What's the point? (2) Climate Change

I do rather enjoy this image of the Apocalypse. Is it saying to you what it seems to be saying to me? I thought so.......



Since my last blog I've been following a discussion within the Network of Buddhist Organisations (NBO) about climate change. Mike Masheder, a physicist and member of the Western Chan Fellowship, wrote persuasively and with authority about the crisis the world's inhabitants face, and the issues facing the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit that meets on 7 December.

Copenhagen - a successor to the Kyoto Agreement - aims to thrash out a solution to the climate change problem which, linked to the imminent end of fossil fuels, really signals "the end of civilisation as we know it", and possibly the end of humankind, if not the end of all forms of life on this planet.

Mike's post elicited the following response from Ken Jones, socially-engaged Buddhist, and it is so typically trenchant and compelling, as well as so characteristically a call to action within a framework of dharmic common sense, that it bowled me over. Ken writes:

"First, am I corrrect in supposing that, in the view of most scientific experts, our climate change crisis cannot be significantly affected by human agency, when compared with the workings of cosmic forces to the same end? In short, we are really in the grip of the Divine Artificer, and whatever may be achieved at Copenhagen wont make much difference ? And the Climate Change Camps may as well pack up and go home?"

"Although I consider myself as tolerably well informed, I haven't anywhere else come across this social and ecological bomb shell, and neither, evidently has the rest of the world -- Left, Right or Centre. Secondly, is it also being argued that ecological sustainability is a myth? That, even with a serious attempt to achieve significant energy efficiency, maybe even to develop (safe???) nuclear power extensively, and somehow progressively to move beyond quantitative material growth, we shall still be doomed once fossil fuel reserves are exhausted?"

"If these arguments are substantially sound, then SO FAR AS CLIMATE CHANGE IS CONCERNED, socially engaged Buddhists should switch their commitment from social change exclusively to the more ancient Dharmic task of enabling the manyfolk to EXPERIENCE ecological misfortune with equanimity, since they cannot DO anything significant about it OUT THERE?"

I couldn't agree more with the apocalyptic and incalculably wise old git. This is surely what we should be doing, the best way we know how, and starting with ourselves. It doesn't have to be a battle with ourselves, we can start by cultivating a teeny-weeny bit of tolerance for frustration and discomfort, and - as experience shows - a little bit of investment yields a harvest of fulfilment; the work virtually does itself if we have confidence in, and attention to, the natural tendency for self-healing that is our birthright. As for how we may enable the manyfolk to do for themselves as we do for ourselves, I can only enjoin you to

"Be present, bear witness, befriend"

What's the point?

The Tibetan syllable "hung" (see below)

I discovered this story in Wake Up To Your Life (WUTYL) by Ken McLeod:

According to the Tibetan tradition, Avalokiteshvara ( also called Lokeshvara, Kwan Yin), the bodhisattva of awakened compassion, received the awakening-being vow from Buddha Amitabha. Avalokiteshvara vowed that he would work for the benefit of beings without limit and, to convey the depth of his aspiration, he resolved that should he ever succumb to despair his head would burst into a thousand pieces.

For time beyond reckoning, Avalokiteshvara worked to free beings from the cycle of existence. He worked for eons and eons and finally took a break to see how he was doing. To his dismay he saw more beings suffering in cyclical existence than when he had begun. "What's the point?", he groaned, and his head burst into a thousand pieces.

Buddha Amitabha appeared before him and reminded him of his vow. Avalokiteshvara resolved to work again to help beings, but this time without any expectation or idea of accompanying anything. Through the power of Amitabha's inspiration the thousand pieces of Avalokiteshvara's head became a thousand arms, each with an eye in the palm.

To formulate a new vow of awakening mind, Avalokiteshvara looked over the world of beings and saw three things: beings were suffering from poverty, reactive emotions had grown stronger, and being needed help fast. Now truly present, Avalokiteshvara experienced the suffering of the world for what it was. Direct awareness took the form of a syllable in his heart, a blue-black hung, the syllable of pristine awareness.

The syllable hung transformed into the Fast-Acting Protector, the six-armed form of Mahakala, the embodiment of the wrathful energy of compassion. The Protector represents how the clarity of compassion, free from subject-object dualism, cuts through all confusion and works for the welfare of all.

I like this story for its crazy 'over-the-top' symbolism of exploding heads and forests of eye-waving arms, all in the interests of suffering humanity. I also relish Avalokiteshvara's taking an evaluative break to audit his performance - a very Twenty-First Century thing to be doing. One can almost see him, sweating into the monogrammed ("AV") leather seat of his Porsche soft-top as he punches data into his blackberry, pulling at an uncorked magnum of Veuve Cliquot, and groaning: "What's the ****ing point?"

Perhaps allegories like this were written to resonate with people's everyday experience, to illuminate it, and to show us that we are not alone. In the story the hero Avalokiteshvara reached "rock bottom", the pit of despair, a place of darkness from which there was no way out. He was, as so many people say nowadays when stark reality impinges on fantasy, "shattered". Despair is, for many, the point at which we wake up, 'see the light', 'turn round in the seat of consciousness', 'find salvation'. For alcoholics, it's the First Step.

I've been in that place and so, I dare say, have most of you who read this. At such a time all our elaborately-constructed edifices of thought and opinion about what we are, who we are, and what we think we ought to do, all crumble to nothing, leaving nothing for us to do except what lies in front of us, directly, nakedly. This is the moment of awakened compassion, a moment of pristine immediacy. Christina Feldman describes it like this: "We are all beginners in the art of compassion". And our first act of compassion is, as it must be, for ourselves.

A few weeks back I met Claire Breeze, a disciple of Joan Halifax Roshi. Claire is currently undertaking chaplaincy training with Upaya Institute and Zen Centre in the US, and we arranged to meet at Jamyang in South London for a chat about the Trust and her chaplaincy work. It was while talking with Claire that I realised how parched and arid my practice has become, and how much in need of spiritual refreshment I am. Claire teased me gently for my slightly curmudgeonly take on things, but we found we have much in common, and her account of Joan Halifax's influence and orientation inspired me and lifted me up. Claire told me later that our meeting had inspired her, too: "Something small and simple. I am going to make an offering in my local area to simply be with people who are chronically ill or reaching end of life. Nothing complicated or highly sophisticated, just simple sitting, bearing witness and befriending."

How wonderful this is. How perfectly and simply Claire's offering captures the essence of the Ananda Network's mission of "being present, bearing witness, and befriending" - a statement that bears resemblance (dare I suggest) to the hung syllable that lay in the heart of Avalokiteshvara as he experienced the suffering of the world, and embodied that wrathful energy to overcome it.

For several years now I have despaired at the inadequacy of my chairmanship of the Buddhist Hospice Trust, at how ineffectual have been my efforts to 'modernise' or 'renew' it, to understand how it might work to bring succour to people in need, to recruit new support, to mobilise and encourage energies in others. As the poet W B Yeats wrote in 'Things Fall Apart', "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity". I sometimes feel these words might be my epitaph!

Enough beating myself up. I am spurred on by the tale above, and by Ray Wills's gentle mantra, "Do what you can, perfection isn't on offer".

To be continued soon....