In the Wake of Tara: NDF Sangha Members Respond with Action
By NDF Sangha member Caroline Frank
As our country finds itself in a deepening crisis, even the most optimistic among us have become acutely aware of all we have taken for granted and all we stand to lose. Blue skies, healthy green forests and nontoxic soil, the freedom to speak our minds and live our values without looking over our shoulders in fear, and at a most basic level, trust in our leaders’ goodwill and respect for basic human rights and life itself. The rug is being pulled out from under us. If ever there was a time for action—some sort of lightning-bolt response—it is now. More than ever in my life, I want to use my voice, go out and protest loudly, scream. This felt good at the recent Hands Off! protest, but does ranting help?
After thirty years of energy justice work and eight practicing Buddhism, NDF sangha member Elizabeth Chant reflects on the precept of Right Speech, which goes beyond abstaining from lying and using harsh words to include speech that promotes harmony and wellbeing. (1) “It doesn’t help to rail and scream. For many years as an advocate for low-income folks, I railed and screamed. But since then my listening has improved.” She says she now uses her position of privilege as a sword, not a shield by truly opening up and listening to others. Lawyer and NDF sangha member Medora Marisseau agrees. She notes that to just walk by a panhandler creates bad karma. “I’ve had amazing conversations with panhandlers,” she says. “You hear all their suffering. You listen and look them in the eyes. They are just poor, and they are other human beings.”
Thich Nhat Hanh introduced the term “Engaged Buddhism” in the 1960s when he returned to Vietnam from grad school in the US to support villagers during the war. He contends all Buddhist practice is by nature socially engaged. Thich Nhat Hanh emphasized that Buddhist practice is “peace-making at the root.” By virtue of daily making the right decisions, using the right speech in everyday life in our competitive, global capitalist communities, we incrementally make a difference—we live the change we want to see.
In his beautiful memoir of a four-year, wandering retreat, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche acknowledges that everyone would like to make the world a better place. “[Yet] they seek to change everything but themselves…Who develops industries that fill the air and water with toxic waste? How did we humans become immune to the plight of refugees?[…] Until we transform ourselves, we are like mobs of angry people screaming for peace.” (2)
It can be a reassuring thought in these times that just by seriously engaging in our own Buddhist practices, we are promoting a better world. Yet we at NDF practice in the wake of Tara. Lama Willa has talked about Tara’s very body as a model for our own bodily dignity and grace, and actions. Tara’s left leg is drawn up in touch with an inner posture, her right leg is touching down to the earth, ready to be of benefit to others. “She is modeling how we too can balance these two: to just be drawn up would not be a compassionate way to be in the world; to just be out there without any self-reflection and development of compassion and wisdom would not be so effective,” she says in a recent teaching. (3) Tara does not have both legs drawn up, nor both legs stepping out.
Practicing Buddhist Medora Marisseau says, “We have the challenging belief that we can become enlightened and we can bring all other beings to enlightenment. If you sign up for that, how can you attain all this wisdom without using it? How can you see all the suffering in the world and not do something?” As a lawyer in the throes of retirement, she has now signed on to work pro bono for fired federal workers. Yet Marisseau has always found ways to bring compassion into her work advising corporate clients. “Yes, you can legally fire this worker who is 65 and can’t get another job, but should you,” she may have suggested, to redirect a client toward forgotten compassion. As a longtime believer in a compassionate collective consciousness, she may advise, “When a jury looks at this, how might they view it?” Small suggestive moments, many times, of truly seeing others as human beings goes a long way, she believes. “We have so many forces now trying to keep us asleep and isolated from each other; fear is being created, all around us.” Marisseau believes we need to tap into the goodness in each and every person, for that is how collective good karma arises.
