Talk: Working On Climate Change With The Four Heart Qualities

So,

Tonight's talk is about climate change and how we can work with it using the teacher of the Buddha.

I'll talk a little bit about the teachings of the Buddha,

But I would like to focus on primarily the four heart qualities,

Love and kindness,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy and equanimity.

So,

This last week I was on a meditation retreat.

I was leading a meditation retreat and we were doing it from Friday the 15th till Friday the 22nd.

The beginning the Sunday before it began,

I was wondering about whether we'd run it or not.

Then came Tuesday I sent an email out to the participants thinking we might be counselling this retreat.

It was at Yarra Wara which is down south,

Right close to where the fires are.

I really wondered about it.

By Wednesday morning we made the decision we'd go ahead with it,

Even despite the fires.

Even though over half the people counselled because of the fires.

So,

I went down there and we had enough people to run the retreat.

Every morning I would get up and there'd be smoke thick in the air,

A bit thicker than up in Lismore actually,

What I noticed.

I don't know how thick it was here.

It was a reminder every morning I'd be getting up wondering,

Wondering will we need to evacuate?

Will we survive past this day?

It reminded me of a practice that I've been doing for the last 45 years,

Almost on a daily basis,

Which is recollecting the reality and certainty of my own death and the death of all beings.

Also,

There's another reality that I reflect on almost daily,

Not quite daily but almost.

That is that all that is mine beloved and pleasing shall one day be part of me,

Shall one day vanish.

This is of course the impermanence that the Buddha talks about.

Reflecting on that,

I would think maybe this is that one day,

Maybe this is the one day that I will die.

If it's not today,

It'd be definitely one day.

Maybe this is the day that all that is mine beloved and pleasing shall one day vanish from me.

On this retreat,

We practice serenity,

Insight,

And cultivating the four heart qualities.

All of these practices became relevant to,

I think,

Dealing with climate change.

If you think about it,

The Buddha talks about the root causes of our suffering being in greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred.

When you think about climate change,

I know that there's many natural climate conditions that are naturally changing our environment.

It is now scientifically accepted that human activities have been influencing climate change.

You could say that greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred at a collective level,

At a mass level,

Has been influencing climate change.

You think about greed,

For example.

Greed,

It's like consumption.

Our capacity to consume has increased exponentially over my lifetime anyway.

I remember when I was a boy,

We used to go to the supermarket,

And I think there was three choices of cereal.

There was callus cornflakes,

Rice bubbles,

And wheat bix.

Remember that?

Some of you who are as old as me.

These days,

You go to the supermarket,

How many choices of just cereal alone do you have?

We see that there's been,

Since the Second World War anyway,

There's been a kind of an age of individualism.

Some people have called it a period of narcissism in our culture,

In our Western culture,

Where everything is about me.

Everything is about getting as much as I can while I can.

Everything is about how healthier I can become,

How wealthier I can become,

How more skilled I can become,

And so on and so forth.

Even to the extent that sometimes you see mindfulness practices as it's taught in the world these days,

It's often about how much better we can become at being a me,

At being a self,

How we can self-improve.

I think that what's happening since that time is a mass consumption,

Like mass greed at many levels,

So that we have increased a group mentality of greed and an increased level of ecological decline.

Actually,

I was reading a paper the other day.

It was a Buddhist paper talking about climate change.

It talked about how there was a correlation with ecological decline and moral decline,

Moral decline meaning ethical decline,

Being driven by greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred basically.

Also,

Delusion.

You think about how much we just choose to ignore the effect of what we do in the world and how it is affecting the world.

It's like an ignorance about the way things interact.

I think it's easy for us to feel angry and point the finger and blame particular government policies or governments or politicians or corporate companies for this mass greed and consumptionism.

I guess it's consumptionism.

Is that a word?

I guess it could be.

This mass greed and consumption.

We all have a part to play.

We've all contributed.

We're all complicit in many ways.

I think of myself.

I've consumed the world.

I've traveled in jet planes unnecessarily.

I've eaten foods that have been brought from a long distance.

I've worn clothes that have been produced in sweatshops in Asia or India or somewhere.

I'm part of this and we all are.

There is a sense that if the causes are greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred,

And again,

I want to say about hatred,

It's easy for us to feel ill will,

And I know it is for me,

Against our politicians,

For example.

