Zen and the Art of Planet Maintenance

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three weeks since His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama graced us with his presence and dropped enlightenment bombs like it was his job for two glorious days. With that said, this column may seem a bit dated, but hey, I needed to get that election column out the other week so you all could be good and educated before hitting the polls, and chances are that most of you haven’t completely forgotten about Tibet’s spiritual leader’s visit quite yet. Let’s take some time to revisit some of His Holiness’ more illuminating points, reflect on Buddhist teachings and talk about why “Educating the Heart” and “Cultivating Hope, Wisdom and Compassion” can play crucial roles in building our communities and preserving our planet.

For anyone unfamiliar, Buddhism is a rich and intricate religious tradition centered as much on philosophical inquiry and research as it is on teachings and practice. As His Holiness alluded to in his talk, much of Buddhist thought has been focused on closing the gap between our illusory perceptions and reality. As a result, Buddhism has provided insight in the areas of philosophy of the mind, psychology and the study of consciousness hundreds of years before modern mind science arrived at the same conclusions. And while His Holiness spared the audience from a longwinded discussion on Buddhism’s contributions to mind science, one product of Buddhist inquiry mentioned — and possibly one of the most important points made by the Dalai Lama in Nelson Arena — could hold particular importance in attempting to formulate an ethical case for environmentalism: the notion that there is no self, and that individuation is an illusion which must be overcome.

Now, that concept may have been a bit hard to swallow for most people in our society, and is enough to induce existential crises in those more philosophically inclined. It’s no mystery why our culture holds notions of the self and individual so near and dear; as Americans, we’re told not only that the highest end we can aspire to is personal success, but that even as a collective unit we’re inherently superior to every other group of people out there. American exceptionalism has proved exceptionally pervasive in our collective consciousness, and while I’m not trying to belittle all of the great things about the land of the free and home of the brave, it’s this precise kind of mentality that has facilitated the extent to which we view the way we treat the planet and other people as acceptable.

One of the effects of remedying this attachment to the thought of ourselves as separate from others is that the well-being of others gains a lot more value in the grand scheme of things. If we can reconcile the discrepancy in the way we value others in relation to ourselves, being concerned about community welfare — and goods and services shared by the community — becomes a whole lot easier. When greater equity is placed in the way others are affected by our actions, it gets somewhat harder to be alright with the costs of pollution and other kinds of environmental degradation to people who aren’t us — what economics calls externalities. And as His Holiness asserted during his talk, there’s even incentive to make this the case. We shouldn’t only be concerned for others’ well being as much as our own because it’s ethically appropriate; research has shown that the way our brains work, we even get satisfaction when helping others. So not only is there a case for not being mean to one another, there’s even a neurobiological case for being nice to one another. And in case anyone was wondering, the Dalai Lama has researched the biological sciences and psychology extensively.

So if there is anything to take from His Holiness’s visit to Midd, it’s that we need to be more trusting and open with everything outside of us — whether it’s our own self, our culture or our species. The world in which we live is shared, and we ought to start treating it as such. In the words of the His Holiness: “We are the generation that will shape the world to come.” Lets do so as a community.

As an aside, to all the people I heard after the talk claiming His Holiness does not “believe in climate change,” you’re wrong. During the student and faculty talk on Oct. 12, he acknowledged that the way nature’s cycles work is partially affected by our way of life. And when he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) forum on climate change on Oct. 15, he claimed that “all of humanity’s children will be affected by climate change,” and that a solution “will only come through compassion.”