There is no emotion that you cannot be rid of, because emotions are simply thoughts, and thoughts are just like the wind moving through the empty sky. There is nothing to them.
Invoking ecological analogy to illustrate the value of contemplative silence, the Buddha invites us to “know from the rivers” how to navigate the terrain of speech.
“Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wild flowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year…Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change…Everywhere was a shadow of death."
“No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” Such words from Silent Spring speak volumes. Anthropogenic climate change has befallen us. How do we rise from the ashes?
Speaking to the impermanent nature of phenomena, Silent Spring tells the tale of an ecosystem set off kilter. While the condition of the climate may seem dismal, there remains much that can be done or abstained from in order to shift the scales and restore symbiotic balance.
“Whatever calamities there are, and whatever sorrows and fears come to the world, they are all the result of attachment to “self.” Why is that attachment mine?
Not having extinguished “self,” one is not able to extinguish sorrow; just as one who has not extinguished a fire is not able to extinguish the burning.
It follows that for the sake of tranquilizing my own sorrow, and for the tranquilizing of the other’s sorrow, I give myself to others and I accept others like myself.”
Sages have long cultivated the fields of awareness, employing imagery from their former careers as farmers in order to best convey the ecological qualities of meditation, tending the mind’s fields with the utmost care and concern.
A poet-painter of Edo period Japan, Buson was aesthetically-inclined in ways that bridged the ecological and the contemplative. His life and creations mirror the mix of challenges and privileges faced by many of us during the current pandemic.
On meditation and ecology, the Kasibhāradvāja Sutta from the Pāli Canon depicts a particularly vivid instance of cross-fertilization between horticulture, permaculture, and contemplative practice via poetry spoken by the Buddha.
As the planet erupts in flames, most turn away from reality, distracted by shiny objects offering the illusion of comfort. Our house is on fire, much like a scene from the Lotus Sūtra, a transitional Buddhist text full of ecological parables.
