A New Initiative: Living the Change | One Earth Sangha

A New Initiative: Living the Change | One Earth Sangha

A New Initiative: Living the Change

Together with a broad range of faith and non-faith partners, we are launching today a new sustainability initiative and encouraging your participation. The core of this campaign is an invitation to, in the context of supportive community, face the difficulty of our unsustainable personal and household carbon emissions and then, grounded in our deepest values, commit to meaningful response. Specifically, the campaign is calling for

1. Commit to reduce
   Dharma teachers, Sangha leaders, Sangha members, experienced meditators and brand new practitioners are invited to commit to reducing personal / household carbon emissions in three specific areas, transportation, diet and home energy.
2. Courageous, compassionate sharing
   To build community, learn from one another and normalize these efforts, we invite participates to share their experiences with keeping commitments, the challenges, rewards, beautiful surprises, vexing frustrations, spiritual insights and logistical roadblocks encountered along the way.
3. Affirm Goodness
   Join people within and across spiritual communities in local events celebrating our efforts to Live the Change during Earth Care Week, October 7 – 14.

Earth is a blessing. She supports life and is the basis of all our economies. She conveys beauty and evokes our recognition of something greater than ourselves. She is our temple, our mosque, our sanctuary, our cathedral. Our home.
— Living the Change campaign

GreenFaith and our funding partners believe that people can make and sustain significant changes in their lives when they are grounded in their deepest values and supported by communities of meaning. In this energized collaboration, One Earth Sangha is honored to represent Mindfulness and Buddhist communities in partnering with The Bhumi Project, representing Hindus; the Global Muslim Climate Network; Hazon representing the Jewish faith, The Global Catholic Climate Movement, Living Witness, representing Quakers; even the World Evangelical Alliance representing Evangelical Christians and more. In a time when divisiveness is on the rise, we are deeply inspired by this diverse set of organizations in beautiful cooperation, each sharing both the particular gifts and challenges of our Paths, in this project to honor and protect life.

So Many Questions

Together, we’ll be exploring the beauty and the very real challenges in this campaign in the coming weeks and months. Even in our own conversations, we wrestle with difficulties and want to open these up with you. Questions like,

• Isn’t this a distraction from the real change we need in public policy and checks on corporations? Don’t we all need to keep our focus on systems change?
• Even if they are not a distraction, at this stage, do household sustainability measures really matter?
• What about the unsustainable behavior of communities, organizations and governments? 
• Do people really change their behavior and if so how? 
• How can we break the deafening silence on climate without alienating others or isolating ourselves? 
• And anyways, what does all this have to do with my practice, Dharma or Mindfulness? 

The first of these is articles comes out soon: Déjà vu, Recyling 2: Haven’t We Been Here Before? 

Connect, Connect, Connect

The campaign is just underway. We’re hoping you will be able to participate in the following support events, which are all about making connections, and even organize your own.

• Join our Living the Change webinar on July 26, 12:00 – 1:00 pm US Eastern with Susie Harrington and Lou Leonard. Register now to hold your spot!
• Get inspired by people actually working together across lines of difference in multi-faith collaboration at LivingTheChange.net.
• Call for leaders at all levels to make, keep and increase their reduction pledges by joining a local People’s Climate Movement’s Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice event on Sept 8.
• Join One Earth Sangha and Spirit Rock Meditation Center for a day of inspiration and practice at our daylong on September 15, Loving this Earth: Engaging Mindfully in the Healing of Our World.  This event will take place at Spirit Rock the day after the close of the Global Climate Action Summit will also be live-streamed from the Spirit Rock website so that all may join in. Learn more and register your interest in the in-person event here.
• Pledge and share your pledge. You’ll soon have the opportunity to pledge your own commitments to reduce personal emissions and then share that with one person, a few friends, your sangha or social media followers
• Engage your community: Share this initiative, develop pledge buddy and other commitment support ideas and start planning your celebration events for Earth Care Week, October 7 – 14 ( potentially followed by the fall EcoSattva Training series!)

Finally, while on the topic of Earth Care Week, just like in previous years, the final Sunday, October 14 of Earth Care Week marks the opening to this fall’s EcoSattva Training with a community webinar. Registration and more details coming soon, but you might want to start gathering interest and planning your meeting times!

Our Partners

One Earth Sangha is honored to work on this initiative, organized by GreenFaith, with our partners from Mindfulness and other spiritual traditions.

Are you inspired, concerned, skeptical, excited, nonplussed? Great. We want to hear from you in the comments below!

May our collective efforts nourish the potential for a new way to flourish, a diverse, justice-oriented and sustainable way, that protects and respects beings, similar and different, near and far, born and unborn.