Earth Care as Interconnectedness

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The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 01, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Earth Care as Interconnectedness

In some parts of the Insight Meditation communities, there was a decision ten years ago to celebrate the first week of October as their Earth Care Week. And so, when it comes to the beginning of October, when I come and give talks, I like to give a talk on that topic. Today is October 1st, and I just love this word, this combination, putting together in the same phrase: "Earth Care."

On the surface, at least in our first thoughts or associations to the word "Earth," it's the planet out there. But "care" is something that's in here, in our hearts or in our life; it's something that arises from us. To put these two together is such a beautiful thing. We have this capacity for care, and we have this Earth that we live in, so we can care for it. You could also say that it cares for us. "Earth Care" could mean not just that we care for the Earth, but recognizing that we're cared for by the Earth. That might not be so popular to think that way. Perhaps it is not so popular to think that we should care for the Earth or that we are being cared for by it. I suppose if we have the idea that it's caring for us, then we feel like we better do something in return. But if we don't, the Earth is just a hunk of rock floating in space, and we don't need to do anything for it; it's just for us to live our life. So it is a labor of love, say, to bring them together: Earth Care.

It also raises some of the great spiritual questions that religious and spiritual people are grappling with in one way or another, explicitly or implicitly. Questions like: Who are we? Who are we in relationship to the world? Who are we in relationship to other people? What is this world we're in, and what relationship does the world have to me? Who are all these people we are sharing this planet with, and what is their relationship to me? How do we fit into all this?

In our particular Insight Meditation tradition, if anthropologists from Mars came to study what these people are doing, they might go back to Mars and say, "They just close their eyes, tune out the world, sit there, and look inside. They seem to be oblivious to the world around them. It's a very, very peculiar species or subspecies." [Laughter]

The Constructs of the Mind

But as we do this investigation into who we are and what it means to be living here, there are all kinds of interesting things that become clear. One is that we divide up our world in all kinds of ways that are not natural to the world out there, but are constructs of the human mind. Today is October 1st. It's a construct. It could be some other month. In ancient India, they used a lunar calendar, so since we just had the full moon two days ago, this wouldn't be the first; it would be the second of this particular cycle of the moon. There are probably other calendars people use. For us, it's Sunday, and that's also kind of arbitrary.

It was really fun when I lived in Zen monasteries, as they don't follow the seven-day week there; they have a five-day week. This Monday to Sunday concept just wasn't relevant. No one would say, "Tomorrow's Monday." The days were named by their number. Days off were not on Sunday; days off were the days of the month that had a four or a nine in them. They would say, "On the next four and nine days, we'll have some time off to do our laundry." And then on three and eight days, there was a special ritual they did in the monastery. We kind of forgot about the days of the week when we were there.

For those of us living in a seven-day week society, we know what weekday it is, but it's a division that we make up. To make it even more clear, this whole crazy way in which we divide up our reality—I don't know how many of you know that if we knew Latin, we would understand that October 1st is the first day of the eighth month, because octo in Latin means eight. Like, we have it wrong! We're confused. The anthropologist from Mars would say, "What's going on?" And November is the ninth month, coming from the Latin word for nine. December is a Latin word for ten, yet it's our twelfth month. These names that we put on things—not only is it arbitrary to divide up the year this particular way, but we arbitrarily decided the names we put on it, and we keep making this Latin mistake every year. So it's a little bit amusing. [Laughter]

What happens is that we do the same thing to ourselves and to the world we live in. We have concepts by which we divide it up. Just the very idea that there's "me" here and "you" there is kind of self-evident, and of course, we have to operate in a world like that, but it's not completely straightforward what that division is. Some people will define themselves as radical individuals, completely separate from others. If you ask who they are, they'll say, "Well, I'm this person who's this age, this size, this color hair, this kind of interests." It's all about "me, myself, and mine." It doesn't say anything about who you are in relationship to your family or your community.

