--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-20' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-10-04' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12197/20201004-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-earth_care_as_self_care.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: Earth Care as Self Care url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12197 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: Xf_1zsS-2aM imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: Earth Care as Self Care upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf_1zsS-2aM --- # Earth Care as Self Care - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1) _This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._ ## [Earth Care as Self Care](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12197) Around the first week of October is Earth Care Week. It is a Buddhist period to care for and focus on the Earth, kind of like Earth Day in April, but this is a week for Buddhists. And so today is that day to give a talk on that topic. What I would like to start off by saying is that caring for the Earth and caring for oneself, many times, are the same thing; they overlap. Sometimes we can care for one or the other, but they overlap. Over the last few decades, that overlap has become stronger and bigger. The ecology of the Earth, how it is unfolding, being destroyed, and shifting, has a huge impact on human well-being. Without caring for the Earth, major disruptions in human life will occur. Caring for the Earth is caring for oneself and caring for us humans. Learning how to care for ourselves deeply—especially with what opens up through Buddhist meditation—is also a way that we can care for the world. This idea that we get changed through Buddhist practice, so that our values, our orientation, and what motivates us begin to change, is one of the key features of this path that we are on. One of those features, part of the culture of awakening, is certainly _anukampā_[^1]: caring for the Earth, caring for others, and caring for ourselves. The radical shift that is possible in how we are changed through practice is that, instead of caring for the Earth motivated by obligation, or by a strong adherence to responsibilities or human rights—and human rights are extremely important, so justifying caring for the world because people have rights is certainly a worthy thing to do—what comes out of awakening is a different orientation. It provides a different basis for doing the same actions, coming from a different place. It comes from generosity, goodwill, and care. That is a motivating force. There is not a "should," there is not an obligation, guilt, anger, or blame. It is not motivated by fear. All those kinds of things get settled in this practice to a remarkable degree, giving us access to other sources of action and motivation. For Buddhists, that can supersede or take priority over arguments that we should do things based on human rights or human responsibilities. But this only works if we act—and act passionately—from our goodwill, care, and generosity. If we simply talk about it and don't do anything, then I think we have to fall back on things like responsibilities and human rights to really care for the suffering planet we live on. ## The Changing Environment We live now in this changing world. Here in California, we're facing multiple challenges, and other places in the world are facing multiple challenges as well. In addition to the coronavirus, here in California we're facing lots of fires and week after week of really smoky air. It's a health hazard now, but for everyone living through this, they say that the accumulation of this ongoing smoke will affect not necessarily our well-being in the short term, but might shorten our lifetime because of the stress and challenges it adds to our system. We have heat wave after heat wave, and we have drought happening with not enough rain. In other places in the United States, we have hurricanes and tropical storms coming in and flooding. The environmental challenges are huge, and some of them clearly have to do with the interface between how humans live—the growing population, the growing use of natural resources—and the natural world. This interface has reached its limit as to how much the world can contain human growth and consumption without homeostasis shifting and changing in some big way. Here in California, it's most clear with all the fires. Some of the challenges with the fires are that we've pushed into fire zones with towns and homes that then have to be defended. Fires have been part of this environment for centuries, but over the last century, there has been a lot of fire suppression. So, of course, there's a lot more dry wood and shrubs ready to burn. ## Cooperating with the Natural World A couple of years ago, I met a Native American elder who lives in the mountains not far from here. He remembered that when he was a child, he would go deeper into the mountains with his father and grandfather every year. One of the things they would do is set small fires—maybe one- to ten-acre fires—in the fall. That was part of their care and tending for the places where they lived in the mountains. In the 1960s, the Forest Service came and told his father he had to stop because they weren't going to allow any fires. But now, fifty years later or more, the Forest Service is coming to him—who only has a child's memory—to learn from him. What did they know about