A Wild Love For The World

“Despair, when shared, delivers us to a new kind of humanity. It gives us new eyes to be able to look at what is happening in our world together. I knew then that my grief and despair would be my close companions and gateway to my work for decades to come.

“Our sorrow is in equal measure our love for we only mourn what we love. Courage is the tantric side of fear, and passion for justice is the tantric expression of anger.

If we could feel the earth acting through us, if we could experience being held by a power greater than our own, it would change everything. We would feel graced.” Joanna Macy

A Wild Love For The World, was compiled as a tribute to Joanna Macy and her work as she turned 90. In it, she shares some reflections and there are articles by many others.

In this series of explorations this April of Walking Softly On The Earth And With Each Other, I am interested in knowing how to acknowledge the reality of climate change without giving way to despair. Joanna has faced this directly her whole life.

She shares a Tibetan Buddhist teaching she received in India that affected her deeply. This is a summary of the Shambhala prophecy.

“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and death, and technologies that lay waste to our world. It is now, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges. 

Now you cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. Now comes the time when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors  - moral and physical courage.

To dismantle these weapons - in every sense of the word - they must go to where they enter into the corridors of power, where the decisions are made. The Shambhala warriors know they can do this because the weapons are manomaya, mind made.

These weapons are made by the human mind; they can be unmade by the human mind. The dangers arise from our own choices, our habits and relationships.

They train in the use of two weapons - compassion and wisdom.

Compassion moves us to act for the sake of all beings. To not be afraid of the suffering of the world.

Wisdom gives us insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. The battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.

We are interconnected, as in a web, and each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see.

We need the heat of compassion as well as the cool of wisdom. 

It is important that we not know the outcome because the desire for certainty can distract our attention and warp our perceptions. Not knowing rivets our attention on what is happening right now. This present moment is the only time we can act and the only time, after all, to awaken.” The Eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche

Join us Sundays as we continue to explore together. Details here.