Whereas in some cultures, if you ask who they are, they might immediately, first and foremost, say, "Well, I'm the child of such-and-such parents," or "I'm part of this village or this tribe." Their identity first comes forward in terms of who they are as part of some other group. It was fascinating for me to live for a year in a monastery in Japan, which is one of those cultures where they tend to think of themselves as part of a group more than as individuals separate from everyone else. It was fascinating to see how I understood the social dynamics differently than the thirty young monks I was living with. It took a while to see it, but by the time I learned enough Japanese to understand, it was really fascinating to see how my way of organizing the world was different from theirs. I didn't think that one was better than the other, but I did think that it was very important to see that we are constructing this thing all the time.

This is a central teaching of the Buddha: that we are constructing ideas about ourselves, and ideas about ourselves in relationship to the world we're in. When we attach to self, to who we are, we're attaching to constructs that we make up. We might think that we're innocent, that we're just living our life, that we are what we are, and that all the concepts we're using are completely self-evident and normal. But they are constructs just as much as October 1st is.

An example I like to give these days is, maybe you're deep in the woods, and there's a tree that no one's ever seen before. No one's gone through that part of the woods, but some adventurous people go to explore. The first person that goes into the woods is a botanist. The botanist sees this kind of tree and zeroes in on the leaves and their shape, recognizing what genus it is but not knowing the species of the tree. That's how you identify the tree; by the shape. Once the tree has been identified, the botanist goes home happy.

Someone who's a sensualist, who loves sensual qualities, goes around looking for where it is really pleasant in the woods. They look at that tree and notice its beautiful flowers and how nice it smells, and how green it is. They think, "Oh, this is better than perfume. I'm going to come back here just to get a whiff of this beauty. This is like looking at art." So they are looking at it for particular qualities that they are selecting out.

A woodworker will go looking for wood that could make good furniture or tables. They are going around trying to identify the kind of wood these trees have. They see this tree, go over, knock on it, push on it, and wonder, "Is this hard enough for what I want to do?" They are trying to recognize something in the woods that is usable for them to cut down and build something.

A devoted romantic goes into the woods, looks at the tree, and looks around at the nice grass under it. They notice how nice and shady it is on a warm day and think, "Oh, this is where I should come with my lover, with a picnic, figs, and chocolate. We'll just lay here under the tree, looking deep into each other's eyes. This place is like love incarnate." Their orientation is about how it's going to fit their story, their fantasy of this wonderful outing with their lover. The tree itself doesn't matter too much; it's how it builds up the story.

And then finally—I don't know if this works so well, but a painter comes along and decides to paint the tree. The painter doesn't need to know a lot about it except for its physical characteristics: light, shadows, and shapes. They need to pick up a lot of little visible details and features. It turns out the painter loves that study; they love the activity, the energy, the interest of the eyes studying and taking it in, and translating it to canvas. Something comes alive for the artist in tracking and being absorbed in all those details. The artist doesn't just love the details; they love the consciousness which is engaged in the play that's needed for the art.

So here we have five different people and five different ways of experiencing a tree. But the tree is whole. The tree does not divide itself up this way. It doesn't divide itself up between its branches and its leaves. The tree doesn't say, "Look at my trunk, it's a little bit too fat. I put on some weight in my middle ages." [Laughter] The tree doesn't think about how the shape of its leaves means it is a certain kind of tree. The tree is an organic whole that doesn't divide up its parts in its mind or anywhere else. The whole thing operates as a kind of ecology, a whole process. But humans have this ability to select things out of the environment and make really hard divisions between what's what. While that might be a little bit interesting about a tree, it's sometimes tragic when applied to ourselves.

We do the same thing to ourselves. We are an organic whole, but how often do we allow ourselves to just be an organic whole without living in the divisions we create? Some of us are obsessed with our physical appearance. Our society and culture support this in all kinds of ways. How we look is actually significant in how people treat us, so it can be very painful, distressing, or worse, when how people relate to us is all about appearance. That's one way that we make this division for ourselves.

