The Curse of Enlightenment

 

Something I'm grateful to the pandemic for is the development and greater use of Zoom as a method for attending meetings and lectures. This week I've been at several webinars sponsored by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, an event they're calling The Buddhism and Ecology Summit: Transforming Anxiety into Awakened Action.  Today's seminar was titled From Mindfulness to Movements and featured activists Michelle King, Dekila Chungyalpa, and Bill McKibben

I've been attending because, like I think.many people are, I am anxious about what is happening to the environment. I'm a child of the 60s and recall too clearly the information, new to the public, that the ecosystem (brand new term) was in trouble and certain things needed to be done or be stopped in order for people to live comfortably in the then-far future of the 21st century. Like many, I calmed myself saying, "By then, practices.will be put into place to counteract all that. There's nothing to worry about, the adults will have it taken care of."

Of course, the adults have not, and in terms of our likelihood of avoiding environmental crises, we're at a further remove than we were then, as solutions like solar, wind, geothermal are more controversial among leaders of industry than to their forebears. President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. They become a source of ridicule to the opposition and Reagan had them removed.

So yes, I worry about the end of human life and civilization, although I was also startled by my agreement a few days ago with author Michael Hinton's statement that the so-called 6th Extinction which we are doing our best to bring about by doing nothing at all is as natural as previous extinction events brought about by volcanoes, meteors, and ice ages, and may in fact herald "another set of miracles" like all those others. 

Like Hinton observed I am jealous of anything like that because I'm "in love with the environment as it is now" and don't want to see it changed in a huge way. But a remark by Michelle King about "being the practice" rather than just doing it reminded me too of something I was told at Dhammapada monastery so many years ago.

First, we have to recognize we aren't going to solve the crises. It will take many generations to turn them around just as it took many generations to fuck them up. And secondly, we can't abdicate our--those of us who see clearly and dismsyingly what is happening--responsibility for opening the eyes of others to it. After a period of time at Dhammapada I approached the Abbott during my weekly interview and told him, "Well, I've become enlightened." He looked at me blankly for a few moments and then it terrible sadness crossed his face. "I am so very sorry," he said, clinching my diagnosis. Because it's axiomatic in practice that, once you become enlightened you will see all the problems of the world. Once you can no longer ignore them or rationalize them away, you are responsible for doing what you can to rectify them.