I notice that even the mention of some of the names of the politicians,

I feel ill will rise.

However,

If ill will,

Greed,

And ignorance are the causes of my suffering and also the suffering of individuals and also the decline of ecology,

Our ecological base,

Our planet in a way that's going to help us live in this world,

Then it's another way,

Another straw on the back or another contribution to this climatic decline.

So what do we do?

Well,

The Buddhist practices,

All the Buddhist practices talk about.

.

.

The Buddhist teachings are about reducing greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred,

Every part of it.

When there's no greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred,

There's no suffering.

So collectively,

We could work towards reducing greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred within our own hearts.

By working within our own hearts,

It sets up this collective movement that we're all working towards reducing greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred.

Things as simple as living a simple life,

Things as simple as choosing not to fly on a plane or drive somewhere unnecessarily,

Choosing to be careful about what we eat,

Maybe even choosing to become a vegan,

For example.

All these little things contribute to this kind of mass collective way of reducing or finding some possibility in climate change.

So I'd like to focus on one aspect of the Buddhist teachings,

And this aspect is the cultivation of the four divine abodes.

In Pali,

It's called the four brahma viharas,

Also called the four immeasurables,

The four sublime states,

The four boundless states,

And so on.

These four divine abodes,

Loving kindness or warm benevolence,

Like warm friendship,

Warm friendliness,

Is the first divine abode.

The next one is compassion,

Which is sensitivity to suffering and the commitment to alleviate it,

According to East Holland's the Dalai Lama.

Another way we can understand it is sensitivity to suffering and the wish to reduce it,

Whether it's within ourselves or another.

Appreciative joy is the joy and appreciation of virtues,

Skills,

Qualities,

Wholesome qualities,

And attributes of oneself or other.

I'm talking about oneself here because they'll often talk about it as sympathetic joy in the text,

But I think it's a joy that arises in appreciation of things.

We could also say gratitude here is a sign of appreciative joy.

In Pali,

It's called mudita.

Pali for compassion is karuna and Pali for loving kindness is metta.

By the way,

Metta comes from the root mit,

The root Pali term mit or Sanskrit term mit,

Which means friend.

Loving kindness is different from compassion in that loving kindness focuses on the good,

Focuses on happiness and wellbeing and it's this wish to connect and wish for happiness in oneself and others.

The last divine devote is equanimity.

Equanimity is this sense of being unshaken by the inevitable ups and downs of life.

In Theravadan Buddhism,

They talk about the eight worldly winds,

Being unshaken by the eight worldly winds of praise and blame,

Loss and gain,

Pain and pleasure and fame and disrepute.

It's being steady and realistic and centered and clear in that.

Another way they talk about or we talk about equanimity,

This is probably from a Mahayana perspective,

Mahayana Buddhist perspective.

It is impartiality regarding one's aversion or attraction to another.

In fact,

Regarding other beings,

Regarding one another impartially and not being swayed by attraction or aversion.

These four heart qualities are the way that enlightened beings relate to themselves and relate to others.

These four heart qualities are qualities we can aspire to in order to relate to ourselves in an enlightened way,

In a balanced way and also relate to other beings.

How can this help with climate change?

Actually,

Before I talk about that,

I want to mention that each of these qualities,

They're all uplifting.

They're called divine.

Brahma viharas.

Brahma means God.

In this case,

It translates as a divine state.

It is an uplifted state.

You feel expansive.

You feel kind of spacious and in Tarot and Buddhism and in other schools and traditions,

They're cultivated as a spacious state of being.

It's considered as one of the,

Within the serenity group of practices,

One that are based on concentration rather than emphasizing mindfulness as we find in insight practices.

They balance the insight and serenity and insight are balanced.

The heart qualities,

I feel,

Are essential if you want to practice insight practices.

Coming back to how we can use these with climate change and also with understanding the near and far enemies of these qualities.

The near and far enemies of these qualities,

The near,

The far enemies are aspects of ourselves or tendencies that are directly opposite the qualities.

The near enemies look like these qualities that are distorted aspects of them.

They're false facsimiles.

The near and far enemies of loving kindness,

The far enemy of loving kindness is hatred,

Bitterness,

Resentment,

All forms of ill will.

That's the opposite.

The near enemy looks like loving kindness,

But it's this deceptive aspect of it.

