The Work That Reconnects

Honoring Joanna Macy

Two books whose titles beautifully express the view of the Dharma College Embodied Ecology program regarding Climate Change (CC) and Biodiversity Loss (BL) are “Not Too Late,” edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and “World as Lover, World as Self,” by Joanna Macy. Focusing as we do on ‘practice’, we are inspired by “The Work that Reconnects” - also a spirit child of Joanna Macy. One might wonder why Dharma College even presents a different program? Joanna is an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Both Dharma College and The Work That Reconnects Network (WTR) are based in Berkeley, California. Both programs are rooted in Buddhism but stretch beyond the boundaries of religion. Each of our root teachers is over 90 years old. WTR seems more politically activist, while Dharma College focuses more on contemplative practice; however, our work is activating and embraces engagement. I think the main distinction is that Dharma College’s Embodied Ecology program teaches the precious contemplative practices of Tarthang Tulku’s Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and our program’s teachers have decades of employing and teaching these practices. Having said that, WTR is very dear and precious, too.

The Work That Reconnects Network “nurtures a regenerative and thriving world for all beings by providing support, connection and inspiration to the global Work That Reconnects community.

https://workthatreconnects.org/

Connected is what we actually are. As individualized persons there seems no hope of fixing CC & BL, but our connectedness – the fact that we are all in this together and our beingness is a result of interdependent origination – shifts everything. The Work That Reconnects unfolds as a spiral journey through four stages:

Coming from Gratitude

Honoring our Pain for the World

Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes

Going Forth

Notice the spiral nature of this work. It’s never linear, we proceed organically and cyclically.

Gratitude

In Buddhism, gratitude and appreciation are seen as essential for cultivating a positive and fulfilling life, fostering a sense of interconnectedness, and ultimately, moving towards enlightenment. (Google Ai) Contemplative Ecology is by no means solely an interest of Buddhists. David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk who, with permission of his abbot, was officially delegated to pursue Buddhist-Christian dialogue, wrote:

The root of joy is gratefulness...

It is not joy that makes us grateful;

it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

Brother David Steindl-Rast

The great Dharma poet Gary Snyder, drawing upon indigenous native Americans, similarly expresses appreciation, particularly for deep interconnectedness:

Prayer for the Great Family
Turtle Island - Gary Snyder - after a Mohawk prayer

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day-

and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf

and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind

and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent

Owl at dawn. Breath of our song

clear spirit breeze

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,

freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;

self-complete brave, and aware

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;

holding or releasing; streaming through all

our bodies salty seas

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through

trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where

bears and snakes sleep-he who wakes us-

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Great Sky

who holds billions of stars-and goes yet beyond that-

beyond all powers, and thoughts

and yet is within us-

Grandfather Space.

The Mind is his Wife.

so be it.

  after a Mohawk prayer

Honoring our Pain

Connectedness brings us appreciation and joy, but it also brings pain. We live in Samsara.

This pain for the world includes grief, fear, anger, and despair. Because these emotions are not encouraged in conventional society, and because they reveal the truth of our interconnectedness with all life, we allow them full play.

Joanna Macy

Without the pain triggered by CC & BL, we would not be motivated to address it. CC has until now been mostly about fear, but BL adds grief:

The extinction of a species, each one a pilgrim of four billion years of evolution, is an irreversible loss. The ending of the lines of so many creatures with whom we have travelled this far is an occasion of profound sorrow and grief...

The scale of loss is beyond any measure the planet has ever known. "Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else."
Gary Snyder

It is one thing to tolerate our pain, but quite another to honor it as our teacher. Tarthang Tulku writes in Lotus Language:

... even pain may have value; we could take care of it differently if we fully cognized the fields of its past, present and future. Where were the little points, the tiny pinpricks of pain? Where did they land, and when?

Stars in the sky having long departed, still we see their light. What we see is a trace, that visible light. Yet we believe that star is present, living in our sky with us right now. We cognize all our experience this way.

