask ten Buddhists if they believe in Amida Buddha, and the responses will likewise vary: “He’s a fairy tale.” “He’s a metaphor.” “I plan to be born in his Pure Land when I die.”But what if you ask ten people if they believe in Earth?A few ecology-minded souls might get what you were up to, probably the younger ones. The rest wouldn’t have a clue. A typical answer might go something like this: “Earth is what we stand on. Earth is where we live. It doesn’t matter whether we believe in Earth or not. Earth is simply real.” More »