It's like codependency,

Subservience,

Idolization of someone,

Conditional love and so on.

It's generally like over attachment to something within another being.

It's dependent on things.

It's not unconditional love,

Which is what we find with loving kindness or metta.

The near and far enemies of compassion,

The far enemies of course are cruelty,

Masochism,

Sadism and all forms of revenge,

For example,

Wanting to hurt someone.

The near enemies of compassion,

And these are really interesting,

I think they are patronizing pity,

Rescuing,

The tendency to rescue,

The tendency to not be able to tolerate suffering.

Therefore,

By saving someone else,

We avoid it.

Other aspects of the near enemy of compassion,

As they've described in the text,

Is being overwhelmed with the grief of the world,

Falling into despair and depression.

I think this is something that a lot of us are falling into with what we're challenged with,

The realities of climate change.

The near and far enemies of appreciative joy,

The far enemy of appreciative joy is envy,

Cynicism,

Especially cynicism about your own good qualities,

For example,

Not recognizing your own joy and good qualities,

Not appreciating yourself,

Putting yourself down,

And envy and jealousy,

I think I mentioned them.

They're the far enemies.

The near enemies of appreciative joy are a kind of nauseating positivism.

I don't know if you know what I mean by that.

It's like putting on a happy face when things are not very good.

Like a polyanarism,

Not that I've ever read polyana,

But I understand,

I know,

I've heard what that's about.

It's about always putting on a smile on your face,

Always seeing the bright side of things,

Which is kind of helpful.

But for example,

If your house had burnt down or you had to evacuate,

Someone was like,

Put on a happy face.

It's all right.

See the bright side of it.

That's like nauseating positivism when what is really required is compassion at that point.

The near and far enemies of equanimity.

The far enemy of equanimity is overreactivity,

Having your buttons pressed,

Losing personal boundaries,

Not knowing personal boundaries,

Feeling responsible for everyone's thoughts,

Feelings,

And behaviors,

Or blaming other people for the way you feel.

It's this overreactiveness.

It's not knowing that we are the owners of our own actions and so on,

That we are on our own life trajectories.

Every individual is on their own life trajectory.

Nobody else can come in and change the way we think,

Feel,

And behave.

Only we can do that.

That's the far enemy of equanimity.

The near enemy of equanimity is kind of interesting.

It's like a kind of aloof detachment.

It's a cutoff,

Disengaged,

Almost sense of superiority.

It's a sense of denial.

It's a sense of dissociation,

The way I see it.

I think it is also a sense of resignation when we're faced with climate change.

It's like.

.

.

One way we can describe genuine equanimity is a deep,

Deep acceptance of the way things are.

The near enemy of equanimity would be an acceptance of the way things are,

Like a resignation about it,

Like a passive giving up,

If that makes sense.

I think that what's happening in climate change is we are falling into some of the near enemies of these high qualities.

We're falling into despair.

We're falling into depression.

We're falling into ill will and anger.

I know I am.

I get angry at the politicians and so on.

We're falling into resignation or a passive acceptance when we should be acting.

We're also falling into a denial of the reality of what's going on.

All of these are near enemies of those qualities.

The way this can work,

I reckon,

Is that with the collabation of love and kindness,

What we do is we begin to connect with one another.

We begin to connect with our common humanity rather than working from a narcissistic selfness perspective,

Like how am I going to survive this?

How am I going to get enough food and water and resources to survive this challenge?

It's more about how we can work together,

How we can,

As a collective unit,

Humanity working together.

So,

Love and kindness is absolutely needed.

This feeling of warm connection and friendliness and being with one another and working as a collective together.

Compassion.

Compassion is absolutely necessary.

Compassion is absolutely necessary.

When we see suffering,

The enlightened human response is compassion,

Whether it's to ourselves or others.

I think it's compassion that has.

.

.

When I was looking at the news before,

When that catastrophic Tuesday was around,

All those stories of people helping one another,

That was all driven by compassion.

I think we need that.

Also,

Compassion can temper.

Compassion works towards the near enemy of equanimity.

It gives it softness.

The near enemy of equanimity,

Of course,

Being this kind of cold,

Aloof,

Detachment,

Cut-off-ness,

Resignation,

Sort of,

I'm okay.

I did hear some Buddhist say,

It's all just impermanence of the realms.

I'm going to go.