Our pain, too: just starlight.

Seeing pain in this way is not instinctive, but it is transformative and can be cultivated with practice.

Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes

To avoid becoming fully hooked by our instinctive reactivity to pain and grief requires both an understanding of and a practice for developing the deep consequences of our interconnectedness. Tarthang Tulku shares a deceptively simple but powerful insight in Gesture of Great Love:

But the key question, the one the observer forgets to ask is: Who is the one observing?

If 'I' is observing mind, does that mean it is somehow apart from mind, a separate 'thing'?

But how could that be possible?

If you explore this question with open curiosity, if you are willing to look and trust what you find, you will begin to recognize mind's regime at work. You will discover-perhaps with some shock-that you can't find a 'who' apart from the regime itself. You are sure there is thinking, but you become less and less sure that there is an 'I' who is thinking.

That is when something shifts. Instead of reacting automatically, assuming 'I' is at the center of experience, you slow down and act with a certain detachment. Attuned to the rhythms of appearing, you experience in ways that are less rigid, more open, with more clarity and more compassion.

Tarthang Tulku also shares a deceptively straight forward ‘practice’ - Simply Seeing – also from Gesture of Great Love:

Sit comfortably easing body and breath. Let the area around your eyes relax and your gaze soften. Take some time for this. Now look around you; Simply see. See shapes, forms, patterns, light and shadow, the nuances of color. You don't need to focus on any particular object, or name anything, or create an inner dialogue about what you are seeing. You can relax and enjoy simply seeing. How intricate and interesting the world is!

Our primary mode of confronting problems begins with pointing out what we can discern about our problem, intending to find solutions to fix it. While rational, this kind of thinking only occasionally works without unintended consequences. The problem-solving mode has clearly not gotten us close enough to fixing highly complex problems like CC & BL. Tarthang Tulku suggests in Lotus Body:

If it is not a problem, the point of arising might be able to offer so much more: a great many more approaches, resources, and choices. Situations, like bodies themselves, are stages of transition. So what is developing? What parameters of space, time and knowledge could be opened up if we really let go of problems?

Seems like a paradox; we often can do better by letting go of the problematic nature of an arising situation! Problem-solving is a disconnected, disembodied practice, unable to open to CC & BL as well as many other challenges of life. Another way is embodied knowing; explore more in a previous blog: How present are you to your own experience? Embodied Ecology: Connecting to Place @ https://substack.com/home/post/p-159027169?source=queue

Going Forth

Ongoing practice of the skill of seeing without pointing out, allows us to go forward creatively. We possess rational problem-solving minds but also the wisdom to not get trapped by reductive simplification of highly complex phenomena. Our natural wild mind, unfabricated by rationalization, is often the best way; Gary Synder in The Practice of the Wild writes:

You know north from south, pine from fir, in which direction the new moon might be found, where the water comes from, where the garbage goes, how to shake hands, how to sharpen a knife, how the interest rates work. This sort of knowledge itself can enhance public life and save endangered species. We learn it by revivifying culture, which is like rehabilitation: moving back into a terrain that has been abused and half forgotten and then replanting trees, dechannelizing stream beds, breaking up asphalt.

Tarthang Tulku extols our “treasure within” achieved by appreciation, honoring our pain, and practicing embodied knowing in Gesture of Great Love:

We can offer hugs and kisses to all beings who have ever lived throughout time and space, sharing with them our new-found joy and inner peace. And we can focus our energy on supporting whatever we care about- justice for all; remedies for climate change; world peace; gardening; animal rights, creating art, or simply taking care of ourselves and our loved ones.

Reconnecting to Place

Engaging the spiral of The Work that Reconnects consecrates where we live. It transforms our neighborhoods into sacred spaces. It embodies our ecological understanding. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass (another heart book of the Dharma College Embodied Ecology program):

For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.