One year ago, on the 15th of October, I began an online course called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, a seven week teaching course based on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, his Plum Village monastics and Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat, UN Chief on climate change and daughter of three time revolutionary president of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer. Dad had just been brought home from hospital by ambulance a few weeks earlier after his fall, Gaza was on fire after a co-ordinated military attack provoked the world into taking sides, Mum was hospitalised with a burst cyst and I was as scattered in my life as I am now with almost the exact same circumstances - one year later.
People say 'war is looming in the Middle East' as if war has not been the aim, the target of US and UK military invasions across Iraq and Afghanistan. You cannot keep amputating a people's children and expect no consequences. We all pay global prices for American greed, for capitalism's dream, for patriarchal power, for religious fanaticism. So although the Zen course was only available for a year, I find myself in need of it now as much as I did then. In Week Two, Brother Pháp Dung speaks of the three energies of Artist, Meditator and Warrior, which we need to keep in balance. At the heart of the teaching is the Diamond Sutra, the cutting through of the illusion of duality, of separate selves. Non-duality, or advaita, is the nirvana of all Buddhist teaching. An impossible feat, it seems, for the human mind to grasp. We would rather snarl and kill first, ask questions of deeper curiosity and understanding later. We act in pain, and out of pain, never having the patience to free ourselves from pain a different way, a slower way. Slowness, like illness, is an obstacle for power, for progress. As Christiana herself learned, without mud, the lotus flower cannot grow. Becoming a lotus flower takes time, and can be a painful process. As humans we seem to be in the business of avoiding pain for ourselves first. So how can the planet survive us?