I'll go somewhere else.

This is just the way it is.

It sort of is the way it is,

But it's not.

.

.

I mean,

Those people are deeply affected.

We will all be deeply affected.

We are deeply affected by the changes that are happening in the world.

To just say,

Just to fob it off and say,

Oh,

I'll just go to a different realm.

There's zillions of realms in the universe,

And I'll just go to a different one.

When this one kind of falls away,

I think that's a sort of a sense of denial and the near enemy of equanimity.

What compassion does,

Compassion softens it up.

Compassion brings a sense of connection to that.

That's absolutely necessary.

That's one way we can deal with the near enemy of that equanimity.

The near enemy of compassion being sort of grief and despair and depression.

Well,

This is where appreciative joy comes to fall.

I notice this.

I think it's easy for us to feel despair,

To feel hopelessness.

Appreciative joy brings hope.

Appreciative joy is noticing some good things in the world,

Noticing some good stories.

I noticed the effect on me when I heard the news that the New Zealand parliament voted for zero carbon emission by the year 2050.

I had a good feeling.

That was appreciative joy.

We need more and more of this,

Because if we fall into grief and despair,

We don't think of innovative ways to work with it.

We don't think of ways we can work together and resolve the problems we're finding.

Can you have appreciative joy on some of the issues?

I don't know.

I don't have appreciative joy when someone dies,

But I do have appreciative joy when I can see something wonderful happening,

Like somebody making some effort.

Even this morning I listened to the news and there was some information about these farmers that are working around the drought,

Using innovative techniques to combat soil erosion and channel water and so on.

That was joyous.

It's a good news story.

It gives us hope.

It gives us possibility.

I think it's important not to lose hope.

We can't cling to hope,

Of course,

But we can hold it.

I think that's the benefits of appreciative joy.

It's about seeing the possibility,

Seeing the reality of it.

The near enemy of appreciative joy,

I just can't help but mention this.

I reckon.

.

.

You know how we had this,

How good is that?

How good is Australia?

How good is blah,

Blah,

Blah?

I think that's a demonstration of the near enemy of appreciative joy.

It's like a false happiness and false celebration and things.

What we need to work with that is also this kind of a sense of loving kindness,

To be honest.

That's what we need for Scott Morrison actually,

Lots of loving kindness,

Not the will that I have,

But loving kindness that goes in that direction.

What else?

Equanimity.

Equanimity can balance all your bones.

Equanimity,

We need equanimity to help us be wise.

Equanimity is an expression of wisdom actually.

Equanimity will help us make wise decisions and act with resolve and see the full picture,

Not be swayed by our biases,

Not be swayed by confirmation bias,

Which I see a lot in the Murdoch press,

For example.

People saying the deniers of climate change,

They're confirming their opinion.

Equanimity we need to see a balanced perspective,

To stay centered,

To stay strong,

To stay courageous.

I think all these four high qualities are essential.

They themselves work with their opposites.

Loving kindness will work with hatred and bitterness and divisiveness and so on.

Equanimity will work with overreactivity.

Appreciative joy will work with cynicism and jealousy and envy.

Compassion will work with cruelty and harmfulness and cut-offness.

The other qualities work with the near enemies.

Equanimity will work with the near enemies of loving kindness.

Loving kindness will work with the near enemies of appreciative joy.

Appreciative joy will work with the near enemies of compassion.

Compassion will work with the near enemies of equanimity.

In finishing this talk,

I'd just like to mention something that I read in a discourse the other day.

This discourse is called the world-turning monarch.

It was very interesting,

This discourse.

It was talking about the decline of societies and how that decline correlates with moral decline or ethical decline.

It also talks about how that decline can be built up again with the practice of ethics,

The practice of meditation and the cultivation of wisdom and compassion.

It was an inspiring discourse in the long run.

This is how it began and it also ends like this.

Medicants,

Be your own island,

Your own refuge with no other refuge.

Let the teaching be your island and your refuge with no other refuge.

It goes on to say how you can do that.

Basically,

It talks about mindfulness and cultivating the path.

What I find I take refuge in is as I chanted at the beginning of the talk.

I take refuge in the quality of awakening.

I take refuge in the Dharma,

The way things are.

I take refuge in the Sankha,

The community,

The connection that we have with other beings on the path with us.

I think that's about enough for tonight.

Thank you very much.