Some people live their lives based on seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort. It's really paramount for them; everything is about navigating and negotiating to be comfortable. They might not call themselves sensualists, but that's the basis of their life. When the Buddha considered human beings in his ancient world, he considered that what defines them is their concern for pleasure and avoiding pain. That is such a central drive and preoccupation for human beings.

Then we have concepts by which we recognize the world, and sometimes they are inaccurate. It's like seeing a stick or a rope on a trail in the woods and thinking it's a snake. Sometimes it's simply inaccurate, but sometimes it's tragic, because the concepts we use to see other people can demean them, or worse. Sometimes we take advantage of people, or we primarily recognize someone as an object for our sexual interest, which is pretty uncomfortable—more than uncomfortable—for the people on the receiving end. We have these concepts we carry around with us. Some of them are inherited from our family, our society, or our experiences in life, and we don't realize that we're seeing through the lens of these concepts. We do that to ourselves, too.

When I was in seventh grade, a teacher came over, watched me make a drawing on my little desk, and just said in the most matter-of-fact way, "Gil, you have no artistic talent." I didn't care. I didn't have any concept of myself in that area. It didn't affect my mood, and I didn't feel bad about myself, but she was the authority. For the next few years, I thought, "I have no artistic ability; I'm just one of those people." It didn't bother me, but I carried that idea with me, and that's how I understood myself. That was until my first college roommate, who was an artist, tricked me into doing art. Then I took art classes, and it was nice.

We live under the burden of a lot of concepts: the idea that we are guilty, that we have shame, or that we did something terrible. A lot of people live with shame, and a lot of people live with conceits of different types, thinking, "I'm special." In Buddhism, saying you're special or saying you're terrible is kind of the same game. Both of them have the same source within us, which comes partly from this division where we're dividing up things that are actually an organic whole. We want to free ourselves from these concepts we're stuck in.

Maybe that's enough to describe the way the Buddha sees that we construct our reality. We also have stories that we live in, and these stories tend to separate out, divide up, and construct. Sometimes our stories are complete fantasies. We have fantasies and then expect other people to share in them. Sometimes they do, and then it gets kind of out of control.

Meditation and the Organic Whole

The meditation practice that we do is meant to relax and quiet down all these constructions we live by. That way, when we're here on a sunny day with a blue sky, sitting quietly, minding our own business in meditation, we're not thinking, "October 1st, October 1st, October 1st. This is October 1st." [Laughter] I hope no one did that. Maybe now you'll be doing it in a minute, but you probably had other things you were thinking about.

The idea is to quiet this down. As we quiet down the divisions, the constructs, and the conceits we live by—the ways we get caught by desires, aversions, and fears—one of the things we begin experiencing is ourselves as an organic whole. It's not so easy to define it by simply saying, "This is what it is," because then it becomes very easy to choose some part of us over another part. In meditation, we learn to leave ourselves alone so that we can just let this organic whole operate without a construct. This doesn't mean letting it operate however it wants with hate or fear. Instead, there is a quieting down. Partly, it quiets down because we start seeing that we're doing it. It's not about ignoring or putting blinders on to what we're doing; rather, these things naturally quiet down.

Then we start seeing the difference between living through constructs and projecting them onto the world versus not doing that. We can see the difference between living with all kinds of thoughts of self-criticism—we can be pretty hard on ourselves—and choosing not to do that. We see that we have some choice about whether we create constructs inside ourselves that lead to harm, either to ourselves or to others. There comes a time when you start being able to choose, realizing, "I don't need to think about that anymore. I don't need to get involved with that. I don't need to divide up the world this way. I can just sit here and breathe, nicely and easily."