making those kinds of prescribed burns? They did it at a time of year that was usually not considered safe, but they seemed to have done it safely. How did they know to do it? What could we learn today from the ancient lore that has been learned over many generations by Native Americans? I read recently about another man in the Sierras whose Native American father stopped doing similar burns when he received a fine from the Forest Service for burning illegally, even though his people had been doing it for generations. How do we care? How do we tend and cooperate with the natural world so we live in some kind of harmony with it? We can't just keep pushing into the limits without something breaking and changing. Caring for the world becomes caring for ourselves. How do we do that not from duty, guilt, or obligation—all of which are necessary if nothing else works—but from generosity, a genuine sense of care, and goodwill, energetically? ## The Buddha and the Elephant Thinking about this, I remembered a story from the Vinaya[^2], the books about the code of conduct for the monastics. They have lots of stories attributed to the Buddha's life. Some of them seem more fable-like, but who knows, maybe they are true. Here is one where the Buddha encounters the natural world—a natural world that could be seen as dangerous—and his response to it. Just like we are facing the coronavirus, fires, and smoke, how do we face that? How do we show up for it? The story has to do with the Buddha's relative, either a cousin or a nephew, named Devadatta[^3]. Devadatta was a monk ordained by the Buddha, but he wanted to take over the order of monks and be the leader. He had a quest for power or was jealous. At one point, he tried to kill the Buddha three times. The first time, he tried to get some assassins to kill the Buddha. But when they came to the Buddha, somehow his presence changed their minds, and rather than killing him, they sat down and learned from him. The second time, Devadatta rolled a rock down from a mountain cliff onto the Buddha. It missed him, but the rock shattered, and a sliver of the rock punctured the Buddha's foot, injuring him. A third time, Devadatta went to the royal stables. He told the people who cared for the royal elephants that he was a relative of the king and asked for their help, promising them rewards. Elephants back then were kind of like Bradley tanks in the modern world; they were animals of war, quite impressive, and trained to fight and kill. The plan was that they would take an elephant out one morning and place it at the head of a street the Buddha was expected to walk down. When the Buddha started walking, the elephant was to charge and kill him. The Buddha got up in the morning and went out for alms in town. When he came to the street, sure enough, the elephant was let loose and came charging down the street toward him. Apparently, it was a long way off, because three times people nearby told the Buddha to run away. Each time the Buddha said no, saying something like, "_Buddhas_ don't run away from danger." He just stood there calmly and peacefully, facing the elephant. As the elephant was coming toward him, the Buddha filled his heart with goodwill and loving-kindness for the elephant. As the elephant came closer, it slowed down. When it got close enough, it actually got down on its knees, bent down, and laid there on the ground in front of the Buddha. That ended its charge and didn't kill the Buddha. The Buddha was not armed. ## Facing Danger with Goodwill It is kind of a fable, but it lends itself to interpretation. The interpretation is that in the face of the dangers of nature, one of the things to do is to really stop and take a good, honest look. Study it and understand what is really going on, whether it's understanding climate change or understanding something happening with your local creeks. Are there any creeks, rivers, or waterways near your home, and do you really know what's happening to them? After living in Redwood City for almost twenty years, I went for a walk the other day and discovered a creek I had never seen before. It is right next to the high school, sandwiched between fences on either side protecting a ten-foot area. There are reeds, bushes, and little trees growing in this waterway. I was fascinated that this exists in Redwood City; I thought most of the creeks were covered over by asphalt. Now I go by there and study it. Do we face and study the dangers? Do we see and look at what is happening? It's a basic practice of mindfulness: we stop and we look, we stop and we learn, we pay attention to things. It is a little different when it's about the environment, because it involves more than just offering silent attention and noting practice; it also involves studying and learning more about it. Then the Buddha offered his goodwill, his generosity, and his care for the elephant. To come from goodwill is one of the most important teachings of the Buddha about how to live in the world. He placed this at such a high level of importance, using hyperbole, saying that even if bandits capture you and are cutting off your limbs, do not give in to ill will; maintain a heart of goodwill.