Hildur Palsdottir, an eco-minister and founder of Sol Center, a nature-based healing arts center on Long Island, says she could not do her work without that confidence in deep love and caring hearts. She joined NDF through our EcoDharma program and she concurs that coming together to support each other in our goodness is what is most needed now. She is a strong advocate for the collective work of Ecosattva Councils, launched in 2017 at NDF. “In this profane transactional world, we need to be sustained by our sangha, and together send out networks of prayers.” Like Marisseau, Palsdottir worries about fragmentation, but in her case it is fragmentation of our ecosystem, not just people that keeps her awake at night. Necessary health-giving interconnections with other beings and other forms of life are being cut up by unchecked “development”, pollutants, and monoculture. On a positive note, though, she adds that she has never seen so many environmental groups forming and coming out so quickly, enormously strengthening Earth activists everywhere. Her work now focuses on environmental education, particularly with high school students, expanding a compassionate collective into the future. She leads or participates in many of these groups in New York. (See a partial list below.)
Elisse Ghitelman, a mitra in the Margha Program and longstanding spiritual practitioner, was also drawn to NDF’s EcoDharma program. In 2020, she did Ecosattva training with One Earth Sangha, for which Lama Willa is one of the guiding teachers. “Spiritual practices may not provide concrete climate solutions, but they do have the potential to shift consciousness,” Lama Willa counsels. Ghitelman, like so many NDF activists treasure the support of sangha and benefactors, and the calling attention to a greater collective consciousness. Elisse does political action postcard writing and phone banking. “I have a benefactor sit right down next to me as I’m making calls, giving me the sense that I am supported. And, I remind myself of the Four Immeasurables as I make each call.” Ghitelman also works with “affinity groups” for more hard-core activists performing arrestable actions. During a recent Extinction Rebellion demonstration against fossil fuel consumption, her group sang and chanted alongside an airfield while the activist-trespassers protested and were ultimately arrested. “The cops were so upset with us,” she chuckles, “that one said ‘You tell the president of your cult that you can’t do this!’”
It is indeed important to allow room for a laugh, for opening to joy and delight in our activism, despite the gravity of the suffering we face. In teaching the foundational meditation practice of shamatha, Tsoknyi Rinpoche points out that “without calmness of mind, it is very hard to have a sense of delight. Without this sense of delight, there is no genuine compassion.” During the Hands Off! March, I chanted loudly, but I also smiled from ear to ear. I was delighted! We were thousands of people, coming together to express collective concern for the wellbeing of human and non-human life, expressing love. The exuberant compassion was palpable and contagious. In response to the guilt one may feel being joyous in the face of suffering, NDF mitra Judith Coleman reminds us of Rinpoche’s words, “Delight is a doorway into compassion.” And she adds, why would we want to add more negativity to an already intolerable situation.
Groups mentioned by NDF sangha members:
Elisse, “I have strong feelings, so I should do something with them!”
One Earth Sangha looks at the vulnerability of the earth’s biosphere to support a diverse forms of life It offers EcoSattva training, Climate Affinity Group for No Coal, No Gas, credited with shutting down fossil fuel plants in NE.
Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental movement using nonviolent civil disobedience to pressure governments into action on biodiversity loss and climate change.
Hildur: Starts local and grass roots, literally
Council on Uncertain Human Future has partnered with NDF for ten years in an intentional practice of acknowledge and addressing the climate and ecological breakdown underway and the related socio-political forces.
Transition Town Port Washington is local action, part of a broader transatlantic movement referencing grassroot projects to reduce effects in food production and energy usage of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability.
ReWild Long Island supports sustainable landscaping through education and tools, such as planting native and pollinator gardens, replacing monoculture (lawns) with vegetables, creating composts and rain barrels, and so on.
NY Renews, broad-based coalition of 300+ organizations supporting clean energy, climate justice, good jobs and job protection.
Center for Earth Ethics, an interfaith organization based in NYC promoting a spiritually based approach to planetary health, climate justice, indigenous wisdom and rights, sustainability and more.
Sacred Activism with Joel and Michelle Levy offer an 8-week class on “courage, mindfulness, and wisdom for navigating these times of the great turning.”
Elizabeth: Energy Justice— “When I started it didn’t even have a name”
Efficiency Vermont, she helped found.
National Housing Trust, she’s been on board since 2015.
