Policy Horizons Canada recently published a new report, Disruptions on the Horizon, presenting 35 of the most likely challenges the world will face over the next ten years, ranked by probability, impact, timeframe, and interconnections, according to a panel of experts in the field of Foresight and Strategic Planning. These disruptions span the domains of society, economy, environment, health, and politics/geopolitics.
Comparing this new report with one issued by the same agency ten years ago is sobering: gone is the optimism about new opportunities, replaced by anxiety about the uncertainty of waiting for the next calamity to hit. And this new report doesn’t even include reflections on the enduring ramifications of our new post-COVID reality. Nor does it weigh the climate crisis as our most serious and pressing disruption.
Why does this matter to Buddhists? There are several reasons.
When I look at Buddhist practice in popular culture, I see an emphasis on anxiety reduction, finding inner happiness, cultivating equanimity, and such. It’s a kind of bootstrap approach that fails to factor in the reality that the causes for much of our dukkha lie in systemic dysfunction, societal inequality, and oppression, not only within ourselves. Unless we can address these imposed distortions to our true nature, we will not be able to build the kind of harmonious, sustainable society described by Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh as the Beloved Community. Only those two foci together can provide us with the key to deal effectively with the challenges we face, let alone find the solace we seek. As Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
“Whether you categorize our current state of affairs as a poly-crisis, a meta-object, or a SNAFU of global proportions, Shakyamuni’s three tenets, or “seals” of the dharma – impermanence, interdependence, and selflessness – still apply.”
If you are a Buddhist teacher, community leader, or educator, and you really want to help your sangha, it is crucial to understand exactly what issues they are grappling with and to be able to offer something deeper than generic words of wisdom. After all, we all are grappling with the same issues. Here are two examples:
According to Policy Horizons Canada, the number one threat we face, in terms of probability, impact, and immediacy, is the loss of our ability to tell what is real or fake in the digital realm. Indeed, as Rod Meade Sperry noted in a post for LionsRoar.com, several Buddhist organizations have already started posting warnings about deepfake videos of their teachers.
Also in Policy Horizons Canada’s top ten list is how emergency response systems are being overwhelmed by climate crises such as biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. In last year’s terrible (but new-normal) fire season, Shambhala’s northern Colorado Land Center, Drala Mountain, was burned by a major wildfire, but thanks to their fire mitigation land practices, they were able to retard the fire and avoid down-wind damage to other properties, for which they were commended by the State. Part of their fire remediation project involves wetland revival and a goal of reintroducing beavers to the area. Located in a significantly water-challenged area, Drala Mountain Center also notably returns immaculately clean water to the local hydrological ecosystem!
Whether you categorize our current state of affairs as a poly-crisis, a meta-object, or a SNAFU of global proportions, Shakyamuni’s three tenets, or “seals” of the dharma – impermanence, interdependence, and selflessness – still apply. And Bernie Glassman Roshi’s own three tenets also still apply – not knowing, bearing witness, and taking action.
If I had to find one word to describe our current plight the most succinctly, it would be “risk.” This karmic game is one of many snakes and few ladders. But unlike the “Snakes and Ladders” board game, our success is not based on rolling the dice, but on sitting with reality, embracing our collective grief and complicity, and finding meaningful work in our current times.
Some environmentally-focused psychotherapists such as Carolyn Baker call this acceptance of inevitable loss with equanimity Conscious Collapse. They advise being hopeless but not helpless. But I don’t see it exactly that way. Mahayana teachings tell us the bodhisattva is fully committed to saving all beings, but fully unattached to the impossibility of saving each. Like followers of Indigenous teachings that awaken us to our responsibility to the Seventh Generation, we are planting trees under whose shade we will not sit. That is as it should be.
To put it another way, Amitabha’s 48th Vow states: “If, when I am to attain buddhahood, all the bodhisattvas of other buddhalands, hearing my name, do not acquire the three kinds of wisdom nor attain the state of nonregression through the Dharma, I will not realize enlightenment.”
I take this to mean that enlightenment is crowdsourced, not an individual accomplishment. Once we step out of the self-centered paradigm, we become bodhisattvas. Once we embrace the bodhisattva paradigm, we embark on the path of Engaged Buddhist practice. Awakening to interdependence is liberating!
Joanna Macy has provided both a conceptual foundation and a range of practical guides for Buddhists and others to engage in this work. She tells us the greatest gift we can offer is simply being present.
It does not take an expert to know that our world is changing, faster and more deeply than we possibly could have imagined. Buddhist teachings that once focused on quenching desire in our materialistic consumer society have become outmoded in our current “VUCA” world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Whereas the Wheel of the Three Poisons was dominated by desire in the period when Buddhism first flourished in the West, our current zeitgeist is now dominated by anger, fear, and conflict.
It’s time to go back to the sutras and shastras for advice on how our forebears practiced in past times of social breakdown, and also to have the courage to extrapolate from ancient wisdom to contemporary issues. Bear in mind that in Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara there are no references to climate collapse or managing an ecosystem. We are in unprecedented times.
Buddhist practice is not like owning a car, used to get from A to B but parked 90 percent of the time. Maybe it’s more like urban planning that builds for fewer cars and better public transit. The Pure Land isn’t just supposed to be in your head.