Armed with a trash picker and a garbage bag, Lina Blanchet finds an unusual opportunity to discover the sacred nature of life, in all of its guises. The winds of an impending winter arrive on an early Sunday morning in late November, the day of our sangha’s bi-annual roadside cleanup. The Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County has been responsible for cleaning the same stretch of [...]
Japanese Buddhist priest joins movement to divest from fossil fuels and nuclear power
A Japanese Buddhist priest is trying to encourage Buddhists in Japan to withdraw money from banks that finance environmentally harmful energy projects. Tomonobu Narita, Buddhist priest at Totsuka Zenryo Temple in Yokohama, transferred some of his temple’s funds to one of Japan’s 45 “earth-friendly” banks. Narita told NBC News that he will speak with priests in other temples [...]
A diet for a healthy world
Clair Brown and Pearl McLeod explain how changing your diet can change the world. To counter the encroaching global climate crisis, significant lifestyle changes are required of those who live in affluent countries. A group of Buddhist leaders said the following on the eve of the Paris climate talks: “We are at a crucial crossroads where our survival and that of other [...]
Lama Willa Miller’s advice for climate change activists
Lama Willa Miller talks to Lion's Roar deputy editor Andrea Miller about how to build a movement that can change the world. Lama Willa Miller offers advice for activists on working with emotion, community, and uncertainty. Read Lama Willa Miller's article from the May 2018 Lion's Roar magazine "5 Buddhist Practices to Face the Truth of Climate Change and Take [...]
5 Buddhist Practices to Face the Truth of Climate Change and Take Action
Climate change can feel so immense that it hurts just to think about. Lama Willa Miller offers five meditations to help bring the truth of climate change into your awareness and lay the ground for a skillful response. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have come and gone, leaving hundreds dead. We’re left facing a dire reality: we live on a warming planet. Homes blown [...]
Spring Prayer
Shozan Jack Haubner presents a prayer for the chaotic awakening of nature that is spring. On the mountain where I live, the weather can be incredibly bipolar, which is great fun. In the winter we get snowed in and in the summer the sun burns us all to hell. A big fan of the "middle way," though, my favorite time of year is... today, as it turns out: Spring (which has [...]
Meet the Buddhist Lawyer Who Took the UK to Court Over Pollution — and Won
"The earth is our client," says lawyer and Zen priest James Thornton. He talks with Haleigh Atwood about how Buddhism can help save the environment. In April, Buddhist lawyer James Thornton won an injunction ordering the UK government to publish a clean-air plan for British cities where pollution exceeds legal levels. Thornton is a lawyer and environmental activist whose [...]
“Ice stupas” bring water to drought-stricken villages of Northern India
Traditional Buddhist monuments are bringing life to a Himalayan community grappling with climate change. Villagers in Northern India have invented a way to fight drought, inspired by traditional Buddhist architecture. Each winter since 2013, the people of Phyang, Ladakh, have built stupas — traditional Buddhist monuments — made out of ice. When the whether warms and [...]
New Ethic for a Small Planet
If the twenty-first century is to be one of peace and caring, says His Holiness the Dalai Lama in this heartfelt personal plea, we must develop a new ethic of human values that transcends religion. I am an old man now. I was born in 1935 in a small village in northeastern Tibet. For reasons beyond my control, I have lived most of my adult life as a stateless refugee in India, [...]
The Tao of Poo
Anne Cushman on tracking as a kind of meditation. "Merely the gesture of paying attention in this way is a revelation," she says. I’ve started going on monthly hikes with the Point Reyes Tracking Club out at Abbott’s Lagoon, a beautiful seashore sanctuary north of San Francisco. In just a couple of guided outings, I’ve realized that tracking is a kind of meditation. Our [...]
