From the polar icecaps to the bottom of the sea. From the bottom of the sea to the polar icecaps...

Observvvvvve the sensations of a changing and unstable climate as you sweep your attention en masse in a free flooooow over smoky forest fires and along storm-cut eroding coastal wetlands. Observe the relentless loss of topsoil, the dying acid-bleached coral reefs, the aquamarine pools of radioactive mine tailings spattering the land. Experience these sensations patiently, equanimously without any aversion or craving, as you calmly sweep your awareness everywhere throughout your planetary body, from top to bottom, bottom to top. Bring your awareness not only to persistent painful gross sensations but also to any subtle pleasant sensations as you scan carefully over the entire Earth, remaining perrrrrfectly equanimous, perfectly equanimous. Clear in the knowledge that all sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, are ultimately impermanent, arising and passing, passing and arising like migrating continents and the tides of mass extinction before us.

Observvvvve the impermanence with equanimity and be sure to work diligently, patiently and persistently. This changing flux is the universal Law of Nature. Anicca, anicca, anicca...
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Over Christmas and New Years, I attended a 10 Day Vipassana retreat in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. It was my fourth such silent retreat and as usual, it was a rewarding and profound experience. The nightly recorded Discourses by the founder of the center, S. N. Goenka, helped provide context for the various meditation techniques we practiced during the day. Long hours of breathing through our nostrils, legs crossed and scanning our bodies for subtle tickling sensations, gross solidified sensations, aching sensations, throbbing sensations, pain, heat, pressure, and even nameless sensations kept us engaged from 4:30 am to 9:30 pm each day. We struggled to observe it all diligently, patiently, equanimously. We learned to release and retrain our minds from the persistent attachments and reactions which bind us to lifetime after lifetime of misery and suffering.

We are taught to focus exclusively on our own personal sensations and reactions during these 10 days as if we were alone and not in the company of 130 other sniffling and bleary-eyed students. I worked hard to remain equanimous and as instructed, did not engage with the other meditators during the course. Maintaining "noble silence" throughout the ten days of meditation was an important part of the practice.  
After each sit, we would go out and stretch our limbs on brief walks through the beautiful madrones and oak trees scattered around the retreat center. It was late December/January and traditionally, a rainy time for California. The whole time we were there, like pretty much most of the year before that, it was unseasonably dry. Trees were bare, the grass was brown and the earth was dusty and perforated with ants nests and gopher holes. 2013, it turns out, was California's driest year since climate data first began to be recorded during the Gold Rush in 1849. The dusty sunrises and sunsets and starry nights were still gorgeous and we took in the beauty of the land and meditated and slept and walked and ate and rinsed the food scraps off our dishes in the dining area after each meal. We bathed each according to our custom and brushed our teeth in the bathrooms each day as well. Next to many of the sinks was a little laminated sign stuck to the wall: Please conserve water.

Despite my efforts to be respectful of and essentially ignore my fellow meditators, I was struck by how deeply the sensitivity and awareness we cultivated internally during meditation, contrasted with the apparently widespread unawareness of what that little sign asking us to "conserve water" might possibly mean. I couldn't help but notice that most of my fellow meditators kept the water running in the sink while they brushed their teeth or flossed, flushed the urinals and toilets religiously between uses and kept the tap on while leisurely wiping off their plates in the sink after each meal. Using water wisely is something I grew up with. Bathing every few days, using a minimum of water to wash dishes (and then reusing that for watering plants) and the "if it's yellow let it mellow" mantra of Californian toilet water conservation was part of my daily practice. Most of my fellow meditators, I eventually learned, were from other parts of the United States or from other countries where these customs were not, apparently, as ingrained. It was a reminder of how fossil fuels have spawned a global culture of traveling humans with a minimal understanding of place and unrealistic expectations of abundance. Consistency allows things to scale quickly, whether through prerecorded meditation discourses, hotel amenities, chain stores or consumer goods and reinforces our faith in the dominant paradigm of endless economic growth which has sculpted our world. Of course there's all the water I need, an infinite supply of disposable paper towels, and all the unblemished tomatoes and odorless bananas I could possibly devour regardless of season or distance to where they grew.

