EcoSattvas in the Anthropocene
What does it mean to be human in these times, when the world of which we are part – sky, wind, air, rivers, oceans, soil, rains, trees, plants, and animals – seems to be asking us to remember? When our bodies are asking as well?
How do we listen deeply, and find our way from here? How might the dharma and the living world serve as teachers and guides?
If you’re asking these questions, if you have sensed this call, if your heart and mind know the growing destabilization of our social and planetary worlds, and you’re seeking a way in and for these times, you are not alone.
As a community that supports the cultivation of contemplative and ethical practices within our earthly mandala, Natural Dharma Fellowship has a strong commitment to expanding ecological consciousness within our sangha and beyond.
EcoDharma Partnership NDF + CUHF
Both the Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Council on the Uncertain Human Future are committed to nurturing a space of listening and coming present to and within our human and more than the human world.
The collaboration between NDF and CUHF was seeded by Lama Willa’s participation in the original Council on the Uncertain Human Future, launched in 2014. Since then, she, Lama Liz and many others have contributed to and nourished its growth.
The first EcoSattva Council was launched by CUHF and NDF at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in 2017, with five such circles having taken place to date. Held within an intentional space, EcoSattva Council members enter a deep collective reflection upon the interdependent planetary questions of our time. This space becomes a portal for the wisdom that may arise between participants.
Our collaborations have now grown to include the annual Green Dharma Retreat, launched in 2019, and the Rewilding the Soul series, which began in 2023. Learn more about all of these practices below.
EcoDharma at Natural Dharma Fellowship
Rewilding the Soul
“It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
… When I Am Among the Trees ~ M. Oliver
Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Council on the Uncertain Human Future presents an annual interactive series of gatherings in which we explore the deepest promise of our practice.
In this year-long, interactive series of monthly gatherings, participants are offered teachings and are invited into meditation in wild spaces and Council practice.
Rewilding the Soul is inner work that helps us attune to the wisdom and love that are always flowing around and through us, the non-conceptual voices of the natural world that seek to draw us home to our deepest being, our core of deep compassion, kindness, and availability to extend ourselves to each other and the wider world.
Together, we deepen wakeful awareness as we foster intimacy with the natural world and compassionate community, an ecosattva path alive to possibilities emerging from deep presence.
Through monthly Home Council Circles, we connect, build relationships, and continue dialogue with a consistent group every month. The Council is an intentional practice of listening and speaking from the heart that builds community and trust and provides a context for collective wisdom to emerge.
Circles are led by trained conveners and based on questions raised in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, yet developed and emerging specifically for this series.
Lama Willa, Lama Liz, and the EcoDharma team invite friends and members of Natural Dharma Fellowship to join future Council gatherings to nurture collective awareness of our planetary interdependence, and possibilities from here.
Current & Past Events
Green Dharma
First held in 2019, this annual gathering at NDF’s Wonderwell Mountain Refuge is led by Lama Willa Baker, Lama Liz Monson, and Sarah Buie.
Each year, we take a transformative journey to access innate wisdom, deepen oneness with the natural world, and lean together into what might be possible from here. It’s designed for those who long to reconnect to inner sources of strength while joining activism with spirituality. We learn to deepen our relationships with self, the natural world, and community and explore what it means to be a mindful inhabitant of the planet.
EcoSattva Council
How shall we conduct ourselves within a changing climate and world?
The NDF EcoSattva Council practice involves reflection, reckoning, and listening for collective wisdom with an EcoSattva focus on our planetary climate crisis and how we choose to behave from here.
As a practice, insight, trust, and the potential for creative collaboration and action is built between members. In the process, we engage these questions:
What is the political and social context in which we are meeting?
What is taking place on the planet, and why is it happening?
What are the implications for the Earth and all living beings?
How do we conduct ourselves in the face of these grave dangers?
And finally, given what we know, how do we live now?
Lama Willa and Lama Liz invite friends and members of
Natural Dharma Fellowship to join future Council gatherings to nurture collective awareness of our planetary interdependence, and possibilities from here.
Dharma Dialogues
Dharma Dialogues is a yearlong series of conversations with esteemed guests and Natural Dharma Fellowship Lamas and Teachers. The series launched 2021 and timely topics have included Women in Buddhism, Confronting Race and Injustice, and EcoSattvas in the Anthropocene.
In 2022, NDF brought together some of the founding luminaries of the mindfulness-informed, eco-activist movement for a year-long series of deep dialogues on important issues concerning our planet. These conversations focused on the Buddhist response to climate change.
The series also included council sessions convened by the Council on the Uncertain Human Future (CUHF).
Meet Our EcoDharma Team
“The self doesn’t exist separately—
there is inextricable communication with everything. Through respectful deep listening, as we do in Council, wisdom arises from the circle.”
“In the circle, in our slowing and listening, we become permeable, mycelial, woven with each other within the emergent living process of which we’re part.”
“If we see with the eyes of the heart, we know that interconnected, interwoven way of being, and can live in loving kindness to the self and all beings.”
“The council process creates a space of sanity. Where we come together in collective wisdom; finding the conviction to go forth and do whatever we are called to do.”
“We live in unprecedented times; human activities have altered the climate and disrupted ecosystems, threatening life on Earth as we know it.”
