On Wednesday evening, Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico hosted writer, reporter and activist Rebecca Solnit for a streamed dharma talk entitled “Everything Is Connected, Everything Changes.”
Solnit — author of acclaimed books including The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and most recently Orwell’s Roses — has practiced with Upaya before, both as part of its sangha (community) and in its Nomads Clinics. She is at Upaya currently with scholar-in-residence status. (“I’m here to learn stuff, not because I know it,” she playfully clarified in an aside.)
Her talk appreciates the transmission of Buddhist wisdom from Asia to the West, and into western culture, tracking alongside it the trajectories and impacts of the civil rights movement, the ecological movement, the feminist movement, the hope-giving power of science, and how these have affected her thinking — as well as each other, and us all. “How do all these pieces all fit together?” she asks.
Read Lindsay Kyte’s Lion’s Roar profile of Solnit, “Why Is Rebecca Solnit Hopeful?” here.
