Mountain Colors, Valley Echoes: Engaging the Environment as Buddhist Practice

Mountain Colors, Valley Echoes: Engaging the Environment as Buddhist Practice

· October 27, 2022

“Mountain colors, valley echoes,” the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher Dōgen writes, are the “voice and body of my beloved Śākyamuni.” From its very beginning, when the Buddha was protected by the enveloping limbs of the bodhi tree and called on the earth as his witness, Buddhist practice has been deeply intertwined with the lived environment.

As Buddhism spread across much of Asia, Buddhist practices, doctrines, and stories transformed the landscape into a Buddhist environment, and Buddhist perceptions of the more-than-human world shaped practitioners. What can Buddhist traditions of engaging the environment teach us today, in a time of climate crisis on a planetary scale and the weakening of relationships with our local places?

Drawing on classical Buddhist traditions and with the help of poetry and ritual, we will explore ways in which each of us can engage the environment—both local and global—as an element of Buddhist practice.

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Resource Includes

  • 1 Lesson