Eventually, an amazing moment will arise in meditation practice. I hope it's sooner rather than later, but sometimes it takes a long time. You're sitting there, minding your own business in the present moment, being present for yourself, and you discover you are breathing in an easy way. Wow, it's so easeful. The breath is just coming and going; it's an embodiment of ease. You might think, "I didn't realize how much I controlled my breath, how much it was held in check. Wow, there's just ease, and now I breathe." You don't need to know what that ease is. You don't have to put a label on it; it's just there.

That easeful breath then becomes a reference point to begin understanding how you lose it. You can see that if you get involved in certain thoughts, the breath tightens up and isn't so easy. You can see it in all kinds of ways internally: certain emotions arise and affect the breathing. You start seeing a little bit of how it works, and maybe you gain some ability to adjust things accordingly, to not go along with those thoughts or that way of thinking.

Interconnectedness with the Environment

But we also start seeing that what happens in the outer world affects our breathing too. Our inner ease is not only dependent on what's going on inside of us; it also depends on the world around us. Last week, there was smoke here in the Bay Area from fires, and that affected our breathing to some degree. I know my breathing was slightly more labored at times with the smoke, especially if I tried to go for a walk outside. A few years ago, it was really bad, and I could feel the extra work it took to breathe. It didn't feel that easeful to breathe. That represents something so profound and important for us: our sense of inner ease is affected by what goes on around us in the environment.

We are not independent of the environment. Many of us want to be independent people. Maybe we can be somewhat independent in certain ways, but that's just one of the divisions we make, one of the constructs we create. The construct of independence can be a kind of conceit or specialness, a way to avoid being responsible for anybody else. I think being all about our independence overlooks the fact that we are amazingly dependent on other people and on the natural world. Not many of us in our society grow 100 percent of our own food. Most of us don't make our own clothes from our own sheep that we shear. The things that support our life come through the vehicle of other people's efforts, labor, and work. It's an amazing network of people, things, and processes that makes it possible for us to live. We depend on it; probably not many of you remember how to knit if you had to!

We also completely depend on the natural world. Most of us know that we have to breathe regularly, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Our life depends on having oxygen to breathe in. Every few seconds, we live in this dependent relationship to the air. Does that make us separate from the air? Are we an independent thing? Is the air out there, independent of us? Or is there some way that who we are is inseparable from the air, inseparable from the sun, inseparable from the ground that we walk on? How do we make these divisions? Where do we see where we begin and where we end? Is that arbitrary, or are there really clear lines between where I end and you begin, or where I end and the air begins?

Lately, I've gotten fascinated by the air that we're breathing all the time. It was pointed out to me this summer that trees and plants are basically solid air. Isn't that amazing? Mostly, what trees are made from is the carbon they get from the carbon dioxide in the air. Imagine how much carbon dioxide from the air a tree has to take in to get enough carbon molecules to be a redwood tree! When you look at these big redwood trees, you might assume, as I used to without thinking about it, that the solidity of the tree came out of the ground. But actually, most of the solidity, most of the carbon we see there, comes out of the atmosphere. Because they take the carbon out of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they release oxygen. And guess who needs the oxygen? We do.

There's this wonderful process happening. So now the question is: this tree in the woods that I talked about earlier—is it that tree over there, and I'm here? Or are we part of an organic whole? Is the organic whole more than just the tree, more than just me, with all these processes working together? Is it a little bit arbitrary how we make these divisions?

Some of these divisions constructed by the human mind cause a lot of suffering. There's a lot of selfishness and self-focus. On the other hand, there can be care. There can be an opening of the heart and mind to look around and see that it is not just "me, myself, and mine." What's more realistic is "we, ours, and ourselves." We're all in it together. And that "us" is much bigger than just our human community; it's about how we're in a community with the natural world, with this Earth.

Is there an organic whole of the entire Earth? Does that organic whole have some bearing on how easy it is for us to breathe? Where is our inner sense of peace and well-being found, and where does it come from? When there are forest fires nearby, how easy is it to breathe? When the air is full of smog, how much ease do you have? Do you have more ease when the air is clean and you can see across the bay? Or is there something, maybe almost subconsciously, that is a little bit oppressive, tight, and constricted about living in smog? When we hear about people around the world who are living under environmental challenges, does that have anything to do with you? Are we independent from that? Do we share this planet with others or not? That's a division that we can construct.

