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 [...]
Land purchased for “Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center” in Colorado wilderness
Today, a group of Buddhist teachers and practitioners purchased 180 acres of rural Colorado land to start "Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center." The land is a nature preserve that is home to deer, elk, moose, bear, and beaver, and borders Arapahoe National Forest. "It's exciting to me," says director and vice president David Loy. "We now have a center devoted to [...]
Commentary: A Decision Cruel and Callous
Bhikkhu Bodhi responds to US President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Much has been written over the past couple of weeks about the political and economic repercussions of Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out from the Paris Climate Agreement. It’s been pointed out that the decision will diminish our standing in the world and cast us in [...]
Concerned About the Climate? OK. But What Are You Eating?
If U.S. president Donald Trump's choice to leave the Paris Climate Accord has you upset, Buddhist practitioner John Bussineau suggests something that will do a lot more good than griping on social media. With the US decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, we, who are caring practitioners and followers of the Buddha’s teachings, are understandably concerned for the [...]