[^4] He didn't say, "Don't try to escape." In other situations, he said it's appropriate to escape danger if someone is going to harm you. But I think this teaching acts as a thought experiment for when escape is hopeless. Even in extreme situations, maintain goodwill. I don't know if we want to take this literally, but it points to the tremendous value this tradition puts on having a heart that doesn't succumb to hostility, and doesn't get caught in the grip of fear, greed, or desire. It points to a heart that is able to stay close to a natural, tender place where these beautiful qualities can reside: compassion, kindness, friendliness, goodwill, care, and generosity. ## The Ecology of the Heart This is our inner wealth; this is also part of the natural world—how we are in our hearts. If we want to practice self-care, we must be careful not to lose, destroy, or cover over the richest parts of our inner life. Ironically, the very forces of the mind that destroy the inner life and make it inaccessible—greed, hatred, and delusion—are the very same forces responsible for so much of the environmental damage in the world. In this way, caring for ourselves and caring for the world has a common denominator: clarifying and purifying ourselves of the forces of greed, hate, and delusion. In doing so, we also overcome unwholesome fear, which often drives human life and drives us to make terrible political, economic, and social decisions. We must begin to care, to look, and to appreciate the tremendous overlap between the earth, the environment, and our human life. This includes taking an honest look at ourselves. Some five years ago, I heard a statistic that fifty percent of the human beings on the planet—the poorest three and a half billion people—are responsible for only seven percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Conversely, seven percent of the human population is responsible for fifty percent of carbon dioxide emissions. That is really lopsided. We can't simply increase consumption and production for the poor so it matches the developed world. There has to be a radical change in consumption, lifestyle, and what the developed world does. While this often becomes a language of obligation, from the culture of awakening, we recognize this disparity and look for a new way of living—driven by generosity, care, goodwill, and joy. We look towards a life of simplicity, discovering how to consume less and have less of a negative impact on the world and underprivileged people. How can those who have the means use them to reduce the damage their lives contribute to the world? No one feels like they're damaging themselves, so we don't want to shame anyone or make it obligatory. But for ourselves, how do we come from the best qualities of the heart so we are inspired and want to change? That is the task. If we're really going to make a difference in this world, it will help tremendously if, rather than feeling the burden of change, we try to experience the _joy_ of change. We are moving toward a better lifestyle, a better way of living. We find how we enhance the wealth in our own hearts and the ecology of the heart, so that ecology shines and is rich and valuable. The work we do for the environment, for social justice, and for the welfare of the world around us nourishes us from beautiful places within. ## Earth Care Week and Eco-Chaplaincy I think that would be the culture of awakening as we engage in earth care. This is Earth Care Week; we're in the middle of it. So maybe for this week—and for every week, but especially this week—you could make it a theme: how can you care for the world more than you already are? And do it in a way that is not obligatory or heavy, but really comes from a place of lightness and joy, yet still makes a difference. Those are my thoughts for Earth Care Week. Thank you for listening. We have a couple of minutes left. It might be nice to tell you about something I have done in this regard. After many years of having this wish, I was finally able to actualize it: I co-created a training program with Susie Harrington and Kirsten Rudestam[^5] for Buddhist eco-chaplains. These are people who offer spiritual care in relationship to the non-human world, the environment, and the ecosystem. We finished our first whole program that ended in September. It was a fantastic group of people, and it was really inspiring to see their dedication, love, and the activities they were setting themselves up to do as eco-chaplains. That was a wonderful thing, and it is an example of something that has been part of my life and my joy to offer. We're going to start that again; I think in January we start the next year of training. Thank you. I'm going to stop now here on YouTube, and I will set up the Zoom room. It will probably be open before I get there, but I think Bev Speicher will say hello to everyone. I hope it all works; I chose a big Zoom account, and I hope this time we all get in happily. Thank you for today. --- [^1]: **Anukampā**: A Pali word often translated as sympathy, compassion, or caring for others. (Original transcript said 'a new kampa', corrected based on context). [^2]: **Vinaya**: The regulatory framework and code of conduct for the Buddhist monastic community. (Original transcript said 'vineyard', corrected based on context). [^3]: **Devadatta**: A cousin of the Buddha who created a schism in the sangha and attempted to assassinate the Buddha. [^4]: **Simile of the Saw**: A reference to the Kakacupama Sutta, where the Buddha instructs monastics to maintain loving-kindness even if bandits were to sever their limbs with a two-handled saw. [^5]: **Kirsten Rudestam**: Co-teacher of the Sati Center's Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy program. (Original transcript said 'kirsten roadster', corrected based on context).