When our consumption of goods is gathered from all over the planet, how independent are we really? I don't know if this goes on anymore, because China stopped it, but China used to take a lot of our recycling until they decided it was too dirty. We don't clean our recycling, making it much harder to process.

Earth Care in Practice

So this "Earth Care" idea in our practice is first about learning to care for the Earth within us—to care for the natural world that we are. In the deepest way, we are not the mental constructs we create. We manufacture all kinds of ideas that separate and divide us, which can cause a lot of suffering, but that is not who we are.

If we can drop down and quiet those constructs, then we start becoming aware of organic processes within that are not mental creations. This was part of the Buddha's emphasis over and over again. He used similes from nature to describe how it's possible to live a life where our breathing is easy. Awaken that easeful breath, that peaceful inner life. That natural process inside is not apart from the natural process of the Earth outside of us. They're intimately connected. They're part of the same whole, the same evolutionary processes coming together and moving back and forth.

To truly care for yourself, you can't really do it unless you also care for the world around you. If you care only for yourself, you're living in a divided world of constructs. If you care only for the world outside, it's the same thing: you're living in a divided world of constructs.

I would like to propose that when we can settle the constructs and preoccupations of the mind enough, the care that we have emerges as part of the natural working of life. The organic functioning of human life has within it the capacity to care, to be concerned, to love, to be generous, and to be attuned to the welfare of self and others. We naturally become interested in supporting and caring for others, being kind, and sharing this planet together. This isn't because we should or because there's an obligation, but because that's what naturally lives in us when we drop into a place where the natural world has a chance to flow through us.

Why it works that way, why this natural world has created us so that it's natural to want to care for our babies, is profound. Some of you have had kids; it's pretty deeply ingrained to have this parental instinct. Of course, we care. But that care doesn't have to stop with our babies, our children, our parents, or our neighbors. That movement of care is a completely natural phenomenon, a part of the natural world we contain. We can allow it to grow, expand, and spread so that our care radiates in all directions. Whatever we touch, whatever we see, we see it with care, kindness, and appreciation. We see it as part of the organic whole, as opposed to seeing it through greed, hate, or conceit. For there to be "Earth Care" is, I think, a profound thing.

I think it is a profound, natural thing that human beings, given a chance to tap into their depth inside, will care for themselves, care for the people around them, and care for this world. At the same time, we know that we are being cared for. Maybe not to the degree to which we would always like—expecting the stock market to be cooperating^[1] with us today, for instance! I don't know if that's a good way of thinking; that's just more divisions. But this world is caring for us in profound ways, otherwise we wouldn't be alive. When we drop the concern with the stock market and just appreciate that we can breathe, that there's water to drink, and that there are people around us who smile—people who appreciate that we smile back—that's a beautiful thing.

Earth Care is not something you have to do, but it is something I hope will come from your inner freedom. As you discover your capacity to drop below all the divisions and constructs that the mind tends to make, you can feel that you are part of the organic whole of this planet. I hope we can take care of this planet well, because it's a way of taking care of our family, our communities, what we love, and it's a way of taking care of ourselves.

Reflections

Thank you. Earth Care this week—maybe this week can be a week that you consider this topic. Maybe just keep this phrase in your mind: "Earth Care." Ask your friends what they think that means. You can say, "Where I go and meditate, this is Earth Care Week. What do you think of this?" Think about it, and let's see what direction your heart goes if you keep this close by for the week. Thank you very much.

As I said, if we go outside in the parking lot, those of you who would like to talk about this some more or say hello in other ways can form a little circle there with the chairs for maybe twenty or twenty-five minutes. Then we'll allow the Dharma Sprouts^[2] to come in here and get set up. Thank you.