There is an emerging clash between the ecological constraints of our actual environment and the daily actions of most contemporary humans. The divergence in realities is such that while we still seek and expect to have more and more, we have exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth itself and would need 5.3 planet Earths to meet those needs if everyone consumed as much as the average citizen of the United States. I do not think Vipassana meditators in the United States are all that unusual in their use of water, electricity, shopping habits or hunger for conventionally grown agricultural products. In fact, as mindful vegetarians they might actually have somewhat lower ecological footprints than the national average.

What became so obvious to me over those 10 days, though, was that the Vipassana meditation technique, as presented, did not fundamentally address the core design flaws of the global industrial growth civilization we have inherited. The focus was, by design, on the individual and that's fine. Vipassana is a very useful technique but I question whether it serves us as an "ultimate goal" in an era of mass extinctions. An experienced meditator may live a happy life here and now, and will likely ripple the considerable benefits of loving kindness and equanimity far out into the world, but their "ordinary" lifestyle puts at risk the ability of future generations to enjoy those same opportunities in the future. We are taught through Vipassana to be *very* aware of our immediate physical bodies but are not invited to consider the realities and sensations throughout the local watershed, continent or planetary body which makes this life possible. Equanimity without sustainability will not help us for very long.

This of course, is what the movement of Engaged Buddhism is about. As Buddhist, deep ecologist and activist author Joanna Macy says, it is our job to take "Dharma practice out into the world, developing skillful means for embodying compassion as they take action to serve the homeless, restore creekbeds, or block weapons shipments. The vitality of Buddhism today is most clearly reflected in the way it is being brought to bear on social, economic, political, and environmental issues, leading people to become effective agents of change. The gate of the Dharma does not close behind us to secure us in a cloistered existence aloof from the turbulence and suffering of samsara, so much as it leads us out into a life of risk for the sake of all beings."

2,500 years ago, Buddha did not have to concern himself with GMOs, toxic fertilizers and pesticides, climate change, or the prospect of a 6 degree rise in global temperatures that may lead to extinction for humanity. So it makes perfect sense that an expanded focus on an ecological self was not a priority. Anicca and reincarnation may well offer us the chance to continue to wash out our sankharas lifetime after lifetime until we "reach enlightenment, but with the real possibility of declining human populations, survivors will need to find another planet to reincarnate back into. S. N. Goenka, the esteemed industrialist and founder of over 227 Dhamma Centers in 94 countries worldwide (including the one I just attended) grew up in an era of abundant fossil fuels and globalization and little awareness of global climate change and its implications. A standardized recorded curriculum and consistent management principles enabled the organization to expand and very effectively bring Buddhist meditation training to millions of people internationally.

Vipassana meditation offers invaluable spiritual tools to help us observe and experience our immediate reality as well as to navigate the ever-changing conditions of life. Along with the actual meditation techniques is a template for living known as the Five Precepts of sīla which provide some contextual scaling opportunities:
to abstain from killing any being;
to abstain from stealing;
to abstain from all sexual misconduct;
to abstain from telling lies;
to abstain from all intoxicants.

If we examine them seriously, we can see how modern life challenges all of those Precepts. Industrial agriculture, mining and petrochemical extraction, even our CO2 emissions (400 ppm for the first time in 3 million years!) kill countless beings through pollution and destruction of habitat. We've made a lifestyle of stealing from future generations' capacity to meet their needs. Sexual misconduct can be linked to institutional patriarchy, gender discrimination and the exploitation of young women's bodies in advertising to support this gluttony. Our expectations for happiness and the future are based on the lie that we can and should all strive to live in ways that exceeds the Earth's capacity to meet our greed rather than everyone's need. And lastly, we swim in a soup of intoxicating advertisements, virtual entertainments, unhealthy fast foods/beverages as well as the side effects of countless poisons, pollutants and pharmaceuticals prescribed to us to cope with the adverse health impacts of all this superficial temporary abundance. And all this is just a small brief synopsis of just some of the ways we are living out of balance.

Global issues affect us all directly and indirectly yet when piled together can be depressing to contemplate, heavily politicized and increasingly complex to address. What they have in common is that they reflect the condition of the very real shared Earth-body which sustains us. Ten days meditating on our individual physical sensations with heightened awareness and equanimity is sadly not enough if we ignore the wasted water pouring down the drain during an extreme drought. In fact, it is dangerous and short-sighted.

