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Environment

 Preserving our environment and mindful consumption are a part of our practice
  • Tricycle Community 21 comments

    The Green Buddha Paid Member

    By David Rome
    What does it mean to be “green” and “Buddhist?” The Green Buddha is traditionally the Laughing Buddha, bringer of prosperity and mirth. His iconic image can be found everywhere from curio shelves to a 1950s film about art theft. But in this age of environmental loss and degradation, “green” and “Buddhist” together should come to mean something new, something about the imperative to face the loss and work to protect the future. The connection between environmental activism and Buddhist practice exists, though it is not always easy to draw. More »
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    Radiator Charlie's Mortgage-Lifter Tomato Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    In August my gardener hands are stained nicotine dark from the resinous sap of tangled tomato vines heavy with summer fruit. In the spell of the nightshades I return to my first season of growing tomatoes at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, deep in the Ventana wilderness of central California. Anchored by a daily meditation schedule of dawn and nighttime zazen, the tomato plants of the Tassajara garden kept my practice grounded by day. Now, almost 35 years later, the intrepid tomato continues to provide long hours of mindfulness and the real wealth of a succulent harvest. More »
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    How Green is Green? Paid Member

    By Daniel Goleman
    Everything I Have; Simon Evans; 2008; pen, paper, scotch tape, white out; 60 1/4 x 40 1/8 inches THE VISUDDHIMAGGA, a fifth-century Indian text, poses a riddle: “Precisely where is what we call a ‘chariot’ located? Is it in the axles, the wheels, the frame? Is it in the poles that connect to the horse?”The answer: Nowhere. What we mean by the term “chariot” refers to the temporary arrangement of its component parts. It’s an illusion. More »
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    Facing the Heat Paid Member

    By Joseph Goldstein
    WHEN I WAS INVITED to write a short essay on the climate crisis, my first thought was that I didn’t have much to contribute on the subject of global warming. Although I am aware of the magnitude of the problem, perhaps like many others, I have not spent much time reflecting on it or seriously considering what I could do about it. It was this response that then piqued my interest. Why hadn’t I spent time thinking about one of the major problems confronting our planet? Why had it slid to the backburner of my interests?Two related teachings from quite different traditions began to shed light on these questions, light that illuminates other important issues in our lives as well. The first is a teaching from the great 12th-century Korean Zen master Chinul. His framework of teaching is “sudden awakening/gradual cultivation." More »
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    The Movement With No Name Paid Member

    By Paul Hawken
    Could you explain what you mean by the "movement" and why, as you put it, "nobody saw it coming"? "Movement" is simply a placeholder for the one to two million organizations in the world today that address issues of the environment and social justice. No one saw this massing of organizations coming because it didn't start as a top-down, ideological movement with charismatic leaders and a manifesto. To this day, new nonprofits and NGOs usually reinvent the wheel because they're created by individuals who find themselves dealing with issues that are not being properly addressed by government or business—or not being addressed at all. When groups of citizens figure that out, they form alliances, institutes, community-based organizations, coalitions, foundations, networks, and educational or faith-based organizations to fill the need. More »
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    The World Without Us Paid Member

    Alan Weisman is an award-winning environmental journalist whose reports have appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and Discover, and on National Public Radio; he teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. His New York Times best seller The World Without Us, called by critics an “eco-thriller” and “one of the grandest thought experiments of our time,” considers the fate of the earth were human beings suddenly to disappear. In August, Tricycle contributing editor Clark Strand spoke with Weisman about impermanence, human responsibility, and the initiation into a new way of global thinking. More »