Given the enlightened wisdom of the Buddha as passed down to us over the generations, is there something we missed from these original teachings that could be applied today? Could a Planetary 10-Day retreat, for example, be devised to expand this sense of self along traditional Buddhist principles? Could this be scaled the way Goenka retreats are? Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects and other workshops can be seen as part of this shift and I expect we need many and varied experiments along these lines. There are a growing number of ecologically responsible retreat spaces and permaculture farms where we can practice and model more sustainable behaviors. Could we apply a standardized framework for a curriculum and host planetary Vipassana in a wide range of centers, ecosystems and contexts globally? Interconnected centers could exchange information and expertise and minimize the need for long distance travel between centers. Opportunities for service in the permaculture gardens and dhamma clothes mending and weaving, the human powered machines and other local support teams would offer not only educational opportunities for Servers but live examples of how to integrate the ideas inspired by the 10 day.

After 4 days of equanimous climate observation - feeling the breath of the Earth flowing through the vast nostrils of the planet - we might move our awareness into the rest our global body to observe drilling, mining, clearcutting and the dumping of waste as well as our magnificent tidal rhythms, ecstatic dances and precious sunsets. We'd be invited to contemplate and observe it all and try to take as much in as we could without attachment. Feel the entire Earth around us in a free flow of subtle sensations and awareness buzzing around us together. Observe flooding sensations in the Philippines and experience the drying prickling sensations throughout the foothills of California. And not just the "gross" painful sensations and climate trauma, but also the subtle sensations of a beautiful moonrise or the chirping squeaking pleasure of dolphins diving through the surf and explore our genetic attachment to human survival at all. There's a real need to be alert and attentive to any clinging or aversion throughout this process. All things ultimately arise and pass and provide opportunities for personal discipline and action as well. At the end loving metta would flow from the center and out into people's lives and the planet. Local Planetary 10 Day groups could form to continue this work on a local level for participants. All of this, as are the Goenka centers, run as a gift to new students and based on dhamma.

As a practice, we all need to continue to educate ourselves and each other about what is going on. My water flowing fellow meditators were likely unaware of the many ways they could reduce their water use, for example. That to me is an informational, cultural and training issue. The Planetary 10 Day retreat centers, would be designed and operated to be resource efficient and serve only organic produce or better yet, grow their own food and generate enough of their own electricity over time to live "off the grid". Existing Vipassana centers could participate if they implemented the necessary infrastructural or behavioral changes or these could be held at spaces already exploring these ideas as mentioned before. Throughout, behavioral prompts and integrated ecological artwork, chants and poetry could help support the messages and healthy patterns needed to make this shift. At times throughout the day, traditional Vipassana practice at the individual level would could be combined with this larger practice as the inner and outer words reflect each other.

As we practice right livelihood and the Five Principles educating and informing ourselves about Planetary "sensations" and remain steadfastly equanimous, we are then, in the words of Goenka, himself, "capable of real action—action proceeding from a balanced mind, a mind which sees and understands the truth. Such action can only be positive, creative, helpful to ourselves and to others." How is this different from what we may already be doing? We are each in touch with an ever widened sense of self. From our personal lives to the scale of our city, country or profession. We can remain alert and attentive to ways we can continually stretch and bring greater awareness to our work and lives at the largest of scales. Opportunities to shape these larger structures and model new paradigms or explore new systems for responsible ecological living exist for us everywhere we can imagine. Our challenge in this era is to try to hold as large a vision of an ecological self as possible and begin to act accordingly.

A true Planetary 10 Day retreat practice could leave us empowered to seek ways to work collectively to reimagine the world we inherited and propose bold solutions grounded in coordinated individual and collective action.

All this emerged from this recent retreat up in the mountains but is drawn from ongoing thoughts and inspiration in my life and by projects elsewhere. The opportunity to deeply experience our Earth body seems to be urgently needed if humanity is to see reality "as it is" and then adjust our behavior accordingly. The wisdom and resilience gained from traditional Vipassana meditation is truly needed to help move us forward through turbulent times but by itself, may not be enough to change the direction of our civilization given our habitual numbness, our many blind spots and the rapid changes and complexity of today's world. Nonetheless, in the spirit of unattachment, it is still very much worth a try.

"Enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness, real happiness...
May all beings be happy!"
-- S. N. Goenka